Exclusive #5: Zara's Tribulation

When her steely resolve began to fade, Zara Shaocheth went to visit the memorial of her youngest son. Corey’s remains stayed on the world now known as Union Central after the failed attack. She knew burying body and core ultimately did nothing to ease the loss of a child, but she still fixated on the fact that she’d been denied that hollow gesture. She placed a hand on her daughter’s nearby grave as she passed it, feeling a twinge of guilt for how little she visited.

It was different when an infant died. Sad, most definitely. But they were a bundle of potential you lost, not a distinct personality. Not like her Corey. He was the child of her old age. Even women at the highest levels of body enhancement couldn’t reproduce forever. Their forms may freeze in time, a snapshot of middle age, but whatever it was that made a woman fecund didn’t last forever. Not that she’d ever want to replace Corey. It just hit hard that her immediate family would only ever shrink in the future.

Her two surviving children were both grandparents now – a daughter integrated into the administration of the first household and a son who lazed about as an idle noble, perfectly content to contribute nothing to the family. Zara’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren were all so busy with their own concerns. The adults were busy with their own families and the youths were mostly in that awkward phase where they wanted to spend time only with friends their age. She was not so tyrannical to force her descendants to honor her every utterance. Being raised the daughter of a merchant and a soldier gave her distinctly different views on family life than the arrogant self-importance of her younger half-siblings.

Zara knelt next to her son’s monument. It was a marble statue of Corey, one that accurately depicted his gentle, affable air. The boy never had a mean bone in his body. Her father saw that as a flaw, of course. Sought to toughen him up with exposure to war. Which led to this memorial stone without the accompanying grave. An untimely death, the same thing that happened to her two full brothers in her youth. Killed in battles they only undertook out of filial duty.

“Your kids are doing well,” she said to the statue. “Rolanda is a good mother. She speaks of you often to them so that your memory won’t fade.”

How many times could she offer the same platitudes to unfeeling stone? She turned her eyes up to the sky and spoke aloud the plans she’d not shared with anyone yet. “I am going to make the final push. Starting a week ago, I passed on my deliveries to others. I’m accumulating energy for my advancement to lord. Maybe then I’ll be powerful enough to shield those I love from this cruel world.”

The only response was a gust of wind. There were many who would interpret such a sign as a message from beyond. Zara wished she were less practical. That might let her imagine Corey approved of her plans. She couldn’t believe such a thing even if she wanted to. The unempowered worlds might speak of their gods, but Zara knew the truth of their mythologies – those legends referred to visiting Xian lords. There were only humans and monsters in this multiverse, and sometimes the lines between those categories blurred.

From that day forward, Zara pushed towards advancement. She drank whiskey to grow her soul reserves, then pushed that energy back out to strengthen her aura. Only a fool went into heaven’s tribulation without an aura and body at the peak. Her mind, constantly lagging behind her level, she pushed forward as well. She cycled through dozens of exercises found within the family library to strengthen her apertures as much as possible.

Months passed. Then years. It took almost two decades for her to finally reach the peak in aura and mind. Her body was nearly there as well, close enough that a single platinum elixir should bring her to her goal. Her soul had long since reached its saturation point and her reserves were at ninety percent full.

Random static discharges would tingle across her skin throughout the day as she approached her goal. According to tradition, they were warnings of heaven’s wrath. A more modern interpretation said that they were a difference in charge between her soul and the universe around her. That charge would equalize in dramatic fashion when the energy density of her soul rose to the level of the world itself.

She’d seen her father’s ascension to lord. It was easy to understand why more primitive generations thought the heavens were angry. As the random shocks startled her awake during sleep or arced between her hand and door handles, the superstitions of the past tempted her. It certainly felt like the entire world had grown angry at her for daring to challenge its supremacy. Like it was warning her to back off from her lofty plans.

Those around Zara whispered to each other when they thought she wasn’t aware. They knew what she intended. How could they not? There was more than just the precursors of the tribulation to tip them off. More than reaching the peak of her current level. As the source of the disturbance, she couldn’t sense it herself, but she knew from observing her father those many years ago that cosmic energy in the environment hummed in her presence. She was in a strange in-between state, not subservient to reality and yet not above its influence like a lord would be.

Her father glanced up from his papers as she approached. He’d yet to comment on her condition. His eyes held a hint of concern that she knew him too proud to ever voice. The Lord General may have had many wives, but he’d only loved the first. Zara didn’t’ know if he was even capable of accepting anyone new into his heart. Other than the handful grandfathered into his considerations, people were things to him.

“The Assembly won’t hear of war with Zing,” her father said. “It was me and Annihilator versus the rest of them. Cowards. Are we not lords?” His question held more weight than one purely rhetorical. He arched his brow as he held her gaze.

Zara drew herself up. “Father. I ask you to serve as protector during my breakthrough.”

