As much as Harlan didn’t like the idea, he was coming around on Fomoria, and so he called him as soon as he found that his gates couldn’t get him anywhere within a dozen miles of the capital.
“I can’t help.”
“Rosewell is in-”
“Danger, I know. But I can’t take any times away from-”
Fomoria’s amulet shattered, and he called back with just his mind.
“I am in a fight, but I will come as soon as I can, if I can.”
Harlan moved at full speed, yet he hardly even displaced the air, his new powers were instinct, and what he believed was the limit to his speed was a thing of the past.
Those dozen miles were covered in a matter of minutes; He sent Zella to his home, such a large threat was surely something involving him as well.
When he saw the walls of the city, he saw a golem, over 20 feet high with several arms, fighting with royal guards.
Harlan tried to fly right into it with his hands forward as if diving, and when it tried to dodge, he made a sudden turn that should’ve sent his guts into a tailspin.
Instead, Harlan had no issues, and he flew right through the golem, his eyes finding exactly where the crystal was located in its chest.
The golem didn’t fall instantly, there was still mana in the metal, but without the crystal to act as an achor, the anti-magic in the area quickly sapped it.
“What is the situation?”
His flight turned wobbly as the magic he brought in from the outside faded, absorbed and eaten away by the dust that clung to every surface and hung in the air.
“Commander Safira and half of the guards remained to guard the royals, we have been sent out to control the chaos as best we can. A very large bomb exploded at the second north gate, and it disrupted the arrays across the entire city, letting enemies drop more and more anti-magic bombs across the city.
We can’t call out, and what magic we can use doesn’t make it more than a matter of inches. Were it not for our enhanced bodies, we would’ve long been killed by these large golems. We will continue our work out here, but I am certain Commander Safira would rather you by her side.”
Harlan jumped from roof to roof, finding another ability, to stand on air.
With the paradox of his weight, the cost of making solid air was almost nothing, and with it so close to his skin, the anti-magic held little sway over it.
He crashed through the window of the hall near the safe room, and nearly found Safira’s mace through his skull.
“Sir Fomoria, I did not expect you.”
“I’m the champion of wind now, Calli told me what was happening, I want to give you my sigil to enhance you beyond enhancement.”
“We don’t have time, if-”
“It takes just a few minutes to recover. I could do one at a time, with me, you would have a force as strong as before.”
“Even a few minutes are too much, we can do this later.”
“Have you actually seen Nulson yet?”
“No. Once you are done here, go to Dagda, he and his creations are guarding his lab, Brig is in the workship. The alchemists are guarding their own work, and the forgemasters with their golems.”
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“He can enter into mindless things, those golems-”
His point was accented by a rumbling as said golems began to rampage.
“DAMNIT, YOU, YOU, GO WITH SIR FOMORIA, SAVE THE FORGEMASTERS.”
“ALCHEMISTS FIRST, USE THEIR ACIDS TO DESTROY THE GOLEMS.”
When they reached the door, they all smelled it, so Fomoria put up an air barrier.
The anti-magic bombs may have coated the outside of the castle, but unless there was an open window, none of the dust got inside.
“He knew we’d come here first, we wasted our time.”
“Maybe there is something scavengeable inside still.”
“We are much more likely to end up setting off a bomb that would fill these halls with poison and collapse this entire segment of the castle. Let’s hope we didn’t waste too much time.”
Each lab or workshop was put some distance from another so that they wouldn’t starve the rest of the castle of mana when they did certain experiments, and if one exploded, the rest wouldn’t be destroyed as well.
When they reached the forge, the door had already been blown off of the hinges, and forgemasters used unstable and dangerous magical weapons in an attempt to fight off their own creations.
Harlan pulled out his blade, and found that it had changed, lines of green spiraled from pommel to tip.
It glided through the metal with ease he didn’t expect.
Had he realized how much stronger he actually was, had he days to find out his new limits, he would’ve never wasted an instant trying to get the acids from the alchemists.
As he cut through them, he always sought the one that was clearly Nulson, the others he had simply hopped into and corrupted.
Yet no matter how fast he moved, Nulson was always fast enough to hop from golem to golem.
When down to the last handful, Nulson fled into the crossroads.
“He’s gone.”
The forgemasters wept not for their fellow man, but for the various pieces of equipment that never had a chance of ever seeing a real fight, cut cleanly by Harlan and the royal guards.
Harlan rushed back to the safehouse; the forgemasters still refused to leave the workshop.
Safira still stood guard.
“How are things? Has he tried to attack?”
“No.”
