As accidental and desperate as the Stelc’s birth was, I’ve ensured its existence is worth the while. For some time I worried I wasted the horde of Essence Jeriko so graciously collected on forging a mindless creature of obsidian and Crystal gems that had no other abilities beyond being nigh impervious with a nack for depositing Crystals, Gestalt or otherwise.
But now I reap the rewards of my accidental genius. The Stelc stands over twenty feet tall and nearly as wide on its four legs. At my orders, Steven arranged a proper palaquin to strap over its back, large enough to fit in three Demons, though I have to sacrifice some of my height to sit comfortably in it. With my help, Steven managed to scar the Stelc’s sides with the runes and sigils of teleportation enchantments that Lumina exchanged as part of our little skill trade alliance.
It’s the best mode of transportation I could ask for. It bounds through the land, crushing sleeping Demons beneath its feet as we trudge along to our destination—the mountain fortress at the edge of Hescaria’s rapidly shrinking borders.
Brok, Veneti, and Steven helped me decide what to do with Hescaira’s call for help. Brok, of course, called for the enslavement of all the Elves, stating they’d be better off serving Meira than themselves. After all, if they could govern, then they wouldn’t be asking for help. Though once I made it clear that conquest wasn’t my overall goal for Meira, Veneti suggested we use them as we used Steven and the Humans, a statement that even Steven had to agree with.
I didn’t mention anything about Jerad’s offer of godhood, to replace King within that Egg with myself—however they planned to do it, I didn’t know or care. King is someone I couldn’t bring myself to fight, not when I know how pointless it would be.
She’d trapped me within my own [Soul Crystal] for a year and took over my body. She tried to kill me when she left too and almost permanently crippled my [Soul Crystal’s] ability to absorb and use Essence. She did all that, and I don’t feel a single shred of anger toward her. All I wanted was for her to be gone, and she is.
Her respect for my strength boils into fear, paranoia that I would seek to fight against her goals now that I no longer care about what the gods did in their heavens or how they governed their creatures. We were smited unto the Wall of Deaders together, our souls and identities interwoven without my young Crimson tier self ever knowing. Her anger is what drove me to seek the Gods I’d forgotten I already knew and fought to no avail. We share that in common, that hatred, but hers is maelstrom that can only be calmed with endless violence and unrestricted power.
I don’t mind as long as it brings about the change that’s truly needed, the change I envision in my mind. My year without a body, my time in Kyis and those few pauses with Meira and Corym, annoying and asinine as they were taught me vital lessons I don’t believe King ever had a chance to learn or even accepted she need to learn—she’s the same old Socerer King she was some millennia ago.
Except, if that pillar of light scalding Hescaria’s capital, transforming the sky and bathing the entire Kingdom in a swealtering heat wave, is any indication, she may have achieved the very thing she’s sought all this time.
Steven gasps at the world, gaping at the pillar scorching the red hue Reais had stained the skies with to reveal the glittering many stars over Hescaria. “Oh… Lord...”
“Yes?” I answer, though I know he’s only awestruck. Besides what undoubtedly has to be King’s doing, the man hasn’t stepped foot outside of Meira. His old life and world died there, and suddenly he woke up to a living nightmare.
He snaps right in the velvet cushions seats that served my palanquin— the Emperor’s palace supplied Steven’s Humans with all the fabrics and luxuries needed to glorify their new, demonic Lord, and I like them very much. As flattering as the sky-piercing throne of bone is, it doesn’t keep me very comfortable.
My palanquin has several pillows, a fine ironwood tableset, and magnificent-smelling drapes I believe are enchanted to perfume the air up here. I’ve had little lust for these luxuries since waking in the Divides, but having them now feels well earned, and I’m indulgent. I make a note to have the Humans decorate my private chambers in the same fashion.
“It’s beautiful destruction…” he says, so fiercely enchanted by the growing pillar smiting the skies and surely leveling whatever landscape it originates in. “What is it?”
The Stelc tears through long forest trees that barely reach its knee. We’re closing in on Brok’s location now. I can sense him and his mind, but he’s still too far to even communicate. The pillar begins pulsating as it swells once more, but rather than descend, the thrumming energies splinter, one thin thread at a time continuously shading from the searing white at the center into a rainbow of colorful strings attached to a stalk.
