The Dark Blade stalked around the room, yet unnoticed by the Vein. She was talking with four Bystanders which the Blade ignored. Instead, all of its focus was on remaining hidden as close as it was to its unsuspecting foe. Undoubtedly, the Hated would be watching near its favored vessel but each had to divide their attention innumerable ways. The Hand though only held so many Dark Blades like it. The Hand did not appease supplicants, for it thrived not on worship but on fear of the Purpose.
The Dark Blade did not breathe for it would be too audible. The Dark Blade’s heart did not beat for it would only distract from its charge. The Dark Blade did not recognize pain nor dread for those would make it less wieldable. It just waited, uncaring if it were to be forever nor for its own death. That was the pact every Dark Blade had made.
Abandon everything. In return, the Hand would wield them to fulfill the Purpose. The Hated would die. The Dark Blade did not remember why it had once thought it worthwhile to spend its mortal life for such a goal but that no longer mattered. It was one with the Hand, an extension of it. And thus, it was defined by the Purpose. The death of all gods, including itself. A paradox. Yet the Hand did not care if its existence was paradoxical - such worries were secondary to the Purpose. And it was about to be advanced.
The Dark Blade was not privy to the work of its brothers but it could observe the effects. It felt the moment that the Vein with golden hair learned of the death of its own kin and spoke in the same breath. When the Hated flinched from pain and stopped paying attention here for less than a second as it assessed the events elsewhere. Then the Hand tugged it forward and the Dark Blade struck, weaving the hundred thousand miracles infused throughout its being into a single moment.
No preservation mattered to it, for if a Dark Blade perished slaying the Vein it would be acceptable. No care for secrecy mattered, for if it was exposed it would still serve the Hand’s purpose. No mercy mattered, for it long had none.
The ebony blade pierced through the throat of the Vein the same second it had been created from naught. The soul was snuffed out in an instant and a small part of the Dark Blade cherished the agonized scream of a promised paradise denied - if distantly. That was easy enough. But she had been only a Vein, and the Hated was the heart. So, from its edge, the poison seeped in. Like in the mortal body, it coursed through the chipped Vein and into every organ.
For half a second, it kept the weapon there, festering, spewing ever more venom, until the Hated realized what was happening and withdrew all of her blessings. Half a second so indirectly was not enough to kill the Hated, even with the Hand pouring all of its power into the act… but three instances? Perhaps five? It would not kill, but was going to weaken them. Perhaps enough for the Hand to strangle them personally. The Dark Blade only knew it had happened before, not what the Hand itself intended. Too much knowledge could be a liability within its fallible mind.
It withdrew back into impresence, noting its own hand twitching. It looked down to see it fester and rot, unable to withstand all the putrid power that had coursed through it. Quickly, the Dark Blade severed the useless limb at the shoulder, letting it plummet into the infinite nothing on the edges of where it hid. The Hand questioned whether the Blade would die from the toxins in its blood. The Dark Blade judged its state and decided that not yet. Thus, it could focus on the rest of the room.
The four Bystanders barely gave it pause. Humans were irrelevant but the Hand preferred witnesses. Knowledge granted it power. The more people learned, the better. But their presence still could present an opportunity for denying the Hated their fateful. Thus the Dark Blade began to access them… just in time to see a surge of fire devour the just slain Chosen, reducing her past ash and into smidgens of vapor.
It recognized them then, when it saw as much. The Anomalies. Bystanders were irrelevant. Humans did not possess power, only Veins did. Yet those four were humans with powers. They had stopped the Dark Blade from arranging an accident for the returning librarian. Honing crossed its mind but none it had ever seen possessed such power. Unsure how to proceed, it requested the Hand’s wisdom. It pleaded for higher judgement. The Dark Blade shared the memory of the moments when the Hand had not held it so tightly, then the Hand looked at the four itself.
The tattooed boy should be spared. He was not dangerous and likely to assist the Purpose. The girl with a ring should die, for the ring was Hated yet different - thus should rather than need. The other boy was too bright for the Hand to look and judge, the unknown might be dangerous. Better to avoid him and pursue the Purpose.
The Hand looked at the last girl and flinched.
