Author: Tower Curator

 

Perr’ok watched with envy as one of those large walking factories from the anvil worked—metal extruded from small nozzles formed into solid sheets, intense torches fused the metal, cogs and gears, shaped from the same extruders, slotted into place as mechanical arms manipulated a hundred different components at once. It took a full hour, but Perr’ok now stood before a fully complete War Walker.

He was still workshopping the name.

It wasn’t quite the same model as the refurbished walkers he had dragged back from the old orc settlement in the Underworld. It was smaller, the weaponry looked more geared to pummeling rather than slicing and chopping. And it wasn’t… all that sturdy-looking. The refurbished ones hadn’t been pretty, but he had done his best to polish them up. With the shadow armor, most orcs hadn’t wanted to try their hand at utilizing them. Only a small handful. Instead, they ended up being used by mostly human pilots.

This one was rough and hastily produced. The factory machines from the Anvil did good work, they just didn’t have the time to grind down the edges and file away the burs. They still did the job in an hour where it would have taken Perr’ok weeks. He was sure that, if they had the time, the visitors from the Anvil would produce something utterly unimaginable.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just time they were lacking.

“No more!” Perr’ok called out again, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Make something else!”

The factory didn’t stop its whirring arms and oozing extruders. Perr’ok wasn’t sure it could understand him. He wasn’t sure it could hear him. The thing lacked ears.

“We don’t have any more pilots! They’re just going to sit empty!”

“Whaᛏ is the problem?”

Perr’ok jolted, turning with his metalworking hammer in hand. With all the chaos going on, sudden noises had him on edge. The foundry was deeper than most of the surface chambers, which was probably the only reason it hadn’t yet been beset by enemies.

But there was no threat in front of him. Who stood there, head tilted slightly. With the machine’s blank face, it was difficult to tell if she was looking at him.

“Would you tell that thing to make something more useful?” he asked, lowering his hammer. “The other factory things are making replacement bodies and body parts for your people, but that one is still producing walkers.”

Who turned, regarding the lonesome walker as it fused two metal rods. “So?”

“It’s a waste of its time. We don’t have pilots for more walkers. I’d say that your people could use them, but I figured you people would just plug your black boxes directly into the machines, no need for the pilot compartment.”

“An accurate assessment,” Who said with a curt nod of her head. “Why no more pilots?”

“We only had ten of those other walkers. They’re mostly with Ilya right now. There wasn’t much point in training more than a dozen pilots while the machines we had were still malfunctioning.”

He looked around the room with a heavy scowl. There were a few of his smiths running around between their anvil guests, but they were mostly dealing with more mundane matters of armor and weaponry. Reports were coming in of the shadow scythes failing after too much contact with enemy forces. With the portal to the Underworld cut off at the moment, they couldn’t replace the shadow scythes, so to keep the army fighting, they needed good old-fashioned equipment.

Most of them could pilot the walkers. From their time working on the refurbished models, they knew enough to utilize them. But they were too busy with their own duties.

“If the factory were to produce regular equipment,” he said, slowly turning back to Who. “the smiths could take over the walkers.”

Three sat empty at the moment. Eight were with Ilya. Five more were already elsewhere in Fortress Al-Mir, hopefully proving effective.

Who turned slowly, looking around at the smiths in the shop. “There aren’t enough walkers for everyone. What will the remainder do with their task taken away?”

“Most are orcs,” Perr’ok said, showing off his tusks. “We know how to fight without fancy machines.”

“Hmph.” Who turned aside. Offended?

Before Perr’ok could ask, she focused on the one factory unit. A blast of noise came from somewhere deep inside her. It was unintelligible, as if she were shouting every word possible at the same time. The pitch and volume changed slightly, warbling and screeching different notes amid the cacophony. As suddenly as it started, the sound cut off.

The manipulators and extruders on the factory slowed. It started to rear up, large actuators in its legs moving, but stopped just before crashing into the ceiling. As it lowered, it let out its own noise, deep and reverberating. Perr’ok felt it in his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Like the thumping of the noise was interfering with the beating of his heart. Thankfully, as with Who’s noise, it went silent after only a few seconds.

She responded in a few clipped chirps. The factory replied in a long, single note of a deep horn.

“Alright,” she said. Her legs remained facing the factory, but from her waist up, she swiveled to face Perr’ok. “ᚠ. ᚨᚲᛏᛟᚱ – IO isn’t particularly pleased to make such uncreative equipment, but she agreed.”

“She, huh?” Perr’ok muttered, looking over the mass of mechanical arms, furnaces, extruders, and moving belts that covered the house-sized machine. She was a beauty, that was for sure. “Do all of your—”

Perr’ok cut himself off as a strange grinding noise came from overhead. He glanced up, watching as a few stray pebbles fell from the ceiling.

Who looked up as well, angling half her body. She didn’t stay still. With inhuman reflexes, she threw herself at Perr’ok. Hydraulic hands clamped down around his shirt and suspenders, gripping him tight. The momentum from her throw and her actuating arms raised her up and over Perr’ok. Despite his much larger size, she flipped him and flung him, throwing him toward the factory just as the ceiling gave way.

The egg’s impact sent a shockwave through the floor, toppling racks of materials and scattering tools in all directions.

Perr’ok pushed himself up, eyes wide as the egg’s thick tendrils began to unfurl. They reached out with unsettling speed and precision.

Overhead, the factory let out a low, blaring horn. It leaned forward, barely avoiding Perr’ok as he scrambled away, trying not to be crushed. A crucible on its… shoulder, probably, slid ajar. Intense heat and molten metal spewed out, spilling over the meat of the egg.

Perr’ok didn’t stick around to watch. Getting to his feet, he charged for the freshly made War Walker, climbed into the pilot compartment, and flipped several levers. Pumps started chugging and gears started whirring. Grasping the controls, he turned the machine and stomped forward.

The flesh of the egg had partially burned away, turning to black charcoal. Lifting his mech’s right arm, a spiked ball almost as large as the egg was, he brought it down, crushing the rest of it. The stray tendrils writhed and slowly went still.

Perr’ok turned, surveying the damage through the machine’s thin visor. The roof was shot. Everything else looked alright. The egg itself hadn’t managed much damage. All thanks to the quick reactions of the factory and Who…

Who?

Perr’ok turned the machine as a foreboding feeling welled in the pit of his stomach, shifting back and forth as he tried to get a good head count.

None of his blacksmiths had been caught near the collapse. The factory had rubble covering it, which manipulator arms were working to clear away. But Who?

Angling the machine downward, he saw it. The black metal of one of Who’s arms, twisted at an unnatural angle. It poked out between a group of bricks and earth. The fingers on the end twitched and jittered like she was trying to claw at the air.

The walker’s right arm was useless, but its left arm had grabbers. He used them to move bricks off Who, tossing them aside. He tried to brush away some of the dirt as well, but the manipulators weren’t as good at that. Lightly, carefully, pinching the exposed arm with the grabber, he gently pulled, only increasing force once he was sure he wasn’t damaging her further.

Her body slid out from under the dirt. It jerked and twitched. She looked intact, but the motion of her body wasn’t working properly. One leg kept kicking only to snap back into its original position. A grinding noise came from somewhere around her waist.

Perr’ok hopped out of the walker, rushing around it to stop over her body.

“Who?” he said, brushing away some of the dirt from around her smooth head. “Who? Please tell me you’re alright?”

She was moving. That was a good sign. Those black boxes were them and he knew that they were extremely hard to damage, far more difficult than the rest of their bodies, but… staring down at her body as it was, he wasn’t quite able to think of her as being alright.

He flicked away a small pebble caught in one of her exposed cogs. A rush of air spat out from the metal grate on her head as it started spinning.

“Agneᛏe built me,” she said, her tone a relief to Perr’ok’s ears. “I will not be so easily dispatched. I just have some foreign material grinding in my gears.”

Perr’ok let out a sigh. A strange release of relief made him laugh with that sigh.

The factory decided that it was her duty to repair the ceiling, raising itself high enough for its manipulators to reach. A few of the Anvil workers were running about, as were the blacksmiths. The egg wasn’t moving anymore. Nothing looked in immediate danger.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said.

Dakka ground her teeth together as she swung her scythe through the air. Severed tendrils flailed about, splattering sticky blue blood across the tiles of Fortress Al-Mir. Flipping the scythe over, she lunged forward and ripped back, dragging the dark, shadowy blade through the oblong egg, horizontally bisecting it. The eggs lacked shells, possessing instead thick layers of muscle-like meat. It split with ease.

Smaller, worm-like tendrils spilled from the wound, slipping and sliding across the floor as they wiggled about. Dakka took a few deft steps back, retreating.

Mikk’ah wasn’t so fast on his feet. The worms flooded around his ankles. He swept his scythe down, cutting through dozens at once, but to no effect on the larger mass. The maws of the worms split into thirds, opening to reveal razor-sharp leech-like teeth. Teeth that latched onto his armor. He started stomping around, crushing more of them beneath his feet, but too many had gotten onto his armor. The dark shadowy greaves and boots started to wither under the worm assault.

Then he started screaming. Some of the worms must have squirmed into the gaps in the armor. As his armor withered and fell apart, more burrowed into his legs.

He wasn’t being teleported. Arkk had been teleporting everyone around, but he wasn’t teleporting Mikk’ah. Arkk would never leave one of his men to suffer, Dakka well knew, which meant that his teleportation must be failing.

Dakka made a snap decision. She stepped forward, crushing a few worms, and swung her scythe. The shadowy armor was all but impossible to damage with regular weaponry, but that wasn’t true for their scythes. It slid clean through Mikk’ah’s thighs, separating his legs from the rest of his body.

Mikk’ah’s upper half instantly vanished, off to Hale, presumably. His legs remained standing upright for a moment more before wobbling and toppling back into the mass of worms. They latched on, chewing through armor and flesh alike.

Dakka retreated once again, crushing the one worm that had latched onto her boot.

“Casters!” she called out. This wasn’t something she could deal with.

Unfortunately, there weren’t many available casters. They were dealing with their problems.

Although she had left the tower defense to Arkk and his spellcasters while she focused on the Eternal Empire’s foot soldiers, she hadn’t remained ignorant of what had been happening. She knew of the whale ships and the eggs they attacked with. She knew the eggs somehow absorbed magic from the very walls of the tower. She knew that Arkk and, later, Agnete had easily burned off every last one before they could do significant damage.

She had thought the attacks were laughable. An easy victory for Company Al-Mir. Maybe if they lacked Arkk or Agnete, both able to use powerful fire spells, the eggs would have taken down the tower with relative ease. But their enemy clearly hadn’t studied hard enough.

Dakka wasn’t laughing anymore. Fortress Al-Mir was too big. Too large and sprawling. Agnete had been able to envelop the entirety of the tower with her flames in one fell swoop, fending off the parasites in an instant. She couldn’t do that here. Worse, as they broke into Fortress Al-Mir, she couldn’t even attempt it. Sweeping flames across the surface might have worked if the eggs had just sat up there.

But they hadn’t.

They were inside the fortress, breaking it apart, room by room. Dakka knew because this was the third egg she had to deal with. One far, far too close to the ritual room where the teleportation rituals to Elmshadow—and elsewhere—were held. They were still moving personnel and equipment. They couldn’t allow the teleportation rituals to be interrupted.

The other eggs hadn’t split into worms, however. They had been smaller, more manageable. Less mature? The other eggs just held more meat and eggs—tiny, like those that belonged to frogs and fully inert. The worms must have been the next stage of those smaller frog eggs.

Her eyes flicked to the dismembered legs, currently covered in squirming, thrashing worms. She shuddered at the thought that these worms were yet another intermediary stage. Like larva before spawning into wasps.

A small gout of flames rolled over the largest mass of worms as one of the battlecasters finally decided to help out. It wasn’t much. Whoever threw the flames was no Agnete. It at least helped to stem the tide of worms flooding across the floor. Mostly. The most intense part of the flames killed off a lot of the worms, but the ones on the edges were still squirming forward. They were just squirming forward while on fire.

A vile stench filled the air.

Dakka moved her scythe in precise, quick flicks, just enough to slice worms in half without wasting energy. A few of the worms didn’t quite die. One took a second swipe to get it to stop moving.

Her scythe was starting to lose its effectiveness. The shadowy blade was mottled and small bits had fallen off. Quick, efficient strikes against the eggs and their tentacles helped keep them from absorbing the magic of her scythe, but it hadn’t come out entirely unscathed. She wasn’t sure if the worms also drained magic on contact or if they had to use their teeth, but it probably didn’t help.

Fighting like this wasn’t sustainable.

There were still more worms falling out of the ruined meat of the egg. A fireball from over her shoulder struck, but it just threw a bunch of flaming worms about the chamber.

Dakka clenched her teeth as she swiped two out of the air before they could reach her. The tip of her scythe snapped off as she scraped it along the ground again, cutting apart a few more worms. She never thought she would miss the cold certainty of metal after upgrading to the shadow scythe, but she wished she had her old axe. It wasn’t magical. It wouldn’t fall apart.

Another flame swept through the room, bringing the number of worms down to a level almost manageable for Dakka and the other orcs.

Just as she thought they might finish this one off, a fresh egg slammed through the ceiling. It crushed several flaming, living worms as it landed, but more than made up for the minor help it accidentally provided by thrashing about its tentacles. Dakka barely avoided getting wrapped up in one with some quick athletics. Juvvy wasn’t so lucky.

It pulled her in before Dakka could act, dragging her through the remaining sea of worms.

Dakka grimaced at the sight. Juvvy’s arms, thrashing about, and her legs, kicking, crushed worms. For every one she squished, just as many climbed into her armor, worming their way under her breastplate and through the gaps in her armor.

She screamed.

Her helmet got knocked off in the process. One worm burrowed into her cheek, latching onto her.

Before it could delve too deep, her entire body turned to stone. The tentacle immediately lost interest, leaving her where it had been dragging her across the ground in order to seek out a fresh target. The worms didn’t quite leave. While the one in her face popped out, the ones attached to her armor continued their feast.

Dakka shot an appreciative glance over her shoulder. Zharja hocked back before spewing caustic venom toward the fresh egg. The green-hued liquid sizzled and burned away at the flesh.

But it wasn’t enough.

A cold wind seeped through Dakka’s armor, pushing her forward a step. The cold turned harsh, pricking at the skin under her armor as though it were pins and needles. For all the pain, Dakka couldn’t help but grin.

The slick slime coating the worms and eggs turned an opaque white as it froze. Their movements slowed, their bodies shriveled. The larger egg took a little longer to be affected, but, starting from the ends of its thin tendrils, it slowly stopped moving as a solid encasement of ice covered it.

Dakka turned, fully ready to heap praise upon whichever battlecaster thought of using ice magic instead of fire, only to freeze—in shock.

A battered dragonoid stepped through the ritual chamber door, turning her head back and forth with ice-glazed eyes. She had found a spear somewhere, her one arm wrapped around its haft as she used it to support her body. Eventually, her sightless gaze came to a rest on Dakka.

“Where…” Priscilla ground out as she hobbled forward.

The last time Dakka saw Priscilla, she had been in the tower infirmary. Hale had been having difficulty regrowing her arm and her wing, citing some kind of unnatural magic clinging to the wound from whatever caused it. To the best of Dakka’s knowledge, the comatose dragonoid had been left behind when Hale and the dozen undead serving as her medical assistants had moved back to Fortress Al-Mir.

Which, she supposed, made sense for why she was coming from the ritual room.

“Where…” Priscilla said again as she stopped in front of Dakka.

“Leda?” Dakka said, saying the first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry. She… didn’t make it.”

Priscilla went still, locked into place. With the ice coating her like scales, Dakka might have thought she finally succumbed and froze had she not known better. Only her lips moved, twitching into an expression that Dakka couldn’t quite parse.

The stillness left as quick as it came with Priscilla shaking her head. “I… see.”

“Are you alright to be up?” Dakka asked. “I didn’t even know you were awake.”

“I felt it… The Permafrost. It was only a moment, but I felt it in my bones, forcing me up.” She staggered forward, moving past Dakka. Her head swiveled as if surveying the frozen eggs and worms. A few of the worms cracked and shattered with the sound of breaking glass as she stepped upon them with her bare feet.

“I must… make amends.”

 

 

Morvin arrived at the portal chamber just in time to watch a lesser servant scurry up the side of the archway, slot in a keystone, and then leap from the height. It landed with a heavy slop against the stone tiles. Apparently unharmed, it scurried off to a corner of the room without delay. Vezz’ok moved ahead, hurrying over to the portal where he proceeded to give it that little spark of magic, activating the portal. Fortress Al-Mir would keep it running now that it was active.

The shimmering liquid membrane slowly spread across the archway’s interior. First, it reflected the room. Vezz’ok, Morvin, and the few guards who were hopefully prepared for whatever might come through when this all inevitably went poorly. Given the active conflict, there were fewer guards than he would have liked. Most were orcs in that shadowy armor. One gorgon sat ready at the back while a handful of those mechanical people from the Anvil filled out some of the empty space in the chamber.

A single, large ripple spread through the silver membrane. The reflection vanished as the ripple traveled from the center to the archway, replaced by another world.

A moist, floral planet with fungal hills and swampy lowlands spread out through the archway like a living tapestry. Moisture clung to every surface, giving trees, stone, and even the ground a glistening sheen that reflected the world’s green-hued sun. Massive, spore-laden mushrooms stretched skyward as if in worship while strange trees drooped from their trunks, hanging like parasols with streamers attached to the ends. Insects buzzed through the air, scurrying in great dark clouds as they made their way through the world.

Things stood in the distance. At first, Morvin thought they were oddly shaped mountains—or large and cavernous rock formations that had been eroded to thin legs capped by a large, central mass. Then one moved. They weren’t made from stone at all. They were creatures that stood atop five spider-like legs, massive enough to have the Walking Fortress frightened.

“Close it!” Morvin called out, striding forward past the rows of guards.

Vezz’ok started, only now noticing his arrival as he turned. He hesitated rather than following commands.

“It isn’t what we’re looking for,” Morvin said, moving ahead to close the portal himself. Good help was hard to find these days. Zullie likely thought the same of him on occasion, but that was different. Zullie had unrealistic standards.

“How would you know?” Vezz’ok said, bristling at his approach. “Supposed to wait for the servant to mime out what it wants us to do, I gather.”

Morvin didn’t much care for his posturing. This portal was dangerous to keep open any longer than necessary. And not just because of those massive spider things in the distance. “I know because this is the realm of the Bloated Mother. Arkk is not there.”

