Author: Tower Curator

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Lost Authority

Snow Globe

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It was like a scene from a snow globe.

A very hot snow globe with no water to cool everything down.

Alyssa stood on the floating reality sliver that had once been directly beneath the Cardinal Virtue of Justice, which itself was above the deep crater where the Justice had pinned the demon down. There used to be a forest around the crater. A mostly destroyed forest thanks to the Justice’s sword, but a forest nonetheless.

Now? There was nothing. Not even a stump was left behind. There wasn’t even a single blade of grass. A heat haze hovered above the ground, which would have made everything shifty like a mirage, but there wasn’t anything to shift around. Everywhere Alyssa looked, there was nothing but flat, smooth terrain.

Dusk grey ash drifted throughout the sphere. Most had, thankfully, settled into a snowy blanket covering the ground. But there was still enough that Alyssa had pulled out a small handkerchief from her satchel and pressed it over her mouth and nose. It wasn’t completely working. She could taste the ash on her tongue.

The view of the Endless Expanse, the demon realm, and all the other worlds in the larger dome was completely occluded. Some of the fractured panels glowed with a little light that managed to pierce the layer of ash. But there wasn’t any way to see the actual worlds behind them. Only about a third of the dome was lit in such a way. Alyssa had to assume that it was the Endless Expanse shining through. The demon world had been dark even before the ash and the Earth-like worlds weren’t as bright.

If not for the impending suffocation hazard, the scenery would have been quite pretty, even with as empty as it was.

“This must be from Irulon’s ritual,” Kasita said, looking around. “I hope she’s alright. Shall I try a Message?”

“Go ahead.” While speaking, Alyssa tried to keep her mouth as closed as possible and her tongue as close to the roof of her mouth as she could. The less ash that got into her lungs, the better. Even if it meant swallowing it with saliva. Her stomach could probably break it down a whole lot better than her lungs. “But we need to leave. Right away. I’m not going to be able to survive here for long. Unless Adrael wants to clear the air?”

Adrael, floating just above Alyssa, just glared. “Having you die here would be advantageous to me.”

“All those questions you have about me and the Throne might just become impossible to answer.”

“I’ll live,” she said, voice flat and uncaring.

“You’ll never find out what happened to your staff.”

That got Adrael’s attention. She tried to hide it, but there was a very subtle twitch in her wings and the start of a snap of her head toward Alyssa. “What do you mean, what happened to it? What did you do?”

Alyssa just shrugged as she started walking. The bridge of reality slivers was still up, but all the segments that were outside the smaller sphere had a good few inches of ash covering them. Between the fine grain of the ash and the perfectly smooth surface of the reality slivers, it was like walking on a sand dune made from ice. Alyssa had some spells to slow her fall if she did end up slipping off, but landing even lightly in the caldera of ash would knock it back up into the air. Keeping the air as clear as possible would be necessary to get out of this place without suffocating.

She was trying to think of all the spells in her deck for any that might help with that, but there wasn’t anything like Draw Water for air. At least not in her library of cards. Maybe somewhere out there. Neither did she have a water breathing spell, an air filter spell, or anything else that she thought might work. Maybe an Annihilator would atomize the ash to the point where it wouldn’t matter, but the dome was large enough that even her beams would only hit a fraction of it all. Unless the dome reflected the beam, which was still a concern.

Despite Adrael’s presumed concern for her staff, she didn’t come to Alyssa’s aid. Iosefael could probably be bullied into helping and Tenebrael might just offer on her own. Assuming clearing the air didn’t break any rules, which it might. But even if it did, Tenebrael would probably be willing to teleport Alyssa out. Kasita might wind up left behind, but Kasita didn’t seem to be having any problem with breathing or walking around.

Hopefully Irulon had a better solution. The draken and Fela would otherwise end up walking around, breathing in the ash. Alyssa had just gone through hell to save Izsha. She didn’t really want to do it again unless absolutely necessary.

“Any response from Irulon?” Alyssa asked as her feet hit solid ground.

With all the heat and ash, she had been a little worried that whatever Irulon had done would have turned the ground into glass and that it would be just as slick as the reality slivers. But this, she felt she could run on it if necessary. At the moment, Alyssa wanted to avoid that. Sprinting across the land would not only kick up a bunch of the ash, but it would make her breathe harder too. At the moment, her rag seemed to suffice. She wasn’t feeling like she needed to cough.

“Not yet, I…”

For a moment, Alyssa thought Kasita had frozen again. Accelero wasn’t active, but she had gotten so used to it that it was basically expected at this point.

“She’s somewhere out in this ash field.”

“Really?” Alyssa let out a small sigh of relief, glad Irulon was safe. She had professed faith in Irulon’s skills earlier to Kasita, but she would have been lying if she said that she hadn’t been worried in the slightest. “I would have expected to see her from where our sphere was.” It had been at an elevated position. But… relative to the rest of the dome, Irulon and the draken would have been small dots in the distance. The heat haze must have disguised them. The shimmering grey on grey overlapped what tiny dots her friends would have been.

It was much hotter down near the ground than it had been on the sliver platform. The ash didn’t burn her bare skin and her dragon hide armor protected the majority of her body, but even the snowflakes that had been drifting through the air landed with the feel of a heated blanket. And it was getting warmer. Her head and hair was almost completely covered at this point. She couldn’t see her face, but she was sure that it was coated as well. Every new bit of ash that clung to her just helped to insulate the rest.

She was fairly certain that she had heard stories of heaps of ash spontaneously combusting. Having that happen to her would be… unpleasant, to say the least.

In the distance, a fireball shooting straight up distracted Alyssa from her impending fiery demise. “That has to be Irulon,” she said as she pulled out her own Fireball spell card. It was a spell that she had probably used once and never since then. There were just more useful alternatives, or less lethal alternatives, for most situations. But acting as a signal flare? Alyssa couldn’t think up a better use for it. Technically speaking, Kasita had a few actual flare spells. But they all had meaning based on their color. The situation might appear over with at the moment, but Alyssa didn’t want to cause any confusion.

So a fireball it was.

Irulon’s fireball didn’t look like it was far out. There was a limit to how far it could be with the dome in place, but even relative to that, Irulon was probably only a few minutes worth of walking away.

But the ash was slowing Alyssa down. She couldn’t make haste through it. Not even if she was willing to ignore the ash she would end up kicking into the air. The real problem was what the ash might cloak underneath. A small divot in the otherwise smooth blanket might be nothing to worry about, or it could end up being a pitfall. Suffocating to death underneath a ton of ash that would collapse on top of her sounded like an even worse way of dying than spontaneous human combustion.

Alyssa took her time in heading toward where that flare had come from, making sure that the ground could support her weight before fully committing to any step. A tactic that did not go unnoticed by her companions.

“If you aren’t going to lie down and die, would you mind picking up the pace?”

“Maybe if you would clear this ash away, I wouldn’t have to watch my footing so much.”

“Want me to run ahead?” Kasita asked. “I shouldn’t have much to worry about. Irulon probably has a way to get rid of or survive inside this place. And I can keep an eye out for anything that might trouble you.”

“Getting separated would be bad. If I do fall into a pit full of ash, I need you to know where I fell so that you guys can recover my body and let my mother know what happened.”

“You’d figure a way out of a pit. Even if you had to use an Annihilator to get rid of the ash. And if you used an Annihilator, Irulon would see.”

“Can you turn into a bird? If you could fly to Irulon, you might be able to keep both of us in sight.”

“I could, but I don’t think I could fly very well.”

“The ash in the air?”

“No,” Kasita said with a small giggle. “I just don’t know how to fly. Never bothered to learn. Might be fun to do so, I should think about it—maybe as a proper harpy rather than a little bird—but that doesn’t help us at the moment.”

“We’ll just keep walking then. Our impatient angel can either help out or quit complaining.” Adrael opened her mouth, but Alyssa interrupted before she could start. “Don’t make me chain you up and gag you.”

Adrael’s mouth clicked shut. Alyssa tried to look like she was ignoring the glare, but she kept an eye on the angel. Iosefael, Kenziel, or Tenebrae, she might have ignored. But not Adrael. The one angel who had demonstrated the ability to harm mortals had to be watched, even if keeping her eyes open was painful with all the ash.

Irulon wasn’t as far off as Alyssa had thought. It helped that Irulon had started moving toward Alyssa when she fired off her own flare. Thankfully. All the ash clinging to Alyssa’s eyelashes was making it almost impossible to walk in a straight line, let alone keep Adrael in sight.

And Irulon did have a way to combat the ash. Again, thankfully. Though that had been more or less expected.

A dome surrounded Irulon. Not a dome like the sliver overhead, but intangible dome of swirling wind. It kept the ash at bay while leaving the interior clear. Walking through it felt like a slap in the face—hopefully a slap that knocked most of the ash off her—but the interior was blissfully calm.

Though Alyssa had to go back outside the dome, grab hold of Kasita, and drag her inside. The poor mimic got flung across the ashfields when she tried to walk through on her own.

All of Irulon’s group were present. The draken, Fela, and Catal. No one had wound up left behind. No one looked particularly good either. They were all just as coated with ash as Alyssa was. Fela and the draken in particular looked worn down. Fela’s fur was matted with the ash, something she was trying to clean through vigorous combing with her claws. It really didn’t seem to help much, but whatever spell Irulon had active whisked away the ash into the swirling cloud, keeping the air inside clear enough to breathe without worrying.

Facial expressions on the draken were always hard to read, but Izsha just had this look to it that spoke volumes about how done it was. The eyes. It was something about how those slit pupils were half-lidded and staring without really focusing on anything.

“Full disclosure,” Alyssa said once they were all safely on the inside of the shield of swirling winds. As she spoke, she took a fresh rag from her satchel and tried to wipe the ash off from around her eyes. “Archangel Adrael has decided to follow me around until I tell her what happened to her staff.”

“Which you could do now that you can breathe, right?” Although Adrael said she wanted to talk about her staff… her eyes were locked onto Irulon. She wasn’t even blinking.

Alyssa clenched her deck of cards, wondering if she shouldn’t just chain up Adrael now before the Archangel had a chance to do anything. She internally debated for a moment. So far, Adrael was being cooperative. But…

Spectral Chains lashed out. There was no sense taking more chances. Adrael’s wings, already spread out, strained against the links as the chains constricted around her. But she didn’t break them. A light tug pulled her out of the air, dragging her to the charred ground.

“What are you—” Adrael started shouting.

“I don’t like how you’re looking at my friends,” Alyssa said, wondering if she sounded like someone overly obsessed and protective.

“Archangel Adrael,” Irulon said, narrowing her eyes at the chains. Adrael was almost certainly invisible to her, but the spell was not. “That was the one who…”

“Yeah. She was.”

“Hm.”

Alyssa sighed, glaring at Adrael. “We can talk later. For now, just… sit and don’t make a fuss.” With one more sigh, she looked to Irulon. “Are you all alright? Looks like you guys have been through the wringer more than I have.”

“I needed six spells cast at once while simultaneously performing the ritual. Only Fela was capable of assisting in the spell casting due to the high rank nature of the spells.”

Fela stopped trying to clean her fur long enough to give Irulon a withering glance. “I hate magic. I had to hold three of those papers at once without dropping them or she said we were going to die.”

“There was a bit of an inferno to outrun as well,” Irulon added. “It might have all been for nothing. I didn’t even see any of the Astral Authority when I dropped the sliver to cast the spells. I’m not saying that there were none, but I presume most fled or otherwise dispersed after you felled their leader.”

“I did end up killing the Justice then?”

“Or you forced it to retreat. No sign of the demon either. Though I suppose I might have a hard time noticing its presence.”

“The last time I saw her, she was chained up right in the path of the Justice’s blade. Which I assume could actually kill her if it hit?” Alyssa asked with a glance toward Adrael. If it couldn’t, there wasn’t much point to their fighting.

Adrael didn’t respond. Her teeth were clenched together and her glare was fixed on Alyssa.

At least she wasn’t staring at Irulon.

“Is there any reason to stay here?” Alyssa asked. “The Justice and demon are gone. I’d like to get back to Illuna and make sure that nothing went wrong over there.” Brakkt was keeping an eye on things, but there were still so many elements to worry about. Demons, Astral Authority, the monsters, the visitors from Yora, the Illuna guards. Probably more than that. They had only been gone a few hours, but so much could happen in only a few hours. All one had to do was look at what had been accomplished here.

The Justice, gone. The Astral Authority and demon along with it. A few acres of forest had been completely destroyed, burned to ash. And not just the forest. Everything that had been living in the area was gone as well.

“Leaving would not be a bad idea,” Irulon said with a nod.

“Good. I need a bath. But…” Once again, Alyssa glanced off to Adrael. For a moment, Alyssa considered just dragging Adrael around until Tenebrael showed up. Which was something that Alyssa hoped would be sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, sooner in this case might mean days off. She had to sleep sometime and couldn’t keep Adrael locked up forever. So… “Iosefael has your staff.”

“The Principality slave to Tenebrael?”

“Is she a slave? I don’t—”

“Why does a Principality have my staff?”

“Would you rather it have stayed in the hands of a mere mortal?”

“You are not a mere mortal, abomination.”

Alyssa opened her mouth to deny Adrael’s likely not-so-baseless accusation, but hesitated as a better idea came to mind. “So you would rather I have it.”

The angel glared. “Release me,” she said, voice a low, angry tone. Her mouth barely moved as she spoke.

Alyssa let the chains drop from around her, keeping ready in case she had to cast the spell again. But her caution was unnecessary. After just one more moment of glaring, the angel exploded in a flurry of feathers. All of which got swept up into Irulon’s whirlwind before disappearing. Alyssa snapped her head around, looking to make sure that the angel didn’t just teleport somewhere else nearby. But she couldn’t find any evidence that she had. No more feathers appeared and got caught in the whirlwind.

“It’s gone?” Irulon said, stepping closer to where the chains had been.

“As far as I can tell.” It was possible that Adrael had teleported outside the whirlwind. With all the ash kicked up into the air around them from the swirling winds, she couldn’t see very well beyond. A flying shield might be able to penetrate it, striking down one of them… but Alyssa doubted that would happen now. Maybe the second after she teleported, but there was no sense in delaying an attack any longer. And she had a goal away from the puny mortals that would be dead in a mere hundred years anyway. “I think she’s gone off to recover her staff.”

“Good. I didn’t want to mention this with an angel present, but…” Irulon stepped closer to Alyssa, moving right up to her. Alyssa started to pull back until Irulon clasped a hand around her arm. “I don’t think I can do this,” she said in a hushed whisper.

“This?”

Irulon tapped the side of her head twice, eyes flicking black and white before returning to their usual violet. “The timing was so precise, I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it even with my companion’s assistance. If one syllable had come out wrong, if I had made a mistake in any element of my cards or the ritual circle, if I had even a split second of hesitation… let’s just say that you and Kasita would be finding your way out of here on your own.”

“Ah…”

“I was a genius before, make no mistake. But without… I… We… We’re me.”

Uncertainty. It was such a foreign look on Irulon’s face. She had shown such a face before, the day after waking up from her divine revelation. But it had been momentary. Almost just a fluke. The next few weeks after that, she had returned mostly to normal. There had been a few times, such as following Izsha’s revival, where she had shown a bit more panic than normal.

“I had been trying to work up the courage, to muster up some semblance of rationality. If we don’t split, we’re very likely both going to be dead. So I was going to ask… but then you cut off your tie with Tenebrael’s power. It was a relief, in a way, to see you walk around without glowing eyes. It meant that I could delay and procrastinate more, take more time for deliberation.

“But after today, after all… this,” Irulon said, waving a hand about. “I have to thank Tenebrael that I was such a coward. My… our mind keeps racing back to what would have happened if I had been alone out here. We just—”

Irulon didn’t get a chance to continue. Alyssa’s first time hugging the princess might have gone sour, but this was definitely a hugging situation. With Irulon’s hand still clamped around Alyssa’s wrist, she could only use one arm, but that was enough. She wrapped it around Irulon’s shoulders and held her position. Even with Irulon stiffening, Alyssa didn’t let go.

She held on tight. Even as Irulon’s eyes flicked from violet to black and white, making it seem as if both the dragon and the princess were glaring, Alyssa didn’t let go. She didn’t let the situation get awkward enough that Kasita had to step in.

“We’ll figure something out. We’ll go back to Illuna, sit down in your room, and come up with a plan. Tenebrael should be done with the Astral Authority soon—” If interrupting the fight between the demon and the Justice hadn’t interrupted Tenebrael’s work. “—so she’ll likely show herself to me sooner or later. She’ll help out too.” Or else… “We’ll figure out a way to resolve the situation so that you and the dragon are both happy without killing either one of you. Slowly or quickly. I promise.”

It was a long moment of staring before Irulon’s black and white eyes flicked back to violet. Slowly, the princess nodded.

Alyssa offered Irulon what she hoped was a comforting smile before removing her hand from Irulon’s shoulders.

Now she just had to find a way to keep her promise.

A prospect that likely involved bullying more angels into submission.

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Lost Authority

Of Thrones and Deities

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“It’s been twenty minutes,” Kasita said, staring at Alyssa’s phone. “We’re almost to the point where we can leave, according to Irulon.”

“Let’s give it another ten, just to be safe.” As Alyssa spoke, she stared around their sphere, watching, trying to decipher exactly what the angels were doing off in that other world. The vast majority seemed to simply fly about, usually toward or away from the main tower. Every once in a while, two angels would stop and chat. Sometimes it looked entirely coincidental. As if they were two school buddies who just happened to stop at the same coffee shop at the same time. Others met with far more premeditation. Like the group inside the one room, they went to a specific spot and waited for other angels to show up.

There was an overwhelming amount of angels with only a single pair of wings. Members of the Third Sphere, Guardian Angels, Archangels, and Principalities. There were a few with four wings, but Alyssa could probably count the ones she had seen on one hand. Which made sense. Dominions would be off on their own worlds, running and managing things. Virtues apparently spent most of their time in some great archive near the Throne. Authorities… were probably the ones that Alyssa had seen. They were the repairmen of the angelic caste. And they had no relation to the Astral Authority.

Of those with six wings, the only ones that Alyssa had seen were the massive spinning wheels in the sky. Ophanim. Beings tied to the movement of reality itself. According to Tenebrael, when they moved, everything moved. If they ever stopped their languid rotation, everything would stop.

They were covered in eyes. Maybe it was Alyssa’s imagination, but it felt like a good chunk of those eyes were staring directly at her. Then again, that was probably just a coincidence. Each one of the Ophanim were supposedly the size of planets, and they were close enough to Alyssa’s points of view that it looked like something out of a science fiction movie more than how planets appeared from Earth’s perspective. With each one of them having perhaps millions of eyes, it was perfectly plausible that a number of them would have been facing in her direction no matter where she was.

Alyssa tried shifting side to side, but there wasn’t any obvious movement in the eyes. Whether that was because they weren’t staring at her or because there wasn’t enough room on the platform to get their eyes to shift wasn’t a question she could answer.

“Not worried about Irulon?”

