Author: Tower Curator

 

Primvila stretched her leathery wings wide, angling to catch an updraft. Normally, she enjoyed flying. As a syren, most people who lived on the ground didn’t take too kindly to her presence. Syren voices carried a certain type of magic that made their words more appealing to those who heard them sing. It was nowhere close to the mind magics that Savren got up to, yet people—humans especially—generally looked at her with ire and suspicion.

Humans didn’t fly. That meant she could stay in the air to her heart’s content without worrying over people. Even if they tried to attack her, they couldn’t reach. She could fly high above their heads, higher than their arrows could shoot, higher than their magic could reach, higher than they could even see considering her lithe form—not that humans ever looked up. She couldn’t quite reach as high as those ships that had been attacking, but humans didn’t normally have those kinds of things.

Normally, Primvila enjoyed flying. It was an escape. Freedom. Even the few times Arkk had asked her to scout some location, it became a nice chance to stretch her wings after long days in the tower or fortress. Humans in Company Al-Mir were more accepting of her, perhaps having grown used to working alongside gorgon and strange beings like the Protector, so she wasn’t so much looking for an escape. She just enjoyed flying.

Normally.

Normally, Primvila didn’t have a metal sphere the size of her head strapped to her chest. It wiggled and jostled on its own, occasionally throwing off her flight, as the things inside it squirmed and wiggled. If those worms were stronger than expected, if the metal was weaker than expected, if she accidentally bumped the small release lever while performing a maneuver, she could easily end up covered in worms. She didn’t know exactly what they were, but they were being used as a weapon. That alone was enough to make her wary.

She glanced off to one side. Her fellow syren, Igvile, flew in the distance, getting to stretch his wings after spending most of his time in the ritual rooms working the bombardment magics. He wasn’t particularly enthused with this plan either.

Three harpies were in the air as well. Primvila didn’t know what they thought. Despite both being winged species with humanoid bodies, harpies and syrens didn’t get along. Harpies liked to play up their friendliness, mingling with everyone, taking up jobs delivering letters and packages over long distances, and all manner of activities that syrens, simply through distrust, couldn’t participate in. Primvila was sure some individuals never felt that envy or jealousy and managed to get along. She was not one of them. There hadn’t been any conflicts among them within Company Al-Mir, but they didn’t seek each other out for company either.

Still, she doubted they were excited. Even if these metal spheres were perfectly safe, the worms were creepy enough on their own that nobody wanted to get too close. There was a whole subset of Arkk’s men who shuddered at the mere mention of wurms, former criminals, mostly.

The sooner they were done with this, the better.

And it looked like they would be done soon.

One of the lead harpies, Nora, if Primvila recalled correctly, let out a sharp screech that sounded like that of a hawk. Loathe as she was to admit it, harpies had sharper eyes.

In this case, it was likely that Nora had simply been paying more attention to their mission. As soon as Primvila turned her attention to the ground below, she easily spotted their targets.

Four warships traveled up the river, barely able to fit despite the swollen river being at its largest with all the snowmelt. Each proudly waved the black and white flag bearing nine swords of the Eternal Empire. As far as she understood the situation, the Eternal Empire’s remaining army, those who hadn’t been at Woodly Rhyme, were aboard the ships. With the river passing directly adjacent to the Cursed Forest, running right past Smilesville Burg and Langleey Village, they practically had a straight shot at the fortress.

Thus, they needed to be dealt with.

Thus, the worms.

Nora pulled her wings back, angling into a dive. Primvila, Igvile, and the others swiftly followed. Not knowing what kind of magical defenses the warships had, but certain they had something, Arkk had been very clear in his warnings against moving too close and staying too close. At the same time, to drop their worms on target, they had to get a little closer.

Her heart pounded in rhythm with each powerful stroke of her wings. The closer they got, the more intense the sense of urgency felt. The warships loomed larger, their flags rippling in the wind. The air roared past her ears as her world narrowed to the task at hand. Her mind raced through the instructions Arkk had drilled into them.

Approach fast. Release. Depart immediately. Do not linger.

She glanced to her side, catching a glimpse of Igvile. His face was set in determination.

As they neared the ships, Primvila’s eyes flicked over the deck, searching for any signs of activity or weapons trained skyward. It seemed quiet, almost eerily so, but she knew better than to trust appearances. Figures were moving about, but not in alarm. Like they were oblivious to the danger descending upon them.

Humans never looked up.

Nora’s screech cut through the air again, the signal to release. Her sphere fell away from her first, aimed perfectly toward the rearmost ship. The metal slats over the sphere retracted mid-way down. Hundreds of squirming, slimy worms filled the air, raining down upon the ship.

With a swift, practiced motion, Primvila followed suit. She bent her wing mid-flight and pulled the lever on her sphere. A loud ticking noise, audible even above the rushing wind, started immediately. The clasps on the harness holding it to her chest popped off, leaving the sphere dropping, spinning toward the deck below.

Primvila didn’t watch it hit. She angled up and to the side immediately, banking sharply to veer away from the ships.

Something hot streaked past her, singed her tail, and continued off into the distance. She immediately began taking evasive lines through the air, but after the third hot streak, all counterattacks cut off.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder. Igvile got away. All the harpies were away as well. And the boats…

With the growing distance, it was hard to see the individual worms. However, the men atop the ships, clearly in a panicked fight, were fully focused on the load they had just dropped. None of the ships were even trying to shoot down the fliers.

Primvila focused on her flying once more, merging with Igvile and the harpies into a loose formation as they all turned southward. Although she didn’t know exactly what those worms were, they had stopped the ships from continuing to attack them. She could only hope that they would stop the ships entirely.

It had been a long few days. Ever since the tower set out from Elmshadow. She hadn’t even been in the thick of the fighting and she was worn out. She couldn’t begin to imagine what the poor orcs felt. They were always the first ones in, the last ones out.

“Some of them better survive,” Dakka said, slamming her gauntlets into each other in front of her chest. “Enough with this magic bullshit. Give me a real fight.”

Arkk pursed his lips. Dakka’s anger radiated in a near tangible manner. Not that he could blame her. She was blaming herself enough as it was, for not being quick enough in taking off the avatar’s head, resulting in six other orcs falling victim to that void magic. She needed an outlet and was looking at the approaching ships with that in mind.

As much as Arkk didn’t want more to fight, he hoped a few survived as well if only to let Dakka take out her anger on them. He tried to clap a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but with the armor in the way, he wasn’t even sure she noticed.

At the same time, he wasn’t sure how willing the enemy army would be to continue the fight. Watching through the scrying team’s crystal ball, it didn’t look like they had any real answer for the worms. An individual worm wasn’t much of a threat. They could be crushed and stomped upon, slashed with blades, or taken care of through practically any spell. They weren’t strong creatures. But there were so many of them and they were such awkward opponents with their small size that it made fighting them difficult at best.

Agnete, Priscilla, and the machines were his best counters to them. The former two were able to sweep magic through an entire room, eliminating everything within in one fell swoop while the Anvil’s soldiers were simply so precise and so modular that they would either cut through them individually in rapid, coordinated strikes or attach alchemical flame spewers to their wrists and copy Agnete’s tactics, albeit less effectively.

Most of the Eternal Empire’s army was made up of swordsmen wearing magical armor. Not a lot of spellcasters among their bunch. Although their armor granted them strength and near invulnerability to conventional weaponry—and even plenty of spells—they didn’t grant them the coordination that machines had. The enchantments on the armor made them mere food for any worm that managed to latch on.

“Keep watching,” Arkk told the scrying team. “Once things have settled down, alert me. And keep an eye on the worms. We don’t know what, if anything, they might evolve into once they eat enough magic.”

Hopefully, it would be something that troubled his enemies further.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t be something that came back to bite him in the ass later.

They had floated the idea of dropping alchemical bombs on the ships, but based on his experiences with the Eternal Empire thus far, he doubted they would have done enough. Magic-eating worms, on the other hand, would rip away the enchantments that protected against such things as bombs and bombardment. Theoretically, sending the fliers back out with bombs now would be their best bet.

Arkk was a bit wary of that. The Empire would be on guard against similar attacks.

They were nearing the Cursed Forest. The river skirted alongside its northern edge, heading eastward for a time until it ran right past Langleey Village. Lelith was currently setting up a secondary ritual room in the north quadrant of the fortress, one that would be in range of the river. If those boats did deal with the worms, hopefully, they would have done enough damage that some bombardment could finish them off without too much issue.

Aside from the avatar—who was currently on a detour around a small lake of molten metal and was about to enter a chamber filled with caustic gas from an alchemical experiment Arkk had messed up a few months back—the next most pressing problem was the remaining whale ship. It was still in the air despite the best efforts of Hannah and Sylvara.

Teleporting to the surface, standing between their aim-assist chairs, Arkk frowned as he stared upward. “What’s the issue?”

“It won’t stop moving,” Hannah hissed through grit teeth. “The other one just sat still. I think taking it down and blasting apart the main ship must have spooked the people on this one.”

“We’ve hit it once or twice,” Sylvara added, looking equally frustrated. “Not the fins and obviously nothing vital.”

“What do you need?”

“How about a spell that tracks its target instead of firing off in a perfectly straight line?” Sylvara grumbled.

Arkk had nothing like that. Not with the range they needed, in any case. Electro Deus would work, but…

Arkk clenched his clawed fist, lips tightening. The first time, he had blown his arm clean off. The second time, it remained intact, but he still almost passed out from the backlash. He could try again, but if he ended up passing out, the avatar would have free reign to advance as fast as she could manage until he regained consciousness. For all he knew, he would wake up to find his Heart destroyed. Something Vezta said would likely kill him.

Priscilla hadn’t died, but she was also a dragonoid. Their hardiness far, far outstripped that of humans.

No one else could use the Electro Deus spell at the same level that he could. The Heart, the territory both local and in Elmshadow, and his employees all fueled the spell. Even Agnete, avatar that she was, would have difficulties.

If Agnete used her own magic, would she be able to hit the aircraft? He had seen her form a tight-knit rope of flames, attacking the airships back at the tower. But they had been much lower at the time.

Arkk fell silent, watching Hannah and Sylvara for a few moments. Both were reconfiguring their own seats, twisting the knobs, and adjusting the position of the chairs. Now and again, one of them would try that rainbow-like spell. Most of the time, they didn’t hit anything but air. Then it was back to configuring the chairs again. With Lelith working on reconstructing bombardment rituals for use against the warships, they had no one to assist.

Arkk wasn’t sure that anyone else in his employ could assist. Perhaps the Anvil’s soldiers. Who had built the things, she should know how they worked.

More eggs fell from the maw of the monster. It wasn’t so much attacking with them as it was drooling on them as it moved. The result was the same. The eggs would land, burrow into the fortress, and have to be dealt with before they hatched.

Who wasn’t immediately busy. With the conventional battle having fallen by the wayside, at least for now, the foundry was mostly idle. A portion of it was active, crafting armor and weapons to replace the shadow armor ruined by eggs and worms, but with the Iron Mongers from the Anvil doing most of the actual fabrication, even that was more or less a non-issue.

So he teleported her up to the surface. A tuft of steam escaped from somewhere under her chin as her smooth head snapped left and right, quickly analyzing her surroundings. In short order, her attention focused on the seats she had crafted and their two occupants.

“ᛏhere is no problem in my creations,” Who said with utter certainty, “but perfection is always a moving goal.”

“They’re having issues. Aiming while seated and aiming while casting are too difficult against a moving target.”

Who motioned for Hannah to stop her efforts, leading the abbess to slump back in the seat, closing her eyes. Beads of sweat dripped down her temples. Sylvara, despite casting the spell twice as often, looked much more composed. Arkk wasn’t too surprised, having already known that Sylvara was on the high end of spellcasters.

“I can creaᛏe a more ergonomic control system. The original design failed to factor in human limb rotational range limitations. There are several gear-shift modifications I can add in to make it smoother—”

“This sounds like an extended project. We don’t need a long-term solution, Who,” Arkk said with mild exasperation. “There’s only one ship. Once it is down, we don’t need these anymore. Help Sylvara target it.”

The amount of sheer offense a faceless being could project through nothing more than a slight turn of her head was a wonder to behold. And slightly terrifying. The link between them wasn’t strained, however, so Arkk tried to brush it off.

“You can redesign the chairs to your heart… engine’s content later, just in case we ever have to deal with things like this again. A patchwork solution is all we need now.”

“Fine.”

Who moved away from the still-resting Hannah to take over the controls of Sylvara’s seat. Her arms split apart, unfolding into several small gripping devices. Like that, she was capable of manipulating every one of the knobs at once. She crouched and tilted her head, aligning whatever she used for sight with the lenses that assisted with targeting.

Arkk didn’t stick around to watch. If they were still having trouble in a few minutes, he would return and see what else could be done.

The avatar, as Arkk had mostly expected, wasn’t stopped for long by the room with toxic gas. She could manipulate wind. Of course, she could blow all the gas off to one side of the room, leaving her with a clear shot through it.

It did buy just enough time to finish setting up her next expected obstacle. Except where impossible, such as the molten metal lake, the avatar moved in a perfectly straight line directly toward the Heart, taking out walls and doors that were in her way with her copy of Tybalt’s spell. That made her extremely predictable.

She entered a relatively small chamber, obliterating the wall. As she walked across, her foot came down on a small plate designed to mesh seamlessly with the natural maze-like tiles of Fortress Al-Mir.

A rod connected to the underside of the plate pressed downward, through a small hole in the floor, where it connected with the top of a clay pot. The small point on the end cracked the pot, mixing the contents. The explosion spread outwards, striking pot after pot until all forty-seven hidden beneath the room’s floor broke.

The room vanished from Arkk’s awareness, as did neighboring hallways and a small slice of the dormitory Richter’s men had used while they were stationed in the fortress. The rumble shook the floor beneath his feet despite it being clear on the other end of the Cursed Forest.

Taking hold of the crystal ball that the bombardment team had been using, Arkk focused in on the section of the fortress that was no longer his.

He couldn’t see a thing. There was so much smoke, so much debris drifting through the air, and even some lingering flames that the dust hadn’t extinguished. The entire roof was gone as was the layer of ground above, but even the sunlight couldn’t penetrate the plume of smoke that was billowing from the gap in his fortress.

He waited, searching, eyes flicking through the image in the crystal ball for any sign of movement that wasn’t from the smoke.

If he were being honest, he fully expected the avatar to survive. The bomb, devious as it was, felt too simple for a being like that avatar to fall to. Perhaps the Heart of Gold’s avatar would have died to it—or at least lost a possessed body—and maybe even Lyra despite Arkk’s lack of knowledge regarding her abilities and prowess, but the Eternal Empress?

Surely, if a bomb could eliminate her, someone would have done so at some point in the last thousand years. An angry subject, a rival politician, or even the other avatars.

Yet there was no gust of wind clearing out the smoke. No walls and doors detained by the void. No continued march through his fortress.

Success?

Arkk’s paranoia insisted that no, it was not success. Yet the evidence pointed to it being true.

Something was burning in the room, constantly creating new smoke. It would diminish eventually, surely, but Arkk didn’t want to wait forever.

The lesser servants couldn’t enter. He could feel the lingering heat at the edges where his fortress was intact. They were too weak to survive in an environment like that.

Arkk teleported to Agnete—no longer having to watch over the egg Who had harvested—as the former purifier incinerated one of the eggs. “I require your assistance.”

To her credit, Agnete didn’t look surprised. “The avatar?”

“Indeed. You up for something a little dangerous?”

Agnete rolled her neck back and forth, cracking her neck. When she finished, she looked to Arkk, eyes bright like the molten metal of the lake.

 

 

Arkk staggered back, slumping against the wall. The fingers of his recently regrown draconic arm twitched and jittered. Sparks of lightning jumped from claw-like fingernail to claw-like fingernail despite having been interrupted before he could fry the Empress. At least he hadn’t blown the arm off this time. He wasn’t sure if that was because he had been more careful, the talisman that Zullie gave him that was supposed to redirect any backlash into a depleted glowstone, or if the draconic-looking arm was just that hardy.

“Claire… Claire!” Kia said, kneeling on the ground where she lightly patted Claire’s cheeks.

“She’s alive,” Arkk said, shoving off from the wall. “I can feel it.”

Kia’s afterimages turned to him, worry riddling her face, but her actual real head never turned. “She isn’t waking up.”

“If I’m right about demons draining magic, it is very likely she is suffering the same thing that happened to the two of you when you accidentally broke the contract with me.” Arkk drew in a breath, holding his other hand to his chest as if that would help with the palpitations. “The two of you were unconscious for an extended period of time until Zullie got the idea to charge you up with glowstones.”

“Then—”

“That ritual isn’t set up here. With that other avatar running around, I’m sorry, but there isn’t time.”

He was able to monitor the avatar running through his halls. Despite what happened to her ship, despite the fight with the demon, and the distance she fell, she hardly looked ruffled. Her black militaristic dress did have a few cuts and scrapes, but nothing large. There were no wounds on her skin. Even her hair, long and blonde, was straight and well-kempt. Which, in Arkk’s eyes, should have been impossible after that fall. A halo of miniaturized swords, all attached to a thin golden ring, floated just behind her head as she moved.

Even had Arkk not been aware of her, she would have been impossible to miss with the constant Tybalt-like abilities she was using to break through his reinforced walls. Each one set off intruder alarms in the back of Arkk’s mind. And he wasn’t quite sure how to stop her. A snap of her fingers and large sections of the fortress were just gone. Tybalt, at least, hadn’t been immediately hostile.

Arkk tried teleporting in Dakka with her blade already out, ready to slice the woman’s head from her shoulders. But the woman was both quick and strong, able to avoid, dodge, or simply block whatever he tried to throw at her. Even with Dakka’s blade at her neck, she bent backward, letting the scythe blade skim just above her nose as Dakka swung. A twist of her body righted her, facing Dakka well within her guard.

The avatar reached up, grasping Dakka’s helm. Even with Dakka being one of the shortest orcs, she still stood a head taller than humans. The avatar didn’t have any trouble dragging her down, slamming her knee into the shadowy helm’s faceplate. Her knee didn’t break the metal, but Arkk could still feel the pain as she rang Dakka’s head like a bell. A quick step forward, linking her foot behind Dakka’s foot, and an almost casual shove had Dakka falling on her back.

She raised her hand, snapping her fingers…

He barely managed to teleport Dakka out before one of those voids opened up around her.

Dakka was one of his most skilled warriors. Even with her blade already around the throat of the woman, she hadn’t scratched her. The avatar was prepared, waiting for more people to appear around her. Blocking her path with soldiers would only see them obliterated or detained or whatever those voids did.

