'Damien!' Yuriko yelled while panicking. The core fragmented and was about to shatter. She could see the cracks crawl around the broken sphere, and they were widening. She had a sudden sense of the entirety of the plane doing the same thing! She didn't know if what she intuited was real, but she knew it was happening. And from what Mum and the Legates said, the integrity of the plane was tied to the core.
"Calm, child. This is a necessary process. The Chaos cretin had corrupted the core and we must excise that rotten matter otherwise we would only delay Rumiga's dissolution. I still have most of my power, and we have just the filler to repair it. But…" He paused. "Are you sure you want to keep Rumiga as it is? There will be damage, catastrophic damage, why not shunt it away from Imperial territory?"
'Eh…what damage?'
"The plane will crumble, though I can make sure central Rumiga remains intact."
'But what about all the people in the south? There's at least ten times as many civilians down there!'
"Enemies, aren't they?"
'Only the leaders. Most had little choice!' Yuriko fired back. It was an opinion she only held after she travelled south. She wouldn't have cared as much a few years ago.
"Hmmm, very well." Damien nodded. "Fri'Avgi, first form please."
The artefact spirit complied and changed into her original, edgeless greatsword form. Damien held her by the hilt and pressed the tip on the ground, the forefinger of the left hand touched the red gem. Then, he turned his focus on the captive Chaos Lord. While the Watcher's Anima struggled inside, Yuriko could tell that Fri'Avgi could barely contain the rotter.
"He would have been good fodder for your growth, but unfortunately, without a Divine Shard, and with your Anima strength several levels below, it is impossible to make use of him. It's ironic, isn't it? The gap between you two now would have been ideal to increase your growing speed, but you wouldn't even be able to hold him there, heh. Either way, this is justice. He who would consume a plane would be used to repair it."
One moment the Anima was a struggling, boiling ball, the next, it was squished down into a bead. Grey threads spun out of it and flowed towards the blade, following runescript lines within and outside, then flowed towards Damien's outstretched hand. He spun the threads towards the planar core, wrapped it around the central fragment and basically healed over the jagged or molten edges. He did the same for the two other fragments, though he didn't join them together.
Then he wove a coating for all three shards, cocooning them in silk made from the Watcher's former essence.
The ground, which had started to shake, began to settle down. All while the others were still moving as though mired in mud.
"There, that's the best I can do while saving all three," Damien said, his voice suddenly weak.
Yuriko looked at the Divine Shard and gasped when she saw there was only a speck left. It shone brightly, trying to push back the darkness.
The layered sunblade had been floating by his side, but she could see the coating beginning to unravel. The immense heat and light began to spill out. It felt hot even to her senses.
Damien grimaced at the sunblade, then shook his head. "I don't have time to unravel this, and if I leave it alone, it will destroy what's left of this place. Fri'Avgi, can you hold the second form for a moment long enough to cut a rift to the Abyss?"
'You're going to dump that there?' Yuriko gasped.
"Yes. The iarvesh near the Abyss is dense enough to contain the inevitable explosion. It shouldn't affect here, or your Empire."
'Shouldn't?!' Yuriko yelped.
"Yup. Do it now, please."
The artefact split into six floating blades and longsword, then spun around each other for a long moment, then it ripped a hole in reality just big enough for the sunblade to slip through. Damien didn't waste a moment and shoved it in. Thick ambient Chaos that tried to seep in was annihilated by the Radiant energy, and by the time the rift closed, all of the contamination had been burned off.
"So…this is it. It's been a pleasure." Damien said softly. The Divine Shard was just a single mote that pulsed light like the beating of a heart. "Good luck, child, and…" he swallowed, "beware of the…"
The Divine Shard winked out.
_________
Vietlanna opened her eyes and sighed at the waste. She shook her head and stood, her robes formed around her as she walked out of her meditation chamber. Deep with Realmheart, at the centre of her power, was a little sanctuary around where the core used to be. It was a set of suites, a mini garden, and the planar Adaviren tree roots.
The sanctuary garden wasn't that large, but it still had the reflected celestial objects at the roof. The centre of the circular chamber was dominated by the root cluster, which looked like entwined tendrils that were each at least a wrist thick. There were thousands of roots there, and there were bulbous protrusions that hung like fruit elevated near the midpoint of the ground and ceiling.
The surrounding earth was filled with flowers and treasured herbs, though each was worth little to the Empress. All it took was a fraction of Will to grow an Imperial Lotus, whose seeds were a key ingredient of the Atavism Ritual.
She walked up to the root cluster, floated over to one of the fruit protrusions, and gently caressed the thick, leathery skin. The fruit seemed to pulse, as though it were a heart. Internal light sometimes shone through the skin, and if one looked closely, one could see the silhouette of an infant.
"Oh, child, I didn't think you'd have to awaken this soon," Vietlanna whispered lovingly at the fruit. Above it were long forgotten remnants that she barely even looked at.