“No. Whatever else is going on with her, I don’t think she is suicidal. She had a plan. A plan that you knew about but I got left out of, but a plan nonetheless. What was up with the violet flare, anyway?”

“Kill ‘em all.”

“Wasn’t that green?”

“That was the plan to kill ‘em all but we were taking care of the demon. Violet was the same but replace demon with the Justice.”

“And what was I doing during all this? How come I didn’t know—”

“I think you were holding your breath.”

“Oh… But that would have been before… Of course, who am I kidding. Irulon probably had all these plans ready to go before we even showed up, didn’t she?” Alyssa shook her head.

“She only got to yellow before you started holding her breath, but I gathered that there were several others.”

Alyssa almost asked what the other plans were before deciding that it probably didn’t matter. Both those plans were far more vague than the two plans they had come up with after Alyssa had joined in the planning session, so they were obviously vague prototypes that hadn’t been intended to be used. Probably.

“But anyway,” Alyssa said, “it isn’t Irulon I’m worried about. That Archangel has been gone for twenty minutes.”

“Worried she figured out that she could order the Astral Authority around and is now setting up an ambush while we’re trapped in here?”

“Well, I am now.” Alyssa eyed the sphere around her. No sign of any portals or feathers—aside from the feathers on the angels in the Expanse, of course. If she was setting up an ambush, it was taking a while. “I was worried that she just ran off even despite the executioner’s axe we’ve got over her head.”

“I’m sure it isn’t anything to worry about. Just trap her in those chains if she shows up. Annihilator the Astral Authority. I’ll hop over to the Expanse and start telling—”

Kasita froze solid again just as a flurry of feathers exploded into the sphere. She froze of her own volition, though. Alyssa had deactivated Accelero in order to monitor time accurately. With Accelero no longer active, the feathers fell with their usual speed. In an instant, Adrael flew between them and the wall, spreading her arms and wings wide as if to physically stop them from entering the Expanse.

“You promised,” Adrael said, voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to take our heads off with your shield.”

Adrael flinched, arms and wings both drooping. “Harming mortals is not something I take lightly.”

“You sure seemed to take it lightly back when you tried to kill my friends.”

“That was…” The Archangel clenched her fists. “You ruined hundreds of years of work and manipulation. In a single afternoon, everything I had been building up wound up demolished and shattered. I was not in a proper state of mind.”

“Is that the secret then? You just got so mad that you got to ignore your programming?” Tenebrael had been wondering about Adrael’s flouting of angelic rules. As far as Alyssa knew, she had yet to find out how Adrael managed to do so. Getting a little information couldn’t hurt, though she wasn’t sure about telling Tenebrael. First of all, telling Tenebrael that she would have to get really mad just sounded like a bad idea all around. Still, it was good to know for her own reasons. She might have to start being a bit nicer to Tenebrael in the future. Avoid touchy topics and the like.

Adrael nodded slowly. “I just… moved on my own. By the time I realized what had happened, you had just taken off my arm.”

“All I did was chain you up. You were the one who called your shield back to you and failed to catch it.”

“A miscalculation. As I said, I was rattled. I even thought you were an angel at the time. One like Tenebrael that had gone astray. After all, normal mortals can’t perceive angels.” Adrael’s eyes narrowed as she looked down at Alyssa. She wasn’t making any movements that might be considered hostile. Probably trying to avoid getting chained up again. Alyssa had her spell cards ready, but as long as she was getting information, she didn’t feel a need to change their precarious status quo. “It wasn’t until later that I realized just what you truly are.”

“And just what do you think I am?”

“An abomination. A failure in all the systems of the Plan. A dark secret, an aberration that has been kept suppressed for all time by the Throne. You are a being that the Seraphim were originally created to destroy.”

“The Seraphim were created to destroy me? I’m not even thirty. From Tenebrael’s talk, the Seraphim and the Throne have been around forever. Literally.”

“I’ve been doing research on you, Alyssa Meadows. It hasn’t been easy. The Virtues don’t respond well to questions involving you. It is tough. I have to find ways around it. But in doing so, I’ve discovered that you aren’t the first mortal who has been able to see divinity as easily as you might see a flower.”

It was a bit surprising that more people who could see angels was a surprise to Adrael. Tenebrael had mentioned someone else on Nod who had seen and conversed with her. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. If it was something innate to Alyssa that she had possessed for her entire life, only seeing an angel in the minutes before she was supposed to have died probably meant that lots of other people like her would never actually get the chance to use that ability. Tenebrael was extremely active on Nod, and possibly had been even more active whenever her other conversation partner had lived. So it made sense that she would have found one while other angels wouldn’t have.

Not wanting to interrupt Adrael while the angel was freely divulging information, Alyssa didn’t voice her thoughts, choosing to simply nod her head in a prompt for her to continue.

“I noticed something interesting. The first record of a Seraphim existing coincided with the first sealed record of something relating to you. The first mortal to have seen an angel? Or simply a coincidence?” Adrael shook her head. “My guess is on the former. But this has had other interesting and, in some cases, disturbing implications.” Adrael took her eyes off Alyssa. She turned slightly, drifting from one side of the sphere to the other only to turn back and drift over. Pacing, in a sense. “I had thought that Seraphim were the oldest among us. And that might still be true. But if the first Seraphim only came about after mortals began their existence, then they can’t possibly be older than other angels. In fact, they would be the youngest. And yet, no matter who I ask, no matter how old they might be, I can’t find a single angel who can remember a time before Seraphim were created.

“So what happened?” Adrael asked, staring at her upturned palm. “Were all angels from back then destroyed to make way for the new, current host of angels? If so, has such a thing happened before? How many times? If they weren’t destroyed—and there are some angels who do claim to be as old as the universe, quite convincingly, I might add—then what? Did they have their memories rewritten? The Throne would definitely have the power to rewrite every angel’s memories. Theoretically speaking, the Throne should even be able to rewrite reality to the point where Seraphim had always existed. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Or if it is the case, the records were left untouched.” Looking to her other hand, Adrael glared. “Or are the records wrong? If so, are the incorrect commits deliberate? A mistake?” Both her hands dropped to her sides as she stared around the sphere, looking into the Expanse from multiple angles. After a moment or two, she sighed, looking back to Alyssa. “Every time I think I’ve answered even one question, a hundred more present themselves. You are… beyond vexing.”

“Sorry,” Alyssa said with a casual shrug, not feeling sorry at all. “I’m just a normal person who has wound up caught up in all this nonsense thanks to Tenebrael.” Adrael scoffed—either at Alyssa calling herself a normal person or at the mention of Tenebrael’s name… or both—but didn’t interrupt. “I just have a question that might help you figure out some of those answers.”

“You have yet another question to add to my pile?”

“It’s something all you angels have been dancing around ever since I first started talking to you all. You all say ‘the Throne’ but you never mention the one who actually sat on the Throne. Who was it? What kind of person was it? Was it the kind of person who would rewrite memories? Falsify records? Or even destroy all the angels and start over from scratch?”

Adrael’s eyes flashed. For a moment, Alyssa feared that she had offended the angel. Spectral Chains were at the forefront of her mind, ready to contain Adrael at the first sign that anything had gone sour. But whatever anger had momentarily taken over Adrael dissipated. She sighed, looking away.

But she didn’t answer.

“You don’t know, do you?” Alyssa took a guess. Something about the way Adrael had been forthcoming about the history of the Seraphim and her theories on the subject only to freeze up at the mention of the Throne’s occupant made her think.

And it wasn’t just Adrael. Tenebrael, Iosefael, even Kenziel. All of them referred to the Throne. They never said a name or talked about an individual who directed the powers of the Throne. Alyssa hadn’t even heard the term ‘god’ which seemed highly applicable in this situation. There was no Zeus. No Buddha. No Jehovah. The Throne did this. The Throne wanted that. The Throne created everything.

An object, presumably inanimate and unthinking on its own, had risen to a state of ultimate apotheosis in the eyes of the angels. The Throne’s occupant didn’t factor into the equation in the slightest.

“The Throne is impossible to ignore,” Adrael said, staring off into the Endless Expanse. “You can’t avoid it. No matter where you look, it is there. You see it too, don’t you?”

“The large tower in every pane of glass?”

“Perhaps your senses aren’t as attuned as I thought,” she said with a ghost of a smile. “Even here on this truly cursed world, the Throne looms over us without needing these pale reflections of the Expanse.”

“Well sorry I’m not an angel.”

Adrael dismissed the notion with a shake of her head. “However, with as omnipresent as the Throne is, its occupant is… was not. I received my orders from the Throne. Only the Seraphim would get a direct conversation. Any direction, change in strategy or tactics, alteration to the plan, or other instructions that went out to the angelic host would come from the Seraphim, oftentimes not even directly from them either. They would tell a Virtue who would tell a Principality who would tell one of the elder Archangels who would finally pass down my mission to straighten out this world. In fact, since my creation, that was the only direct instruction I ever received from the Throne.”

“So you never once spoke with or otherwise meaningfully interacted with this… Deity. I assume you don’t know his name, so why don’t we call him that?”

“I don’t think gender applied at any point.”

“That’s really not relevant to my point, but okay. What about Tenebrael? Iosefael? Would either of them have interacted with Deity?”

“Doubtful. It would have been the same process. Throne to Seraphim to whoever to them.”

“So nobody at all would have any idea about a possible personality to Deity except maybe the Seraphim, who seem to have been intentionally created with no personality or even basic drive themselves and are currently completely nonresponsive.”

Adrael hummed, looking toward the panel that displayed the large tower most prominently. “They were created, at least in part, to act as a barrier between the Throne and the rest of the angelic host?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about you angels and your organization. And I know even less about the Throne.” In fact, Alyssa could safely say that she had learned more about the Throne in the last five minutes than she had learned over the entire course of her interaction with other angels. Even that wasn’t that much. Mostly because it seemed as if angels didn’t have a good grasp on the Throne’s history or capability. Which might not be their fault. Not if the Throne had truly manipulated them, either by memory wipe or by remaking all the angels anew.

And the Throne manipulating them wasn’t even remotely far fetched. After all, as Tenebrael complained about, the higher up in the angelic hierarchy an angel got, the less free will they had. The more robotic they became. Tenebrael, through some deal with the demons, had managed to break at least part of that. It would be interesting to find another Dominion and compare them with Tenebrael, just to see how different Tenebrael truly was. But that wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon. It was just an interesting thought experiment.

“I think I have some more research to attend to,” Adrael said with a sigh. “More questions. Now about the Throne itself? If information about you is sealed away, I can only imagine how difficult it is going to be to dig up even minor details about… the Throne.”

Still referring to Deity as the Throne. Alyssa had to wonder if that was part of their programming.

“As for you,” Adrael’s eyes narrowed. “You keep yourself quarantined on this world. The Endless Expanse is not for mortals in general. They cannot survive the twisting and folding of reality there. But you… you would probably find a way to destroy everything. Shut all this down,” she said, waving around the sphere. “Just live out your life and then die like a good mortal. Maybe then I can go back to getting work done.”

Alyssa glanced over at the silent Kasita. She looked fine. Her arms were both there, at least. The twisting and folding of reality, as Adrael had put it, didn’t seem to have affected her. Which might have had something to do with her being more or less intangible. A dagger going through her head wouldn’t even be an inconvenience. Why would her arm folding in on itself be anything to worry over?

“What of the Astral Authority?” Alyssa asked, looking back to Adrael. “Did ordering them away work?”

“Didn’t find any,” Adrael said with a shrug.

“None?” Alyssa perked up. Had Tenebrael finally gotten around to kicking them off the world? If so, Alyssa and Irulon could have just sat tight for a short time.

“Not in the local area.”

“Oh. But elsewhere?”

“There were some on this world, but I interpreted your instructions as ordering away those that might have been near you.”

“I see.” So her efforts had not been useless after all. “No sign of the Cardinal Virtue of Justice?”

“None.”

Alyssa drummed her fingers against her leg, wishing one of the shards of glass showed outside the sphere instead of the Endless Expanse. Had the Justice disintegrated much faster than Alyssa had been expecting? Or maybe it was Irulon. “Were there any demons out there?”

“There was nothing out there. At all. Not unless I ventured as far as the local human city, but I suspect you aren’t asking about them.”

Tensing, Alyssa’s thoughts raced to Irulon, Fela, and the draken. Had they been caught up in whatever Irulon had done? But a thought occurred to her regarding the sphere she was in. “You checked in a place that was also surrounded by a dome like this one, right? Or did you go back to the rest of the world?”

Adrael looked around, not through the panels to the Expanse, but simply around the sphere. She had something of a sneer on her face as she did so. “You’ve borrowed a bit of Dominion Tenebrael’s power as a Dominion to create something of a partitioned world. If I didn’t know it existed from when the relic breached the barrier between here and the Endless Expanse, I wouldn’t have known that it existed at all. Frankly, I am surprised such a thing is possible.”

Alyssa let out a small sigh. That meant that the Justice could still be out there. It also meant that Irulon was likely still out there. Even if Adrael had simply gone one level up and found nothing, Irulon would be in another sliver of reality. It was odd that the Astral Authority wouldn’t be out in the forest, but if they had managed to hunt down all the infected in the area out there, there probably wasn’t much reason for them to stick around.

More of an interesting note… Adrael hadn’t found the bubble one level up. Alyssa filed that bit of information away as being potentially useful if she ever did have to fight angels. For the time being, however…

“Why don’t you stick around for a moment longer. It should be safe to collapse this spell. If the Astral Authority are still around, you can try to wave them away. And if you do so, I’ll make sure that no one runs off and informs the rest of the angels about your little… incident with your staff.”

“Which I still want back.”

“I said we would talk about that after you got rid of the Astral Authority. If they left on their own, you didn’t technically get rid of them, did you?”

Adrael narrowed her eyes, glaring at Alyssa for a moment before putting on a small smirk. “So you’re saying that I should go find some of the Astral Authority, bring them here, let them harass you for a bit, then send them away so that we can talk?”

Alyssa glared back at the angel. Even if Fractal Lock worked, she would still have to recast it every twelve hours. If she slipped up even once, Adrael would escape. Would she actually risk coming back with the Astral Authority, potentially risking recapture? Possibly. She wouldn’t actually need to come herself if she could order around the Justice.

It was too much of a risk for Alyssa to keep up the rules lawyering. “We’ll just play it by ear, how about? Let’s get out of here first and then we can talk.”

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Lost Authority

The Endless Expanse

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Alyssa stayed for ten minutes, just sitting and waiting for something to go wrong. Accelero was still active—if something did go wrong, she wanted the extra speed. That meant that she would have to wait another thirty minutes before canceling the spell, but that might just be worth it.

So many things came to mind. From the Justice having compromised the structural integrity of the sliver before it left reality proper to lesser members of the Astral Authority portaling their way in to try to kill Alyssa for harming the Justice. From the demon doing basically anything to Irulon’s spell not caring at all about the boundaries of the sliver and killing everyone in the area. Which applied to Irulon and her group as well. They could be having the same problems that Alyssa was thinking up.

“They really probably aren’t having those problems given that we aren’t having them,” Kasita said as fast as she could. She had taken to speaking extremely quickly partially unintelligibly to get as much out as she could before her form froze. “The real question is whether or not we killed the Justice.”

“I don’t know that it was ever alive. Those things are… things. The angels are bad enough,” Alyssa said, eyes drifting from one shattered panel to the next. “But the Astral Authority is on a whole other level of robotic.”

Kasita had frozen again. There was no way of knowing how much she had actually heard, but it didn’t really matter to begin with. Alyssa had been dodging the question more than anything else. She didn’t know the answer. Other members of the Astral Authority could be killed relatively easily. Relative to real angels, in any case. But the Justice was a tier higher than them. Attacking the scales had been pure guesswork. It seemed to have done something, but with Irulon’s countdown, there hadn’t been time to find out exactly what.

Frankly, Alyssa hoped it wasn’t dead, but was injured enough that it had to retreat back to wherever it came from long enough for Tenebrael to finish her thing. If it was dead, its corpse would likely stick around for far too long. At its size, it could take years for it to disintegrate if it went at the same rate as the rest of the Astral Authority.

“So. That’s Tenebrael’s homeworld, is it?”

“I assume so.”

“Pretty.”

“Ehh. I think I would die from an epileptic seizure if I had to live there… and I don’t have epilepsy as far as I am aware.”

“I’m going to pretend that I know what those words mean and just nod my—”

As Kasita froze again, Alyssa walked around the mirrored platform. Unlike the dome around them—or sphere rather, as it went all the way around—the platform had been unaffected by the Justice falling on it. The bottom portion of the sphere, the part that had still been forming when the Justice fell, reflected nothing at all. Just mirrors and Alyssa if she leaned over the edge. Any part of it that would have reflected the Endless Expanse was distorted and strange. The only thing that could be seen was that one central tower that was in every single panel no matter how impossible that should be.

For instance, one of the shattered panels showed off the interior of one of those towers. A handful of angels were gathered around in some kind of meeting. Maybe a casual get together, if angels had those sorts of things. Despite there being no windows and no doors, Alyssa could trace a detailed flourish on the wall to find herself staring at the exterior landscape which had that one tower in the dead center.

She was fairly certain that two of the cracked panels were showing off opposing views of the city, perhaps from the tower itself. It was mostly guesswork. The constantly shifting cityscape gave her a headache on par with the math Tenebrael had tried to show her. But there were no commonalities between the views aside from the tower in the dead center. She could tell that it was the same tower thanks to the mass of angels swarming about it. Most of the rest of the Endless Expanse seemed almost vacant. Not quite completely empty, but empty enough that there weren’t more than a handful of angels in any one spot.

Except for that tower.

“Can they not see us?”

Alyssa turned to find Kasita right up against the wall of the sphere. The floating bridge of slivers that she had created to get to the Justice was still intact, leading right to the edge. Kasita wasn’t actually touching any part of it, but she was leaning awfully close with her hands behind her back.

And she froze again.

But Kasita was right. As with the outer shell, none of the angels had taken notice. If there had been cameras where these panels were positioned, one four-winged angel would have just flown right into it in her rush to get to the large tower. The angel didn’t pause or look around or otherwise take note of anything amiss.

Alyssa took out her phone and started snapping pictures. She wasn’t sure just what use it might be, but if she could replicate the effect, she could spy on the Expanse. And on the angels. For whatever that was worth. Perhaps it would help Tenebrael in some way. Irulon would probably like to take a look too. Alyssa couldn’t be certain that the larger dome outside would stay the way it was long enough for anyone to see it, so pictures seemed sensible.

Oddly enough, pictures worked properly whereas the mirror didn’t. And the picture of the group of angels didn’t show the tower anywhere. It captured the scene as Alyssa saw it before she started looking too hard. She honestly wasn’t sure what that meant, but at least the pictures didn’t give her a headache.

While taking pictures, Alyssa tried to spot any angels that she knew, but there were literally thousands of them and she could name four and had only seen two or three others besides them.

Experimentally, Alyssa walked up beside Kasita’s frozen clone. She carefully brushed the tip of one of her fingernails against the formerly reflective surface. It clanked when it hit. Unlike that crazy whiteboard math that Tenebrael had drawn, and unlike how the demon acted with those darkened panels outside, this was not some portal into another world.