To be fair, he didn’t know with absolute certainty that the realm beyond the portal was that of the Bloated Mother. But it was a damn good guess. The realms were arranged somewhat like a ladder, each realm being a rung. Their world was at the bottom, where all the magic flowed from wherever it started, with the Underworld being the next closest, devastated by the toxicity in its air. Anywhere in the bottom half of that ladder was effectively unlivable, at least without access to another world for supplies.

Given the plant life through the portal, the realm was either high up on that ladder, likely near the very top, or the Bloated Mother had come up with a method of avoiding the ill effects of extreme toxicity, much as the Anvil had done.

Either way, maintaining the portal to the realm of life, fertility, and disease longer than a second or two seemed like a good way for everyone present to die horribly.

He pressed his hand against the archway, pulling magic from it. Just enough to disrupt the stability of the portal. The shimmering membrane collapsed a second or two later, popping like a bubble. “I don’t know if he is busy teleporting people to the infirmary or if he got distracted on his end, but we’re not about to wait around for the lesser servant to play a game of charades.”

Vezz’ok didn’t look pleased that someone had come to barge in on his moment to shine. “How would you know where he is?”

“I’m not Zullie’s chief assistant for nothing,” Morvin said. “Not that one,” he said as Vezz’ok bent to pick up another keystone from a small collection over by the lesser servant. “That one is the Holy Light’s symbol. It’s all over the abbey’s churches. Same with that one and that one. Gold and Glory, if I don’t miss my mark.”

Morvin moved over to the collection of keystones, shooing Vezz’ok aside. “Anyway, Gretchen let me know that she had been mucking about with the Maze of Infinite Paths again, despite her being the one to shelve that project. I posit that she is either in the realm of the Unknown, Xel’atriss, or somehow between realms. And Arkk is obviously with her.”

Eleven keystones sat in front of Morvin. One was set apart from the others. He had heard that, before he arrived, they had opened a realm to the Fickle Wheel. Probably. It wasn’t like they had taken the time to do a full examination of the place. He wished he could have seen it in person, apparently an ever-shifting landscape of color and lights where nothing was ever certain and the only constant was change. He wasn’t quite sure how Hyan came up with that description, but that was what he had heard.

There would be time to reopen it at a later date. Now that they had the keystones in their possession, it wouldn’t be trouble.

First came resolving the immediate emergency.

The three he had pointed out went off on their own. That just left seven.

The symbols on the keystones weren’t typical runes used in ritual circle construction. They were ancient and archaic, each scratch containing more information than a whole sentence in regular speech. While he didn’t recognize the symbols, he could make educated guesses on where some of them might lead based on that information. Those markings there probably meant division. A division was a separation, or, in other words, a boundary. Xel’atriss?

He set it apart from the rest.

In the same manner, he pulled out four more. They were his best guesses for the most likely places of where Arkk would be. He had his two best guesses for the Betwixt, realm of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The remaining three hopefully had among them the keystone for the Maze, realm of Unknown, the Enigma. Unfortunately, they were only guesses. Five out of seven wasn’t even a good ratio.

Morvin snatched up one of the Betwixt keystones and handed it off to the lesser servant. Zullie’s magic often invoked Xel’atriss, so starting with THEIR realm seemed like a good beginning.

The servant climbed up the archway, removing and tossing down the keystone already up there. Morvin caught it and handed it off to Vezz’ok. “Attach a label to this, give a brief description of that plane, and call it the Hatchery for now.”

Though he still had a few grumbles left to give, Vezz’ok complied, moving off to the side of the room. He elected to label the Fickle Wheel’s realm as well, picking it up as he moved to a large desk.

Morvin waited a moment, watching the servant. As soon as it slopped to the floor, he moved forward and pushed a bit of magic into the portal.

Nothing happened. The shimmering membrane didn’t form. It remained as inert as it had been while completely shut down.

Morvin raised an eyebrow and tried again, feeling the magic leave him just as it was supposed to. Yet again, nothing happened.

“Need some help,” Vezz’ok said with a half sneer. He used his sheer bulk to push Morvin aside, planting his hand on the archway’s base. Morvin watched with mild satisfaction as the smug look on his face twisted into confusion. “Oi. Servant,” he said after a moment. “You put everything where it needs to go?”

Lesser servants supposedly lacked feeling, emotion, or even proper cognizance. That didn’t stop it from shrinking down on itself like it was embarrassed.

“It could be that this particular stone requires further configuration,” Morvin said, feeling bad for the thing. “Or that there are no available portals on the other side, like what happened with the Anvil. Rather than try to force it, let’s try one of the others first.”

Shuffling the keystones took but a few minutes. The servant slotted it in and slopped off the frame. Morvin simply waved a hand at Vezz’ok, letting the orc take the lead in activating the portal.

A wintery blizzard appeared on the other side, so thick with massive clumps of snow that seeing further than ten paces was utterly impossible. Plenty of the snow blew through the portal, bringing a chill into the otherwise warm chamber that got immediate protests from nearly everyone present. Morvin gave the signal to cut the portal connection almost immediately.

“Permafrost,” he said, handing it to Vezz’ok for labeling once the servant got it down.

“We get storms like that out in the Tribelands a dozen times a year,” Vezz’ok said. “You think none of the other realms can get snow?”

“They could, but Permafrost was my second guess for that particular keystone. If it makes you feel better, you could put a question mark after Permafrost on the label.”

Vezz’ok grumbled at that as he stomped off to the desk.

This time, Morvin didn’t wait for him to return, activating the new keystone straight away. It was one of the three he suspected would lead to the Maze.

He made sure to warn everyone against stepping foot into the place. One wrong move and they might be lost forever. He wasn’t sure at all how Arkk was going to get back. But that was up to him. His job was just to open the portals.

And open it did. A fresh silver membrane spread through the archway, rippling a few times before solidifying on a new realm.

The realm beyond was a darker land, draped in twilight. An ethereal glow in the atmosphere provided some light, casting long, haunting shadows across the landscape. Towering spires and ancient ruins stood tall in the mist, their bases obscured by the flowing, moving fog. Long shimmering wisps of air currents curled the streams and blew through the unhealthy-looking leaves of swaying willows.

A shadowy figure swept through the fog, their form more visible in the absence of mist than any actual body. They moved gracefully in a fluid allure, yet there was something unnatural and haunting about their movements. Long, slender limbs stretched and twisted in a delicate yet disjointed ballet. At least as tall as one of the Protectors, they nearly matched the height of some of the shorter willow trees.

They paused, still swaying as if caught in a silent rhythm, and turned their head to face the opened portal.

Morvin wasn’t sure if he was frightened or enticed. Probably a mixture of the two. He heard the soldiers behind him shifting their grips on their weapons as the creature’s gaze lingered on them.

But the creature didn’t approach. After a moment of staring, it simply resumed its slow dance, waltzing through the forest of trees in slow, gliding movements.

“Think that’s the place?” Vezz’ok asked, watching the dancer with unblinking eyes.

Morvin didn’t have an exact answer, though he did have a guess. The lesser servant made a cross shape with hastily formed arms, further informing him. “No. I presume that is the Veiled Dancer.”

“That is a god?” Vezz’ok said with clear disbelief in his tone.

Morvin stared at the swirling mists a moment more before slowly shaking his head. “Who knows? Might just be an inhabitant of that place. The Elysian Flow, if I remember what Vezta called it. Curious, but not what we’re looking for.”

“Seems a shame not to say hello,” Vezz’ok said with a longing look on his face.

Morvin shot him a strange look, wondering what that was about. He looked around at the others in the room, looking at the faces that weren’t hidden by helmets. A good half of them stared, enraptured. One of the closer guards took a step forward, slow and hesitant. “I’m sure Arkk will want to later. But we need to get him back so he can.” He passed the servant another keystone as he moved forward to disconnect the portal. Better to not leave temptation around. “Make sure you label this one with a question mark,” he said as the servant scurried up the archway.

As before, Morvin didn’t wait for Vezz’ok to finish his task before jolting the portal. The moment the lesser servant was clear, he sparked a drop of magic into the frame.

A new world filled the archway, one divided into nearly two even sides.

On the left were soldiers clad in dark metal armor, designed for killing, not for glory. They clung to spear shafts and sword hilts as they surged forward, crying out—though the sound didn’t pierce the portal. War beasts—hulking creatures with scaled hides and spiked harnesses—plowed through men and earth alike, their handlers driving them forward with shouts and whips as they took on the opposing army.

The army on the right was vastly different, mostly dressed in loose cloth and lighter armor, wielding curved blades, longbows, and even bare fists. A small group of warriors with painted faces stood side-by-side, poised as if in meditation despite the war around them. At least up until one of the armored soldiers got too close, then they became a blur, moving fast and hitting hard enough to cave in armor with their bare knuckles.

Morvin closed the portal the moment he registered what he was seeing. “The Red Horse,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “The Infinite Battleground. We have enough war here already,” he said, picking up one more keystone. “Don’t need any more.”

Although it was more the focus of Arkk, Zullie, and Vezta than an assistant like him, Morvin still heard things around the fortresses. Things like the statues appearing in the temple. Thus far, the Red Horse had not appeared in the temple. Which, he found, to be somewhat strange given the Horse was the god of war and there was a big war going on. The Smiling Prince showed up after a display of necromancy, so it stood to reason that events related to the domains of a particular god might help bridge the Calamity to draw them here.

Then again, the Red Horse—according to Vezta—despised magical combat. Between avatars, spellcasters, Arkk, and everything else, this was far more of a spell-slinging conflict than not.

Before he could hand the last keystone to the servant, a slight tremor shook Fortress Al-Mir. A faint few specs of dust fell from higher up, making Morvin grimace as it fell around it. He stared around the room for a moment. The guards all mimed his actions. At least, the living ones did. The machine people stood near perfectly still, only emitting strange clicking and grinding noises.

It stopped as quickly as it came. Everyone glanced around, no longer looking upward but at each other, as if someone here had answers.

Morvin didn’t have answers, but having been at Elmshadow and knowing what had happened toward the end, he had suspicions. None of which were reassuring. A bad feeling of impending doom slowly welled in his chest. “We need to hurry,” he hissed, turning back to the lesser servant. “Unless I was grossly off-mark, this one should—”

Another, stronger tremor shook the fortress. Morvin stumbled back, the keystone slipping from his grip. It landed on the floor with a clatter, sliding a short distance away. He stooped to pick it up.

A cracking, grinding noise of stone against stone was the only warning he got. Stone bricks and dirt from overhead rained down as the ceiling collapsed. He dove to one side, using the vacant crystalline archway as a makeshift shield even as he speed-spoke the incantation for a proper shield.

Not all were as lucky as he was. A few of the guards took the brunt of the ceiling. One of the machine things turned into a pile of scrap. Vezz’ok grasped at his leg where it was pinned beneath a thick slab.

Something slopped against the ground near him, just a few paces away. In all the chaos, he thought it was another lesser servant.

Then he turned his head.

A pile of meat, smooth on its edges and vaguely egg-shaped, sat in the chamber. Thin tendrils of meat squirmed outward from it. Some dug into the tile floor. The magically resistant tiles cracked and wilted where they touched. Others went after some of the people. At the epicenter of the ceiling’s collapse, everyone nearby was on the ground, either hunkered down or knocked down. Those still on their feet were further away. They tried to move forward, scythes and cutting tools drawn, but they were too far.

The dark, shadowy armor of the orcs turned far more tangible where the tendrils touched, as if they leeched out whatever magic was held within the ethereal metal. A few of the orcs vanished just before the tendrils could reach them, teleported away by Arkk no doubt. Others weren’t so lucky. The tendrils lashed around their arms or legs, holding them in place. A few of the nabbed orcs started screaming even as fresh soldiers teleported in, already hacking and slashing at the thin tendrils to try to free their comrades.

Amid the chaos, Morvin’s eyes found the keystone on the floor. One of the tendrils snaked toward it.

Morvin dove, fingers grabbing the keystone the second before the tendrils reached it.

In his head, he did a perfect flip, grasping the keystone in one smooth motion.

In reality, his face slammed against the tile, skidding along the ground despite the shield around him. But he had the keystone.

“Desidia,” he intoned, feeling the utter drain of one of the old spells against his magic. But the slowing spell successfully connected, turning the egg creature’s lashing limbs into slow-moving worms. No longer having to dodge, the active guards advanced far more effectively. The shadow scythes of the orcs only worked once against its flesh before whatever magic kept them going was drained away.

The slowing spell was already beginning to fail, far sooner than it should have. One of those whip-like tendrils lashed at him, missing by a hair. It struck the portal instead.

The golden, iridescent crystal lost its glimmer where the tendril hit.

Morvin focused back on the egg. Fire. Arkk had used fire to kill these things. But the only flame spells he knew were relatively weak, more designed for light or cooking, or far too strong to use while a dozen people were fighting in melee or, worse, were trapped in the squirming tentacles.

Before he could figure out what to say, a heat washed through the room. He didn’t even need to see the woman to know that Agnete was present.

She would handle this.

Morvin looked over the portal frame, grimacing at the dark spot. It didn’t look good.

Rather than waste time, he clutched the keystone to his chest, hopped over a stray, now flaming tendril, and rushed from the room. He made it ten paces down the hall before Arkk must have noticed his flight. The familiar pull of a teleportation flung him across the fortress.

Luckily, at the moment, his and Arkk’s minds were one.

In the ritual room, Morvin rushed to one of the teleport rituals and took it.

A dozen hops later and he found himself in the Highlands ruins, standing before the undamaged portal frame. A spare dozen glowstones were already in place, ready for any emergency activation they needed with this frame. All it needed was a keystone swap.

“You had better work,” he hissed as he ran to a ladder leaning against one of the walls.

 

 

Rekk’ar stood atop the lower ambulatory of Fortress Al-Lavik, a small balcony that ran the circumference of the tower near its base. Archers stood to either side of him, wielding greatbows mounted to the brickwork. It was only a step removed from full ballistae. The lance-like arrows they wielded were enough to punch through most armor of any poor sod hit by them, and then anyone standing immediately behind them as well. The Eternal Empire’s armor protected them to a degree, but it still obeyed the rules of reality. Any lance that struck a knight launched them backward, bowling over their own allies.

The archers hadn’t loosed a lance in several minutes now. With the addition of the Anvil’s forces to the Shieldbreakers, Black Knights, and every other squad capable of doing damage, the melee had become too hectic. There was too great a risk of hitting their forces.

Unfortunately, following an initial success of pushing back the Empire forces around the base of the tower, they quickly closed ranks. The Empire tightened gaps, covered each other well, and hunkered down, becoming an effective fortress of their own even if they lacked the brick walls. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last. They would tire. They would break. They would fall. Fortress Al-Lavik ensured it. They had no support and nowhere to retreat to tend to their injured. No stores of food to maintain their strength.

All it would take was a little time.

Rekk’ar curled his lips in anger. His tusks would have been on full display were it not for the shadowy helmet he wore.

Time they apparently did not have anymore.

“Recall them,” he snarled off to one side.

Evelyn, some human with one arm who hadn’t bothered to get it replaced with Hale, raised her eyebrows. She stared a moment but moved before Rekk’ar felt the need to snarl at her. She grasped one of the trumpets and sounded the warning to pull back.

With that done, Rekk’ar turned to the Protector looming over the archers. “All teams you’re in contact with need to return to the tower,” he said, grinding his teeth together. “Assemble in the lower levels for further orders.”

The Protector nodded, presumably carrying out Rekk’ar’s orders.

The orc turned back, gripping the railing as he leaned forward, glaring at the now-fighting retreat down below.

Another few hours and they could have claimed victory over that force. Another few hours and he would have claimed victory. The airships would have remained overhead, but they were someone else’s problem. He would have destroyed an army that was said to have never known defeat. Sure, it was only a fraction of that army, but the sentiment stood. The greatest achievement he could have imagined. Some of the old boys he once knew never would have thought him capable. A petty raider of farmers and craftsmen turned to a successful general who clashed on a scale of nations.

Now, they were pulling back, leaving the army alive to cause more problems. All because they didn’t have time.

“Damn Arkk,” he muttered.

The retreat wasn’t going as well as he had hoped. Were he in the position of the enemy army, he would have been relieved that they were being given some breathing room. The Eternal Empire wasn’t so grateful. The moment they had even a smidgen of space, they tried to turn the tables.

“Archers,” Rekk’ar barked. “Suppress them. Aim far. Hit one of ours and I’ll throw you over the edge myself.”

A few of the closest archers gave him wary looks at that. They were all smaller than he was. Several were humans, but a few beastmen were among their ranks. Those without the skill to fight in close combat and without the ability to conjure up great amounts of magic. The greatbows only required careful aiming, with the winches attached to the tower wall doing all the work of actually drawing the bows—making the distinction between the bows and ballistae even fuzzier.

Rekk’ar wasn’t worried. The retreat had sounded. Their forces were backing away. While the Eternal Empire advanced in their wake, they weren’t in such a tight melee anymore.

He was pleased to see that it was an orderly retreat. Nobody turned and sprinted away when the trumpets sounded. They covered each other’s backs. Even the metal men from the anvil used their strange, puppet-like movements to throw oncoming attacks off balance.

A thunk from one of the nearby greatbows rattled the air. He watched the heavy bolt arc and fall, slamming into the center of the Eternal Empire’s forces, well away from anyone retreating. It wouldn’t help their forces disengage, but it would hopefully keep the Eternal Empire from becoming overwhelming.

“Left side warning,” he said, noting the way the enemy forces were maneuvering, trying to create a concave around their retreating forces.

Evelyn picked up a trumpet and started sounding an alert. Rekk’ar called out a few more commands, both to her and to the Protector. Having an elevated view of the battlefield was a tactical advantage he couldn’t have even imagined in his raider days. Every so often, he noticed the inevitable injury. There wasn’t much he could do to help that, not beyond what he was already doing.

Arkk was teleporting individuals out, both injured and people who got trapped in precarious positions. According to the Protector, nobody quite knew where Arkk was or what he was doing. He did wonder why Arkk wasn’t simply teleporting the entire army back. Perhaps he was busy, or perhaps there were simply too many. With the Anvil forces, their numbers had more than doubled. Maybe even tripled. Given their sudden appearance and all the chaos going on, nobody had given him a number and Rekk’ar hadn’t bothered trying to count.

More lances launched and more orders turned to the toots of trumpets.

