Part 1 – The Hermit and the Sword
Chapter 1 - Slice
638 years later
Estrellis. Capital of the Kingdom of Morance, and its crown jewel.
The most prosperous city of an already prosperous nation, it was a bustling economic centre that brought visitors from all over the world, from powerful businessmen to immigrants looking to start a new life. Its elegant architecture, world renowned restaurants, and magnificent royal palace made it an attractive destination to tourists as well. Partly built on a cliff facing the ocean, its flawless view of the sea made it particularly popular with newlywed couples on their honeymoon. Being the final resting place of the Demonbane, it also brought its fair share of pilgrims who came to pay their respect to the Daughter of Light.
Right now, however, the beauty and spiritual significance of their city was the furthest thing from the mind of the Estrellians. This was particularly true for a young city guard currently fighting for his life against a threat he knew nothing about.
Sidan found himself cornered by the unknown. Only 20 minutes ago, a pleasant summer evening had been thoroughly derailed when a translucent, grey forcefield had appeared around the city, extending well into the sky. Shortly after, while everyone was still reeling in confusion, they had attacked.
Crawling out from sewers, climbing over the cliff, and even from particularly wide cracks in the sidewalk, they were now overrunning the streets, attacking anyone who was still outside.
If Sidan had to compare them to any creature he knew about, real or imaginary, it would be a bunch of telepathically linked snakes, though even that was stretching it. Each of them looked like a mass of two meter long, metallic grey ribbons that kept weaving and sliding past one another in a hypnotic pattern. Despite this, the things kept their structural integrity, and could adopt a variety of shapes, from flattening themselves to squeeze into tight spaces to a vaguely humanoid shape the size of a ten-year-old child for combat, though with significantly longer arms. Sidan knew from experience that those ribbons were razor sharp, and had quite a bit of strength behind them. No eyes, mouth, or any features that he could find familiarity in. He didn’t even know how they were able to see.
The twenty-three-year-old city guard had been trying to regroup with his sergeant when he found himself stuck between two of them. Gritting his teeth, he readied his seldom-used sword, and tried his best to ignore the sting from the dozens of injuries he had received in the past few minutes. Thankfully most of them had already been partially healed to shallow cuts. He would have restored them all the way on any other day, but magic took energy to perform, and he expected to receive a lot more cuts before the day was over. For now, he would have to be content with healing them just enough to stop being life-threatening.
For a tense few seconds, the two monsters didn’t make a move. He’d already killed three of their kind, and they might have somehow sensed that he was more dangerous to them than the average citizen. But the three he had killed had been alone, and they had been hard enough by themselves. Against two of them at once, he didn’t fancy his chances very much. If he wanted to get out of this alive, he had to make the first move.
He turned around, and with a sudden burst of speed, dashed towards the one that had initially been at his back. The monster went on the defensive, slithering away with a snakelike motion, while at the same time braiding ribbons together and quickly lashing at him from a distance.
He cut down those strikes, making sure to keep a tight grip on his sword, lest the abomination wrench it from his hands. No matter how many of those ribbons it sliced in half, it didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, continuing its retreat without changing anything. Meanwhile, he received plenty of cuts on his arms and legs in the process, the thing slicing through the joints of his light armour with precision.
Sidan’s boot caught on something, and he stumbled. His opponent wasted no time, reconfiguring its body into a form with thicker limbs that could grab him and take advantage of his mistake.
And… there, Sidan thought with grim satisfaction. From what he’d seen, these weren’t all that smart, but they weren’t mindless animals either. Which meant they could be tricked.
As the monster’s mass shifted around, there was a brief moment where a trio of ribbons that was normally hidden from sight was visible. Slightly thicker than the others, coloured blue, green, and red, respectively, they stood out from the grey of the rest.