Alyssa had to admit that part of her was somewhat disappointed. The particular pane of glass she was tapping her fingers against looked like it was suspended over a bottomless pit between the large buildings. Walking through it would probably lead to her death. Even if she used some spell to slow her fall, she could easily die of starvation if it truly was as bottomless as it looked. None of the buildings in that other world looked like they were connected to any sort of ground. But they didn’t exactly float either. It was like looking at that one optical illusion of the three pronged tuning fork except multiplied an infinite number of times.

There was also the very real problem that, while she might not be in any direct danger from the angels because of their rule that mostly kept them from harming mortals, Alyssa wouldn’t put it beyond them to lead her into a trap, summon the Astral Authority to do their dirty work for them, or just imprison her until she died of starvation. Iosefael had already admitted that they weren’t above indirect methods of dealing with their problems.

Which was why Alyssa tensed when she noticed a new Kasita’s arm halfway through the mirror.

Alyssa grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her back. “Can we please not draw the attention of a million angry angels?”

“I didn’t think my hand would go through it!” Kasita shouted, genuinely shocked tone in her voice. “Yours didn’t… There are really a million angels back there?” she said a little softer, looking at her hand as she turned it one way then the other. “I really can’t tell.”

“There are lots of them and… you’re frozen again.” Accelero’s effect on Kasita was really starting to get annoying. If Alyssa wasn’t worried that they would need the speed, she would stop it immediately. But for now, she focused on the world beyond, watching for any change in the angels’ behavior as a result of Kasita’s arm being in their world.

Angels were not omniscient. Kasita’s arm was one tiny speck in the Endless Expanse. The panel with the bridge next to it wasn’t even near the large tower with most of the angels around it… probably. It was actually really hard to tell with how space seemed to twist in on itself in that other world. But none looked to have deviated from what they had been doing before. Or, at least, none were flying over to inspect it.

Most of the angels didn’t seem to notice. So that was a good thing. The real problem were the white feathers drifting about inside the sphere.

It was… strange. Every other time Alyssa had an angel appear around her, it had been in real time. Now, the feathers drifted so slowly that they were still exploding out from a central point. There was a silhouette in there, like the cocoon of a monarch butterfly. Except feathery. In the center was a bright golden light that Alyssa couldn’t remember having seen before on an angel’s arrival. There were never any flashes. But yet, there it was.

The light faded out a whole lot faster than the feathers could expand out. It gave Alyssa ample time to see just who was slowly unfurling from that cocoon.

Just a single pair of white feathers with a red dress was all Alyssa needed to identify who it was.

Archangel Adrael.

The one angel who had demonstrated an intent to cause direct harm. Though she didn’t appear to be much of a danger at the moment. Alyssa had never actually gotten to watch an angel appear. Tenebrael liked to pop up from out of view. So did the rest, now that she thought about it. Even the ones who hadn’t known that she had been watching, like the angel in the alley that had taken the soul from Chris’ clone, still managed to pop up quick enough that letting her eyes drift to one side had been enough to miss the actual appearance.

In slow motion, it was really flashy and drawn out. Adrael was doing that thing from shampoo commercials where she was standing up from a crouch to send her hair flying back behind her. If Tenebrael popped up in even a remotely similar manner, it was no wonder that she kept doing it behind Alyssa’s back.

Shaking her head, Alyssa held out a card. An instant later, Spectral Chains lashed out and wrapped around Adrael. It was… really quite pathetic compared to how tense Alyssa had been about the Justice. Tenebrael could escape from Spectral Chains, but Kenziel hadn’t. Or, at least, Kenziel hadn’t really tried. Tenebrael had shown up and bullied her into submission before she could. Still, her lack of action at the time was encouraging.

When the flash fully disappeared, Adrael opened her eyes. It was slow motion, but much quicker than Alyssa would have expected from any mortal. Surprise on her face shifted to anger about as fast. With as fast as she emoted, she sure didn’t speak clearly in the slightest. It took a full twenty seconds for her to get a single word out and Alyssa had no idea what that word was supposed to be. Or even if she had spoken a full word.

“Got to speed it up,” Alyssa said, pointing to her mouth. “I know you can. Unless demons can do things that you angels can’t. Wouldn’t surprise me, but it would disappoint me.”

Adrael blinked much faster than she spoke, looking affronted. She opened her mouth and…

Some kind of noise assaulted Alyssa’s ears. A high pitched warble. It only lasted a second but it left Alyssa’s head spinning.

“Jeeze,” Kasita said with a big wince. “The demon figured out how to talk to you on the first try, didn’t she?”

“That was trying to talk to me?” Alyssa said, rubbing her forehead. “I thought it was an attack.”

“I guess the demon did get to—” “—observe you for a lot longer than this thing has.”

“Can you even see her? Or hear her?”

“About as well as I can see Tenebrael. I based my guess off your reaction—”

Alyssa dismissively waved a hand. Not that Kasita saw it. Her frozen forms were really starting to pile up. She might have to start popping up in a smaller form. A gremlin, maybe. Or a kitten. But…

“I knew I smelled something from this corrupt world,” Adrael sneered. Her voice still wasn’t perfectly matching Alyssa’s speed. It was, however, understandable at this point. “What have you done, Alyssa Meadows? Release me at once.”

“No. I don’t think I will. That sounds like a bad idea.”

“You abomination. You couldn’t just sit quietly, quarantined on this nightmare of a world, could you? What are you trying to do to the Expanse?”

Alyssa didn’t even have a real response to that. She wasn’t doing anything. This whole scrying chamber was the Justice’s fault. Entirely. Would Adrael believe her? That was irrelevant. The real question was whether or not it mattered if Adrael believed her.

The answer was no. Not at all.

“You sensed Kasita’s arm? So it really was in the Expanse then? Not an illusion?” Back to the panel of glass, Alyssa rapped the knuckles of her free hand against it, finding it just as solid as it had been when she tried to pass her fingernail through.

“I’ve spent enough time here that I would recognize a part of it anywhere.”

It was something unique to Kasita then. Or perhaps mimics in general. Irulon had mentioned that Kasita wasn’t wholly within this reality, or world, or something. Without discussing with Irulon or Tenebrael, that would be Alyssa’s primary guess as to why Kasita’s arm could slip through whereas Alyssa could not.

“What about the other Archangels? The other angels in general? You’re saying that none of them noticed because none of them have been here? They certainly don’t look like they noticed,” Alyssa said with a glance toward the panel showing off a few angels inside a room.

“Those fools? They sit about trying to decide whose quarter-century reports have progressed the most? They wouldn’t know a real problem world if they were chained up under your…” Adrael trailed off, devoting most of her energy toward trying to spread her wings and break the chains.

A fruitless endeavor.

“So there is no backup coming? No cadre of angels teleporting in to rescue you?”

The struggling stopped immediately. Adrael looked up, red eyes narrowing. “What are you saying?”

“Oh come now,” Alyssa said, fighting to keep a smile off her face. This was it; she had a chance to solve at least one of her current problems. Possibly more than one. “You angels might be trapped in your own programming, but you aren’t that stupid. I’ve got you trapped and at my mercy. I might be willing to release you if you do a little something for me. And if you don’t… I’ll have Kasita stick her head into the Endless Expanse and start shouting about how you harmed a mortal.” Adrael tensed, but Alyssa didn’t let up. “Something like that will work regardless of whether or not you are here. So even if I let you go and you decide to betray me…” Alyssa waved to one of the frozen Kasitas before continuing. “I gathered from a few other angels that such things are heavily frowned upon. You might even be reclassified as a fallen angel before morning.”

That was mostly guesswork, but it seemed to work. Adrael opened her mouth, snapped it shut, glared for a moment, and opened it again. “What do you want?”

“As an Archangel, you’re in charge of getting a world on track with… ‘the plan’ or whatever it is, right?”

“Yes.” The response was clipped, but instant.

It was hard to avoid smiling at that.

“The Astral Authority—”

“Is here?” she asked, perking up. “Are they finally dealing with Dominion Tenebrael? Have my pleas been answered?”

“Don’t look too excited. Tenebrael is handling them. We were using demons to occupy their attention, but the demons have been… disappointing.”

“Demons? Demons?” Her eyes narrowed to thin slits as she looked Alyssa up and down. “You disgust me.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get over yourself. The point is, there are a few out there that have been annoying me in particular. I want you to go tell them to find something else to occupy their time with. Tell them about some other world with a rogue angel mucking things up. Do that and I’ll let you go. I’ll even forget that you skewered a human and a draken with your staff.”

“I want that staff back.”

“Do this for me and maybe we’ll talk about your staff.” Like how it’s in Iosefael’s hands.

“You think I can just walk up to the Astral Authority and order them around? The Seraphim are their leaders. Not me. Not any Archangel.”

“And what if they are acting on their own? How much weight would your word carry? Enough to get a Justice off my back?” If the Justice was still alive. There was every possibility that Alyssa had killed it. Or that the demon had come back and finished the job in the time since Alyssa sequestered herself and Kasita away. Or even that Irulon’s spell had dealt the final blow. Any one of those options was plausible.

Adrael looked to be considering the prospect. Unfortunately, she shook her head slowly. “I don’t think it will work like that.”

“Shame.” Yanking Adrael off her feet, eliciting an undignified squawk from the angel in the process, Alyssa moved forward and pressed a foot down in the small of her back. “You’re going to sit right there and you’re going to be good. No attacking me or my friends. I’m sure Tenebrael or Iosefael or someone will be here someday. Until then… Do you suppose Fractal Lock works on angels?” Alyssa said, glancing to the latest instance of Kasita to appear. “Because I really don’t want to have to hold onto these chains for any length of time. And you need to stick your head into the Expanse and start shouting about Adrael.”

“Only one way to find—”

“Wait! Wait I’ll try. Don’t… say anything.”

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

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Lost Authority

Continuum Split

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“What are you doing?” Alyssa shouted as soon as she got over her shock of having the demon drop down right in front of her. It wasn’t much of a shock. As it turned out, having angels and mimics constantly pop up out of nothing had immunized her to most forms of suddenly appearing people. It helped that the demon wasn’t going to attack her. She could tell that much from how the demon hadn’t drop-kicked her on her way down from whatever panel of the broken glass dome she had launched herself from.

No. Alyssa wasn’t worried about the demon at the moment. Not even with her slightly more frightening visage. Now that she was up close and face to face with the demon, Alyssa couldn’t help but grimace. Before, her unmasked face had been normal. Human-normal. Lips. Ears. Nose. If Alyssa were to describe the demon’s mouth now, she would have to say it was more of a maw. Her nose was gone, replaced with little slits highlighted with those glowing red veins that covered her entire body. The ears had vanished as well, replaced with little spikes that matched the larger horns on the demons head. Watching the demon talk in that strange way she had to use to make her speech understandable through the effects of Accelero did not help matters.

It was… quite horrifying, actually.

But the real problem was getting back to its feet in the distance. Or… getting back to its wings? The Justice was getting up either way.

“What am I doing?” the demon said. Despite her strange mouth, the steam coming out with every word, and the slight hiss that accompanied the steam, the demon’s voice was strangely… seductive. And her pose had clearly been lifted from the cheapest rag of a dating tips magazine.

Alyssa hated every second of it.

“What am I doing?” the demon said again, pointing at herself as she shifted her hips. “What are you doing? Do you really have time to stand around and gawk?” As she spoke, she moved to poke Alyssa in the chest.

Alyssa took a step back, careful to avoid letting the demon touch her. If the demon actually tried, Accelero or not, she wouldn’t be able to avoid her. But, luckily, the demon was not trying. “I’m not gawking. I’m trying to get into position so that when we’re ready, we can try to take that thing out.” Her head snapped back and forth between the demon and the Justice, trying to keep both in her field of view at the same time.

Which revealed another problem.

The Justice stood fully upright. Both of its hands were clasped around the hilt of its sword.

It clearly intended to try attacking the demon again.

The demon that was right next to Alyssa.

“Could you go back up there and keep knocking it around?”

“I could. But—”

“But? Why is there a but!”

“It just seems like I’m not getting much out of this deal.”

“Deal? Deal!” Demon. Of course. It was something she really should have expected. People back on Earth had a phrase. If you’re good at something, never do it for free. And at the moment, the demon was the best at keeping that Justice down. “How’s this for a deal: You keep that thing face down in the mud and I’ll do my best to get rid of it?”

“Hmm… Doesn’t sound that enticing.”

“Enticing?” Alyssa’s head snapped to the Justice as it shifted. The sword was raised as high as it could be, preparing for a straight downward slash. The tip hit the dome’s ceiling, sending another wave of cracks through it. But the sudden stop seemed to give the Justice pause. A moment of confusion to get the demon to act.

“Having the Astral Authority off your back doesn’t sound enticing?”

“Tenebrael will get to that eventually. All I have to do is wait—and I am a very patient being. The Astral Authority won’t kill me before she gets around to it, even if they have managed to temporarily… undo my work on many of my fellow brethren.”

“They killed them?” Alyssa said, eyebrows raised. “The infected?” She really should concern herself more with the Justice and its impending sword. But she did have a few Annihilators up her sleeve and that had worked last time. If it didn’t work, she doubted that she would be able to run fast enough to get away from the shockwave. Especially not if the demon followed her, thus keeping Alyssa at the center of the Justice’s aim.

“Temporarily.” Despite the emphasis, Alyssa wasn’t sure that there was much conviction in the demon’s steam-filled voice.

“Well maybe you could temporarily go beat that thing down so we can keep haggling. You might be able to take a hit from it, but I can’t. If I die, you won’t be getting much out of this deal either way.”

The demon reached forward like she was about to brush Alyssa’s cheek. “I could bring you back.”

“No.” Alyssa jumped back to keep away from the demon’s hand, just about stumbling over one of Kasita’s clones in the process. “Absolutely not.”

“You might not have much choice in the matter,” the demon said, looking up to where the Justice had shifted positions to get the sword ready to swing. It wouldn’t be quite as big of an attack as when it had nearly leveled the ruins of Owlcroft, but that had honestly been overkill for everything but the demon.

“I’m pretty sure Tenebrael wants to eat me and Iosefael wants to… whatever normally happens to souls. You’re going to have some competition and, right now, the Justice is after you. You might want to bring your expectations of what you’re going to get out of this down a few notches before I decide to just take care of it all on my own.”

A blast of steam came out of the demon’s mouth. There might have been a burst of a laugh somewhere in there, but the hiss covered it up. “On your own?”

“That was the original plan,” Alyssa said, eyes never leaving the demon—thankfully she was standing between Alyssa and the Justice. That let her watch as the Justice refocused and angled its sword to swing in a wide sweep toward the ground, fully within the large dome. “Last chance to make a realistic demand.”

Steam leaked out from the corners of the demon’s maw. She didn’t say a word for a long moment, simply choosing to stare as she slowly tilted her head. “I think I’ll pass and… see how this plays out.”

“Damn it.”

“Aw, did I call your bluff? Need me after all?”

“Kasita!” Alyssa shouted, focusing all her attention on the Justice.

“Done with your—” “—one sided conversation? Good, because I’m starting to crowd myself out,” she said between freezing and popping up again.

And she was right. There were a good twenty Kasitas around. A few looked to be interacting with each other. Two were shaking each others’ hands. Another two were engaged in some kind of dance. Four were… posing? For…

It really wasn’t the time. Both for wondering at the mimic’s antics and for staring at them. Alyssa spared enough time to shoot a shrugging Kasita a dirty look.

“What? It was boring. And I might never—” “—have this opportunity again.”

“Is this going to interfere?”

“No.” Kasita said, smile disappearing. “I’m ready.”

“Good. Because we’re out of time.”

Kasita reached into her own chest, withdrawing a single spell card. “Just give the word.”

The demon took a step back, crossing her arms as she watched. Alyssa tried to put the monster out of her mind as she watched the Justice. It was the real threat.

But it wasn’t swinging its sword. It looked like it was ready. There was nowhere else to move to get more of a swing on its sword. But it just wasn’t attacking.

Why? The Astral Authority were like computer programs, designed to carry out a specific task or two. It wouldn’t stop just because she was near its target. And it hadn’t before. Granted, she had been connected to Tenebrael at the time, but it certainly hadn’t cared for the safety of Kasita or Izsha. Alyssa glanced at the demon, wondering if it was watching and waiting for her to make a move before committing to an attack. Even for it, that sword had real mass that couldn’t simply be ignored. It did, after all, obey at least some of reality’s rules. From a standstill, the demon could easily jump and move out of the way as it had done before.

“Plan B it is.”

“Blue Flare,” Kasita said.

A blast of teal flames launched high into the air. High enough that, when Irulon came out from her dome to enact her part of the plan, she would be able to see it and know what Alyssa was trying to do.

“Should have agreed with me,” Alyssa said, offhandedly glancing at the demon.

The demon didn’t have any eyebrows to raise, but the change of her face might have been one eyebrow raising in amusement. One amused eyebrow up turned to two in surprise as three sets of Spectral Chains wrapped around her body. Arms pinned to her side and legs pulled together made even the demon a simple thing to knock off balance.

“Shame the Taker isn’t here to free you this time. You let him die like the rest of your minions?”

“Plan B is… suicide?” the demon asked, craning her head up to see. Despite falling into dirt and loose brush, her obsidian face was entirely clean. “Even if I couldn’t get out—”

Whatever the demon was going to say, she didn’t get a chance. The Justice obviously calculated that the odds of hitting its target were in its favor. Its entire form flickered and, along with that flicker, the sword flashed into motion.

Even with Accelero, Alyssa had less than a second to react.

Continuum Split. A combination of Irulon’s research into Fractal magic and her father’s Time magic. Apparently developed together, according to the briefing that Irulon had given her a few minutes ago.

Alyssa stood still, holding the chains that kept the demon from moving. At the same time, she started running. The blade of the Justice’s sword was frozen in the air only a football field away—far too close for her liking. She could see the wave of pressurized air that its sharp blade created as it failed to cleanly slice through like a heat haze around the entire thing.

Time was… effectively stopped. Again, not completely. Had she used the spell alone, she might have suspected that time was completely stopped. That was what Irulon claimed the spell would do, in any case. But with the Justice and how fast it was moving, with the demon and how she was slowly struggling, Alyssa could tell that there was still some movement. It wouldn’t last forever. In fact, relative to the caster, it was only supposed to last a few minutes at most before the spell would… snap, had been Irulon’s word. While she wasn’t sure what snap meant exactly, a few minutes should be more than enough.

She had a secondary card had Continuum Split not worked as advertised. Another Reality Sliver. But… looking at the sword that close, she wasn’t sure that she would have been able to get it off before that sword took her head off.

Or just turned her into a fine red mist, as was likely a far more plausible outcome of it coming anywhere near her.

Kasita, already a stone and back in her hand, was not shifting or leaving duplicates of herself anymore. Hopefully that meant that everything was alright. If it wasn’t, Kasita wouldn’t be harmed by physical attacks anyway. It might be hell to find her after everything, but she would be fine.