For the first time since its pact, the Dark Blade remembered fear. It looked at the girl and saw a resemblance. Much like it shared memories with the Hand, a memory slipped to the Dark Blade from the other side. From before the Hand was a Hated. From when it was merely a tool without a proper name, abandoned by a creator who did not care for its fate. The Dark Blade witnessed a man in all black, a frown of anger on his brow. The same insignia as on the terrifying girl wore adorned his chest as he spoke words long forgotten. His rage was not intense. It was not an all-consuming desire for vengeance, no. A passing anger that would be acted upon and forgotten afterward. It was the Wrath of a bloodline bearing its Name, invoked over offense given.
The man uttered four lines and created from nothingness an ebony knife which would slay the very gods for their hubris.
The man left but the knife remained. It decayed, its power limited even as it slaughtered one deity after another. It did not yet think so it did not understand that its rampage would inevitably end, it merely perpetuated its original commands. And people learned of it. They spoke in hushed whispers of divine carcasses and heavens rend by cuts blacker than the night. And so, it began to change.
For, one day, their fears - spoken not unlike prayers - gave the knife a new life.
The knife deluded itself into becoming the Hand as that was what its worshippers thought it had to be - for how could there be a blade unwielded after all? Its existence was contrary to itself but it never cared - those who trusted in it did not either. Everyone believed that the Hand and its Dark Blades slew gods, so they did. As any god would, the Hand answered those homogenous prayers and blind belief.
The Black Blade gasped, shuddering. Fearing, hurting, doubting, confused… then the Hand grasped it tighter again and cut away such distracting thoughts and memories in an instant. The Dark Blade would not quarrel with the four nor think about them. It did not question the Hand’s judgment. Instead, it left the building. Whether to flee or to bury deeper and look for yet more opportunities, it could not yet know. The only certainty was the Purpose.
----------------------------------------
They huddled together after Elizabeth’s exclamation, expecting another attack to aim for them. Irwyn doubled then redoubled his barriers around himself and Waylan, then layered another two around all four. He was not confident that would be enough.
“We cannot stay here!” Waylan yelled after the shock wore off, “Don’t care who killed the bitch, we gotta carry on as if we did!”
“He is right, Alice,” Elizabeth turned to their Time mage who also seemed to have gathered her wits for the most part.
“On it!” she nodded. “In a circle, hold hands! And don’t resist it!”
Irwyn was fully focused on spotting the assassin, as Elizabeth seemed to be. Waylan was mostly standing around, unable to do much. Yet not a sign of the assailant appeared. That only made all of them tenser, watching for something they would never see coming and hoping it could be stopped. Alice took only a moment before she began to chant:
“
Just or not: A question of power,
be it a mountain or a tower.
With the Chosen dead,
Down we fled
”
Then the mana began to flood into him. He recognized it to be Alice’s and allowed it to, suppressing every instinct screaming to reject the foreign magic. There was no time for portals, those were too dangerous. Instead, Alice filled each of their bodies with her mana down to the last cell. Intrusive and dangerous – and very noticeable when done by someone not far from Irwyn in power. If she wanted to, she likely could have torn the rest of them into shreds from within in a split second.
Instead, Irwyn blinked and found their group standing outside the outer city walls. Not by the gates - that would be much more noticeable - but rather by an empty stretch of a wall, already a good way from the mountain’s foot. Irwyn quickly made platforms of Light or Flame beneath their feet, then encased said legs just in case. Alice was still gasping after her spell when he began to drag them ahead with all the speed Irwyn could manage.
Then the entire city shook. The sand beneath them shifted in a way that would likely make them stumble had they still been standing on it. Looking behind, Irwyn spotted the gaping holes on the city’s cliffsides - the craters were literally distinct from where they stood at the ground level. Entire structures had been blown wide open. Fires were flickering with a crimson sheen while one entire terrace was in the middle of collapsing.
“I thought those were small bombs!?” Irwyn gaped as they flew ahead as fast as his magic could manage.
“They are!” Elizabeth shot back, needing to yell to be heard over the wind. Realizing that, Irwyn also quickly improvised a windbreaker of sorts ahead of them with another pane of Light.
“How is that small?!” Waylan took Irwyn’s side. “It destroyed entire buildings!”
“How is it not?” she seemed to be similarly confused. “It destroyed only buildings.”