Narrowing my eyes at it, I can’t think of anything else it could be other than, “The birth of a God… and a potential enemy.”
Steven does a double take, looking back at Enoch who stands atop what would be the Stelc’s head and handles its reins to check if he was listening to any of this. He wasn’t. Enoch and I share a look; the young Crimson was born of the promising Pinks Brok guaranteed would serve well in the battle against Thraxis and the nest of [Myrmi].
Without a word or thought from me, Enoch tears away and whips the Stelc into an earth-pummelling charge toward the fortress peeking out on the horizon now.
“Woah!” Steven yelps as the Stelc rearranges the landscape in its wake. “Why are we moving so fast?”
“The pillar is moving toward the fortress.” Again, he does a double take, squinting his eyes out at the pillar and coming up with nothing beside confusion and fear. Smirking down at him, I say, “Don’t strain your eyes, they aren’t as good.”
Enoch may have noticed its movement and trajectory with his eyes alone, but practicing [Soul Forgery] as a Maroon tier reveals those colorful threads splintering off the white stalk of light for the soul harvesters they are.
I’m not sure whose souls King is plucking, but if she’s headed toward the fortress with that attitude, then I need to retrieve my assets.
***
The valley’s ground shatters under the Stelc’s feet. Demons scamper away from rolling debris and the shower of its toughest Crystals. Many fail in their escape, crushed under the Stelc from the start or one of its raining Crystals and hard minerals.
They’d gotten a long headstart from spotting the charging giant, Blood Orange Demon, and still nearly half of Gerim’s Demons lay dead under the Stelc’s feet. To their credit, the Demons had begun to tear through the Hescarian forces now bunkering within their fortress that the Stelc shares the same height with, including foundation.
I recognize several energies among the cowering, recovering army, but none stand out more than Jerad and Duruk. The Dragon perches atop one of the towers, wings spread and ready for flight at Jerad’s command. And some distance behind it is the ever-approaching spire of light cleansing the sky over Hescaria of Reais’ darkness.
Ignoring that for a moment, I turn my attention ahead, where Brok and Valery bother Gerim with their attempts, Valery looking ever worse for wear with each brief exchange—she makes another charge under Brok’s flaming uppercut, stabbing a venom-coated sword and battered shield at Gerim, only to have her jaw caught by a pillar of rising ice.
Gerim continues without pause, snatching Brok as he summersaults over another burst of Soul Fire, dashing his flipped foot at his jaw. Brok leans out of reach and inhales for a breath of fire, only for a flurry of quills to stab into his engulfed body. Gerim lurches out in a blur, bringing his gauntlet down on Brok’s face. Frost spills from his gauntleted fist, hastily encasing my Emerald General in a coffin of ice and snow.
He steps off and looks up at the Stelc, at me still lounging on its luxurious cushions. His Demons retreat to his side, forming up behind him in a line of injured [Adar], [Leptir], [Khozuik] and several more born of the Desert Divide. With a good dozen of them being Blood Orange, Gerim’s army is quite formidable; it would be against anyone else.
“You must be the Lord Prime this one keeps touting on about.” Gerim roars, his voice and image carrying the scent of nostalgia in its deep intones.
Breathing in a deep breath, blood, burning flesh, and wood sting my nostrils. The fields around them have been bludgeoned time over by Brok and then filled with ice and snow either by Valery or Gerim, but the blood splotches can only be from Valery. While Gerim is a challenge I wouldn’t wish upon any mortal, Valery is the one Warrior Mage responsible for some of my suffering in the past, and I expected much of her, considering she and King took down Jeriko together the first time.
Searching her mind, waving away the troublesome and now-moot wards that guard it, I find her psyche in turmoil—much of her attention isn’t even here at all. She’s more or less given up on the fight in favor of reminiscing on better times with her sister.
Lost her will to live. Given what King’s pillar of celestial light is doing and what I know of her relationship with Lumina, I’m sure the Elf Queen is dead and gone in service of King’s ambitions.