Halfway through their return to the fortress and the situation was starting to deteriorate. Rekk’ar opened his mouth, about to call for a stop, for their side to push against the Eternal Empire just enough to shove them back a step. The command never made it out of his mouth before he heard a sharp, grating whistle in the air.

An obsidian pillar slammed into the ground in the center of the Eternal Empire’s forces.

It stood tall, imposing. Its sleek, polished surface reflected the chaos around it. A moment of stunned silence fell over the battlefield as both sides paused, their eyes fixated on the enigmatic structure. The air seemed to hum with slowly building energy as a low, resonant thrum reverberated through a sudden wind.

Without warning, the obelisk burst into life. A brilliant line of blood-red energy lanced from its apex, frying the very air as it targeted a random soldier in the Eternal Empire’s army. The beam ignited anything it touched with malevolence. One of the Eternal Empire’s ancillary squads, perhaps a logistic unit or loaners from Evestani, scattered like ants caught under a lens of glass as the beam swept over their position. The obelisk tracked them with cold efficiency, each movement calculated, each moment a brief eternity before a swathe of soldiers was cut down.

The commander of the Eternal Empire’s ground forces barked out orders. Rekk’ar couldn’t hear from this distance, but he could see the way the man was swinging his arms about, directing units around him in an attempt to deal with this new threat in their midst.

A second obelisk slammed down, crushing him.

“Bombardment magic active once more,” the Protector intoned, making Rekk’ar hop lightly in surprise.

Rekk’ar glanced upward, frowning at the lack of airships. One of them had been interfering with bombardment spells earlier—then the bombardment chamber had blown up, taking down the tower’s defenses—but with the airships gone, they must have gotten some ritual working again. He wasn’t quite sure where the bombardment team had pulled that spell from, but it was working wonders. The blood-red beams didn’t do as much to the knights as they should have based on how they cut down the unarmored units, but it was the exact kind of chaos they needed.

The retreating forces broke away from the Eternal Empire, leaving them behind fully.

“Treat any injuries,” Rekk’ar said as the first obelisk started crumbling apart. He hadn’t noticed any real damage inflicted upon it. It must have run out of magic. A third one quickly replaced it. “Organize anyone healthy into fresh squads. Anyone too exhausted will remain here. Those who can still fight need to move to the teleportation chamber and begin making hops to Fortress Al-Mir. Everyone else, get them patched up as much as possible and seal the tower.”

“Understood.”

Rekk’ar nodded his head, then glanced around at the awe-struck archers. True, their near ballistae couldn’t contend with bombardment spells, but that was no excuse to not try. “Did I tell you to cease your attacks?” he barked out, pausing just a moment for them to mentally answer the rhetorical question. “Suppress them into the ground.”

Repeated thunks of launching lances thrummed the air as the archers followed his orders. There was a lot of confusion at the moment. Likely even more with those soldiers he had just ordered back. They would have questions for him. Questions he would very much like hearing the answers to.

Turning, Rekk’ar gave a light nod to Tell’ir. He would have command, though it wouldn’t be much of one. The battlefield would be empty of anyone to command soon.

“Airships increasing in speed, Sir. Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen something move so fast. Barring teleportation, that is.”

Arkk spared Harvey an appreciative nod of his head. It seemed as if his forces noticed what was going on. People were transferring to Elmshadow and then back to Fortress Al-Mir as fast as they could. But Fortress Al-Mir, despite its name, wasn’t Al-Lavik. He hadn’t spent months filling it with weapons and magic for war. Assuming any assailants would have to go through Elmshadow to get to him there, it just made more sense to occupy his time at Elmshadow.

They didn’t have a bombardment room. They didn’t have the magical defenses that had kept Al-Lavik safe from both conventional magic as well as those magic-draining eggs. All they had was an admittedly thick layer of earth followed by the reinforced bricks of the fortress. Bricks that had already proved they could crumble and fail when drained of magic.

They were running out of time.

They stood before the crystalline archway. Lesser servants curled around both sides of its base, holding tight, as if a slight slip of their grip would see it running away. The rocks that had been partially blocking it were gone, cleared away courtesy of even more lesser servants. Now, it was just a simple archway, just like every other portal they had seen.

Except it wasn’t active. No silvery membrane stretched between the archway.

“Zullie?” he called out.

The witch turned back, lips curled in frustration. “It must be something in Fortress Al-Mir. Everything here should connect.”

“I’ve followed all of your instructions. Everything in Al-Mir looks how I expect it to look and how you described.”

“Then check again!” Zullie snapped, her irritation getting the better of her.

Behind Arkk, he heard Camilla mutter, “Can’t even draw a straight line in this place and thinks her work is perfect…”

Arkk didn’t exactly disagree. While he was fairly certain the problem was here, he still sent a lesser servant crawling up the Al-Mir archway, inspecting every little rune and even every little scratch. From their experiments with returning Agnete home, they knew the portals weren’t so sensitive. The highlands portal still functioned even with a significant slice of material having been shorn off for use in the small anvil portal. The real problem was that they didn’t have a keystone.

The keystones, like the ones they had received from Sylvara for the Silence or the Laughing Prince for the Necropolis, seemed to force a connection. The Underworld had been established by Xel’atriss and the Anvil keystone came from the distant portal in the Underworld. Thus far, they hadn’t visited anywhere else, and thus had no access to other…

Keystones.

Arkk blinked. Realization hit him.

“Zullie, if Fortress Al-Mir had access to a keystone on that end, would it be able to force the connection open with no further input on our end?”

Zullie paused her inspections, turning her head back to face Arkk. Though she still looked frustrated, she did raise a curious eyebrow. “Where are you going to get a keystone? More delving in the temple? Won’t that be hard while you’re here?”

“No,” Arkk said. “The Anvil. When the portal closed, trapping Agnete on the other end, the Infernal Engine did so by removing the keystone. It then dropped it into a bank of similar rune-covered crystalline stones. Keystones! A whole bunch of them!”

As Arkk spoke, he was already resetting the Fortress Al-Mir portal. The lesser servants scurried over it, undoing the changes he had made so that they could reach the Anvil instead.

Come to think of it, the undead of the Necropolis might also have a stockpile of stones. It wasn’t much of a surprise if the Silence lacked anything similar—there wasn’t anyone living there to organize such a collection—and if the Underworld ever had the same, it was likely buried under the ravages of time.

But he knew the configuration required to set the portal to the Anvil without even consulting with Zullie. He had memorized that long ago.

“How will you know which one is which?” Zullie asked, moving alongside him as she cupped her chin with her thumb and forefinger. “Even I couldn’t tell just from holding the stones.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Arkk said. “We’ll just try them all. One by one, until we find one that connects to the Maze. If it doesn’t connect here, at least we’ll have made progress. We can try reconfiguring again from there.”

One of Zullie’s assistants, the orc Vezz’ok, had remained behind to manage magical matters at Fortress Al-Mir. Now, following a quick game of charades from the lesser servant, Vezz’ok moved forward and planted his hand on the portal, trying to activate it once again. Unlike earlier with their failed connections to the Maze, this one lit up almost instantly. Fast enough to surprise Vezz’ok, who likely assumed it would fail again. He jumped back from the forming membrane.

The lesser servants surged forward. As soon as the image of the massive factory that was the Anvil appeared in its portal, they moved through. He had no idea how long he might have before the denizens of the Anvil grew angry with him for pilfering their keystone collection. If they got upset at all. With Agnete, they had formed something of an alliance. Unfortunately, he was in no position to explain.

Only when the servants climbed up a tall ladder and moved across a narrow catwalk to the bank of keystones did Arkk notice his immediate surroundings.

Zullie, Camilla, and Luthor were all staring at him. Harvey with the crystal ball kept glancing up, but kept the majority of his attention on the images inside its glass surface.

“What?” he asked, looking around.

Zullie’s lips formed a thin line, but it was Luthor who asked the question on all their minds.

“D… Didn’t you say magic would flood into our world if you connected to too many more realms? You and Zullie were talking about magic toxicity levels… T-trying them at random isn’t going to start with this portal almost guaranteed, which means we’re opening at least two portals.”

“Then I’ll skip the first keystone I select,” Arkk said. “We’ll go straight to the second.”

Zullie managed the flattest stare possible despite her lack of eyes. “That’s not how statistics work,” she said in an equally flat tone of voice. Shaking her head, rubbing her temples, she drew in a deep breath. “With the war, we’ve not had time for a full risk analysis on the situation.”

“It isn’t going to be an instant problem, is it?”

The lesser servant in the Anvil moved as he spoke, searching through the neatly organized bank of keystones. Some possessed symbols he recognized. The Underworld, the Silence, even the Anvil. He ignored those, selecting one of each from the other dozen different patterns.

One of those mechanical eyes loomed overhead on its gantry, watching the servant’s actions. It didn’t raise an alarm or try to shut off the portal. Arkk took that as a good sign, that his actions were sanctioned by the factory—or at least tolerated.

“Certainly not,” Zullie said, splitting Arkk’s focus. “Recall what Yoho told us. He didn’t use specific numbers, but from context, we can conclude that it was at least a hundred years after the Calamity began that the last living people in the Necropolis died. I doubt they even realized the true scope of the problem in the first several years, beyond the obviousness of the portals failing. And the Underworld didn’t turn to the state it is in overnight.”

Arkk looked from Zullie to his scrying team. They weren’t his typical advisory council. They were employees. People whose well-being was his responsibility, both to return them home as well as to avoid them starving to death in a world filled with too much magic.

“We could still try to use our sympathetic link with Xel’atriss—”

“You think that’s less risky?”

“Well, no…”

Arkk shook his head. “We’ll deal with the consequences later. For now, let’s open some portals.”

 

 

“What do you mean, he isn’t available?”

“How else can I put this?” Alma stared at the bubbling, angry bowl of water. She wasn’t sure that whatever was on the other side could see her, but she leveled a flat look in its direction just in case. “He can’t respond to your summons. His attentions are required elsewhere. His presence is non-negotiable. He is tied up in matters that don’t involve you.” Alma folded her arms over her chest. “Do you want me to rephrase it a few more times?”

The light in the basin glared right back, boiling away the water despite the lack of heat.

Alma often felt she got the short end of the stick. The duties assigned to her were almost entirely the lower-rung administrative duties that nobody else wanted. Whether that be managing undead, compiling reports, or fending off whatever this bowl of water was supposed to be. Although she had complaints, she didn’t exactly dislike her duties.

While she had intended to sign up for a mercenary company, she had not been signing up for a war. Taking care of things like this, while a pain in her ass, at least weren’t swords in her ass.

Sure, Company Al-Mir might have an extremely low fatality rate compared to other mercenary companies that, almost without exception, had ended up destroyed and defunct due to Evestani’s initial advance. Alma still didn’t like the idea of getting stabbed in the first place. Or of going to Hale to get patched up. That was liable to end with her growing scales or grossly mismatched limbs.

The light in the basin pulsed as the voice started speaking once more. “It is imperative that I speak with him as soon as possible.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know,” Alma said. It wasn’t even a lie. She would tell him if she saw him again. No one had been able to climb the stairs to the upper levels after the explosion and nobody had seen Arkk since.

Concerning, but not altogether out of the ordinary. He was, at the very least, still actively engaging in company management—he had been the one to drop her off at this talking bowl of water, though with no specific instructions.

A sudden flash of light made Alma take a wary step backward. The bowl of water was already upset and, typical though it might have been, she was a werecat who didn’t particularly enjoy being splashed with water without being prepared.

“He isn’t there.” The feminine voice spoke with a sudden flash of insight. “He isn’t there?” she repeated, though now she sounded confused. “He left in the middle of a battle? What kind of Keeper does that?”

Alma drew in a breath, considering possible responses. She didn’t know who this water bowl was or what level of strategic knowledge they deserved. All she knew was that she had been sent to deal with it. Rekk’ar would be here if they were someone relevant to the defense. One of the spellcasters would be here if they were someone able to assist with magic. If someone was on the shit list enough for her to deal with them, they clearly didn’t deserve much.

In the end, she decided that the best response was no response.

In fact, she had said enough as it was. If Arkk wanted her to continue entertaining the basin, he would teleport her back. Otherwise, she had other duties to tend to. Like ensuring the skeletons who volunteered to help with healing duties didn’t give someone uncontrollable flatulence to liven things up. Again.

“Hold it!” the basin called out before she could take more than a few steps away. “There was a magical accident in the tower just a bit ago, correct? An accident involving planar magic.”

Alma paused and frowned. She wasn’t sure what happened up there. “Are you asking or do you simply enjoy hearing your own voice?”

“Arkk was at the center of it, wasn’t he? He isn’t in this world anymore. Is he looking for a way back? You must stop him.”

That got Alma rolling her eyes. “Of course. Let me just switch to the magic bowl of water that lets me talk to him.”

“Fool. This is no laughing matter. The Greedy Gold’s avatar is dead. Now more than ever, there is danger in meddling with the planes. Until we… Until I can strengthen the barrier, he cannot be allowed to return.”

“And what, exactly, do you want me to do about it?” Alma snapped. “Take a hammer to the portal?”

“Yes!” the bowl said, light pulsing in excitement. “Dismantle it! Destroy it! Where is it?” The voice paused, somewhat clipping the last word of her question. It was as if someone had interrupted her and she was pausing to listen, but Alma couldn’t hear anything. “Cursed Forest. Langleey Village?” the woman murmured more than spoke, as if she were consulting with someone other than Alma. “You think I have the time or energy to turn over every last stone in the land? Fetch a map already—”

The voice cut off again, far more abruptly this time. The light in the bottom of the basin winked out and the surface stilled, looking indistinguishable from any other basin.

Alma was left staring at it. A deep sensation of foreboding filled the back of her mind. Not many people knew the location of Fortress Al-Mir. Even within the mercenary company, the exact location was somewhat obfuscated, not exactly hidden, but not exactly discussed either. Most people entered and left Fortress Al-Mir via a teleportation circle. Even if they did go up to the surface, it wasn’t like they could look around and pinpoint its location.

As someone who had been roped into a position on Arkk’s inner advisory circle, Alma knew its location. She was likely one of an exceedingly small number of people who knew the name Langleey Village, Arkk’s hometown.

To hear that someone else knew that was concerning. Combined with the context, it sounded downright alarming. As if they intended to attack, or at least destroy the portal.

Neither was acceptable. The portal was the cornerstone of their power. Through it, they had access to the Underworld, which was needed for charging glowstones and manufacturing the shadow armor. Without either, they wouldn’t be dead, but they would be a whole lot worse off.

Alma turned and rushed from the room. If she could have contacted Arkk, she would have. The only option available now was to find someone who could ready some kind of defense. Rekk’ar, Dakka, or someone else from the inner circle. This was far over her pay grade.

She left the training room and started down the steps only to bump into one of the people she had been looking for. Savren wouldn’t have been her first choice. It wasn’t anything personal, it was just that she could hardly understand what he was talking about half the time.

He wasn’t alone. The gremlin assassin Lexa and their guest, Inquisitrix Sylvara, were with him. All three looked quite pleased, especially in the latter two’s cases. Despite the ongoing battles, Lexa looked more relaxed and calm than Alma had seen in a long time. Sylvara had a smile on her face for perhaps the first time.

And therein was a problem. She didn’t know exactly who she had been speaking with, but she knew they were related in some way to Sylvara and the Abbey. If Sylvara heard that that person was thinking about attacking, who was to say how the situation might devolve.

Worse, it looked like they were headed for the room Alma had just come from.

Thinking quickly, Alma casually waved a hand back at the door behind her. “If you’re seeking the one in the bowl,” she said, “they had to depart to attend to… something or other. They didn’t specify, exactly. But the light in the water is gone.”

All three paused. The inquisitrix’s smile slipped. “Was she disappointed in me?”

“I… don’t think so?” Alma said, trying to keep a straight face. The sudden frown had her worried that she said something wrong. “I’m sorry, Arkk teleported me in there just as the abbess left to carry out those rainbow attacks on the airships. Your name didn’t come up in the short time before the bowl went dark.”

“Ah. Abbess Hannah got the magic working then? Good for her.” Sylvara looked at Savren and Lexa. “I’ll move to assist her then.”

“She’s on the bombardment team’s balcony,” Alma offered.

“Understood,” Sylvara said, moving up the stairs past Alma without a second glance.

Alma held her breath until she passed. Only then did she start to relax. “Wait!” she said as Savren started to follow. “Sorry,” she said to Sylvara, who paused along with everyone else. “I just need to speak with Savren for a moment.” Turning to face the warlock fully, she continued, “A possible mind-altering problem has arisen with some of the fear totems you developed.”

Facing away from Sylvara, Alma relied on her hidden ears to track the inquisitrix as she continued to make her way up the stairs.

As soon as she was sure Sylvara was out of sight, Alma grabbed hold of Lexa before the gremlin could move. “Keep an eye on all Abbey members,” she hissed into the gremlin’s pointed ears. “We might have a problem with them shortly.”

Lexa’s eyes widened but hardened right after. Glancing between Alma and the staircase, she nodded her head and then continued upward without a word.

Savren, standing aside and watching the exchange, let his face fall as Lexa hurried off. “What weary weight are you about to wreak upon me?” he said with a despondent sigh.

Alma flicked her gaze up the stairs, then looked to Savren, shaking her head. “Not here,” she whispered, grabbing hold of his arm, she dragged him back down the stairs. “We have a problem with Fortress Al-Mir.”

“Careful,” Arkk said, warning Zullie as the witch started wandering away from the row of lesser servants.

They were in the forest now. Trees made from a silvery liquid stood tall, lacking leaves but possessing almost umbrella-like canopies. Within those semi-spherical domes, Arkk could see elsewhere. Shimmering worlds reflected in the silver that didn’t match their surroundings. Arkk couldn’t say whether it was somewhere else in the Maze or some other plane entirely. There were no familiar locales reflected in the liquid.

The trees seemed solid enough, as evidenced by a lesser servant hugging one, but the liquid reminded him a bit too much of the silver membrane that hung between a portal’s arches before it fully activated.

Zullie, being drawn to them, looking as if she were enraptured despite her eyeless state, did not serve to reassure Arkk.

He redirected a few of the lesser servants, still clasped to the main line, to form a waist-high barrier. Despite their best efforts to push her back, Zullie still almost toppled over it. The only thing that stopped her was the belt around her waist.