“I think I would call destroying buildings ‘medium’,” Alice chimed in, recovering somewhat by then. She still seemed a bit out of breath.
“Medium affects a tactically relevant area!” Elizabeth defended her stance despite the steep odds. “Small works against clusters of foes. Anything smaller is anti-personnel. That is official doctrine!”
“We are not fighting an army here, are we?” Irwyn shook his head in exasperation.
“That doesn’t warrant a change in vocabulary!” Elizabeth still insisted.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“No one coming after us yet,” Waylan interrupted. “But I don’t see the best.”
“I am on it,” Alice confirmed. They were rapidly gaining distance, though the mountain was still far from the horizon. It was tall. “People are swarming about but no one in pursuit at the moment.”
“It will take several minutes to be over the horizon,” Elizabeth frowned. “Any ideas on how to speed up? More intensions perhaps?”
“Already using intentions,” Irwyn shook his head. All six he could think of. Speed, Haste, Frictionless, Fast, Hurried, and Rapid. “This is as fast as physically moving something will get us.”
“Now that we have a moment, what was that with the killer?” Waylan spoke up. “Who?”
“No idea,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Perhaps some kind of inter-city conflict? Theocratic city states will have rivalries, maybe another god is thinking of starting a war? Hard to guess.”
“Someone went snooping instead of researching other gods so we cannot know,” Irwyn said with a slight smile.
“We will still get all the blame for the murder,” Waylan did not rise to the bait and instead spat to the side. Irwyn made sure the platform extended there and catch the phlegm so that Waylan would be left staring at it for the foreseeable future.
“Not necessarily a bad thing,” Elizabeth said. “We will have to change which way we go but there are cities which will celebrate us for it.”
“Let’s not get them so celebratory as to try and recruit us with clubs again, eh?” Waylan chuckled grimly.
“Fuck,” Alice suddenly cursed. “Someone just flew out of the city, from the upper military districts.”
“How fast?” Elizabeth immediately inquired.
“Gaining speed quickly,” Alice stared back. “Not good, already faster than us I think, definitely heading this way!”
“The ‘Trapper’ then,” Elizabeth murmured also staring back. But to her and Irwyn the figure was a barely discernible dot. Almost unnoticeable without Alice’s warning – for the moment at least.
“What are the odds they give up if we get far enough?” Irwyn questioned.
“Not great if they think we are the assassins,” Waylan cursed. “Got any ‘large’ explosives to keep them off us?”
“I don’t carry around strategic weapons!” Elizabeth denied. “Do you have any idea how hard they are to store?”
“Fuck, I bet good money you did,” Waylan managed to find humor in the situation. “How do we unshit our pants then?”
“We have less than three minutes at this pace,” Alice urged, eerily calm all of a sudden, likely due to the ring though Irwyn did not see it on her finger.
“I cannot go faster,” Irwyn shook his head. “Maybe a sandstorm? Can we lose them in it if we manufacture one?”
“Assuming they cannot just clear the skies with a thought,” Waylan said. “I am pretty sure I overheard the Trapper can do that. Sky is a bad place to challenge the damn-god Skyhunter.”
“Wait!” Alice suddenly seemed to have an idea. She pointed at a large dune a good distance ahead of them. “Over there! Land us there!”
“I hope you…” Irwyn started
“There is a cave beneath!” Alice explained. “About 15 meters deep!”
“Can you teleport us?” Elizabeth immediately grasped.
“No, the space is too tight,” Alice denied. “But if we can dig down a bit there will be a bigger cavern close enough for me to perceive. There is an expansive cavern system under the desert! Our best chance that something big enough to fit all of us is near the smaller one I sense!”
“We will get caught in the meantime!” Waylan pointed out the obvious issue. By then they were already landing. Elizabeth immediately got digging at a spot Alice was pointing out right beneath the dune, Void magic erased the solid sand at a speed Irwyn did not think he could match, a pit basically manifesting before his eyes. Unable to help with that, Irwyn instead reinforced the sand walls as to not re-fill the rapidly deepening hole.
“I will force the asshole to slow down!” Alice shouted and spun as Irwyn dismissed his platform. The heiress of Steelmire used that moment to teleport a rifle into her hands from her pouch. Or perhaps handheld artillery station would be more accurate.
