Darrin Ordin
Time slowed around me as I watched Dima's body crack to the side. She didn't even make a noise as she flew, unable to scream or cry out in horror. I felt I must have been dreaming; my former lover's body twisting at unnatural angles in the air.
I watched with a sense of distant detachment. This can't be real, I thought, the clashing of steel, rocking of water, and cries of battle fading to nothingness around me. This is a nightmare. I'll wake up in a moment, safe in my estate. Yes, this is a dream.
Dima's body tumbled across the metal plating beneath us, leaving a messy streak of crimson blood. She fell still, her face staring up at the sky.
Everything seemed to condense back in on itself. A guttural cry tore itself from my throat as I dug my fingers into the metal around me. I wrenched myself forward, unable to feel the pain in my mangled leg as I hauled myself toward my lover.
I finally made it to Dima, heaving for breath and feeling a frantic tugging in my gut. "Dima," I tried to say. My lips moved, but they failed to make any sound. "You're going to be okay," I lied, grasping onto her arm.
Dima coughed weakly, not turning to look at me. There was a haze in her eyes that terrified me. Her back was twisted in a strange direction, making me feel nauseous inside.
"Darry?" she said, still staring at the sky.
"I'm here," I said, trying to hold back a sob. A puddle of blood was slowly forming around her body, but no matter where I looked, I couldn't find the source. "We're going to get out of here. You're going to tell me about what went wrong, yeah?"
"I can't– I can't feel, " Dima forced out, tears gathering at the edges of her eyes. Her breath stuttered.
"We can–"
"I need to," Dima started, almost forcing the words out, "Need to tell you."
"What?" I asked, feeling lost. My eyes tracked to the slowly growing pool of blood under my former lover. Tears finally began to flow down my cheeks. I grit my teeth, cursing my weakness. I couldn't even stand.
From the corner of my perception, I noticed the Frost twins, alongside Sevren Denoir, launching themselves at the flesh colossus. Dima and I were alone in puddles of our own blood, left to slowly wither away.
Dima whispered something, blood streaming from her lips. It was the first sentence she'd said that sounded clear and resolute. It seemed to echo over the battlefield, quelling every other sound.
I felt my breath hitch as I processed the words. I froze, my thoughts spiraling out of control. What did she mean?
"We— we have a daughter," Dima repeated, forcing the words through bubbling blood.
I wanted to shrivel up; curl into a ball and block out the light. Dima's words seemed to skip a beat in my head. I knew what each syllable meant individually. Knew the meaning they intended to convey once strung together. But the end result still didn't make sense.
"After we spoke," Dima said, tears glistening through the red crimson around her, "I– I found out after that. I was pregnant. But you'd just told me you would give up everything to tend to me."
Dima coughed, something between a sob and a rattling death drum. Her blonde hair, once so luscious, was burned and torn at the edges. It soaked up the blood like a sponge.
I reached my hands out, clutching at Dima's arm. It was limp in my grip. She didn't even seem to notice.
"I couldn't do that to you," she said weakly. "You would give up the tombs. Give up fighting. I knew that… if you knew, you'd stop antagonizing all those highbloods. Stop helping people."
Dima's head finally lolled to the side, twisting like a doll's. I choked as I met her eyes. She didn't even seem to be aware I was there, just saying what was on her mind.
"So I," Dima coughed again, making her body spasm. Something fleshy dribbled down the side of her mouth. "I left. I couldn't make you sacrifice for me."
I pulled myself closer, feeling my shoulders sag as I nestled myself against Dima's broken body. She had always been warm. All the times I'd taken her in my arms so many years ago rose to the forefront of my mind. I cradled her as she slowly bled out, her misty eyes still unfocused.
I had always forced myself to stand tall. I was the leader of the Unblooded Party; the focus for all to rally around. I put myself between corrupt nobles and their weakened prey, standing as a defender of the weak.
Yet I couldn't even save one lonely soul.
I nestled my nose into the side of her neck, resisting the urge to weep further. "What's her name?" I whispered. I was going to die here with Dima. It was a fitting end, but there was a daughter out there I'd never get to meet. Never get to hold.
"Penny," Dima said. She was limp in my arms, her breath choking rasps. "Her name is Pen."
Sevren Denoir
My hairavant wire snaked around the commander's arm, lashing itself there with the force of a tourniquet. I ran through a dozen different ideas for my next move: perhaps sliding through the monster's knees, and bringing the wire along in another path. If I weaved just right, I'd be able to tie it up in a similar method to the last one.
But this undead wasn't brainless like all the others. Even while Numar Frost swung his sword at the creature's foot, the commander was already twisting, flexing its arm in a way that forced my wire to cut.
Numar's sword sank into the commander's meaty thigh. He looked triumphant for a moment, but then it was quickly awash with horror. Sticky hands erupted from the side, trying to drag the boy in.