Arkk latched a hand on her shoulder, trusting in the scrying team to maintain contact with the line of lesser servants. “Are you with us?” he asked, dragging her back toward the others. “We’re trying to get back home, remember?”

“I’ve not gone daft,” Zullie snapped, swatting away his hand.

“Good. I need you to keep it that way. We can explore this place later. Maybe.” It seemed risky, given the nature of the Maze, but if it mollified Zullie for now, he would give her whatever promises she needed.

Theoretically, Arkk could get them back home on his own if necessary. He had seen Zullie reconfigure the portals often enough and, up until she got distracted just now, she had been informing him of all the changes the lesser servants would need to make to the portals. But she was the expert. She knew how to configure portals with her eyes… well… missing. If he made a mistake and she wasn’t around to correct it, he could very well die here.

“Got us into this mess,” Camilla murmured behind his back as they started walking once more. “She could at least get us out before she loses the plot.”

Arkk shot the fairy a mildly reproachful look, not that he could blame her. Or that he disagreed. But he didn’t need infighting now of all times. If Zullie heard, however, she didn’t acknowledge it. Her hand was back on the lesser servants, even if her gaze was still on the forest around them.

“Status of the battle?” he asked, looking to Luthor, who had taken over from Harvey after the flopkin mentioned drying eyes.

“G-Going well. The addition of the forces from the Anvil have employed great s-skill in tearing down those knights. They just started a full retreat now.”

That was better than he had hoped for. Given how flimsy most of those mechanical people looked, he had been more nervous about sending them into battle than not. It felt like a waste to just have them march in and die. But Agnete and Who had convinced him otherwise. Apparently, their bodies weren’t valuable so long as their core black box survived, and that black box was nearly indestructible, having been crafted by a literal god.

“And Evestani?”

“Rounded up by the Prince’s forces. I think they’re surrendering.”

Arkk peeked into the temple chamber back within Fortress Al-Mir, mentally scowling at the Fickle Wheel. He wasn’t one to question a good turn every now and again, but this seemed… simple. Too easy. He was winning the battle and he wasn’t even present. Granted, he could teleport people around and get injured employees to the infirmary, but still…

He hadn’t even needed to send Agnete out to handle those eggs in a while.

“The airships?”

Luthor paused, images in his crystal ball flickering. “Moving away from the tower,” he said after a moment. “At speed, no less. They’re hurrying back toward…” The chameleon trailed off, frowning with his scaled lips. “No. That’s not right.”

“They aren’t retreating?”

“They’re moving away from the tower,” Luthor repeated. “But they might be plotting something else. They’re headed eastward. The whale ships and the main ship all.”

“East. Toward Elmshadow?”

Luthor nodded his head.

Arkk frowned to himself as they continued walking. There wasn’t much at Elmshadow. Some civilians. The tower was still trapped by that ritual array and his forces were with it on the battlefield. All of the Prince’s army was there as well. Ilya was in the opposite direction, wreaking havoc in Evestani’s homelands along with Hawkwood and more of the Kingdom’s soldiers. Even if they set down in Elmshadow, it wasn’t a strategic asset without the means of securing it and holding it.

With the Eternal Empire’s army routed and Evestani’s captured, the ritual trapping the tower couldn’t possibly last much longer. All he would have to do would be to turn around. With how few forces the Eternal Empire had available, and now that the avatar of the Holy Light had taught his forces how to use magic that could penetrate the armor of the airships, he doubted they would hold the city for more than twenty minutes.

So why head there?

Unless they weren’t heading there.

“Are they angled directly toward Elmshadow? Or just vaguely eastward?” he asked as an unpleasant idea took root in the back of his mind.

Luthor didn’t respond right away again, instead taking the time to scan through various sights in the crystal ball. He tapped Camilla on the shoulder, getting the fairy’s input on various angles in soft, murmured whispering.

Camilla was the one to look up, shaking her head. “They’ll overshoot it to the north, well over the northern Elm mountain range.”

“P-Plenty of time for them to change direction, however.”

“No,” Arkk said, teeth grinding together as that rooted thought crystallized. “I doubt they will.”

“Sir?”

“We need to pick up the pace,” Arkk said. “Zullie, continue telling me everything that must be done. No more distractions.”

“Are we almost there?” the witch asked.

That was a difficult question to answer. While holding to the line of servants seemed to keep them on track, the length of that track was difficult to guess. They had come upon the liquid forest far later than he had initially anticipated.

“I hope so,” Arkk said. “I hope so…”

 

 

Hawkwood, holding aloft his sword with a loud cheer, felt every day of his age and then some.

White Company knights rushed forward alongside an assorted mix of Vaales and Chernlock soldiers present to fill some gaps in his ranks. Evestani’s primary garrison had surrendered. All it took was a massive shadowy spire holding a threatening leg over the building. There were still a few pockets of resistance holding out within the structure, but the vast majority of the city guards had already thrown down their weapons.

Once the garrison was secure and the unruly soldiers who hadn’t surrendered were either dead or thrown in their own dungeons, all that would be left was the palace. It was almost too easy. As Ilya assured, there was no sign of the avatar and his golden magics. No arrows turning his men into animated statues, no holy aura infused throughout their enemies, no rays of gold carving out chunks of terrain. Hawkwood hadn’t even had to swing his sword.

And he still felt exhausted. Clapping a hand to his side, he stretched his back as much as he was able. Though it was his usual armor, it weighed heavier than he was used to.

“We found two enemy soldiers capable and willing to assist with translating commands,” Neil said, stepping up next to Hawkwood. “They are encouraging their fellows to surrender. It won’t be long now… Sir, are you well?”

“Well enough,” Hawkwood said, sheathing his sword. “I think I’ll retire once we’re done here. Maybe serve as an advisor to my replacement. I can’t keep leading the men like this.”

A sudden look of alarm crossed Neil’s face. “Careful, Sir. You know what they say about talking on the battlefield of retirement, loved ones, or your past.”

“Bah. Bard’s tales and superstition. I’m not going to die out here. We’ve practically won already.”

“That’s another taboo,” Neil said, closing his eyes with a sad, mournful shake of his head.

Hawkwood stared at his adjutant. Neil, sensing the stare, looked up. They held the stare for a brief moment before both men erupted in a bout of laughter.

“Think the palace will be trouble?” Neil asked.

“Most of Evestani’s fighting force is in Mystakeen.” Hawkwood waved a hand around, gesturing to the line of enemy soldiers walking with their hands on their heads to a small holding area in the garrison courtyard. “These are the dregs. Either too stupid to contribute or too important—nobles and wealthy men—either way, not a threat. I imagine the palace guards will be mildly better trained, but even their position is ceremonial. Even if not…”

Hawkwood leaned back, freeing a crick in his spine as he stared up at the shadowy spire. It loomed overhead, an ominous sight if not for knowing its owner.

It couldn’t easily get to the palace. While the garrison was somewhat on the edge of the city, the palace was in deep. Had Arkk been in charge here, he might have crushed all the buildings en route, but Ilya struck him as someone wanting to cause the least amount of chaos possible.

Just the threat of it would have been enough for old Duke Woldair to throw up the white flags. He wasn’t expecting much resistance.

The loud squeal of metal ripping at metal made Hawkwood turn.

The tinny laughter of an orc echoed from the confines of one of those walking machines. The spinning blade on its arm crashed into a large gateway while Hawkwood’s men watched from a distance, shields raised and weapons ready. A slam of the machine’s other arm, capped with a spiked ball as wide as a sword was long, splintered the wood and bent the metal braces, cracking open the gate.

One stubborn fool of the Evestani army rushed out from the opening with a pike. That only made the orc laugh again—the sound coming from a conical brass speaking horn—before that spinning metal sawblade came down on the idiot, cleaving through armor, flesh, and the pike as if it were all made from air. Blood sprayed across the wall as the machine moved forward, shoulder slamming into the doorway.

“They told me to offer you a chance to surrender,” the orc barked from inside her machine. “So this is your chance. If I see even one single weapon in someone’s hands in three seconds, I’ll cleave through the lot of ya!” Another laugh punctuated her statement as a clatter of weaponry hit the ground from further within.

Hawkwood’s men moved inside, careful to keep their distance from the machine as they moved to secure the newest batch of captives.

Between the tower and those things Arkk had built, if the palace did put up resistance, he doubted it would be much. There were only ten of them, but each was practically an army on its own. He certainly didn’t rate his—admittedly diminished—forces as having a high chance of taking one down. Perhaps the right spell from an experienced battlecaster could stop one, but regular soldiers?

Not a chance.

“Is that the last holdout?” Hawkwood asked, turning to Neil.

There wasn’t much of a holdout anymore. It was a strange thing to attribute body language toward, but the machine almost looked disappointed that the soldiers inside hadn’t even tried to fight off the machine.

“Correct. Barring reinforcements from elsewhere in the city, the garrison is fully under our control.”

“Good. Get a detachment on round-the-clock guard duty over our captives. We’ll take a brief rest before rejoining with the other commanders to push further into the city.”

“Sir,” Neil said, acknowledging the orders. He turned and set to carry them out.

Hawkwood, remaining where he was, leaned up against a small banister in the courtyard—probably a post for some archery targets. He threw a glance over to the walking machine as it trudged out from the hole it had made in the garrison building, then a look up at the walking fortress looming overhead.

One or the other was a paradigm shift in how warfare would be carried out. Both together? And under the same banner, at that?

He shook his head, letting out a soft sigh. “Definitely too old for this.”

“Gah! What are these things?”

ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV twisted and bent, allowing a sharpened sheet of metal to slide directly alongside their left tool arm servos. Their right tool arm snapped out, reconfiguring to a cutting torch just as they made contact with the sheet of metal. A pulse of the torch cleanly sliced the sheet of offending metal, eliciting a cry of anguished rage from inside the metal suit.

The armored knight staggered back, drawing a shorter backup blade from somewhere on their person. ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV tilted their head, calculating. Their black box hummed, steam spouting from pipes and gears whirring in synchrony as they surveyed their opponent. Their opponent desired harm upon the automaton. That could not be allowed.

Around them, the clangor of battle echoed off metal plates of armor and automaton alike. Fellow engineers moved with mechanical grace, deploying tools that easily sliced through the nearly impenetrable armor. ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV detected magic on the armor. Analyzing it, they concluded that it had been magically enhanced to resist nearly any weapon. But engineers didn’t use weapons.

ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV focused back on their opponent, who had charged while their head was turned. They sidestepped, moving precisely far enough to avoid the attack without compromising their counterattack. Their left tool arm rotated, deploying a magnetic pulse generator. A flick of a latch in their core activated it, directing a focused wave at the knight. The pulse, designed to shape, join, or modify metals without physical contact, ignored the armor’s enchantments. Plates of articulating metal locked into place, flash welded, while the occupant of the armor began screaming in pain. Unable to move yet carried by momentum, the suit of armor toppled forward into the mud.

To the left, ᚾ. ᛞᛁᚷ – II utilized an array of cutting implements to slice away layers of their opponent’s armor. ᚹ. ᛒᚱᚨ – VII swung a pneumatic hammer with rhythmic efficiency, denting the armor of a knight who attempted to advance. A shadow-armored soldier swung a shadowy harvesting tool at one of the enemy knights who turned to fight back—shadow soldier categorized: ally; ignore. Sparks flew from ᚷ. ᚱᚲᚷ – X as they drifted overhead. The lightning was less effective against the armor. Analysis indicated it was too close to weaponry—spellcasting in particular—to ignore the enchantments. It was no less effective in startling and blinding the soldiers.

Right tool arm reconfiguring to a construction foam sprayer, ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV took advantage of the blindness by rushing forward and deploying construction foam. The liquid-like spray hit the legs of the nearest six soldiers. For a moment, nothing happened, but as the chemical reaction with air proceeded, the liquid began expanding, bubbling, and foaming before abruptly hardening into a material as strong as solid rock.

ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV had to end their spray early, spinning their torso to avoid a sudden arrow flying in from an oblique angle. A sharp static-like alert erupted from ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV, spreading information of a new threat in the vicinity to their fellow engineers. All incorporated the new data, readjusting their dismantling of the enemy forces.

ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV had seen a dozen engineers fall, all in need of repairs. More information meant less would fall in the future. That meant higher efficiency in carrying out their assigned task.

Their head twisted to face the new target, then their torso, then their mobility actuators. Consensus stated that ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV, momentarily disengaged already, was optimal to engage the long-range threat.

And so ᚱ. ᚲᛁᛏᛏ – IV moved.

Mags turned around, a small scowl forming on the current sheath he wore.

Up until a few moments ago, there had been an overwhelming source of magic nearby. Somewhere in the Evestani army. He had been heading in its direction for a while now, taking his time pulverizing anything in his path—no sense letting the opportunity for good suffering pass by—but now, he paused.

That source of magic was gone.

For a few minutes, it had only grown more distant. He could still sense that delectable smell of magic off in the direction of the tower—itself almost overwhelming in its vastness. That distance cut off abruptly. The target of his hunt was either dead or too far off to sense.

Mags thrust his hand out at one of the poor fools still brave enough—or stupid enough—to get near him. The blade bounced harmlessly off his skin as his fingers sought out the idiot’s throat. His nails bit into flesh. The sudden scream of pain died as Mags ripped out the man’s esophagus, and nothing else, slicing open his neck with such precision that all that snapped was the thick cartilage that gave his throat structure. The fool’s hands started grasping at his throat as if he could somehow put himself back together. Sharp, panicked breaths sucked in and blew out from the gaping hole in his throat, with none passing through the man’s mouth or nose.

Head tilting from left to right, Mags watched as the panic increased, trying to parse an odd sensation he felt deep within this sheath’s chest. It was something he had felt before, recently at that, but not something he could really put words to.

The man in front of Mags regained enough wherewithal to try to run. A single step from Mags moved him directly in the man’s path. He tried to turn, but Mags was already there. He turned again and again until he tripped over his own two feet. With the man on his hands and knees, Mags moved forward, turned around, and sat directly on the man’s spine. His arms buckled, forcing him down into the mud, but Mags didn’t move from his newfound seat no matter how it struggled. He simply propped an elbow on his knee and rested his head on his hand.

None of this was turning out as he had hoped. Sure, he had taken some fun from the situation. Traipsing through an army of mortals was always a good time. The few spellcasters among them had fed him, but nowhere to the point of satiation. He wasn’t sure that he had ever been satiated, but there were times when he felt close. Yet the Prince denied him Arkk and his fortress. Now that other source of magic had eluded him. Partially his fault, true, he could have rushed it immediately.

But then he wouldn’t have been able to savor the situation. Mags was a refined demon and as a refined demon, he enjoyed an appetizer before his meals.

Mags leaned over, grasping the head of the man he was using as a stool. He wrenched the head back, exposing the gaping airway to fresh air. Mud and blood and muck stuck around the blowhole, most of which was expelled as the man heaved.

“Is this frustration?” Mags asked, staring into the fearful eyes of the man. “I think I’m genuinely frustrated. Upset. Me? Normally, setbacks are just a little teaser for the meal to come. Sometimes I even set myself up to fail just to further whet my appetite. But when that promised meal never gets plated…”

The man’s mouth moved. Mags couldn’t tell if he was trying to answer the rhetorical question or if he was just screaming or babbling incoherently. Either way, with his esophagus hanging out, none of his words made it to his mouth.

“Useless,” Mags said, forcing the man’s face back down into the mud of the battlefield.

Head back on his fist, propped on his elbow, Mags stared out at that tower. Despite employing some guile and trickery, he had been unsuccessful in turning its inhabitants against the Prince. Normally, all it took was telling people that he was a demon summoned by Cedric. Most mortals didn’t take kindly to that kind of thing and instantly reframed their thoughts to view the summoner as hostile, especially if Mags was hostile to them in the first place.

A plot thwarted by the Prince himself, meddling where he wasn’t wanted.

He had tried turning the soldiers against the tower, forcing the issue.

Again, thwarted by that damned Prince.

He had tried convincing Arkk that Cedric was about to be his enemy because of a few missing nobodies.

That one hadn’t been thwarted, exactly. Instead, it resulted in the current situation. Not altogether a bad thing, but not exactly what Mags intended. Admittedly, that one would have been a bit of a long shot.

“Sir Mags?”

Mags first glanced down to the body—for that was what it was now, it must have drowned in the mud—before looking up to find one of the Prince’s soldiers standing at a distance that implied a healthy level of fear. Not enough distance if Mags attacked, but he wasn’t allowed to attack the Prince’s men under any circumstances, so the point was moot.

No one in the Prince’s army was aware of his true nature. Glancing around, he spotted two dozen bodies of enemy soldiers, all felled by his hand. And that was just in this little corner of the battlefield. They must have had some suspicions, though demon was probably last among them.

“You need something?” Mags asked, still glum.

“Evestani is surrendering. A few still fight, but it won’t be long. What are your orders for the prisoners?”

Mags just shrugged. He had already eaten the spellcasters. Under other circumstances, he might have killed the remainder personally, but he just couldn’t bring himself to be in the mood.

The soldier, some squad commander or other, shifted in obvious discomfort as he stared at Mags. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to get a proper response, he continued speaking. “I have men taking record of our current status. A lot are dead, but most survive. I do not believe Prince Cedric will be disappointed with our performance today.”

“That’s great,” Mags said, hoping his utter apathy came through in his tone.

A dazzling array of light covered one side of the distant tower. White, bright light with an almost rainbow-like pattern barely visible within the glow. It lanced out from the tower in narrow beams, instantly crossing the distance between the tower and the airships hovering a distance away.

Mags licked his lips, idly wondering if he could get whoever was casting that to aim at him instead. Attacks on his person didn’t count as attacks against Cedric, so he wouldn’t have been able to retaliate. It wouldn’t have been satisfying, but it would at least have been some magic to lap up… like he was some mutt out slurping at a puddle after a rainfall. The thought only made Mags scowl more.

“We… maintain a fighting force,” said the increasingly exasperated commander. Even still, he maintained a note of respect in his voice. Which was a first. Mags was well aware that most in the army viewed him as a pudgy fool of a commander who only got the position out of nepotism. At least, they viewed him as that before his showing today. “Are we to assist our allies against the Eternal Empire? What are your orders?”

Mags followed the beams of light, staring up at the airships as they struggled to come up with a countermeasure against the attacks. He slowly stood from his body-seat, making the commander take a fearful step backward. “Commander…”

“Giles, Sir.”