“Will you come out and face us then? Your champion is defeated and my Demons grow hungry. Who should I feed him to?” Gerim roars out again, stomping his feet over Brok and reinforcing his ice prison against Brok’s Soul Fire inferno.
I sent Brok with the estimation that he as a high-tier Blood Orange would be more than a match for Gerim, though I didn’t dare believe him capable of killing him. No, there were several advantages Gerim had thanks to Calridian, thanks to time and age that I couldn’t give Brok, at least not yet. I couldn’t underestimate him either. For all Brok’s struggles against the ice coffin, there’s one thing he did right—warn me of everything. His mind downloaded the entirety of his encounter with Gerim. The first he did with the gauntlets, and they were effective machines, but he retreated. And now, the gauntlets have a ring that grants an unknown power to them.
Picking myself from my comfortable place on the cushions, I have Steven sit with the Stelc and Enoch follow my lead onto the Stelc’s head. It bows forward until its faceless head touches to ground and we walk off.
Manipulating myself to my preferred height, I chuckle as his army cowers at my presence, even the Blood Orange among them buckling in fear. At the moment, removed from my Dominion, I am vulnerable only to a temporary death as my [Soul Crystal] still resides within it. A Demon like Gerim knows this property of Maroon tiers. To end one truly, you must fight them in their Dominion and win—he’s done so before. I watched him march into a Fire Divide Maroon tier Dominion and here he stands, alive, well and defiant.
The form I embody now, disconnected as it is from the wellspring of power that is Meira, still holds more than double the Crystal Essence of a high-tier Blood Orange, and I have a lot more to grow into. He should be proud.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your best student, Gerim,” I say at last, taking a step forward and resisting the urge to laugh at the minds of the Crimsons looking for an escape.
“I’ve never… Nil?” He voices my name, glancing down at Brok quickly, burning through his ice in a reckless expenditure of Essence and then narrowing his eyes at me, all the while forming a fist.
“That’s my name, but as you might have heard, I go by the Lord Prime now.” I take another step and start pushing mana outward. “How is… everyone? The twins, I never got to learn their names, are they still alive, or has Hargoil eaten them?”
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“Calridian demands your return, Nil,” he says, closing the other and sending a final burst of ice to encase all Brok has worked to melt through before crossing over his coffined body. “I’m here to bring you to him.”
“Hahaha! I thought Haern was meant to do that.”
His eyes go wide at the mention of Haern. “You killed him?”
“No, but that would be the safest thing, wouldn’t it? No, instead he serves me now, serves my Dominion.” I set my hand out and take another step, fighting Gerim for control over the dense atmosphere of mana we’re creating. “You could stop this nonsense and serve me too, Gerim. I don’t want to have to fight you. We have so many fond memories… actually, we don’t, but I’d rather have you serve me than fight me. You could be my personal adviso—”
“That will never happen,” he says with conviction as he starts down a march, his Blood Orange and horde of Crimsons following close behind. “You may have ascended heights you weren’t meant to, but we will bring you down to where you belong.”
With a wave of my hand, the Crimsons fall asleep, crumpling down in their march to slumber in a nightmare that has them screaming and moaning seconds after. The dozen Blood Orange behind Gerim look at their stock of fodder wailing and begging the unseen for mercies and share a stark look of concern for themselves.
When they look back, I’ve multiplied and encircle in numbers beyond their dozen. The sounds of terror and nightmare crescendo around them as my mirror images belt out rich laughter into the night sky.
“Don’t be deceived! It’s an illusion!” Gerim screams at them, then turns to face me with a sneer, “Even that magic belongs to Calridian.”
I set my hand out and Seeker flourishes from my robes, extending into its full form as I grip its length. “You could say so about this too, but one thing you can’t say belongs to Calridian is me.” Leveling Seeker at the Blood Orange tiers still getting over my mirror images, I say, “This is your last chance, all of you. Flee now, or pronounce your eternal servitude to me, the Lord Prime.”
“Don’t you dare,” Gerim seethes at them but noticeably he doesn’t make a move, and so I do.
