Distortion

Much like himself, the Spire was getting old. Tim couldn’t remember when it first happened, but Distortions were first seen as a sign of the world ending. A sign that the reality anchor could not keep up with the dying god in its final few flashbacks. Over a thousand years have passed since then. Now, the Distortions almost felt like another natural occurrence here, much like how earthquakes and floods used to ravage the old Earth.

Of course, not everyone was as old as he was.

“What in the king’s name is going on?!” As usual, Lynn’s voice jolted out from the backseat.

“Seatbelt, ladies. And make sure your windows are all rolled up. I don’t want Mia getting radiation poisoning from wiping the seats later.”

“How’d you know I washed the car?!” Mia was more shocked at getting caught than at the literal thunderstorm up ahead.

SHE washed the car? Tim thought Mia only wiped the insides. So Pris didn’t do full detailing and outside wash when it installed the upgrades? He sighed. That’s what he got for a free service.

But it would suffice for now. Slamming his foot on the accelerator, he sent the car charging forward, only to slam the brake from time to time for almost no apparent reason.

Holding an empty paper bag in her hands, Lynn clearly learned from her past experience in the car. “Some explanation behind your atrocious driving would be great!”

As if to emphasize the exclamation mark at the end of her sentence, another bolt of lightning landed just a few feet in front of the car. The ground beneath them shook, tremors travelling straight to their knees.

The truth was, he was playing chicken with the Distortion, and it was working. But he wasn’t going to give an entire lecture to justify himself. Distracted driving was dangerous.

He hinted, a lone eyebrow raised. “Princess, ever wondered why you don’t find any natural disasters in the Spire?”

“No. What does that have to do with THAT?”

As if on cue, a meteor fell through the night sky, causing her voice to crack at the end. It was bright enough to illuminate the woods in their entirety, despite how tiny the space rock actually was. Good. He didn’t need to keep the headlamps on anymore.

A stir of excitement surged through Tim’s blood vessels as a crooked smile snapped onto his face. Dodging lightning was nothing special. But outrunning a meteor? That was something he always wanted to try. Taking his right hand off the wheel, he bit his thumb, blood rushing out as if it was waiting for this exact moment.

“Hey Mia, check this out.”

His daughter was hit with a look of confusion, only for it to be quickly wiped away with awe. The moment he touched the central hub of the steering wheel with his bloodied hand, no stain was left behind, as if the car drank the fluid through the leather. Even though he was clearly pressing the car horn, there was no sound whatsoever.

Lines and runes appeared all over the interior of the car, the same ones that adorned the structures outside of Pris. As Tim activated his Blackblood, the markings on the car glowed together with his ability. And with each beat of his heart, the orange exterior of the vehicle pulsed black, united as one with its master.

Thanks to Pris’s upgrade, Tim could now pump Blackblood directly into the car.

He didn’t even bother dodging the next thunderbolt. The car’s roof took a direct hit, only for him to feel a mild tickle. Thunder drowned in his armor of blood, unable to escape and even make so much as a noise. Could it even be called thunder if it made no sound? His mind posed this philosophical question to the Distortion, both as a flex and an insult.

Come get me.

He floored the throttle. The supercharger whined at first, only to roar like a jet engine as it breathed in more air. The lungs of the mechanical beast expanded, cylinders running faster than ever as adrenaline-fueled Blackblood became biohemic ethanol. For a brief moment, the car screamed and cried, rejecting the transfusion. But once the beast embraced its master’s Gift, it went dead quiet.

Under the meteor-lit sky, a silent comet emerged, blazing black across the tarmac. One illuminated the darkness as the other devoured light. A battle between Distortion and Aberration, the Spire their only spectator in a canvas of chiaroscuro.

No longer bound by physics or engineering, the car’s speed approached that of an aircraft. The g-force inside entered into the realm of double digits, and Tim took it all. Lynn held onto his shoulder for dear life while he kept his hand on Mia, singlehandedly keeping all three of them alive with his healing. On top of siphoning his blood as fuel for the car, he would have been brain-dead several times over if not for his regeneration.

Yet, all he felt was mild discomfort as his eyes fended off the encroaching tunnel vision. A clear sign of his aging. He recalled a specific moment in his youth where he casually walked off a black hole, the spaghettification at its event horizon feeling like nothing. His current regeneration probably couldn’t keep up with an attack on that level, so he was glad to have experienced that in his formative years.

At the very least, he still had the luxury to sneak in a glance or two at the passengers. They seemed to be treating this like a roller coaster ride. Mia definitely enjoyed it more than Lynn from the looks of it. For someone who could turn to stone, she was awfully weak to motion sickness.

As if it sensed her weakness from inside the car, the Distortion adapted, growing more frenetic. Nearby trees were suddenly uprooted, tossed in the air as multiple tornadoes joined the thunderstorm and impending meteor strike. Dirt and debris pummeled the windshield, trying to blind the driver, but to little effect. Every inch of the vehicle, from the glass down to the burning rubber, regenerated constantly in response to the abuse it was taking.