With time slowed to an even further degree, Alyssa managed to run and hop, using Shorten Distance, a fair way. She didn’t run away from the Justice. Rather, toward it. She slipped directly underneath the sword, glad its pressure wave didn’t act like a solid wall, and kept running. Behind her, she erected a series of walls. Not physical walls, but a different version of Reality Sliver. The same version that Irulon had used to block off the entrances to the church basement at the Juno Federation Outpost. Irulon had suggested that they might be used as an emergency shield against debris when a full dome would be impractical or unnecessary.

Alyssa was hoping that they would act as a wind break. And a debris shield. And… an anything shield, really.

The ground disappearing out from under her was another concern. When that sword hit, shit would hit the fan. A sliver of glass underneath her would help, but she would have to be careful. If she dismissed it and there wasn’t anything underneath, she might end up falling to her death. So many ways to die, so little time.

Irulon had created a bridge of Fractal magic to get over the swamp on their way out of Illuna. Being a highly ranked spell that Alyssa hadn’t ever cast before, she hadn’t wanted to test any strange side effects when using it.

Instead, she started laying out long stretches of the slivers directly underneath her. The Justice was still over the large crater, now hovering rather than kneeling or being beaten down. Her boots gave her enough traction, but it was a good thing that it hadn’t been raining. The mirrored surface was smooth as the glass it resembled. They created something of a bridge over the crater.

Skidding to a stop directly underneath the Justice, Alyssa built up several more walls of the impenetrable Reality Slivers. She terraced them on top of each other, leaving not even the slightest crack save for a small hole the size of her arm directly overhead. The hole wound up covered up as well. She wasn’t sure how the air pressure from the Justice’s attack would act if it wasn’t sealed.

The second there were no holes, Alyssa chose the split she wanted. The version of herself that had done nothing aside from stand still, holding onto Spectral Chains, vanished from existence. There wasn’t any disorientation. Just a sudden feeling that she was once again alone.

Thunder crashed against her small chamber at the same time. Air flew about her head, throwing her hair around. There were a few cracks in her perfect construction. It felt like a hurricane physically slapping her face, but it wasn’t slicing her apart the way a stream of pressurized water might have done.

Kasita popped up, only to be thrown back against one of the mirrored surfaces before she had a chance to get a single word out. Her form froze a second later. No duplicate popped up until after the rush of wind died down.

Alyssa dismissed the topmost sliver the second she felt safe in doing so, though she kept herself ready to dive to the sides of her small chamber should there be any debris overhead.

But there wasn’t. The Justice stood overhead, legs bent slightly as it hovered a few dozen feet up.

The sky—what little of it existed beneath the larger dome—was filled with debris. Dirt, rocks, trees. The usual. But in the area around the Justice, everything was perfectly clear. As if it was warding it all away with its presence alone.

That worked for Alyssa.

“I see it holding the scales in its hand,” Alyssa said. “But both hands are holding the sword.”

So far, it hadn’t tried lifting the sword back up for a second attack. It simply stared somewhere out of Alyssa’s line of sight. Presumably the demon… or whatever was left of it. Though if the demon was dead, Alyssa would have expected it to retreat back to wherever it came from.

Just can’t catch a break, can I?

“We’re going to run out of space if this goes on for too long,” Kasita said, popping up and already glancing at two frozen clones of hers.

“All the more reason to answer my question quickly.”

That particular instance of Kasita did not answer. A new one popped up on the other side of Alyssa. “I see it around the left shoulder right now, but it changes any time the Justice makes a large move. Not waiting for Irulon’s signal?”

“It is still at the moment. Might not get another chance.”

A third instance of Kasita popped up, spell card already in hand and aimed at the gap in the slivers. “Violet Flare.”

“Violet?” Alyssa said as the purple ball of fire flew off, well away from the Justice. “What’s—”

“Now!” Kasita shouted. “Hit it now if you’re going to hit it! Quick, before—”

Gritting her teeth, Alyssa held her hand out the hole in the top of her protective shield. Annihilator card in hand, she adjusted slightly to try to get the Justice’s full left side in the blast.

The blindingly brilliant beam of her Annihilator blocked out all sight outside the shield. The mirrored surface inside the shield didn’t help. She pinched her eyes closed as hard as she could and it still felt like staring into the sun. But at least there wasn’t a giant laser beam incinerating her.

~Alyssa. If you do not wish to die, you need to use a full Reality Sliver in under twenty seconds from when I say now. Do not leave its safety for at least one half hour outside the effects of Accelero. Get ready… now!~

She had been planning on holding the Annihilator active as long as possible. Now…

Irulon’s timer was going. Unlike Alyssa at the best of times, Irulon counted time accurately in her head. She couldn’t delay for an answer from Kasita.

“Ugh!”

The Annihilator beam collapsed as Alyssa clenched her fist. With the heat gone from her face, Alyssa squinted.

The Justice was injured. One wing was missing entirely. The rest were in flames. Its entire backside looked like someone had tied its legs to a truck and dragged it over some bumpy country roads for a few miles. There wasn’t any actual blood—just gaps into the core of light that filled its being—but it was injured. Which was more than Alyssa had managed to do with several Annihilators back at Owlcroft. She had been aiming for the sword at the time, but the point still stood.

Looking around as Alyssa grasped for a Reality Sliver card, Alyssa couldn’t find the scales anywhere on the Justice. There were metal chains and a drooping bar, but no actual scales.

Only as the mirrored dome started forming up around her reflective shelter did Alyssa realize that the Justice was not floating anymore.

It was falling.

Just before the spell finished, the Justice must have hit the outside. Cracks ran across the shell. The solid panes of mirrored glass changed, every single one showing off the prismatic city of towers and angels.

The Endless Expanse.

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Lost Authority

Beneath the Fractured Dome

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The bubble fell. The little sliver of reality that had protected their troupe shimmered, broke into shards, and vanished. Brilliant golden light from the Justice forced Alyssa to squint as it chased away the moonlight. It felt all the brighter now that she had spent an hour in relative darkness. A small Light spell that they had sparked up couldn’t compare.

At least the bubble had done its job. Alyssa, along with her companions, sat on a small patch of untouched land. All around them, trees, earth, and boulders had plowed across the landscape. What had once been a relatively scenic, if wet, landscape now looked like it had been attacked by a thousand lumberjacks who had been ordered to break the trees rather than cut them. They had been followed by a massive rototiller that just laid further waste to the area.

As ravaged as the land had been, the Astral Authority looked untouched. If anything, they looked even more numerous. But that was probably just because of how far Alyssa could see now that there wasn’t much in the way.

With the trees felled, there was nothing obscuring the fight between the Justice and the demon. In her unleashed form, the demon was definitely much better off. Alyssa had thought that the demon’s movements had been quick at Owlcroft, but now, she could barely keep track of the demon. She was more of a black blur with some glowing red streaks surrounding her.

The demon darted around, dashing from foot to arm to hip to shoulder, slicing and cutting all without doing any real damage. Even had Alyssa been staring through her binoculars, she doubted she would have seen anything.

But the Justice wasn’t having an easy time of it either. It had seemingly decided to forgo using its sword for the time being. Perhaps it was just a bit too unwieldy, even for such a monstrous being, against the demon as she was now. Its current tactic involved shifting between trying to grab the demon with its hands that were always in multiple places at once and trying to swat the demon out of the air.

It came close to hitting the demon three times while Alyssa watched. All three in the span of a second. A few seconds after each attempt, a heavy wind just about made Alyssa take a step back. Not strong enough to send trees or even people flying, but…

When it next used its sword, it surely would send her toppling through the air.

Alyssa kept a firm grip around Kasita’s arm to ensure that the mimic wouldn’t go flying off again.

They were still toward the far end of the larger sliver dome, still contained within.

Which was a relief to see. Alyssa had been nervous that they would have escaped completely and gone on a rampage outside. If they could be redirected back to Owlcroft, that might be fine. But Alyssa had a feeling that the demon had been leading it closer toward the city, rather than away from it.

Or perhaps just closer to Alyssa. The Taker had said that his master wanted something from her. At the time, Alyssa had thought it was something more sinister, but she now had to consider the possibility that the demon just wanted a distraction. Or an ally?

Alyssa scowled as she walked right up to the edge of where their smaller bubble had been. Pristine forest floor shifted so abruptly into turned up dirt that it felt like she was stepping over the threshold of some portal. Her fingers tightened around Irulon’s tome as she took one more step.

“Ufu~” Kasita’s usual giggle was lacking in enthusiasm. “What a mess.”

“It is probably going to get a lot worse before this is over. I just hope the spell over the battle holds tight. And that they don’t use portals to escape.”

“Tenebrael was plotting to disrupt those. Perhaps you could do the same?”

“Using Tenebrael’s power?” Alyssa asked, raising an eyebrow at Kasita. “I’d have everything in this bubble after me in an instant. Probably things outside the bubble too, given how quickly they reacted to me the last time they showed up. I’d rather keep them ignoring us as long as possible.”

“And when they do turn their eyes our way?”

Alyssa looked around while keeping an eye on the Justice—just in case it swung its sword again. There were simply too many of the lesser Astral Authority to count. Most were far enough away that they were just little fireflies. The mirrored dome didn’t make it any easier. Some parts of the dome made it hard to tell whether she was seeing a reflection or the actual thing.

“We’ll have to trust Irulon.”

“Don’t worry. You can rest assured that I will do my utmost to keep us all intact. Stay safe,” Irulon called from behind. “I will send a message when I am ready.”

“So you said,” Alyssa mumbled as a smaller mirrored dome started forming up again.

She blinked her eyes for just one second.

When she opened them again, there was no sign of a second dome. Irulon, Izsha, Musca, Fela, and Catal were nowhere to be seen either. The ground went from torn up earth with twigs and debris to more torn up earth and more debris. The patch of untouched forest was gone. If she took a step, she would end up moving a good twenty feet, she knew. But…

“How does that spell work?”

“Asking the wrong mimic.”

“Is there a right one?”

“If I am allowed further access to spells and research materials, maybe me one day!”

“When we get back to Lyria. For now… Let’s test the spell.”

“Sure thing,” Kasita said. With a forced smile, her form shifted. A large rock, large enough to hide a small deck of cards, appeared in Alyssa’s open hand.

Alyssa pulled out a spell card of her own after pocketing the rock.

Just in time for the Justice to make contact with the demon. An open-palm strike sent the molten woman flying higher in the air. Without any wings or methods of propelling herself, she couldn’t stop. Faster than a blink of an eye, she met her reflection in the mirrored dome.

The sound of a thunderclap ripped across the landscape, followed by a shockwave. More debris got knocked up in the air.

The world around Alyssa slowed down, dropping to a near standstill as Accelero’s effect took hold. Bits of earth, wood, and even shattered glass all froze in the air. There wasn’t as much as when the Justice had swung its sword and most of it wasn’t anywhere near her, but better to be safe than sorry.

The falling glass had her worried. She stopped and stared, fingering a Message card. Irulon had said that Messages wouldn’t work between the domes, but she was only saying what she knew to be true. For Alyssa, someone who had a penchant for unexpected outcomes when using spells, contacting Irulon might just be possible. And might be necessary. If the outer dome fell, both the demon and the Justice could more easily flee. Even if they stayed in the same general area, their attacks on each other were too destructive to the surrounding environment. Moving even a little closer to Illuna could wind up cataclysmic.

Around the point of the demon’s impact, concentric rings of the shattered sliver spread out like a spider weaving its web. Alyssa sucked in a breath as she watched the cracks form.

But the dome didn’t shatter and fall apart.

Rather, the vast majority of the dome remained intact. The mirrored wall still reflected the ground, Astral Authority, and even Alyssa somewhere up there. Yet there were definitely shards falling from it.

Some facets of the mirror between the cracks around where the demon had struck, where the mirrored surface had once reflected the ground and nothing more, there was something else. Something ominous. An abyss of darkness spread along with the cracks, lit only by the same dark red lines that marred the true demon’s skin. Staring into them made drained all sense of motivation from Alyssa. It was like being at the bedehouse or the pit, except a thousand times worse. All she wanted to do was lie down and curl up in on herself.

Even with Accelero active, Alyssa thankfully didn’t have time to watch and worry over the mirrored ceiling any longer. The Justice moved at a much slower pace than it had before, but it still moved. Focusing her attention on the Justice brought back a mild warmth, driving out the despair of those darkened panels.

Grasping its sword with both hands—all while the scales remained in one of them—the Justice swung from the ground straight up to the ceiling. A blade of wind followed the tip of the sword, rippling through the air slow enough that Alyssa could tell it wasn’t aimed at her.

The hard metal of the Justice’s blade slammed into the same spot that the demon had struck.

Where the demon had caused only a few dozen rings of broken mirror expanding out around her, the sword caused ripples to form across the entire surface, from the crown of the dome all the way down as far as Alyssa could see. Explosions of shattering glass followed the rippling all the way down after a short delay. The entire dome cracked and broke, looking like a massive kaleidoscope.

Light flooded into the world around Alyssa.

The shattered dome still reflected the normal world, but only in a third of the total space. The rest was split between the red-veined utter oblivion that had surrounded the demon and… something new. A world of gold and crystal towers, prismatic light glistening with eerie iridescence. Colors that Alyssa couldn’t even name danced around like little fairies in the mirrored surfaces. The buildings were so tall that Alyssa wasn’t sure whether or not there was actually a ground for them to stand upon. Every second, the buildings seemed to collapse and twist in on themselves like they were shards of Fractal Mirror.

Yet no matter what facet of the dome she looked into, there was always one particular tower that stood just a little more prominent than the rest. Whether it was in the background, the foreground, behind another building, or completely out of sight, it was somehow still there and just a little more important than anything else.

Alyssa wasn’t sure how long she sat there just staring into the various facets. Something about the prismatic world was just… enrapturing. And, somehow, familiar. There was a warmth coming from it. One that completely suppressed that unnatural feeling coming from the darkened facets.

Angels, she realized. Not just one, but possibly thousands. Looking past the shifting buildings and strange light glistening off their surfaces, Alyssa could see them. Sometimes they were in the foreground, tiny compared to the buildings. Sometimes they were just specks off in the distance. Some had only one pair of wings, some had two. Relieved, Alyssa didn’t see any with the full six wings of the Seraphim, though she did see some massive wheels turning in the foreign sky that she recognized from Tenebrael’s brief dossier on angels as being Ophanim.

Movement from the Justice let Alyssa pull her eyes off the shattered dome. It lowered the sword, slowly at first, seemingly inspecting the tip of it despite the blindfold still being mostly intact over its eyes.

The demon wasn’t pinned to the ceiling or skewered on the sharp point of the sword. Alyssa hadn’t seen her flip out of the way. She could have moved just in the nick of time, flipping away in a direction obscured by the sword itself, but the apparent confusion of the Justice said otherwise.

“Kasita?” Alyssa said, voice barely above a whisper. “Kasita? Are you…”

Irulon had said that Kasita might be able to piggy-back through Accelero if she was on Alyssa’s person at the time of casting. She hadn’t used the word ‘piggy-back’ but the meaning was the same. However, pulling out the rock in her pocket, Alyssa just frowned.

“Kasita?”

It wasn’t the time to play games. Kasita wouldn’t sit around pretending it wasn’t working as a joke. Alyssa slipped the rock back into her pocket with a small sigh. With Kasita’s ability to sense the Justice’s invisible limbs, Alyssa had been hoping that Kasita would notice anything she missed. But…

Alyssa started forward, only to stumble and trip straight into her own clone. She didn’t fall, but the same wasn’t true for the poor mimic.

Kasita tumbled to the ground, only to shimmer. But she didn’t disappear. A second Kasita popped up, staring down at herself. “Something is strange,” she said, all too candidly for the situation.

“You’re still in my pocket,” Alyssa said as she removed the rock. Which had to be Kasita. Alyssa was not in the habit of carrying around random rocks. But… “What’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I can—”

“Kasita?” Alyssa asked, reaching forward.

The mimic stopped moving. Almost completely. There was still a little movement to her, much like the world frozen by Accelero. After a moment of her sitting mostly still, her form shimmered.

Another Kasita popped up beside the other two, crossing her arms with a heavy scowl. “I think I’m falling out of sync with the world. It’s the spell.”

“But you aren’t being hurt?”

“I don’t think—”

Once again, Kasita froze.

Alyssa shook her head and just started moving. When Kasita popped up a few moments later, she didn’t stop. “Keep up as best you can. If you aren’t being harmed, I don’t know that we have the time to stop and figure out exactly what is going on.”

“Yeah. I understand. It’s strange, but I think I’m fine.”

Kasita took two more steps alongside Alyssa before her form froze once again. It was a bit distracting, but Alyssa managed to ignore the trail of Kasitas they were leaving in their wake. She had to keep her focus on the Justice as she walked toward it.

With Accelero active, it didn’t move quite as quickly… at least to her perspective. But it wasn’t moving that much anymore in the first place. Rather, its confusion about the missing true demon kept up. It slowly turned its head, looking around the dome from behind its ruined blindfold. Its movements paused every time its line of sight crossed one of the darkened panels of the dome. It never stayed staring at any one spot for long.

“Is that Earth?” Kasita asked, popping up in front of Alyssa and pointing off toward one of the larger intact shards.

Alyssa had to stop. The pane that Kasita had pointed out was definitely not a mere reflection of the world around her. There was an asphalt street, red and green streetlights, and cars. The entire image was upside-down, but Alyssa still instantly recognized it. How could she not? Even had she been away from Earth for a hundred years, she was sure that she would recognize modern civilization.

But that one pane got her looking around. She had previously dismissed all the facets of glass that weren’t showing off the prismatic city or the red-veined abyss. They were obviously different from the local area. Now…

The more Alyssa looked, the less she noticed any actual reflections. Several looked like foresty areas, but taking a closer look, the trees were all wrong. There were pine trees or smaller maple-like trees in the reflections where there larger bulky trees… or just debris should have actually been reflected.

One showed off a desert. A sandy, dune-filled desert. No matter what trees were around or what angle she viewed those trees at, there was no way that any single spot in her immediate area could be mistaken for a sandy desert. Even the crater where the demon had been pinned didn’t look anything like a desert.

A city skyline, more than anything else, cemented the fact that at least some of those facets were showing things other than Nod. And maybe not even just Earth. The skyline was like nothing Alyssa had ever seen. She didn’t have a mental library of all the cities on Earth or the silhouettes they created against a setting sun, but she was fairly certain that the skyline she was looking at wasn’t from Earth at all. There were too many narrow, pointed spires. Most skyscrapers on Earth were square and blocky. Or at least they appeared that way when looked at from the side.

This skyline looked like something from the Jetsons. Maybe not quite so cartoonish, but close. It might have been from the angelic world, but Alyssa doubted it. None of the other views of the Endless Expanse showed a body of water. And this particular panel wasn’t iridescent or prismatic at all.

The fractured dome was showing other worlds. Not just Earth or Nod, but completely new places.

The ramifications of which Alyssa wasn’t sure what to think. She knew that other worlds were out there. Nod existed because of Tenebrael. She was but one of many Dominions. So it stood to reason that other angels were out there, running their worlds in a presumably more by-the-book manner.