Seeker lurches from my hand and spears through a Blood Orange, a [Leptir] like Haern and the only one of the bunch capable of flight. Gerim roars, sending a volley of quills my way. A wall of bone erupts in time as the long quills dig in deep. I smile down at Enoch, “Well done, but you don’t want to be anywhere near this. If you see an opening, go help Brok and Valery, the Human.”
He nods and scampers away just as an [Adar] charges through the wall, shattering bone with its blind rampage, its head poised to skewer me with the long, curved horn adorned atop it. Low-tier Blood Orange that it is, I snatch its horn in my hand and lift it off its legs so I have a better look at it with all three of my eyes. “TriBeam.”
The close-up beam blasts the Demon to smithereens, leaving its horn in my hand. I toss it over my shoulder and stare down Gerim and eleven of his Blood Orange tiers. “I killed my first Blood Orange as a mid-tier Crimson. I don’t have time for children, Gerim.”
Looking over my shoulder, the Stelc responds behind me, and the stark fear that coarses through Gerim’s Demons fuels me. They haven’t seen anything yet.
The Stelc’s bulging stomach bursts open with a scattering of Crystals and obsidian as it releases its cargo. “You didn’t think I’d come here with only a Crimson tier, did you?”
Released from their dark, rocky cage, three low-tier Blood Orange Demons rush to my side. Each of them share a similar look; shiny dark fur resembling ink clings to their skin and twisted limbs as they traverse on all fours, arms longer and thicker than their legs from knuckle-walking. Their eyes hold a familiar malevolence, a stain of horrid yellow that glows menace at their prey lined up in front of them— a feature I personally thought to add.
{T-3/L-2— Kimpe}
{T-3/L-3— Kimpe}
{T-3/L-2— Kimpe}
“Don’t they look familiar?” I ask Gerim with stern glare. My eyes track his use of the gauntlets and the single ring on one of the fingers of his left hand.
“You’ve perversed—”
“No, I have forged. Forged these Demons from scratch as a reminder to you and Calridian. I kept my end of the deal, Gerim. I ended Morthul as I was asked and then by accident I found myself here. I will not apologize for surviving or for thriving.”
Seeker dislodges from the [Leptir] and spins in a flourish, decapitating two more Blood Orange in a moment of surprise as the veil of illusion I cast on it wears off with their blood. With a flick of my wrists, Seeker zips at Gerim. He blocks it with his gauntlets, and I get a feel for how strong they are through Seeker. “[Kimpe], go. Kill all with the red mark, reap, and feed.”
Not waiting for another word, the [Kimpe] launch themselves into the disoriented Blood Orange tiers, the yellow in their eyes paralyzing the prey that stares too long, and several can’t look away.
Gerim snatches Seeker by its length, but I’m not having that. With a thought, the lance becomes a short blade, slipping out of his grip and jutting down at his neck with a vengeance. The blade stabs a coat of ice instead, and Gerim roars toward me, ignoring the blade entirely as he pumps the gauntlets full of Essence.
Smirking, I catch the first punch in the palm of my hand and almost regret it. Frost bursts at contact, freezing my palm to his fist as he simultaneously launches himself up my height to connect the second to my jaw.
A blast of my [TriBeam] send him flying, and with a flex I shatter the ice coating my hand and laugh at the tingling sensation in it—this must be what Brok warned about. As though on cue, Gerim activates the gauntlets’ power and my arm is drawn irreversibly to him. But rather than reel in my entire body for a disorienting punch, I merely let him have my hand. It goes slack with excess flesh as it’s drawn to Gerim like a rope. He looks down at my elongated hand and curses as my laughter continues.
He spares a glance at his struggling Blood Orange tiers. Between the effects of my personal illusions and the hypnotic yellow iries of the [Kimpe], the dozen hve become five. When he turns his attention back to me, I’m already behind him, whispering, “I think it’s time you leave.”
Columns of quills spurt out of his back in immediate retaliation. He gathers mana and Essence into ichor, preparing for something big as I glide away from him and put myself beside a daydreaming Valery.