The avatar couldn’t possibly stand up to everything. Six orcs, teleported in, all with their blades trapping the woman’s neck. A single step from her, a single pull from the orcs, and she would lose her head.

He saw the muscles tense, he watched those shadowy scythe blades move, he saw the blood start to drip from the woman’s neck.

The halo of swords flashed a bright white light. It lasted barely an instant. Not even the time it took to blink.

The orcs pulled their scythes, slicing through nothing.

The woman stood, unharmed, several steps backward. Her fingers were already snapping.

A great void opened and collapsed, only slightly slower than that flash of light. With it, six orcs vanished, their links cutting off as one.

Arkk grimaced, ill feelings digging into his stomach. “She can teleport too,” he hissed, annoyed. “How many powers does she have?”

All of them, it felt like. Tybalt’s void magic, strength that had to be enhanced in some manner, the ability to control wind and air, teleportation, and probably more that he had yet to see. At this point, Arkk wouldn’t be surprised if she started breathing icy air or igniting flames with a wave of her hand.

It was a small consolation that they had fallen far on the outskirts of Fortress Al-Mir. With the size of the Cursed Forest, traveling all the way to the Heart could take hours at a walking pace, especially if Arkk found a reliable means of slowing her.

“I’m sending you and Claire to the infirmary,” Arkk said. “Let Hale know that Claire is suffering from the same thing she was last time and she’ll be back on her feet before you know it.” Hopefully. “However, I may be teleporting you on your own. That woman…”

Arkk pursed his lips.

“I need to speak with Sylvara,” he muttered.

That void magic was by far the most dangerous aspect of the woman and Sylvara had the most experience with it through Tybalt. Assuming it was the same Jailer magic. Beyond Sylvara, Lyra Zann might have information. Given that Lyra was the self-admitted reason the avatar was at Fortress Al-Mir in the first place, Arkk wasn’t really sure how far he could trust her. Especially since she said she wanted the avatar to remain alive.

Arkk didn’t think he could abide. Even if she hadn’t been killing his men, both through the war and now personally, capturing someone of her capabilities without killing her didn’t seem feasible.

Without another word to Kia, he teleported the two dark elves to Hale and himself straight to Sylvara.

The inquisitrix jolted, startled by his arrival, but composed herself in short order. She stood from the targeting seat, drawing herself up. “Ready to take down the other ships?”

Arkk couldn’t help but grimace. The other whale ship was the only thing in the air at the moment. It was not idle. Eggs rained down upon Fortress Al-Mir without pause, as if enraged by what happened to its counterpart—or the avatar. From its height, it seemed able to target just about any spot in the entire Cursed Forest. Agnete, Priscilla, and a squad of orcs were on cleanup duties, but they were starting to fall behind.

Taking it down was a priority.

“Unfortunately, there is a slightly more pressing issue at the moment,” Arkk said. “The avatar is inside Fortress Al-Mir.”

“We killed… Not the Golden Order’s avatar,” Sylvara said, frowning to herself. “The Eternal Empire?”

“She seems capable of using the same magic Tybalt used, albeit with a snap of her fingers instead of making a window with her hands. I was hoping you had a way to nullify it.”

Sylvara closed her red eyes, drawing in a short breath. “Last I saw of Tybalt’s Binding Agent, it was around his wrists in Elmshadow. As he almost certainly got someone to remove the manacles, they are likely still there.”

“Would he not have destroyed them upon removing them?”

“They were made to resist his power. I suppose it might have been possible. It isn’t something we ever really tested.”

Arkk’s mind jumped to Elmshadow. Despite the tower having moved, the entire land was still under his control, both above ground and below it. Every part of the city had been claimed by his lesser servants. The homes built atop it were made through the power of the fortress magic. He scanned through it all with his near omniscience of his territory. He had seen the manacles before, back when he first met Tybalt. They hadn’t looked like anything special. More like a bracelet than actual binding chains. When equipped on Tybalt’s wrists, runes glowed along their edges, but otherwise, they were just cuffs of metal. It wouldn’t surprise him to find that Evestani had found them and tossed them aside, not realizing what they were. Or even for him—or one of his employees—to have sequestered them off in some storage box in ignorance.

“Can they be remade in short order?” Arkk asked, even as he continued searching.

“How short are we talking?”

“Ideally five minutes—”

Sylvara laughed in his face.

He expected that.

Quite intimately familiar with the size of the Cursed Forest, both from living in Langleey Village all his life and then his occupation of it through the fortress, it was fairly trivial to guess a few numbers. “She doesn’t appear to be in any rush. As long as I can do it safely, I’ll throw whatever I can at her to slow her down further.” Perhaps flooding her path with molten metal from the Iron Mongers would force her to detour. Collapsing a few areas might help as well, though she could probably tunnel through if she never tired of using that void magic. “I think… six hours at most?” And that was assuming he could slow her.

That was only before she reached the populated section of Fortress Al-Mir. Not that the Heart was far away from there.

“Six is still too short. You remember what it took to make that effigy for the Heart of Gold’s avatar?”

“A month or so of research and development, yes. But I was hoping that since you had already developed one set of manacles, you’d be able to develop a second much faster.”

“I didn’t develop those manacles. But you’re also forgetting the excursion to another realm, which won’t be easy since the portal was damaged.”

Arkk ground his teeth. It wasn’t impossible to visit another realm at the moment if they used the highlands portal. But with the unknown dangers that came from visiting such places, it likely wasn’t any more feasible than simply getting lucky with killing the avatar with what they had on hand.

“I’ll keep looking for the manacles in Elmshadow,” he said. “If you have any other bits of advice, I’m all ears.”

Otherwise, it might be time to speak with Lyra Zann.

“The magic utilized by Purifier Tybalt was exceptionally potent. Outside the Binding Agent itself, which was specifically designed to counter him, I have never seen anything caught within the borders of his spheres survive intact. He always referred to it as detainment, but as far as I was concerned, he may as well have been obliterating everything he came across.” Sylvara paused, frowning. “There was no known way to block the effect. Even other purifiers couldn’t interfere, their abilities vanishing into oblivion when the spheres collapsed.”

Half that, Arkk already knew. The rest was… not good news. He had considered using Agnete to block the avatar’s path. It was a good thing she was busy with the remaining eggs. Kia and Claire might be fast enough to stab the avatar before she could teleport, but Arkk could see in her movements just how wary and cautious she was being. He could try to keep up with her teleports, constantly teleporting his own people to match her movements, but that moment she teleported had blinded him. Brief though it had been, it had been just enough time to miss the void opening around his men.

It was a risk.

For now, lesser servants were collapsing large swaths of the path before her. That should buy a little more time to properly plan.

“You think you’re good to take down that last whale ship?” Arkk asked. The eggs were still a problem. The sooner they were dealt with—and the sooner he lobbed one of those eggs into the approaching Empire army—the better he would be able to concentrate solely on the avatar. “Actually,” Arkk said before Sylvara could respond, “with the main ship out of commission, it probably doesn’t matter. You aren’t in danger of a counterattack. I’m sending you and Abbess Hannah up there. Take it down at your leisure.”

Arkk teleported in a perfectly normal set of manacles to ‘capture’ Sylvara. The inquisitrix held out an arm, staring at the chains for a long moment, before she a little note of epiphany.

“Ah! Tybalt, Chronicler Qwol, and I were on the lower floors of the Elmshadow keep when that ray of gold struck. He slipped away while we were concerned with evacuating personnel. When later tracking down his movements, we came across a detained segment of the keep’s inner wall.”

“That means he removed those bracelets somewhere within the keep,” Arkk said, immediately narrowing his search area. It was still a large chunk of the burg which had seen two separate occupants and a great deal of fighting, but it was better than having to search through the entire city. Unless, of course, it had been moved out into the rest of the city—but there were a million what-if scenarios. No sense in bothering with them.

Either he would find the manacles or he would find another solution. Given that the manacles could have been melted down for scrap at any point, he was leaning toward the latter. He had no other options.

Failure was not an option.

Arkk teleported Sylvara to the surface, along with Hannah and the aim-assist chairs. He didn’t stick around to watch their work. Hannah could alert him once they were done. If she ‘captured’ Sylvara, he wouldn’t even need to return for them.

Once they were settled, he teleported himself down to the temple.

The statue of the Holy Light had its arms crossed, looking like it had been waiting impatiently. Looked like he wouldn’t need to light one of the candles to get Lyra’s attention. Before approaching, however, he took a quick survey of the room, making sure nothing had changed since his last visit. The empty pedestals were empty and the filled pedestals were filled. None of the statues save for the Holy Light had moved.

“You’re back. Good,” the statue said, perking up as he approached. Again, it shifted from its impatient waiting pose to an interested lean forwards without crossing the intervening space. Quite the contrast from the way Lyra acted when he returned from the Maze. “I believe there is merit in your theory. Precautionary note: My findings are hastily done and tentative. I would need a demon to examine—”

“The demon that has been harassing me is dead,” Arkk said. “But I didn’t come to discuss that.”

Arms crossed in disappointment, the statue glowered down at Arkk. “Oh?”

“The avatar. The Eternal Empire’s avatar is inside my fortress. If you want me to keep her alive, I need options. And I’m going to need them quick. No long drawn-out research projects. I need a solution I can implement in less than three hours.”

“That… might be a problem. I do not know the true scope of the Almighty Glory’s granted powers.” Lyra sounded upset with herself, her tone turning almost embarrassed at the end of her sentence. “The few conflicts that happened between us over the centuries ended with my utter defeat. I can hold off Evestani given some time and preparations, but not the Empress. The only reason I still exist is because it is in the prideful nature of the Empress to display compassion toward her defeated opponents. Given the threat you represent to the Calamity and the mark you’ve made on her pride, I doubt you’ll see much compassion.”

“So there is no point in attempting to convince her to stop and no tools you can provide to de-escalate the situation.”

“Arkk, please try to avoid brash actions,” Lyra said, now with a warning in her voice. “I cannot yet predict how long this solution might take to implement, assuming our reasoning is not flawed. If the existing solution fails further and we cannot replace it in time, this world will wither.”

“Then you better start working faster,” Arkk said, teleporting away without another word.

He reappeared next to Agnete, who was still containing the egg he had asked her to keep neutered. It was clear that she hadn’t been fully successful. The egg had grown since he last saw it, bulging and pulsing in unpleasant undulations. But it wouldn’t need to be kept for much longer. Who was already here, working on attaching some metal machine to its side. Arkk didn’t question how the machine was supposed to work, trusting that Who would have made it correctly.

“You recall Purifier Tybalt?” Arkk asked, making Agnete frown. “I have it on authority that your powers will not affect the type of magic he used, but I’m likely going to need you and the dark elves to… do something dangerous for me.”

Agnete flicked a finger, slicing off a thin, freshly grown tendril from the egg as it reached out toward Who. She didn’t turn to look at Arkk as she spoke, maintaining concentration on the egg. “Can it wait until Who has finished?”

Arkk turned his head, watching Who screw a large rod of metal into the egg. The mechanical lifeform seemed utterly unbothered by both the tendrils and the lances of flame that sliced them apart. She simply worked, siphoning worms from within the egg into a small bucket. “As long as she finishes soon,” he said.

“We have an avatar to kill.”

 

 

Something was wrong.

The Empress sighed, finger pressed against her temple as she leaned against her armrest.

Something was off.

Everything had been going well enough, considering the lack of resources she had to work with. Thanks to information from her luminous counterpart, she knew where the fortress was. She had been able to lay siege with only her airships. The attack must have taken the Keeper by surprise; there were holes in the fortress everywhere within the so-called Cursed Forest.

Once her army arrived to invade and wipe out the defenders, she would be free to venture forth in person and destroy this troublesome Heart once and for all. The tower at Elmshadow would be left vulnerable and simple to destroy. Finally, she could put this issue to rest. Permanently.

The Empress sighed and stood. She moved forward, crossing her chambers to the large window. Rather than look downward at the hole-filled fortress, she peered upwards.

Her eyes did not see the sky as others saw it—as she herself had seen it before her ascension. She saw beyond the flimsy veil that protected the minds of the ignorant, through the fractures to the great void beyond and the watchers of the Stars—the gods of the world without gods.

They couldn’t interact with the world around her. Even if they could, they wouldn’t. It wasn’t in their nature. Yet, somehow, they were more… more. More prevalent, more visible, and more active than she had seen in centuries. It was like they were waiting for something.

She had already felt the disparity in magic as the Solution finally started to crumble. Was it that? Did they wish to see the sweeping tides of magic lay waste to the world? She doubted it. While it might prove interesting for a time, the watchers watched. Should this world turn into a hollowed-out ruin, there would be nothing to watch but the slow decay of everything that once was.

The Empress could feel the magic levels rising. She doubted many others could. Few were as sensitive to every kind of magic as she was. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to be concerning. Without the Heart of Gold’s power, she would have to look into replicating it, just as she replicated the powers of the rest of the Pantheon. She didn’t expect trouble with that; it was always easier to replicate abilities that she had seen wielded in person, and she had seen the Heart of Gold’s power more than most. If her luminous counterpart was willing to lend her assistance, the process would go much smoother.

She turned, frowning at the still basin. For a few moments, the avatar of the Holy Light had urged her forward, identifying this fortress as the place to be if they wanted to stop the Solution from failing.

Then it failed anyway. They had been too slow. Or perhaps by the time they began, events had already been set in motion to destroy the Solution and they simply hadn’t realized at the time. Either way, magic leaked from the other realms and the bowl went silent.

Plotting something, likely.

It had been the Holy Light’s power, albeit weak and flimsy, that had taken down one of her armada.

And now… Something was wrong. Something beyond the magic leaking into the world. Something beyond the traitorous actions of her contemporary avatar. Something more immediate.

It was quiet.

The cannons were silent.

“Adjutant,” she called out.

When all was well, the door to her chambers would open immediately. When all was well, she would hardly need to speak to have her commands carried out. When all was well…

The door opened, slowly sliding into place. A wiry man with a perpetually furrowed brow stepped inside, black nails dug into his little notebook as he held it close to his chest. He stopped at a respectful distance, bowing his head as he awaited her edicts.

“Why have the cannons ceased their assault?” she said, peering out the window again. “Our opponent is distracted with the destruction of the crashed vessel, but that won’t last. It is important to keep him suppressed.”

“There is damage to the main gunnery,” the adjutant said, holding his bow.

“Progress on repairs?”

“No progress, I’m afraid. The engineers are dead.”

The Empress stilled, turning to narrow her eyes at the adjutant. “Every one of them?”

“All that I could find. If there are others, they have sequestered themselves away.”

“How.”

“Oh a myriad of gruesome ways,” he said, eyes closed in his solemn bow. “Heads twisted around backward, hearts pulled from chests while they’re still beating, disembowelment… It would likely be easier to list ways they hadn’t died.”

“Infiltrators,” the Empress hissed. “Assassins.”

“An astute assessment.”

“Rally the guards. Deploy—”

“I’m afraid the guards are dead as well. All the ones I could find aboard this ship. As are the cannoneers, navigators, helmsmen, armorers, quartermasters, cooks, surgeons, battlecasters…” The adjutant looked up, a smile spreading across his face. “And your adjutant.”

The Empress turned fully to face the impostor. She drew herself up to her full height, shrugging off the militaristic jacket from her ensemble, leaving bare muscular arms on display.

“You really shouldn’t have sequestered yourself off like this. Maybe if you had been more integrated with the crew, you could have stopped me.”

“I do not know why you have given up your advantage of surprise,” she said, looking up and down the thin form of her adjutant—or the creature that wore his skin. He hadn’t taken a ready stance. He wasn’t even looking like he wanted to fight. He stood there, hunched slightly, still holding that notebook. “You are mistaken if you believe I will fall. I would have suggested a dagger to my spine from a trusted source, but it would not have helped.”

“A surprise attack?” The grin spread across the face of her adjutant, moving wider than was humanly possible. “Where’s the fun in that?”

She snapped her fingers.

A space-warping void blitzed through the air, collapsing the moment it made contact. The notebook the impostor held vanished within where it would remain detained until the end of time.

But the impostor did not go with it. In a blur of movement so fast that it was almost imperceptible, he moved, clinging to the ceiling with sharpened claw-like hands. He didn’t remain there, staying overhead just long enough for a second detainment cell to pass harmlessly beneath his head. As soon as it was gone, he launched himself forward, claws outstretched.

Muscles rippled across the Empress’s skin. A swipe of her hand knocked his arms aside. A sidestep maneuvered herself away from his continued momentum. A flat shove downward against his back slammed him into the metal floor. She had long studied the arts of the war god, the Red Horse.

She slid aside a light lock of hair, the only thing on her person out of place, as she slammed the heel of her boot into the impostor’s spine.

She did not hear the crackling of breaking bone and torn cartilage.

The Empress snapped her fingers again. The void appeared and collapsed, swallowing metal plates, beams, and rivets whole.

The impostor jumped out of his skin, pinned as it was under her heel. It shedding it as a snake sheds their scales—or as a lizard sheds their tail when in danger.

Looking up, her lips twitched in an imperceptible frown. “Demon,” she said, cold and plain.

The creature that clung to the wall no longer bore a resemblance to a human. Its body was an amalgam of flesh and bone. Jagged lines of fractured light ran along its sleek, angular frame, pulsing in rhythm with an unpleasant heartbeat. What had once been clawed fingers were now spindly appendages ending in razors sharp enough to carve steel—each digit twitched in a subtle, unnerving eagerness. Legs jointed backward hooked into the wall, effortlessly perching.

The face—or where a face might have been—was a twisting nether of spiraling energies, constantly drawing in magic in the air like water down a drain. Outlines of the adjutant it once mimicked framed the spiral, leaving a head that was distorted and incomplete. Mocking. Even that melted away as a smooth, black rubber melded over the surface of its head.

The voice that came from its oscillating maw was layered and grating, both high and low at once. “Your magic is strange. I can taste so many marvelous flavors within.”

“Enjoy it,” the Empress said. “It will be your final—”

A strange buildup of crackling energy filled the air around her, turning it thick and heavy. A charge that tingled the hairs on her skin. She didn’t know what manner of magic it was—the demon, cocking its head in confusion, wasn’t the source. All she knew was its power was dangerous.

With a snap of her fingers, a rush of air filled her chambers, pinning the demon to the wall it clung to while throwing her to the opposite side of the chamber.

A blinding white light filled her vision, painting the world in stark, shadowless light before rendering her momentarily blind. Before the light even began to fade, the sound arrived. It was more than just a noise. It was a concussive blast that shattered the air itself with a crack so sharp and immediate that it felt as if it were rending apart a narrow sliver of the fabric of the universe.

A lesser human would have fallen unconscious.

The Empress simply fell as the floor of the airship gave way beneath her feet.

