Can mana be considered a universal force?

  One could easily answer yes, that everyone, even non-mages, possesses that vital energy that comes from within us.

  The Gods are capricious, or perhaps fearful, when they decided to leave this gift, this boon of power to manipulate the forces of nature using the vital pulses of the soul, to a few, at random.

  They decided to let the dice of fate roll with every birth, deciding whether that life might possess what is needed.

  Pulse.

  Because it is not only the heart that beats within the bodies of living beings.

  It is the soul.

  An echo that constantly resounds in every fiber of our being, of our physical vessel. One that lies at the center of our material plane, granting us the energy that lifts us to our feet with every breath we take.

  The one that gives us our will.

  Entire books of sorcery, ancient scrolls written in dead tongues, do not even come close to comparing with the precise moment in which a mage enters into the perfect resonance between body and soul. Because then… something wonderful happens.

  Something that breaks through the barriers of imposed mortal limits.

  “MANA COLLAPSE !!!”

  STRIKE!

  Flesh and spirit, blood and mana, in a perfect, simultaneous heartbeat. With the precise flow of muscle moving the perishable impulse in a blink.

  “COUUGHHH!!!”

  A heavy, broken, badly wounded groan was heard coming out through the filters of a gas mask.

  A blue, electric flash exploded against Amon’s abdomen, Grace’s fist, charged with crackling mana, stunned him and sent him stumbling several steps back inside the train’s inner cabin.

  She clenched her teeth with all her strength as her knuckle discharged the lethal blow. The windows shattered, and the cars jolted so violently it made a ship in a typhoon seem like a gently rocked cradle.

  The screams of the passengers came immediately.

  “BEHIND ME, NOW!”

  Gerard, his breath briefly recovered, ordered the entire crowd of blank civilians to move behind him. The young albino, despite his severe injuries, held his will firm, standing against all adversity.

  “I can’t let anyone else die…” his mind whispered. “Elijah, wherever you are, I beg you, just stay alive…!”

  He clenched his fists, his black leather catalyst gloves shining with intense celestial runes as he recited aloud.

  “ICE STYLE: GLACIER WALL!”

  The floor of the car shook violently as frost as hard as titanium burst upward to the ceiling, covering the entire width.

  “ALL OF YOU, FALL BACK, GO TO THE OTHER CARS, NOW, NOW, NOW!”

  Like frightened sheep, they obeyed, running and nearly tripping over their desperate steps.

  From the opening above, Buttons, in a much larger and sturdier evolved bear form, carried unconscious passengers from the front cars back toward the disaster the two powerful mages were causing.

  Gerard watched with pleading pity every time the bear returned with a person, wishing it would be his old butler, and lifelong friend.

  There was no room to lose hope, nor to forget the importance of the real matter at hand on the other side of the glacier.

  Grace panted, her breathing uneven. Sweat and blood ran down her face. She kept one hand on her torso; Amon had nearly broken five ribs with a single blow.

  There was no time to regenerate.

  Seeing the white-suited colossus lying on the ground, writhing, she pulled from inside her black jacket a vial of red liquid.

  She yanked out the cork with her teeth, spat it aside, and drank it in one shot. She exhaled in painful relief as the healing potion took quick effect.

  “Haah, haah…you…you really know how to fight, huh…?” she managed with a smile, wiping her forehead with the back of her forearm. “Phew…not bad.”

  Amon, with electrical discharges biting into every part of his being, struggled just to sit up.

  “Y-you son of a bitch…” he rasped between mute gasps, his metallic breathing low and heavy. “That was a damn Mana Collapse…! T-The Spellborne didn’t teach you that banned sorcery!”

  The car was a disaster: burns of negative energy painted the chaotic scene like graffiti. Grace slowly walked to where her sword was embedded in the floor.

  “No.” she said with the casualness of someone considering this an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. “They didn’t…”

  SHNK!

  The sharp weapon spat sky-blue sparks as it was torn free.

  “I learned it on my own.”

  The bones of her hand throbbed as if she had smashed a brick with hundreds of blows. She struggled to keep her wrist steady, the sword stable in her grip.

  Slowly, Amon pulled a syringe filled with purple liquid from his coat pocket. He injected it into his neck and pressed the cursed substance in with his thumb. He growled in agony. Grace didn’t understand; she stared with wide, surprised eyes, her step frozen at the sight of Amon grunting while bracing his back against the wall to rise once more.

