Overpowered Wizard-Chapter B4 Ch27: Naomi’s Tribulation

When Naomi was young, a terrible hurricane struck Central Florida, the perfect time to kill her father. It was a secret she’d kept all her life. She’d nearly revealed it to Zarian multiple times, but that was too much ugliness and sin to let out.

Then again, there were a lot of ugly parts she’d buried deep down under the service to the Marines, under the service to Zarian, and under the service to seizing all the power she could for herself. It was in her tribulation she’d had to face her first sin.

Murder.

The hurricane roared, the wind unstoppable, slamming down on the earth, buckling and breaking homes like gods kicking over sticks. The trailer park was more like sand castles, but just like any hood, there were rules a young girl like her had to follow, even during a hurricane.

Never answer the door for strangers or the weird neighbors. Always listen to what you were told. And never mess with daddy’s gun.

She followed the rules and went for the big kitchen knife instead.

The timing was just too perfect. The window was broken, hail coming through. Her dad was sitting, gasping, looking all fish-eyed, holding in the blood pouring out from his chest. She was standing there with the hail and the rain hurling in behind her, watching him bleed out at her little feet, the glass spread out around them. Once she got out of here – or after she’d gotten out of here – the hurricane had done the work of messing up her dad’s body and hiding the murder for her. Nobody would/had bothered with a proper autopsy.

“Look at what you’ve done,” spoke a loud, rowdy, and familiar woman. She cackled like a witch, her voice overcoming the hurricane outside. It was like she was the source, the storm growing more violent, the winds rocking the trailer back and forth, the familiar voice cackling again. “You’ve gone and messed up now! God doesn’t like ugly little girls who sin! You’ve gone ahead and killed your pappy! That’s why the hurricane’s going to blow you, the neighbors, and all of Florida away!”

“He was a bad man.” Naomi’s voice was as young as her appearance. “I’m not a bad girl.”

“Yes, you are!” The witch crashed through and filled up the space with just half her body. The trailer groaned as it stretched to let her in. No matter how she cackled and roared like a monster, her voice remained familiar. No matter how she stretched, shifted, and moved like an overgrown beast, her face and features were familiar.

The beastly witch was Naomi.

This was her tribulation.

The inner child versus the inner monster.

“He’s a bad man. And bad men go to hell. So I sent him there.” Her mind wasn’t working as fast while in this childish form. It felt like she was speaking with a mouthful of cotton. But she made her points anyway. “I’m not sorry. I’ll do it again and again. I’m not sorry.”

“Then why are you trapped?” the witch asked. “Why are you doing this again and again? The answer’s simple. It’s because you’re already in hell, and this is what you get for being a sinner! Me here to torment you!”

The beast of a witch struck out. The child raised the knife to fight. Too short. Too slow. The witch’s claws, longer, faster, crueler.

She slashed apart the child, the trailer burst into crumbling fragments, whisked into the massive hurricane that scoured all of Florida and the world. The wind was screaming, and it sounded like the souls of the damned. Naomi was screaming with them.

She stopped screaming and had the bloody knife in her hand again. Her father was sitting on the kitchen floor, his back to the thumping fridge that would freeze up in the back at least twice a week. He was gasping, eyes wide, hand patting at the blood pouring out from his chest. They’d been through this over and over. Naomi lost count.

Her heart quivered. She thought about saying sorry at long last. The hail and the rain blowing through the window stung her back. She was cold. Tired. Unworthy. She nearly gave in. She nearly. s

“Nah, I’m that bitch. I’m no weak punk.” Little Naomi straightened and hardened her heart for the thousand-and-one time, and she would do so for another thousand-and-one times until she was dead-dead. “No regrets. No mercy. Let’s kick ass all the way to the end.”

The demonic witch howled outside, the hurricane growing more violent. Little Naomi walked forward. Each stride was like moving through tar, but she forced her way still, walking over her dying father’s body. She even dropped the knife on him. She didn’t need it.