The arrogant brat was forced to slide backward, releasing his weapon in the process. A collage of spells simmered on the fingertips of the grasping fingers, aiming deadly force at the retreating runt.
Bered flashed in from the side, priming his mace. It enlarged once; twice, three times, swelling with the force of mana. And when he swung it upward, it deflected the myriad shots fired at his brother with a resonant gong that rattled my teeth .
But the way the undead twisted forced me to flex my wire too soon. The commander's arm fell to the floor with a crash as my metallic wire tightened, severing the limb whole.
I rushed forward as more undead streamed toward their wounded leader. I focused on my regalia, Dictate of Mass, channeling mana through the spellform.
When people watched me fight for a while, they generally assumed my runes lessened my weight, allowing me to achieve super speeds.
I let them think that.
My rune was far more deadly than simple weight reduction. In effect, I could change my apparent mass without increasing my size.
Yet I still maintained the strength and power of my prime even when my mass was that of a feather. This allowed me to achieve hypersonic speeds if I timed my power correctly. I would turn down my mass, leap forward, and then suddenly increase it tenfold to deliver a punch that could shatter boulders.
The tip of a bullwhip breached the sound barrier because of its tapering edge. A whip's mass decreased along its length, slowly thinning to just a few strands.
So when a person snaps their wrist and flicks a whip, momentum travels at a speed relative to the mass that carries it. But what happens when that mass decreases? That momentum can't just disappear. So, to compensate, the entire force speeds up instead.
Using these principles, I was able to strike with the speed of sound with every blow, provided I measured my output correctly.
I'd honed this ability for a dozen years, training and filing my intent and strength to a razor point. I'd gone through countless zones; fought innumerable beasts, and conquered more aether beasts than most ascenders ever would.
Yet it all felt inadequate today. The listing minions grafted themselves to the commander, their bodies seeming to liquefy and travel up its arm. I watched in growing despair as the arm it had lost simply reformed itself from the provided mass.
The twins were the first to charge back in. There was a wildfire in their eyes; the desperation of boys who knew they were going to die. Yet the two worked in perfect synchronization; covering for each other with spellfire and mace. They were a wild, reckless barrage of limbs and power, working in perfect tandem as their mental tethers guided them forward.
I steeled myself, preparing to jump back into the fray. Mother had always chastised me; saying that my constant ascents would get me killed. Her nose would wrinkle and her eyes would burn as she offered faux comfort, but I knew that she simply wanted me to stop risking my life so I may prove an asset to her causes.
It seemed I might have finally bitten off more than I could chew. Quickly surveying the battlefield, I noticed the other mages around us in similarly dire straights. Alandra's dress was torn and bloodied, yet she gritted her teeth as she stuck to the exhausted Jared's back. Jana was trying to keep as many undead from reaching the platform as she could manage, yet Hraedel simply knelt at the side, watching everything with an expression of despair.
Just as I prepared to rush to the twins' aid, however, something soared into the air from the water, landing on the metal near me with a wet flop. I almost attacked it out of instinct, but the power radiating off the form made my hand inadvertently still.
Toren Daen writhed on the metal ground. Sparks of familiar black fire flared all around him in little pops, eating away at anything and everything.
He looked no better than the undead we were fighting. Blood soaked his clothes, the decay-attribute mana arcing around him carving out divots in his flesh.
He pulled himself to his knees, looking up at the sky.
And he roared. A beam of red-hot plasma erupted from his throat, a buzzing sound filling the air as it streaked higher. I skidded back from the force of the beam, covering my face with my hands as the wind buffeted my body.
The torrent of strange magic slowly dissipated, allowing me to get a better view of the mage. A red chain burned like blood on his arms, and feather-stem runes glowed underneath his eyes.
I'd seen this form of Toren's once before, albeit briefly. His use of it had clearly taxed him, forcing the young mage to ask me for help in dispersing his mana. But something was different about him now.
It was in his eyes. He had pupils no longer. Instead, a nimbus of solid fire roiled in their stead, as if his eyes were carved out and replaced with two suns.
I felt my breath hitch as I stared, momentarily forgetting the battle around me. There was an alien, ineffable presence wafting from the young mage's body. I felt my spine tingle at the power in the air, those ancient eyes seeming to tear into my soul.
I subconsciously clawed at my jacket, withdrawing my aether compass. I looked down at the device I'd spent months crafting with the greatest of my abilities, not knowing what to expect.
The entire thing glowed purple. The aether around us was palpable, pressing into us on all sides. My little golden compass cracked.
"Lesser," Toren said. Except it wasn't Toren. Even as Toren's body slowly ate away at itself, I noticed the changes in the boy's posture. He stood up straight in a way that seemed regal. A poise and arrogance coated his every movement like molasses even as he decayed away in front of me. "Come to me. Now!"