By the time she could see again, she was well and truly falling while bits of debris cascaded down around her. Twisting, putting her back toward the ground, she scowled at the ship overhead. It looked as if an alchemical bomb had gone off inside the front half of it. Most of it was still intact, still hovering in the air, but it wouldn’t remain that way for long without her presence.

Debris fell. Bits of metal, wood, even a chunk of her throne. It all fell in nice, straight lines toward the ground. That made the sudden lateral movement all the easier to spot.

The demon. Now sporting a pair of wings, it swooped through her field of vision before folding its wings up, and diving directly toward her.

She waited, watching with calm eyes despite the wind rushing past her head. The demon approached, closing the gap between them, while she simply waited.

She waited for the opportune moment and…

A snap of her fingers shifted the air currents around her. A welling cushion of air slowed her fall at the last moment. She twisted, facing downward with her hands splayed out. The demon missed, slicing through the air she had occupied an instant before. Her hands grasped hold of its wings as it flew through.

The wind now rushing sideways made her feel as if she were grasping an iron bar over her head, hefting herself up. It was not helped by the force of the wings as they suddenly beat against the ground, jostling and jolting her.

The flesh of the demon in her grasp melted and shifted, turning in mid-air to face her while leaving its wings right where they had been. A thin tongue slid out from that void of a maw, whipping in the wind for a moment before snaking along its body toward one of its wings. Intent on reaching her.

The Empress released the wing the tongue had been heading towards, grasped the opposite wing with both hands and slammed both boots into the side of the demon.

The wing ripped out from the demon’s body, tearing a thin strip of flesh with it.

Wind caught in the dismembered wing, yanking her whole body backward. The demon rocketed onward while she, still grasping the wing, used it like a ship’s sail. A quick twist of her wrist maneuvered her to one side just as a long plank of wood fell to her side.

Her eyes narrowed, searching the field of debris. If a demon could be rendered inert by something so simple as ripping off a wing, it wouldn’t be a demon. Her eyes hopped from point to point as she cycled through all the powers she knew.

The Whispering Gale was a favorite of hers. It provided control over the wind and weather, at least what aspects she had learned, and was the main reason falling as she was didn’t concern her. However, she doubted that a breeze would bother a demon. The knowledge she copied from an avatar of the Bloated Mother couldn’t be utilized in short order. It required growth and gestation. With more time, some aspects might harm a demon, but nothing she could prepare before landing on the ground below.

The Jailer of the Void detained anything it encompassed. To the best of her knowledge, nothing could escape it. Not even an avatar of the Jailer could nullify its effects. The demon had avoided her first use of that power so quickly that even her trained eyes hadn’t seen it move—which likely meant that not even a demon could escape. All she needed to do was create a situation in which it couldn’t dodge.

The Empress scanned the debris field, calculating her next move.

Air combat would be difficult. There were too many vectors of travel for the demon to use as an escape. On the ground, one vector would be eliminated. A cave—or inside the fortress—would further eliminate escape routes.

As she descended, the ground loomed closer. She twisted her body, using the dismembered wing to steer through the falling debris. A snap of her fingers adjusted air currents, pushing her to an area where she would have a clear landing—one of the large holes made by her assault on the fortress. With her airships having maintained their maximum altitude, the ground was still far below. Her makeshift glider slowed her fall, further distancing her eventual landing.

There it was. The demon—higher up than she would have expected from a beast missing a wing. Because it wasn’t missing a wing. Its body shifted, reforming still. It seemed to be assessing her, calculating its next attack.

The same trick to avoid its dive wouldn’t work again.

Before she had a chance to plan, it rushed her, moving far faster than before.

She released the wing, letting the wind carry it away as she snapped her fingers. A void appeared between them, forcing the demon to divert. Making it appear where she had, she had hoped it wouldn’t be able to escape before the detainment cell collapsed, but the demon never came close. It turned in mid-air so sharply that she suspected it didn’t need those wings to fly.

If it could move like that, it must have been toying with her. Not unexpected given what it said about fun. If it started serious, she might have been in actual trouble.

That meant she needed to end this sooner rather than later.

A snap of her fingers generated a slipstream of wind, accelerating her descent. It turned what might have been two more minutes of falling into half a minute. A second snap of her fingers reversed the gust of air, slowing her just enough to land safely in a vacant room inside the stone fortress.

She immediately hopped several steps backward, avoiding the demon crashing into the ground without making any effort to slow himself. If she hadn’t moved, she would have been flattened into a paste.

That strange dual voice of the demon chuckled and giggled. It started saying something. The Empress flicked her eyes around the bare chamber, ignoring it. Hubris was something with which she was intimately familiar—it could always be exploited. All she needed—

The demon abruptly stopped speaking. A strange, transparent blade slammed through its chest from behind. Its vacant face looked down at the ghostly sword as a second one ran it through.

Real blades, colored black with shimmering, twinkling lights, cut through his chest, falling into the exact place those ghostly swords had occupied moments before. The flesh and bone that made up the demon’s body started peeling apart, spiraling through its chest from the point where those swords made contact.

“Arkk,” the demon snarled, craning its head.

Two luminous red eyes stepped forward from the shadows. A rather unassuming man, hands clasped behind his back, stared at the demon with utter impassion.

“We could have killed this bitch. Together.”

The so-called Arkk did not respond. There was a certain lack of emotion on his face as he watched the unraveling continue. One of those black blades pulled back, slamming through another ghostly sword at the demon’s neck. The Empress caught a glimpse of a dark elf over the top of one of the demon’s now drooping wings. More of the demon started unraveling at the new point of impact.

The other blade pulled out as another ghostly sword slashed through the demon in a different spot, the real blade following a moment later.

Notably, they avoided the spiraling nether that was the demon’s face. The Empress couldn’t be sure if it was to make the demon suffer or if there was fear of coming into contact with that location.

As more cuts slashed through the demon, the speed of the unraveling increased.

The Empress raised a hand, fingers pressed tight together.

She froze as she felt a metal blade against her neck. Irritation buzzed in the back of her mind. Venturing into an active fortress was always a pain. The complete control the Heart afforded its user could be dealt with, but, focused on the demon, she had been woefully unprepared.

Arkk’s red eyes lingered on the demon for a moment longer, watching as the unraveling demon seemed to collapse into that twisting nether it called a face before they flicked to her.

“I was asked to let you live,” he said slowly as if he were still trying to decide whether or not he was going to. A dark elf stepped closer to him, clearly protective, while another continued slashing at the parts of the demon that had yet to unravel.

The Empress looked back to the demon. She had only seen two demons die in her thousand years. Neither quite like this… but if patterns carried true…

She doubted anyone present had seen a demon die.

“Lyra Zann wants as much time as possible to work on a new solution. Weakening the barrier further with your death will accelerate that.” He paused, frowning. “But I think we’ll have time enough.”

“If you intended to kill me,” she said, eyes still watching the demon collapse.

The spirals of the demon’s face curled inwards, reaching for the deepest point.

“You should have done so the moment you saw me.”

A thunderclap of magic crashed through the room. The dark elf closest to the demon was flung back, leaving a trail of afterimages behind as she struck a wall. The other elf stepped in front of Arkk, only for both to be thrown back.

The Empress, while bracing against the magic, gripped the sword at her neck with her bare hands, crushing the shadowy material it was made from. A fist to the chest sent a shadowy-armored orc to the ground with a grunt.

She snapped her fingers, forming a detainment cell in the corner of the room where Arkk had been. He wasn’t there anymore. Of course, he wasn’t. The detainment cell still left a gaping hole leading further into the fortress.

She took off in a calm, steady walk, keeping herself prepared since she was fully aware that she would be facing the irritant that was teleporting opponents in short order.

The Heart powered everything here. All she had to do was destroy it, then she could leisurely spend her time cleaning out this place. Or even wait for her reinforcements to do it for her.

Either way, this would soon be over.

 

 

“Those lenses should help,” Lyra Zann said as she rummaged about in a far corner of the room, waving a hand vaguely toward a pair of glasses sitting atop the desk.

The hidden library within the Chernlock Grand Archives had changed since the last time Darius saw it. The desk he had once used was now covered in books, as were the surrounding shelves and even the floor. Books weren’t exactly a strange sight in a library, but they hadn’t been here before.

Darius Vrox pulled a pair of tomes off a shelf. They were ancient. Beyond old. It was a testament to the care with which Lyra Zann maintained her collection that they didn’t fall apart in his hands. Unfortunately, as was the case with most tomes older than a few hundred years, they were utterly unreadable. The language within bore similarities to that of the modern day, but that only made the odd word that he did recognize all the more confusing.

Donning a pair of glasses provided by Lyra, everything changed.

The letters on the pages transformed before his eyes, rearranging themselves into coherent words and sentences. The tomes contained detailed accounts of ancient rituals and incantations, knowledge that had been lost to time. Every once in a while, an odd word or sentence stuck out, forcing him to parse the line manually, but as a whole, it was a wonder.

Lyra dropped another two tomes on his desk, partially leaning against them with a weary sigh.

“These should be everything,” she said. “All the records of what we did to enact our barrier between the realms.”

Darius looked up from the text, about to respond until he noticed Lyra through the enchanted glasses. He stared in confusion at the worry written on her face. Faint, glowing symbols were etched into her skin, flickering and changing with every small movement of the muscles in her face. The slight pinch of her lips read as irritation and the narrowing of her eyes meant annoyance. There was more to Lyra than just emotions. Beauty and care and effort. It was as if he were reading a book outlining her daily routine, from the lotion she used on her face to the meager exercise she performed to how much sleep she got lately—not much.

There were other symbols as well, more mystical symbols, the likes of which would be found in rituals. They weren’t translated, either because of the inherent necessity of the symbology of the shapes or because they were already familiar to him, he couldn’t say. Her eyes, especially, were utterly alien.

Lyra noticed his stare. Her lips quirked into amusement, temporarily pushing away some of her worries and fears. “Yes, yes. Those lenses do more than just see. I dare say that you are seeing more of me than I’d care for anyone to know.”

Darius quickly slid the glasses off, noting with some relief the way he saw nothing more than Lyra’s dark red hair and faintly luminescent silver eyes. “Sorry,” he said.

“It isn’t like I gave them to you with the expectation that you never see me, but I draw the line at staring.” She rested her hands on the stack of books on his desk, moving on before he could say anything. “As I was saying, these are the… well, they are the Calamity. Everything we did to enact it. I need you to go through them and identify all the portions my golden counterpart was responsible for. In addition, note down any parts that seem like they might come in handy for a god of construction and fabrication.”

Darius sighed as he looked around. There were stacks of books on the desk, some on the floor piled up as high as the desk, and more on shelves surrounding him. He hadn’t counted them. He didn’t really want to count. “I know my way around a library,” he said slowly, “but some of the archivists, curators, and other librarians here would surely be better suited for such a task. Not to mention more people would make for faster work.”

“Trying to shirk your duties onto others, Vrox?” Lyra said with a disappointed tut of her tongue. The silver in her eyes intensified for a brief moment before fading. “You are the only one here who knows of my true nature or the hidden library within the greater archives. I would prefer if it stayed that way. Besides, this does not need to be done today.”

Darius sighed, looking over the hundreds of tomes stacked up around him. He slowly donned the glasses once more and was swiftly assaulted by a wealth of information that he didn’t need to know.

“Now, now. It won’t be that bad. Just a little light reading,” Lyra said, laughing. “I’ll leave it to you.”

“Hold on… You aren’t joining me?”

Lyra paused in her retreat, looking back to Darius with pity in her alien eyes. “Not now. Perhaps later, if my other subject falls through. This is busy work, a mundane task that just about anyone can handle.”

“What will you be doing?” Darius couldn’t help but ask. He had grown a little closer to the avatar. Close enough that he had a bead on her personality even without the glasses letting him read her like a book. She wasn’t going to fry him without due cause and a question, even in indignation, wasn’t cause enough.

“You are carrying out the backup plan. If all else fails, you, Darius Vrox, will save the world through your efforts. But Arkk has an alternate solution.”

“Of course he does,” Darius said with a frown. “Something insane, I presume?”

“Oh yes. Quite.” Lyra grinned wide. “Fascinating, but insane. I’ll be investigating the plausibility along with his quasi-avatar of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. Zullie, I believe is her name.”

Darius narrowed his eyes in distaste. Her again. What a menace.

“I know that look,” Lyra said, somehow smiling wider. “She isn’t anything you need to concern yourself with. You focus on those books.”

Darius sighed as Lyra walked away, looking around him once more. He sat down, pulled the nearest tome closer, and dipped a pen in a pot of ink.

He barely read a single page when a stray thought came to him.

“I miss field work.”

“I must reiterate, restate, and repeat that I am doing this under protest.”

“So you’ve said,” Arkk, exasperated, said with a sigh. “I’m surprised. I thought this would be something you would find fascinating.”

“Fascinating, yes,” Zullie said, folding her arms over her chest. “I can admit that. But that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot, regardless of what you think of me after those recent… miscalculations. There are things even I know not to mess with and punching a permanent hole into Hell is certainly one of those things.”

A bright, bubbly voice came from the basin in the room, shining with silvery light as Lyra Zann spoke. “That is where I come in. Obviously, no one wants a tide of unbound demons to come flooding into our world. The goal isn’t to open a portal to Hell. No, no, no. We wish to prevent physical matter from moving between planes while allowing magic to flow freely.”

“I started to bring it up with you before,” Arkk said. They had gotten interrupted by all the war problems. Even now, he only had a few minutes to spare before he had to see to the defenses and offensive once again. “Speaking with Lyra only confirmed my suspicions. The demons killing their god is what caused the events leading to the Calamity. The god ate magic, or in some way disposed of it. The demons, in killing their god, took on this role.”

“Whether through ignorance, intentional avoidance of responsibility, or through the flow of magic breaking with the demon god’s death,” Lyra continued, “this mechanic of reality broke, leading to the steady accumulation and build-up of magic in other realms.”

“Long story short, we need to force magic down their throats whether they like it or not.”

“Possibly,” Lyra amended. “This is a theory. Not even, actually. Not quite a hypothesis. A guess. Logical and reasoned through experience and knowledge, true, but still just a guess at how the world works. Arkk, an interview with your demon might assist.”

Arkk scowled. “It is probably still at Elmshadow, snacking on the Evestani army.”

“See what you can do,” Lyra said. “In the meantime, Zullie, while Arkk confirms his guess, we need to discuss combining our abilities—and possibly those of Purifier Agnete—to create a new solution. The validity of whether or not the solution of breaking these boundaries is possible.”

Arkk paused, noting the continued scowl on Zullie’s face. Normally, she would have been upset until she started thinking for a few moments. Then her face would shift to one of interest before she threw herself into her work. Not this time.

“This doesn’t need to be done soon,” Arkk said. “I’m talking multiple years. There will be time to check over our work thoroughly.”

Zullie huffed, glancing aside. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “Just that, when the world is overrun by demons, I claim no responsibility.”

“I doubt many people will be alive to care,” Arkk said, shaking his head. Warning bells from the fortress stopped him from saying anything more. “I’ve got to go. Try not to kill each other while I’m busy.”

“I’ll try not to drown in the shallow basin,” Zullie said with irritated sarcasm.

“Good luck. We’re all counting on you.”

Drek, the young gremlin on the scrying team, hopped in place when Arkk appeared in front of him.

Arkk felt a bit bad for startling him, but he had been the one to pull on the link. He really should have expected a sudden appearance.

“Problem?” Arkk said, already leaning over the crystal ball. He must have been flicking through images as Arkk didn’t see anything particularly alarming, just the wide and desolate Cursed Forest.

“Two things,” Drek said, smoothing down the front of his tunic, which had ruffled when he jumped. “First, our uninvited guests are a short distance from Smilesville.”

“Did the evacuation finish in time?” Arkk asked, fearing the worst.

“Yes. With our aid, about half made it to Langleey Village and the other half are at Stone Hearth Burg.”

“Good.” That was a small relief. When they had first realized the enemy army would be approaching from the north via the river and that Smilesville was right in their way, Arkk had been in the Maze. Even warning them of the approaching danger had been a trial, organizing a few of Richter’s men to escort them had to wait until Arkk returned.

That had left them with precious little time to move them, but he did have tunnels and ritual teleportation circles set up around Fortress Al-Mir. The burg hadn’t held too many people and this was hopefully a temporary evacuation.

Langleey certainly lacked the resources to support too many additions. Stone Hearth was better off, but not by enough.

“If the enemy army makes no attempt at staging, they will enter our territory in roughly seven minutes at their current pace. They just entered the range of bombardment spells.”

A quick peek through his domain had Arkk frowning. Lelith had certainly taken his orders to heart. She was still flattening the crashed whale ship. The highlands portal had been reconfigured to connect to the Underworld once again, allowing those in his employ on the other world to return, bringing charged glowstones with them. Still, he should probably put a stop to her efforts now.

Not that bombardment had held up well when targeting the Eternal Empire’s army outside Al-Lavik. Fortress Al-Mir also lacked a few of the more esoteric bombardment rituals, the few that had worked.

An idea popped into his mind.

Their armor was enchanted. Magically enchanted.

And for the last hour, Fortress Al-Mir had been bombarded by magic-consuming eggs that grew worm-like monstrosities that also ate magic.

“Hold your second thought,” Arkk said, holding up a finger for a bare instant before he teleported himself across Fortress Al-Mir. He performed a quick examination of the entire fortress and, in short order, selected a target.

He and Agnete appeared side by side.

Quite a mistake as heat washed over him. Like he jumped over a bonfire. A follow-up teleport sent them to opposite sides of the room where, it seemed, Agnete noticed his presence and quickly dialed back on her temperature. A haze of heat still swirled around her, warping and bending the air.

She raised a hand toward the egg in the center of the room.

“Wait!” Arkk called out, teleporting her in place to face her toward the wall. Arkk made it just in time to watch a swirl of flames travel up her arms, coalesce in the palm of her hand, and fly forward in a tight line.

Agnete cut it off quickly enough once she realized she wasn’t aiming the way she had been aiming. It did leave a deep gouge in the wall, but given the state of the fortress as a whole, he wasn’t too worried about a little minor damage.

Arkk teleported back to her, relieved that he didn’t singe the hairs on his arm from proximity alone. “I need you to not destroy this one,” he said, earning himself a frown and a furrowed brow. “Keep it from causing problems, yes. Destroy the tentacles, yes. Leave the egg itself as intact as possible.”

“Reasoning?”

“I think we can use it. I saw what it has done to the Black Knight armor. That stuff is nearly indestructible and these things—and the worms they spawn—eat right through it.”

“Ah. I see,” she said, slowly looking toward the egg. A thinner line of flames severed two of the tentacles, both of which had been burrowed into the floor of the room. “They don’t seem smart enough to tell friend from foe. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Eggsactly.”