A massive fist smashed in the door. Fingers as long as arms, claws as long as swords. They reached for her.

The witch was going to snatch her up like the many times before and pick her apart. And the child couldn’t do anything to stop it before. She’d tried crying. She’d tried pleading. She’d tried cajoling, dancing, singing, persuading. She’d never said sorry, and she still refused to.

Bad men deserved to be in hell. Naomi smirked. “And I won’t let the heavens stop me!” She cocked back her little fist and punched forward, striking the monstrous palm. The witch stopped for a moment, and Naomi let herself rant.

“That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? I’m not good enough! I’m not pure enough! I should be damned all my life! Well, I refuse! I’m not carrying this burden anymore! I got friends who like me! I have someone I admire the hell out of! And I know I’m screwed up in the head and I’m too much and I should be alone! But I’m not! I’m not going to get held back anymore! Not even by myself!”

“Nobody’s greater at hurting you than you.” The witch closed her claws around the child again.

Yet, the child smiled. She finally found her answer. “Nobody’s better at healing you than you.”

She threw another little punch into the palm. The power behind it was different. The witch screamed, her arm flying backward. The already damaged trailer tore in half and crumbled under the large limb. The hurricane roared through the wider opening, and under a flash of lightning, the witch growled with a feral face. Her eyes were sharp like a carnivore, her fangs growing.

She stood at her full height, towering over the child, more lightning and thunder clamoring above. The hurricane roared louder and rougher. By the time the child entered the elements fully, her trailer disintegrated, her father’s corpse gone.

“No forgiveness. No regrets. No apologies. Not for what we had to do as kids.” The child strode forward against the storm, and the monstrous witch watched, biding her time, able to pounce and kill at any moment. But the child didn’t care. She kept going. “But that doesn’t mean we should hurt the people we love. We shouldn’t have hurt Zarian like that! We shouldn’t have pushed so hard that we left everybody to figure it out without us. We got a lot a junk in our trunk, but our junk is our junk! It’s on us to deal with it!”

“Nah, let’s be messy. Just like him. He’s a mess. He’s got all that toxic potential. Why not us? You know how fun it’ll be to wreck it all — all the time!” The witch cackled, and the hurricane grew even louder. Thunderbolts struck down near the child and set her skittering about. The wind picked up and threw her around. The witch didn’t have to even do anything to make the child feel small and weak. “You can’t overcome me. I’m rooted deep in your roots. You fed me by being you. You can’t be better than yourself. Just accept it. You’re a sorry piece of shit, and we’ll be shitty forever.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The witch lifted her foot and brought it down. That should’ve been the end of this loop and the start of the next, but the child didn’t crumple like all the times before. The foot stopped short of touching the mud, and with a great show of strength, the child threw back the foot and the entire witch.

The larger of the two stumbled in surprise, and in that window of weakness, the smaller one rushed forward and punched the other in the ankle. The witch cried and slammed down onto hands and knees. The child kicked the witch’s wrist, bringing her down even lower, face to the mud.

Eye-to-eye, the witch’s pupils sharpened with fear.

“Yeah, I murdered my dad, and I’ve lied about it for years. But he was a shitty man, and I can be better than that. Stronger than that!” The child extended her hand. “We can be better and stronger.”

Slowly, the witch rose out of the mud. The hurricane above abated, and the monstrous other half shrank down from her massive bulk. The more she shrank, the more the dream storm settled until it was nothing more than hard rain and distant thunder. Back on her feet, the witch stood across from the child, the two now of similar heights while in their adult forms.

The child held out her hand still.

The witch examined it like it was a trap.

“Don’t you want to be rid of me?” the inner witch asked.

“I need you as much as you need me,” said the inner child.

“It wasn’t you who did it. It was I who killed him.”

“Thank you. If it weren’t for you, we would’ve died.”

The rain kept falling, a comfort now.

The child dropped her hand, and the witch came forward. A handshake was too formal for them. Instead, they hugged. A cosmic gong rang out, filling them with vibrations of the universe and beyond.