Just as Alyssa started wondering if the panes were able to be passed through like a portal—something that could be a problem if an Annihilator wiped out some city a world away—the demon returned. It was a black blob of red-streaked light coming from one of the darkened panels of glass. Launching from behind the Justice, it passed through the glowing aureole and slammed into the back of the Justice’s head hard enough to knock it down to its knees.

Before the Justice could retaliate, the demon leaped off the Justice’s head, disappearing into one of the darkened panels.

Like a rocket, she popped out of another before the Justice could right itself. The thunderclap from the first strike rumbled over Alyssa just as its foot further hammered the Justice down. Once again, the demon jumped away.

The Justice tried to reach after her, but where the demon passed through the dome without any obstruction, the Justice’s hand crashed into it, sending more cracks through some unbroken shards, all of which split off into different views of the abyss, the Expanse, and other worlds.

Alyssa winced, worried about the worlds beyond. But the Justice’s fingers didn’t seem to actually disturb anything on the other sides. The street, for instance, was completely fine. Cars drove by, even directly into the shard of glass, without any notice or care. Even the angels floating around the Expanse didn’t seem to notice the windows into their world… or any giant fingers sticking out on their end.

Again and again, the demon popped out of the portals, knocked the Justice around, and disappeared back inside them.

At no point did the Justice come close to touching the demon. And after a few more kicks, it couldn’t do much of anything besides try to keep itself off the ground. The demon was relentless. Even with the Justice down, she didn’t let up.

But she still wasn’t doing any appreciable damage. It was just hit after hit. She didn’t even have her scythe anymore. Most of her attacks were either kicks or punches… with her entire body weight put behind them. And her body weight compared to the Justice was like a toddler trying to punch an elephant to death.

At least she was keeping it down. With the constant pelting, the Justice couldn’t swing its sword.

“Perfect time to get closer,” Alyssa said… to herself. Kasita froze just in time to miss it. Shaking her head, she started forward.

Only to freeze herself as a black and red blur fell out of the sky.

“Going to help?” the demon asked, mouth hardly moving. Her words came out with a hiss of steam. “Or just stand there and watch?”

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Lost Authority

Sketched Out

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Shards of glass hung in the air around Alyssa, swirling in a languid tornado. Each facet of each shard displayed an image. With her heightened knowledge of how the first high level spell she had ever used actually worked, she knew that it wasn’t displaying literally every possible action she could be taking at the moment. Had that been true, the shards would have been overwhelmed by different images of her standing around in ever so slightly different positions. There would be so many infinitesimally small variations in action that would result in roughly the same outcome that Fractal Mirror would never end up displaying anything actually useful.

No. There was a focus to the images in the shards of glass. Some did show her standing around, of course. Some showed her doing rather… unpleasant things to her companions. Even if throttling Irulon sounded cathartic at the moment, she didn’t need the memory burned into her mind as if she had actually done it. Months after her other two uses of the spell, she could still remember so many things that she hadn’t actually done.

It was one of the main reasons why she hated this particular spell. It could be handy, but the lasting consequences of using it were almost a price too high.

Alyssa brushed the shards to the side as she sought something a little more useful.

Thankfully, the vast majority of the shards showed her running around outside their little sliver of reality, directed by her desire and intention to somehow get the demon or the Justice under control. A few showed rather painful-looking deaths. Really painful in the case of the one where an Equanimity skewered her with its scorpion tail before bashing her against trees and rocks over and over again. Luckily, those didn’t actually imprint into her mind. The shards were destroyed the moment she died, negating whatever caused that particular problem. Several showed her getting hurt, but she didn’t exactly feel the hurt, even if she could remember it happening.

Many shards showed her pointing Irulon’s tome at either the demon or the Justice. Not much often happened in the case of the former. Most spells seemed to slide right off the obsidian skin. Shards that would otherwise split the world into tiny chunks might cause a small rash of glowing red lava to appear on the demon’s skin, but nothing more. Even that quickly sealed back into the thin cracks that lined the demon’s skin. That seemed to be the most damaging of all the shards, depressingly enough.

For the Justice, any time she tried attacking it, she generally got ganged up on by the rest of the Astral Authority. They were far less impervious to harm than the demon was, but their numbers were their true problem. An Equanimity eating a bit of fractal glass to the face would kill it, but even Irulon’s tome didn’t have enough spells to kill them all. And while the Justice got injured, its size meant that most spells ended up being nothing more than little paper cuts. In some possible futures, it seemed as if the Justice got hurt a whole lot more than others despite the effect of the spells she used being roughly the same as any other shard. She couldn’t tell why it seemed so injured in some of them. Maybe if Fractal Mirror showed a bit more time… but that probably wouldn’t help. The Astral Authority invariably swarmed her the moment she attacked, destroying the shard in almost every case.

She wasn’t quite sure how long she had been sitting inside the spell, watching the shards. Time went a little strange with a few Fractal type spells. Enough so that Alyssa had to wonder if there wasn’t some relation to the regular Time magic that the Pharaoh used. However, despite all the time she had spent looking at possible futures, Alyssa still wasn’t seeing a solution.

The Justice was definitely far more vulnerable than the demon. That she had learned. The demon was significantly less likely to try to kill her, but she somewhat already knew that, and there were no infected or other demonic entities around to gang up on her. As much as she hated to admit it, teaming up with the demon might be the best option at this juncture.

The real problem was just the minor members of the Astral Authority. In all futures Alyssa had seen, the Justice itself had completely ignored her. Back at Owlcroft, it had mostly ignored her, even when she had been doing Tenebrael stuff like messing with Izsha’s soul. Collateral damage was still an issue, but one that could be mitigated a few dozen times with more Reality Slivers.

With a sigh, Alyssa tapped one of the shards that showed her doing not much of anything. All the shards pressed in on her, squeezing her, crushing her, drawing her into them. And then… they were gone. Alyssa stood in the bubble of separated world, standing among Catal, Fela, Kasita, Irulon, and the draken.

She immediately sucked in a breath, filling her burning lungs.

Kasita was at her side in an instant, clearly worried.

Alyssa waved her off. “I’m fine,” she said between breaths. “Just decided to hold my breath for some reason.” She should have been a little more careful in selecting a course of action. At least she was still on her feet. The sweat slowly beading up on her forehead was easily ignored.

“Any ideas from the future?” Irulon asked. The princess was seated on the ground, cross-legged with her hands on her knees. Her eyes were closed, as if she were in deep meditation. They were probably black and white at the moment rather than her normal violet. Alyssa knew her well enough to guess that. “I have had a few thoughts, but I’ll wait to share them until I learn whether or not you tried them.”

“Nothing much,” Alyssa said with a shake of her head. “We might have to give the demon the assist, reverse our original plan.”

Irulon nodded slowly, as if she had considered a similar thing and had come to the same conclusion. “How easy is it to achieve victory?”

“I didn’t get to see any such situation. The Astral Authority aren’t actually that strong. Fela can tear them apart one on one without problem. It’s just their numbers that are the issue.” Hefting up the leather-bound tome, Alyssa flipped it open. “I don’t suppose there are any spells in here that might cull the herd a bit? I will say that I did not notice any extra Astral Authority angels portaling in. This sliver might hamper them. Or they just haven’t figured out how to get inside just yet but will soon. Either way, if we can get rid of most of them here and now, we’ll at least have a minor advantage.”

“No. Nothing in the book that could eliminate an army.”

“Nothing in the book? So something outside it?”

“Counter-army magic might work. All of which is Rank Six and can unleash wide-scale destruction. One particular spell comes to mind that might vaporize everything underneath the outer sliver.”

“Does that include us?”

“If we cannot create another smaller sliver fast enough, very likely yes. This particular spell is traditionally used only in the most dire of situations as it generally kills the lone arcanist sent to the back lines of the enemy army to prepare and execute the ritual.”

“It’s another ritual?” Alyssa asked with a frown. “We don’t exactly have a month to sit around—”

“Izsha’s ritual was created from scratch. Well, not quite, but semantics aren’t important at the moment. The ritual I am thinking of is already created, tested, and well known—though the details are kept secret to all but Rank Six arcanists in the royal family. The last person to use it was my father’s father’s mother.”

“I see… So it hasn’t been done in quite some time and no one knows the exact details of it and you have no idea whether or not you could get everyone into a bubble in time before whatever this ritual does actually goes off?”

Irulon didn’t answer for a long moment, choosing to remain still as she slowly opened her eyes. Her eyes were black and white, as Alyssa had suspected, spinning rapidly when she finally opened them. “Most of what you say is… mostly correct.”

“In that case, why don’t we table that thought for now… but I guess we might come back to it later on. Is there anything else that comes to mind, anything perhaps a little less cataclysmically deadly to all of us here?”

“Something that stands a chance at destroying the Astral Authority? Nothing particularly comes to mind. As you said, they are just too numerous to fight conventionally.”

“Alright.” Alyssa nodded, looking around to the others. “Other suggestions? Kasita, Fela? Catal?” Turning to the man in fairly bulky armor, Alyssa had to frown again. “Are you alright?”

Catal had hardly moved or even spoke since the sliver of reality had separated them from the rest of the world. He just sat on the ground, staring down at that sketchbook he had brought with him. On it, he had started a drawing. A tiny little stick figure stood next to the much larger drawing of the Justice. Given that the stick figure wasn’t detailed at all, it was probably just there for scale. As for the Justice, Alyssa found herself quite impressed with his drawing skills. He certainly hadn’t been the one to have drawn out that map she had taken a picture of. If he ever decided to retire from the mercenary life, he could likely make a decent living in the world of art.

His drawing obviously wasn’t complete just yet, the whole lower half of the Justice wasn’t anything more than rough lines, but the upper torso and head seemed… mostly complete if not entirely accurate. Or maybe he wasn’t quite seeing everything that Alyssa saw.

The strange way the Justice appeared, with Alyssa being able to look over its arm only to find herself staring at its stomach in the same spot, would make it difficult for anyone to draw, no matter how skilled they were. She didn’t expect a perfect drawing. Such things would have been nearly impossible to represent on a static sheet of paper. But there were other, larger details that she felt should be there.

For one, the Justice had only two arms on Catal’s sketch. Alyssa saw only two arms as well, but the Justice could do odd things like grasp its sword with both hands while still holding the oversized scales out. Or grasping its sword with one hand, the edge of the portal with one hand, and the scales with one hand. All that the same time. Catal’s drawing was completely missing the scales, even though he had the sword drawn in a surprising amount of detail. It only held the sword with one hand, but the other hand was completely empty.

No scales to be seen.

Another thing that was missing were the wings and the aureole. Given how prominent both were, Alyssa had to wonder whether or not he could see them. Six great wings were impossible to miss while the glowing false-halo should have been represented somehow. Probably like old-fashioned religious art like those found in old cathedrals or monasteries.

“Do you,” Alyssa started, looking between everyone else present—they had all failed to answer her question. Pausing, she decided to switch how she was about to phrase her question. “What did the Justice look like to you all? All except Kasita.”

The mimic put on a pout, though it lacked the carefree feeling that Kasita usually gave off. “Why not me?”

“Because you see things differently than others,” Alyssa said without looking away from Irulon, Catal, and Fela. “What are some basics? How many arms did it have? Legs?”

“Two arms. Two legs,” Irulon said without hesitation, earning nods from both the other two.

“Alright. Any equipment?”

Catal and Irulon both opened their mouths, but Irulon paused, allowing the former to answer first.

“A sword the size of the palace. It swung it around as easily as I swing my mace around.”

As soon as he was done, Irulon continued. “A blindfold.”

“But it was all torn up. And its face,” Fela said, leaning forward, eyes burning a bit brighter than normal. “Looked like it had a few of my kind tearing it up for a few days.”

Nodding again, Alyssa looked around, waiting. But it quickly became apparent that none of them were going to say anything. Irulon seemed to realize that something was up. She narrowed her eyes, flicking them to black and white for a moment as she stared at Alyssa. Though her stare only lasted until Kasita started frowning, and her attention shifted.

“Anything else? Any other notable traits or aspects of the Justice that you noticed?”

With no answer forthcoming, Alyssa looked to Kasita.

“It was carrying something,” she said. “Not the sword, but something else. I couldn’t quite tell what it was and it kept shifting around its body into different places. But it was definitely carrying something.”

“Scales,” Alyssa said. “Like the ones Tzheitza has in the potion shop, but much larger ones. It also had wings and a halo.”

“Didn’t see a halo, but I did see the wings. Six of them.”

“The halo doesn’t surprise me. I don’t think there is really any part of it that is real. But the scales…” Alyssa thought back, both to her time inside the Fractal Mirror and while the Justice had the demon pinned to the ground. The first time she had seen the Justice was something of a wash. She had been too awed to actually pay attention and as soon as she realized that Izsha and Kasita weren’t where she expected them to be, she had focused almost entirely on them. But the most recent times…

The Justice and the demon were both vicious fighters. She was a little afraid of what the world outside their small bubble of reality looked like. The incoming debris that the sliver saved them from was the least of what could have gone wrong out there. And that was just the Justice and its collateral. The demon seemed to keep herself contained to damaging it and it alone, but Alyssa had only seen a fraction of their entire fight… presumably.

As Fela had said, the demon had done a number on the Justice. Not just its blindfold and face, but its arms and body as well. Just a few minutes ago, Alyssa had seen the demon slice up the Justice’s arm. Even the sword was chipped and damaged now more than when Alyssa had last seen it. Not to the same extent as the demon’s scythe, but it had definitely been targeted a few times.

It made Alyssa wonder exactly what the demon thought she was doing. Were her attacks actually inflicting appreciable damage? Was she trying to do something else? Protect her other… demon infected things. Though probably not that. So maybe she was just trying to delay until Tenebrael finished her job of kicking out the Astral Authority?

Or was she actually trying to kill it?

“The demon hasn’t attacked the scales as far as I could tell. They were completely without a single scratch. Just as pristine as when I first saw them. Makes me wonder just why that might be.”

Irulon stood, pressing a thumb to her chin as she started pacing back and forth. “A weakness that it is hiding? Or is the demon intentionally avoiding it?”

“They might be similar to the demon’s mask.”

“Damaging the scales would empower it?”

“Can’t discount the possibility, but given that none of you were able to see it… or see it well,” Alyssa added with a glance to Kasita, “I would hazard a guess that the same holds true for the demon. I don’t know why I can see Tenebrael or the true demon, but whatever that is probably lets me see the scales as well.”

“Do you think you can damage them?”

That was the real question. The scales were quite large. A simple bullet from her pistol wasn’t likely to do anything aside from a small dent. Annihilator would probably do something even though it hadn’t been all that effective on either the demon or the sword. Still, if the scales were as tough as the sword, the Justice wouldn’t need to keep them so hidden.

“Very well,” Irulon said, standing. “I think we have a plan then.”

“We have a what?”

“A plan.” Irulon dusted her hands together. “Listen here, we’ve got a shot at this. We just have a few details to figure out…”

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Lost Authority

Beneath the Dome

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“Hm.”

“Hm? Hm?” Alyssa hissed, snatching the binoculars back from Irulon to find out the extent of the damage removing that mask might have caused.

So far, it didn’t look like too much had gone wrong. Both the demon’s hands were still clamped around the tip of the Justice’s sword. But every scrap of leather that had once bound her body had fallen away, turned to dust and ash that coated the molten ground surrounding her without actually being consumed. But the ash only entered into Alyssa’s subconscious as a side note.

The demon herself was far more shocking.

With her clothes and mask obscuring all skin save for a small patch around one eye, Alyssa had expected something roughly human beneath. In fact, when she had removed her mask at Owlcroft to give her bullshit speech about how much she loved life and wanted to save it all, Alyssa had seen a human mouth and chin and neck. It had hardly been notable.

But now, things were changing. A rippling motion moved underneath the demon’s skin. Muscles bulged and tightened, twisting her body into a far more bulky form. Horns grew from the sides of her head, jutting downward before curving straight up. Her smile melded into her face. The line between her lips and her teeth blurred until she had no lips… or maybe no skin at all, just sharp teeth that were part of the rest of her face. Where once her skin had been average for a human of an unclear ethnicity, an obsidian black gleam spread over her body, starting from her eyes. Red glow, deeper yet somehow brighter than the lava around her form, followed after the obsidian, making her look like a sculpture carved from fresh volcanic rock.

Her hands lengthened and sharpened in the same way that her grin had shifted into part of her face, twisting into sharp claws.

Claws sharp and strong enough to bite into the metal of the Justice’s sword.

“Sever Reality.”

Alyssa shot the princess a glare as a mirrored dome of fractal magic wrapped around the entire crater. A huge mirrored dome, several times larger than any Alyssa had seen so far. She hadn’t even thought a dome of this size was possible. It might have covered the entirety of Illuna. It was a theoretically impenetrable wall. At least Irulon claimed it to be so. The Astral Authority were beholden to most rules of reality as far as Alyssa could tell, so they might not be able to get inside or outside… without using their portals. The demon could teleport as well, but so long as neither side used their portals, the mirrored dome would contain damage such as that which had caused the crater…

But…

“We’ve screwed up.”

“Perhaps,” Irulon said, voice with a heavy tension in it. Fear. Fear that Alyssa hadn’t heard from her since she found out that her combining with the dragon might have had repercussions. Though it wasn’t quite the same kind of fear, it was around the same level. “The dome should buy us some time to figure out an alternate course of action. But… hm. I feel like I’ve seen this before.”

“You’ve seen the Justice?”

“Not the Justice. The dome with a bright light fighting against an obsidian black.” Black and white eyes tore away from the crater to meet Alyssa’s stare. Slowly, Irulon broke her gaze and shook her head. “Do you recall me saying that there was something I didn’t understand in the revelation that Tenebrael offered me? The pieces have fallen into place. This scene, something about this scene jolted my mind in just the right way. I believe Tenebrael foresaw this. Foresaw us here.”

“I’ll kill her,” Alyssa hissed through grit teeth. “I swear I’ll kill her. She could have said something to me.”

“Perhaps she knew that you would have avoided the situation.”

“Did she at least give you some hints that we can follow? Some clue to resolve the situation?”

Irulon puffed up her chest, smiling. “I don’t think so. She must have faith that we can deal with this on our own.”

Alyssa turned a harsh glare to the faith-struck princess. Irulon might believe such nonsense, but Alyssa knew better. Tenebrael was messing with them again. Maybe this was some experiment with the book. Maybe she did foresee the demon being freed and wanted to give Irulon hope so that they wouldn’t give up.

But Alyssa was keen to the angel’s tricks. Tenebrael didn’t know anything. She wasn’t omniscient.

“Alyssa…”

“Just sit still and… don’t do anything, please.” With this new information, Irulon might be compromised into acting strangely. She might think she was doing something to help Tenebrael, such as freeing the demon. That… hadn’t been intentional, right? Irulon had been trying to weaken or kill it. Nothing more. Irulon…

Would the princess betray her and throw her to the wolves—or demons—if Tenebrael asked it?