“Commander Giles,” Mags said as bits of his clothes and skin and muscle sloughed off his back. The commander stumbled backward, tripping over a corpse. Even after hitting the mud, he still tried to scramble backward. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

Large, leathery wings sprouted from the meaty, exposed flesh. They unfurled wide, flapping once in the air as Mags tested them out.

“Do whatever you want. You’re in charge,” he said before beating his wings in one powerful stroke, taking to the skies.

Those airships were full of magic. He could almost taste them even from this distance. And somewhere on one of those airships, there was another presence. A mass of magic equivalent to the one he had been hunting.

Mags would be damned if he was denied his meal again.

 

 

“Have you been able to take any readings of ambient magic?” Arkk asked as he and his tethered group walked along a line of lesser servants. They all made sure to keep in physical contact with the servants at all times.

So far, no one had gotten lost in the Maze which, given the scattered lesser servants who felt right next to each other yet couldn’t find one another, seemed more like a miracle than not. Yet it couldn’t be a miracle. Not when the god of this realm was the one pushing them apart.

“You’re really worried about that now?” Zullie asked, using both hands to maintain constant contact. Although she had done something to her vision—even now, Arkk still wasn’t sure of the specifics—she still had occasional moments where she simply couldn’t see what she needed to see. The line of lesser servants was one of those things.

“As long as we’re here, we might as well.”

In truth, Arkk was growing nervous. Beyond the war and beyond the avatars, he had another concern. The Calamity. Neither he nor Vezta knew exactly how to repair the damage to the worlds, so they had mostly been stumbling about. However, somewhere around the time of the Anvil opening and the Burning Forge appearing in his temple, he had started developing theories. Some, he had voiced to Zullie, Vezta, and the others, but with the war taking precedence, proper research on the subject was delayed.

However, with every additional statue in his temple, feelings of foreboding grew. The time between them appearing was shortening and some, like the Fickle Wheel and the Laughing Prince, had appeared mostly spontaneously. As of this moment, there were only four empty spots in his temple. The Bloated Mother, the Veiled Dancer, the Whispering Gale, and Unknown, the Enigma.

“When we reconfigure the portals to return,” Arkk said, “I have a feeling another statue will appear. I don’t know if we’ll pass some critical threshold where the Calamity breaks apart or if we must collect them all, but one way or another, I doubt we have long to figure out what will happen to our world once that barrier falls.”

“Magic will flood into our realm. Can’t say whether it will be a trickle or a tidal wave.”

“Plants will die. People will starve. It’ll become as barren as the Underworld.”

“Probably not overnight,” Zullie said, though she didn’t contradict the inevitability. “Did some research on plants versus people after seeing the state of the Underworld way back when we first opened it. Something about the rigidity of plants makes infusions of magic toxic. Low levels can invigorate or add odd properties—alchemists use magical plants in a lot of their concoctions—but the little parts that make them up can’t stretch and mold around high levels of additional energy, bursting apart and killing them. People are far more squishy and thus more able to contain magic.”

“So in the short term, life will… flourish? Until it hits that point where it starts killing.”

“In a sense.” Zullie continued forward, humming to herself. “Can’t do rituals here, so the best I can give you is a feeling. This place isn’t suffering from high levels. Not that it matters. We have other realms we’ve seen. Either this place, like the Anvil, has managed to conjure up a solution… or it simply is too metaphysically distant from the end-point of the… drain.”

“Drain?”

“Magic flows through the realms. We know this. We have evidence for this. The Calamity is like a massive water dam, blocking magic from entering our world uncontrolled. The Underworld, the next closest realm to ours, has filled up because of that dam. Thus, we can theorize that whatever source of magic exists out there acts like a river flowing through the realms. It is only a trickle here because the next realm on the river’s downstream hasn’t flooded yet.” Zullie looked back over her shoulder, meeting Arkk’s gaze with her glasses. “If you ask me, the Calamity feels more like a response to some other catastrophe than anything malicious. Maybe wherever magic was supposed to drain to from our world, further on the downstream, flooded or erected their own dam.”

“I wonder…”

“Hm? Have you got alternate ideas?”

“Not so much alternate, but… additions?” Arkk thought back, far back. Before the incident at the Duke’s party. “I possessed Vezta one time. She doesn’t see the sky like we do. It’s… shattered. Broken. The Stars beyond that shattering aren’t like our stars. They’re more like… her, I think.”

“You mentioned not wanting to think about that.”

“It was quite shocking. Time and having seen far more insane things since have numbed that sensation quite a bit.”

“Do we know when the sky broke?”

Arkk shook his head. Realizing that Zullie probably wouldn’t be able to tell with her back turned and her sometimes-there-sometimes-not sight, he said a quick, “No.”

“It certainly sounds like a plausible theory. Something clearly happened. Though I don’t know how we might go about fixing it.”

Arkk didn’t have an answer for her. From what Vezta said, not even the god of boundaries and barriers had a solution to the shattered sky beyond the tiny, pinprick-sized holes used to rip servants out of that realm. If a god couldn’t do it, they probably didn’t have much hope.

But the shattered sky wasn’t the only deific-level incident that he was aware of. There was one other idea he had, something he had come across on complete accident during unrelated studies.

“Demons killed their god,” Arkk said. He wasn’t sure that it was true. There was a lot of misinformation, rumors, and outright lies surrounding demons. Yet most of the older sources, those Sylvara had dug up from her time at the Abbey’s archives especially, agreed that demons once had a god and now they didn’t.

Zullie hummed a light agreement. “Two potential inciting incidents for the magic problem. Neither solvable. Though, if you ask me, fixing a broken sky sounds a whole lot easier than reviving a god. Unless it isn’t quite dead. Then maybe even odds for both.”

There was a squawk of surprise from behind Arkk. “You think you can heal a dead god?” Camilla asked, sounding utterly incredulous.

Arkk did a quick headcount, making sure that everyone who was supposed to be behind him actually was. He had kept track of everyone in the back of his mind using the link, but it was good to check with his actual eyes. Luckily, both the tether keeping them together and the line of lesser servants were working as intended.

He gave a light chuckle. “You probably think we’re mad.”

“N-Not really.” Luthor waved a hand around. “This is mad. Can’t even w-walk in a straight line without going in a circle. We are making progress, right? If we wind up where we started, I might cry.”

“There are a limited number of lesser servants,” Arkk said, gesturing forward. “They might look the same to you, but I can tell the difference. We are making progress. We’re about to enter that forest I mentioned, the one with the liquid-like trees. Once there, we’ll have about half the line of servants left to traverse before we reach the portal.”

“I suppose I should explain to you what you’ll need to do to reconfigure the Al-Mir portal,” Zullie said as she fumbled along the line of servants. “I wish we had a Protector with us. It’d be easier.”

With Rekk’ar leading the men, he had felt it more important that their limited number of Protector bodies be with Rekk’ar and the various units in need of rapidly updated orders, leaving only one with Arkk—which had managed to escape their translocation because that Protector had been the furthest from the epicenter. Arkk had been just a little too quick.

It would have been more convenient, he was willing to admit.

Zullie proceeded to provide instructions for the modifications to the portal at Fortress Al-Mir, which Arkk carried out through a lesser servant. She wouldn’t know exactly what needed to be changed, besides carving a new keystone from some of the scraps left over from their efforts to bring Agnete back. Until they reached the portal here in the Maze, she wouldn’t know fully what to do, but experience in modifying portals gave her some ideas to lessen the time spent later.

“Back to our previous discussion,” Arkk said as Zullie ran out of adjustments to make. “I had an idea I wanted to run by you. I don’t know if this is a solution or just something to delay the magic toxicity problem—or if it would work at all—but… could demons solve the problem?”

“Demons?” Zullie said with a funny look on her face. “While true they break a lot of laws of magic if their contract dictates they must… I’m pretty sure there are still rules they have to follow. Just ones we’re unaware of.”

“Not like that,” Arkk quickly affirmed. “I have no intention of summoning demons. That’s wacky nonsense and possibly suicidal.”

There was a small sigh of relief from one of the scrying team.

“No. It happened when that demon got a hold of me. It ate—”

“Sir,” Harvey said, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve kept up scrying. Something odd is going on with the airships around the tower. Bright beams of light keep appearing.”

Arkk stopped abruptly. Everyone else, tethered to him as they were, was forced to stop as well. “Everyone, keep holding onto the servants,” he said as he shimmied around Luthor and Camilla. Harvey was at the tail end of their tether. “Show me.”

The Empress stilled, sensing something amiss. Almost absentmindedly, she reached over and dipped a finger into the shallow bowl at her side, swirling the contents in long, gentle movements. A light flick disturbed the water, shattering its glassy surface.

There was no response.

“Adjutant,” she called out.

A wiry man, his perpetually furrowed brow somehow more furrowed than usual, stepped up. “Empress?”

“Turn one of the observers onto the Evestani army. Locate their leader and inform me of his status.”

“Yes, Empress.” Rather than rush out of the room, he approached a bank of brass pipes mounted on the wall. Depressing a small lever on the underside of one flipped open the cover, tugging on a string in the process. After a moment of waiting—during which a light chime echoed from the pipe—he cupped his mouth and began speaking.

As he worked, she focused inward.

Something had happened. Some shift in the world beyond the dangerous magic the Keeper was employing in his defense.

Things were going well, despite appearances to the contrary. The avatar of flames was an unexpected setback, but she had plans for removing that hurdle. The planar magic employed to defend against her attacks had already failed with no need to lift a finger on her part—evidence of its danger. It was only a matter of time until the Keeper slipped up and let one of the spores bloom or the magic sustaining the tower failed entirely and the whole thing came crashing down. It was an inevitability.

But now…

She wasn’t so sure. It was just a feeling she had. Like something had happened and she didn’t know what.

“We can’t find him,” the adjutant said, turning back to her. “They’re going to keep looking, but—”

A light feminine tone disturbed the liquid in the bowl, interrupting the adjutant. A brilliant white light pulsed in time with the spoken words. “He’s dead.”

“Not for long, I expect. Those puppets he uses are numerous.” The Empress snapped her wrist, waving away the adjutant. He departed the chamber, leaving her alone without complaint. “And you… You’re back, are you? Had enough fun annoying us?”

“You don’t understand. He is dead.”

“I do have functional ears.”

“But not a functioning brain. It isn’t his puppets that are dead. He is deceased. Bereft of life. He is no more. He has ceased to be. There is no current avatar of the Heart of Gold on this plane.”

Resting her elbows on the armrests of her chair, the Empress interlaced her fingers, mind running over possibilities. The first and foremost was the possibility that the Holy Light’s avatar was spreading falsehoods. It was the most obvious answer, given her recent duplicity and treachery. Yet, something about the situation rang true. As the avatar of knowledge and wisdom, she wasn’t one to outright lie. Twist words, agree to the letter rather than the spirit, and otherwise perform the bare minimum expected, perhaps, but not lie.

As further evidence, she always spoke with a hint of humor in her tone. Like she knew something that nobody else did and wasn’t about to bring them in on the joke. That humor was missing. That, more than anything, convinced the Empress that the sensation she felt had indeed been the avatar’s death.

Quite the surprise, given how much care he gave toward protecting his true body.

“How?”

Though often silent when she found ignorance amusing, the avatar of the Holy Light truly enjoyed showing off her knowledge. When suitably enticed, getting her to stop speaking was the challenge. Now, however, the Empress was met with nothing but silence.

A particularly damning silence.

“Your doing, I surmise?”

The light in the pool flickered before steadying out. “You are aware of my experiments with the avatars of other gods?”

“Vaguely. Continue.”

“The resources necessary to construct a restraining device for our golden counterpart may have found their way into the Keeper’s hands.”

The Empress could only sigh, shaking her head in light disappointment. “The Holy Light must be in tears over the wisdom of your decision.”

“This was no error in wisdom.” The light in the basin pulsed in anger that matched the spoken tone. “I’m not even upset he is dead. I don’t yet understand how he is dead—you know what he was like, so paranoid and careful. But if you think I’m going to shed tears, you’re insane. He wouldn’t have stopped at the Keeper. Unleashing his powers, showing off, and digging out weaponry like those golden arrows of his despite the treaty, he would have marched to Chernlock to take my head. The only thing that concerns me now is…”

“Our vigil is weakened.”

“Yes. The Calamity—”

“Solution.”

“Whatever you want to call it. It was threatened even before, but I presumed I would be able to deal with it after sending our greedy friend home with his tail tucked between his legs. I’ve built up a rapport with the Keeper, one I intended to use to convince him to cease his destructive efforts…”

“But with one of us dead—”

“I may not have the luxury of time,” the avatar of the Holy Light said, her tone firm and solemn “The Calamity is weakened by a third. Things are more precarious than they likely seem to you. I’m not entirely sure we can stop it anymore.”

The Empress turned a stern look onto the basin and, when she spoke, she spoke slowly and clear. “I hope, for your sake, you will find yourself incorrect for once in—”

The door to the chamber slammed open. “Empress! I am deeply sorry for disturbing—”

“On with it,” she interrupted, not caring in the slightest about her adjutant’s platitudes.

“Our armada, it’s under attack. Rays of light that penetrate the metal armor are shining forth from the tower, too fast to dodge and cannot be deflected.” He cowered back, faltering under the severity of her gaze. Even still, he pushed forward with his report. “They’re thin and narrow. Not enough to do significant damage. But if they hit the wrong spot—or you…”

The Empress leaned forward, gripping the ends of the chair’s armrests hard enough to bend the metal. Slowly, her gaze turned to the basin. “Avatar…”

“Oh. Sorry. Maybe should have mentioned this sooner.” A tinge of that irritating humor returned with the pulsing light in the basin. “I might have taught a few of the Keeper’s minions how to wield a sliver of power to get you off his back.”

“You…”

“Well! I’ll leave you to it. I need to get into contact with the Keeper and explain exactly why he needs to stop doing whatever he is doing before things really do end up out of control. Good luck!” The light in the bottom of the basin winked out, leaving the Empress glaring at a simple bowl of water.

“My Empress?”

A wave of her hand threw a sudden gust of air at the adjutant, knocking him aside as she strode out of the room. A greater well of power swept up as she moved, building beneath the airships momentarily before she hurtled them away from the tower. With the damage to her construction yards, the existing ships were irreplicable in the short term. She would need them alive if she intended to end this today.

“Damn her,” she snarled as she marched forward, moving to the observation room to see the trouble for herself.

With the Heart of Gold’s avatar gone and the thinning of the barrier, dispatching with the Holy Light’s avatar would be an ill-conceived plan. Once this irritant of a Keeper was gone and the proper Solution returned to strength, ridding herself of that menace would be far less of a detriment.

Until then, she had to grin and bear with the avatar’s machinations.

“Damn it all.”

 

 

“My plan worked,” Arkk announced to the silent darkness. “The avatar is dead.”

Zullie turned away from her work, lifting an eyebrow. “Your plan?”

Arkk let out a small sigh. “My plan, you and Sylvara’s efforts in making that effigy, Lexa’s efforts in actually getting it to the avatar, and Savren trapping the avatar’s mind solely in the host he was inhabiting. Whatever you want to call it, it worked.”

“Permanently?”

“I’d hope so. I think Savren is trying to check.”

“Shame I wasn’t there to see it,” Zullie said, leaning back over a large scrawling ritual.

The Maze, their best guess for where they were, wasn’t something to be taken lightly. Not if half of what Vezta had told him was true. Thus far, no one had left the command floor of the tower that had come with them. Using tunics, belts, curtains from the windows, and even Arkk’s trousers, they had fashioned a lengthy rope that looped around everyone’s waists, tied off at Arkk and Luthor at either end.

Ideally, they wouldn’t have to venture into the Maze at all. Zullie thought she could weaken the boundaries between here and home just as she had done from the other side to create the spell in the first place. Arkk was somewhat less optimistic.

The appearance of the Fickle Wheel in the Al-Mir temple had him on edge. It felt like everything they did was now being watched by a god known for random whims and false balance. The avatar being dead was a good thing. That only made Arkk worry that something unpleasant was going to happen to counterbalance that.

The increasingly frustrated looks on Zullie’s face weren’t reassuring.

Arkk closed his eyes momentarily, first scanning over the continuing battle, helping where he could, before moving to the lesser servants. He had summoned dozens of them, giving each orders to venture off into the Maze. If they could find a portal, they would have a much easier time getting home than hoping Zullie could recreate a magical accident intentionally.

The Maze was a strange land, he decided. When he had first heard of it, he expected walls, narrow passages, random dead ends, and a labyrinthine layout that was impossible to navigate. Instead, it appeared to be almost the opposite.

A bright light spell, thrown high into the air, provided illumination for the transported command chamber and its surroundings.

The command chamber sat in a vast, open plain that appeared simple enough. Grasses made of shimmering silver swayed in a gentle breeze. As the lesser servants traveled, the ground itself shifted, altering the landscape. Hills rose and fell, streams redirected their courses, and even the sky changed at seeming random from night to day at a whim, despite the light not changing elsewhere—whether that be for Arkk or other lesser servants searching the land.

More than once, he had sent a lesser servant off with orders to travel in a perfectly straight line, only for them to end up right back where they started a few minutes later. Yet, ordering one of the distant lesser servants to return ended in failure. He could feel them approaching yet they never actually drew near.

Three of his lesser servants made it beyond the plains. One reached a forest whose trees seemed to be made from liquid, all in the same silvery color as the grasses. One lesser servant had gotten itself trapped on a series of floating islands. They seemed to look down upon the plains, but the servant had managed to reach them without climbing or flying through the air.

The last lost servant wound up in a cave of sorts.

It had died. Nothing attacked it. It simply had been traveling forward when, in the span of a single step, it aged. Arkk could feel the centuries passing even though he was fairly certain that he wasn’t aging himself. At least not beyond the usual rate.

Above all, Arkk wanted to avoid that cave.

“Light,” Zullie started to swear, only to stop and shake her head. “This is impossible.”

More bad news. “We got here somehow. It should be possible to return.”

“Yes, but I can’t even draw a ritual circle. Look,” she said, scooting a step away from her work area. With a long piece of chalk in one hand, she dragged her arm in a perfectly straight line.

Arkk didn’t see anything wrong.

“Of course it works when I try to show somebody,” Zullie said with an annoyed click of her tongue. Her face brightened. “Observation? Maybe my lack of eyes is ruining things. Come, all of you, stare at me working.”

Arkk glanced around. The three members of the scrying team weren’t far away—they couldn’t be with the limited length of makeshift rope they had. He doubted they hadn’t been watching, but everyone still complied, squeezing a little closer to Zullie. She promptly started her work once more.