Sidan quickly recovered from his feint, and sliced those colourful tendrils apart. The thing collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the mysterious force assuring its structural integrity no longer there. His gamble had paid off. These three ribbons seemed to be the closest thing to vital organs that the monsters had, and destroying them was as far as he knew the only way to kill them. He’d gotten lucky with this one and handled it with minimal injuries, but he still had…
Before he could finish that thought, the other jumped on his back, making him fall on his knees. As he struggled to get back up, he felt a crushing pressure around his neck, trying to choke the life out of him. Instinctively, he focused his magical energy in his neck, making it physically more resistant and delaying his death by a precious few seconds.
In a panic, he tried to hack at the tendrils covering his neck to set himself free, but found that his opponent had grabbed a hold of his sword, pinning it in place. Instead, he let go of it, strengthened his hands and forearms, and desperately reached backwards into the mass of writhing razor strips.
After fumbling around for what felt like a minute, but was really only five seconds, he finally found his target. Gripping the vital tendrils with both hands, he pulled, the enhanced strength currently coursing through his limbs snapping them in half.
The pressure around his neck immediately stopped, and he took a desperate gulp of air, then another, and another, before the rational part of his mind told him that he was awfully exposed kneeling in the middle of the street. In a daze, he dragged himself behind the fence of a restaurant’s terrace, and focused on getting his breathing back under control. Which was proving a hard thing to do.
His thoughts kept drifting back to that pressure on his neck, to how close he had been to getting his trachea crushed, or worse. In the two years that he’d been part of the city guard, he’d never been involved in anything like this. The closest thing to actual combat he’d had to do was breaking up a few street fights and handling the occasional violent drunk. Incidentally, a drunkard was also the cause of the worst injury he had received prior to this. Despite barely being able to stand up straight, the man had been able to cast a mean fireball, and he’d received a pretty nasty burn to his face before he could restrain him. Nothing that a few days of healing magic couldn’t heal, but his mother had almost cried when she’d seen it.
Thinking about his mother only worsened his panic attack. He had no idea if she was still alive, though he could take comfort in the fact that the monsters didn’t seem to be attacking people staying indoors, at least for now. If she had any self-preservation, she would stay in her tailor shop, assuming she still hadn’t packed up for the night.
In the midst of his scattered thoughts, he seriously considered hiding in a building himself and waiting until this whole thing was over. He had seen many people cowering behind windows, fearfully watching what was unfolded in the streets, but otherwise unharmed. He would have appreciated that safety. But he couldn’t. He had a sworn duty to protect his city. Besides, he had no idea what the things wanted. There was no guarantee they wouldn’t come after the hiding people once they were done with the ones in the street. He needed to learn more. For that, he had to find his sergeant.
Sergeant. He hung on to that thought. As a member of the Estrellian City Guard, he wasn’t powerless. The fact that he was still alive was proof enough. The two spells he’d used during this fight were all the magic he had been taught, but they were very useful. The healing generally wasn’t fast enough to make a difference in the middle of a fight, but it made it very hard to permanently injure him, and barring extremely severe injuries, he would be in top form the next day. If it wasn’t for it, he would have surely succumbed to blood loss by now.
The second temporarily enhanced select body parts, greatly increasing their muscle strength and making their flesh more durable than rock. This one was much more energy consuming than the first, and was generally only used in short bursts. Keeping it active for several seconds straight may have saved his life, but it also consumed nearly half of his magical reserves in one go. To top it off, his allotted replenishing potion had been smashed to pieces in his first fight.
While not as flashy as other kinds of magic, these two abilities served the city guards very well for the vast majority of the situations that they were needed in. Of course, they didn’t stand a chance against someone who was truly talented and versatile with combat magic, but in these cases, they had other people to handle those situations. People who were probably defending the palace right now, and could not help him right now.
The thoughts helped him return to reality, and once he did, he took stock of his situation. He instantly cringed at the state of his hands. Plunging them into the beast like he had had completely shredded his thick leather gloves. His flesh, despite the strengthening, was riddled with cuts of all kinds, looking in places more like ground meat than an actual hand. He imagined his neck didn’t look too pretty either. Weirdly enough, the pain wasn’t as intense as he imagined such an injury would produce. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
He spent the next several minutes using his healing magic, hoping that nothing would find him in his little hiding spot. He noted grimly that his reserves were running dangerously low.