  “Dammit, Caillou! Just stay on the ground!” Grace spat in rage. “Don’t make me cut off your stupid bald head…”

  She frowned, gripping the sword with both hands. She hated these parts; these critical moments when the bad guys got back on their feet again and again, just like she did.

  She hated it because it meant reaching the limit: killing.

  Murder. Ending one more life. Every spell she cast, except for her recent monstrous strike, was meant to knock out, paralyze, even completely break legs. Never to end another living being.

  She could forgive herself for crippling a criminal for the rest of his miserable existence, but this, no. Panting, the two of them stood still, locked in an endless duel of intense stares, waiting for the other to move.

  An interminable silence; only Buttons’ footsteps going back and forth could be heard, carrying unconscious passengers, their cries echoing from the other side when they woke from the sleeping gas.

  Nothing. Not a single blink. The tension was palpable on the palate. Barely a pinky of Amon’s moved; that was the signal.

  Both raised a single hand at the same time; Grace her left, Amon his right. Same sigil: index and middle finger extended. Each glove glowing with corrupted, purple energy.

  Their voices came out together, in a tone without jokes, without insults. Only raw desire for survival.

  “Miracle Style. Negative.”

  Their bodies were wrapped in a flaming purple radiance.

  “BLASPHEMOUS RENEWAL!”

  Two shockwaves collided as the glow roared, like a bonfire being fed a gallon of gasoline.

  Each held their raised hand firm, watching as the other regenerated open wounds. Fractured bones repairing, cuts sealing, bruises losing their color in the muscles.

  When they finished, Grace cracked her neck, Amon his knuckles.

  “I’ll smash that hollow fucking head of yours, you piece of shit,” the mafia leader promised. “Then, I’ll skin your fucking bear and use it as a rug.”

  The man grabbed one of the train’s support bars, tore it free effortlessly, and ran his free gloved hand along it, bathing it in negative energy.

  Grace only smiled, dried blood painting her cheek in a twisted way.

  “How adorable, do you also know how to enchant objects?”

  She did the same; her katana taking on a purple, twisted glow that flared with the same intensity beneath her palm.

  “You know, baldy, I already gave you two chances. Now…” she took her stance, as she had countless times before, with funerary seriousness. “Now I’m not lifting you off the fucking ground.”

  “...”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  At superhuman speed they closed the distance.

  SHNK!

  Mana-altered metals collided, spraying sparks everywhere. Each of them held their weapon with force, staring at the other with atrocious hatred. Their arms vibrated under the pressure of all that clashing energy.

  CLANK!

  It was a dance of steel. Every impact was a sharp drumbeat that screeched.

  Buttons carried a well-dressed elderly man, who slowly regained consciousness amid the tearing sounds of screams and metal colliding. It was Elijah.

  "Y-Young...master?" he murmured, blinking heavily, seeing two blurry silhouettes shedding powerful flashes. "W-What's...happening?"

  He lifted his gaze because he felt he was flying through the air; his eyes opened in pure terror when he saw from below a massive bear carrying him with a serious face.

  "KYAAAHHH~!"

  The man’s girly scream made Buttons raise an eyebrow.

  “...?”

  The old man desperately kept screaming, seeing he was on the roof of the already afflicted train still in motion. When they landed inside, Gerard let out a shout; part joy, part panic.

  "ELIJAH, ELIJAH!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs, rushing to help the confused, shocked old man. "THANK THE GODS YOU'RE STILL ALIVE!"

  "Y-young master?! What’s going on?!"

  "Not really the best time to explain right now!" the young albino interrupted, kneeling beside him, "Hold still! Let me check if you are wounded before we escape."

  His butler sighed.

  “Thank you, Milord…”

  But before the old man could get up, the glacier wall was completely destroyed.

  KRASSHHH!!!!

  Grace was launched backward, Amon had delivered a kick so powerful that if not for the katana, she would have lost the fight, or her life.

  The woman's body plowed into the young man and his butler. Buttons extended his arms to hold them and keep them from crashing into the seats. The giant bear raised his gaze, tense at Amon’s imposing advance.

  She steadied herself, stepping in front of them to protect them. Her muscles burned with pain after the kick. She ground her teeth, sheathed her sword, and with a pointed clap aimed at him, she shouted.

  "FORBIDDEN SUMMONING STYLE: NAHASH’S BASILISK!"

  BROOOMMM!!!