At my presence she seems to stir, but I don’t concern myself with her as a thousand of Gerim’s quills shoot out at me from both of his gauntlets. “Petriv!” A curved wall of rock erupts around us, but the quills don’t relent. Several shoot through entirely, only to clatter off my chest when they land a hit. A second after, the quills curve around the wall and pelt against my [Titan Crust] skin.
“Look…” Valery’s voice calls to me as I increase the walls around us and have Seeker disturb Gerim. She picks up her body from the floor, leaning out to point at the sky. “It’s coming… Hescaria… oh, Hescaria.”
Her psyche is becoming broken, but she is correct about one thing: the pillar of celestial light has reached us. Duruk roars as he takes to the sky, scorching the remnants of scattered Halflings Brok fought. Leaving Valery within the whole dome of earth, I scowl at Gerim battiing and swatting away at Seeker. “I overestimated you… or perhaps I underestimated myself. Nightmare.”
He goes slack as he falls asleep. [Nightmare Prowler] has quickly become my most reliable and Essence-heavy abilty. I watch his mind through the nightmare, and to his credit he doesn’t scream or moan—he fights. Ichor swells within his sleeping form as I looked onto the close-approaching pillar of light. Its energies send the earth into rumbling quakes.
As Gerim fights hard against my [Nightmare Prowler], I stand over his body and recall the Stelc out of the light’s path. Freed from his icy prison, Brok immediately goes to hunt Gerim’s Blood Orange tiers with the [Kimpe] and Enoch.
Once he’s done, he returns to my side, refreshed and glad. “Lord Prime!” he yells over the whining of the pillar of light. Great winds blow in our faces, ripping off trees as it ploughs straight through the fortress. Its colorful thread has returned to the white stalk, and now it simply tears the land and everything in its way.
“Don’t slack off, Brok, end the Crimsons and reap their Crystals,” I speak into his mind and release the Crimsons from [Nightmare Prowler], leaving me headspace and Essence to press down against Gerim’s consciousness. I don’t want to kill him, even though I have full opportunity to do so now; he’s the only Demon so far to resist [Nightmare Prowler], and I figure if I leave him under long enough, map his mind and plant as many fears as I can, he’ll fall under my thumb eventually.
As if to spite the very thought of subjugation, his mind flares up in furious attempts for freedom, startling my attention away from the encroaching pillar of light. In his sleep, he starts to pull himself up. I back away and watch with some hysteria as he wields muscle memory to fight.
Seeker finds my hand, and with a swing I slice off his arms. The gauntlets clatter to the ground and roll away. “Gerim, wake up.” He wakes with a gasp, stifles a scream, but falls to his knee in groans. “Hurt doesn’t it? I told you, I didn’t want to fight. When you see Calridian, tell him I don’t want to fight him either. We had a deal, and I kept my end. If he comes after me, my possessions, then the next time we meet, I won’t be so merciful.”
I leave him be as I sense Brok, Enoch, and the Kimpe round up behind me, their hands full of Crystals. I break the walls I set up around Valery with a thought and start to pick her up when the pillar suddenly thins into a single point in the sky after crossing a line through the Kingdom.
Finally, this is what I waited for. Let’s see what you’ve become, King. The point becomes clearer as a ball of concentrated divine as it hovers down. Gerim grunts up to his feet with his arms already regenerating. “Is this also your doing?”
“No, but I know who it might be,” I say without taking my sight off of it. Between Brok, Enoch, and the [Kimpe], there’s nothing left for Gerim to do other than take my message to Calridian.
As the ball touches the ground it pops soundlessly. The blinding light dissiapates and gives my eyes a rest, but what or who steps out is another thing entirely. A woman cloaked in thin, covering drapes floats out. Her bosom is large and supple, legs long, slender, with feet unnaturally bent and pointed down. Her hair may as well be the ball of light she appeared out of, a cluster of the brightest colors my eyes can see.
But most interesting is her image, her face. She looks so much like the King who shaped my body to her needs and preference, yet at the same time she looks just like—
“Valery… bring her to me, will you, Nil?” Her voice is lithe, yet striking. It carries more compulsion than I believe my [Compulsion] did.
Still, I hold Valery over my shoulder and ask instead, “Who are you?”
