Lab Rat
Fate used Null to move a few feet to the right, another dark beam cutting through the wall behind where he was just standing.
"You're a horrible shot," he taunted, looking at the hole created by the beam. In response, Trithmund just launched another five in a scattered pattern.
Fate let them pass through him, moving across the room to stand right behind the man, who was still glancing around, trying to figure out why he had burned several holes in his room. Fate deactivated Null right as he tapped the man on his shoulder, shouting "BOO."
To his credit, Trithmund didn't jump out of his skin. Instead, he whirled around, jabbing some kind of needle in Fate's direction. Fate caught his wrist with ease, along with the other wrist when Trithmund tried to attack a second time. He stared at Trithmund for a while, the man struggling to escape his grip.
"You know, it's people like you that put a bad taste in my mouth." Fate glanced at the cages, specifically at one of the cages containing a human infant, whose cries had provided a backdrop to their fight.
"Just because you have a piece of creation, doesn't mean you are a god." He looked back at Trithmund. "It just means you'll show who you really are. And I've found your true self lacking, Trithmund. So not only am I going to kill you, I'm also going to expose your dirty deeds done here to 'your' people, so they can see for themselves what a twisted fuck they were following."
Trithmund headbutted Fate, the blow causing him to blink. Fate chuckled.
'Compared to Autumn's headbutts, that was like being hit by a pillow.' Then he felt a surge of energy, and he was launched into cages. The bars bent and squealed under the impact. He dropped to the floor, pushing himself up. Looking up, he saw Trithmund looming over him, needle raised above his head.
'I'm a dumbass. Forgot about Divine Reach.' He rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the needle Trithmund thrust at him.
The tip broke against the concrete floor, causing Trithmund to toss it aside in disgust. He reached out with his hand, using his Divine Energy to yank Fate into the air, arms and legs spread eagle. Fate instantly threw up his Divine Energy barrier, preventing Trithmund from squashing him. He was careful to use the bare minimum he felt necessary, which was about 600 pounds of force.
'Gotta be at least Divine Grasp, a stage or two above me. Won't be able to fight this. Maybe…' He used Null once more, but it didn't release him. He kept it up anyway. Trithmund was showing signs of bewilderment, no doubt wondering what it was he was grasping with his Divine Reach.
Unfortunately, the man was still a scientist. He opened an empty cage, chucking Fate inside and slamming the door, locking it. Then he went to a table and grabbed a weird pair of glasses, the lenses some strange red color, with yellow flakes mixed in.
He took his current glasses off and placed these new ones on, studying the cage Fate was in with a frown on his face. Fate could still feel the man's Divine Reach squeezing him, and knew that his chances of being forgotten were low.
"Whatever it is, it's fighting back," Trithmund muttered. "It has some kind of Divine Energy around it, preventing me from exerting my full pressure on it. It even has a trace of my Manifestation's energy inside. Curious."
Fate blinked. He looked down at his stomach, where the beam had passed through him. He, of course, could still see himself in this state. He pulled up his shirt, and was startled to find a chunk of his flesh pitch black and throbbing; the veins in that area were a sickly green, giving that section of his stomach the appearance of a tumor.
'Shit. So, I guess I'm NOT fully immune to Manifestations now. Probably went through due to the Level disparity. Damn. Why didn't I think of that?' That would also explain how Trithmund's Divine Reach was still affecting him, even with Null up.
His mind raced, trying to find a way out.
Trithmund spent the next thirty minutes testing all manner of devices on Fate. Many were strange panes of glass or crystal of various colors, while there were a few crystal balls. After that were the physical tests, Trithmund yanking Fate to the cell door and forcing him to extend his hand. Trithmund tried hammers of silver, gold, crystal, glass, copper, and one of green metal, then moved on to knives, needles, and liquids.
Of course, they all went straight through Fate, leaving Trithmund scratching his goatee. His frown as the acid he used, after dropping through Fate's incorporeal hand, melted its way through twelve inches of concrete floor and another three feet of dirt was amusing, and a small consolation for Fate's predicament.
"Curiouser and curiouser. What manner of creature are you? If it weren't for the infallibility of Divine Energy, I'd almost think myself senile. Maybe I've been going about this all wrong," Trithmund said, stroking his goatee and looking at the cage Fate floated in. "Maybe I need to go about this a different way."
He pointed his hands at Fate, sending a beam of Death at him. Trithmund couldn't see it, but Fate could easily see and feel the necrosis spreading from that spot in his stomach. It was painfully slow; at the pace it was going, it could easily take days to fully encompass him. Trithmund seemed to find this unacceptable.
Fate felt Trithmund relax his Divine Grasp, using just enough to hold Fate aloft. At the same time, the beam quadrupled in power; if before it would take days to overtake him, now it would take hours.
Fate ignored that, however. He could see finally see a path out. All at once, he exploded with his Divine Grasp, concentrating all 1,050 pounds of force on the man's head. It burst like a ripe melon, the man's blood and gray matter splattering the room and painting a scene similar to the paintings in the hallway. Fate landed in a crouch. He stood to his full height, using his Divine Energy to tear the cell's door off its hinges. Striding out, he looked down at the headless corpse.
"…Shit, I needed the head." He smacked his forehead. 'At least I'm alive.'
Once again, his power saved his life. Due to Null, Trithmund was incapable of remembering any aspect of Fate, including the fact he was an Embodiment. Because of this, Trithmund likely assumed it was some Avatar-crafted artifact, which would explain the protective barrier Fate had up. Artifacts often had such safety measures. The important ones, anyway.
Trithmund no doubt believed that it had an almost zero chance of having some form of offensive ability since it had such astounding defensive capability, leading him to release some of his Divine Grasp on Fate.
In other words, Null was completely broken. Fate felt like one of those invincible main characters from those books Tom read.
His eyes went to the cages. "Just a little longer, guys."
He hoisted Trithmund's body over his shoulder, scooping the brain bits, eyes, and blood into a beaker with his Divine Energy and using some rope to tie it to his belt. He was hoping it would help identify the body if the headless corpse wasn't enough. Besides, Avatar Renli never said the head had to be intact.
He used the acid in the room to melt the wall to the outside, and then the wall around the castle. The result was the room becoming completely open to the city. He strode out of this new gap, headless corpse on his shoulder and brain matter at his hip, to face the now-gathering crowd.
He dropped the corpse at his feet. "By the grace of Avatar Renli, the monster Trithmund has been dispatched. If you doubt my claims as to his being, you need only look to my feet. If you doubt my claim of 'monster,' look to the room behind me and see for yourself the twisted experiments he has performed on the creatures of nature, and even on your own children."
He picked the body back up and made his way to his ship, the crowd behind him stepping tentatively into the now-open laboratory. When he got to the gates, he heard what sounded like hundreds of people shouting in outrage, followed by the clanging of metal.
'A revolution?' he thought. But it was none of his business, so he continued on.