Agnete turned to him, eyebrows crammed together as she gave him a look.

“I… Sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he said, taking a wary step back. “Sorry. Keep it under control. I’ll be back shortly.”

Teleporting away in utter embarrassment, he reappeared in front of Agnete’s mechanical counterpart.

“Who,” he said. “I have another job for you.”

A long, thin whistle noise came accompanied Who’s turn. A sigh? Or was it excitement? It had a slight up-tilt at the end that made him think it was a positive noise.

“Were the targeting seats faulty?”

“No. Not at all. One airship is down. We’ll take down the other two shortly. But first… you have seen the worms from the eggs, yes?”

“I have.”

“Is there any way you can construct a non-magical way to contain them? Maybe a hollow metal sphere, if they can’t eat through it, or even a bucket with a lid.”

“A bucket,” Who said, tone flat and unimpressed. “You come to me for a bucket.”

“We all have to do things we don’t want on occasion. If it were up to me, you’d have nothing but interesting projects to work on. This is war, we all have to make sacrifices…” Arkk frowned, then continued. “If you want this to be a little more interesting, come up with a safe way to extract the worms from the eggs and put them into your container.”

Who tilted her head, gears turning behind some of her casing. “I shall need to examine a subject,” she said with hesitant interest.

“Agnete is protecting one. I’ll send you to her. When you want to return, you can pull on the link.”

“Understood.”

Who vanished from the foundry. Arkk did as well, reappearing in front of Drek.

This time, with little warning given, Drek still jumped in place, even despite Arkk appearing several paces away. The gremlin wasn’t as nervous as Luthor, but he still startled easily.

“You had a second issue you wished to raise,” Arkk said. Not a question, a simple statement of fact.

“Yes, Sir. It’s the remaining airships. They’re acting… oddly. Ever since we shot down the first.”

“Odd how?” Arkk asked, approaching the crystal ball to peer inside.

The current image was focused on the airships from underneath, looking up at their underbellies. Both sat there, hovering in the air. Without the ground adding context, it looked like they were utterly still. Neither moved, both were a short distance from one another. Nothing looked odd about either.

“They haven’t done anything. It has been five minutes since the last egg drop. Seven since the main ship unleashed its cannons.” Drek tapped his finger against the crystal ball, scowling at its contents. “I think they’re up to something.”

Arkk bit his lip. There were still a few eggs inside Fortress Al-Mir. But he realized that Drek was right. No new one had crashed down in a while. Priscilla, Dakka, and even Perr’ok inside one of the war machines were taking care of them.

“Maybe they ran out of bombs and eggs?” Arkk said with a hopeful note in his voice.

“Sir. We are not that lucky.”

“Of course not,” Arkk agreed with a sigh. “I… I think I’m going to try something mildly foolish.”

“Sir?”

“Lightning forced that airship away the first time around. It came at a bit of a cost, but Hale fixed me up. If they’re just going to sit overhead, with no army to protect the ground just yet and no attacks coming in…

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t try a second time.”

 

 

Sylvara and Hannah aimed, pointing their arms above their heads at the circling airships. Neither enacted their magic. They held off, waiting as Lelith moved about, minutely adjusting the exact position of their arms. The dark elf squinted up into the sky, consulted with a crystal ball, readjusted their arms, and held up a finger of her own.

“Hold,” she said, eyes glued to her crystal ball. “Ready… Now!”

Twin waves of multicolored light ocellated through the air. Unlike most spells, there was no travel time. Fireballs, the golden waves of Evestani’s avatar, and even lightning all took at least a short amount of time to reach their targets. Whatever magic the avatar of the Holy Light had bestowed upon the abbess and the inquisitrix did not.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as damaging either. Where the rays of gold obliterated all in their path through sheer destructive force, the narrow waves of light had to hold position, frying all they touched over a short amount of time. The actual wave looked like it went on forever even after hitting the target, stretching off into the sky as far as it was possible to see. It likely went even further.

Watching through a telescoping spyglass, Arkk couldn’t help but frown. One wave pierced directly through one of the whale ships. It struck its underbelly, dead-center, and emerged somewhere out the top, punching a relatively small hole in the clouds before carrying on toward eternity. Despite knowing how the magic worked, he couldn’t tell if it was doing damage. It was too bright to look at for more than a second.

The other spell, unfortunately, missed. Not by much. It sheared off the end of one of the fin-like structures on the sides of the whale ships in short order. But it missed the main bulk.

Lelith hissed, obviously displeased. “They’re far enough away that even a minor deviation will miss by a hundred paces. If we had some kind of adjustable brace for them to rest against—”

“Explanations later,” Arkk said as the main ship swerved in the skies. Spyglass down, he couldn’t see anything distinct, but he could see the glow from the underside cannons.

Sylvara and Hannah cut off their spell. Arkk teleported Hannah and Lelith away. Sylvara, because she had still not joined up with him, was a bit more complicated to evacuate. He clamped a manacle around her wrist, capturing her. As a prisoner, she could be moved around.

It was a tenuous solution at best. Given the sloppy and obviously poor job at capturing her, the only reason it worked was because Sylvara didn’t try to fight back. Even the slightest bit of resistance from her and Arkk would likely wind up stuck on the surface, trapped under the oncoming bombardment since he was chained to her.

Luckily for all their sakes, Sylvara wasn’t suicidal. They both reappeared in one of the safer lower levels.

“It’s my fault,” the inquisitrix hissed, pulling the pin from the manacles before Arkk could even move. She flexed her gloved hand. The one that Hale had used as practice when she first started replacing limbs instead of just healing them. “It is a bit heavier than my old arm. I should have used my other, but it isn’t my dominant arm. It doesn’t feel right.”

“As I was trying to say,” Lelith said, “if we had some kind of brace that I could properly aim, we could hit whatever we wanted.”

“We have a whole army of master craftsmen at our disposal. I’ll speak with Who. I’m sure they’ll have something whipped up in minutes.” Arkk first teleported the crystal ball from Lelith’s hands into his own and quickly focused on the whale ships. “I’d like to know we’re causing actual damage before anything.”

“Hannah’s spell scored through the ship there,” Lelith said, pointing into the glass. “You can see the ruined metal and seared flesh. But it is such a small hole. Couldn’t your avatar have taught you a spell with a bit more oomph?” she snapped, glaring at the other two.

Abbess Hannah visibly bristled. “The Holy Light is the god of knowledge and enlightenment. Not the god of… of… blowing things up!”

“That didn’t stop the golden boy, did it?”

Hannah pursed her lips. “The Heart of Gold is the god of greed. What is greed but envy? Is it any surprise that the Heart of Gold would be envious of other powers and try to replicate them?”

“Then shouldn’t the god of knowledge know more destructive—”

“Enough,” Arkk said. He didn’t need infighting now of all times. “That spell is the only thing that can hit at the distances we need, so we make it work. The avatar is busy researching a topic I gave her that is a bit more important than this fight, so we can’t go ask for a different spell. So unless you have better ideas—” Arkk shot a glare at Lelith. He paused, waiting just long enough to be certain that she wasn’t going to actually have one. “That’s what I thought.

“Sylvara’s spell, though it missed the main mass, did do damage,” Arkk continued. “It sheared off a portion of a fin. Maybe we aim for the fins and the narrow point of the tail for now.”

“No disrespect to the inquisitrix,” Lelith said in a hedging tone. “But that was pure luck. It is hard enough to hit the main mass. Aiming for something so small and you might as well ask me to thread a needle in a hurricane.” She sighed, looking at the others with a determined expression. “Maybe if we had the brace I mentioned, something to stabilize and guide the aim precisely, then maybe—just maybe—we can try for your idea.”

“Her Holiness said that we should aim for the heart or the brain,” Hannah said, sounding hesitant. “Those things are living creatures, so the heart or the brain will kill them.”

“Then perhaps she should have mentioned where the hearts and brains are,” Lelith snapped back. “Even creatures that large can have pea-sized brains. We could poke a thousand holes in them and still miss.”

“I concur,” Sylvara said, nodding at Lelith even as she shot an apologetic look at Hannah. “I vote we follow Arkk’s plan. Maybe without fins and tails, they’ll crash into the ground.”

“Then we can bombard them with proper spells,” Lelith finished.

“It’s a plan then,” Arkk said. “I’ll speak with Who.”

Who was, perhaps understandably, quite eager to work on something she had never worked on before. She called it a good change in pace from creating mundane armor or repetitive components. She had a sketch down practically before Arkk finished describing what he needed. In collaboration with one of the large factory machines they had brought over from the Anvil, they threw together prototypes in less than fifteen minutes.

The pair of chairs didn’t look like much. Who promised she could make better ones, but Arkk didn’t need fashion, he needed function.

They certainly looked functional.

One arm of the chairs could be raised and lowered. Ratcheting locks kept them in place. Each click of the ratchet in the arm was fairly distant, but the elbow ratcheted as well in much finer degrees. That finesse only increased at the wrist. The fingers, each with little straps to keep them in place on the machine, could be finely tuned for exact aiming. A series of telescoping lenses in both the seat and beside the seat—for Lelith—should allow for targeting.

“You’re really ᛏaking these?” Who stepped between Arkk and the prototype seats, spreading her arms as if that could block him. “I could make them so much nicer. A bit of leather, a bit of padding, some nice brass instead of the crude iron—”

“We’re at War. No time to doll them up for a king.”

“But—”

“Thank you, Who.” Arkk teleported himself and the seats away.

“Perfect,” Lelith said as she fiddled with one of the chairs. “Better than I imagined. We keeping those Anvil folk around after this? Because I could think of a thousand improvements they could make to the ritual rooms for bombardment magic back at the tower.”

“If they’ll stick around, I’d be glad to. Agnete said something about making a town for them to live and work in though. Some city of progress, or something. There hasn’t exactly been time to discuss the details.”

“As long as a few of them stick around…” Lelith said, hopping out of the chair. “This will work. It’ll take a full trial run to see exactly how accurate they are, but if they’re as close as they look, cutting off the fins and tail might be doable.”

“Why wait? Let’s put them through a live trial right now.”

“You read my mind.”

The whale ships generally stopped moving in the minutes leading up to them vomiting more of those eggs. That meant that the optimal time to get everything ready was just before an attack. It was also the best time from a defensive standpoint, given that Agnete, Priscilla, and the other defenders didn’t need his attention—all the existing eggs would be gone. Or they had better be gone.

Given the little worm things that popped out of the more mature eggs, he wasn’t looking forward to seeing what it looked like when one fully hatched.

Ideally, one would never fully hatch.

“Almost ready,” Lelith said. She was working to adjust Hannah’s seat, turning a small knob to adjust just the tips of the abbess’ fingers.

“Take your time, but be quick about it,” Arkk replied, monitoring the ships through the crystal ball.

Sylvara adjusted herself in her own chair, her eyes focused and determined. There just wasn’t enough time for Lelith to work on both chairs and, once she adjusted one, any minor movements in the ship would ruin her efforts while she worked on the other. Thus, Sylvara had to try on her own. “I’m ready when you are,” she said, her voice steady.

“Hold. Just a moment more,” Lelith said, ticking the knob back and forth. With a slight twist of her neck, she stepped back. “Ready… now!” she called.

The multicolored beams shot forth, guided by the new contraptions. Arkk grimaced at the blinding light, turning slightly to shield his eyes while still watching through the crystal ball. Both beams struck the long, flapping fins of one of the ships. Hannah’s hit directly at the joint, the narrowest point. Sylvara’s was just a titch off, hitting the wider part of the fin.

The whale immediately tried to move. Hannah’s didn’t look like it had held position long enough, but when the fin flapped, the entire thing broke off the main body. The whale ship sagged in the air, tilting away, consequently bringing Sylvara’s beam into direct contact with the main mass of the ship.

The ship froze for a bare instant before swinging off to the side with no fin. Dipping in altitude, it forced the other whale ship to climb to avoid a collision. It didn’t stop with just a dip. The entire thing began a slow, lofty spiral toward the ground.

“That can’t have been because of the fin,” Arkk said, watching as it fell. “Did we luck into hitting the heart?”

“More likely it is because of the fin,” Sylvara countered. “Chop off a bird’s wing in mid-flight and that same thing happens.”

“You sound like you’ve seen it.”

“Tybalt,” was her only response.

Arkk decided not to question her further. Not that they had time. “Hold on,” he said, clamping the irons around Sylvara’s wrist again.

All four of them—and the chairs—vanished from the surface just as ordinance rained down where they had been standing.

“Lelith,” Arkk said. “You’re going to the ritual room. Once that thing hits the ground, bombard it until it is flat. Everything we’ve got.”

“If it recovers before it lands?”

“It’s lower now than it was. Should be in range of something. Force it down then flatten it.”

“With pleasure,” she said, accepting the crystal ball from Arkk as he offered it. She would need it for aiming purposes. The other crystal ball was with the scrying team.

Lelith vanished, teleported away. That left Arkk, Hannah, and Sylvara—who quickly unchained herself.

“You two… Depending on where that ship lands and the vigilance of the other ships, the surface might be dangerous for the next cycle. So, while we deal with that, I want you two practicing with those chairs.”

Two lesser servants appeared in their midst. Both immediately took to eating away the wall of the room. With a snap of Arkk’s fingers, the two chairs reoriented themselves, now aiming toward where the wall had been.

“We’re off in a corner of the fortress. The hallway there is long and unoccupied and nobody should be entering it. Nothing valuable is on the other side of the far wall. It won’t be exactly like aiming at the ships, but it’ll be close enough. I’ll make a mark on the wall for you to practice targeting. Sound good?”

Hannah looked at Sylvara, but Sylvara maintained a steady gaze. “I won’t miss again,” the inquisitrix said.

Arkk was about to tell her that it really wasn’t her fault. Both times, Lelith had been assisting Hannah at the moment they fired. Even just the light drifting the ships did was more than enough to throw off someone’s aim. Seeing the determination in her red eyes, he decided not to patronize her. He simply nodded his head, teleported to the far end of the hall where he marked a cross into the wall with a bit of chalk, then teleported out to his scrying teams.

One ship down. Two to go.

It took several minutes for the whale to finally hit the ground. Whether it had simply been that high or if it was trying to use whatever kept it aloft to avoid falling, Arkk couldn’t say. All he could say was that it didn’t hit the ground lightly.

It didn’t hit the ground at all. Through luck or aim, it crashed through the ground, striking in one of the places that had been most hit by the bombardment and eggs. It slammed into the fortress, broke through the weakened ceiling, and landed in the middle of the alchemy laboratory. The impact sent out a shockwave, blasting open doors and kicking up dirt and dust. Some part of the alchemy lab exploded into a plume of violet-hued smoke.

His claims over the surrounding area were disrupted, unfortunately. The Heart was screaming at him, warning him that the fortress was under attack. So easily accessible, he almost sent in the lesser servants to reclaim the area and then Agnete to ensure the entire thing was rendered nothing more than ash, but Lelith didn’t hesitate in her bombardment even with it having landed inside the fortress. The moment the thing hit the ground, it was under siege. Multi-colored flames, boulders, even the strange, dark Xel’atriss-derived spell that Zullie had developed all crashed down upon it.

He could send in Agnete later to ensure everything was dead. For the time being, he had other things to focus on. The approaching army, for one. They would complicate matters. Arkk would have said that they were a non-issue. Fortress Al-Mir hadn’t seen proper combat since the inquisitors broke in, but it was still secure. He had gone out of his way to enact traps and false passages and reinforced doors at every junction. The maze of pathways covered the entirety of the Cursed Forest, giving him plenty of space to work with.

However, with the attacks from above, his fortress had more holes in it than imported Tetrarchy cheese. Assuming the incoming army was all wearing the heavy armor that granted them their near imperviousness, he had some plotting to do.

 

 

The Maze had rapidly grown more and more uncomfortable.

Ever since reaching the portal, it felt like the air had shifted. Some aura seeped into the land, like an observer, constantly breathing down on them as it watched from an outside perspective. The few lesser servants he had sent around to explore and safeguard the area surrounding the portal, those not connected to the larger mass, vanished almost instantly. As if that observer were actively upset at their efforts to remain together and was pushing them apart.

The sooner they got out of here, the better.

Arkk got the feeling that the Maze didn’t like them not being lost.

But the time was almost upon them. Morvin was fiddling with the highlands portal frame, following directions from a lesser servant which was doing its best to explain what Zullie was explaining to Arkk. The degrees of separation, even with the servant mentally bound to Arkk, made him a little nervous about their odds of success.

But it had to work.

Arkk watched, breath held, as Morvin activated the highlands portal.

The runes on the portal in the Maze started glowing.

Whether through a blessing of Xel’atriss, bridging the gap home, the Fickle Wheel tilting in their favor, or Unknown, the Enigma deciding they had outstayed their welcome in is realm, or sheer hard work on their part—the portal was working.

The membrane stretched across the crystalline archway. Its silvery, liquid-like material shimmered and rippled, stilling after a moment with a thankfully familiar view. Zullie held out a hand, inspecting the portal for a long moment. Eventually, she gave him a nod, confirming its stability. Holding hands with her and the scrying team—he wasn’t going to trust their makeshift rope through realms while the Maze was being so hostile—they all stepped forward as one.

Morvin stood, ready to greet them on the other side. He looked about as relieved as Arkk felt. “Welcome back,” he said. “Glad you could get back. We weren’t exactly sure what happened. I had theories based on the evidence left behind, but those were really just guesses.”

Arkk was well aware that he was inordinately lucky. Having all of them appear within the Maze together, bound to that displaced command center, kept him from losing anyone to the strange topography. They hadn’t wandered off before realizing the scope of the situation. And, with endless capacity for summoning servants, they had managed to escape with relative ease. Had anyone else been in that position, no one in the Maze would have been seen again.

“Excellent work,” Arkk said, clapping a hand on Morvin’s back. “Both in selecting the stone and getting it out here when things went awry.”

“Indeed,” Zullie said. “Keep it up and you might just make senior junior assistant by the end of the year.”

Morvin’s smile at Arkk’s praise turned to a puzzled frown. “I wasn’t aware there was a hierarchy.”

“We can discuss company structure later,” Arkk said, cutting off whatever Zullie had been about to say. “Fortress Al-Mir is under attack. Right now, it is just the airships that have been attacking Al-Lavik, but they’re being significantly more effective against the wider target. But it won’t be just that for long,” he said, turning to Harvey.

The flopkin nodded his head, peering into the crystal ball clutched in his small hands. “I’d guess we have about an hour? Maybe more. Maybe less. Depends on how they navigate the narrowed bend ahead of them.”

