The Lines

 

It took time to recall Kia and Claire. With the end of the war, they often spent their time quietly moving around Mystakeen, acting more like the mercenaries they once had been than whatever Company Al-Mir had turned into these days. They hadn’t taken to the peacetime as well as most of Arkk’s other employees. Every few weeks, they stopped by to see if anything interesting was going on, bringing the heads of anyone causing trouble in Mystakeen, from bandits to unruly barons taking advantage of the transition in the realm’s leadership.

Sometimes, Arkk did have tasks befitting of their skills. Most of the time, he encouraged them to take a break for a while.

Project Liminal, the project of Zullie’s that had granted them their abilities, was still the best weapon against demons they had yet to develop. They were still the only two successes of the project. Arkk hadn’t asked for any further volunteers. The war was over. Alya was giving him regular reports on Prince Cedric’s activities in Evestani. There was no sign of demons on the horizon, no need for more volunteers. They would be needed. The plan had always been to open a portal to Hell and funnel magic into it and opening such a portal carried risks of demonic incursion.

But there were too many complications. Kia and Claire weren’t quite able to associate with the rest of reality anymore. They existed somewhere between. They also required their connection to the Heart or they would likely perish. That wasn’t even getting into the sheer level of power at their disposal. They could destroy anything they came into contact with, except more esoteric magics like what created them in the first place.

Arkk couldn’t ask just anyone in his employ to undergo Project Liminal. He had been compiling a list of candidates, but it always seemed like a far-off thing.

Arkk stared upward, glaring at the void open overhead. Now, he was wishing he had been a bit more proactive. It was too late now. Both Kia and Claire had taken days to recover enough to simply walk, let alone fight.

They didn’t have weeks to spare.

One full day and it was still there. Thus far, nothing had come pouring out from it but magic. No hordes or demons—nor any other denizen of the other planes. At least not that they had detected. Not around Fortress Al-Mir.

Conversation with Lyra indicated that the void had opened everywhere, always looking exactly the same no matter how far one was. An eye-like slit in the sky that stretched from horizon to horizon. He could only hope that hordes of demons hadn’t already poured through on the other side of the world, devouring all in their path.

Kia and Claire were here now. They would have to suffice.

The rest of his inner circle stood in the cleared-out courtyard of Upper Al-Mir. Olatt’an and Rekk’ar had taken over the general defense of Mystakeen, working with Katja and her army to ensure they had no intruders from any front. Dakka served as head of internal peacekeeping, enforcing the rule of the land allegedly in Katja’s name, as Company Al-Mir was on a permanent mercenary contract to the Duchess. Zharja was one of only two gorgon who still stayed with Company Al-Mir. Arkk had found the others a nice little cavern not far from the Cursed Forest where the rest were building a dwelling of their own. Now, Zharja served as his primary contact with most beastmen who wished to consort with Company Al-Mir.

A constantly increasing element. Beastmen in his employ now outnumbered the demihumans and humans. Upper Al-Mir housed plenty more who weren’t directly contracted with him.

Savren—now cured—and Zullie stood among their little clique of mages, including Morvin, Lelith, and Hale. Morvin wasn’t so much an assistant these days as he was a proper researcher with his own specialties, that of general combat magic and magical history. Lelith remained his expert in bombardment. Hale…

The young girl barely looked human these days. She had a dragonoid’s frame with an orc’s musculature, large leathery wings folded behind her back, and a thin tail that whipped back and forth, bringing its barbed, venomous end uncomfortably close to everyone near her.

Priscilla was the only one willing to get too close. Unless, of course, they were wounded. Even then, they much preferred visiting with the undead who thought Flesh Weaving was a funny spell for a skeleton to learn.

Agnete and Who took up a position not far from Priscilla. The mechanical being also didn’t look like she used to. She was far more bulky these days, having switched out large parts of her chassis to better engage in civil construction projects. Just beyond them, Lexa, Edvin, Alma, and Joanne formed another clique, one more focused on negotiation and subterfuge than fighting—a sort of counterpart to the front formed by the orcs standing across from them. No-longer-Abbess Hannah and a Protector rounded out the inner circle, one of the few from Richter’s group who stuck around with Company Al-Mir following the war.

Ilya, of course, stood by Arkk’s side, her hand gripping his.

Not all of everyone present would have a direct role in the day’s activities. He had called them here despite that if only to ensure that all of his advisors and key personnel were fully informed of what was going on.