And that voice. It wasn't a man's voice. It was that of a woman.
I felt compelled by the authority in the voice, slowly loping toward Toren's broken body. Those eyes lingered on me, seeming to peer into my innermost thoughts.
Why did I listen to this thing? I asked myself.
I'd felt Scythe Seris' aura before. She carried herself like a poised knife. Always drawn, yet always composed and infuriatingly relaxed. She held a power I thought to be absolute. Yet whatever was inside of Toren compelled me with even greater force than even that despicable Scythe.
"What are you?" I asked numbly, feeling my knees tremble. I'd followed this young mage into these Relictombs, expecting to find something about the secrets of aether. Yet only now did I realize I had miscalculated.
If this was what Toren had been hiding all along, how did I ever expect to escape this zone alive? I'd thought I'd seen it when I helped the young mage with his 'assimilation,' yet the breadth of power I witnessed then had barely scratched the surface.
"You will give me your dagger," the thing possessing Toren said, burning eyes drilling into my hand.
Those words–that demand –finally snapped me back into focus. How many times had I seethed under the orders of Seris Vritra as she molded my sister? How many times had Alacryan society chipped away at my hope and patience, where our Sovereign gods toyed with us like pawns?
"You're an asura," I whispered, taking a step back. It was the only explanation. But I had taken orders from them for too long. "I won't be pushed around by your ilk. "
This was the same kind of being who would leisurely waste my sister's life in the meat grinder of war.
"You resist me further?" the voice said, the pressure emanating from Toren's body redoubling. I coughed, stumbling backward and falling on my rear. I felt like I was drowning, as surely as if I had thrown myself into the lake beside us. "You would defy me?"
I groaned.
Then the pressure relented. The black fire around Toren continued to eat away at his body. Most of his arms had been stripped entirely of skin, revealing a patchwork of muscle, tendon, and bone underneath.
"Please," the voice said instead. I looked up, feeling shell-shocked. "Please, give it to me. He'll die if you don't." Toren's body coughed, a wad of blood and flesh splashing on the ground in front of him. The thing's eyes dimmed as they looked at me. "His natures clash, like fire and water. And your dagger is the key."
I felt confused, torn every which way by the strange events of these past few weeks.
"You want to know of aether?" the thing spoke up, an urgency in its voice at my confusion. "We can show you the Relictombs. That's what you followed my Contractor for, yes?"
I pulled myself to my feet, walking weakly toward the thing possessing Toren's body. My thoughts were still a jumble. But there was one thing for certain: here was the source of my search. This asura could give me answers, couldn't it?
"What do you mean?" I said with a hoarse whisper. Toren's mana signature continued to dip. The creature holding him was sitting in a seiza position, but that air of regality and composure had long since begun to seep away like melting wax.
"This zone is a reflection of Toren's mind. He can tell you the secrets of this pocket dimension," the asura said, her words sending a wave of dizziness through me. "But that mind is fading. He will die. " The creature pulled itself straight one more time, looking up at me with authority. "Give. Us. Your. Dagger," it hissed.
Yet I recognized the emotion in that face. Even as the skin on Toren's face slowly dissolved under the soulfire flickering around, I felt that emotion all the same.
Toren is this monster's Caera, I realized with a strange sort of awe. It wants to protect him. Pull him through this.
I numbly unlaced my white dagger from the hairavant wire I kept attached to it. This dagger was special: it was forged of djinn bone, something I'd specially crafted years ago. It had been my constant companion through the Relictombs; a friend that had always protected me. Its interactions with aether had been one of my prime avenues of increasing my knowledge.
The asura took the dagger from my grip with surprising deftness. She seemed to study it for a moment before something flashed into her other hand, drawn from Toren's dimension ring.
A large fire-red feather, easily the length of my forearm, settled into the asura's waiting hands. It glistened with an ethereal glow, flaming dewdrops running along each tuft. Compared to the wrathful tempest of mana and despair that raged all around me, this simple orange feather radiated a warmth that made me want to curl up on the ground and nod off to sleep. I watched in blank fascination as the asura closed its eyes, holding the feather over Toren's heart like a mother holds a child.
Then she raised the dagger, holding the point over the feather and Toren's breast. I had only a moment to cry out before the asura slammed the blade into the young boy's breast. I watched in mute horror as my djinn-bone dagger erupted from the young Daen's back, no doubt piercing straight through his heart. The feather itself seemed to turn incorporeal, shimmering with an orange-purple haze as it was stapled to the young mage's body by my weapon.
"And so the dice is cast," the spirit said through bloody lips. Her eyes shimmered out, those burning suns setting like dusk. "Another gamble to this second life."
My aether compass exploded in my hands, spraying shards of metal across the small ice floe. Toren's body toppled backward into the sea foam below, vanishing beneath the waves.