Rosewell came out.
“We need to find out what his actual plan is. You and Balor claimed that he was working with Magruder, find what they were doing together. What does denying magic here actually bring them?”
“They killed over half of the forgemasters, your alchemists are dead.”
“Too small, he doesn’t care about hurting Ragne, he wants me either dead or in his hands. There has to be something else at play.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“The city has suffered substantial harm, entire blocks are gone, I had to… I had to go past the dead and dying to reach the castle.”
“We don’t have time to worry about that. If you were him, what would this actually be leading to?
He neglected to bomb the castle itself, he wants everyone who is outside to be without magic, and he wants our defenses lowered. But any bomb with enough force to cause any real damage would need to come through a gate, and it would need to be mundane.”
Harlan thought, though his mind went to the people outside contenting with golems and soldiers.
“It has to be mundane, but it doesn’t need to be a bomb.”
He leapt through another window and looked at the sky.
“There is a mountain headed toward us. Even if we break it apart, the city is done.”
“So we must demolish it entirely.”
“He wanted us to have magic inside so we could try to stop it, it wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t put up resistance. I’ll try to get help with this.”
Harlan went high into the sky until he could contact people again, spinning himself fast enough to shake loss whatever dust still clung to him.
His first thought was Marigold, but she didn’t have the right to enter this fight, because while it would surely effect Ragne greatly to have most of the royal bloodline die, it wasn’t world shattering enough that Aarde would let her.
Xol refused for the simple reason that Harlan could get Rosewell and Relly out if he wanted, and the rest of the city didn’t hold any real value to him; Xol would’ve loved the mass to strike the city let him crack open the royal vault of artifacts.
Sepul came once he heard, and scolded Harlan for not calling him sooner.
But he could do little, and wouldn’t help until he was sure of what could be done.
Perhaps he could break it up enough to save the castle, but that was also assuming that the mountain headed toward them hadn’t been boobytrapped. For all he knew, it would release anti-magic crystals that would devour his attacks and then kill them all anyway while they were weakened.
“Calli, can I call upon your power?”
“To destroy the mountain, perhaps, but the blowback of the attack would flatten the city. If you can break it apart, I may offer a shield which could divert much of the rubble, assuming it isn’t anti-magic.”
“I can try. Calli told me that she could help with a shield if we found a way to break it apart.”
“The risk is too high. Can you get closer and check it for bombs?”
“My body would burn up.”
The sky was starting to redden as it drew nearer.
It was then that Fomoria arrived with a void gate high above the pair.
“How are we handling that?”
“We don’t know yet. It could have anti-magic bombs, but we can’t get close enough to find out.”
“Alright.”
Fomoria flew without hesitation, his adamant body could not be harmed by the mundane heat that came from it, though his eyes did start to boil, forcing him to remove them.
He shot back down, burning just as the mountain.
“There are no bombs within the range of my magical and seismic sense.”
“Even with myself and you two, I don’t see how we are going to destroy it. We will try to save castle, but the city is likely forfeit. Were I only able to make a larger gate.”
“Harlan, get Rosewell to agree to lend me the royal guards, all of them, just once, without any arguing or question, and I will save the city without needing you.”
He floated in front of them, his figure backlit by the mountain falling from the sky.
“Can you actually-”
“You are wasting time.”
Harlan flew down to Rosewell.
“Fomoria said he can save the city, but you must give him the royal guard, once, when he asks for them, no questions, no arguments.”
“Can he do it?”
“He seems confident.”
She couldn’t hesitate for more than a few seconds.
“Do it. Safira, you and the royal guards will carry my siblings, myself, and Relly out of this place.
Harlan, come with and run defense, you are our fastest royal guard.”
“Understood.”
There was no attack on the way out, the golems Magruder and Nulson made were content to destroy the city rather than pursue them, and they saw nothing of either man.
Miles away, they could still see the mountain in its horror closing.
Rosewell opened a gate, ready to step through, but she wanted to see if Sepul and Fomoria could actually do it.
They saw a giant sphere of void open, one of Fomoria’s gates, and from it came hundreds of Others.
This was expected, what wasn’t was the giant arm that reached forward.
Rosewell couldn’t tell what was happening, but Harlan’s eyes were much better, and he knew the right spells to extend his vision even further.
The arm must’ve come from or been created for something a hundred feet tall, it was at least 40 feet on its own, and it was being attached to Fomoria’s arm.
The Others breathed void flames over the city, trying to destroy the crystal dust faster than it could eat away at it, and while it wasn’t perfect, the upper bounds of the anti-magic zone was significantly lowered.