“You do not recognize me?”
It’s like a repeat of my conversation with Gerim. “I do, but I don’t believe it’s you, King, not anymore.”
She smiles and glows brighter as she hovers closer,.“I bring no malice onto you, Nil. It is as you say, I am not King, and I am not Lumina. Bring me Valery.”
“You know my name, you know hers. You must be some… coagulation of the two?”
Her lips purse in a line, and a force my arms fail to resist pull Valery from my grasp like a doll. Valery stirs awake at the light of this coagulation’s face. “Lumina? You’re alive, oh, thank Vuius.”
“Shhh. Vuius is dead, Valery, long dead. I am as the people called me, Luminary, the Goddess of Elves and War Sorcery, and you are my most special child.” The newly titled Luminary plants a kiss on Valery’s forehead before warping her entirety away in a blink of an eye.
“Where did you send her?” I start, though whether my strength as a Maroon tier would be enough to face a Goddess is the better question.
“Do not be afraid, Nil. I know King has hurt you greatly, and she is sorry… was sorry in her own way. I am Luminary. I wield the passions of King and Lumina au Hescaria. You, like Valery, are among such passions.” Her feet glide just above the torn ground as she leans into me, and I see she’s far larger than I, larger in more ways than size.
She draws closer and as she does I notice my Demons have been silent, that Gerim has been silent. I want to check on them, see what she’s done to them, but that smile, her voice, all are so irresistible.
Gritting my teeth, I pour Essence through my pathways and let the rush of demonic power snap me to reality, but it’s barely a sufficient change. She leans in, palming my cheek in her warm hands and whispers through her green-blue eyes, “The heavens are a graveyard, Nil, as you and King thought. The Gods, myself included, are nothing more than Vampires feeding off the suffering and glory of mortals, but that can change. Tell me, Nil, will you help me?”
“Do what?” I nearly stutter.
She smiles and gets even closer. “Help me bring balance.”
“You’ve torn through the Kingdom, plucking souls left and right to feed your power. Could a hypocrite bring balance?”
“I took the sinister souls who blighted my Kingdom.They will become pure within me and serve the Elves with their Essence. And you are no hypocrite, are you?” She fully cups my face now and I squint not to be blinded. “I am Goddess, demi goddess of Elves and War Sorcery. My passion is for these things to bring balance in all, in the Elves and in King’s war against the heavens, against this reality. Soon, Teir and Reinmer shall return as themselves and seek to smite this Realm and all within it for their disbelief, but surely you know that is a lie now, yes? A lie concocted to served these Vampires and their passions. I will not lie to you, Nil and you would not lie to me. You have been invaluable to my mortal Elves. You alone have protected them when there was no one left to, when I was yet to be born. I know you seek tranquility.”
I shake my head and try to pull away, but her hands are like metal braces locked on my head. “I want whatever I decide. I’m done living for others, fighting for others.”
“Are you finished protecting others?” she hums, searching my eyes for something and then, “What are you fighting for, Nil? What use will your immortality be?”
“I… I… I’m fighting for…” I bite my lip as her divinity pressures my Essence into silence. “I’m fighting to keep my Dominion, to keep it as a safe space for all, where no one has to fall prey to senseless violence, to death. I want my Demons to enjoy their immortality, and I want my mortals to…”
“Yes? Say it, tell me what you wish for mortals like the Elves.”
“I want them to have an opportunity at eternity.” It was something I’d thought of with the Humans within Meira. Getting the Demons to stop tormenting them was easy enough, but bringing them into the fold of immortals without bastardizing their souls like Gerim did with his Halflings or like I’ve done with the Stelc or Kimpe was a different experiment to be had. “I want them to have a true eternity, whether in this Realm or in another. An eternity that isn’t merely another punishment.”
She giggles, sounding like the soft chime of my mortal days. “You are passionate. I wish the same, Nil. We have so much in common, including our enemies.”
“Maybe…” I mutter.
“Come visit me, Nil. My work has only begun, but yours has long since been in progress.”
Before I can ask what she means, she plants a kiss on my forehead and everything folds in on itself.
----------------------------------------