Toren Daen
I spun on my feet, my heartbeat flaring in my chest. Suddenly, the looming dread from facing the final resting place of an asura was inconsequential. Mardeth's mana signature surged with malice barely a hundred feet away.
Fire and telekinetic force bloomed under my feet, the flare of orange light fighting the unnatural darkness. An explosion of sound, one I didn't care to mute, accompanied me blurring toward the terrifying blankness of Sevren's mana signature.
I didn't remember drawing Oath from its sheath. My heart thundered in my chest, the pulse of my own heartfire threatening to escape my ribcage.
The first thing I saw was a whirling cage of glowing green liquid churning around the basilisk blood crystal and blithe depository. A familiar putrid mana rippled in a domelike shape, shielding the inside from any harm.
But the second thing I saw…
Mardeth floated in the air, his head tilted and a vicious grin on his face. He held Sevren's body aloft by his right arm, putrid green decay spreading across his grip. Green sludge ate through different parts of the limp Denoir heir's body, worming their way deeper.
I couldn't sense his mana signature.
"Ah, little mage," Mardeth purred, turning midair to look at me. I barely noticed that the vicar's onyx horns, which once thrust nearly a foot from his head, had been severed near the base, leaving two neat black stumps. Sevren's head lolled, his white hair seeming a mute silver in the darkness. "I was wondering when you'd make your way to me."
The words went in one ear and out the other. I froze as memories flashed in my mind. Of a nameless unadorned melting under the onslaught of the acidbeam hornet's wave. Of a man speared through the gut, his stomach evaporating before I could save him.
An old, dark memory replayed as I stared at the hand Mardeth used to hold Sevren's own wrist. Kaelan Joan's dagger descended toward Norgan's sternum in terrifyingly slow motion. I remembered the steel drawing my brother's life's blood like a grim harvest.
The hand holding Oath shook. The vicar above noticed. "Oh, this one is your friend, isn't he?" the vicar said, shaking Sevren's body like a doll. Green lines slowly crept past the Denoir heir's elbow, tracing their way along his veins. "You remember what I promised you, didn't I?" he hissed with contained glee. "If you tried to stop me before I was ready, those you cared for would face the consequences."
The vicar raised a disjointed, spindly hand, shifting his gnarled digits into the shape of a knife. As he did so, I could almost see his fingers become sharp stilettos. Kaelan Joan's broken dagger seemed to overlap Mardeth's hand, poised to reap the blood of another brother.
I pushed myself out of my frozen terror, feeling anger swell through my worry. Aurora's mind burned away my remaining indecision. I needed to save Sevren. I'd pulled him into this, and he was going to die.
"I'm sorry, Sevren," I whispered shakily, preparing to try anything to save the young man.
Something dark blurred past me with the force of a typhoon. I stumbled as the wind disrupted my stance lightly.
Mawar rocketed toward the Vicar of Plague, her pale skin shifting to that of midnight black. She seemed to absorb the darkness of the room into herself as eddies of void wind carried her toward Mardeth. Her normally scarlet eyes bled to deep yellow, but the rage in them overwhelmed anything else. Her change in form amped her mana even further.
"Mardeth!" she yelled, "I've come for what was promised!"
No, I thought, engaging my Acquire Phase. I felt my heartbeat slow slightly as the familiar warmth seeped from my core, but it immediately sped up once more as Mawar charged the vicar, uncaring of the hostage in his hands.
"Melzri's pet," the vicar said simperingly as Mawar arced toward him in the air. "You should've stayed in the kennel she created for you in Etril, girl," he said maliciously, entirely unphased by the waves of power wafting off the retainer.
I rushed forward with a mindfire stamp, but Mawar would reach the vicar first. Mardeth smiled toothily, his blind eye glinting with malevolence. He threw Sevren's limp body at the charging retainer.
She's going to rip him apart, I immediately recognized. She's not thinking straight!
I thrust my hands out, trusting in Lady Dawn to help guide my magic as I skidded to a halt. Oath clattered to the floor as I ignored it, engaging my telekinesis emblem. I quested out with my mind, grasping the tumbling body with my mind.
My emblem, predictably, smashed straight through the Denoir heir's weakened mana defenses. I pulled downward for all I was worth, barely yanking my friend out of Mawar's path of decay.
Sweat beaded on my brow from the speed of the action, but the hint of surprise on the vicar's wretched mug was worth the expenditure. Then Mawar hit him like a truck.
A streak of wispy black carried the vicar and the retainer back through the cavern, far away from me.