“Sidan! Is that you?”
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Sidan felt relief washing through him as he heard his sergeant’s voice.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he replied weakly. “I, um, could really use a potion right now.”
“Devo’s tits, lad! What the hell happened to you?”
“Got cornered by two of them, Sarge. Had to get creative.
Sergeant Callahan kneeled in front of him, his thick red moustache wrinkling in concern. He handed Sidan a small vial filled with a translucent blue liquid, which he gulped down greedily. He briefly grimaced at the foul taste, before sighing in relief as a familiar warmth spread through his body, replenishing his magic.
“You okay to stand?” Callahan asked.
“I am now.”
“Then on your feet, lad. We’ve got some walking to do.”
As Sidan painfully stood up, he noticed that he and the sergeant weren’t alone. Julia, the newest recruit in his own unit, was standing watch. An immigrant from New Jerdel, her light brown skin and straight black hair contrasted sharply with the pale skin and red, curly hair of most native Morench people. Sidan could tell that she was nervous, but she still showed admirable composure for someone who had only done this job for four months.
His unit of ten guards had been doing drills under the command of Sergeant Callahan when the shimmering grey forcefield had appeared. Then, they had gotten separated in the confusion when the things had attacked. He had no idea what had happened to the others, and he tried not to think too hard about it. He was happy enough to have found two of them.
He gave a nod towards Julia, then started following his superior.
“So, Sarge, any idea what those things are?” he asked, warily glancing around for any of them.
“No idea,” the sergeant grunted. “My first thought was demons, but I quickly realized they’re nothing alike.”
That made sense. No human alive had seen a demon with their own eyes, but even their most monstrous depictions made them human-like, and beings of flesh and blood.
“We’ve been calling them Slicers,” Julia spoke for the first time, her lightly accented voice rolling the R. “Uncreative, but describes them pretty well, I think.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” he murmured, glancing at all the cuts covering his hands and forearms.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, changing the subject to something more productive.
Callahan’s thick eyebrows furrowed in concern.
“Me and Julia went to Wanderers United, to see if the teleporting circles there could be used to evacuate people,” he replied in a gruff voice. “The Slicers beat us to the punch. According to the people inside, the ones that had popped up close to the building immediately went inside and destroyed the circle. They told us the same thing happened at the other travel agencies.”
“Shit. If they destroyed those ones, then that means…”
He glanced at the palace. Built on an artificial hill in the middle of the city, it could be seen from almost anywhere in Estrellis. Its sweeping white towers, multi-coloured windows, and gold-coloured spires made it a sight to behold. Its favourable position, and the presence of the queen’s Royal Guard, also made it the best defended place in the city. Judging by the flashes of light he could occasionally see in the distance, the squad of powerful combat mages was still active, and hadn’t yet fallen prey to the slicers.
“Yeah. The palace is our only option,” Callahan finished.
If the teleporting circles in the travel agencies had indeed been destroyed, then the palace was likely their only escape route. Members of the United Coalition of Nations, which Morance was a part of, had an agreement that let them set up a teleporting circle in the seat of their government, which was in turn connected to the circles found in that nation’s embassies throughout the capitals of the UCN. Only a nation’s head of state, and a few trusted officials, could activate the circles, meaning escaping through the foreign embassies found within Estrellis was probably off the table. Even if the people necessary for their activation were here for whatever reason, the Slicers might have destroyed the circles as well.
“The hill is probably crawling with Slicers,” the sergeant continued. “Getting up there won’t be easy. But with the three of us, and hopefully any stragglers we pick up along the way, I believe we have a good shot at it. Now, are you with me?”
“Sir yes sir!” Sidan barked.
Julia was slower in her response.