  Materializing at rocket speed, Grace’s gigantic serpent shot forward like a cannonball; its body stretching with every centimeter it crossed. As wide as a full-grown bull, with venomous fangs.

  Amon stopped dead, his eyes completely wide for the first time, terrified at the imminent possibility of truly dying. In an attempt to raise a barrier he dropped the iron and crossed his arms over his chest, but it was too late.

  CRUNCH!!!

  Shoulders and abdomen were bitten by the basilisk, flesh and bone being pierced as if it were wet paper taking a stab wound.

  Gerard and Elijah were mortified as they listened to the man's screams of pure, torn agony as he was dragged by the massive summon.

  Amon vainly tried to pry the creature’s jaw open, its venom being pumped into his body by the liters. They slammed into the closed door of a train car, the creature vanished into black ashes; its purpose already fulfilled: defeat the target.

  …

  …

  …

  After the frantic battle came silence.

  For a few seconds, no one moved.

  There were no screams. No orders. Not even clear breaths.

  Only the rattle of the train, now crooked, irregular, as if it too were wounded.

  The smell arrived late.

  Hot metal. Ozone. Fresh blood mixed with something sour, chemical. The air scraped the throat as it entered, as if every breath demanded a toll.

  Grace remained standing, rigid, with her hand still outstretched where seconds before the sigil had been. Her fingers trembled slightly, not from fear, but from emptiness. That horrible sensation that comes after spending something that never fully comes back.

  She blinked once. Twice.

  The world snapped back into place in stuttering pieces.

  The car lights crackled, some dead, others wavering like sick fireflies. Broken glass crunched under the weight of distant footsteps. Someone was crying in another car. Someone was praying. Someone was vomiting.

  Grace slowly lowered her arm.

  Everything hurt.

  Not a sharp, specific pain, but that deep fatigue that seeps into the bones. The kind of exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix. The one that reminds you you stayed standing only out of pure stubbornness.

  Buttons approached cautiously, as if he feared she might shatter if he touched her. He sniffed her first, restless. Blood. Sweat. Burnt magic. His eyes showed anguish.

  Grace rested a hand on his fur.

  "I'm fine..." she murmured, without much conviction, petting him. “I’m fine just…just a little tired…haah.”

  She wasn't, she really wasn't. But she was still alive. And for now, that was enough for her loyal friend.

  “We got him good, eh?” she chuckled, every breath hammering her chest with pain. “Think we could, cough! Haah, think we could still claim that…that reward?”

  Buttons smiled, nodding.

  On the other side of the car, Amon’s mangled body barely moved. A wet sound escaped his throat, irregular, mechanical. It didn’t seem human. It didn’t seem like anything.

  Grace looked at him without hatred. Without triumph. Only with tired resignation.

  This was what remained when no one stopped in time.

  She swallowed.

  The train kept moving.

  And for the first time since it all began, the silence wasn’t a pause.

  It was a warning.

  Grace fell to her knees, Buttons licked her cheek like a worried puppy.

  "Nahash’s Basilisk..." Elijah murmured without blinking, his jaw hanging open, seeing the woman being helped by her bear. "Milord..w-who the hell is this woman?"

  Gerard didn’t answer, his breathing just as ragged, his heart racing, his eyes refusing to close as he took in the aftermath of all the chaos.

  With Buttons’ help, Grace got to her feet. Her legs wobbled, her chest burned from all the mana spent.

  "Is it over?" she asked, with an exhausted smile at her lifelong companion. "Please tell me it’s over..."

  The mute bear nodded, smiling with pride and worry for his summoner.

  "Last time we travel by train...ha ha." the blonde woman laughed. Buttons shook his head in disappointment, but a soft smile betrayed him.

  On the other side lay Amon’s dying body, it looked like a red-berries cheesecake that had been assaulted. The white suit with huge gouts of blood pouring out like lava from an active volcano.

  He panted, his throat choking on his own blood. He blinked slow and heavy. One. Two. Five times in a row.

  On the sixth, the center of his chest burned. He screamed with the little voice he had left under the immense pain. The tattooed symbol of an eye glowed, burning his skin. Activating an emergency call.

  Buttons’ ears lifted in alert, he raised his gaze in terror. Gerard asked him what was happening.

  "Whispers…?" Grace answered, feeling unbearable fear in her bones, watching from a distance the nearly inert body of the suited man already defeated.

  On the ninth blink, she appeared. A manifested sin, dressed in a suit and black tie. The sky clouded over completely at once, and it wasn’t because the trip was reaching Larion’s winter.