While Tim could ignore the lightning, he had to avoid the tornadoes. Just because the car could heal itself didn’t mean it couldn’t get knocked off course. Armed with trees and boulders, twisters would make it no different from stepping into a blender, slowing them down. He had to make it to Mount Harlow before the meteor struck. The car might survive it, but Mia definitely wouldn’t.

The closer he got to the mountain, the more frenzied the assault on them grew. Good. He would be more worried if the calamities weren’t trying to kill him. That would mean the mountain wasn’t doing its job. If it weren’t for the pile of rocks in front of him, the rest of the Spire would be done in by the Distortions.

Swerving and weaving between the unnatural disasters, he’d like to imagine the look on the Distortion’s face if it had one. Every single attempt to slow him down only seemed to make him faster, the high from the adrenaline directly injecting higher octane biofuel into the belly of the beast. With the finishing line in sight, the Distortion had one final surprise.

The meteor broke through the imaginary atmosphere, hanging above Tim like the Sword of Damocles, eager to punish him for his impudence. But as it hurtled toward the ground, it also unleashed the full brunt of the evil stored within. Millennia of cosmic radiation absorbed across shattered realities burst forth from the meteor, dousing the land in a wave of extinction.

Grass turned white within seconds. Trees crumbled to dust. Life blinked out of existence. Tim felt the collective sigh of death around him. The song of the soulless. But by the time he noticed it, it was too late.

All the radiation damage taken by the car was passed onto him. His hair was the first to fall off. But before he even noticed it shedding, he was destroyed on a cellular level. Instantaneous disintegration. Taking in radioactive energy equivalent to that of a collapsing star, there was nothing left of him. The driver's seat was completely empty, down to the last subatomic particle.

But even after all that, he did not die. He was not Immortal; he was an Aberration. The rules of reality did not apply to a Sirath like him. Rather, they obeyed him. His only hope of a “true death” was the bullet that killed another Sirath, Vita. And until then, neither black hole nor supernova, not even the total collapse of reality, could put him down for good.

Even with his regeneration impaired by age, he still brought his hands and feet back first, controlling the vehicle while continuing to heal the passengers from the effects of the g-force. His disembodied limbs were the only things keeping the car on a straight line and the others alive. They moved purely through instinct, functioning autonomously as the rest of the body took time to heal.

“Wait wait wait waaaaaait!” Lynn’s panicked yelps were ignored. The driver had no ears. He didn’t have eyes to see her flailing about, or the literal mountain right in front, for that matter.

The car was headed straight into the cliff face, front bumper seconds away from kissing the jagged, almost 90-degree wall of solid stone. No sign of slowing down or even attempting to turn. A collision was imminent.

But so was the meteor’s impact. The space rock that snuck into their reality was right behind them, a flying ball of fire brighter than the sun. Its radioactive wave was only a preview. Once it hit the ground, there would be no ground left.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the car-turned-comet charged straight ahead into the mountain, obeying the will of its bodiless master.

Mia had her eyes closed, full of faith in her father. Lynn’s eyes were at the back of her head, terror written over the whites of her sclera as the extent of her immortality was about to be tested. Could her body even reform itself if it were compressed in a flattened car wreck? She didn’t want to find out.

As the hood of the car touched the side of the mountain, everything seemed to slow down to a crawl. From a speeding bullet into time standing still, a moment of clarity arrived for those within the car. It was as if the entire world paused just for them. Whether to laugh or cry at their situation, nobody knew.

As that moment left them, time flowed once more, alongside inertia. Everything turned black.

Tim’s body finally finished healing. His hands and his feet connected once more. Consciousness returned to the helm. But with everything being pitch black, his fingers reflexively reached out to turn on the headlights.

And as light returned, he saw Mia and Lynn in sheer disbelief. Sitting in their respective seats, they were at a complete loss as to what had just happened. The car clearly made contact with the cliff face. Metal met mountain. Yet, there was not so much as a dent.

Just like how the car crossed over the imaginary boundary from the Holographic Sea to the unknown woods, the same had happened once again. This time, they were shrouded in total darkness. So thick were the shadows surrounding them that the only thing the headlights illuminated was the interior of the car. But at the very least, they were still in one piece.

“We’re almost there.” Tim’s voice was the only guiding light they had.

And with his reassurance, a flash of white arrived at the end of the tunnel. Whether it was growing larger or they were getting closer, it was hard to tell. The light shone brilliantly, not with the overwhelming presence of the meteor from before, but with genuine, comforting warmth.

And as the car passed through the light, they felt it washing over them. Pure light in the form of water pouring down from a waterfall.

The car, encapsulated within a bubble, floated gently over an unbelievable sight. A rainforest of crimson—wood and leaves the shade of blood.

Tim announced, “Welcome to the inside of Mount Harlow.”