“Got a problem, lassie?” Callahan asked with a raised eyebrow. “I won’t stop you if you sit this one out, but I would really appreciate it if you didn’t. We need all the help we can get.”
“It’s just…” she replied. “Will we really just escape through the palace? Leave the people here?”
“No. At least not unless a superior orders us to. I imagine the queen already evacuated many of the palace’s residents. But with the situation as it is, they need all hands on deck. We might not be able to do much compared to those bigshots in the Royal Guard, but if we can make it even slightly easier for them to clear a route towards the palace, then this will have been worth it. On top of that, they might know more about what is going on than we do. Understand?”
Julia nodded.
“Good. Any more questions?”
Both Sidan and Julia nodded in the negative.
“Then let’s get a move on.”
The trio warily walked toward the centre of the city, dispatching any Slicers they came across with minimal injuries. Still, as they got closer and closer to the base of the Royal Hill, Sidan couldn’t help but feel something was off.
“Hey, Sarge, isn’t this going a bit too smoothly?” he voiced his concerns.
“Hmph? Elaborate,” was the curt reply.
Julia beat him to the punch before he could answer.
“I agree. At first, they were running around everywhere. Now we only see isolated groups? And only in groups of no more than three. Surely we can’t have killed that many, no?”
“Now that you mention it…” Callahan murmured, concerned. He glanced over his shoulder, and the colour drained from his face.
“I think I found the reason. Scatter!”
Towards the left, towering over the houses, was a monstrosity that looked like an amalgam of hundreds, possibly thousands of Slicers. Through its shifting, amorphous mass, Sidan could catch glimpses of their vital ribbons, braided into a very thick looking rope.
Well, I probably can’t slice through this one with just a sword, he thought as he gulped down his own fear.
The colossus seemed intent on squashing some unseen target below it, forming countless limbs that picked up and hurled bits of smashed roads and buildings. Most of its attention seemed to be focused on its opponent, but it occasionally chucked rocks in other directions. And a volley of deadly stones was flying right towards them.
Sidan didn’t wait for the order to be repeated. He ran in a random direction, seeking cover behind buildings. He didn’t glance back as he felt the heavy impacts of the boulders landing behind him. Once he felt he got far enough away, he paused to catch his breath. He couldn’t see Julia and Callahan anywhere, and just had to hope that they had made it to safety.
He glanced back at the Slicer titan, and was treated to an odd sight. The monstrosity seemed almost… frustrated, as it continued attacking its mysterious adversary with greater intensity than before. Just then, a flash of lightning coming from the ground stuck the colossus in its centre of mass, the sound of thunder following a split second later.
When he blinked away the spots in his vision, he saw that the ribbons where the lightning had struck were writhing, as if there were in pain, and struggling to hold on to their neighbours. The central rope of colourful tendrils was briefly exposed. Not wasting any time, the source of the lightning then fired a massive blade of compressed air, severing through it in one go. The colossus instantly collapsed.
Sidan watched the spectacle in awe, his previous terrors momentarily forgotten. To his knowledge, there was only one person in Estrellis capable of using elemental magic on that scale. And if he was right about that… then ironically, he was probably safer close to the fighting than out there on his own.
Running towards the scene, his hopes were quickly confirmed.
A woman was standing in the middle of the street, dressed in flowing purple robes, surrounded by all the individual Slicers that had made up the titan. And she was winning.
Her name was Solel Anwar. One of the most powerful combat mages in the world, Grandmaster of Estrellis, and descendant of the Daughter of Light herself.
Solel shared the iconic blonde hair of the Anwar family, but unlike her ancestor, wore hers in a tight bun instead of the wild, flowing curls that were depicted on countless murals and paintings. Though she approached her sixties, she wore her age with grace, remaining in top physical shape.
She stood there with her right arm raised skyward, a sphere of light blue light floating above her open palm. Projectiles made out of that same light periodically fired out of the sphere, flying almost too fast for the eye to follow. When they hit a solid object, a mass of crystal-clear ice instantly formed, trapping several Slicers at once. Though they struggled, they couldn’t seem to break free.