“The plan still holds true,” Irulon said, looking back down into the crater. “We just have to give the demon a fighting chance for a short time before we turn the tables.”

“Turn the tables? Turn the tables!” Alyssa thrust a finger toward where the formerly pinned demon was visibly lifting the sword off her. “I would have thought weakening her would have been tough before. What are we supposed to do about that!”

Irulon, without a hint of nervousness, simply looked back down to the crater. “I’m sure a solution will present itself. Tenebrael would not have put us… or perhaps just you in a hopeless situation.”

“The hell she wouldn’t!”

“Have faith.”

“Faith? You— Ugh.” Alyssa eyed the faith-blind princess, wondering how she might get Irulon back to her senses… or if she should just Fractal Lock her now and leave her in the corner of the dome to sit until she could do something to fix the situation.

Alyssa didn’t want to believe that her friend would betray her for a stupid angel, but it didn’t necessarily take betraying her to do something stupid.

A small earthquake took Alyssa’s attention off the princess.

The true demon managed to lift the blade up enough to roll out from under it. The sword was partially embedded in the lava and the demon was back on her feet.

Even with the Justice’s hand reaching for her, she still took a moment to look directly at Alyssa. As with almost every other time they had come into contact, the demon waved a jaunty little flick of her wrist. The Justice’s hand moved fast enough that Alyssa could feel the air pressure change, first increasing with a bit of wind before thinning out as it all rushed back down into the arm’s wake.

But the demon’s wave turned into a backflip, sending her right over the top of the hand. She brought her scythe around in that same movement, angling the chipped tip perfectly to drag a deep wound from the Justice’s wrist clear to its elbow.

“How long?” Alyssa asked without taking her eyes off the fight below, ready to Fractal Lock everyone at the first sign of the Justice’s sword swinging around. “How long can we even survive in this dome with these two?”

“Hard to say. If it swings that sword…”

Catal had hardly moved—his former bravado apparently forgotten, or perhaps he hadn’t actually believed Alyssa about the size of the Justice in the first place—not even reacting to Alyssa fighting with Irulon.

Fela was down on all fours, tail whipping back and fourth. A low growl had been coming from her throat for a while now. Every so often, she looked back over her shoulder, looking directly to Alyssa as if wondering if there was some direction coming.

Unfortunately, she would be waiting a while longer. Barring a swarm of infected appearing inside the dome, Alyssa did not want Fela engaging in combat. Not with the true demon or the Justice.

The same went for Izsha and Musca—the latter of whom as growling almost as loud as Fela.

Of everyone present, Izsha was the most steady. Not frozen in fear as Catal appeared to be. No, Izsha was still moving, but the movements weren’t those of a frightened person cowed by what was in front of them. Izsha was fluid and ready to move as soon as it became necessary.

The air pressure changed again, pulling half a breath straight out of Alyssa’s lungs.

“Split Reality.”

A shard of fractal glass struck the trunk of a tree as it careened through the air. The wood quickly began disintegrating until nothing more than a snowfall of sawdust fell to the ground. It piled up a few feet out, well away from any of their group, but the trunk probably would have kept going had it remained intact.

Irulon didn’t say anything, though she did glance toward Alyssa with one eyebrow slightly arched.

“Can we leave this bubble? They can fight it out without us here as long as they want if it isn’t going to affect the outside world.”

Irulon shook her head. “Not as far as I know. Even Message spells don’t tend to penetrate the barrier. The spell was designed to use the casting point as its epicenter. The size and shape can be changed, but we can only retreat as far as the mirrored wall. It should be some distance behind us, given how large this particular instance of the spell is. Honestly, I wasn’t entirely sure it would work, but that thing is large enough that I had to try.”

“Izsha, Musca, Fela, we’re moving,” Alyssa said before Irulon had even finished speaking. “Fall back as far as we are able.” Instant action was what was required at the moment, not hesitation and gaping at the monstrous fight before them. Instant action required goals. Her first goal was to keep all of them alive. They were in the most immediate danger and needed to act quickly to protect themselves. If the Justice swung that sword while they were this close, they might as well shoot themselves now and get it over with.

Thankfully, none of the mentioned individuals argued. Musca seemed perfectly happy to turn around and start running. Izsha put on a burst of speed, just about flinging Catal from the saddle. Only a quick arm around Alyssa’s waist kept him in place.

Beyond their own personal safety, they needed to protect the people outside the bubble. Illuna was still a ways away, but that could change in an instant if the demon and Justice were allowed to move freely. Alyssa was tempted to tell Irulon to take the spell down and put it back up with only her in the center, but…

Alyssa wouldn’t abandon her friend to the Justice and the demon. Regardless of whether or not the normally intelligent princess was acting in a less intelligent manner because of her faith.

As long as the demon and the Justice were going to stay in their own section of the bubble, the situation wouldn’t get all that bad.

“Behind us,” Kasita whispered, forming herself into existence between Alyssa and Izsha’s neck, clinging to Alyssa’s shoulders.

Alyssa threw her head back to find the Justice’s sword up in the air. Not high overhead like it was going to unleash an overhead strike, but more like it was going to slash horizontally. Standing at its full height, the trees did little to hide it.

“Down!” Alyssa shouted. “Everyone, flat against the ground!” Fractal Locks were on the edge of her mind, but…

The Justice wasn’t targeting them.

It was waiting, posed with its sword ready to attack as the true demon launched herself at its face.

Izsha slid in the loose dirt, skidding to a stop. Musca wasn’t quite as fast in stopping, continuing ahead for several feet. Alyssa sprung from Izsha’s back, hitting the ground with one foot, managing to hop and keep her balance.

Catal wasn’t so lucky. The man let out a shout as he slid through the mud and brush.

Some kind of training must have kicked in for Irulon. Perhaps she had practiced emergency draken dismounts before, perhaps the dragon was helping her decide exactly how to move. Either way, she didn’t waste any time in dismounting from Musca. She landed with far more grace than Alyssa or Catal had. As she dove for cover, Izsha, Musca, and Fela all slid up against the ground. It was an awkward move for the draken given that their bodies weren’t really designed for duck and cover exercises. They wound up mostly lying on their sides.

Alyssa moved to crouch between them and the Justice. Projectile Reflection would keep debris away…

The sword flashed with blinding white light. In an instant, far faster than should have been possible, it was on the opposite side of the bubble.

For an instant, everything under the dome went utterly silent.

Dirt, trees, and rock exploded into the air, blotting out the view of the battle. They hung in the air, reaching the apex of their arc. All at once, with a rush of wind and thunder, the sky started falling.

The Projectile Reflection, Alyssa quickly realized, would not cover everyone behind her from that.

“Irulon,” she shouted. “Have you got something for that?” Alyssa had an Annihilator, but with the dome in place, she might just cook them all alive. Assuming it didn’t reflect off the mirrored surface.

Despite the tricky slight of hand that she used to pull cards out, Irulon did need to pull out the cards from her tome.

Irulon brushed off her dragon hide armor as she stood up. A motion that transitioned seamlessly into pulling up the book.

The first bits of debris started pelting the ground in the distance, the dirt and pieces of wood that hadn’t gone quite so high in the dome. Alyssa saw more than a few bounce away from her. Izsha and Musca wouldn’t be bothered by such small pieces and Fela and Catal were in nearly identical poses with their arms over their heads and necks, but the larger debris was rapidly approaching.

“I wonder…” Irulon said softly. “Reality Sliver.”

A dome, much smaller than the one overhead, formed up, wrapping around their small group.

Darkness fell around them. Not complete darkness. The ten foot area they had was lit as if the moon was high overhead. But the bright golden light emanating from the Justice completely vanished. Along with the light, the falling bits of earth, rock, and tree had disappeared as well.

Even with them out of sight, Alyssa kept tense. Something might still break through.

But Irulon didn’t seem concerned in the slightest. Letting the tome dangle at her hip, she continued brushing herself off. “Nested slivers,” she said in apparent amusement, seemingly to herself. “Huh. Wouldn’t have thought… I think we should be safe in here for a time… unless doing this has released the outer sliver. We should probably check that sooner rather than later.”

Alyssa felt a flash of irritation well up. It was just something about the princess’ tone. The mild amusement mixed with discovery at discovering some new thing bothered her. Or perhaps it was her earlier thoughts about Irulon’s possible betrayal—a complete fantasy generated in her own mind with no real evidence in reality—that made her clench her fists. “How are we going to contain, kill, or otherwise injure the true demon now?” she asked, trying not to grit her teeth as she spoke.

“I know you’re upset.”

“A little,” Alyssa said after taking a deep breath. It wasn’t actually Irulon that Alyssa was upset with. It was a certain angel. Tenebrael knew of Irulon’s devotion toward her. If she planted ideas in Irulon’s mind, toyed with her, or otherwise tried to get her to act in a way that Irulon wouldn’t normally act in…

Irulon pressed her lips together, closing her eyes.

“Tenebrael is…” Alyssa had mostly ignored Irulon’s idolization of Tenebrael. It had been mildly annoying, but ultimately harmless. But now… Alyssa really felt like the princess needed some disillusionment. Now probably wasn’t the time.

But something had to be done. The biggest question was just what. Just saying that Tenebrael wasn’t what Irulon thought she was wouldn’t likely do anything. Irulon already knew that Alyssa was less than thrilled with the stupid angel.

If only she had a recording of Tenebrael from the festival in Teneville. Her comments about her own high priest, her dismissive reaction immediately after taking the souls, practically any moment she had been there except for the actual soul collection part would surely have been damning. In fact, most any conversation with Tenebrael eventually revealed something unpleasant. The real question was whether or not Irulon would agree with that unpleasantness. Alyssa could easily see her making excuses or outright ignoring some things.

But… Alyssa didn’t have any proof or evidence of Tenebrael’s lack of worthiness at the moment. Just her own word.

“We’re going to take the demon down,” Alyssa said, no conviction in her voice despite her best attempt. “Somehow, some way, we’re going to take it down.”

Irulon, still with her eyes closed, simply sighed. Reaching down to her hip, she grasped the chain of her tome. Alyssa just about Fractal Locked her then and there, but hesitated just long enough to watch her unhook the chains and pull the tome free. With both hands, Irulon held it out, offering it to Alyssa.

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“All my spells. All save for a dozen Fractal Locks and two more Reality Slivers. Just in case. I was thinking about it, considering how your use of magic might trump my own. What if you had cast the Split Reality spell at the demon? Would it have done more damage? Could it have hurt the demon itself? So I thought you might best be the one to put these spells to use.”

“I don’t even know what spells you’ve got in there.”

“You mentioned accidentally turning an older woman into fine red mist the last time you got your hands on it. You didn’t know what was inside then, did you?”

“That was an incredibly different situation. She was an old woman. Not a true demon in its true form.”

“Point still stands.”

Alyssa grabbed the tome, perhaps a bit rougher than she should have, and stared down at the unadorned leather cover without opening the book. Could she just point it at the demon and end this immediately? It could be worth a shot.

But she felt like they needed a backup plan, just in case.

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Lost Authority

Trudge

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“You don’t have to come. This is a bad idea.”

“Not hearing you put forth any better ideas,” Irulon said, voice a bit terse as they walked over the top of the swamp. She had made a bridge from shifting shards of fractal glass, taking them right over the top of the knee-deep water. It was a strange spell. It looked like they should have fallen right through it. Or perhaps it looked like their ankles should have been flayed to bits. Yet it was solid enough that even Izsha, walking behind Alyssa and Irulon, got to keep its feet dry and intact.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Alyssa shot back, voice barely above a whisper.

Walking over the swamp was a nerve-wracking affair. The Astral Authority were still all over the place. So far, they were ignoring everyone on the fractal bridge, but if that suddenly changed, Alyssa wasn’t sure how much she could actually do about it. She had a few Fractal spells from Irulon’s tome that might come in handy, but there were a lot of the stupid things hovering about.

Demons were another concern. So far, Alyssa had only seen one infected since leaving the city walls. The Astral Authority had swiftly dispatched it without anyone else needing to do something. So at least they were good for that. But an infected could still pop out and get a hit in before any of the Astral Authority did something if they didn’t keep their guard up. And if an infected got close, they would have to worry about collateral damage. The Astral Authority were probably not going to attack them directly, but they probably wouldn’t care too much if a Diligence’s beam or an Equanimity’s… bulk happened to clip one of them.

“I wouldn’t even be going if you weren’t because I’m not sure we can do anything about either being. One is taller than a mountain—”

“Last time it was only taller than a building.”

“Whatever. It like… shifts between dimensions or something so whatever I perceived its height to be probably doesn’t matter.”

“Shifts between dimensions? Now I’m all the more intrigued.”

“The other one is a being that might or might not be on par with Tenebrael. So you better have a good plan and some amazing spells that I’ve never seen before.”

“No real plan at the moment except for what I’ve already outlined to you. Distract either one of them long enough that the other will achieve victory. The details can come later on after I’ve had a chance to observe them for a few moments.”

“Which is exactly why the rest of you don’t need to come,” Alyssa said, looking over her shoulder.

Brakkt had stayed back at the wall, both to act as a liaison between any Messages that Irulon or Alyssa might send as well as to try to keep order among the soldiers. But practically everyone else had come. Irulon was present, obviously. Izsha and Musca both came as well, though Izsha wasn’t looking too enthused with the prospect. They were walking alone with no riders. Soon, perhaps, but for the moment, Alyssa and Irulon had both been worried that riding out at top speed might aggravate the Astral Authority. Hence their rather sedate pace during this past twenty minutes of walking.

Fela prowled ahead, trying to give everyone a heads up on any approaching infected. She sniffed the air constantly, but apparently the air was a bit saturated with the smell of demons. It might end up being that she served as an early warning sign in other ways. Luckily, and really the only reason Alyssa was not arguing against her being a good dozen yards ahead of the group, Fela was strong. Empirical evidence showed that she could take a hit from an infected. Especially if they were more of a lower-level infected. Someone on par with the Taker might pose problems.

Had he died again to the Astral Authority? Was he out there, lying in wait?

Probably not. If he was alive, he was probably fighting.

Kasita walked along between Izsha and Musca. She hadn’t said much so far. Being one of the few who had actually seen the Justice, she had to be just as worried as Alyssa was. If she was, it wasn’t showing on her face much at all.

Catal was the final member of their group. Apparently, he moonlighted as some kind of monster researcher for the guild. He wanted a closer look at just what kind of a force the Astral Authority could bring to bear and just what it took to bring them down.

Alyssa wasn’t sure if he believed her claims of the Justice being the size of dragons, but he was going to see it for himself soon enough.

Catching his gaze, he shrugged. “I’m not planning on fighting if I can help it. I trust that these things are dangerous at least. But someone qualified needs to give a real report on them. Still, don’t worry about me. This isn’t my first foray into danger. I have ways of protecting myself.”

“From what is effectively a building falling on top of you? A very sharp building in a roughly sword shape?”

“Well… no. Not exactly.”

“Or hordes of infected that will probably defend their leader the moment we try to intervene?”

“I have some experience in handling those affected by the plague.”

“The Taker is back. Fully sane and probably as strong as Fela over there. Maybe stronger. Might be hard to kill too. Brakkt was unable to take his head off and that was before getting a new demonic body. All the infected might be like that.”

“Alyssa. If it comes down to it, you and I both have several copies of Fractal Lock. We have, through previous experiences, proved that angelic beings are unable to harm those affected by Fractal Lock. These lesser angels should have a harder time. It’s my fall back plan should things go drastically wrong.”

Pressing her lips together, Alyssa nodded slowly. That could work. Though she wasn’t sure that angels couldn’t harm people in stasis. Rather, it seemed a lot more likely that Adrael simply hadn’t had the opportunity to undo the effect. But the theory was sound, at least for the Astral Authority. As long as nobody was using Tenebrael’s power, the Astral Authority would probably immediately ignore anyone in stasis. And they might not be able to take people out of stasis either.

The true demon might be a bit more of a problem. She could probably take people out of stasis if she tried hard enough. The Cardinal Virtue of Justice would probably keep her busy enough that she wouldn’t be able to do anything. Besides that, the true demon was almost certainly under similar rules as to what kept the angels from directly harming mortals.

Her henchmen didn’t suffer under the same rules, but they weren’t likely to breach Fractal Lock anyway…

Though if everyone wound up inside Fractal Lock, the infected could just stand by and wait for it to wear off.

“I don’t suppose you have an Accelero card handy?”

“Actually, yes. And I have you to thank for it. Father never let me into his temporal noteroom. And ever since my… companion came to live with me, he took care to keep the cards out of my direct line of sight as well. Showing Accelero to you was a bit of a slip-up on his part. I don’t think he even conceived of the possibility that you had something like a camera. Though really, he should have considered that you might have perfect memory.”

“You can’t just use Retrograde Cognition to catch a glimpse of spells he uses?”

“And wind up disowned? No thanks. I don’t much care for being a princess, but I do enjoy the opportunities and resources my status affords me.”

“But the Pharaoh slipping up and showing off a spell is fine?”

“His fault, not mine. He should have been more careful.” From a pocket that was nowhere near the tome chained to her hip, Irulon produced a single spell card. “I only have two. It is quite time consuming to create.”

“You could say that again,” Alyssa said, offering a sympathetic nod of her head as she took the card. Her own experience trying to create that card had been… exhausting to say the least. So many cards had been scrapped because of minor mistakes or tiny angles. It had actually made her wonder if it wasn’t possible to create some kind of stencil or stamp, but both would probably be too imprecise with the current technology of this world. At least for something as complex as Rank Six Time magic spells. They didn’t have any laser cutters after all. She was a little more surprised that there weren’t stencils for things like Flame and Light.

“Shall we ride it out from here? The Astral Authority seem to be ignoring us.”

“True.” Six miles away, assuming that Alyssa’s calculation had been accurate, would be a long while before they managed to catch up to anything if they had to go on foot. The draken could slim that time down to only a few minutes.

Alyssa rested a hand on Izsha’s side. “You sure you want to come? I’m not going to let what happened last time happen again… but…”

The draken gently nudged its nose against Alyssa’s hand. It wasn’t running away, so Alyssa took that as a reassurance. Swinging a leg up and over the saddle, she settled into position with a glance to Kasita. The mimic accepted an offered hand, disappearing halfway through being pulled up onto Izsha’s back. Alyssa slid a large coin into her pocket as she looked over to Catal.

“We didn’t plan well for this, I suppose.” He had no horse and no draken. Fela didn’t either, but Fela was a hellhound. Six miles at a mild jog wouldn’t even be a sweat. “Izsha can likely carry you.”

Izsha shot a quick glance at Catal before flicking an eye toward Alyssa. He was a larger man with a bit of size to his armor, so Alyssa could see why Izsha might not be too happy. Still, there wasn’t much other option aside from leaving him behind and alone.

“It’ll be fine,” Alyssa said, mostly to Izsha. “We don’t need to rush. In fact, slower might be better.”

Alyssa offered him a hand, one which he took after eying Izsha almost as much as it was eying him. He settled into the saddle just behind Alyssa. The saddle was Dasca’s saddle this time—Irulon sat in Musca’s usual saddle—which was a bit larger and had needed some good harness work to get it steady. Thanks to its extra size, he wasn’t completely crowding Alyssa out. Just mostly.