As she worked, Arkk started to notice discrepancies. Where she looped her hand in a wide, sweeping arc, a truncated line would appear. Where she marked down a cross, a ring would appear. In one case, she drew her arm along in a straight line and a straight line appeared, but it appeared on the opposite end of the circle from where she held her chalk.

With a snarl, Zullie flung her chalk across the room. Parts of it broke off as it bounced along the floor. The rest of it came around and struck her in the back of her neck.

“A-Are we trapped here?” Luthor asked, watching Zullie furiously rub at the chalk staining her cloak.

To be reassuring was to be a liar, at least in this situation. Arkk doubted they would be forever trapped. He had allies both here and at home who could work to bring them back. Unless, of course, the battle turned disastrous. With the avatar dead, the undead and Mags’ forces causing chaos in the Evestani army, and the machine lifeforms joining in the fray, using their power tools to dismantle the Eternal Empire’s invulnerable armor, things weren’t looking too poor at the moment, so he was cautiously optimistic.

At the same time, being stuck away from the battle, unable to directly assist, was concerning. There were still those airships. At some point, they stopped their repeated assaults. They were planning something, he knew. If they thought the battle was lost, they would surely have retreated by now, pulling themselves and their army back to rally for another attack.

There was still the matter of the Eternal Empire’s missing forces. They had marched across Mystakeen with only a few thousand less than Evestani, yet only about two thousand of their soldiers were assailing the tower. If the Fickle Wheel had anything to say about the matter, they would make themselves known at the worst time.

“I might have something,” Harvey said, looking up from his crystal ball. The others of the scrying team had mostly been fretting, but Harvey kept up with his duties. He waved Arkk over, showing off something in the crystal ball. “I can’t get a better view of it. Something is blocking the way—or maybe it is just this place—but that right there looks familiar, doesn’t it?”

The liquid-like trees of the forest his lesser servant had stumbled across dotted the crystal ball up to about the halfway point, where the land changed to octagonal pillars of stone, jutting up from the ground. Despite being equally sized on all eight sides, the columns of stone managed to fit together perfectly. Each face of the eight-sided stones matched the face of another eight-sided stone.

Harvey’s padded paw touched the scrying ball, drawing Arkk’s attention to a small gap in the stone columns. A golden crystal, covered in an iridescent sheen, just barely peaked out through the gap. Like someone had grown those stones in an attempt to hide the crystal only for the ravages of time to have worn away part of its facade.

“A portal,” Arkk said. The yellow crystal matched with every other portal they had seen. The full archway wasn’t visible, just the base of it on one side. Even if the rest had been destroyed, just having access to that crystal could be enough to get them home. After all, Zullie had already perfected portal construction while trying to get Agnete out of the Anvil. The only thing she needed was the material. “Do we know where it is in relation to us?”

Harvey looked up, giving Arkk a flat stare. “Does relation matter in this place?”

“Good point.” Arkk frowned, glaring into the crystal ball. “It exists, thus there must be a way to reach it. Something beyond stumbling about randomly and hoping for the best.”

Arkk waited a moment, looking around. The others were paying attention, but no suggestions came forth. He… really only expected Zullie to have ideas in a situation like this. The others, while good at their job, weren’t exactly idea people.

“I can summon more and more servants,” Arkk said. “Maybe have them all link together so they can’t get lost. Then if one finds the portal, we can just follow the trail of servants.”

“That could take an eternity,” Zullie said with a frown. Even without eyes, she fiddled with her glasses as she stared at the crystal ball. “Maybe some kind of… anchor? From my brief experience here, I would say that Xel’atriss, Lock and Key, and Unknown, the Enigma, are diametrically opposed gods. You and I have a deeper connection with the former. Though we would have to fashion some kind of spell without a ritual circle.” She shot an eyeless glare at the hodgepodge scrawls on the floor. “That’s right out.”

Arkk closed his eyes, rubbing at his temples. Verbal spells were much more difficult to craft than rituals, requiring the compression of all the scribbles and circles and symbols down into a few sounds. To the best of his knowledge, Zullie hadn’t crafted a single verbal spell since the disaster that took her eyes—though she had worked a little to safeguard that spell. But creating it in the first place had taken weeks if not longer. Its first use had turned out… poorly.

If rituals were out, that meant that that was the only spell either of them knew that had any connection with Xel’atriss. They couldn’t sit around for weeks, waiting for Zullie to cobble together another spell.

“You aren’t suggesting…” Arkk trailed off, glancing toward the scrying team.

They still didn’t know why Zullie had lost her eyes. Perhaps she saw something she wasn’t supposed to or something she couldn’t process, or perhaps Xel’atriss simply didn’t like being observed—Vezta had shielded Arkk’s eyes upon their encounter with Xel’atriss, presumably to prevent him from going mad upon witnessing something mortal minds simply weren’t capable of processing. But if Zullie was suggesting they repeat that incident, would having the scrying team close their eyes be enough?

Or would they wind up like Zullie, albeit lacking the drive and ambition to uncover magic’s secrets to keep themselves sane?

“If you—any of you—have better ideas, I’m waiting,” Zullie said, turning her head slowly over everyone else.

To Arkk’s great surprise, Luthor raised a hand. He waited to be called upon, acting as if he were a young boy attending a Suun lecture, until Arkk nodded his head.

“We’re all tied t-together,” he said, lightly tugging against the rope around his waist that was tied to Arkk’s trousers. “So linking together works in this place.”

Arkk nodded along, encouraging him to continue. They had done a few experiments shortly after realizing where they were. Two lesser servants walking side by side would eventually, and randomly, drift apart from one another even if they always tried to keep the same distance. Two lesser servants doing the same while touching each other didn’t.

“Rope. A rope of lesser servants. Send them out, all connected to here, and have them sweep over the entire place. When they find the portal, we put a hand on them and follow the rope.”

He didn’t see why that wouldn’t work. It sounded sensible, logical, and didn’t invoke a god to help get them out of this. Arkk looked over to Zullie, giving the woman a questioning tilt of his head. She looked… frustrated, scowling down at the complicated mess of a ritual circle that she had drawn out. He could almost see the thoughts flitting through her head as she tried to find a reason to reject the plan. It wasn’t complicated enough for her, not enough moving pieces, not enough things to go wrong.

Crouching down, Zullie picked up the broken piece of chalk that had hit her in the back of the head. She pressed it against the cracked tiles before spinning fully around, though she did have to stop and navigate the makeshift rope around her waist before completing her circle.

Except it wasn’t a circle. It wobbled, more like a bean despite her circular movement.

“It is possible that, even if line up an infinite number of lesser servants and send them about in a complete circle…” She jammed the chalk down on the odd bend in the bean-shaped circle. “We might still miss the portal.”

“But we might not,” Luthor said. “I… I don’t know what you two were referring to a moment ago, but if Arkk is hesitant, that means it is risky. This seems low risk, so why not try it? U-Unless I’m missing something,” he finished with a nervous look at his fellow scrying team.

“The only thing it will cost is time,” Arkk said. Lesser servants did press on his magic ever so slightly. He wouldn’t be able to summon an infinite number of them, but a few hundred would be fine. Malleable and amorphous as they were, one could stretch a great distance, reducing how many he would need to cover a larger area. “While we don’t have unlimited time, Zullie would need time to fully think through her plan anyway,” he said with a pointed look at the witch.

He was done with half-baked plans from Zullie. Capable though she was, genius though she might be, she was too interested in the creation process and not interested enough in perfection. If she spent a little more time to truly finalize one idea before the next one carried her off, her success rate would skyrocket. Arkk recognized that he was part of the problem, moving her from project to project especially as of late, but the problem still existed. Once they were out of their situation—the threat of the Eternal Empire and Evestani, that was—Arkk fully intended to recruit some more casters. An entire team he would have dedicated to nothing more than going over Zullie’s designs and ensuring they were finished, not half-baked.

Although Zullie bristled at his quip, she nodded her head. She sat down. Lacking eyes, she had grown adept at thinking about things without writing them down. Possibly another reason why her successes lately were few and far between, but useful in a realm where writing was forbidden.

As she began her ponderings, Arkk began summoning. Lesser servant after lesser servant warped into being, as if they oozed out from a tiny hole in reality. He had never possessed more servants than he did now, including those at Fortress Al-Mir, the tower, and now here. Idly, as he carried on the monotonous task, he wondered if they would ever deplete. They weren’t created from nothing, but drawn from the Stars.

The lesser servants scurried forth, all connected to each other. As one manifested, the line mushed forward. Although he could tell where one servant ended and the next began, he couldn’t see it. The oily, tar-like bodies they possessed merged together in a long, thin strand of mush, squirming forward like a snake crossed with a caterpillar.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Camilla whined.

“When I first found Fortress Al-Mir,” Arkk said between summonings, “I didn’t want to conjure them up at all, off-putting as they are. But they are necessary to run the fortress and, even outside that, useful.” He gestured to the long line of servants stretching off toward whatever horizon existed in this strange place.

“Still think I’m going to be sick.”

Arkk just chuckled as he continued summoning. “Vezz’ok is still at Fortress Al-Mir. I’ll move him to the portal room to have him assist the servants in reconfiguring the portal.”

“Won’t help unless we find the portal here.”

Two of his lonesome, earlier exploratory servants had found the liquid forest where the portal resided. Neither had set off in the same direction, but he still had them—and all the other servants out there—patrolling around, trying to find anything stable enough to resemble a landmark.

At the same time, he kept his eye on the continuing battle. A full tenth of the Eternal Empire’s army was lying dismantled in the mud, with Shieldbreakers and the Black Knights’s assistance. The rest had been pushed back from the base of the tower. A good thing too. When the disaster in the command center occurred, the Maze of Infinite Paths protecting the tower legs, and keeping the enemy army out, had failed as well.

The portion of the Empire’s army that had been inside the tower’s legs hadn’t returned when the spell failed. They accounted for a significant chunk of the army, so unless they randomly reappeared, that was one benefit to the spell failing.

Maybe the Fickle Wheel really was on his side after all.

Time would tell.

 

 

Golden eyes looked over a golden battlefield. Streaks of color lined everything. The grass, the trees, the soldiers. Even his host body now sported a thin stripe of gold from hip to shoulder. It was a wonder this body hadn’t been bisected, though he did suppose it was a lucky break. Switching bodies would have been a waste of his efforts.

The startled, frozen battle didn’t remain paused for long. A dazzling display of magical might should have seen his enemies surrendering immediately and unconditionally, yet they fought on. Irritants. Bolstered by the presence of that tower.

The soldiers in his immediate vicinity, once they recovered from their momentary fright over the situation , straightened up and took on looks of pride. As if the golden streaks of light now crossing over their armor had been an act of blessing. They probably wouldn’t have been as enthusiastic had the deadly magic remained deadly after splitting so much, but as it was, there was no need to hamper their bolstered morale.

Let the peons have their delusions.

Narrowing his eyes, he shot a glare at the tower. It was still standing. Still mostly unharmed. Certainly, he had been unable to cause much damage, though they had yet to reactivate the protective ritual he had first taken down. Now they were reflecting attacks at their attackers?

The irritant grew with every passing day.

That glare shifted upward. What was the Almighty Glory doing anyhow? She was the expert in destroying these things. Yet she was fiddling about. Clearly, her skills had rusted in the extended years since the last major fortress had been discovered. She had but a single trick. Even now, all she tried was dropping more nihilith pods onto the tower. At the start, they had been doing something. Now the flames employed by the tower burned them away with such ease that it was worthless. A waste of time and effort.

So rigid and stuck in her ways. She hadn’t developed an iota of creativity over the centuries. If anything, she had lost what little creativity she once possessed.

Well, if she wasn’t going to pull her weight, it was up to him to show the Almighty Glory the glory of the Gold.

Kneeling once more, he closed his eyes and began gathering himself.

So they could redirect his attacks? Hardly a concern. All magic had its limits and his limits were far, far beyond what some uppity Keeper could manage. He just needed to be at his full strength.

A few moments into his meditations and he felt something. Some tension in the very world. It built up slowly, over a few minutes. The final few seconds ramped up, reaching a crescendo in an instant.

Golden eyes snapped open just in time to witness an explosion in the tower. A tenth away from the top of its peak, bricks flew outward as if pushed by a bubble. Crackling blue-white lightning-like lines of pure arcane magic danced between the bricks, locking them into place. A tremor cascaded down the tower’s walls, rippling the stone as if it were made from water.

At first, he started to grin. His enemies having trouble was a benefit to him. It didn’t look like the tower was about to topple—it held on by a thread—but that could easily be rectified. Such a magically charged explosion wouldn’t have left that Keeper unscathed.

His smile slid askew as he felt a second wave coming from the tower. Not an explosion. A rush of magic cascaded over the battlefield. Pure, chaotic magic flooding into this world from elsewhere.

“What have you done?”

Apoplectic. That was the only word to describe the tone of the august voice coming from the shallow basin at his side.

“What have I done?” he snapped before his eyes flicked to the guards around him. They didn’t need to be here for this. The sounds of battle had drawn closer, so he jerked his head back toward the battle lines. “Assist our brothers,” he said, voice firm yet quieter. “Ensure I remain undisturbed.”

Although they looked anxious at being ordered away, they couldn’t disobey. Not him. He was their god. None could question his will. It wasn’t like he needed bodyguards anyway. Any mishap and he would simply take another body for his own.

As soon as they were gone, joined in merry battle, he looked back to the basin while keeping the crackling arcane tower in the corner of his vision. “Do you feel that?” he asked, wanting to confirm his suspicions.

The magic flooding into the battlefield had not stopped. Fortress Hearts were magic amplifiers, outputting more than they took in, but even they had limits. For such an infant tower as this, a short but loud thunderclap of magic should have been the only consequence if they had managed to damage its core. At the very least, the onrush of magic should have faded by now.

If anything, it was increasing.

“Feel it? The Solution is threatened. If we do not put a stop to this, all will end.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, sneering at the bowl of liquid. “Of course. Let me just snap my fingers and fix everything.”

“Your incongruous nature is unneeded. Where is our contemporary? The god of knowledge will have insight.”

A flare of angry golden light bathed the surroundings. “That traitor? Probably cheering on the Keeper, knowing that her end is our end.”

“Unacceptable.”

“Your inability to accept facts does not make them untrue. It just makes you a stubborn fool.”

He knocked aside the bowl of water after that taunt. Not spilling it, but sloshing the water to the point where he wouldn’t be forced to listen to whatever commentary the Almighty Glory would have for that. The fact that the noise would grate on her ears only made him grin. For all her pride, she sure knew how to whine.

Once again, he would simply have to handle things himself.

Kneeling, intending to use the momentary peace for something productive, he closed his eyes.

And felt another odd thing. The wash of magic still cascaded over the battlefield, drowning out most other sensations, but this one was different. Like something was specifically attuned to him. Cracking open an eye, he saw it.

A bright golden effigy hurtled through the air toward him. It wasn’t aimed properly. If he did nothing, it would sail right over his shoulder.

He reached forward, feeling a pull towards it. He wanted it. A golden effigy? Of course he wanted it.

The moment his fingers wrapped around its makeshift waist, he let out a content sigh.

Contentment. It wasn’t a feeling he could say he felt often. There was always more. More land to claim, more gold to hoard, more people to bow before him. To be content was to be anathema to the Heart of Gold. Yet content he felt. He settled down, smiling at the small doll. Did it look like him? Not this borrowed body, but the real him.

He was quite certain it did. Someone had gone to the trouble of carving a little statue in his honor. It was touching. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something nice for him. There were the servants and slaves and sycophants, but that wasn’t the same thing. They were obligated to serve him.

Someone cloaked in darkness slipped past the sparse soldiers around him. That cloak shouldn’t exist, but it did. But he didn’t care. Not now. Not while he was at such peace. Even her kicking over the basin and stomping on it didn’t bother him. It should have. Those basins were rare. Only a handful existed. Now, his was destroyed. But he had something greater. A treasure all for himself.

“Wow. That thing really did a number on you.”

Someone spoke now. The one in darkness. He didn’t even look up.

Not until the darkness grasped hold of his wrist.

“It’s mine,” he snarled, yanking his hand back. His anger, clearly felt, was enough for the darkness to release him. As soon as he was free, he settled back down, smiling as he gently ran his fingers over the golden surface.

“Okaaay… Tell you what, you can keep it if you just put on this little bracelet.”

His eyes drifted upward to find the shadowy figure holding a shiny silver bracelet. Manacles. Silver wasn’t really his color. It was just inferior to gold. It probably wasn’t even real silver. Did that make it better?

The shadowy figure stepped closer again, taking hold of his hand that wasn’t holding the little golden idol.

He allowed it. He wouldn’t have normally—it was his hand—but he didn’t feel quite so possessive at the moment. The shadowy clamped the manacle around his wrist and then around her own, smaller, arm.

“Great. You feeling nice and captive?”

He stared at the golden idol. “I can’t recall the last time I was feeling so captivated.”

“Right. Close enough I guess. We need to get out of here before that demon catches up.”

Demon should have been alarming. It wasn’t. Nothing was. If anything, getting away from a demon sounded like a great idea.

“I sure hope Arkk wasn’t in the middle of that explosion. Or else we’re going to have to get back the hard—”

A tug in his navel pulled at him, dragging him through a narrow tunnel of magic. The surroundings warped around him, removing him from the field of battle and dropping him down in the middle of a foul-smelling chamber of stone and metal bars. But he still had his idol, so he didn’t care.

“Oh good. You sit tight,” the gremlin—she removed her hood—said as she slipped her hand out of the manacles with ease. “I’m going to go find out what happened. Don’t lose that effigy now. Do you want me to tie it to your hand? That way you’ll never lose it.”

“Never lose it… Yes. Never.”

“What do you mean he’s gone again? This is the second time he’s disappeared in the middle of something important.”

“A worrying trend,” Inquisitrix Sylvara said, not that a hint of concern slipped into her tone. Her red eyes focused on the cage that held their esteemed guest. She hadn’t even blinked since Lexa brought her in. “Nothing to do about it, however. The fact that things are still moving and operational is a sign that he is paying attention.”

“Has he gotten himself kidnapped by the demon again?” Lexa asked, more to herself than to the rest of the audience. “No… The demon is tearing apart the Evestani army. Unless there are two of them.”

“I certainly hope not.”