Vietlanna sighed as she floated back to the ground. "Such a waste…" she repeated as she strolled back to her meditation chambers. She only spared a single thought to the frontier plane. There were dozens more than needed her attention, and her goal of ever growing would not be over soon.
___________
The Tyrant is Dead! Long Live the Tyrant!
The headlines in the newspapers gave Axel Voight no small amount of amusement. He puffed contentedly on his cigar, alone in his study. The newspaper was several days old, but he kept it around as a sign of victory.
The wear had continued on for a couple of years after the anomaly left. Karcellia and her allies pushed the Richmond Confederacy hard, gaining ground lost to the daemon invasion. It came to the point that the Tyrant had led a battle, all to raise morale.
He died, of course. A man too arrogant for his britches.
Oh, it was a slow death, from a lingering wound that no medic could seem to heal. Axel had been by his side all the time, providing valuable service and insight to the new Karcellian magicks. He was now the Premier Warlock, having advanced in power so quickly that no other State Warlock could match, and because of his…innovations, he was able to counter the Karcellian offensive and bring the Great War back into a stalemate.
The new Tyrant was the old one's heir, a boy too young to shave. There was a Regency Council, of course, headed by the general staff, which included his august self. Heh.
He sat back and relaxed, though he rarely went without his exercises. He held his hand, palm up, in front of him, and pulled at the occult resonance, ambient Chaos, around him. An orb of golden light materialised and he spent several minutes making it fly complex patterns. He could still barely believe that he now held this power. The Lord of the Dawn's promises were fulfilled.
Once he was done, he pulled open a drawer and retrieved a leatherbound journal. It was locked with a metal clasp, and would only open when he sent his Animus inside. He withdrew a photograph held carefully within.
It was the greatest prize to everything he's ever done. It was a picture of the anomaly, and he could help but trace his finger across her figure. He recalled the words of the Lord…
Ultimate power is yours if you possess her.
He shivered in anticipation. He didn't know where she was, but she would return here eventually. And he would be ready when that time came.
__________
A young man grubbed the fresh earth that came from the planar city's collisions. He held a hand pick in one hand and a small shovel in the other. A canvas bag hung by his belt. The outskirts were illuminated by the light of the Deep Chaos shining through the Great Dome, though the meagre light barely inconvenienced him.
It was said that near Equilibrium, the skies were bright with golden light, but the boy didn't believe it. How could anything pierce through the dense Chaos Sea? Only the odd creatures, and the other deep places, normally had light.
Clink!
As soon as his pick hit something, he eagerly dug at it with his hand shovel. A minute later, the dirt revealed a small crystal. A Fragment! It looked to be three measures too! Enough to pay his life debt amortisation and the day's living expenses. Well, three days if he was frugal. He hurriedly scooped the crystal up, not even bothering to admire the multicoloured hues, and shoved it into his bag.
Then he continued looking for more.
Unbeknownst to him, the shard in his backpack shifted to pure, Radiant gold.
___________
The strings across the Fateweaver Loom gave a discordant jangle loud enough to deafen any who were within. Misha grimaced and plugged her ears, shifting them back to humanoid in the process. She half contemplated doing away with ears for the meantime, but sighed knowing that all of her senses were necessary to perform her duties.
She looked over to the Loom. The Fateweaver Loom was the size of a palace, and that was only for its main strings. Her office was an overlook over the vast tapestries that vacillated between looking like the strings of a harp, an actual loom, and a tapestry that was wider than most cities.
The discordant jangle came from a particularly bothersome knot, and the annoying thing wasn't just the noise, but the fact that the disorder was spreading.
Misha did not try to smooth the weave. The Loom, despite being called Fateweaver, was more of an observational tool than one for manipulation. The latter could be accomplished, but it would take vast reserves of Ambrosia to do so.
Instead, she watched the knot and tried to decipher what the source was. The tangled skein was resistant to being deciphered, but Misha's experience spanned three millennia. Soon enough, she could see it. And it was a rather familiar flavour.
"Oh, Damien. My old love, your tricks cannot always succeed," Misha smirked. While her time with him had been more than pleasurable, she did crave variety. She'd also thought him long gone, but imagine her surprise when she found a little bit of him tainting her descendant.
Yuriko Mishala Davar was a special child born from a confluence of coincidence and fortune. It would have been misfortune if Misha had not intervened, though she did little more than have a conversation. Still, it looked like that fragment had let go. Her descendant would fly or fall on her own merits now.
Well, with a whole treasury of wisdom and power, it was unlikely for Yuriko to fail. Unless she was foolhardy and careless.
But the ripples of the knot expanded beyond the confines of the Fateweaver Loom, and it behooved her to investigate.
She sank into a meditative trance. One that could last for days, weeks, Seasons, or years.
End of Book 11