With Fela still in the lead, though at a much closer distance, Izsha and Musca picked up the pace. Alyssa spent the first few minutes watching all visible members of the Astral Authority. Just in case. A few paces forward, Irulon was doing the same thing.

One of the closer Kindnesses turned to watch them, but neither it nor any of the others did anything else.

Anything to their little party, anyway. One Patience dashed overhead through the trees, skewering an infected that had already been on its spear against a large stone boulder.

No infected bothered them either, Alyssa noted as they continued on. They were too busy being torn apart by the Astral Authority. Back at Owlcroft after the first Patiences came through their golden portals, the infected had put up a decent fight. Not just the Taker-level ones either. Larger groups of the weaker infected had been surprisingly efficient in turning the tables on anything that got too close.

Alyssa couldn’t be certain how fast they were traveling. It was far slower than draken could go and a good deal slower than their standard trotting speed. Still, Alyssa would have expected that a half-hour of running through the forest would have revealed something. Some sign of the Justice. It was the size of a building. And while she couldn’t see buildings in a neighboring city from a forest thirty minutes away, most buildings on Earth didn’t fly. Or move. Or get into slugfests with supernatural monsters.

The only evidence that there was something around were the trees. The further they went, the more the trees looked broken. Branches were snapped and the bark had been torn clean off the far sides. Leaves coated the ground, torn to shreds for the most part.

It could have been the regular infected and Astral Authority destroying trees in their fights, but there were too many. The effect was too consistent.

And the further they went, the destruction got more and more intense.

“There.” Irulon’s voice was soft, quiet, and tense.

Even still, Alyssa heard her clearly over the sporadic crashes and shouts of dying infected in the background of the forest.

Musca had already shifted direction to go in line with Irulon’s pointing arm. Izsha didn’t waste any time in following after. A quick whistle was enough to get Fela to notice their changed course. A burst of speed had the hellhound moving along right beside Alyssa.

Their new course opened into a clearing after several minutes of movement.

An unnatural clearing. The trees didn’t just thin out to an open area of land. They had been uprooted and thrown to the side, creating an almost log-cabin wall around the entire place. Dirt and rock had been torn up like the world’s largest rototiller had passed through.

It reminded Alyssa of the aftermath of an Annihilator spell. The only thing that was missing was the molten terrain.

Though even that was present at the very center, bubbling up around the Justice itself.

It was kneeling down, bent over completely while grasping its sword. Its pose certainly explained why she hadn’t been able to see it over the tops of the trees further out. But she couldn’t quite figure out what it was doing. At first, Alyssa thought it was injured. Perhaps even dead. It wasn’t moving much at all. The tip of its sword was in the deepest recesses of the crater. Both its hands were clutching the hilt, though somehow it still managed to hold its massive set of scales. The hand that held the scales was illusory, shifting in and out of Alyssa’s sight with subtle movements in the thing’s body.

Looking closer, amid the molten rock at the tip of the Justice’s sword, Alyssa figured out exactly what it was doing.

The true demon’s scythe poked out of the ground just to the side of the sword, casting a dark shadow over its otherwise gleaming silver blade. A hand clutched the scythe’s haft.

Binoculars out, Alyssa spotted it. The true demon, pinned underneath the blade of the Justice. Not skewered, just pinned. The true demon was fighting back as hard as she could, pushing against the blade with all her strength. Alyssa wasn’t sure that the demon was going to get out of this one alive. It wasn’t cutting through the gloves on the true demon’s hands, but the demon was out of options. If it moved even one of its hands, it would likely get killed.

There were no other demonic entities in the area either. No one to come to its rescue. The Astral Authority were swarming around, keeping any that might try to intervene away.

They still ignored the mortals in their midst.

“Might not have to do anything after all,” Alyssa whispered to Irulon as she handed over the binoculars. “I don’t know if you can see it, but—”

“That’s the true demon?”

“You can see it.” That made some mild amount of sense. Trik and the other members of the plague containment team had seen brief flashes of the true demon when it had been fighting with that Patience in Lyria. Any time the two had connected, the demon had been visible.

“Tenebrael help us all… That’s a true demon?”

Alyssa briefly glanced over her shoulder, not wanting to take her eyes off the crater for any length of time, to find Catal staring with his mouth agape and his eyes wide.

“No,” she said as quick as she realized what he was staring at. “That is the Cardinal Virtue of Justice. One of the Astral Authority. The thing that you came here to sketch out.”

“H-How are we to fight something like that? A dragon takes thousands of men and hundreds of highly ranked arcanists just to stand a chance. That is…”

“We’re not going to fight it,” Irulon said, still looking through the binoculars. “We’re here to fight the thing under its sword.”

“The thing holding up its sword,” Alyssa said, feeling a need to point out just how screwed they were.

“Indeed.” Irulon’s hand brushed over the top of the tome. Two cards appeared between her fingers, held out toward the center of the crater. “Unfortunately, assuming my estimations are true, that true demon might actually win despite its position. You might not be able to tell, but I can see it slowly getting ready to throw the Justice off it.”

“You have a plan?” Alyssa said, eying the cards.

“I doubt this will kill it, but it might weaken it. Split Reality.”

The card shifted into a crystal clear shard of glass before launching out from Irulon’s outstretched hand. It flew straight down to where the two beings were connected. The princess was still using the binoculars. Even still, Alyssa could see the two burning red embers of the true demon’s eyes flash a little brighter as she turned her head.

With a second shift of her head, the black leather of her mask connected with the spell.

For a moment, Alyssa thought it was going to end there. Perhaps suicide at a mortal’s hands was preferable to being killed by the Astral Authority. Either because of pride or because mortals wouldn’t be able to kill the demon permanently while the Justice could.

But Alyssa quickly realized that the demon was not splitting apart as everything else struck by that particular spell ended up doing. Rather, it was her outfit that was falling to pieces. The leather bindings and the mask that she had repeatedly tried to get Alyssa to remove.

It was all coming off.

And, even from the distance, Alyssa could see the true demon’s mouth twist into a grin.

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Illuna’s Happenings

Thunderbolts and Lightning

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Two dozen infected had been chased into the swamp. Either the swamp slowed them enough for pursuers to slaughter, or the Astral Authority already out in the swamp moved to intercept. If she hadn’t known better, Alyssa might have thought that the Astral Authority was working to protect the city. In the distance, both to the north and to the south, Alyssa could see more lights flittering about. Likely chasing more infected. With the darkness, Alyssa couldn’t actually see any infected. It was too far, even with binoculars, and infected didn’t glow like the fake-angels did.

The horizon still had a bubble of glowing gold light cresting over the treetops. Like the world’s slowest sunrise. More of the Astral Authority were still coming closer. Unless that glow was solely from the Justice… At this point, Alyssa rather hoped that it was not the Justice. She would rather deal with a thousand of the littler ones than it.

The smaller ones could cause problems. Every time Alyssa had seen them so far, they had ignored everyone except her. So it stood to reason that they would continue to ignore everyone so long as nobody tried attacking them. They would hunt down whatever infected they could find and then… hopefully go back to wherever they came from. But if the Justice appeared, things could go poorly. Not just could, but would. Aside from the panic a literal skyscraper of a being would cause, the Justice itself would cause unparalleled destruction. Even if it ignored the humans around, all it had to do was try to swing its sword at one of the infected. That one swing would basically wipe out the entirety of the city of Illuna.

Having used her sole Accelero card back in Owlcroft, Alyssa doubted that even she would be able to get away. One of Irulon’s spells might work. The one that put up a mirrored dome came to mind. But even that was only a chance. The Astral Authority seemed to obey a whole lot more rules of reality than angels did, but Alyssa couldn’t say with confidence that they obeyed them all. With her limited experience in the presence of the Cardinal Virtue of Justice, she couldn’t say that it was as grounded as the lesser members either.

Taking her eyes off the distance, Alyssa looked around the city wall. More guards had shown up. Everyone was on edge. Alyssa had thought, in the past, that she had sometimes been able to feel the tension. Perhaps she had or perhaps it had been her imagination. But here and now?

It was a good thing that firearms hadn’t been invented in this world. With a bow or a sword, or even spells that required a verbal statement to activate, there wasn’t much of a chance of accidental firings, twitchy fingers, or nerves getting the best of someone. A bow required several pounds of force to draw back, not something that even a grown man would do unthinkingly. Swords were far too close range. Spells were the one thing that she had been a little nervous about, but so far, nobody had tossed a fireball at one of the Kindnesses that were buzzing about.

Part of which could probably be attributed to the rarity of arcanists. Nobody in her line of sight had a tome chained to their hip. Volta might be the only real arcanist around.

Assuming a monster could be considered an arcanist. They could both cast spells, so Alyssa wasn’t going to worry herself over the nomenclature.

“So. This is the Astral Authority in all their glory.”

Alyssa snapped her gaze to her opposite side to find Irulon walking across the wall, eyes black and white as she stared over the edge of the wall. Fela trailed behind her on one side while Catal flanked her on the right. Neither followed in any kind of formation, making them look like they were unrelated and had just coincidentally arrived at the same time, even though that likely was not the case at all.

She was glad that her mother hadn’t chosen to join them. They were all supposed to have gone back to Lyria a full week ago, but the job had fallen through. At the time, Alyssa had been glad that her mother wasn’t going to be trekking back without her, but now was wishing that they had left.

Nothing to do now but try to figure out a way to protect everyone.

“You saw them before we headed to Owlcroft, didn’t you?” Alyssa asked, focusing on Irulon as Fela bounded up to her side. Catal took out a large notebook and started sketching out a Kindness—one was hovering not too far from the wall, though its porcelain mask was aimed toward the forest.

“True,” Irulon said. “Between worrying about you running off, trying to keep the guild and guard from provoking them, and them not doing much aside from hovering about in search of you, I didn’t get to actually observe them much at that particular moment.”

“Well you’ve missed most of the action it seems. They were killing infected left and right. Now they’re just sitting around. A few went back, maybe chasing down other infected. The rest have mostly just been standing about.”

“Waiting for something? The true demon you’ve mentioned in the past?”

“No sign of her. I can’t close my eyes to check on the infected’s souls anymore—” Thankfully, Alyssa mentally added, not wanting to know how many of those things would be after her if she still had a connection to Tenebrael. “—but I haven’t seen a single one collected yet.”

For all the true demon’s talk of preserving life, she sure wasn’t doing a good job of rescuing her… loyal followers? Corrupted monsters? Whatever they were. Given that the true demon had looked quite harried the last time Alyssa saw her, she had to wonder if losing this fight meant something just a little more serious than having to run home and lick her wounds. And if the true demon was gone on a slightly more permanent basis…

What was going to happen to the souls? Would Tenebrael come down and clean them up?

Alyssa had a bad feeling that no angel would touch them. Even dead infected presented a hazard to everything around them. The corrupted souls tried to latch onto things around them. The one soul that the true demon had delayed collecting the other week ago had started killing the land around it too.

If the true demon wasn’t able to collect them and the angels weren’t willing to touch them… Alyssa had a bad feeling that she would have to do something about it. Assuming the Astral Authority left her alone, removing the infected souls from the local deceased wouldn’t be that difficult. Maybe. She would still have to locate the corpses, but Fela could help with that. As for the rest of the world? As long as new infected were being created, she wouldn’t be able to do it all herself. Even with Tenebrael’s power, she couldn’t do much about anything outside her general area. She wouldn’t be able to tell when new ones cropped up or when they died either.

She wasn’t an omnipresent angel.

Then there was the problem of what to do with the souls. Maybe she would be able to crystallize them the same way that she did with normal souls, but that still left demonic crystals lying about. Maybe Tenebrael could give her some container for them like they were some radioactive waste that needed containment, but there were already too many maybes piling up and she was sure that she hadn’t thought of all the problems that went along with this course of action yet.

The corpses should be fine for a short time anyway. If necessary, she could collect them up and blast them off planet with a well aimed Annihilator. That was probably the safest option.

“I don’t suppose it would be possible to capture one,” Irulon said, eying the nearest Kindness. It eyed her back, but it eyed everything.

“They would probably start attacking. And there are a lot of them.”

As Alyssa spoke, the Kindness rotated, turning its porcelain mask toward the wall. It was still twenty feet out, but the movement made her tense. It didn’t attack, but it couldn’t really attack, lacking any weapons or offensive abilities. At least, a Kindness had never displayed any offensive abilities while in Alyssa’s presence. Still, it was unnerving in its timing.

Alyssa wasn’t the only one to notice the Kindness. Several of the guards tensed. One even raised his bow until a superior shouted at him. Fela crouched down like she was ready to pounce. Both Irulon and Brakkt made nearly identical slow movements to their respective weapons of choice, each resting a hand on top without actually drawing it. For Alyssa, she already had a pistol in one hand and her deck of cards in the other. Both stayed firmly at her side as she watched the Kindness and the more distant fake-angels.

The others hadn’t reacted. Aside from a handful of Patiences and Equanimities, most every member of the Astral Authority was up in the air, hovering over the swamp while staring at the forest. Two of the four Diligences had their masks split apart as if they were preparing to fire their beams, but neither were actually doing anything. Just watching. Waiting for more infected.

After a full minute of tense scrutiny, the Kindness drifted a few feet further away as it looked back to the forest to match the rest of the Astral Authority.

Alyssa let out a slight sigh as she flicked her pistol’s safety back on. “Perhaps we should be wary of errant comments.”

“Possibly just a coincidence,” Irulon said, moving up to the edge of the wall to lean over. “It started turning before I actually spoke, if only by a few instants.”

Brakkt put a hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her back. “We should be careful regardless. We don’t know their full capabilities. They may be capable of reading more into your thoughts than your verbal actions.”

“I hope not,” Alyssa said. “But I doubt it. They would probably already be attacking us if that were the case. And they would probably be better at catching… uh… whatever they might have been chasing the few times that they chased after… whoever.” If they were listening in, Alyssa didn’t want to mention that she was the one they had been chasing. Thus far, they were leaving her alone. None had paid her any more attention than they had given to the other humans around.

It would be best if it stayed that way.

“—do about the situation?”

“Unknown, sir.”

Glancing to the stairway leading up onto the wall, Alyssa spotted a few familiar faces.

Martin was at the lead, wearing the full armor set he had worn when first meeting with the group of monsters, flanked on either side by his two advisers. Volta was behind him, hanging just a bit back. Upon reaching the top, all four of them stopped suddenly, staring over the edge of the wall. They probably would have stared a lot longer had one of the guards—probably some local captain—not ran up to them. The guard didn’t seem to have much to report on, but he did wind up pointing directly toward Alyssa.

Catching Volta’s eye, Alyssa got a look. Like this was all her fault.

“Prince Brakkt. Princess Irulon,” Martin said as he walked past the guard, tone a bit more on the terse side. “And Alyssa. You know, I believe my life was filled with far less stress before your arrival in our humble little city.”

Irulon’s eyes flicked to Alyssa, turning their regular violet in the process, before she looked to Martin. “Trouble does seem to follow us.”

Alyssa shot her a look, but it was too late. Still, Irulon probably knew that she was being glared at.

“Do you have a recommendation for a course of action? They appeared so suddenly last time and disappeared just as quickly… We didn’t have time to really look at them let alone come up with anything that might be considered a plan of action.”

“As of now? Do nothing, hope they disappear again. They might be fighting infected at the moment, but make no mistake, they are not our allies. If we attack them… or perhaps even consider hostile actions against…”

Irulon’s speech stalled as a pulse of light from the large glow made the land look like the sun had come back for an encore. She, along with most of everyone who wasn’t already looking out toward the swamp, stopped to watch. But there was barely any time to look. The flash died out in seconds. If there had been a storm, and if she hadn’t known better, Alyssa might have suspected that it was nothing more than lightning.

If this had been any other time, any other place, any other situation, she would have dismissed it as a distant lightning strike.

One of Martin’s twin advisers was the first to speak. The taller of the two raised an eyebrow as he looked toward Irulon. “I don’t suppose you know what that was?”

“One of the creatures has been using beams of golden light to attack infected. Perhaps simply a more powerful version?”

“I doubt it,” Alyssa said. As far as she had seen, the Diligences used the same beam every time. There was still the Humilities, a class of the Astral Authority that she had yet to see. It was possible that they had caused it. But… “It was probably the—”

A crack of thunder stole the words from Alyssa’s mouth. Some of the guards dove for cover, fearing an attack. Others readied their weapons, heads darting from one member of the Astral Authority to the next, trying to figure out which one they should act against first.

Even Alyssa crouched down, not quite diving to the ground, but definitely taking some cover. Brakkt and Irulon both remained standing, though the latter’s stance shifted to mirror the wider and more stable pose of the former. Fela crouched down, fur rising.

Martin and his two advisers crouched down much like Alyssa had done, though Martin’s armor wasn’t exactly designed with dexterity in mind. He really only lowered his height by a head. Volta, on the other hand, put a scowl on the double’s face as she turned to glower over the swamp.

“Stay your weapons!” Brakkt bellowed, deep voice carrying even over the panicked shouts of the guardsmen. At his shout, those in charge followed suit, relaying the order up and down the wall.

The thunder wasn’t quite normal thunder. There was just something imperceptibly wrong about it compared to what Alyssa was used to. Normal thunder had a sharp crack followed by low rumbling echoes over the land. This had been similar, enough so that she wouldn’t have noticed had Alyssa been out traveling between Lyria and Illuna. She would have dismissed it as thunder.

Maybe it was just the situation that was making her think it sounded wrong. Either way…

“Irulon,” Alyssa said, pulling out her phone without standing fully. “How many seconds between the flash of light and the thunder?”

The princess’ eyes flicked black momentarily as she looked toward Alyssa. “Thirty-one. Give or take a second.”

A quick use of her phone to look up of the speed of sound and a quicker calculation gave Alyssa an answer that she wasn’t sure what to do with. “Six and a half miles.” She wasn’t at all sure how far away Owlcroft was from Illuna, but was fairly sure that it was something more like sixty to a hundred miles away. Relative to that… “The Cardinal Virtue of Justice might be nearby.”

“Hm.”

“Hm? That’s it?” Alyssa slowly stood only to catch a heavy breeze. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the wind had been at Owlcroft following the Justice’s attacks, but the fact that she could feel it at all made her tense. “This thing is the size of the palace. I hit it with an Annihilator. Several, in fact. Aside from a little steam on the skin and maybe some burnt clothes, it came out of it without trouble and kept attacking the true demon…”

“I recall your first description of the creature.”

“You have a plan then?”

“Question for you first, would the Justice attack random infected?”

“I… don’t know. Probably.”

“While you were at Owlcroft observing the fight in person, was it attacking random infected or just the true demon?”

“The… latter I think. Though it might have also directly attacked me. Or I might have just been in the way. Hard to say one way or another.”

“If the true demon isn’t gathering souls, could it still be engaged in combat with the Justice? Perhaps having been forced away from the pit?”