Then hundreds of gates opened to catch the rubble and sendless mostly harmlessly into The Great Desert.
“He isn’t really going to just… I need to go back.”
“Go, we are safe now.”
They could see him reel back the giant adamant scaled arm, then they saw it darken with earth imbibing, grow shiny and hot with fire imbibing, lastly, they could not see Fomoria focusing his aura very specifically to enhance the blow far beyond sense.
Before Fomoria’s blow could land, Harlan channeled Calli’s might, putting up a shield that prevented the shockwave of the strike from killing everyone in the city.
When the fist stuck the mountain, they saw a cloud of dust and stones that were launched for miles.
From inside of it, cutting beams of radiant heat sliced the pieces which were too large to fit through some of the gates, and when the cloud cleared, the city stood, and Harlan could see Sepul grab the falling Fomoria, yet the arm fell separately, crashing down with a great sound.
“I can’t believe it. He actually did it.”
Rosewell’s voice was more terrified than astonished. She wondered what he even needed her royal guard for, his army of Others was clearly worth more than them even if they were more quantity than quality, which she wasn’t sure of.
----------------------------------------
Many miles in the direction opposite from Harlan and the royals, Magruder and Nulson watched as their game ended with their loss.
“DAMNIT DAMNIT DAMNIT. HE CHEATED, WHO THE FUCK IS THAT? WHAT WAS THAT?”
“Calm down, we did what we came to do.”
“And what was that?”
“Well, if you are going to be rude, I won’t tell.”
Magruder was shaking with fury, veins on his neck looked ready to burst.
“Please, what did we actually come here for.”
Magruder, wearing the body of one of the royal guards who was nearly killed by one of the rampaging golems outside of the castle, pulled out a crystal sphere the size of a man’s head.
“Don’t be shy, say hello.”
“If you hadn’t wrapped me in this damnedable cloth, I would sear the skin from your bones, lamenting only that I lack a nose to smell your bubbling flesh.”
“Come now, that’s hardly fun. Why don’t we-”
A dozen gates opened around them, then another dozen, and another, and another.
Nulson was ready to abandon Magruder without a care in the world that it would mean they actually did accomplish nothing but attacking Yggdra, the city.
Yet a thick needle planted itself in his neck, and he found himself unable to leave the body or move at all.
The Others stepped out stacked on top of one another.
Then came Fomoria, who couldn’t even stay in the sky under his own strength, leaning on Sepul, missing an arm.
“You didn’t think that I would just let you go, did you? Dagda, I noticed you were missing, and I expected that he would be the only one to steal you, tracking from there was simple.”
“Why were you looking for me?”
“No need to ruin this by asking why. You must be Magruder?”
“I think we can work out a-”
Jewelry hidden under his robes fired war spells, but the Others countered them with void flames and proper counter magic, then descended on him, tearing the man limb from limb before crushing his head and stomping him until he was nothing but a stain of pulpy flesh on the hillside, there would be no chance that he could come back from this, he would not be sloppy like David was.
“Nulson, I am also told that you threatened my sister, Amber, and my friend, Liat. Oh, no response? Oh, that must be the soul sealing needle, yes, I made many of them. You see, I might not have been involved in hunting you, but my brother, Balor, he was, and I say was, because you are caught, and I’m going to kill you. Along with him, I had my spymaster, D’if, and together, we worked to make something to keep you from escaping. Grandpa, set me down by him.”
“Of course.”
Nulson tried as hard as he could, but the stolen body refused to move, the aura of the man had turned to a solid shell that refused to let anything in or out, not entirely unlike a Goliath and their anti-magic that repelled mana, but if mana was inside of them, it had no way out, so it would build until they burst.
Fomoria put his hand inside the man’s chest, sliding easily through his sternum, but he avoided his organs.
He just needed to be as close as he could, then force a connection between their minds.
Nulson thought for a moment that he had a way out, then another voice met him.
“You may call me Micheal, or as I was known, Mindkiller.”
The threat of Nulson was dealt with.
Ultimately, it was pride that stopped him.
If Nulson any real sense, he would’ve fled with Dagda the moment he could. But no, Nulson wanted to savor the moment, he wanted to see Yggdra, the city, turn into a crater, stepping into a gate just before the shockwave turned Magruder and himself into shadows on the hillside.
It was that difference between him and Fomoria that was his downfall.
Fomoria found no joy in the suffering of others, and he tried to send a message with his work, but he wouldn’t put himself in such a position to lose just so he could send that message.
Discretion was the better part of valor.