The crystal ball displayed a worrying sight. They had been concerned over the surprising lack of Empire soldiers at Elmshadow, wondering where they had gone off to. The crystal ball held the answer.

They were approaching Fortress Al-Mir via large ships traveling up the river. They must have been out at sea, perhaps even headed toward Cliff, when the airships decided to bypass his tower and Elmshadow to directly siege Fortress Al-Mir.

“Right. Harvey, Camilla, Luthor, you’re on messenger duty. Once we’re back at the fortress, I’ll teleport you around. Whoever you appear in front of, inform them of the approaching Empire soldiers. Tug on the link as soon as you’re finished and you’ll be teleported again. Once done, you’ll be on the lower levels, the safest place in the fortress at the moment. Continue standard scrying duties.”

The three gave him affirming nods, leading to Arkk motioning toward the teleportation circles.

As they moved, Arkk turned to his spellcasters. “Morvin, Zullie—”

“I have an idea,” Zullie interrupted. “If we—”

“No ideas,” Arkk said, voice far harsher than usual. “I need things that work. Not things that blow up in our faces.”

Zullie’s shoulders deflated as she turned aside.

“I have Kia and Claire in the Heart chamber. They’re on full-time Heart guarding duty. If you can erect a layered shield—just the regular old one we used at the start of Al-Lavik’s defense—that would free at least one of them up to help elsewhere.”

“But—”

“No buts. Morvin, you’re in charge of keeping her on task.”

Morvin sighed but nodded, resigned to his duties. At his side, Zullie did not look pleased. Perhaps owing to her being the principal cause of their detour through the Maze, however, she did not protest, merely frowning in Morvin’s direction before stalking after the scrying team toward the teleportation rituals.

“If she does something you think is dangerous or foolhardy,” Arkk said, leaning in to whisper to Morvin before he could follow, “tug on the link and I will deal with it.”

Even if he had to throw her into a dungeon cell for the duration of the attack. There would be no more incidents caused by his side. They had enough to deal with from the Empire.

Morvin nodded, hurrying after Zullie. Arkk remained for a moment more. He looked around the highlands portal chamber as a lesser servant scaled the portal frame. There were no guards or defenders. If that keystone hadn’t led to the Maze—hadn’t led to them—Morvin could have easily opened the doors for anything. Given the relative desertion of most other realms, it likely wouldn’t have meant much, but all it would take was one hostile creature like the Anvil wyrm slipping through to kill Morvin and leave the portal open for a flood of fresh enemies. At least until the glowstones powering the portal ran dry.

Depending on what came through, they could have proved near impossible to displace. Especially while he was fighting a war on another front and trapped in another realm.

It hadn’t happened. But it could have. That alone was reason enough to keep Zullie from making another mistake.

Arkk caught the keystone, tossed down by the lesser servant, and immediately headed toward the rituals.

The Eternal Empire thought they could assault him without even a ground force to occupy his defenders? No longer. The Holy Light’s avatar taught Hannah and Sylvara how to hurt the airships. Between him, Agnete, and now Priscilla, those eggs would soon become a non-issue. Protective magics around their weak points would halt bombardments. They had an hour to solve their current issues before an expected force of six thousand Empire soldiers descended upon the Cursed Forest.

If there was one upside to the approaching situation, it was that the Empire’s soldiers would be forced to march across the relatively massive Cursed Forest, slowed further by whatever bombardment and defenses he could erect before they departed their ships. They would arrive weary and exhausted with no time to set up camp to recuperate. Unfortunately, with the constant battle his forces had been engaged with since they started marching Al-Lavik toward Woodly Rhyme, it was more of an evening of the playing field than an advantage toward him.

His men were tiring. He could see it in every swing of an orc’s scythe, every thrust of a Shieldbreaker’s spear. Even the machines from the Anvil were slower now than they had been before. Arkk hadn’t thought beings like them would be capable of tiring, but unless something else was going on, they were.

With him back, with him able to use his localized omniscience to properly organize the defense, he hoped to buy shifts of rest for at least some of his forces. And, once the opportunity presented itself, shift their defense into an offense.

He had experienced quite enough assaults from foreign nations. Evestani was already defeated, with their capital captured by Ilya and their avatar dead. It was time to do the same to the Eternal Empire.

The first order of business was finding out why Alma kept pinging him. The little tugs on the link had been going on for a while now. Almost the entire time he had been in the Maze. She clearly had something for him, something urgent but not something that posed an imminent threat to her.

She was trying to be unobtrusive, not drowning out any other tugs on the link. Yet she was persisting.

But she was also still at Al-Lavik, seated on the floor in the small chamber that held the Holy Light’s basin. Whatever she wanted likely involved the Holy Light’s avatar.

Arkk left her there for the moment—he thought of teleporting her to the ritual room, but depending on what was wrong, her presence at the basin might be a necessity. He didn’t have enough information to make a judgment just yet. But that could easily be resolved.

Fortress Al-Mir’s temple room had changed once again.

The first and most notable change was the Permafrost’s statue. A miniaturized blizzard swirled around the ice carving of the dragon. Its glowing blue eyes slowly tracked him as he teleported into the room. The Permafrost wasn’t the only statue to have changed. It seemed like every other statue was no longer static as they had been before.

The Fickle Wheel tilted and turned, rotating in place. The dark tendrils emerging from the door behind Xel’atriss twitched and squirmed. A fire roared around the base of the Burning Forge’s anvil. Wind, unfelt throughout the rest of the temple, picked up and jostled the Cloak of Shadows’ wisp-like cloak. Each of them now had some small aspect animated.

And there were new additions. Four more pedestals were filled. A tall, armored figure with a spectral cape and elongated limbs stood at one. They stood in place, locked in a pirouette, with only the tail-ends of the cape fluttering. A veil obscured the face.

The Veiled Dancer. Deity of sensuality, arts, and flow in all forms—water, air, words, and, of course, dancing.

Unknown, the Enigma… existed. The pedestal was there. Arkk could tell that something was occupying it. But what, exactly, he couldn’t tell. His eyes slid from its form, unable to process what was there. He couldn’t identify a single aspect of it, not even a vague shape, color, or size.

A shirtless, muscled man rode atop a rearing horse on the next pedestal. Even the most fit of his orcs would find themselves envious of the man’s build. Dark red liquid flowed endlessly over both the man and the horse. The Red Horse. God of war and physical prowess.

The final pedestal was somewhat unpleasant to look at. A blob of flesh. Rows of breasts and a belly hidden beneath of titanic proportions. Its corpulent body, sessile due to its own size, spilled over the sides of its pedestal.

The Bloated Mother. Deity of life, fertility, and disease.

That only left a single empty pedestal. That of the Whispering Gale.

Based on the process of elimination, he was fairly certain he could add the Gale at any time, simply by using the keystone borrowed from the Anvil.

For the time being, however, Arkk moved to the statue of the Holy Light. The shimmering light making up the clothes seemed so much more vibrant now, cycling through dozens of bright colors instead of just the pure white it had been. He teleported one of the candles the avatar had given him to his hand and, with a small flame spell, lit it. They were supposed to alert the avatar, allowing them to meet, if not face-to-face.

It didn’t take long for the statue to come to life.

“Arkk. You’re back.” The avatar did not sound pleased. “This is… not good. This is really not good.”

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Arkk asked, presuming that was why Alma kept pinging him.

The statue shifted, knuckles digging into its temples. “Yes,” Lyra said. “I needed to tell you not to return, fool. Do you realize what you’re doing? What you’ve done?”

“You’re speaking of the Calamity,” Arkk said, looking around the temple, eying the fluttering banners of the Almighty Glory and the gentle rise-and-fall of the Eternal Silence’s chest. “I suppose I have some idea. I imagine the Calamity is weaker than ever before. The temple is populated. One of the three traitor avatars is dead. You all were holding the Calamity together, weren’t you?”

“You knew and you still…”

“I’ve seen the effects of your Calamity,” Arkk said, teleporting a short stool into the chamber. He had been walking for the last hour. If he were to be stuck in a conversation for the moment, he would multitask and use the opportunity for a quick rest. “Entire worlds turned to wastelands. Do you know how many must have died slow and painful deaths?”

“Don’t you dare judge,” the statue snapped, pointing a finger toward Arkk. “You don’t know what it was like. Magic levels started increasing. Everyone thought it was a great boon. Feats of magic were being performed on a level never before seen. A wave of the hand and all problems could be solved.

“Except me. I knew. You’ve seen the other worlds.”

“Magic toxicity,” Arkk said with a nod of his head. “Something about plants is different from animals and people. Too much magic kills them.”

“It is a bit more complicated than that, but yes. At the smallest scale, plants are rigid and unable to accommodate magic beyond a certain amount.” The statue’s head shook, snapping from one side to the other. “I tried to warn others. Tried to explain the problem, tried to generate support for possible solutions. But, in the end, my past self could only find two allies.”

“The Heart of Gold and the Almighty Glory.”

“Their avatars. The gods themselves—I hesitate to say that they do not care, but they certainly do not operate on a level that we do. Glory-hog and I came up with the Solution. Greedy Gold joined. The Heart of Gold was the key to it all, gold, you see, does not tarnish. That concept expanded to encompass the barrier between realms, keeping it safe.” A low, sorry chuckle slipped from the statue. “Glory is all about the pride and nobility. But I imagine my golden counterpart only loaned his abilities once he realized that he would have a whole world with next to no competition to call his own.”

“So you cut them off,” Arkk said. “Condemned millions. Billions? More?”

“We saved as many as we could,” the avatar snapped. “Brought as many to this world as we could. People died, yes, but only so that more could be saved. The barrier was the only thing keeping this world from ending up like them. Do you comprehend how many people you will be killing in the coming decades? The last bastion, the solution, lain to ruin because of you.”

Arkk nodded his head, closing his eyes. “How long have we got? Anything more precise than decades?”

“You don’t have many dams up there in Mystakeen, do you?”

“I… don’t think so?” Arkk said, confused at the odd change in topics.

“We have a number in Chernlock. It is a desert, you see. Manipulating the rivers and lakes is vital to our continued survival. With proper construction, a relatively thin wall can retain a truly massive amount of water.” The statue held its hands together in front of its face. It poked a finger forward, making a hole in the wall. “But even a tiny hole will lead to disaster. At first, only a small trickle of water escapes, but that water rushes through, forced by all the weight of the water behind it, tearing away at the wall around it.” More fingers poked forward, breaking the wall. “Until the entire dam fails and an entire lake’s worth of water rushes down, flooding anything near the river.”

“I take it this is a metaphor?”

“We’re at the point of that first tiny hole. Even if I were to measure the amount of magic that is certainly making its way into this realm at this very moment, I can’t estimate when that hole will widen or when the entire barrier will come crashing down.”

“And it cannot be repaired, even temporarily?” Arkk asked.

“As I said, the Heart of Gold is the main key to this solution. Unless a new avatar is appointed in a hurry—and they never are—and we find that avatar, and that avatar proves at least as adept as his predecessor in utilizing his powers, and he proves willing to assist instead of blinded by greed, and—”

“No, I take it.”

“Not likely,” Lyra corrected. “At least, not with the Heart of Gold. But I haven’t been sitting idle in the last few hundred years. I’m the avatar of enlightenment, after all. There are other powers out there. Some far more adept at construction than the Heart of Gold.”

“Agnete,” Arkk whispered, eyes widening in realization. That was why she kept asking for the other avatar. It was likely why the Abbey of the Light went to such lengths to accommodate or subjugate their purifiers. She must have been plotting this for some time. Plotting to cut out the avatar of Gold. If Arkk had handed Agnete over earlier or killed the avatar of Gold without opening a bunch more portals, it probably would have worked.

He frowned, wondering why she hadn’t told him earlier, only to immediately realize… He was here trying to break down the Calamity entirely. Lyra had either found out, perhaps from Vrox, or simply surmised based on Vezta’s existence. Either way, she would have wanted Agnete without telling him why.

“I didn’t expect the barrier to be quite so damaged,” the avatar said, all but confirming his suspicions. “But if anyone can fix it, it would be the avatar of the Burning Forge. Arkk, once again, this time with the fate of the world at stake, I implore you to hand over Agnete.”

Arkk leaned back in his chair, staring at the maze-like pattern of the temple ceiling. It was a solution. Likely the easiest one. But he had promised Vezta that he would bring down the Calamity. If Agnete helped repair it, it would likely be stronger than ever. Perhaps even impossible to bring down at a later date.

“Could you call off the Eternal Empire?” Arkk asked without looking back down at the statue. He teleported Agnete around, dropping her in front of an egg that looked near to bursting. Priscilla was freezing another. Sylvara, with his assistance, was able to visit the surface to try to attack the airships, but the main one seemed especially focused on bombarding any source of the rainbow-hued light attacks.

When he realized that Lyra wasn’t responding, he glanced down, frowning at the sheepish look on the statue’s face. An odd expression for a god to make, even if it was only a depiction.

“Avatar?”

“I… Remember how I said that her whole thing is pride? Well, I think you’ve damaged some of that pride. I can’t get the Empress to respond to me right now. She might be a bit upset with you.”

“Great,” Arkk muttered.

“It might go against your instincts, but if you would please avoid killing the glory hog, it would be best for the world.”

Arkk could only shake his head, sighing. “We’re in a war here. I make no promises.”

“Arkk—”

“And my answer remains the same with regards to handing over Agnete. Agnete is a free woman, she can go where she chooses. Thus far, she has shown no inclination toward returning to you.”

“Arkk, be reasonable—”

“I have a question for you, Lyra Zann. Assuming you repair the dam, what happens when it overflows? When the water level reaches the top and then keeps going up?”

“What? What are you—”

“As you said, I’m not too familiar with dams. But I can’t imagine anything good. That water would rush past over the top, damaging the structure. Maybe it would be slower, since it doesn’t have all that weight behind it, but it would damage it nonetheless. Or am I wrong?”

“That was a metaphor, Arkk, not a literal explanation of the situation.”

“So when all the other realms fill to the bursting point, your barrier will remain in place?”

The avatar did not respond. The statue shifted, adopting a frown as it stared at Arkk. But there was no response. Which, Arkk decided, was an answer all the same.

“I have another question, Lyra Zann. When did demons become a thing?”

“Demons? Are you still having demon problems?”

“Not problems, per se. Solutions, maybe. Though I intend to kill this demon if only to avenge Leda.”

“Arkk. Demons aren’t a solution. A single demon, given the opportunity, would destroy the entire world all on its own. It would do so for no other reason than because it could, because it was bored. They could do it too because of what they are.”

“Yes, they break the laws of magic. So I’ve heard—”

“Heard from who? That’s wrong. Utterly wrong. Every one of them acts somewhat like an avatar. Powerful avatars. Think on the level of Agnete, were she to go rogue, sweeping her flames across entire nations. They don’t break magic,” she said with a scoff, as if the thought were absurd.

Arkk folded his arms, frowning. Zullie had told him that. It… well, it wasn’t much of a surprise to find out that she had been wrong, especially about a subject outside her fixations. “That isn’t what I wanted to question anyway,” Arkk said with a shake of his head. “When did demons become a thing?”

“I’m not sure. Since perpetuity. Why does that matter?”

“I’m no avatar, certainly no avatar of knowledge, yet… I am willing to bet that demons became a thing shortly—perhaps shortly on a vast time scale—before you started noticing those problems with the magic toxicity.” Arkk clasped his fingers together, staring at the statue. “You had to enact the Calamity because they killed their god.

“And, if I am correct… there may be a solution there that does not involve building your dam taller and taller until it collapses under its own weight.”

 

 

Perr’ok watched with envy as one of those large walking factories from the anvil worked—metal extruded from small nozzles formed into solid sheets, intense torches fused the metal, cogs and gears, shaped from the same extruders, slotted into place as mechanical arms manipulated a hundred different components at once. It took a full hour, but Perr’ok now stood before a fully complete War Walker.

He was still workshopping the name.

It wasn’t quite the same model as the refurbished walkers he had dragged back from the old orc settlement in the Underworld. It was smaller, the weaponry looked more geared to pummeling rather than slicing and chopping. And it wasn’t… all that sturdy-looking. The refurbished ones hadn’t been pretty, but he had done his best to polish them up. With the shadow armor, most orcs hadn’t wanted to try their hand at utilizing them. Only a small handful. Instead, they ended up being used by mostly human pilots.

This one was rough and hastily produced. The factory machines from the Anvil did good work, they just didn’t have the time to grind down the edges and file away the burs. They still did the job in an hour where it would have taken Perr’ok weeks. He was sure that, if they had the time, the visitors from the Anvil would produce something utterly unimaginable.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just time they were lacking.

“No more!” Perr’ok called out again, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Make something else!”

The factory didn’t stop its whirring arms and oozing extruders. Perr’ok wasn’t sure it could understand him. He wasn’t sure it could hear him. The thing lacked ears.

“We don’t have any more pilots! They’re just going to sit empty!”

“Whaᛏ is the problem?”

Perr’ok jolted, turning with his metalworking hammer in hand. With all the chaos going on, sudden noises had him on edge. The foundry was deeper than most of the surface chambers, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t yet been beset by enemies.

But there was no threat in front of him. Who stood there, head tilted slightly. With the machine’s blank face, it was difficult to tell if she was looking at him.

“Would you tell that thing to make something more useful?” he asked, lowering his hammer. “The other factory things are making replacement bodies and body parts for your people, but that one is still producing walkers.”

Who turned, regarding the lonesome walker as it fused two metal rods. “So?”

“It’s a waste of its time. We don’t have pilots for more walkers. I’d say that your people could use them, but I figured you people would just plug your black boxes directly into the machines, no need for the pilot compartment.”

“An accurate assessment,” Who said with a curt nod of her head. “Why no more pilots?”

“We only had ten of those other walkers. They’re mostly with Ilya right now. There wasn’t much point in training more than a dozen pilots while the machines we had were still malfunctioning.”

He looked around the room with a heavy scowl. There were a few of his smiths running around between their anvil guests, but they were mostly dealing with more mundane matters of armor and weaponry. Reports were coming in of the shadow scythes failing after too much contact with enemy forces. With the portal to the Underworld cut off at the moment, they couldn’t replace the shadow scythes, so to keep the army fighting, they needed good old-fashioned equipment.

Most of them could pilot the walkers. From their time working on the refurbished models, they knew enough to utilize them. But they were too busy with their own duties.

“If the factory were to produce regular equipment,” he said, slowly turning back to Who. “the smiths could take over the walkers.”

Three sat empty at the moment. Eight were with Ilya. Five more were already elsewhere in Fortress Al-Mir, hopefully proving effective.

Who turned slowly, looking around at the smiths in the shop. “There aren’t enough walkers for everyone. What will the remainder do with their task taken away?”