Lexa scowled. There was no sign of anything being truly wrong. No unconscious dark elves popping up or lesser servants playing games of charades to communicate. He was teleporting people where they needed to go, even assisting with the battle against the Eternal Empire soldiers now that the visitors from the Anvil had joined the fray. All-in-all, the tides of battle had turned almost in their favor. The only things wrong were the airships still in the air, the lack of Arkk, and the top of the tower being blown up.

Anyone trying to climb the stairs got instantly teleported to a lower level once they got too close. So he was watching.

“What’s with those airships anyway?” Lexa asked, looking up at the inquisitrix. “I thought you and the abbess were going to take them down.”

“The avatar of the Holy Light was communicating with us, instructing us on how to use a portion of her abilities. Not making us avatars, but something more akin to Zullie’s utilization of the boundary god’s powers. But the communication cut off abruptly a few minutes ago. Same time as the explosion on the upper levels occurred.” Sylvara clenched a fist, still staring at the jail cell. “Abbess Hannah is remaining with the basin, awaiting further instructions. I elected to oversee this.”

Lexa didn’t like the sound of that. While it seemed like Agnete had the defense of the tower on lock, only an idiot continued to try the same strategies over and over when they obviously weren’t working. She doubted they had long before the paradigm shifted again and those airships became a threat once more.

That said, having the inquisitor present was something of a reassurance. Lexa had a lot of tricks up her sleeves but the inquisitor had knowledge and power. Especially when related to that golden effigy. She had created the thing, with Zullie and Savren, after all.

Savren was in the room as well. A series of cells—only one was occupied at the moment—lined half the room. The other half had been cleared out, providing space for Savren to make the final adjustments to the ritual circle he had designed. It was to be used in conjunction with the effigy.

Several guards stood about as well, weapons poised over the avatar’s head. Orcs, Kia, and a shieldbreaker weren’t about to let the avatar regain his wherewithal while still inside the tower. It would suck to have to kill him too soon, but they couldn’t jeopardize the fortress.

Alma ran about the room, bringing the flower to each guard as well as Savren, Lexa, and Sylvara in a circuit. With the avatar now holding onto the effigy, its effects didn’t seem to be affecting many others, but they still used the flower just in case. Having them all fall into apathy would end in disaster.

As for the avatar…

The avatar showed no signs of awareness of anything around. He sat on the floor with a vapid smile on his face, staring at the effigy. Some twine looped around his hand and wrist made it impossible for him to accidentally drop the effigy. Though that twine wouldn’t stop a dedicated attempt to get rid of it, he hadn’t even tried.

“He isn’t going to get tired of it, is he?”

“When crafting countermeasures for dealing with abominations of magic, a tuning is required before they can become purifiers. The Binding Agent needs to be powerful enough to stop their abominable powers from going out of control in an emergency but lenient enough to allow them to wield those powers in the first place.” Sylvara’s eyes flicked away from the avatar for the first time. It only lasted a moment, but she shot Lexa a tight smirk. “Naturally, I didn’t bother trying to limit this Binding Agent’s restraining power. If anything, I enhanced it.”

That didn’t exactly answer Lexa’s question. Sylvara probably didn’t know for sure. “The sooner this is done with, the happier everyone will be.”

“Indeed. Savren, are you still tweaking values?”

The warlock blinked long and slow, sighing. “Cease your complaints. I must be certain that the countermeasure carries out its purpose correctly. Complications would be cause for catastrophe. Counter to my communication, however, I am closing on completion.”

“Finally.”

“Carry the comatose captive to the center of the circle,” he said, waving a hand to the two orcs.

They looked at each other, swallowing. Normally, two burly orcs wouldn’t have hesitated to pick up a human child. Lexa doubted it was a task that required a pair. One of them could have picked up the avatar with a single hand. But therein was the problem. Avatar. They all knew what he could do if he suddenly returned to his senses.

“Just don’t try to take away the effigy,” Lexa said, offering her advice. It seemed to have worked when capturing him.

Carefully, as if he were an actual child and not their sworn enemy, the two orcs moved up to the avatar. One took his legs while the other took his back, tilting him so that he could be carried while keeping the effigy in sight. Kia followed close, her own sword humming with afterimages of her strange power, ready to eliminate the avatar before he could be a threat.

With even more care, they set the avatar down. Once out of their hands, they scattered, as if worried he was a viper ready to strike.

The avatar just sat there, staring at his little golden idol.

Savren swiftly moved about the circle, performing one final check to ensure nothing had gone wrong in the short few seconds since his last check. Normally, Lexa would have scoffed and rolled her eyes. Not now. If there was ever a bit of dangerous, experimental magic that she didn’t want going wrong, it was this ritual.

It came as some small relief that Zullie also hadn’t been seen since the explosion on the upper levels. Lexa didn’t wish the witch ill, but the witch had a habit of being overly ambitious to the point of ruination.

For every success like Kia, there were a dozen smoking craters. Or, rather, exploded chickens.

It was one of the many reasons why, despite witnessing Kia and Claire’s abilities, she hadn’t volunteered for the same thing. Nor had anybody else, to the best of her knowledge.

“Please promptly partition yourself,” Savren said with a look at Kia. “Proximity to your preternatural powers may prove problematic.”

The dark elf, still hovering over the avatar ready to strike, shot a glance at Savren. It took a second look at Sylvara—who nodded her head—before she was willing to take a step back. Savren then shooed her back even further with a little upward flick of both his hands. He continued, pushing her all the way back to the far wall. Only then did he stalk back to the ritual circle, pause at its edge to pull the sleeves of his robe up to his shoulders, and slam his hand down on the activation rune.

Bright golden light flooded into the prison. Lexa tensed, bracing for the inevitable end.

It never came. Blinking away the spots in her eyes, she squinted at the ritual circle. The golden light emitted from its markings, not from the avatar. The possessed boy still sat, a vapid smile on his face, even as the ritual raged around him. His fingers kept twitching, as if there was some struggle going on. Lexa had never been more relieved with her own foresight. If she hadn’t tied that idol to his hand, he likely would have dropped it by now.

As the light in the ritual circle intensified, the golden light on the ring of tattoos around the boy’s head began to fade. The bright tattoos dulled and blackened, drained of their power. Lexa would have expected that to mean that the avatar had left the body, but the boy’s eyes still glowed with bright golden light, doing their best to wash out the light from the ritual.

The brightness reached a peak, forcing Lexa to turn aside.

All at once, the light cut out. Savren pulled away from the ritual circle, panting, while everyone else in the room rushed forward, weapons raised. Lexa remained where she was, staring at the avatar, now with dull tattoos around his head but still-glowing eyes.

“Did it work?” Sylvara asked, staring at Savren.

The warlock, unable to find words for once, simply nodded his head as he tried to catch his breath.

Sylvara didn’t ask for a second confirmation. She strode forward, pulling a spiraled, needle-like dagger from behind her back. One of the counter-demon weapons they had ended up rejecting as viable. It was still overkill for non-demons, but perhaps the avatar warranted it. She tossed it to her other hand, the lizard-like mutation that Hale had regrown in place of the arm the avatar had taken from her.

Standing over the avatar, she waited one moment, just to stare. Lexa thought she was about to say something, some words of victory.

The only noise she made was a small grunt of effort as she plunged the knife deep into the avatar’s skull.

 

 

“Well, that looks good.”

Arkk snapped his gaze to Zullie, raising his eyebrows. “Why do you sound so surprised?” he asked.

The witch stood atop a freshly drawn ritual circle. One that he would rather not have had inside the command center if at all possible. They had a whole sealed room specifically for these kinds of rituals. The dangerous kinds. The Maze of Infinite Paths was beyond dangerous to the point where Arkk didn’t want it inside the tower at all. Yet, in a situation like they were in, compromises had to be made. Zullie didn’t have the time to figure out how to get it working from afar and did not want it down on the lower levels with the other maze ritual which was protecting the tower legs. The interference between the rituals could prove catastrophic, in her words.

Thus, she had set up in the command chamber.

He opened his mouth to say more, ready to berate her for experimenting in the middle of battle, only to brace himself as another volley rained down from the cannons overhead.

He didn’t feel a thing. The tower didn’t shake or tremble from an impact. He watched using his fortress-localized omniscience as each of the incoming projectiles hit the wobbly barrier Zullie had just erected. They warped, stretching into long, thin versions of themselves while looping about the air, bending at odd angles, and splitting into a hundred separate projectiles. After a few sections of the warping, they emerged from the field, aimed in completely random directions. Mostly random, anyway. They avoided the most important direction—toward the tower.

“Oh… That does look good,” he said, moving to the scrying team to get a few different perspectives on the situation.

Plenty fell down upon the army amassing for a second invasion, Arkk noted with some satisfaction. Some went right back up at their attacker, forcing them into an evasive movement. Unfortunately, most of the volley scattered randomly throughout the surrounding forest, not likely to do any immediate damage to the things he wanted to immediately damage.

“Can we aim the rebounding…” Arkk started, only to trail off as he felt a tingle on the back of his neck—his hair rising.

Having felt that before, his eyes widened. He immediately tried to move the tower. The legs were still trapped but it could lean.

A spear of golden light, aimed far too high, swept downward toward the tower. It wasn’t as large or as powerful as some he had seen the avatar use. That didn’t mean he wanted to take his chances. But with the tower trapped and the movement of the beam, there was no avoiding it.

Just before he teleported everyone in the tower down to the tunnels below, the ray crashed into the protective membrane around the tower.

Dazzling golden light filled Arkk’s vision, both inside the crystal ball and from his omniscience. It cut off almost immediately, but the brilliance of it all forced Arkk to blink several times. He busied himself inspecting the damage to the tower while he waited for his eyes to recover.

Except, the tower wasn’t damaged. Not in the slightest. A few lesser servants who had been out there at the time were still going about their tasks, repairing the damage to the tower without any sign they had even noticed the attack.

A drawback to his localized omniscience was that it focused on his fortress and its inhabitants. He couldn’t simply turn his head to see a different view. But what he could see on the edges of his vision was gold. Lots of thin gold streaks drawn across everything. The soldiers down below, trees, even the airships overhead.

“Report!” Arkk shouted. The command chamber was mostly empty. With the majority of the tower, including Rekk’ar, down managing the defenses of the tower from the army—just in case the protections on the tower legs failed—it was just him, Zullie, a Protector, and the three members of his scrying team. Hale, having finished her work on his arm and eye, was back to healing everyone else who ended up injured in the infirmary.

Camille and Harvey were both still blinking away the spots in their eyes, but Luthor heard him and took control of the crystal ball. Images flickered across its surface.

Arkk focused on the crystal ball with Luthor for a moment until he noticed something slightly more concerning.

“Damn, damn, damn…”

Arkk blinked away the last of his blindness to find Zullie rushing about the ritual circle. This one used a combination of the natural magic generation of the fortress to keep the ritual stable and glowstones to account for spikes in magic draw. At the moment, three of the six glowstones were smoking—a hissing and sputtering filled the air, accompanied by odd sparks. Black lightning-like streams of magical energy crackled over the ritual’s surface as it flickered and pulsed.

He felt a sudden uncomfortable reminder of the Duke’s party and the glowstone-based bombs Evestani set up in the throne room’s chandeliers.

“Don’t teleport us!” Zullie snapped as if she could sense what Arkk had been about to do, pointing a finger directly at him. “If this fails without being properly shut down, the entire tower will—”

The glowstone she had been reaching towards let out an enormous spark, shooting motes of magic directly into her face as she recoiled. She swiped her hand forward, knocking away the glowstone’s debris as she planted her own hand in the spot it had once occupied.

The ritual circle stabilized. The flickering in the ritual array steadied out, still oscillating but in much smoother, gradual pulses compared to the erratic pulsing from a moment ago. Zullie’s lips twisted in concentration as the lightning-like surges of magic still coursed around between the remaining glowstones, but even those were dimming and steadying out.

Arkk let out a small sigh of relief. He quickly started moving people about, resuming his management of the battle. The airships were dropping more eggs and they needed dealing with. He could figure out what had gone wrong with this ritual in a few minutes, once everything stabilized and returned to the status quo.

Except, that moment never came.

He heard a groaning in the stone around the room. The groan quickly shifted to a scream of stress. The air vibrated with the deafening sound of the fortress tiles cracking under pressure as arcs of energy lashed out, ripping through the command chamber. One struck the chair Arkk used. Another careened just over the heads of the scrying team in their depressed pit. The map and the entire table it was on took the brunt of one of the arcs, throwing it through the room as little cuboids of white matter trailed in its wake. The table slowed down abruptly, leaving it floating in the air with all the tiles and tokens they had used to mark positions drifting in the air around it.

A cataclysmic pulse erupted from the ritual circle, radiating outward in a wave of blinding magic.

It all happened in an instant. Arkk had no time to react.

The heatless shockwave struck him, knocking the breath out of his lungs. He felt his feet lift up off the ground, picked up with those same cuboids of white drifting in the air around him. The walls of the command center buckled. A ripple ran through them as if the stone were liquid. After an instant of a delay, the reinforced walls of the tower exploded outward, drifting a short ways before the cuboids and arcs of magic locked them into place in the air.

The cubes began to change. Their surfaces rippled and began to hollow themselves out. Tiny square-shaped voids appeared on each face, as if a sculptor was carefully carving away the solid material. Yet the cubes didn’t diminish. They became more intricate, more complex. And they grew. The material hollowed out from the smaller voids spread outward, building up more of the cube, only for more and more hollows to appear.

Chunks of the map table vanished as one of the cubes near it grew into it, eating away small hollows just like the source. The table didn’t break. Splinters didn’t go flying through the air. It was a lot like Purifier Tybalt’s abilities, simply removing small square chunks of the table as the cubes grew through it.

Arkk tried to teleport himself. That same locked-in feeling that stopped him from teleporting while trapped in the inquisitor’s ice blocked him. He tried to teleport Zullie, the Protector, Camilla, Harvey, and Luthor.

Only the Protector made it, being the furthest from the ritual circle.

The cubes didn’t stop growing. They didn’t stop spreading. They closed in on him, chunking away bits of his body. He tried to scream. It didn’t hurt, but the sensation was anything but pleasant.

One of the cubes spread in front of his face, hollowing out as it grew more and more, closer and closer. It closed in on his face and—

Darkness enveloped Arkk.

But his awareness didn’t cease. He couldn’t see, but the tower was still there. One of its walls had blown out from the explosion, but some part of it was still connected. Somehow. The sponge-like magic cubes slowed their growth about halfway through the floors above and below the command chamber. Arcs of magic tethered the stones, keeping them from falling to the ground below.

“Damn, damn, damn.”

It took Arkk far too long to realize that he was intact. Hearing Zullie’s voice in the distance, swearing up a storm, brought some level of comfort. He patted himself down, feeling relief with each touch of fabric and skin and hair. His vision was still gone, but not because his eyes had been removed by those expanding cubes. It was more like someone had simply snuffed out the lights.

“Zullie?” He tried calling out.

“I’m not an idiot,” she snarled. Arkk didn’t get the impression that she was angry with him, but at herself. “I planned for that.”

He tried looking in on her through the employee link, but he only got darkness there. Other employees were fine. Rekk’ar was still organizing the defense, Lexa was making her way through the Evestani army, and Ilya was rapidly approaching the Evestani capital. It was just Zullie, Camilla, Luthor, and Harvey. And himself. The five of them were somewhere trapped in utter darkness.

“Of course we were going to be hit by something the avatar could throw out but the ritual couldn’t withstand. I deliberately designed a weak point in the ritual that would fail if overloaded first, saving the rest.”

“Zullie? Can you hear me?”

“I’m not an idiot!” she shouted again.

Fingers clutched at Arkk’s tunic, yanking him through the darkness. He stumbled only to stop abruptly as a head thumped against his chest.

“I planned for that.” She ground her face into his chest, still clawing at his tunic. “It was just… too weak of an attack to overload the failsafe component but too strong for the ritual to withstand. Pure luck. Nothing else.”

That Fickle Wheel appearing in the temple hovered in the back of Arkk’s mind. He didn’t know if that god had anything to do with the current situation, but he was starting to dislike the Fickle Wheel despite that. Of all the Pantheon, the Fickle Wheel might just be his least favorite.

The light, squeaky voice of a terrified fairy called out into the darkness. “Is someone there?”

Arkk pursed his lips, disappointed. “Camilla?” he called out, gently resting a hand on Zullie’s back. The construction of a failsafe implied she knew this was a possibility. She had neglected to warn him of it, likely because of a supreme confidence in her own work. “Camilla, can you hear me?”

“I hear you. I—”

“Wh-Where are where?”

Luthor was out there as well. Harvey too.

“Follow the sound of my voice,” Arkk shouted. He tried to teleport them, but there was no nearby destination. The tower itself felt distant and far off. “Gather together.”

This was partially his fault. As much as he could blame Zullie, they had secure chambers for a reason. Compromising by having her set up in the command center was entirely his fault. He could have denied her, hastily built a new containment room away from the others, or just not have her set up inside the command room but a floor below.

“Gah!” Harvey grunted after a slight thump echoed in the darkness. “There’s some kind of wall here.”

“Wall?” Arkk asked. “Just a minute.”

If they were safe, he had other things to focus on for a moment.

He could still see the tower. It was distant, yes, but still his. It was like looking in on the tower from the Underworld. Moving things and personnel about was doable as well. He tested on a few lesser servants, moving them to try to repair the damaged command chamber. The whale ships, seeing the weakness for what it was, tried launching another volley of their eggs.

Several splattered against the walls of the tower. Arkk simply moved Agnete to the furnace room, opening the vents for her to blast her flames up along the walls of the tower. He could send her out to take care of the few that she would inevitably miss afterward.

Though he would have to be careful.

The sponge-like cubes looked like they had stopped growing. The entire top portion of the tower looked disconnected from the rest because of them. But that couldn’t be the case because he still had control over the territory both above and below the command room. Some connection existed.

The eggs that crashed down near the command floor didn’t quite make it. Lashings of magical arcs scattered through the air, pinning the eggs in place just as Arkk had been stuck. The cubes didn’t continue spreading to the new victims, however, leaving the eggs and their tendrils squirming helplessly in the air. He would have to teleport Agnete out there, though at a distance.

The lesser servants he sent to try to repair that chunk of the tower ended up stuck and floating as well, just like the eggs.

As a test, he tried to teleport one directly into the command chamber, only to… fail. It was like the command room wasn’t there at all. It was probably broken apart, hidden behind the endless cubes, but there should still be something there. He could sense it.