The witch and the child laughed as the world around them turned from dark and dreary to bright and promising. Then they both lit up like flashing stars before flowing into each other to be united as the one and only Naomi Washington.

***

“How are you feeling? Oh my goodness, you look so fabulous! I mean, you’re as naked as me, but you have this new glow around you?!” Bianca was talking a mile-a-second in Spanish as the two of them dodged attacks from Absolute Ruvaria. Naomi had just gotten here after digging herself out of an underground facility and punching her way across the world by forming portals with her fists.

Yeah, Naomi had gone through a lot of changes. A lot, a lot of changes. Her tribulation had leveled her up, advanced her skills, and combined multiple powers. And she’d achieved over a dozen achievements of Mythical Quality or above mythical, the unknown quality, lending her even more power and stats. Then there were the rewards she’d earned from fighting Zarian himself and surviving. Hence why she’d appeared from halfway across the world and thrown herself right into the mix.

She wasn’t the only one who’d grown a lot. There was an edge to Bianca hidden under all of her cheer and brightness. Naomi could pick up on the latent mentality coming off of Bianca – it was unyielding. Her friend had forged herself out of the sternest stuff in the universe and had a backbone that was denser than the core of a star.

She’d been fighting the mad lady across from them for a while, huh?

Naomi kicked off another massive darkness bolt. Bianca bolted between swiping dark tentacles, leaving behind zig-zagging lights in her wake. The two women moved through the air with the utmost mastery of their powers, working together like they shared the same mind. With Naomi’s powers, they might as well, but it wasn’t necessary. They easily clicked just because, as if neither of them had been apart for long.

“I’m finding you are all an unbelievable annoyance to me,” Ruvaria said, standing upon a floor of darkness she fused with the air.

Naomi was catching on to a lot of updates through the latent mental thoughts in the area. One thing was obvious – Ruvaria was uncomfortable with Naomi’s presence, and Naomi had an inkling of why.

I’m going to need to have that chat with Zarian, Naomi thought, ignoring the vibrations reaching her from a distant part of the universe. It didn’t feel right to have an important grown-up talk from a long distance. It had to be face to face. For now, she focused on the drama in front of her.

“How about we stop trying to genocide a whole group of people and just talk it out?” Naomi suggested.

Ruvaria narrowed her eyes. “Your tribulation has changed you.”

“No, I think it just made me less of an angsty jarhead. Trust me, I’m still me, but I can see the forest for the trees and vice-versa.”

“I love that!” Bianca cheered, flickering left, right, and all over. Soon enough, a lull entered the fight as the ladies looked across from each other high above the continent.

Naomi found it nifty that she could stand on air easily now. She wasn’t even using a new power. She was using an old psychic one that was dialed up to the extremes. Having power that made old tricks look simple was nifty.

Absolute Ruvaria crossed her arms and huffed. “I just want to wipe the slate clean. They are of my blood. My responsibility. Let me just do this one thing and be free of it.”

Naomi cast her gaze down at the continent of cowering elves. Bianca had done a helluva job spreading freedom. Naomi only sensed a tiny number of holdouts for the old traditions, but they would soon die out. Freedom could spread on its own.

“I get it. You’re deep in the muck. So deep it feels like there’s no going back. But maybe if you drag others deep into the muck with you and just drown them, you can stack up enough bodies and get out of that muck,” Naomi said.

She watched the genocidal elf carefully as Ruvaria focused a lot of attention on her. So much so, the air darkened around Naomi more. It was a little scary that anybody could make their own version of Zarian’s bloodline, but if anybody could do it, it was Ruvaria. She had Naomi’s respect, but that didn’t mean she was right.

Naomi’s next words came out even bolder. “The muck isn’t holding you back. It’s you. You are the muck. And the muck is you. All you have to do is stop holding yourself back and just move upward and onward. You can let it all go and free yourself.”