“Most are orcs,” Perr’ok said, showing off his tusks. “We know how to fight without fancy machines.”

“Hmph.” Who turned aside. Offended?

Before Perr’ok could ask, she focused on the one factory unit. A blast of noise came from somewhere deep inside her. It was unintelligible, as if she were shouting every word possible at the same time. The pitch and volume changed slightly, warbling and screeching different notes amid the cacophony. As suddenly as it started, the sound cut off.

The manipulators and extruders on the factory slowed. It started to rear up, large actuators in its legs moving, but stopped just before crashing into the ceiling. As it lowered, it let out its own noise, deep and reverberating. Perr’ok felt it in his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Like the thumping of the noise was interfering with the beating of his heart. Thankfully, as with Who’s noise, it went silent after only a few seconds.

She responded in a few clipped chirps. The factory replied in a long, single note of a deep horn.

“Alright,” she said. Her legs remained facing the factory, but from her waist up, she swiveled to face Perr’ok. “ᚠ. ᚨᚲᛏᛟᚱ – IO isn’t particularly pleased to make such uncreative equipment, but she agreed.”

“She, huh?” Perr’ok muttered, looking over the mass of mechanical arms, furnaces, extruders, and moving belts that covered the house-sized machine. She was a beauty, that was for sure. “Do all of your—”

Perr’ok cut himself off as a strange grinding noise came from overhead. He glanced up, watching as a few stray pebbles fell from the ceiling.

Who looked up as well, angling half her body. She didn’t stay still. With inhuman reflexes, she threw herself at Perr’ok. Hydraulic hands clamped down around his shirt and suspenders, gripping him tight. The momentum from her throw and her actuating arms raised her up and over Perr’ok. Despite his much larger size, she flipped him and flung him, throwing him toward the factory just as the ceiling gave way.

The egg’s impact sent a shockwave through the floor, toppling racks of materials and scattering tools in all directions.

Perr’ok pushed himself up, eyes wide as the egg’s thick tendrils began to unfurl. They reached out with unsettling speed and precision.

Overhead, the factory let out a low, blaring horn. It leaned forward, barely avoiding Perr’ok as he scrambled away, trying not to be crushed. A crucible on its… shoulder, probably, slid ajar. Intense heat and molten metal spewed out, spilling over the meat of the egg.

Perr’ok didn’t stick around to watch. Getting to his feet, he charged for the freshly made War Walker, climbed into the pilot compartment, and flipped several levers. Pumps started chugging and gears started whirring. Grasping the controls, he turned the machine and stomped forward.

The flesh of the egg had partially burned away, turning to black charcoal. Lifting his mech’s right arm, a spiked ball almost as large as the egg was, he brought it down, crushing the rest of it. The stray tendrils writhed and slowly went still.

Perr’ok turned, surveying the damage through the machine’s thin visor. The roof was shot. Everything else looked alright. The egg itself hadn’t managed much damage. All thanks to the quick reactions of the factory and Who…

Who?

Perr’ok turned the machine as a foreboding feeling welled in the pit of his stomach, shifting back and forth as he tried to get a good head count.

None of his blacksmiths had been caught near the collapse. The factory had rubble covering it, which manipulator arms were working to clear away. But Who?

Angling the machine downward, he saw it. The black metal of one of Who’s arms, twisted at an unnatural angle. It poked out between a group of bricks and earth. The fingers on the end twitched and jittered like she was trying to claw at the air.

The walker’s right arm was useless, but its left arm had grabbers. He used them to move bricks off Who, tossing them aside. He tried to brush away some of the dirt as well, but the manipulators weren’t as good at that. Lightly, carefully, pinching the exposed arm with the grabber, he gently pulled, only increasing force once he was sure he wasn’t damaging her further.

Her body slid out from under the dirt. It jerked and twitched. She looked intact, but the motion of her body wasn’t working properly. One leg kept kicking only to snap back into its original position. A grinding noise came from somewhere around her waist.

Perr’ok hopped out of the walker, rushing around it to stop over her body.

“Who?” he said, brushing away some of the dirt from around her smooth head. “Who? Please tell me you’re alright?”

She was moving. That was a good sign. Those black boxes were them and he knew that they were extremely hard to damage, far more difficult than the rest of their bodies, but… staring down at her body as it was, he wasn’t quite able to think of her as being alright.

He flicked away a small pebble caught in one of her exposed cogs. A rush of air spat out from the metal grate on her head as it started spinning.

“Agneᛏe built me,” she said, her tone a relief to Perr’ok’s ears. “I will not be so easily dispatched. I just have some foreign material grinding in my gears.”

Perr’ok let out a sigh. A strange release of relief made him laugh with that sigh.

The factory decided that it was her duty to repair the ceiling, raising itself high enough for its manipulators to reach. A few of the Anvil workers were running about, as were the blacksmiths. The egg wasn’t moving anymore. Nothing looked in immediate danger.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said.

Dakka ground her teeth together as she swung her scythe through the air. Severed tendrils flailed about, splattering sticky blue blood across the tiles of Fortress Al-Mir. Flipping the scythe over, she lunged forward and ripped back, dragging the dark, shadowy blade through the oblong egg, horizontally bisecting it. The eggs lacked shells, possessing instead thick layers of muscle-like meat. It split with ease.

Smaller, worm-like tendrils spilled from the wound, slipping and sliding across the floor as they wiggled about. Dakka took a few deft steps back, retreating.

Mikk’ah wasn’t so fast on his feet. The worms flooded around his ankles. He swept his scythe down, cutting through dozens at once, but to no effect on the larger mass. The maws of the worms split into thirds, opening to reveal razor-sharp leech-like teeth. Teeth that latched onto his armor. He started stomping around, crushing more of them beneath his feet, but too many had gotten onto his armor. The dark shadowy greaves and boots started to wither under the worm assault.

Then he started screaming. Some of the worms must have squirmed into the gaps in the armor. As his armor withered and fell apart, more burrowed into his legs.

He wasn’t being teleported. Arkk had been teleporting everyone around, but he wasn’t teleporting Mikk’ah. Arkk would never leave one of his men to suffer, Dakka well knew, which meant that his teleportation must be failing.

Dakka made a snap decision. She stepped forward, crushing a few worms, and swung her scythe. The shadowy armor was all but impossible to damage with regular weaponry, but that wasn’t true for their scythes. It slid clean through Mikk’ah’s thighs, separating his legs from the rest of his body.

Mikk’ah’s upper half instantly vanished, off to Hale, presumably. His legs remained standing upright for a moment more before wobbling and toppling back into the mass of worms. They latched on, chewing through armor and flesh alike.

Dakka retreated once again, crushing the one worm that had latched onto her boot.

“Casters!” she called out. This wasn’t something she could deal with.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many available casters. They were dealing with their problems.

Although she had left the tower defense to Arkk and his spellcasters while she focused on the Eternal Empire’s foot soldiers, she hadn’t remained ignorant of what had been happening. She knew of the whale ships and the eggs they attacked with. She knew the eggs somehow absorbed magic from the very walls of the tower. She knew that Arkk and, later, Agnete had easily burned off every last one before they could do significant damage.

She had thought the attacks were laughable. An easy victory for Company Al-Mir. Maybe if they lacked Arkk or Agnete, both able to use powerful fire spells, the eggs would have taken down the tower with relative ease. But their enemy clearly hadn’t studied hard enough.

Dakka wasn’t laughing anymore. Fortress Al-Mir was too big. Too large and sprawling. Agnete had been able to envelop the entirety of the tower with her flames in one fell swoop, fending off the parasites in an instant. She couldn’t do that here. Worse, as they broke into Fortress Al-Mir, she couldn’t even attempt it. Sweeping flames across the surface might have worked if the eggs had just sat up there.

But they hadn’t.

They were inside the fortress, breaking it apart, room by room. Dakka knew because this was the third egg she had to deal with. One far, far too close to the ritual room where the teleportation rituals to Elmshadow—and elsewhere—were held. They were still moving personnel and equipment. They couldn’t allow the teleportation rituals to be interrupted.

The other eggs hadn’t split into worms, however. They had been smaller, more manageable. Less mature? The other eggs just held more meat and eggs—tiny, like those that belonged to frogs and fully inert. The worms must have been the next stage of those smaller frog eggs.

Her eyes flicked to the dismembered legs, currently covered in squirming, thrashing worms. She shuddered at the thought that these worms were yet another intermediary stage. Like larva before spawning into wasps.

A small gout of flames rolled over the largest mass of worms as one of the battlecasters finally decided to help out. It wasn’t much. Whoever threw the flames was no Agnete. It at least helped to stem the tide of worms flooding across the floor. Mostly. The most intense part of the flames killed off a lot of the worms, but the ones on the edges were still squirming forward. They were just squirming forward while on fire.

A vile stench filled the air.

Dakka moved her scythe in precise, quick flicks, just enough to slice worms in half without wasting energy. A few of the worms didn’t quite die. One took a second swipe to get it to stop moving.

Her scythe was starting to lose its effectiveness. The shadowy blade was mottled and small bits had fallen off. Quick, efficient strikes against the eggs and their tentacles helped keep them from absorbing the magic of her scythe, but it hadn’t come out entirely unscathed. She wasn’t sure if the worms also drained magic on contact or if they had to use their teeth, but it probably didn’t help.

Fighting like this wasn’t sustainable.

There were still more worms falling out of the ruined meat of the egg. A fireball from over her shoulder struck, but it just threw a bunch of flaming worms about the chamber.

Dakka clenched her teeth as she swiped two out of the air before they could reach her. The tip of her scythe snapped off as she scraped it along the ground again, cutting apart a few more worms. She never thought she would miss the cold certainty of metal after upgrading to the shadow scythe, but she wished she had her old axe. It wasn’t magical. It wouldn’t fall apart.

Another flame swept through the room, bringing the number of worms down to a level almost manageable for Dakka and the other orcs.

Just as she thought they might finish this one off, a fresh egg slammed through the ceiling. It crushed several flaming, living worms as it landed, but more than made up for the minor help it accidentally provided by thrashing about its tentacles. Dakka barely avoided getting wrapped up in one with some quick athletics. Juvvy wasn’t so lucky.

It pulled her in before Dakka could act, dragging her through the remaining sea of worms.

Dakka grimaced at the sight. Juvvy’s arms, thrashing about, and her legs, kicking, crushed worms. For every one she squished, just as many climbed into her armor, worming their way under her breastplate and through the gaps in her armor.

She screamed.

Her helmet got knocked off in the process. One worm burrowed into her cheek, latching onto her.

Before it could delve too deep, her entire body turned to stone. The tentacle immediately lost interest, leaving her where it had been dragging her across the ground in order to seek out a fresh target. The worms didn’t quite leave. While the one in her face popped out, the ones attached to her armor continued their feast.

Dakka shot an appreciative glance over her shoulder. Zharja hocked back before spewing caustic venom toward the fresh egg. The green-hued liquid sizzled and burned away at the flesh.

But it wasn’t enough.

A cold wind seeped through Dakka’s armor, pushing her forward a step. The cold turned harsh, pricking at the skin under her armor as though it were pins and needles. For all the pain, Dakka couldn’t help but grin.

The slick slime coating the worms and eggs turned an opaque white as it froze. Their movements slowed, their bodies shriveled. The larger egg took a little longer to be affected, but, starting from the ends of its thin tendrils, it slowly stopped moving as a solid encasement of ice covered it.

Dakka turned, fully ready to heap praise upon whichever battlecaster thought of using ice magic instead of fire, only to freeze—in shock.

A battered dragonoid stepped through the ritual chamber door, turning her head back and forth with ice-glazed eyes. She had found a spear somewhere, her one arm wrapped around its haft as she used it to support her body. Eventually, her sightless gaze came to a rest on Dakka.

“Where…” Priscilla ground out as she hobbled forward.

The last time Dakka saw Priscilla, she had been in the tower infirmary. Hale had been having difficulty regrowing her arm and her wing, citing some kind of unnatural magic clinging to the wound from whatever caused it. To the best of Dakka’s knowledge, the comatose dragonoid had been left behind when Hale and the dozen undead serving as her medical assistants had moved back to Fortress Al-Mir.

Which, she supposed, made sense for why she was coming from the ritual room.

“Where…” Priscilla said again as she stopped in front of Dakka.

“Leda?” Dakka said, saying the first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry. She… didn’t make it.”

Priscilla went still, locked into place. With the ice coating her like scales, Dakka might have thought she finally succumbed and froze had she not known better. Only her lips moved, twitching into an expression that Dakka couldn’t quite parse.

The stillness left as quick as it came with Priscilla shaking her head. “I… see.”

“Are you alright to be up?” Dakka asked. “I didn’t even know you were awake.”

“I felt it… The Permafrost. It was only a moment, but I felt it in my bones, forcing me up.” She staggered forward, moving past Dakka. Her head swiveled as if surveying the frozen eggs and worms. A few of the worms cracked and shattered with the sound of breaking glass as she stepped upon them with her bare feet.

“I must… make amends.”

 

 

Morvin arrived at the portal chamber just in time to watch a lesser servant scurry up the side of the archway, slot in a keystone, and then leap from the height. It landed with a heavy slop against the stone tiles. Apparently unharmed, it scurried off to a corner of the room without delay. Vezz’ok moved ahead, hurrying over to the portal where he proceeded to give it that little spark of magic, activating the portal. Fortress Al-Mir would keep it running now that it was active.

The shimmering liquid membrane slowly spread across the archway’s interior. First, it reflected the room. Vezz’ok, Morvin, and the few guards who were hopefully prepared for whatever might come through when this all inevitably went poorly. Given the active conflict, there were fewer guards than he would have liked. Most were orcs in that shadowy armor. One gorgon sat ready at the back while a handful of those mechanical people from the Anvil filled out some of the empty space in the chamber.

A single, large ripple spread through the silver membrane. The reflection vanished as the ripple traveled from the center to the archway, replaced by another world.

A moist, floral planet with fungal hills and swampy lowlands spread out through the archway like a living tapestry. Moisture clung to every surface, giving trees, stone, and even the ground a glistening sheen that reflected the world’s green-hued sun. Massive, spore-laden mushrooms stretched skyward as if in worship while strange trees drooped from their trunks, hanging like parasols with streamers attached to the ends. Insects buzzed through the air, scurrying in great dark clouds as they made their way through the world.

Things stood in the distance. At first, Morvin thought they were oddly shaped mountains—or large and cavernous rock formations that had been eroded to thin legs capped by a large, central mass. Then one moved. They weren’t made from stone at all. They were creatures that stood atop five spider-like legs, massive enough to have the Walking Fortress frightened.

“Close it!” Morvin called out, striding forward past the rows of guards.

Vezz’ok started, only now noticing his arrival as he turned. He hesitated rather than following commands.

“It isn’t what we’re looking for,” Morvin said, moving ahead to close the portal himself. Good help was hard to find these days. Zullie likely thought the same of him on occasion, but that was different. Zullie had unrealistic standards.

“How would you know?” Vezz’ok said, bristling at his approach. “Supposed to wait for the servant to mime out what it wants us to do, I gather.”

Morvin didn’t much care for his posturing. This portal was dangerous to keep open any longer than necessary. And not just because of those massive spider things in the distance. “I know because this is the realm of the Bloated Mother. Arkk is not there.”

To be fair, he didn’t know with absolute certainty that the realm beyond the portal was that of the Bloated Mother. But it was a damn good guess. The realms were arranged somewhat like a ladder, each realm being a rung. Their world was at the bottom, where all the magic flowed from wherever it started, with the Underworld being the next closest, devastated by the toxicity in its air. Anywhere in the bottom half of that ladder was effectively unlivable, at least without access to another world for supplies.

Given the plant life through the portal, the realm was either high up on that ladder, likely near the very top, or the Bloated Mother had come up with a method of avoiding the ill effects of extreme toxicity, much as the Anvil had done.

Either way, maintaining the portal to the realm of life, fertility, and disease longer than a second or two seemed like a good way for everyone present to die horribly.

He pressed his hand against the archway, pulling magic from it. Just enough to disrupt the stability of the portal. The shimmering membrane collapsed a second or two later, popping like a bubble. “I don’t know if he is busy teleporting people to the infirmary or if he got distracted on his end, but we’re not about to wait around for the lesser servant to play a game of charades.”

Vezz’ok didn’t look pleased that someone had come to barge in on his moment to shine. “How would you know where he is?”

“I’m not Zullie’s chief assistant for nothing,” Morvin said. “Not that one,” he said as Vezz’ok bent to pick up another keystone from a small collection over by the lesser servant. “That one is the Holy Light’s symbol. It’s all over the abbey’s churches. Same with that one and that one. Gold and Glory, if I don’t miss my mark.”

Morvin moved over to the collection of keystones, shooing Vezz’ok aside. “Anyway, Gretchen let me know that she had been mucking about with the Maze of Infinite Paths again, despite her being the one to shelve that project. I posit that she is either in the realm of the Unknown, Xel’atriss, or somehow between realms. And Arkk is obviously with her.”

Eleven keystones sat in front of Morvin. One was set apart from the others. He had heard that, before he arrived, they had opened a realm to the Fickle Wheel. Probably. It wasn’t like they had taken the time to do a full examination of the place. He wished he could have seen it in person, apparently an ever-shifting landscape of color and lights where nothing was ever certain and the only constant was change. He wasn’t quite sure how Hyan came up with that description, but that was what he had heard.

There would be time to reopen it at a later date. Now that they had the keystones in their possession, it wouldn’t be trouble.

First came resolving the immediate emergency.

The three he had pointed out went off on their own. That just left seven.

The symbols on the keystones weren’t typical runes used in ritual circle construction. They were ancient and archaic, each scratch containing more information than a whole sentence in regular speech. While he didn’t recognize the symbols, he could make educated guesses on where some of them might lead based on that information. Those markings there probably meant division. A division was a separation, or, in other words, a boundary. Xel’atriss?

He set it apart from the rest.

In the same manner, he pulled out four more. They were his best guesses for the most likely places of where Arkk would be. He had his two best guesses for the Betwixt, realm of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The remaining three hopefully had among them the keystone for the Maze, realm of Unknown, the Enigma. Unfortunately, they were only guesses. Five out of seven wasn’t even a good ratio.

Morvin snatched up one of the Betwixt keystones and handed it off to the lesser servant. Zullie’s magic often invoked Xel’atriss, so starting with THEIR realm seemed like a good beginning.

The servant climbed up the archway, removing and tossing down the keystone already up there. Morvin caught it and handed it off to Vezz’ok. “Attach a label to this, give a brief description of that plane, and call it the Hatchery for now.”

Though he still had a few grumbles left to give, Vezz’ok complied, moving off to the side of the room. He elected to label the Fickle Wheel’s realm as well, picking it up as he moved to a large desk.