I leapt forward, catching Sevren's body before setting him down. My eyes darted over the Denoir heir's form, tracing his tendrils of heartfire and signs of weakness. I instinctively ignored the rampaging crash of Mawar's battle with the Vicar of Plague, instead sinking into the clinical observation of a surgeon.
His other wounds are deep and dangerous, I thought, noting where divots of sludge had carved through Sevren's flesh like a knife through meat. But those aren't the worst. The green acid is static.
The worst damage was the Denoir heir's right arm, where Mardeth had held him like a toy. The flesh around his wrist had been melted to the bone, five distinct marks showing where the bastard of a vicar had grasped my friend. But even that wasn't the worst.
Some of Mardeth's sludge had infiltrated Sevren's bloodstream. I could sense it as it gradually ate its way along his mana channels like a parasite, slowly but surely carving its way toward his core.
I exhaled, then called my lifeforce to the fore, laying my hands on the Denoir heir's chest. "Sevren," I said quietly. The man groaned in pain, his eyes fluttering weakly. "I need you to think of why you fight," I continued, engaging my healing. Orange-purple lifeforce flashed over my palms. "Think about Caera, okay? Your sister wouldn't want you to die here," I added with gritted teeth.
The aether of my heart seeped along my palms as I tried to enmesh my emotions with those of the Denoir heir.
That was the simple part. We were more alike than different. The thrum of my heartfire clicked easily into place as I synchronized myself with him. His own heartfire flared in response, the heat driving away his wounds.
His body began to mend along his ribs and thighs, where that horrid vicar had taken gouges from his flesh. But when his own fire met the scalding mana of Mardeth's scourge, it faltered for the barest moment.
"You aren't going to let this beat you," I said through hissed teeth. "You've denied your Fate once. What's one more time?" I said, calling with voice and aether at once.
Sevren's red lifeforce began to push back the taint of the vicar. Before, it had reached past his elbow. Yet through our combined efforts, the green infection that showed through his veins and mana channels gradually receded.
"Mardeth," Sevren choked out, "His horns…" he said with fitful breath, his teal eyes unfocused. "They're in the crystal. Nailed to the blood. Don't know why…"
"Save your strength," I snapped, the chain on my forearm flashing. "We're almost through this."
Yes, yes! I thought, feeling a sense of victory as all else fell away. I was making it. I was succeeding. Sevren would make it out of this fine. He wouldn't die as Norgan did.
Something hit me in the side of the skull, hard. My telekinetic shroud creaked from the blow, crystalline fractures spreading along the side of my head. I tumbled away from the prone form of the white-haired striker, momentarily disoriented by the sudden change.
I rolled, growling as I pulled myself to my feet. I'd been so focused on healing my friend that I hadn't sensed the vicars streaming into the cavern. At my side, a dark spike of blood iron dug into the ground from where it had rebounded off my protections. Behind me, the green dome shield protecting the blithe distillery cast me in shadow.
The vicar with short onyx horns–Jorta–held a longbow in one hand, a sneer on his lips as his companions filtered into the cavern in front of him. The weapon in his hand was intricate, the limbs of a familiar red, crystalline material.
"You're arrogant, Lord Daen," he said, "To think you could break into Mardeth's base of power so easily."
I snarled, plasma burning around my hands. Oath levitated from the ground back into my palm.
Toren, the voice of my bond said in my head. You need to get rid of these men quickly! The Artificer ails!
My eyes darted to Sevren's body near my feet. The steampunk sparrow crouched defensively over my friend's prone form. Once my healing had stopped, the rot of Mardeth's mana had redoubled in its efforts to spread toward his core. The green veins stretched up to his elbow once again.
Fuck! I thought with desperation. I felt flashes of mana as Mardeth and Mawar clashed outside, their battle shaking dust from the cavern ceiling. I couldn't heal someone and fight at the same time. The necessity of shifting my thoughts and emotions to align with their own was incompatible with the mindset I used to cut down my enemies.
Jorta drew back the string of his bow, and a shaft of blood iron formed there in barely an instant, settling against the twine without a sound. The dark metal was wicked sharp, glinting in the darkness. I could barely see it in the shadows.
It zipped toward me at an absurd speed. I growled, smashing the bolt out of the air with Oath. The contact shuddered up my arm, making my hands tingle.
He's powerful, I thought angrily. A few vicars darted toward me, trying their luck. I raised my hand, a concentrated sphere of fire mana glowing around the tip of my finger. Sound mana edged around the sides, amping the vibrations even further.