The silence that followed had nothing but the wind to fill it. Ruvaria waited in her darkness that stained far back toward the distant horizon. Bianca remained a miniature sun next to Naomi, who was doing all she could to not smile at the ease of standing in the air. Naomi was also finding it fun that she out of all people was negotiating for the lives of the elves.

“I don’t think … I can take this from you,” Ruvaria said. “I’ve warmed his bed, and yet he still holds you above me.”

“Oh, no, no, please don’t go there,” Bianca pleaded. “It doesn’t have to be about him at this moment. Let’s keep it between us girlies!”

“It is about him,” Ruvaria grumbled. “He’s literally at the center of it all. He decides our fate. How can it not be about him?”

The old Naomi would’ve popped off or egged Ruvaria on. Hell, she should feel just as insecure, too. Zarian was the top dog, and the highest woman at his side could reap he cosmic rewards.

From what she could tell, even Shadowfell’s marriage to Zarian was questionable. Anyone who could take that position was in for a helluva ride filled with ultra power. But Naomi didn’t engage like she normally would’ve.

“Honestly, Zarian deserves a good smack. He can’t be playing with hearts like that.” Naomi sighed. “But I deserve a smack, too. I should’ve done a better job separating my feelings for him and my thing for power. So, congrats, I think you got me beat.”

Ruvaria paused. “What?”

Bianca chuckled. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I guess I’ll say it. He loves you, Ruvaria. You were there when he needed someone.”

Naomi felt sadness over that. But she didn’t rage. She didn’t go crazy. The sadness was her recognition of what could’ve been if she had made a different choice. But with that sadness, she could see a more true path for herself.

“Yeah, I lost that one. But it’ll be alright. I’m going for gold in a different way.” Naomi flashed a smile. “I’ll make myself my own Ultra Goddess!”

Ruvaria opened and closed her mouth. “But … I thought … it would be over once he returned and saw you. I thought that I’m too old and too broken and not as incredible as you all are. You’ve achieved greater power at faster speeds that put me to shame. I’m just a mentor and fallen idol.”

“Do I have to say it?” Naomi groaned.

“It’ll help a lot,” Bianca urged.

Shaking her head, Naomi sighed. The words tasted awful, and she hated losing, but she would grow stronger from this. So, she committed all the way.

“Zarian’s the definition of a wacko Florida man. Show him a little kindness, give him a solid drink, and send him into a good time, and he’ll come away with a hundred wild stories, and you can’t be sure which one is more incredible. You think you’re too old. Don’t kid yourself. You’re the hottest little granny I’ve seen, and if I was playing harder for the other team, I’d bang ya. Hells, if you two become an official couple, I might come knocking and show you what this unapologetic mortal can do. But that’s besides the point. You both are nerdy magic nerds. You both have a compatible vibe. And I’m sure you rocked his world in bed plenty enough. Bravo. You beat me. Now will you stop acting all crazy and just enjoy your life instead of self-sabotaging yourself? We have too many people who are gold medalists in the self-sabotage Olympics.”

“Hm. Well. I feel somewhat disturbed. I suppose if that is true, then Zarian’s heart is mine.” Ruvaria looked up. Then she looked down. “Oh, huh, this makes everything all too difficult. I feel a little too committed now, but the muck as you say isn’t as heavy as before. How about this? If you can land a solid blow on me … I shall concede. But I won’t make it easy.”

Bianca was about to cheer, but Naomi shushed her. Then the psionic woman smiled from ear-to-ear. “Sure, you got yourself a deal, as long as our best friends can join. Gilbert! Hannah! Let’s go!”

Seconds away from reaching the elven continent, Gilbert rode his eight-legged steed hard across the air. Deep, deep, deep underground, Hannah stood in a room covered in blocks, and on each block were myriad runes that shone with white-golden light. These runic blocks were the great secret the dwarves had been slain for, their kingdom buried and lost as a dungeon until Hannah crawled deep enough.

System runes.