“We’re here today with a simple task,” he said, his statement earning a look of disbelief from Zullie. “Our objective is to redirect the incoming flow of magic to Hell.”

“Simple,” someone said, he didn’t quite catch who.

“Yes. Simple. Not necessarily easy,” he said with a smile that he didn’t quite feel. “Failing that, we must staunch the flow of magic coming from the other realms. Otherwise, we’re all likely to be dead of starvation by the end of summer.”

“The god of boundaries opened the gates. Xel’atriss, Lock and Key,” Zullie said with a note of reverence in her tone. “I believe slowing or stopping the activity will be a much more difficult task than rerouting. Like trying to plug a wine cask with your finger instead of pouring it into a glass and having someone drink it.”

“Which is why we’re going with this option,” Arkk confirmed. “Except it is going to be demons drinking it.”

“What’s the over-under on this coming back to bite us?” Edvin asked Alma in a whisper that was just a little too loud. Noticing everyone’s eyes were on him, he cleared his throat awkwardly. “My mother never said not to mess with demons… I guess because that one was a bit too obvious even for her.”

“If you’ve got a better suggestion—”

“Sorry I’m late. It took a bit longer to confirm the safety of those relays you provided. I would have hated to find out that they were killing everyone who used them and replacing them with an identical duplicate.”

Arkk paused, turning with a strange frown on his face, confused over what all that meant. A woman walked toward him, accompanied by a lanky man. She wasn’t familiar, but her bright red hair and luminous white eyes tipped him off to her identity.

“Avatar,” Arkk said before looking at her companion. If her eyes weren’t enough, the presence of Darius Vrox at her side would have clued him in. “Darius. Good to see you again, even under the circumstances.”

“Arkk,” Darius said, tone neutral. He didn’t look particularly happy.

“Please,” the avatar said with a much brighter smile. “Call me Lyra.”

“Sure.” Arkk didn’t particularly care what she wanted to be called so long as she was here to help. “I presume nothing has changed since last we spoke?”

Following some information-gathering rituals conducted by Zullie, they had all retreated to analyze and discuss. There had been some hope that the event would simply evaporate away after a time, perhaps after Xel’atriss discovered whatever it was that she had come here to discover. Unfortunately, all of Zullie’s tests indicated that the void was not just stable, but actively resisting being sealed away.

They couldn’t risk it sticking around for any length of time. Thus, the plan.

“Nothing drastic has changed, no. A slight alteration to the planar manifold interface, which I’ll give Zullie the notes I made overnight once we’re ready to begin.”

“Very well. In that case, I’ll continue. We are conducting two rituals. The first is to gather the magic flooding into this realm and direct it. The second is to open a portal to Hell.”

That got a little grumbling from his crew. Not much. Most everyone came here with an idea of what was about to happen.

Arkk continued to address the gathered crowd. “I understand the gravity of what we’re about to do,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “But we are left with little choice. We must act or we will die. The influx of magic is beyond anything we’ve theorized over before. A consultation with Yoho revealed that even during the Calamity, the magic levels of the Necropolis didn’t increase this fast.”

He glanced at Kia and Claire. They were the lynchpins today. The thing keeping them safe from any incursions through the portal he was about to open. It was not going to be sustainable in the long run. Two people couldn’t protect an entire world indefinitely. The real hope was that this would buy them time to find a more permanent solution. Either closing the void—which would also be temporary—or finding a way to funnel magic into Hell without leaving the door open for demons to invade.

Which had been the plan all along. This was just… accelerating things.

Zullie took over from there. She explained in far more detail than Arkk, going into some of the specific mechanics of what they were doing. Arkk watched his crew, noting the way most of their eyes glazed over once she started talking about infinitely differentiable metrication of local aetheric topology. Arkk knew that was going to happen. Few, even among spellcasters, could keep up with Zullie. Lyra Zann paid attention as did Savren, Morvin, and Lelith.

For everyone else, Arkk was just trying to build some confidence. They would all be required to support Kia and Claire as well as any spellcasters needed in the rituals. Making this ordeal into something that sounded routine and properly thought out could only help in keeping them calm and focused.

It also served as a way to fully inform Lyra of the exact status of the plan. Much had still needed working on when Lyra ended their communications the evening before, just after Arkk sent out a few casters on a long mission to create a chain of teleportation rituals all the way down to Chernlock.

