Leland landed beside Isobel with a dull thud. It wasn’t graceful by any means, but after all of his practice with Erupting Steps, he didn’t crash to his knees like Sybil. The two non-Champion Sky Dwarves had anticipated this, however, and helped her to her feet within moments.
The Champion strolled through the air like walking on concrete, appearing beside Leland with a mighty open-handed clap to his back. “Aye laddies, this is as far as we go. Stay safe now.”
Lurching with the slap, Leland rolled with the momentum, pivoting to look the man in the eyes. “I can’t say we wouldn’t appreciate your help, but we understand. Thank you.”
The Champion gave him a great toothy smile and nodded before doing the same for the others. Then he turned away, and his blue tattoos flared. Within moments a gale like before kicked up, lifting him and the other dwarves into the air. As they made for the battle in the clouds, each removed various magical weapons or spells.
Then, like a bird flying into a tree line, they disappeared, swallowed by the clouds. Leland, Sybil, and Isobel watched the sky for a moment, blue flashes of lightning quickly appearing in the general locations the dwarves were last seen.
Leland took a deep breath. “Alright. Now it’s our turn.”
With the proclamation, everyone turned toward the white beam splitting the sky. They were far closer than before, only a few hundred strides away, but well behind enough rock coverage to properly hide if needed.
“It’s hard to breathe.”
It was Sybil who had said it, but the other two had been thinking it as well. It was hard to breathe, but not because they were tired. A thickness bounded through the air, like humidity if humidity was ethereal. The effect was something each of them had felt before, yet for wildly different reasons.
For Leland, the humidity reminded him of Soul Fire. Magic, so powerful and deep that it pushed at the foundation of reality like a flame licking unburnt kindling. Yet while Soul Fire was the culmination of destruction and focused calamity, the air surrounding the white beam was scared, fearful even.
Isobel knew quite a bit about people being scared. With her own powerful tools, she had extracted this same feeling from many of those she hunted. One situation came quickly to mind by way of a former investigation. She had hunted a murderous mind-mage, someone who instilled terror through use of mind-altering magic. Unluckily for this mage, Isobel was hardly his normal target. This mage preyed on the weak and frail so when an Inquisitor appeared before him, he finally felt the same fear he had instilled in his victims.
The air around the white beam was much the same as the mind-mage’s magic in his last few moments. Afraid and twitchy.
Sybil, however, felt the air as something more human. Fear, yes, but the air reminded her of the grand medicine hall within her kingdom. She was visiting her brother once after he returned to the city wounded from an assassination attempt. And while he lived and made a full recovery, Sybil later refused to visit anyone who was placed in the hall’s care.
The pain in the air was just too real, too much like her own. Seeing people wounded, missing body parts, loved ones crying over the dead, even the haunt in the faces of the work staff. She had imagined herself in all of their places, especially the ones that dealt with kids. It was their lack of understanding that really got her. So small, yet in so much pain without even knowing what “pain” was.
“It’s a kid,” Sybil whispered, feeling, two hundred strides away, the same heartbreak as back in the medicine hall.
“What?” Isobel asked, taking a half step between the beam and the Princess.
“I wasn’t sure of it before, but now I am.” Sybil pointed next to the beam. “An Archon, right there. It’s hurt and afraid, but… it doesn’t know why? It’s confused, like a kid that got separated from their mom.”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Isobel and Leland shared a glance. “How do you know?” he asked.
“I-I just can. I… I can understand what it is like, the feelings it leaks.”
The Huntress did a half snorted half scoff, but then stopped herself from speaking. Instead she just hummed… which slowly turned into a groan.
Before Leland could speak up, a crash silenced the group. A few steps away a body landed from the sky. Crashing with enough force to crack stone, the person struggled, all of their bones like dust. The person, whose face was obscured in the darkness of a hood, wore robes and enough jewelry to open a market stall. Lines of crimson magic poured from their sleeve, forking into multiple different paths in tandem before pushing against the ground.
The Sightless Cult member rose from the rocks, slumped over like an overweight stalk of corn.
Leland spared no time, magic coursing through him along with enough mana and lifeforce to cast the spell. “Kneel before me!” he snarled as the cultist’s head slowly creaked up toward them.
As purple flames spiraled around the enemy, two dull red globes appeared through the shadow-like cowl. Eyes, each wider and deeper than any normal human’s, stared at Leland before slowly adjusting to Isobel. Recognition came a moment later, and the cultist quirked their head like a broken gear. Without bones, the cultist stumbled forward but slowly gained a foothold in a march.
A blood red crown formed above its head just as words poured from the cultist’s hidden mouth, words unpronounceable by humans. Growls and clicks, the person roared, their words coming together into a mixture of hatred. The cultist passed the summoned soul of the Damned, ignoring the fact that their soul was being torn from their broken body.
“I reeeeemmmmmember you,” a guttural voice echoed. “You destroyed my avvvvvvvvaaatar.”
Green mist poured from the cultist like a sponge being squeezed. Its death was more than inevitable at this point, but that was beside the point. The cultist now had its sundered arms stretched wide, a crimson crescent glowing just below its crimson eyes.
Then, like an omen in the wind, the cultist, or rather the Sightless King controlling the cultist, whispered, “Forrrrrrrrget the Void. I demand bllllllllllood.”
Leland felt sure the Sightless King need not verbally speak his commands, but that hardly mattered. The air had changed, enough so that even Isobel took her eyes off the enemy to glare at the sky. At some point she had summoned her parasitic centipede-weapon, two pairs of dragonfly wings fluttering along her spine in preparation.
A scream came not from the Sightless King’s cultist, no that broken being had already crumbled, their soul stolen, but from a particularly low cloud. A fan of red cut the cloud in half, revealing a meteor-like cultist hurdling down in crimson power. Waves of destruction spilt from their hands, feet, and mouth, each propelling them faster and fast—
Isobel fired, having lined up the shot perfectly. A green sickly spike burst in equally poisonous glee, easily piercing through the waves of red like a ship’s figurehead. The cultist’s descent was stopped, or rather, adjusted. Instead of hurdling down toward the group, their momentum had been rerouted into a dry fall.
The cultist landed with a splat just after another cultist let their presence be known.
Isobel growled, firing away. As her parasitic weapon reloaded itself, she screamed at the others, “Go! Figure out how we get out of here!”
Leland was a step ahead. He reached out to the soul of the Damned holding his newest fuel source. He accepted the lost soul with a “thank you,” mentally bidding the Damned a happy life in the next life.
He didn’t hold onto the lost soul for long, instead using its inherent power as a means of summoning. Lodestar appeared in his hand with the same flourish of dark violet and black energy, sprouting to life in his hand with a muted pop. The scythe was cool in his hand, despite a zapping sensation along the tips of his fingers.
The feeling was technically soul damage, but being Lodestar’s owner had its perks. Still, Leland couldn’t help but think about when the parasitic weapon would try for his life. Just a few days ago he watched Isobel go through her own trial and just a few weeks before that he listened to Glenny speak of his own misadventure.
Hopefully, hopefully, he would be home safe long before he had to deal with any of that.
But that was later, Leland had a princess to worry about. A gentle breeze edged him along in direct contrast to the unrelenting gale roaring around the wasteland. He recognized the breeze as his pathway, which always led him toward his goals.
The breeze pushed him toward the white beam and the “kid” Archon Sybil said was out there.
Leland took her hand and began to pull her along. Isobel followed closely behind, spikes of poison being fired as quickly as they formed in the centipede’s mouth. The attacks were followed in kind, some of the cultists choosing to remain in the air and fire bursts of red.
The rocky ground turned to smokey craters as they ran.