Morvin waited a moment, watching the servant. As soon as it slopped to the floor, he moved forward and pushed a bit of magic into the portal.

Nothing happened. The shimmering membrane didn’t form. It remained as inert as it had been while completely shut down.

Morvin raised an eyebrow and tried again, feeling the magic leave him just as it was supposed to. Yet again, nothing happened.

“Need some help,” Vezz’ok said with a half sneer. He used his sheer bulk to push Morvin aside, planting his hand on the archway’s base. Morvin watched with mild satisfaction as the smug look on his face twisted into confusion. “Oi. Servant,” he said after a moment. “You put everything where it needs to go?”

Lesser servants supposedly lacked feeling, emotion, or even proper cognizance. That didn’t stop it from shrinking down on itself like it was embarrassed.

“It could be that this particular stone requires further configuration,” Morvin said, feeling bad for the thing. “Or that there are no available portals on the other side, like what happened with the Anvil. Rather than try to force it, let’s try one of the others first.”

Shuffling the keystones took but a few minutes. The servant slotted it in and slopped off the frame. Morvin simply waved a hand at Vezz’ok, letting the orc take the lead in activating the portal.

A wintery blizzard appeared on the other side, so thick with massive clumps of snow that seeing further than ten paces was utterly impossible. Plenty of the snow blew through the portal, bringing a chill into the otherwise warm chamber that got immediate protests from nearly everyone present. Morvin gave the signal to cut the portal connection almost immediately.

“Permafrost,” he said, handing it to Vezz’ok for labeling once the servant got it down.

“We get storms like that out in the Tribelands a dozen times a year,” Vezz’ok said. “You think none of the other realms can get snow?”

“They could, but Permafrost was my second guess for that particular keystone. If it makes you feel better, you could put a question mark after Permafrost on the label.”

Vezz’ok grumbled at that as he stomped off to the desk.

This time, Morvin didn’t wait for him to return, activating the new keystone straight away. It was one of the three he suspected would lead to the Maze.

He made sure to warn everyone against stepping foot into the place. One wrong move and they might be lost forever. He wasn’t sure at all how Arkk was going to get back. But that was up to him. His job was just to open the portals.

And open it did. A fresh silver membrane spread through the archway, rippling a few times before solidifying on a new realm.

The realm beyond was a darker land, draped in twilight. An ethereal glow in the atmosphere provided some light, casting long, haunting shadows across the landscape. Towering spires and ancient ruins stood tall in the mist, their bases obscured by the flowing, moving fog. Long shimmering wisps of air currents curled the streams and blew through the unhealthy-looking leaves of swaying willows.

A shadowy figure swept through the fog, their form more visible in the absence of mist than any actual body. They moved gracefully in a fluid allure, yet there was something unnatural and haunting about their movements. Long, slender limbs stretched and twisted in a delicate yet disjointed ballet. At least as tall as one of the Protectors, they nearly matched the height of some of the shorter willow trees.

They paused, still swaying as if caught in a silent rhythm, and turned their head to face the opened portal.

Morvin wasn’t sure if he was frightened or enticed. Probably a mixture of the two. He heard the soldiers behind him shifting their grips on their weapons as the creature’s gaze lingered on them.

But the creature didn’t approach. After a moment of staring, it simply resumed its slow dance, waltzing through the forest of trees in slow, gliding movements.

“Think that’s the place?” Vezz’ok asked, watching the dancer with unblinking eyes.

Morvin didn’t have an exact answer, though he did have a guess. The lesser servant made a cross shape with hastily formed arms, further informing him. “No. I presume that is the Veiled Dancer.”

“That is a god?” Vezz’ok said with clear disbelief in his tone.

Morvin stared at the swirling mists a moment more before slowly shaking his head. “Who knows? Might just be an inhabitant of that place. The Elysian Flow, if I remember what Vezta called it. Curious, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Seems a shame not to say hello,” Vezz’ok said with a longing look on his face.

Morvin shot him a strange look, wondering what that was about. He looked around at the others in the room, looking at the faces that weren’t hidden by helmets. A good half of them stared, enraptured. One of the closer guards took a step forward, slow and hesitant. “I’m sure Arkk will want to later. But we need to get him back so he can.” He passed the servant another keystone as he moved forward to disconnect the portal. Better to not leave temptation around. “Make sure you label this one with a question mark,” he said as the servant scurried up the archway.

As before, Morvin didn’t wait for Vezz’ok to finish his task before jolting the portal. The moment the lesser servant was clear, he sparked a drop of magic into the frame.

A new world filled the archway, one divided into nearly two even sides.

On the left were soldiers clad in dark metal armor, designed for killing, not for glory. They clung to spear shafts and sword hilts as they surged forward, crying out—though the sound didn’t pierce the portal. War beasts—hulking creatures with scaled hides and spiked harnesses—plowed through men and earth alike, their handlers driving them forward with shouts and whips as they took on the opposing army.

The army on the right was vastly different, mostly dressed in loose cloth and lighter armor, wielding curved blades, longbows, and even bare fists. A small group of warriors with painted faces stood side-by-side, poised as if in meditation despite the war around them. At least up until one of the armored soldiers got too close, then they became a blur, moving fast and hitting hard enough to cave in armor with their bare knuckles.

Morvin closed the portal the moment he registered what he was seeing. “The Red Horse,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “The Infinite Battleground. We have enough war here already,” he said, picking up one more keystone. “Don’t need any more.”

Although it was more the focus of Arkk, Zullie, and Vezta than an assistant like him, Morvin still heard things around the fortresses. Things like the statues appearing in the temple. Thus far, the Red Horse had not appeared in the temple. Which, he found, to be somewhat strange given the Horse was the god of war and there was a big war going on. The Smiling Prince showed up after a display of necromancy, so it stood to reason that events related to the domains of a particular god might help bridge the Calamity to draw them here.

Then again, the Red Horse—according to Vezta—despised magical combat. Between avatars, spellcasters, Arkk, and everything else, this was far more of a spell-slinging conflict than not.

Before he could hand the last keystone to the servant, a slight tremor shook Fortress Al-Mir. A faint few specs of dust fell from higher up, making Morvin grimace as it fell around it. He stared around the room for a moment. The guards all mimed his actions. At least, the living ones did. The machine people stood near perfectly still, only emitting strange clicking and grinding noises.

It stopped as quickly as it came. Everyone glanced around, no longer looking upward but at each other, as if someone here had answers.

Morvin didn’t have answers, but having been at Elmshadow and knowing what had happened toward the end, he had suspicions. None of which were reassuring. A bad feeling of impending doom slowly welled in his chest. “We need to hurry,” he hissed, turning back to the lesser servant. “Unless I was grossly off-mark, this one should—”

Another, stronger tremor shook the fortress. Morvin stumbled back, the keystone slipping from his grip. It landed on the floor with a clatter, sliding a short distance away. He stooped to pick it up.

A cracking, grinding noise of stone against stone was the only warning he got. Stone bricks and dirt from overhead rained down as the ceiling collapsed. He dove to one side, using the vacant crystalline archway as a makeshift shield even as he speed-spoke the incantation for a proper shield.

Not all were as lucky as he was. A few of the guards took the brunt of the ceiling. One of the machine things turned into a pile of scrap. Vezz’ok grasped at his leg where it was pinned beneath a thick slab.

Something slopped against the ground near him, just a few paces away. In all the chaos, he thought it was another lesser servant.

Then he turned his head.

A pile of meat, smooth on its edges and vaguely egg-shaped, sat in the chamber. Thin tendrils of meat squirmed outward from it. Some dug into the tile floor. The magically resistant tiles cracked and wilted where they touched. Others went after some of the people. At the epicenter of the ceiling’s collapse, everyone nearby was on the ground, either hunkered down or knocked down. Those still on their feet were further away. They tried to move forward, scythes and cutting tools drawn, but they were too far.

The dark, shadowy armor of the orcs turned far more tangible where the tendrils touched, as if they leeched out whatever magic was held within the ethereal metal. A few of the orcs vanished just before the tendrils could reach them, teleported away by Arkk no doubt. Others weren’t so lucky. The tendrils lashed around their arms or legs, holding them in place. A few of the nabbed orcs started screaming even as fresh soldiers teleported in, already hacking and slashing at the thin tendrils to try to free their comrades.

Amid the chaos, Morvin’s eyes found the keystone on the floor. One of the tendrils snaked toward it.

Morvin dove, fingers grabbing the keystone the second before the tendrils reached it.

In his head, he did a perfect flip, grasping the keystone in one smooth motion.

In reality, his face slammed against the tile, skidding along the ground despite the shield around him. But he had the keystone.

“Desidia,” he intoned, feeling the utter drain of one of the old spells against his magic. But the slowing spell successfully connected, turning the egg creature’s lashing limbs into slow-moving worms. No longer having to dodge, the active guards advanced far more effectively. The shadow scythes of the orcs only worked once against its flesh before whatever magic kept them going was drained away.

The slowing spell was already beginning to fail, far sooner than it should have. One of those whip-like tendrils lashed at him, missing by a hair. It struck the portal instead.

The golden, iridescent crystal lost its glimmer where the tendril hit.

Morvin focused back on the egg. Fire. Arkk had used fire to kill these things. But the only flame spells he knew were relatively weak, more designed for light or cooking, or far too strong to use while a dozen people were fighting in melee or, worse, were trapped in the squirming tentacles.

Before he could figure out what to say, a heat washed through the room. He didn’t even need to see the woman to know that Agnete was present.

She would handle this.

Morvin looked over the portal frame, grimacing at the dark spot. It didn’t look good.

Rather than waste time, he clutched the keystone to his chest, hopped over a stray, now flaming tendril, and rushed from the room. He made it ten paces down the hall before Arkk must have noticed his flight. The familiar pull of a teleportation flung him across the fortress.

Luckily, at the moment, his and Arkk’s minds were one.

In the ritual room, Morvin rushed to one of the teleport rituals and took it.

A dozen hops later and he found himself in the Highlands ruins, standing before the undamaged portal frame. A spare dozen glowstones were already in place, ready for any emergency activation they needed with this frame. All it needed was a keystone swap.

“You had better work,” he hissed as he ran to a ladder leaning against one of the walls.

 

 

Rekk’ar stood atop the lower ambulatory of Fortress Al-Lavik, a small balcony that ran the circumference of the tower near its base. Archers stood to either side of him, wielding greatbows mounted to the brickwork. It was only a step removed from full ballistae. The lance-like arrows they wielded were enough to punch through most armor of any poor sod hit by them, and then anyone standing immediately behind them as well. The Eternal Empire’s armor protected them to a degree, but it still obeyed the rules of reality. Any lance that struck a knight launched them backward, bowling over their own allies.

The archers hadn’t loosed a lance in several minutes now. With the addition of the Anvil’s forces to the Shieldbreakers, Black Knights, and every other squad capable of doing damage, the melee had become too hectic. There was too great a risk of hitting their forces.

Unfortunately, following an initial success of pushing back the Empire forces around the base of the tower, they quickly closed ranks. The Empire tightened gaps, covered each other well, and hunkered down, becoming an effective fortress of their own even if they lacked the brick walls. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last. They would tire. They would break. They would fall. Fortress Al-Lavik ensured it. They had no support and nowhere to retreat to tend to their injured. No stores of food to maintain their strength.

All it would take was a little time.

Rekk’ar curled his lips in anger. His tusks would have been on full display were it not for the shadowy helmet he wore.

Time they apparently did not have anymore.

“Recall them,” he snarled off to one side.

Evelyn, some human with one arm who hadn’t bothered to get it replaced with Hale, raised her eyebrows. She stared a moment but moved before Rekk’ar felt the need to snarl at her. She grasped one of the trumpets and sounded the warning to pull back.

With that done, Rekk’ar turned to the Protector looming over the archers. “All teams you’re in contact with need to return to the tower,” he said, grinding his teeth together. “Assemble in the lower levels for further orders.”

The Protector nodded, presumably carrying out Rekk’ar’s orders.

The orc turned back, gripping the railing as he leaned forward, glaring at the now-fighting retreat down below.

Another few hours and they could have claimed victory over that force. Another few hours and he would have claimed victory. The airships would have remained overhead, but they were someone else’s problem. He would have destroyed an army that was said to have never known defeat. Sure, it was only a fraction of that army, but the sentiment stood. The greatest achievement he could have imagined. Some of the old boys he once knew never would have thought him capable. A petty raider of farmers and craftsmen turned to a successful general who clashed on a scale of nations.

Now, they were pulling back, leaving the army alive to cause more problems. All because they didn’t have time.

“Damn Arkk,” he muttered.

The retreat wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. Were he in the position of the enemy army, he would have been relieved that they were being given some breathing room. The Eternal Empire wasn’t so grateful. The moment they had even a smidgen of space, they tried to turn the tables.

“Archers,” Rekk’ar barked. “Suppress them. Aim far. Hit one of ours and I’ll throw you over the edge myself.”

A few of the closest archers gave him wary looks at that. They were all smaller than he was. Several were humans, but a few beastmen were among their ranks. Those without the skill to fight in close combat and without the ability to conjure up great amounts of magic. The greatbows only required careful aiming, with the winches attached to the tower wall doing all the work of actually drawing the bows—making the distinction between the bows and ballistae even fuzzier.

Rekk’ar wasn’t worried. The retreat had sounded. Their forces were backing away. While the Eternal Empire advanced in their wake, they weren’t in such a tight melee anymore.

He was pleased to see that it was an orderly retreat. Nobody turned and sprinted away when the trumpets sounded. They covered each other’s backs. Even the metal men from the anvil used their strange, puppet-like movements to throw oncoming attacks off balance.

A thunk from one of the nearby greatbows rattled the air. He watched the heavy bolt arc and fall, slamming into the center of the Eternal Empire’s forces, well away from anyone retreating. It wouldn’t help their forces disengage, but it would hopefully keep the Eternal Empire from becoming overwhelming.

“Left side warning,” he said, noting the way the enemy forces were maneuvering, trying to create a concave around their retreating forces.

Evelyn picked up a trumpet and started sounding an alert. Rekk’ar called out a few more commands, both to her and to the Protector. Having an elevated view of the battlefield was a tactical advantage he couldn’t have even imagined in his raider days. Every so often, he noticed the inevitable injury. There wasn’t much he could do to help that, not beyond what he was already doing.

Arkk was teleporting individuals out, both injured and people who got trapped in precarious positions. According to the Protector, nobody quite knew where Arkk was or what he was doing. He did wonder why Arkk wasn’t simply teleporting the entire army back. Perhaps he was busy, or perhaps there were simply too many. With the Anvil forces, their numbers had more than doubled. Maybe even tripled. Given their sudden appearance and all the chaos going on, nobody had given him a number and Rekk’ar hadn’t bothered trying to count.

More lances launched and more orders turned to the toots of trumpets.

Halfway through their return to the fortress and the situation was starting to deteriorate. Rekk’ar opened his mouth, about to call for a stop, for their side to push against the Eternal Empire just enough to shove them back a step. The command never made it out of his mouth before he heard a sharp, grating whistle in the air.

An obsidian pillar slammed into the ground in the center of the Eternal Empire’s forces.

It stood tall, imposing. Its sleek, polished surface reflected the chaos around it. A moment of stunned silence fell over the battlefield as both sides paused, their eyes fixated on the enigmatic structure. The air seemed to hum with slowly building energy as a low, resonant thrum reverberated through a sudden wind.

Without warning, the obelisk burst into life. A brilliant line of blood-red energy lanced from its apex, frying the very air as it targeted a random soldier in the Eternal Empire’s army. The beam ignited anything it touched with malevolence. One of the Eternal Empire’s ancillary squads, perhaps a logistic unit or loaners from Evestani, scattered like ants caught under a lens of glass as the beam swept over their position. The obelisk tracked them with cold efficiency, each movement calculated, each moment a brief eternity before a swathe of soldiers was cut down.

The commander of the Eternal Empire’s ground forces barked out orders. Rekk’ar couldn’t hear from this distance, but he could see the way the man was swinging his arms about, directing units around him in an attempt to deal with this new threat in their midst.

A second obelisk slammed down, crushing him.

“Bombardment magic active once more,” the Protector intoned, making Rekk’ar hop lightly in surprise.

Rekk’ar glanced upward, frowning at the lack of airships. One of them had been interfering with bombardment spells earlier—then the bombardment chamber had blown up, taking down the tower’s defenses—but with the airships gone, they must have gotten some ritual working again. He wasn’t quite sure where the bombardment team had pulled that spell from, but it was working wonders. The blood-red beams didn’t do as much to the knights as they should have based on how they cut down the unarmored units, but it was the exact kind of chaos they needed.

The retreating forces broke away from the Eternal Empire, leaving them behind fully.

“Treat any injuries,” Rekk’ar said as the first obelisk started crumbling apart. He hadn’t noticed any real damage inflicted upon it. It must have run out of magic. A third one quickly replaced it. “Organize anyone healthy into fresh squads. Anyone too exhausted will remain here. Those who can still fight need to move to the teleportation chamber and begin making hops to Fortress Al-Mir. Everyone else, get them patched up as much as possible and seal the tower.”

“Understood.”

Rekk’ar nodded his head, then glanced around at the awe-struck archers. True, their near ballistae couldn’t contend with bombardment spells, but that was no excuse to not try. “Did I tell you to cease your attacks?” he barked out, pausing just a moment for them to mentally answer the rhetorical question. “Suppress them into the ground.”

Repeated thunks of launching lances thrummed the air as the archers followed his orders. There was a lot of confusion at the moment. Likely even more with those soldiers he had just ordered back. They would have questions for him. Questions he would very much like hearing the answers to.

Turning, Rekk’ar gave a light nod to Tell’ir. He would have command, though it wouldn’t be much of one. The battlefield would be empty of anyone to command soon.

“Airships increasing in speed, Sir. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen something move so fast. Barring teleportation, that is.”

Arkk spared Harvey an appreciative nod of his head. It seemed as if his forces noticed what was going on. People were transferring to Elmshadow and then back to Fortress Al-Mir as fast as they could. But Fortress Al-Mir, despite its name, wasn’t Al-Lavik. He hadn’t spent months filling it with weapons and magic for war. Assuming any assailants would have to go through Elmshadow to get to him there, it just made more sense to occupy his time at Elmshadow.

They didn’t have a bombardment room. They didn’t have the magical defenses that had kept Al-Lavik safe from both conventional magic as well as those magic-draining eggs. All they had was an admittedly thick layer of earth followed by the reinforced bricks of the fortress. Bricks that had already proved they could crumble and fail when drained of magic.

They were running out of time.