If he were being honest, it was as much for him as it was for them.

Except it wasn’t quite having the same effect on Arkk. He could feel his stress level rising as Zullie neared the end of her recitations. As soon as she finished, it would be time to act.

No more delay.

No more excuses.

Ilya looked at him, smiling an obviously forced smile as she squeezed his hand.

It helped. A little.

“Which is why we’ll need all casters on call,” Zullie finished. “Any questions?”

Dakka scoffed. “If you answered any, I’d just get more confused,” she muttered to a round of murmured agreements.

“Hmph.”

Arkk looked over the group. Judging by their faces, most agreed with Dakka. The few who were more magically inclined worked with Zullie and had likely asked their questions while developing the ritual. After a moment of no one offering any further commentary, Arkk nodded. “Then begin the preparations.”

The gathering split apart. Those who knew Zullie’s research ended up directing those who didn’t, organizing some of the rank-and-file of Company Al-Mir’s employees into workers to assist with moving glowstones, construction of the array, or ensuring everyone was well-fed, in the case of Larry. Arkk hung back, watching and waiting.

The entire time, he avoided glancing upward as much as possible.

He could feel Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, staring down at him. Every movement he made, every decision in the back of his mind, every little idea that he dismissed before they could fully form. It was as if his mind had been cracked open like a book, ready and waiting for anyone to read through. In his first encounter with Xel’atriss, the god had pushed and pulled on the division between what he knew and what he didn’t know as a way of communicating. No actual words were spoken, just a slight nudge of his thoughts in one direction or another.

For as much as he could feel that gaze upon him now, Xel’atriss had yet to reach out to him. He didn’t know if that was because he was doing everything right and he didn’t need to be informed or if it was because, as she was now outside her domain, Xel’atriss couldn’t do that.

Why had this happened? Vezta suggested that it was because Xel’atriss was curious about the Calamity collapsing and perhaps wished to witness the event in person, but her presence was actively nullifying the remaining scraps of that barrier, rendering it effectively useless. Had she just come to watch him? Or Zullie?

He had asked Zullie the evening before. Xel’atriss apparently spoke with her—using that same shifting of knowledge and ideas—to the point of giving her the idea for exactly how they were going to redirect the flow of magic to Hell and keep it there. Which, according to her, was something of a trial given how the void overhead seemingly connected to all the planes at once. Anything they pushed into Hell would just come flowing right back through.

At the same time, that conversation—again, according to Zullie—felt almost incidental. As if the knowledge gained was more of an accident than anything intentional on the part of Xel’atriss. And Zullie reported no feelings of being watched or followed or read.

Thinking it over was likely a worthless endeavor. The gods were… Well, as Yoho had once said, understanding the thoughts of an entity so far removed from mortal concerns was simply not something anyone could do. Even the forms that he was familiar with, their statues in Fortress Al-Mir’s temple, were apparently based on his preconceptions. For all he knew, this massive eye overhead, a moon hanging in the void, was Xel’atriss’ true form.

Ilya lightly poked Arkk in the side. Just enough to force his attention to snap back to reality.

“They’re ready for you,” she said, voice soft.

Arkk nodded without a word.

Glowstones weren’t going to be enough for this ritual. Similar to their first endeavors toward tearing open reality, which ended with an audience with the deity high above, this ritual would simply be far, far too magically draining. Even more so than that first ritual. They were still being used, mostly to stabilize any odd spikes and to help keep any assistants from collapsing, but the key factors for today’s ritual were going to be people.

Several anchoring positions had been constructed, connecting the ritual directly to Fortress Al-Mir in the hopes that the fortress magic would keep it going once it stabilized.

Zullie took one of the cardinal positions. Agnete took the opposite. Just like the first ritual. Hale and Savren weren’t participating this time, however. In their places, Sylvara took one end and Lyra Zann took the other. As avatars, Agnete and Lyra had wells of magical power on par with him, if not greater. Zullie was some kind of quasi-avatar—no one was really sure—and had already been quite powerful even before her interactions with Xel’atriss. Sylvara was the only normal human present. Arkk still remembered the way she had kept up with him during the initial defense of Elmshadow, powering arrays for hours on end without sweat. Despite being the only normal human, Arkk was confident she could keep up.

He and Ilya stood at the center. Two Keepers seemed like overkill at first, but with the expected demands of this array, and the potential consequences of things going out of control, they decided to err on the side of caution.

