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.