Plasma seared from my hand, burning holes through the priests that dared to try and rush me. They fell limply, but I was forced to jump forward to swat another bolt of blood iron out of the air as Jorta tried to shoot Sevren.
Bastard, I thought, throwing a condensed sphere of fire at the vicars surrounding me. I lashed out with spell after spell, ripping every mage apart. I might have hesitated with anyone else. I wasn't a killer at heart, and death was so final.
Yet these vicars held the same place in my mind as the Joans. They were leeches on the lifeblood of every good man and woman on this continent, slowly draining them dry. My hands barely faltered as men died.
Would I regret this slaughter later? I didn't know.
It would take less than a minute to tear all these mages to shreds, Jorta included. If I could afford to move from this spot, it would end even faster, but I had a friend to protect. The vicar's blood iron arrows struck with the force of a dozen hammer blows, but they couldn't protect him from me forever. The thrumming power of my Phoenix Will demanded retribution as half a dozen telekinetic punches broke through several streaming spells aimed at my heart.
Small grenades of barely contained plasma zipped around me under the control of my telekinetic emblem, ripping through anything that got in their way. And if a mage managed to block one, it would detonate, engulfing the target in burning ions. Screams of dying vicars caressed my ear, barely sating my fury. My Phoenix Will-amped powers tore through every mage that pushed their way into the cavern as I split my mind into a dozen different sections. The scent of blood clawed at the air as the ground was coated red.
Projectiles of every element screamed through the air, but I sent waves of fire and rippling sound to intercept any that got too close. I threw up a telekinetic wall of force as a spark of lightning tried to cut through me, instead diverting it into a vicar who was trying to sneak up on me with a long knife. He spasmed wildly, then collapsed. I fired a quick bolt of plasma into his forehead, ensuring he would never rise again.
Barely a few seconds had passed as my rampage began, but my bond transmitted her worry over our link. My head snapped down to Sevren's body, which I'd stood guard over like a sentinel. The green veins that had spread up his arm were nearly at his shoulder.
And I couldn't heal him. Not while also protecting him.
I screamed my fury, the mana fluctuating with my intent. For an instant, every single dark-robed vicar faltered. Even Jorta, who had contemptuously hung near the rear while firing intermittent blood iron arrows, stumbled as a wave of killing intent thrummed through the room.
But it wasn't simple killing intent. I threaded my hatred for the Doctrination through each wave, unconsciously conveying the depths of my fury. These vicars saw their deaths.
The blood seeping into my shoes rippled in undulating currents, small drops rising as my power distorted the air.
"Cut off the arm," a weak voice said as my rampage continued. I looked down at the Denoir heir as his lips moved, but the entire cave rumbled as something crashed against the cavern walls outside. "Do it," he said weakly, the green veins almost past his shoulder.
I didn't have time to waste. I drew my fingers over Oath's blade, imbuing it with a searing edge. Then I brought it down on my friend's shoulder.
He screamed as the red-patterned saber sheared through the limb. The fiery edge seared the wound shut, but my friend almost immediately fell deeper into the effects of shock. I grit my teeth, unable to tend to his wound.
My arm snapped up, catching a blood iron spike as it sought to pierce my eardrum. My arm jerked from the force. If I weren't in my Acquire Phase, I wouldn't be able to deal with these at all. My hands tingled, some sort of poison wrapping the iron. My heartfire flushed that away without issue. I snarled, my eyes searching through the bodies of the vicars around me for a certain heartfire. One that was tinged with the blackness of Vritra blood.
The assault had relented slightly as the number of my assailants dwindled, but my anger had only grown. I cocked my arm back as I spotted Jorta, a sneer on my lips. His face paled as he seemed to finally recognize the position he was in. He'd evaded all my attacks by the luck of being outside my range.
But my range could change.
Spells splashed ineffectively across my telekinetic shroud as I lined up my sights. The Vritra-blooded vicar ducked behind a few of his compatriots, no doubt hoping their meaty bodies would protect him. As my enemies sensed the buildup of my power, they began to stumble backward.
I concentrated on my emblem, shifting my telekinetic range into a narrow area in front of me. A long tube of pushing telekinetic force flared into existence in front of my face, exactly like I'd done to kill the leviathan as it corded around the Empire State Building, even if it was less powerful. I threw the spike I'd caught, using Jorta's heartfire as a guide.
The blood iron accelerated like it was in a railgun. One moment I was holding the black spike. The next, blood sprayed as a hole opened in every single body that dared to block my target.