They stood before the crystalline archway. Lesser servants curled around both sides of its base, holding tight, as if a slight slip of their grip would see it running away. The rocks that had been partially blocking it were gone, cleared away courtesy of even more lesser servants. Now, it was just a simple archway, just like every other portal they had seen.

Except it wasn’t active. No silvery membrane stretched between the archway.

“Zullie?” he called out.

The witch turned back, lips curled in frustration. “It must be something in Fortress Al-Mir. Everything here should connect.”

“I’ve followed all of your instructions. Everything in Al-Mir looks how I expect it to look and how you described.”

“Then check again!” Zullie snapped, her irritation getting the better of her.

Behind Arkk, he heard Camilla mutter, “Can’t even draw a straight line in this place and thinks her work is perfect…”

Arkk didn’t exactly disagree. While he was fairly certain the problem was here, he still sent a lesser servant crawling up the Al-Mir archway, inspecting every little rune and even every little scratch. From their experiments with returning Agnete home, they knew the portals weren’t so sensitive. The highlands portal still functioned even with a significant slice of material having been shorn off for use in the small anvil portal. The real problem was that they didn’t have a keystone.

The keystones, like the ones they had received from Sylvara for the Silence or the Laughing Prince for the Necropolis, seemed to force a connection. The Underworld had been established by Xel’atriss and the Anvil keystone came from the distant portal in the Underworld. Thus far, they hadn’t visited anywhere else, and thus had no access to other…

Keystones.

Arkk blinked. Realization hit him.

“Zullie, if Fortress Al-Mir had access to a keystone on that end, would it be able to force the connection open with no further input on our end?”

Zullie paused her inspections, turning her head back to face Arkk. Though she still looked frustrated, she did raise a curious eyebrow. “Where are you going to get a keystone? More delving in the temple? Won’t that be hard while you’re here?”

“No,” Arkk said. “The Anvil. When the portal closed, trapping Agnete on the other end, the Infernal Engine did so by removing the keystone. It then dropped it into a bank of similar rune-covered crystalline stones. Keystones! A whole bunch of them!”

As Arkk spoke, he was already resetting the Fortress Al-Mir portal. The lesser servants scurried over it, undoing the changes he had made so that they could reach the Anvil instead.

Come to think of it, the undead of the Necropolis might also have a stockpile of stones. It wasn’t much of a surprise if the Silence lacked anything similar—there wasn’t anyone living there to organize such a collection—and if the Underworld ever had the same, it was likely buried under the ravages of time.

But he knew the configuration required to set the portal to the Anvil without even consulting with Zullie. He had memorized that long ago.

“How will you know which one is which?” Zullie asked, moving alongside him as she cupped her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Even I couldn’t tell just from holding the stones.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Arkk said. “We’ll just try them all. One by one, until we find one that connects to the Maze. If it doesn’t connect here, at least we’ll have made progress. We can try reconfiguring again from there.”

One of Zullie’s assistants, the orc Vezz’ok, had remained behind to manage magical matters at Fortress Al-Mir. Now, following a quick game of charades from the lesser servant, Vezz’ok moved forward and planted his hand on the portal, trying to activate it once again. Unlike earlier with their failed connections to the Maze, this one lit up almost instantly. Fast enough to surprise Vezz’ok, who likely assumed it would fail again. He jumped back from the forming membrane.

The lesser servants surged forward. As soon as the image of the massive factory that was the Anvil appeared in its portal, they moved through. He had no idea how long he might have before the denizens of the Anvil grew angry with him for pilfering their keystone collection. If they got upset at all. With Agnete, they had formed something of an alliance. Unfortunately, he was in no position to explain.

Only when the servants climbed up a tall ladder and moved across a narrow catwalk to the bank of keystones did Arkk notice his immediate surroundings.

Zullie, Camilla, and Luthor were all staring at him. Harvey with the crystal ball kept glancing up, but kept the majority of his attention on the images inside its glass surface.

“What?” he asked, looking around.

Zullie’s lips formed a thin line, but it was Luthor who asked the question on all their minds.

“D… Didn’t you say magic would flood into our world if you connected to too many more realms? You and Zullie were talking about magic toxicity levels… T-trying them at random isn’t going to start with this portal almost guaranteed, which means we’re opening at least two portals.”

“Then I’ll skip the first keystone I select,” Arkk said. “We’ll go straight to the second.”

Zullie managed the flattest stare possible despite her lack of eyes. “That’s not how statistics work,” she said in an equally flat tone of voice. Shaking her head, rubbing her temples, she drew in a deep breath. “With the war, we’ve not had time for a full risk analysis on the situation.”

“It isn’t going to be an instant problem, is it?”

The lesser servant in the Anvil moved as he spoke, searching through the neatly organized bank of keystones. Some possessed symbols he recognized. The Underworld, the Silence, even the Anvil. He ignored those, selecting one of each from the other dozen different patterns.

One of those mechanical eyes loomed overhead on its gantry, watching the servant’s actions. It didn’t raise an alarm or try to shut off the portal. Arkk took that as a good sign, that his actions were sanctioned by the factory—or at least tolerated.

“Certainly not,” Zullie said, splitting Arkk’s focus. “Recall what Yoho told us. He didn’t use specific numbers, but from context, we can conclude that it was at least a hundred years after the Calamity began that the last living people in the Necropolis died. I doubt they even realized the true scope of the problem in the first several years, beyond the obviousness of the portals failing. And the Underworld didn’t turn to the state it is in overnight.”

Arkk looked from Zullie to his scrying team. They weren’t his typical advisory council. They were employees. People whose well-being was his responsibility, both to return them home as well as to avoid them starving to death in a world filled with too much magic.

“We could still try to use our sympathetic link with Xel’atriss—”

“You think that’s less risky?”

“Well, no…”

Arkk shook his head. “We’ll deal with the consequences later. For now, let’s open some portals.”

 

 

“What do you mean, he isn’t available?”

“How else can I put this?” Alma stared at the bubbling, angry bowl of water. She wasn’t sure that whatever was on the other side could see her, but she leveled a flat look in its direction just in case. “He can’t respond to your summons. His attentions are required elsewhere. His presence is non-negotiable. He is tied up in matters that don’t involve you.” Alma folded her arms over her chest. “Do you want me to rephrase it a few more times?”

The light in the basin glared right back, boiling away the water despite the lack of heat.

Alma often felt she got the short end of the stick. The duties assigned to her were almost entirely the lower-rung administrative duties that nobody else wanted. Whether that be managing undead, compiling reports, or fending off whatever this bowl of water was supposed to be. Although she had complaints, she didn’t exactly dislike her duties.

While she had intended to sign up for a mercenary company, she had not been signing up for a war. Taking care of things like this, while a pain in her ass, at least weren’t swords in her ass.

Sure, Company Al-Mir might have an extremely low fatality rate compared to other mercenary companies that, almost without exception, had ended up destroyed and defunct due to Evestani’s initial advance. Alma still didn’t like the idea of getting stabbed in the first place. Or of going to Hale to get patched up. That was liable to end with her growing scales or grossly mismatched limbs.

The light in the basin pulsed as the voice started speaking once more. “It is imperative that I speak with him as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” Alma said. It wasn’t even a lie. She would tell him if she saw him again. No one had been able to climb the stairs to the upper levels after the explosion and nobody had seen Arkk since.

Concerning, but not altogether out of the ordinary. He was, at the very least, still actively engaging in company management—he had been the one to drop her off at this talking bowl of water, though with no specific instructions.

A sudden flash of light made Alma take a wary step backward. The bowl of water was already upset and, typical though it might have been, she was a werecat who didn’t particularly enjoy being splashed with water without being prepared.

“He isn’t there.” The feminine voice spoke with a sudden flash of insight. “He isn’t there?” she repeated, though now she sounded confused. “He left in the middle of a battle? What kind of Keeper does that?”

Alma drew in a breath, considering possible responses. She didn’t know who this water bowl was or what level of strategic knowledge they deserved. All she knew was that she had been sent to deal with it. Rekk’ar would be here if they were someone relevant to the defense. One of the spellcasters would be here if they were someone able to assist with magic. If someone was on the shit list enough for her to deal with them, they clearly didn’t deserve much.

In the end, she decided that the best response was no response.

In fact, she had said enough as it was. If Arkk wanted her to continue entertaining the basin, he would teleport her back. Otherwise, she had other duties to tend to. Like ensuring the skeletons who volunteered to help with healing duties didn’t give someone uncontrollable flatulence to liven things up. Again.

“Hold it!” the basin called out before she could take more than a few steps away. “There was a magical accident in the tower just a bit ago, correct? An accident involving planar magic.”

Alma paused and frowned. She wasn’t sure what happened up there. “Are you asking or do you simply enjoy hearing your own voice?”

“Arkk was at the center of it, wasn’t he? He isn’t in this world anymore. Is he looking for a way back? You must stop him.”

That got Alma rolling her eyes. “Of course. Let me just switch to the magic bowl of water that lets me talk to him.”

“Fool. This is no laughing matter. The Greedy Gold’s avatar is dead. Now more than ever, there is danger in meddling with the planes. Until we… Until I can strengthen the barrier, he cannot be allowed to return.”

“And what, exactly, do you want me to do about it?” Alma snapped. “Take a hammer to the portal?”

“Yes!” the bowl said, light pulsing in excitement. “Dismantle it! Destroy it! Where is it?” The voice paused, somewhat clipping the last word of her question. It was as if someone had interrupted her and she was pausing to listen, but Alma couldn’t hear anything. “Cursed Forest. Langleey Village?” the woman murmured more than spoke, as if she were consulting with someone other than Alma. “You think I have the time or energy to turn over every last stone in the land? Fetch a map already—”

The voice cut off again, far more abruptly this time. The light in the bottom of the basin winked out and the surface stilled, looking indistinguishable from any other basin.

Alma was left staring at it. A deep sensation of foreboding filled the back of her mind. Not many people knew the location of Fortress Al-Mir. Even within the mercenary company, the exact location was somewhat obfuscated, not exactly hidden, but not exactly discussed either. Most people entered and left Fortress Al-Mir via a teleportation circle. Even if they did go up to the surface, it wasn’t like they could look around and pinpoint its location.

As someone who had been roped into a position on Arkk’s inner advisory circle, Alma knew its location. She was likely one of an exceedingly small number of people who knew the name Langleey Village, Arkk’s hometown.

To hear that someone else knew that was concerning. Combined with the context, it sounded downright alarming. As if they intended to attack, or at least destroy the portal.

Neither was acceptable. The portal was the cornerstone of their power. Through it, they had access to the Underworld, which was needed for charging glowstones and manufacturing the shadow armor. Without either, they wouldn’t be dead, but they would be a whole lot worse off.

Alma turned and rushed from the room. If she could have contacted Arkk, she would have. The only option available now was to find someone who could ready some kind of defense. Rekk’ar, Dakka, or someone else from the inner circle. This was far over her pay grade.

She left the training room and started down the steps only to bump into one of the people she had been looking for. Savren wouldn’t have been her first choice. It wasn’t anything personal, it was just that she could hardly understand what he was talking about half the time.

He wasn’t alone. The gremlin assassin Lexa and their guest, Inquisitrix Sylvara, were with him. All three looked quite pleased, especially in the latter two’s cases. Despite the ongoing battles, Lexa looked more relaxed and calm than Alma had seen in a long time. Sylvara had a smile on her face for perhaps the first time.

And therein was a problem. She didn’t know exactly who she had been speaking with, but she knew they were related in some way to Sylvara and the Abbey. If Sylvara heard that that person was thinking about attacking, who was to say how the situation might devolve.

Worse, it looked like they were headed for the room Alma had just come from.

Thinking quickly, Alma casually waved a hand back at the door behind her. “If you’re seeking the one in the bowl,” she said, “they had to depart to attend to… something or other. They didn’t specify, exactly. But the light in the water is gone.”

All three paused. The inquisitrix’s smile slipped. “Was she disappointed in me?”

“I… don’t think so?” Alma said, trying to keep a straight face. The sudden frown had her worried that she said something wrong. “I’m sorry, Arkk teleported me in there just as the abbess left to carry out those rainbow attacks on the airships. Your name didn’t come up in the short time before the bowl went dark.”

“Ah. Abbess Hannah got the magic working then? Good for her.” Sylvara looked at Savren and Lexa. “I’ll move to assist her then.”

“She’s on the bombardment team’s balcony,” Alma offered.

“Understood,” Sylvara said, moving up the stairs past Alma without a second glance.

Alma held her breath until she passed. Only then did she start to relax. “Wait!” she said as Savren started to follow. “Sorry,” she said to Sylvara, who paused along with everyone else. “I just need to speak with Savren for a moment.” Turning to face the warlock fully, she continued, “A possible mind-altering problem has arisen with some of the fear totems you developed.”

Facing away from Sylvara, Alma relied on her hidden ears to track the inquisitrix as she continued to make her way up the stairs.

As soon as she was sure Sylvara was out of sight, Alma grabbed hold of Lexa before the gremlin could move. “Keep an eye on all Abbey members,” she hissed into the gremlin’s pointed ears. “We might have a problem with them shortly.”

Lexa’s eyes widened but hardened right after. Glancing between Alma and the staircase, she nodded her head and then continued upward without a word.

Savren, standing aside and watching the exchange, let his face fall as Lexa hurried off. “What weary weight are you about to wreak upon me?” he said with a despondent sigh.

Alma flicked her gaze up the stairs, then looked to Savren, shaking her head. “Not here,” she whispered, grabbing hold of his arm, she dragged him back down the stairs. “We have a problem with Fortress Al-Mir.”

“Careful,” Arkk said, warning Zullie as the witch started wandering away from the row of lesser servants.

They were in the forest now. Trees made from a silvery liquid stood tall, lacking leaves but possessing almost umbrella-like canopies. Within those semi-spherical domes, Arkk could see elsewhere. Shimmering worlds reflected in the silver that didn’t match their surroundings. Arkk couldn’t say whether it was somewhere else in the Maze or some other plane entirely. There were no familiar locales reflected in the liquid.

The trees seemed solid enough, as evidenced by a lesser servant hugging one, but the liquid reminded him a bit too much of the silver membrane that hung between a portal’s arches before it fully activated.

Zullie, being drawn to them, looking as if she were enraptured despite her eyeless state, did not serve to reassure Arkk.

He redirected a few of the lesser servants, still clasped to the main line, to form a waist-high barrier. Despite their best efforts to push her back, Zullie still almost toppled over it. The only thing that stopped her was the belt around her waist.

Arkk latched a hand on her shoulder, trusting in the scrying team to maintain contact with the line of lesser servants. “Are you with us?” he asked, dragging her back toward the others. “We’re trying to get back home, remember?”

“I’ve not gone daft,” Zullie snapped, swatting away his hand.

“Good. I need you to keep it that way. We can explore this place later. Maybe.” It seemed risky, given the nature of the Maze, but if it mollified Zullie for now, he would give her whatever promises she needed.

Theoretically, Arkk could get them back home on his own if necessary. He had seen Zullie reconfigure the portals often enough and, up until she got distracted just now, she had been informing him of all the changes the lesser servants would need to make to the portals. But she was the expert. She knew how to configure portals with her eyes… well… missing. If he made a mistake and she wasn’t around to correct it, he could very well die here.

“Got us into this mess,” Camilla murmured behind his back as they started walking once more. “She could at least get us out before she loses the plot.”

Arkk shot the fairy a mildly reproachful look, not that he could blame her. Or that he disagreed. But he didn’t need infighting now of all times. If Zullie heard, however, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her hand was back on the lesser servants, even if her gaze was still on the forest around them.

“Status of the battle?” he asked, looking to Luthor, who had taken over from Harvey after the flopkin mentioned drying eyes.

“G-Going well. The addition of the forces from the Anvil have employed great s-skill in tearing down those knights. They just started a full retreat now.”

That was better than he had hoped for. Given how flimsy most of those mechanical people looked, he had been more nervous about sending them into battle than not. It felt like a waste to just have them march in and die. But Agnete and Who had convinced him otherwise. Apparently, their bodies weren’t valuable so long as their core black box survived, and that black box was nearly indestructible, having been crafted by a literal god.

“And Evestani?”

“Rounded up by the Prince’s forces. I think they’re surrendering.”

Arkk peeked into the temple chamber back within Fortress Al-Mir, mentally scowling at the Fickle Wheel. He wasn’t one to question a good turn every now and again, but this seemed… simple. Too easy. He was winning the battle and he wasn’t even present. Granted, he could teleport people around and get injured employees to the infirmary, but still…

He hadn’t even needed to send Agnete out to handle those eggs in a while.

“The airships?”

Luthor paused, images in his crystal ball flickering. “Moving away from the tower,” he said after a moment. “At speed, no less. They’re hurrying back toward…” The chameleon trailed off, frowning with his scaled lips. “No. That’s not right.”

“They aren’t retreating?”

“They’re moving away from the tower,” Luthor repeated. “But they might be plotting something else. They’re headed eastward. The whale ships and the main ship all.”

“East. Toward Elmshadow?”

Luthor nodded his head.

Arkk frowned to himself as they continued walking. There wasn’t much at Elmshadow. Some civilians. The tower was still trapped by that ritual array and his forces were with it on the battlefield. All of the Prince’s army was there as well. Ilya was in the opposite direction, wreaking havoc in Evestani’s homelands along with Hawkwood and more of the Kingdom’s soldiers. Even if they set down in Elmshadow, it wasn’t a strategic asset without the means of securing it and holding it.

With the Eternal Empire’s army routed and Evestani’s captured, the ritual trapping the tower couldn’t possibly last much longer. All he would have to do would be to turn around. With how few forces the Eternal Empire had available, and now that the avatar of the Holy Light had taught his forces how to use magic that could penetrate the armor of the airships, he doubted they would hold the city for more than twenty minutes.

So why head there?

Unless they weren’t heading there.

“Are they angled directly toward Elmshadow? Or just vaguely eastward?” he asked as an unpleasant idea took root in the back of his mind.

Luthor didn’t respond right away again, instead taking the time to scan through various sights in the crystal ball. He tapped Camilla on the shoulder, getting the fairy’s input on various angles in soft, murmured whispering.

Camilla was the one to look up, shaking her head. “They’ll overshoot it to the north, well over the northern Elm mountain range.”

“P-Plenty of time for them to change direction, however.”

“No,” Arkk said, teeth grinding together as that rooted thought crystallized. “I doubt they will.”

“Sir?”

“We need to pick up the pace,” Arkk said. “Zullie, continue telling me everything that must be done. No more distractions.”

“Are we almost there?” the witch asked.

That was a difficult question to answer. While holding to the line of servants seemed to keep them on track, the length of that track was difficult to guess. They had come upon the liquid forest far later than he had initially anticipated.

“I hope so,” Arkk said. “I hope so…”