  Amon saw the dress slacks, the coat like a corrupted tunic. He heard her sigh of disappointment.

  "You’ve lost your edge, Butcher."

  Her voice, soft, maternal. She formed a sideways smile, looking with her single golden eye at the agonizing man bleeding over well-polished shoes.

  He lifted his gaze, extended a trembling hand in pleading mercy.

  "C-Carmilla…”

  “...”

  She leaned toward him, closing her hand around his.

  "Shhh, shhh...you’ve done enough." she knelt, and stroked his bald head as if he were her baby.

  Just as Amon was about to close his eyes in calm, Carmilla drove her hand through his chest.

  "GHCK!"

  The filters of his mask expelled all the blood gathered in his throat when he felt his heart being squeezed and then crushed by the witch’s hand. The woman’s face was expressionless, apathetic despite her atrocious act.

  "You’re poisoned.” She said in a firm voice. “I’ll see you at headquarters. Doc will heal you."

  Then the man’s entire body burned away completely in black fire, dematerializing him without leaving any ash.

  Carmilla rose, wiping her bloodied hand with a white handkerchief she pulled from the pocket of her black coat. Her black heels echoed with each step as she approached them with total confidence.

  "Please forgive the destruction. I’d like to say in my defense that I didn’t expect any of this to happen in the first place."

  She spoke with total confidence, as if she were arriving late to a managers’ meeting and not to total destruction.

  "B-Buttons? I–I don’t like this." Grace stammered without taking her eyes off the refined white-haired woman. "I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t like it–"

  Buttons couldn’t move from fear. Both sensed that cursed mana. Both…didn’t know what they were looking at.

  It was like watching a black hole of pure evil approach calmly, with the certainty that no matter what they did: their fates were doomed.

  She smiled like a feline: polite, sincere, without boasting about the brutality her companion had shown, or rather: her subordinate.

  Now almost near them, Carmilla stopped. She brought a hand to her chin, examining the blonde woman and her bear.

  "Hmmm, how curious. I thought Blake had killed you both years ago."

  That name lodged in Grace’s throat with unspoken trauma, she clenched her teeth hard, trying to raise her katana.

  "Oh well, such are the whims of luck." Carmilla said, extending her hand toward them. “Let’s finish–”

  BANG!

  …

  "Elijah...?!" Gerard babbled.

  A deafening shot rang out, the old butler had drawn his revolver and fired into Carmilla’s chest.

  The old man breathed hard, his hand trembling, the muzzle of his weapon smoking.

  No one moved a hair. Not a single breath was heard. Grace and Buttons stared at him with the same stupor.

  She was still standing.

  The woman’s chest began to bleed a dark purple liquid; blood also ran from the corner of her lips. She calmly smiled, snorting through her nose, watching the stain spread across her white shirt.

  "They’re so cute...guns."

  With her fingers in a pinching gesture, Carmilla dug them in deep until she pulled the bullet out. She looked at it with absolute, indifferent calm.

  Unlike the rest, Elijah did not let horror paralyze him. He dropped the revolver’s cylinder to fire again.

  TING!

  Carmilla catapulted her index finger with her thumb, launching the bullet as if it were a tiny paper ball.

  THUCK!

  The bullet from her hand pierced Elijah’s forehead, the butler fell like a marionette with no strings. Gerard felt the world freeze completely. He watched the body of his most loyal and oldest friend fall in slow motion.

  He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t even curse.

  Suddenly, Gerard felt the grip of Buttons’ claw holding him by the collar of his coat. The bear grabbed Grace and Gerard, and with all the speed he could muster, he leaped so powerfully his body broke through the roof to flee.

  Running across the roof wouldn’t work, so in a last desperate move he chose to throw himself off the train entirely, crashing down through the forest. The bear felt his arms being cut by tree branches. He preferred that a million times over dealing with "that" on board.

  Carmilla barely tilted her head, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

  She was left alone in the car. She didn’t want to follow them at that moment, no.

  She only smiled to the side, because she knew that after all this she would be able to enjoy a much more entertaining hunt.

  …

  …

  …

  ?

  Murder Pizza

  [WLW LitRPG Satire]

  That wasn’t in the recipes!

  What’s on the menu?

  ? Lesbian leads.

  ? Bingeable short story.

  ? Cozy NOM. This is a pizza book.

  ? Tongue-in-cheek entertainment.

  ? System messages with a side of mockery.