But he couldn’t see it.

Raising an eyebrow, he slowly let go of Zullie, lightly patting her on the back in some form of reassurance. Kneeling, he felt the floor.

It was made up of stone tiles. Familiar stone tiles engraved with a faint maze-like pattern on their surface.

He was still in the command room. It was just…

Not in the tower?

“W-Where are we?” Luthor asked, sounding much closer than before.

Arkk tried a small light spell, murmuring the incantation.

It didn’t so much as light up the room as the darkness pulled back. Either way, he could see. The large seat he used was toppled on its side, cracked and broken. The map table had finally crashed into the floor. All its pieces and markers were scattered about. A few steps away, down in the scrying pit, Luthor’s nose poked up above its edge.

Zullie still clung to him, though she had loosened her grip enough for him to move. Anguish and distress lined her face. It wasn’t hard to imagine what was going through her head. More than a couple of her projects failed, many quite catastrophically. To have one that started out so promising end up like this? Arkk was angry with her for several good reasons, but he still felt a pang of sympathy somewhere underneath.

“Everyone alright?” Arkk said, earning a frightened nod from Luthor. He stepped toward the pit. Rather than have them try to navigate toward the stairs in the inky darkness, Arkk extended a hand. At the same time, he teleported Agnete around the exterior of the tower to handle the straggler eggs. “Let’s get you out of there.”

Luthor accepted his hand without reservation, practically clawing his way up Arkk’s arm like it was a rope thrown down an oubliette. Harvey and Camilla, being much shorter as a flopkin and a fairy, forced him to kneel. On the plus side, they were much lighter and easier to help out of the shallow pit. Harvey even had the wherewithal to grab hold of the crystal ball on his way out of the pit.

“Where…?” Harvey asked, trying to look around as he found his feet.

“A very good question,” Arkk said, trying to keep his voice calm and reassuring. The last thing they needed was panic. “Zullie. You can be angry with yourself later. I’ll even join you in your anger—”

The witch wilted, making him regret his words before he finished his sentence.

Nothing to do about it now. Words couldn’t be unspoken. Unless you were Savren and could wipe minds. “I need you to focus. Where are we?”

“Where?” she asked, turning her head this way and that. “We’re… likely in one of two places. One bad. The other worse.”

“Lovely,” Arkk bit out. “Where?”

“It would be better if we were in the domain of Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The Maze of Infinite Paths utilized her boundary magic to try to weaken the barrier between our reality and other planes, just enough to warp everything. Like a portal without the portal itself providing structure. Chaotic and wild.”

“We’re in another plane?” Arkk said, feeling a sudden chill down his back. No wonder it felt like controlling his tower from the Underworld.

“Yes,” she said before a sudden look of worry crossed her face. “I hope we’re in another plane. Let me rephrase my earlier answer. We’re likely in one of three places, one bad, one worse, and the other… disastrous.”

“Disastrous being?”

“Between planes. I… Planes are accessible through the portals. But if we’ve somehow ended up between planes—No. It couldn’t be. We wouldn’t be alive. It has to be one of the two planes… yes. Definitely.”

Arkk let out a sigh, not feeling reassured in the slightest. “We’re either with Xel’atriss or where?”

“The plane the Maze of Infinite Paths is designed to weaken barriers between is… well, the Maze. We could very well be in the domain of Unknown, the Enigma.”

That chill down Arkk’s spine turned to a cascade of ice. The one domain that Vezta had warned him against entering, fearing a single step would see him lost for eternity, and he had somehow found himself there.

Arkk swallowed, lips pursed into a thin line. “Lovely.

“Just lovely.”

 

 

The tower loomed in the distance, taking hit after hit from the bombardment. Flames spread around it every few minutes only for the bombardments to resume. Even from the corner of Lexa’s eye, she could tell that it was being worn down. Arkk had stopped trying to repair less essential parts of the tower and the areas he was focusing on didn’t manage to recover in the brief reprieves. Worrying, but nothing that Lexa could focus on.

She had her hands occupied with the endless demands of the battlefield. The avatar was somewhere nearby. She could almost feel him. The golden aura had faded before she could get her eyes on him, leaving her searching.

Lexa had figured he would be easy to locate once she got close enough. The avatar’s host bodies were distinctive, both in that they were shorter than what was typical of the human-dominant army and their tattoos stood out. Especially when the tattoos were glowing. Venerated as he was, Lexa assumed that whoever he was possessing would have been surrounded by retainers, sycophants, and other attendants. At least someone to manage the child when he wasn’t possessing them.

Lexa couldn’t find a hint. This was a battlefield, not even one at the Evestani base of operations. It was possible he would have left such attendants back at Woodly Rhyme. With all the bulky armor of the soldiers blocking her view and Lexa’s own deficient stature, she was having more trouble than she would have thought.

The frustration left her looking around.

She found her gaze drawn to the distance. She had been focusing on her task, not the status of the tower, trusting that Arkk would figure something out. But a subtle distortion rippling through the air around the fortress drew her attention to it in full. It was like waves of heat rising from a sunbaked stone. Initially, it seemed inconsequential. Just another anomaly amid the tumult of war. Lexa started to dismiss it, knowing that Zullie was trying to get something better than her previous defensive spell so that Arkk might have a window for an offensive maneuver, but as the distortion intensified, it became impossible to ignore.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lexa caught sight of an impossible phenomenon—a second tower, identical to the first, materialized beside it. Her curiosity piqued, she turned her head sharply to focus on the spectacle.

That swift motion proved a disorienting mistake.

Every degree her gaze shifted, the tower transformed. Its shape and presence fluctuated wildly. One moment, it stood as a solitary monolith. The next, it vanished completely, only to reappear in the next movement of her head as a multiplied, chaotic assembly of towers jumbled together at bizarre angles. Some iterations soared skyward, impossibly tall, as if trying to swat down the airships hovering high over the battlefield. It was as if she peered through the slits of a lattice, each narrow gap revealing a wildly different scene.

Lexa wasn’t the only one to have noticed. A chorus of gasps, hisses, and even the sounds of retching from those overwhelmed cascaded throughout the battlefield. Unfortunately, with Evestani’s backs to the tower, Prince’s forces bore the brunt of the disorienting vision. In a fight to the death, even a brief instant of distraction and disorientation cost more than most could afford.

A practiced flick of her wrist sent one of her daggers flying through the air, catching one sand-gold-clad soldier in the side of his neck, just below the bulbous shape of the helmets characteristic of their elites. It saved one of the Prince’s men from certain death. Another dagger flew true and struck one of the soldiers just to the left of his nasal bar, digging into his eye and cheek. But alone, Lexa couldn’t help everyone. Even if she had enough daggers hidden under her cloak, she didn’t have enough hands.

Soldiers fell. They weren’t of Company Al-Mir, nor were they innocent children. Lexa wasn’t going to shed tears over them. Still, it rankled, their losses gnawed at her. Every advantage for the Evestani army was a disadvantage for her.

The mesmerizing distraction of the tower’s transformation didn’t remain isolated to one side of the battlefield for long. Even outside the visual spectacle of whatever Zullie had done to the tower, which drew plenty of eyes, the airship overhead continued its destruction from the skies. Or tried to.

The streaks of alchemical cannon fire in the sky never quite reached the tower. It was hard to tell with the shifting mirage that the tower had become. The shifting mirage of the tower defied the trajectories of the shots. Instead of striking true, the shoots veered unpredictably, scattering in wild arcs around the fortress. Some even ricocheted back toward the airship, similar to light reflecting off a well-polished mirror. One such rebounding shot forced the airship to veer sharply, cutting off its bombardment as a fierce gust of wind drove the projectile in the opposite direction.

More chaos in the already disordered battle.

Evestani had been setting up at a distance, right at the edge of the range for their bombardment magics and siege engines. That distance protected them from most of the reflected shots, but not all.

Lexa’s eyes widened as a hurling ball of flame, arced high in the air from the tower, started its descent straight toward her.

Wrapped in the cloak of darkness, she was as notable as any other shadow on the battlefield. That kept her safe from the soldiers. It would not help against a giant ball of fire. Springing off, muttering every agility and speed-enhancing spell she knew, Lexa ran as hard as she could perpendicular to the incoming fireball.

A beam of golden light shot up into the air, making Lexa skid to a stop in the dirt and muck. The light wasn’t as large or as powerful as the one that had knocked out the tower’s first protective array, but it was enough to scatter the ball of fire into a thousand harmless embers. The beam of gold didn’t stop there. It swept downward, aimed for the tower. It probably wouldn’t be enough to do much damage, but the avatar must not have wanted to waste what power he had gathered.

As soon as the light crossed into whatever shifting effect enveloped the tower, the beam split. It split and split and split. A million rays of gold lanced out from the tower in every possible direction. Lexa hurled herself to the ground, taking cover behind a fallen soldier whose colors were so caked in mud and blood that she had no idea to whose faction he had once belonged. One thin beam of gold strafed the ground directly in front of her nose.

It barely left a mark on the ground.

Already weaker than the beam that punched a hole into a mountain, splitting the beam so many times must have weakened it further. Everyone on both sides of the battlefield cowered away, hunkered down, but ended up looking surprised as the rays passed over them mostly harmlessly. The only real effects were faint streaks of gold now adorning everyone’s armor.

A beat of unusual silence hung over the battlefield before a surge of wind just about swept Lexa off her feet. It rushed toward the multitude of towers. Dark lightning reminiscent of some of Zullie’s more dangerous spells crackled along the surface of some of the towers, right at the mid-point. Bits of brick peeled away, pulled outward while still connected by those streaks of lightning. They froze in the air, looking like time stopped just as an explosion had gone off.

Lexa wasn’t sure what that was about. Hopefully nothing bad.

Some idiot shouted and started the fight once again.

Lexa paid it little mind, focused on her task.

She had seen where that ray had come from.

Throwing herself to her feet, still enhanced by all her spells, Lexa rushed through the battlefield, dodging soldiers and weaving through battle lines.

There he was. A small ring of guards surrounded him, but none of them were particularly notable. None of those gold-armored knights like the one Dakka had slain in Elmshadow. They were simple sand-gold elites with those bulbous domed helmets. In the middle of the ring, a young boy, human and probably no older than fifteen years, stood with glowing gold eyes and intricate tattoos etched into the crown of his head. The snarling look of anger didn’t quite fit the boy’s face.

He was upset.

Good.

Lexa didn’t know who the avatar was possessing. It was probably someone he had brought with him rather than an unwilling captured child. The children she had tried to rescue in Elmshadow hadn’t been well taken care of, dressed in rags and imprisoned in the remnants of that church building. This one had ornate robes, lined with golden threads and flashy mosaic patterns of blue, gold, and white.

Would it have made a difference if he had obviously been possessing a slave? Not to Lexa. Even if he had been in the body of someone so obviously innocent, such as a mere baby, she would still have proceeded. She had already resolved herself to do so. One baby’s death was worth preventing what happened in that Elmshadow church from ever happening again.

Lexa’s fingers brushed over the silver sphere she carried beneath her cloak. The sphere sealed off the effigy’s effects for now, but as soon as she opened it, things would change. The avatar would surely notice. She needed a full plan, a fool-proof plan, both to get in and to get out. Arkk said he would teleport her, but he had warned her that his magic didn’t work on employees who ended up captured. That included immobilized people, such as those who had been trapped in ice during an engagement with the inquisitors before her joining.

It also worked in reverse. His captives could be teleported even if they weren’t employees. Prisoners at Fortress Al-Mir could be moved about at will—Arkk’s will.

Lexa eyed the surroundings, narrowing her gaze. A distraction would work best. The avatar would probably be most distracted right as he began to attack again. Unfortunately, Lexa didn’t know when that might happen. If the avatar swapped bodies before she struck, she might lose him completely.

The avatar knelt as Lexa watched, resting on a large rug that covered the ground. The rug matched the rest of Evestani aesthetics with its mosaic pattern and predominant gold. Despite the gaudy and eye-catching attire of the avatar, the rug gave him enough camouflage to make him almost invisible except for his head. Fortunately for Lexa, the camouflage only extended to the edges of the rug. The entire assortment stuck out in the forest to the point where she had trouble believing she had been having difficulty finding him.

The anger on the boy’s face vanished as he closed his eyes and took up a meditative pose. Lexa’s heart lurched, fearing she had missed her window of opportunity. The glow in the tattoos didn’t subside, however, letting her calm back down. The avatar was probably trying to hasten his recovery so that he might try one of the large rays again.

Lexa wasn’t sure if that was a wise idea with what happened to the weaker beam. It might end the conflict, but probably not in the way the avatar wanted. Then again, when one didn’t put themselves at risk, obliterating everything on the battlefield including their borrowed body probably didn’t sound like that big of a dealbreaker if there was even a slight chance at success. Though Lexa doubted Evestani’s imperial allies would agree.

The meditation gave her an opportunity. The avatar’s eyes were closed. A part of her wanted to rush forward now, not wanting to waste that opportunity, but she couldn’t be too careful. She wasn’t about to underestimate the avatar and believe that he had simply decided to take a nap. A misstep here and she would surely die.

Except for two, his bodyguards were focused on the nearby battle raging on. It hadn’t gotten close yet, but it wasn’t far off. The tide had turned back against Evestani with the addition of the hordes of undead goblins. The little skeletal beings were utter menaces, hopping and bouncing around like they had coiled springs for shoes. They would jump on someone’s back and stab them in the neck before bounding away to find another target.

None lasted long if they took a hit. Small and barely held together as it was, a single slash of a sword or, more effectively, a blunt hit from a mace or hammer would scatter their bones across the battlefield. The only reason they hadn’t been destroyed within seconds of clawing their way out of the ground was their size and agility.

It wasn’t quite enough for the Prince’s forces to surge forward and claim victory. Three hundred goblin skeletons added to a conflict of nearly twenty thousand just wasn’t enough on its own, not even when some of their victims got back to their feet only to attack their own side. Especially not with the Prince’s army viewing the skeletons with just as much hostility as the Evestani. More than once, Lexa had witnessed a skeleton get clobbered from behind by the very people they were supposed to be helping.

But if Lexa could rope a few of them into helping her, it might just prove the distraction she would need to deal with the avatar. If she could push the battle a little closer to the avatar—just close enough for his bodyguards to be forced into more active defense but not close enough for the avatar to take action himself—she would have the best opportunity she would be getting.

Hopping away and climbing a small tree, Lexa surveyed the larger battlefield, looking for what she needed.

A cadre of goblins acted just like real goblins as they worked together to take out a few larger targets. The poor Evestani soldier ended up isolated in the middle of the battlefield. They likely would have been overran by the Prince’s forces already had the presence of the goblins not been keeping them wary.

They weren’t close to the avatar. Not by half. There were a lot of people to fight through on the way. But again, Lexa didn’t need them to reach the avatar. They just needed to get close enough to cause a disturbance.

With one last glance at the avatar, making sure the tattoos were still glowing and that he didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon, Lexa took off.

Three minutes after setting off, one of the soldiers the goblins were having trouble with had a dagger through the front of his throat. The other soldier didn’t have time to look surprised before he joined his friend in the mud at the hands of one of the goblins.

The rest of the little skeletal creatures froze upon her arrival, their bones clattering and their jaws grinding. Lexa wasn’t sure if they could sense her or not. They lacked eyes that could track anything, leaving their heads just vaguely pointed in her direction. It was as if they were trying to decide if she should be a target as well.

With a suppressed shudder, Lexa didn’t stick around. She started back the way she had come, driving a dagger into the back of some knight’s knee on her way. The goblins mostly followed her, drifting around to do their part in causing chaos. More importantly, the rapid deaths they were causing made a hole in Evestani’s defensive line. The Prince’s army started pouring in, adding their own blades to the mix. They still kept a ways away from the goblins, but that was fine for her purposes.

Fine until they got a reinforcement of their own.

A short, stout man bounded into the fray. Blood coated him from head to foot as if he had deliberately bathed in it. He knocked aside a goblin with an absent-minded backhand, dispersing the skeleton’s bones in every direction as he took over the goblin’s target. The Evestani knight didn’t stand a chance. Despite his rotund belly, the man easily slid around the swing of the knight’s sword. His arm thrust out, slamming into the knight’s armored elbow, shattering the metal with the blow even as the man’s elbow bent in the wrong direction. The knight didn’t even get to scream before the man reached forward with his bare hands, thrusting his fingers through the knight’s breastplate, only to rip out the man’s heart and crush it in front of his face before the light left his eyes.

All with an expression of absolute rapture on the rotund man’s face.

He then turned, eyes finding another target. He rushed forward and ripped off someone’s head. Another knight lost his arms, only to be beaten to death with them. The man continued, charging through the opening Lexa had created with an unstoppable frenzy. He didn’t even use a weapon.

It took Lexa far too long to recognize the man underneath all that blood. The leader of the Prince’s forces. She had considered assassinating the man after his foiled mutiny to retake the leadership position over Arkk, but had been sent off on a mission before she could start plotting. Seeing him now, Lexa wondered how much she owed her life to that distracting mission.

She hadn’t realized the Prince’s force contained any specialists like Company Al-Mir had. The man fought like a less dignified version of Kia.

The man, Mags, turned. Despite her cloak of darkness, despite all the stealthy spells that even the avatar failed to notice, Mags turned to directly face her. With the way his head angled downward to her height, there was no mistaking his look as mere coincidence.

There was something different about Mags. Something other than the thick layer of blood he wore as clothes.

His eyes shifted, catching the light. They were green, bright, and divided in two by a long slit-shaped pupil.

Demon.

He grinned at her, smiling as if daring her to do something about it.

There was nothing she could do about it. She wasn’t equipped with counter-demon weaponry. Even if she was, she wasn’t suicidal enough to think she could take him on. Not when he easily bent in half, dodging a sword strike he couldn’t possibly have seen coming for his back. He righted himself fast enough that his headbutt dented the attacking knight’s armor, knocking him clean on his back. Mags pounced on him, straddling his armored chest as he started crushing the knight’s skull with his bare hands.

The head burst apart like a watermelon, sparking movement in Lexa’s feet. She took off, running back toward the avatar. The demon fought Evestani. That was good. She wasn’t an enemy of the Prince. He couldn’t attack her.

And what could be more distracting than a demon?

But she had to act fast. If the demon got to the avatar before she did, he would kill him. Easily, even. The avatar would survive and probably possess someone else, but then Lexa would have to start all over again to find him.

That couldn’t be allowed to happen.