Sidan stood there slack jawed as Solel handled by the dozens the monsters that had given him so much trouble before. He had heard stories of the woman’s power, but to see it action was something else entirely.
As Grandmaster of Estrellis, Solel was in charge of all the magical forces in the city, and was thus technically Callahan’s boss’s boss. That said, she mostly concerned herself with the affairs of the Royal Guard. He had seen her in person only a few times before, all of them when she had performed routine inspections of her underlings in the City Guard.
From those few visits, Sidan got the impression that Solel was someone that was completely dedicated to her job, rarely allowing herself to unwind. She didn’t seem mean, exactly, but he also couldn’t imagine himself joking with her like he sometimes did with Callahan. Then again, being dedicated was something of a requirement for mages of her calibre. He had heard somewhere that the Elite Guard had to train up to six hours a day to keep their magical abilities to an acceptable standard. In comparison, the single daily hour he had to dedicate to his own magic seemed like nothing.
Amidst the chaos of the Slicers getting flash-frozen en masse, Sidan spotted something. A crack in the pavement behind Solel, a few ribbons stealthily creeping out of it.
“Behind you!” he yelled.
Solel did not get startled by his shout, and turned around. The ball of ice magic above her hand morphed into a whip of fire, which she swung at the sneaking Slicer that was now jumping towards her.
The whip sliced through it like butter, the two halves of the monster falling lifelessly to the ground on either side of Solel. This casual display of power seemed to be too much for the few remaining Slicers, and they scattered, likely looking for easier targets.
Solel gestured for Sidan to come closer. He happily obliged.
“Thanks kid,” she told him with surprising informality. “Your name?”
“Sidan, unit 10, City Guard, ma’am!” he saluted.
Solel gulped a few swigs of replenishing potion before answering.
“No need for formalities, boy. Just call me Solel.”
“Understood ma- um, Solel.”
She sighed in response.
“Were you heading up towards the palace?” she continued.
Sidan, not trusting himself to not call her “ma’am” again, simply nodded in response.
“Good. Then would you mind helping me?”
“Me? Help you?” he answered dumbly.
“Yes,” was the curt reply. “You saw how one of them snuck up on me. Normally I’d regularly use scrying to check my surroundings for any trickery, but there’s just so fucking many of the pests that I was forced to go on the offense more than I like, and I got careless. The one you spotted probably wouldn’t have killed me, but I’m getting tired and more mistakes like that will be inevitable. And before you ask, a mob of them will come back to hunt me down. They’ve done so five times already. I want you to stay close to me and watch my back. You won’t have to fight, just to warn me if you see anything sneak up on me. Alright?”
Right. One of the fundamental rules of magic was that you couldn’t use multiple different abilities at the same time. Every time Solel stopped her elemental assault and used scrying magic to check her surroundings, that was a few precious moments that the Slicers could gain on her. It seemed even mages as accomplished as her couldn’t escape this limitation.
Seeing one of the most powerful people in existence so casually admit her weaknesses was strange, to say the least. Still, it made Sidan’s respect for the woman grow. Perhaps she wasn’t as unapproachable as she first appeared.
“Alright,” he answered. It wasn’t like he had any other options. Even with hordes of Slicers gunning for Solel, he was probably safer at her side than alone. And her destination was the same as his. Part of him felt like he was betraying Julia and the sergeant by leaving them behind, but he forcibly quashed his worries. If they hadn’t yet followed the mayhem to this place, then they probably wouldn’t in the near future, for better or for worse. He briefly considered asking Solel to use her scrying to locate them, but held his tongue. He knew the ability was magically demanding, and its range limited.
“Good. Then follow me, kid. And stay sharp, because I get the feeling that this is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.”
Without further fanfare, the two of them began their march towards the palace. As focused as he was on his spotting job, Sidan still couldn’t help but overhear the mage whisper something under her breath.
“I swear, of all the days that I chose to take time off…”