Jorta coughed black blood as a hole the size of a soccer ball opened in his stomach. He toppled backward, bleeding out slowly. The blood iron spike disappeared somewhere into the cavern wall.
I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow, then knelt back by Sevren's side. He groaned slightly, the smoldering cauterization of his shoulder sizzling noticeably.
I grit my teeth, then laid my hands on his chest again. I began the arduous work of trying to seal over his shoulder. Guilt bloomed in my chest as I recognized why this had happened. Sevren didn't need to accompany me on this mission. "I'm sorry," I said weakly, tuning out the scent of scorched flesh and how heartfires winked out every second. "This is my fault."
The scorched flesh along Sevren's shoulder receded gradually as my healing worked over the skin. "I get it now," the Denoir heir muttered groggily, clearly not lucid. "How you can tether things. What you're supposed to do."
I grit my teeth. "Be quiet, Sevren," I said. "Save your strength."
"No, no," he said, raising his sole arm up. He grasped Aurora's puppet with a surprisingly deft hand. She squawked indignantly as he pressed the construct to my chest. "It's a river of energy," he said, seeming to suddenly gain clarity. His teal eyes flashed as they opened fully. "You don't change what's on the river. Only its source!"
I opened my mouth, unsure as to what he was trying to say. Then a final crash thundered through the cavern, shaking the ground and making me stumble.
Mawar tumbled back into the cavern, her body riddled with bruises and bleeding from innumerable cuts. She cracked into the stone, then tumbled near to my feet. Green poison writhed across her black skin, barely held at bay by small eddies of void wind trying to force it back.
The retainer's eyes flashed from their gold back to scarlet, before hardening into gold again. She groaned in pain, trying to pull herself up. Her dark dress was an utter mess, parts melted into each other. She coughed up a mouthful of blood, then collapsed back to the ground.
I knelt quickly, trying to heal the young retainer on instinct. She groaned as my lifeforce caressed her own.
But I was ripped from that reverie as Mardeth floated back into the cavern. His robes were similarly decimated, and several bruises stretched along his body. He surveyed his devastated troops, snarling angrily. He turned to face me as his wounds slowly healed with a wash of putrid green sludge.
"You've proven yourself the largest thorn in my side I've ever experienced, little mage," Mardeth hissed. Mawar groaned at my feet as she struggled to fight off the poison in her body. "I should have killed you when I had the chance the first time. Your death is going to be slow and agonizing."
I squared my stance. If this was going to be my final battle with Mardeth, then that was how it needed to be.
But even now, I could sense the difference in power between us. He seemed… weaker somehow, from how he'd severed his horns.
Aurora, I thought as the vicar floated closer. I need to go deeper into my Phoenix Will if I want to win this, I added, standing guard over the bodies of both Sevren and Mawar.
You're not ready, Toren! Aurora snapped back, her construct fluttering from Sevren's hand. It flapped in front of my face, seeming to scold me for my actions. It will rip you apart! You're close, but you can't! Escape needs to be your prerogative!
I glared at the little clockwork construct. Mardeth floated ever closer, seeming to savor my growing desperation.
"I can't leave them!" I snapped at the bird, only realizing as I spoke that I was talking out loud. "They'll die here! Because of me!"
I heaved for breath, the red chains on my arm flaring and retreating in tune with my heartbeat. I could escape here by myself if I tried. I was certain of that with my current level of power. I needed to dive deeper into my Will, but my obstinate bond was denying me.
"They'll die regardless," Mardeth said, though he hung back, grinning as he watched me break down slightly. He was like a cat, savoring his trapped rat. "Tell me, how do you want them to wither?"
The Unseen World coated my vision, revealing Lady Dawn's stern, angry form.
"Then what will you do?" Aurora snapped back. " Die with them? My priority is you, my son. I will not allow you to kill yourself here. I will do what I must to keep you alive. Even if you may hate me for it later."
I growled, then waved my hand through the orange-purple threads that blocked my vision in an attempt to push them away. My eyes flashed with what the construct saw, but I couldn't sever them.
"Source," Sevren croaked at my feet, his hand clutching my pant leg. "The source of the threads!"
He knew about the threads connecting my Bond to the relic, of course. I'd told him about them long ago. But what was he trying to say?
I went rigid, my mind flashing as I looked down at the striker. His teal eyes were feverish and hot, boring into my own with hidden meaning. I remembered what he'd said earlier before he'd thrust the relic at my chest.