The gun, if it could still be defined as such, was roughly shaped like any sniper rifle Irwyn had seen, except upscaled. Just the barrel was longer than Alice was tall at a glance with the rest of the weapon being significantly thicker than any firearm Irwyn had ever beheld. That made the trigger still sized for a hand-fired weapon look almost comical. All of that was also heavily enchanted, layers upon layers of magic too complex to easily decipher. Alice did not need a scope nor a magazine, instead, she immediately took aim and fired within a second of their landing.
The weapon was, predictably, loud enough to deafen. It was just that Irwyn had failed to make said prediction in time. He was still thankfully maintaining his old reliable ‘Indestructible Starflesh’ at all times which meant his hearing returned after a few moments. Alice had clearly taken personal precautions and Elizabeth was even more durable than Irwyn, not to mention further away… Waylan was sprawled across the ground, the start of bleeding coming from his ears as he dazedly cursed.
The bullet itself was too fast to see even as it traveled an incredible distance. The Chosen was still mostly a dark blip against the cloudless sky with the City of Terraces vaguely in the background far away. What was visible was the explosion as the projectile impacted the Trapper just a second after being shot. Way faster than a bullet should fly by any reckoning, not to mention they usually pierced rather than blew up.
The second shot somehow caught Irwyn completely off-guard, sounding basically at the same moment the first had hit. It was actually much slower than Alice could reload a regular weapon. And she was clearly not about to stop. Which was a bit an issue given Waylan was about to be knocked unconscious just by the overwhelming noise.
“Wait,” Irwyn yelled but Alice obviously could not hear him. So he quickly made a loop of Light around her ankle and tugged slightly.
“WHAT!?” she turned to him in surprise.
“Waylan!” he pointed at the writhing sneak.
“Oh,” she paused. “OH FUCK! Shit, shit, sorry!”
“I don’t think he can hear you!” Irwyn turned back. Then he noticed movement in the corner of his eye. Something flying. Towards them.
He immediately raised as many layers of shields above them as he could in the second he had, simultaneously sending a barrage of Starfire spears to intercept it. The projectile was not half as fast as Alice’s bullets but that still meant it was ludicrously quick. Some of his offensive spells impacted it while others were simply not fast enough to get in the attack’s way, missing the collision course. Then it impacted the shields piercing his layers of defense so fast that it was past them by the time the broken barriers shattered.
Irwyn barely managed to glimpse it as the attack flew next to them, followed by a sonic boom. Whether it had been diverted by his efforts or merely a bad throw, it impacted the ground at least three meters away from Alice who was the closest. Then it either penetrated very deep into the sand or disintegrated just out of sight from the sheer impact. Irwyn did manage to notice at least what it was: A bone spear.
“I hit the cave!” Elizabeth finally yelled. Alice turned to fire off a last shot while Irwyn dragged Waylan toward the hole. The figure above was still afar and was approaching far more cautiously than how it had rushed before. Alice had achieved her goal of slowing the Chosen down at least, however unlikely it was she had actually hurt them.
The heiress of Steelmire was the last into the hole which Elizabeth must have dug at least 15 meters deep into the sand in the half a minute or less of what had just happened. Irwyn had become distracted so she had made supports for the loose material herself, though that quickly became unnecessary as she had reached sandstone a few meters in. The cavern Alice had sensed was a very wide-open space which was, however, only about a meter tall, less in some spots. Elizabeth had actually dug past it in her hurried excavation – not stopping just becase she had stumbled into the original target.
Then Irwyn felt himself once again filled by Alice’s mana, not resisting despite the urge to do so. The scenery shifted in front of his eyes into total blackness. Then, instead of releasing the magic, Alice teleported them again a heartbeat later. Her senses were limited in range when it came to spotting suitable places beneath the ground but that also meant her teleportation itself had no issue keeping up. Like that she executed 11 consecutive transports, ending them up in some kind of small-ish cave with a bit of glowing lichen to their right.
“We should be well over three hundred meters deep,” Alice managed to gasp out, then she fell into a heap, taking quick breaths to stabilize from the clear strain she had just been through. Elizabeth wasted no time erecting a veil of Void magic, much like she would for secrecy, enveloping them in complete darkness again. That should make them much harder to find if the Trapper even tried. Irwyn quickly reversed the blackness by summoning a bit of Light - intentionally with little power as to not disrupt the Void magic around them.