“If they’re fighting toward us… rather, if the true demon is leading the Justice toward us…” Alyssa grit her teeth as realization struck her. “That stupid demon. Save life my ass. If they bring their fight here, it will be a slaughter,” she hissed, voice quiet to keep from being heard. Luckily, the wind was still going strong. Martin and his attendants would have a hard time hearing much of anything without magical assistance. Brakkt trying to keep the wall guards from provoking the Astral Authority—none of whom had significantly reacted to the flash, thunder, or wind—helped as well.

“I don’t believe we can fight the Justice. I haven’t seen it for myself, obviously, but I trust your description.”

“So then—”

“But what about the true demon? It is the size of a human. Can it be killed or at least contained long enough for the Justice to do what it needs to do? After that, with no high value target, the Justice might just leave. Or at least stop approaching the city.”

“You’re suggesting we go out there?”

“What choice do we have? Either that or we evacuate the city. And that doesn’t seem like much of an option to me. There are too many people, not enough means of transporting food, and there is nowhere nearby that can support so many people. Even assuming we can get the entire population moving in a reasonable amount of time, I can’t see the evacuation being counted as a real success. And if the true demon is leading the Justice here, then who is to say that they’ll stop here? They could end up chasing them to Lyria.”

“Chasing them?” Alyssa shook her head, thinking back to when the Justice first appeared. The Taker had said something at the time. He didn’t attack Alyssa even though he wanted to because his ‘lady’ might not be finished with her. If this is what he meant… “The demon is probably chasing me. So if I leave…”

“Same problem except with you. You would be on the run, never able to stop in a town for long without worrying about the Justice and this demon showing up. Shall we at least see if we can stop the problem at the source?”

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Illuna’s Happenings

A Light on the Horizon

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Searching for humans that might or might not be out there had to be put on hold. Nothing had happened to the camp so far, so their priority wasn’t that high. In contrast, Alyssa felt an urgent need to figure out what was going on with the sky. Were the Astral Authority still on Tenebrael’s world? What about the demons? Had something happened to Tenebrael? The stupid angel wasn’t answering the phone still, but that could be for any number of reasons.
“Five hours ago?”
“I was up on the wall, keeping watch. Not much to keep watch for these days. Haven’t had a demon attack in weeks and—”
“Sorry to rush this along, but let’s try to keep on topic.”
The guard, an older man named Ature, was the first person who could remember seeing the actual change in the sky. At least the first person that Alyssa had spoken to. Illuna was a large city, so there had to be others. He had simply hailed down Alyssa on her way back into the city, knowing that she knew something about the sky being set on fire in the first place.
Unfortunately, her little interruption seemed to have jolted him out of his thoughts, making her wonder just how old this man really was. “You were saying?
“Saying?”
“About the sky and the fire…”
“Oh. Oh yes, it was just after I arrived for my shift. It’s nice of the city to give me back my old job as a guardsman. They said I was too old a few years ago, but now they want me back. Short on hands, I guess.”
“I guess,” Alyssa said, trying not to put too much strain on her words. “But the fire in the sky?”
“Oh yes. I was watching the clouds when I noticed the symbols in the sky up and vanish before my very eyes! One moment it was there, the next, gone. Those faint flames faded not long after, shrinking to nothing before disappearing completely.”
“That’s it? They just faded away. No bright flashes or anything?” If there had been bright flashes, more people would have noticed. Alyssa was surprised that nobody at the monster camp had seen the change, but not so surprised that she thought anything funny was going on. There certainly wasn’t any memory altering magic that made people forget or anything. It was just that the sky was always there, but always in the periphery. People were far more focused on the goings on around them than they were elsewhere.
Perhaps people in Teneville, who might look up to the sky to spot harpies, would have noticed better. Except they probably could barely see the flames at all. From calling up Jason and Chris back in Lyria, she knew that they couldn’t see the flames in the sky unless they were concentrating hard, even at night. They hadn’t noticed at all when it first happened. Not until Alyssa’s phone call when she asked them to look.
“There was a bit of a gold streak, but it wasn’t that bright. Far off. Like the sun leaked out a bit of its light.”
“The Astral Authority,” Alyssa mumbled, putting a hand to her chin.
“Is that good or bad?” Brakkt asked. He still wore his armor, but his helmet was off, held under his arm against his side. His voice still made the older guard hop in surprise.
“Not sure. Might be neither. If the Astral Authority were the ones to take down the ensign… it might mean that they finished off the demons. Or at least closed the pit, sealing it back up. Without the demons around, they would have had the time to destroy the ensign like they did to the spell above Lyria. But… they shouldn’t come after us. I’m not connected to Tenebrael to draw their attention. They’ve never been interested in anyone else as far as I’ve seen.”
“They won’t remember that you were the one connected with Tenebrael?”
“Possibly… But…” Alyssa shook her head. “I know for a fact that they don’t think like normal people. They might not make the connection. If they do, I imagine that I could hide simply by using an Empty Mirror spell. Without the connection acting as a beacon, they shouldn’t be able to find me. What I really wonder is what it means for Tenebrael. She said she needed a month. The demons warned me that they wouldn’t be able to hold off that long. I told Tenebrael, but she said it would be fine.”
“You told Tenebrael?” The old man’s eyes narrowed as he gave a scrutinizing stare.
Alyssa stared back for a long moment before slowly shaking her head. “It’s a figure of speech we use back home in, uh, Teneville.” Looking back toward Brakkt, she gave a slight jerk of her head toward the stairs back off the wall. He gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head. “Thanks for your help. If there is anything else you notice about the situation, you can find me or someone in my party at the guild’s tavern.”
Brakkt waited until they were down on the ground and well away from the wall before speaking again. Izsha and Ensou were waiting for them. Fela and Dasca were still down at the camp.
“Shall we just carry on as normal?” he asked.
“I don’t know… I mean, we should go help the monsters make sure that their camp is secure, but something might happen. Waiting until tomorrow at the very least might be for the best. Unless you’ve got some insight?”
“Hardly. I leave magical matters to Irulon for a reason. This is beyond even that.”
“Yeah… I wish Irulon could answer questions about angelic things. I’m stuck waiting for someone to die or for Tenebrael to bother showing up, which she usually only does when she wants something. Ugh. Maybe we should just go about our day as if everything were normal. It might be weeks before she shows up to tell me anything. Besides that, things are normal. Technically, things haven’t been normal until now.”
“We’ll wait. Or rather,” Brakkt turned, looking toward where Izsha and Ensou stood near the gate’s entrance. A slight gesture of his hand called them over. “If something did happen at Owlcroft, the eastern wall will be the best place to spot approaching trouble.”
“You aren’t going to venture out into the swamp and head toward Owlcroft, right?”
With a slow shake of his head, he put a foot into Ensou’s stirrup and slid into the saddle. “I’m not that crazy,” he said with a mild chuckle.
Alyssa grimaced, feeling as if that was a bit of a jab at her, but Brakkt wasn’t even looking in her direction anymore. “I’ll join you,” she said softly as she hopped onto Izsha’s saddle.
On the way across the city, Alyssa pulled out a few Message cards. Irulon should be informed, Fela as well. Sending a message to Volta wouldn’t be the worst idea either. The monster would know how to organize the city to properly respond to any potential threats. The situation might not be a big deal in the end, but for the time being, they should at least be aware that something might be afoot. It was just too impossible to know at the moment.
Much like Alyssa and Brakkt, not too many people seemed to have noticed the sky just yet. Or, if they had noticed it, they weren’t terribly concerned. When Alyssa had first returned from Owlcroft, people had been a little on edge, but not overly panicked. Tenebrael’s symbol had been the primary calming factor. When people saw that, they more often fell to their knees in reverence than worried over the possibility of it harming them.
At least Alyssa hadn’t heard of anyone in this world trying to sacrifice unwilling virgins to volcanoes or anything similar in an attempt to appease Tenebrael. The festival in Teneville, disgusting though it might be, was all willing sacrifice. And it wasn’t for appeasement anyway.
“People are awfully indifferent,” Alyssa said as they slowly rode through the town. “Back in my world, even a mild light in the sky would have probably caused mass panic unless someone could have explained it away through science. And the sky literally being on fire with a symbol hanging overhead would have been hard to explain.”
“The general public is not well educated in matters of magic. Smaller communities, those with no real arcanists to speak of—perhaps a firestarter and nothing more—might even be skeptical about magic’s existence at all. If the local leader, magistrate, noble, arcanist, or anyone else in a position of authority isn’t concerned about odd happenings, then the public won’t be either. Granted, there isn’t often such a large or long-lasting effect, but I would imagine that nobody would worry unless we started charging through the city, tolling alarms, and otherwise starting a commotion.”
“Probably helps that it has been fairly faint during the day. Once it hits nighttime, more people will notice.”
“Mhm. Even still, unless the city’s soldiers start organizing, most people will likely dismiss it as nothing to do with them. They’ve got hard enough lives as it is without adding magic to the mix.”
Hard lives. Alyssa had barely seen it, but… most people spent the majority of every day out in the fields, hunting, working manual labor, or otherwise toiling away. Whether it was Teneville or Lyria, the people who could avoid farm work were in the minority. A wealthy potioneer, literal nobility, guards, adventurers, criminals. All the people Alyssa interacted with didn’t have the same problems that almost everyone in this world had. Namely, the need for food.
“I wonder how Jason’s project with that elf blacksmith is coming along,” she said to herself. With that said, she sent a quick text message to Jason’s phone, both asking for an update on his farming equipment project as well asking for confirmation that he could no longer see any fire or ensign in the sky.
The reply came surprisingly quickly. Before she even reached the opposite side of the city. Normally, Jason responded promptly to any messages she sent, but this was almost instant. Alyssa scanned through the message the second her phone vibrated, expecting the quick response to mean something bad was happening back in Lyria. But it was a surprisingly concise message. A simple statement that he couldn’t tell the difference between the sky right now and when he last looked at it and that he would try again in the evening as he was a bit busy at the moment.
He didn’t say what he was busy with or offer an update on the farm equipment situation… making Alyssa wonder if the two were related.
But as long as there wasn’t an emergency in the city, she could wait until tonight. He might have more time then to give a proper response.
The other side of the city was mostly normal. There was a noticeable alertness to the guards that hadn’t been present over on the western wall. Whether that was because Volta sent a notice or just because this was the side that normally had to worry about demons wasn’t a question that Alyssa could answer. Either way, the guards seemed quite receptive to Brakkt wanting to sit with them on their watch.
The Black Prince, fully armored up, was a welcome addition to any defending force. Even if there was nothing to defend against at the moment.
Alyssa wasn’t dismissed either. Even aside from being with the Black Prince, she came riding up on a draken. A fairly prestigious action, at least among the guards. Besides that, a few of the guards recognized her. Though she couldn’t actually remember speaking with any of them.
Setting up a watch on the wall was… not the most interesting thing going on. It was mostly just staring at the swamp and occasionally perking up at any movement only to realize that nothing down there was moving aside from frogs and fireflies. Normal frogs at that, not even monster frogs.
After scanning the horizon a few times with her binoculars without spotting anything too worrying, Alyssa settled in for a full afternoon of observation. The guards were supposed to stay standing throughout their entire shift, but in practice, they had dragged some chairs up from somewhere. They weren’t slacking on their job. Even without having had a single infected assault the walls in the recent weeks, all the guards knew how important this particular posting was. But standing watch for hours on end was rough work.
However, they didn’t seem to be using the seats at the moment. Every so often, a guard would glance toward Brakkt and suddenly straighten his back. It was… actually mildly amusing to watch. Alyssa doubted that today was very indicative of their normal behavior. In fact, they might even be less attentive than normal.
Brakkt made up for them in droves. While they glanced back at his intimidating armor every so often, he stood perfectly still, one hand down at his side and the other resting on the hilt of his enchanted sword. The only thing that moved was his head, which slowly scanned from left to right.
Alyssa was a bit more relaxed than he was. If something went wrong, they would surely know about it. Whether that be because the Astral Authority glowed a bright golden light or because infected would be spotted by one of the many other guards on this wall, one of the ones far enough away to avoid the awestruck stares to a prince standing alongside them.
After a few hours, Kasita climbed up onto the wall in the armor of a palace guard. Easily recognizable as part of the royal party, the guards didn’t bar her entrance.
“Thought you might be hungry,” she said, holding out a few wrapped meat pies.
“These the ones the monsters made?”
“Iona? I don’t think he was there today.”
“Probably for the best… I don’t suppose you’ve checked in with those Yora guys, have you?”
“Not since yesterday. I believe they’re still waiting on orders from their home or superiors or whatever. With their intelligencer in the local dungeon, I don’t think they’re going to make any waves until they get told to do so.”
Nodding, Alyssa unwrapped the meat pie. Mutton. Lots of mutton in this world. Back on Earth, she was fairly certain that she had never had any sheep meat, but here, it was a staple more common than beef. She wasn’t an expert, but it seemed to her that using sheep for wool was a more productive use for them than killing them for meat.
“As soon as they do something, I’ll get back to spying.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to have some forewarning.”
“Perhaps, but sitting around waiting for something to happen while they just complain to each other about being sent on this mission for hours on end?”
“Is that really all they do?” Alyssa asked as she looked back to the swamp, just sitting around and waiting for something to happen…
“More or less. They try to avoid leaving their quarters as much as possible, and there really isn’t all that much to do inside them. It’s really dull.”
At least I’ve left my quarters, Alyssa thought to herself.
“I’m surprised they aren’t mingling more,” Brakkt said. He had removed his helmet in order to eat the pie that Kasita brought for him. An action that seemed to be causing more than a few extra glances toward him. “If they are interested in the monsters and bringing them back to Yora, I would expect them to do some research, both on the monsters themselves as well as the people and their reactions toward having the monsters around.”
“That would require them to care about the monsters. Or the people…”
“Mhm… I don’t believe Yora treats its people poorly.”
“Even still, they clearly don’t care about the monsters. I…”
Alyssa trailed off, looking upwards. The sun dipped behind the rings around the planet, occluding it completely. A wave of darkness rolled across the land. Sure enough, even with it being dark, there was no luminescence from the sky burning or even a faint image of Tenebrael’s tattoos hanging above the land. Just stars and the pale grey moon.
“What’s that over there?”
Turning her head toward Kasita, Alyssa followed the mimic’s outstretched arm to the swamp. At first, Alyssa didn’t see a single thing. Nothing unexpected, at least. Most of the area was a immediately surrounding the wall was a marshy swamp, with lots of water and lots of tall grass poking above the water level. Further out, a line of trees sprung up. At first they came from the water as well, but further out, Alyssa knew from personal experience that there was actual solid ground.
“What’s what?” Alyssa said, straining her eyes to see. She was about to activate a quick Night Vision spell in the hopes of spotting whatever Kasita managed to see. But the mimic pointed upwards.
“Higher. The canopy line in the distance.”
The trees that grew from the swamp were fairly flat on top, with lots of drooping branches on all sides, creating a rounded look to them rather than the conical shape that lots of trees ended up with. They were also all around the same height, giving a fairly clear view from the elevated city and even higher wall.
And it was over the top of that canopy that Alyssa noted a faint glow. Yellow-gold in color.
Alyssa narrowed her eyes, standing from the seat she had taken. She had her hand on her deck of cards, but hesitated because of the glow. If everything was bright, she wasn’t sure that she would have been able to see it.
In fact, that glow could have been coming all the way from Owlcroft. With the sky being on fire, it likely hadn’t been noticeable until now. There was no reason to worry just yet.
“There! Unknown individual spotted.”
Alyssa tensed as one of the guardsmen started shouting about a lone person. It took a minute to spot him, but a splashing through the otherwise still marshy water was hard to miss after a moment of looking. And it really was just one person, one humanoid rushing through the swamp toward the city, faintly outlined by moonlight. The water should have impeded him a whole lot more than it looked like it was doing. He was practically flying across the surface.
Around her, the wall guards were readying for combat. Most were grabbing bows and knocking arrows. They didn’t draw them back, but they were ready to do so at a moment’s notice.
Then Alyssa saw it. A flash of red in the person’s face as he threw a head back over his shoulder.
One of the other guards spotted it too. “Plague,” he shouted.
Immediately, a dozen of the soldiers all drew back their bowstrings. Without any further confirmation as to the nature of the individual, a dozen arrows lanced out from the wall.
Alyssa could hardly see where they landed. It wasn’t like they lit the tips on fire. But the likely-infected kept charging without slowing.
And the guardsmen drew back for another volley.
“Ready!”
“Loose!”
“Ready!”
“Loose!”
Someone struck true on the third volley. It wasn’t much, but the infected staggered in what had to have been a hit against its leg. Even still, it didn’t stop.
“Ready!”
A small light broke off from the distant golden glow, speeding forward far faster than any arrow. Before the guardsman could order the bows to be loosed, the infected slammed into the ground, silver spear jutting from his back.
“Stop!” Alyssa shouted as a silver filigreed doll emerged from the distant treeline. Unlike the infected, it was surrounded by its own faint glow, making it fully visible even without sunlight. “Don’t attack it. Don’t… Just hold.”
“Hold!” cried the same voice that had been ordering around the bowmen.
The Patience dashed forward, flying from the treeline, skimming the top of the water, until it reached the struggling infected. In the same motion that it grabbed its spear, it cleanly bisected the infected. Insides spilled out as the thing’s back split in two.
Much like the Patience in Lyria that had killed an infected, it readied its spear, but otherwise went still. This was the part where the true demon would show up to take the soul…
But nothing was happening. No pentagrams etched themselves into the swamp. No leatherbound demon showed up for the soul. Alyssa knew that the demon wasn’t exactly under the same time constraints that Iosefael and Tenebrael were under. Or maybe she just didn’t care. The one infected that Brakkt had found a few weeks ago had sat for a good hour before she showed up to take the soul.
A tremor interrupted Alyssa’s stare. Nothing major. Just a slight vibration under her feet. Not even something worth calling an earthquake.
The golden light over the distant canopy swelled.
Another infected tore from the treeline, only to be blasted apart by the beam of a Diligence. A Chastity, the bulwark of the Astral Authority, proved that its insectoid form could fight just as well as some of the others. The large beetle’s elytra were covered in thick blood, eerily gleaming in the golden light. It wasn’t even chasing someone, but somehow, an infected wound up caught between the two halves, crushed to death.
Without her soul sight, she couldn’t tell whether or not it still had its soul, not without walking up to it and dragging it out with a scythe, but given that the true demon hadn’t come for the others, it probably hadn’t collected that one either.
The infected were being driven away from Owlcroft. Possibly in all directions, but all directions didn’t matter much to Alyssa. What mattered was that they were being driven toward Illuna and the Astral Authority was chasing after them.
Alyssa’s eyes flicked up to the golden light on the horizon, biting her lip. If some of the Astral Authority were coming here…
Where was the Cardinal Virtue of Justice?

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Author’s Note: Finally got around to updating the Characters page with a few people from around the city of Illuna.

Alyssa’s Notes: Rearranged the bestiary to be in alphabetical order. Also added several monsters, including Bunyips, Cursed Swords, Cyclopes, Doppelgangers, Gremlins, and Minotaurs.