The source, I thought, reaching out on instinct with my hands. The threads connecting the puppet to my bond's shade split into nearly a dozen threads as they connected with the tips of her fingers. I wrapped my hand around their invisible cords, tuning out even how Mardeth was slowly lowering toward me. Aurora controlled the relic, true. But as far as I was aware, her shade was only a manifestation of her center. Not the ultimate source.
I wrenched the threads from my bond's hands, hearing her gasp in alarm as they tore free of her control. It was always my heartfire that formed these connections, after all. It was ultimately mine.
Holding the frayed ends of this connection, I looked at the wispy ends of these energetic veins. The ends bled orange-purple light, and I was certain they were finally visible to the naked air. Mardeth paused in surprise, and I utilized that chance to take a gamble.
To change the source.
I thrust the severed heartfire threads into my sternum. They phased into my chest without resistance, some part of these veins understanding my intent. They snaked and twisted with a life of their own as they thrust into my silver core.
The phoenix feather in the nexus of my power–which glowed with the exact same light–reacted, thrumming outward. The threads wove around the feather in a gentle embrace, brushing against the plume with the caress of a mother.
Aurora's shade gasped in surprise as she began to glow, her form becoming indistinct. She looked at me with those wide, burning eyes. I smiled, sensing instinctively what was about to happen.
Mardeth realized the depth of my actions too late. He blurred forward, his face cast in a snarl that showed his rotten teeth. He thrust a hand out, green ooze erupting from his palms in a cascading wave that sought my soul.
Something massive and glowing white-hot blocked its path, the attack sizzling away on contact. The djinn relic grew as Aurora's shade vanished, metal unfolding from nowhere as a grand transformation took place. Wind churned in the small, dark cavern as space was displaced, the brass clockwork sparrow growing exponentially in size. Mardeth was pushed back as he put his hands in front of his face, bracing himself against the flow.
I had to avert my eyes from the glowing heat as the relic transformed. And when I opened them, I was cast in the shade of something massive behind me.
The steampunk sparrow had changed; morphing from the size of a songbird to something that could rival the asura. Metallic feathers the length of my arm ran along its pristine form, and light the color of a waxing dawn shone from the cracks. A powerful grinding noise churned from within the construct. Above my head, a bronze-colored beak sharper than Oath glinted, large enough to swallow a man whole. Eyes like molten stars banished the darkness.
I laughed headily, feeling a rush of dizziness as my Acquire Phase shifted back into my core from exhaustion. My reserves of heartfire diminished at a rapid pace as a thick stream of lifeforce layered over what was once thin threads, wrapping over and over themselves a dozen times to become powerful cords as wide as my arm. Along that highway of energy, all of Aurora's essence streamed in a steady thrum. The feather in my core pulsed as it transmitted power along a current of aether.
"Hold onto me," Aurora's voice said aloud from somewhere above me. Massive bladed talons scooped up both Sevren and Mawar. The former was grinning wildly himself; the latter was unconscious after fighting off Mardeth's poison. I barely had the presence of mind to clutch onto the transformed relic's large avian feet, my hands feeling weak.
Mardeth rushed us again, but my bond opened her jaw. Mana thrummed along her beak as red-hot plasma slowly coalesced. Then she screeched, firing a laser beam directly at the vicar. He was forced to duck low as the stream of mana melted through any rock in its way.
My bond flapped her massive wings, blowing away the dust around us. Sounds like clashing swords echoed from her bladed metallic feathers before she lurched straight up, barrelling into the rock above.
Her plated body smashed through the offending stone, breaking into the night sky above. I held onto her leg desperately, rocks tumbling around me. I cackled again, feeling drunk on euphoria. Sevren had understood before I did!
My bond soared into the sky with a triumphant screech. Millions of light years away, the stars sparkled their approval at our escape.
But then my muscles clenched once more as I remembered our situation. I turned back, expecting Mardeth to try and pursue. He could fly, after all, and though I had no doubt my bond would be faster, he could make our flight hell on earth. But after a minute or so of lightning-fast travel, I realized we were in the clear. Considering Aurora brought the roof down on his experiments, he was likely held up with making sure it remained safe.
My shoulders slumped as adrenaline bled from my veins.
Something large grasped the back of my collar gently, lifting me with a surprised yelp. Aurora's massive beak gently deposited me on her back as she soared to the northwest.
"Rest, my son," she said in a low rumble, her eyes burning with the light of a sun. "Soon, I must land. But before that, allow yourself some time."
I settled my forehead against the metal-plated feathers. They were warm, but not scalding. A comforting heat that assured me. I allowed myself to doze for a few minutes as we fled from the shattered plains below.