The Lord General stood slowly and inclined his head. “I accept this honor, daughter. No one, not man nor beast, will interrupt your tribulation or strike while you recover.”

Over the next two weeks, Zara filled her energy reserves. She used the family’s cosmic chamber, drawing in energy at a density ten times greater than the general atmosphere. She reduced her intake, only eating small amounts of high level meat and drinking high level silver elixirs. The level eight platinum elixir she had purchased was waiting for her in the family’s vault. A level nine elixir would have been infinitely more suitable for her needs, but those were rare – few were made in the first place and those were typically claimed by lords.

Static discharges became a constant in her life. Rather than occasional shocks, there was a constant flow of prickly electricity over her form. Even more concerning, Zara felt the dissonance growing. A massive tribulation was building just out of sight, she sensed. She didn’t believe it could be stopped now even if she emptied her energy reserves.

So massive did the malevolent even feel that Zara actually considered the coward’s path: traveling to an unempowered world to advance. The tribulation would strike anywhere, but its intensity would be less anywhere but Tian. So also would the benefits of surviving heaven’s wrath be diminished away from Tian.

Her father sought her out more often as the days passed. “Have you been practicing the twin touch game?”

“Yes, father. I still don’t understand its importance.”

“You will,” he promised.

The next day, thunder from a cloudless sky announced the approach of her tribulation. Thrakkar Shaocheth, the Lord General, embraced her with his strong arms like he had the day her mother died. “You are my greatest pride, Zara. Face this tribulation and become my equal.”

She was too nervous to speak in that moment. Her hands shook so much that she barely managed to get the top off of her platinum elixir. She swallowed every drop down and felt her body incrementally improve, approaching its limits.

Her father began to walk backwards. “Disrobe if you wish your clothes to survive.”

Zara doffed her robe but kept her undergarments. They would not survive what was to come, but she didn’t need the distraction of standing fully nude. She walked further into the empty field, twitching at the constant play of electricity over her flesh. It grew in intensity the same as the thunder within the sky.

She never saw the first bolt.

One moment she stood. The next she didn’t. Her muscles locked up in a tense seizure as the second bolt fell. She flared her aura and felt the lightning dance around the barrier, seeking a weak spot to attack through.

Strike after strike fell. Faster and faster. Each landed with a colossal boom. Each raised the temperature of her body, even blocked as they were.

Finally, the bolts fell in truth. She remembered when her father became a lord, how arcs of brilliant violence had connected sky and ground, a continuous stream of energy that looked like it would never rest. Her senses were befuddled by being the center of the barrage, but she knew that was what happened to her now. A massive attack hit and didn’t stop.

Her soul apertures began to ache. Especially her domain, which was under-leveled compared to the others. Zara opened her mouth to scream, but that only allowed super-heated air in to scorch her lungs. There was such pressure. No one prepared her for that aspect.

The heat continued to grow. Even with the lightning blocked, the heavens refused to be denied their vengeance. She sought to become their equal? She would be swatted down like a fly.

While the main bolt continued to connect sky and her and earth, secondary strikes lashed her from the sides. Heaven’s attacks began to bridge the gap, penetrating her domain aperture to reach the interior of her soul. The energy wasn’t purely cosmic in nature, containing a wild mixture of everything the world was. It raged within her, scorching the substance of her soul.

And then her aura, exhausted beyond its means, collapsed.

Lightning burrowed into her flesh. It entered through her mouth and nostrils, through her ears, through the pores of her skin, and burnt its way through flesh bone. It came from every direction, destroying substance in its wake.

Every bit of matter composing Zara burned away.

In that moment, as her physical form dissolved into nothingness, she understood why her family taught the twin touch game. The template of her corporeal existence, imprinted upon her body aperture, remained. Lacking a physical substrate to imprint itself upon, she seized the only thing present: the chaotic energy surge of her tribulation.

A new body formed from tamed chaos.

At the same time, her advancement completed. The walls of her soul grew thicker, doubling in strength. Zara felt reality tremble around her. With an instinctive reaction, she brought her will to bear, insisting that the attack from the heavens cease.

The lightning cut off in an instant.

Thunder rumbled in the sky, the grumbling of the heavens after being denied a victim.

Zara’s body finished reforming and she lay within a deep gouge in the earth, simply breathing. She’d done it. She was a lord now. Her soul was in shambles, damaged from the attacks, and her domain aperture would take years to fully recover, she felt. But she’d done it.

Her discarded robe fluttered down to cover her. Thrakkar Shaocheth descended next, tears wetting his cheeks. “Zara, my precious child, you have done it. There are now two Shaocheth lords.”

The adrenaline keeping her aware began to fade away. Zara managed but a single smile before she lost consciousness. She’d survived her tribulation and become a lord. Everything would be different now. She would make sure of that.