“It should not be possible to track us this far down,” Elizabeth nodded. “But best we are careful. I will deploy a few other countermeasures to divination alongside my own magic. We should stay like this for at least a few hours, I am not sure how persistent the Skyhunter might be when pursuing us underground.”
“I think we made it,” Irwyn sighed, also falling to his ass. Not from actual exhaustion like Alice but the relief. “It certainly looked bad.”
“You looked composed throughout,” Elizabeth smiled.
“I got used to being calm under pressure,” Irwyn sighed. “You did great too. Waylan needs help though.” his friend was still unconscious, bleeding from his ears. That immediately reignited Irwyn’s worry.
“I had grafting potions prepared for all of us before we left the Federation,” Elizabeth nodded, withdrawing one, then handing it to Irwyn for administration. “And other things in that regard. It would be stupid to leave without sufficient healing since none of us can provide that.”
“Aren’t those incredibly expensive and difficult to make?” Irwyn asked as he poured it down Waylan’s throat, moving his head to help his catatonic friend swallow.
“The main difficulty is that each needs to be custom-made for the person as to not induce rejection of the recovered flesh,” she shook her head. “Since I was not keeping up any pretenses at that point, it was not difficult to get a stockpile in advance for each of us.”
“Do you have anything for an empty Vessel behind the counter,” Alice gasped from the ground beside them. She was still breathing heavy and clutching her head with one hand.
“For a pinch but the crisis has passed,” Elizabeth said. “Recovering by yourself will help to empower your Vessel compared to relying on liquid mana.”
“The migraine is killing me,” she muttered
“I would hope not,” Irwyn feigned worry in his voice.
“You know what I mean,” she sighed, slowly sitting up. “How is Waylan?”
“I don’t think he is bleeding anymore,” Irwyn noted.
“Fuck, I will have to make it up to him,” she glanced at the unconscious sneak guilty. “I should have realized the sound would be too much for him.”
“It was a crisis, he will understand,” Irwyn assured. “Just don’t make the same mistake twice.”
“I won’t,” she nodded with severity.
The conversation turned lighter from there, the three of them talked for half an hour before Waylan came to. The sneak seemed mostly fine thanks to the potion, barely even shaken. Like Irwyn, he had also gone through many stressful pursuits in Ebon Respite and took it completely in stride. The nap might have helped, forceful or not. Afterward they spent four and a half more hours sitting in the small black bubble before Alice needed to use the metaphorical restroom and Elizabeth decided they had hidden long enough. Once again Irwyn looked around the cave with softly luminescent lichen, then re-summoned a proper source of Light. There did not seem to be much else around them though.
“There is a massive cavern twenty meters to the right,” Alice said. “So large I cannot feel any of the other edges. Water, maybe even some flora and fauna shuffling around. My perception is not the best with that level of detail. A lot of large stalagmites too.”
“Stalag what?” Waylan asked
“Stalagmites, rock formations pointing up from the ground – generally accumulating over long periods of time from minerally rich water,” Irwyn immediately explained. Random trivia from the recesses of his mind struck again. “As opposite to stalactites which sprout from a ceiling but are formed similarly.”
“Stalac-tits,” Waylan snickered. Irwyn suppressed a groan. “They even hang down from age.”
“No point staying here,” Elizabeth said with amusement and Alice quickly grabbed them all with her magic. It was much easier to stifle the urge to resist the dozenth or so time. A moment later, they stood in the cavern.
“Uhm, curious color for rocks,” Waylan was the first to speak, looking in front of them. “And shapes.”
“Ah shut it,” Alice had been gaping but got woken from it by Waylan’s jab. “It’s roughly shaped like stalagmites!”
“They are not though,” Elizabeth joined in. "Unless rocks can grow into wood now?"
“This was like pulling a bucket from a well and assuming it will be filled with water rather than alcohol! How is that my fault?”
“Why are there trees?” Irwyn asked the question all of them were really thinking.
And more than just trees. They had not stepped into a cave hundreds of meters beneath the ground. They have stumbled upon an actual jungle.