Vezta stood in the center symbolic position, not meant to directly power the ritual but merely to act as a conduit for the barrier magic.

“Alright,” Arkk said. “We’re beginning. Savren is monitoring the ritual externally. Zullie will be monitoring it as a participant. Listen for their callouts.”

His words were likely unnecessary. The first ritual made use of bandits and novices unaligned with him. Everyone here today was trained. Everyone here today knew what was going on and what the stakes were. Still…

“I’ll start slow, just enough to get it going. You all join in at Zullie’s command. Ilya, with me.”

Arkk knelt, followed shortly by Ilya. They both placed their hands across from each other in the center of the large, cleared-out courtyard. He pushed just a touch of magic into the array, just enough to get a faint glow lighting up the rings around him. Ilya copied him almost exactly, if a second slower. After a moment, they both sat amid steadily glowing violet lines.

“Hold,” Zullie said. “Don’t increase any further until we’re ready. All the rest of us start… now! Just a little at first. We’re not trying to tear open reality until we’ve gotten things going!”

Her words, much like his, weren’t necessary. Agnete, Sylvara, and Lyra all started adding their magic to the ritual alongside Zullie.

“Readings looking good,” Savren said. His voice sounded somehow distant, despite him being less than a dozen paces away. Given what they were doing, that was likely to be expected. “There is a little less leeway than anticipated, but next to no chance of a resonance collapse.”

“Confirm stage two?” Zullie called out.

In the past, Zullie might have immediately started stage two. Over the past year, Arkk had sentenced Zullie to learning to better rely on others. Her assistants, including Morvin and Lelith, had full veto authority over her if they deemed something she was attempting too risky. They had all gotten much better about working together.

She waited, patiently, while Savren, Morvin, and Lelith had a brief consultation with one another. Eventually, Morvin spoke up.

“Stage two okay to proceed.”

“Stage two proceeding,” Zullie repeated. More protocols Arkk had implemented. “Arkk, Ilya. You’re going to increase magical input until the dark rune between Vezta’s legs begins to glow. Stop the moment you see any light. I’ll direct you if we need more.”

“Understood. Increasing magical output until the rune glows,” Arkk confirmed, following his own protocols to verbalize as much as possible.

He pushed more magic into the array, matched by Ilya. More and more went in. Enough to the point where he could have blasted apart a dozen people with a lightning bolt. Yet the rune in the center remained stubbornly inactive.

This was why he was at the center point. He and Ilya. Perhaps the avatars could have matched his magical output. Perhaps not.

He had claimed a great deal of territory throughout Mystakeen in the past year, mostly around Fortress Al-Mir and Elmshadow, while the number of mercenaries contracted to him had increased tenfold. Ilya wasn’t quite on his level, but she might have been at the point where he had been during the war, now holding territory covering a vast swathe of land where Mystakeen’s borders met that of Evestani and the Tetrarchy.

Arkk channeled magic, flooding the array. If the Calamity was a dam holding back the tides of magic from other realms, he was a dam holding back a single tidal wave.

The rune flashed a bright, angry red.

“Don’t stop!” Zullie shouted just as Arkk was about to clamp down on the amount of magic he was unleashing.

“Glowstones four and six require replacement,” Savren said, almost sounding bored. “Vezz’ok, don’t forget the protective spell before entering the ritual array.”

Zullie talked over him. “Agnete, increase output. Sylvara, hold steady. Lyra, pull back a tad. Need to equalize…”

Slowly, over a good ten minutes, glowstones swapped out and the ritual’s participants steadied out their magical output.

As they worked, the red rune in the center of the array slowly shifted hue.

At the twenty-minute mark, it glowed a bright, dazzling violet.

Everything shifted. Arkk felt a lurch in his stomach, rather like being teleported, and then everything went still and calm.

The ritual remained active, but the drain on his magic slowed to a crawl. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I think we’re good,” Zullie said. “Savren, confirm.”

“Confirming. Please hold steady for a moment… long… uh—”

Arkk glanced up, checking to see what the problem might be, only to catch a glimpse of the sky. He wrenched his head back, staring straight upward.

The moon in the void was still present. But the sky surrounding it was no longer the bright blue, white cloud sky that he was familiar with.

A red, fiery inferno blazed across the entire sky.

“The bridge has been opened,” Vezta said, speaking in a soft, hushed tone. “The lines are being drawn.”