Clearly, the Lord of the Third Floor had underestimated the sheer strength that the Eternal Guardian possessed. Its roar made the newly-reformed glass panes of the windows shatter. Ray and everyone else in the throne room were forced to clap their hands over their ears, the noise like thunder bursting to life in their midst.
Then the humongous creature rushed in. Even the Sylvan leader’s Growth Mana wasn’t able to stop it. Ray was sorely tempted to get a good look at the supposed Floor Lord, but the Guardian’s bullish entrance into the throne room took all of his attention.
Mostly because, as he had willed through the Tower Node of the Songstress, it was coming straight for him.
The hole in the roof wasn’t big enough to accommodate it. That wasn’t going to stop the Guardian. Half the ceiling broke and crashed into the throne room, an avalanche of shattered masonry forcing everyone back. All the Sylvans who had been rushing Ray’s position now retreated. The king squawked as a rocky chunk nearly fell on his shoulder.
Ray grinned wide and spread his arms. For all that the Sylvan leader had drawn out Ray’s Tower Nodes with his Tower Node of the Revealer, their allegiance hadn’t shifted. All the Tower Nodes still belonged to Ray.
As such, when the Eternal Guardian picked Ray up, the Tower Nodes came with him. He clutched the huge creature’s craggy skin as best as he could, the rush of air past him making his hair and Vestments flutter.
“Stop him!” the king of the Everstead shouted. “Someone stop that vile Denizen.”
“Stop him after he’s gained control of the Eternal Guardian?” someone asked.
Their voices were fading as the Gurdian took off with Ray in tow, completely ignoring the various abilities flung after it. But before the throne room and the palace itself left from Ray’s view, he caught one last thing that hooked his attention.
“The Viledrake,” someone yelled. No, that was Mary. “Don’t you have a Viledrake?”
How the hell did she even know the Everstead had a Viledrake? Also, how in the world did they have one? It almost sounded like the same case as the Lostcallers. That the Everstead could control Viledrakes.
A little crazy to think about. Had the first Viledrake Ray had defeated placed there by the Everstead too? To think that these… Imitators could control such powerful monsters…
Ray could ask how, but he doubted he was going to get any easy answers. Unless, of course, the powerful monsters were also advanced Imitators, just taking the form of other creatures instead of people. After all, if the Everstead could create an entire palace from their own Imitator forms, then other monsters would be chump change.
Said palace was dwindling rapidly. It was surprising that he wasn’t being followed, that the Floor Lord wasn’t throwing any skills from a distance to shoot down the Eternal Guardian.
Far beneath, the soldiers of the Everstead shouted and shrieked. Ray had to wonder what they were thinking just then. How would they react then they learned that their own king had sold them out to their enemies? Fucking pissed, if he assumed right.
The only question was how they could learn the truth…
[Enemy Defeated—Human]
Hoplite [Tier 2] Human: [Level 34] x5
Vanguard [Tier 2] Human: [Level 37] x5
Adamant Barbarian [Tier 3] Human: [Level 38] x1
Essence: +41,200
Knowledge: +33
True Mana Restored: +19,650
Essence to Level 43: 46,860/161,200
Knowledge to next Threshold: 2,222/2,500
Ah. No new level yet. Also, he hadn’t killed Cory. That was the bigger problem, though Ray took solace in the fact that he was still alive after his last encounter to actually enjoy gaining so much more Essence.
Ray: Kredevel, how far have you made it?
Kredevel: Ray! Is everything alright? We heard that the palace had been breached, that they had managed to kill you.
Ray: Don’t worry, I’m alright. But there’s a LOT we need to talk about. But it’ll be easier if we talked in person.
They decided that Kredevel would send a signal as soon as he or anyone in his troop spotted the huge Eternal Guardian flying towards them. It would be pretty difficult to miss a giant, flying monster.
As for Kredevel himself, Ray learned that he and the company of Everstead he had more or less captured—by threatening to kill the Floor Lord if they didn’t cooperate—were halfway to the royal palace. They hadn’t suffered any difficulties and no new armies of Everstead soldiers had appeared to complicate things. Perfect news.
Ray looked up at the huge Guardian as it continued carrying him away. There was still a strange connection between him and creature through the Tower Node of the Songstress, though it was fainter than before. Maybe there was a timer involved.
“Thanks,” he said. Ray was pretty sure it wasn’t going to hear him over the wind. He could barely hear himself. “I probably wouldn’t have made it out of there so easily if you hadn’t been there, bug guy.”
He patted its arm just to make his appreciation felt. The Guardian did look down briefly at him, its refrigerator-sized eyes blinking down at Ray. There was a certain awareness in its eyes. Maybe it understood that it was assisting Ray, though considering he had more or less ordered it to do so…
Although, had he actually ordered the Eternal Guardian to do anything? All he had done was use the Tower Node’s ability to forge a connection to the Guardian using Flight Mana.
And then it had immediately complied with his wishes, without him needing to actually specify anything.
Maybe this connection was doing all the work.
A flare went up in the distance about twenty minutes later. It was a burst of green light, shooting easily over a hundred feet into the air. They had reached their destination. The Eternal Guardian was fast despite its size, and it had flown pretty far. No wonder it had taken no time at all to find Kredevel.
Ray didn’t recognize whatever skill had thrown something that high up. A quick chat with Kredevel confirmed that it was indeed the flare, though.
They all stared as Ray and the Eternal Guardian landed.
“I should not be surprised you come down in the hands of a gigantic, ancient creature,” Kredevel said as he stepped up from the host he was leading.
He wasn’t alone. Gritty followed close behind, her eyes on the Gurdian.
“How’d you get your grubby hands on something like that, wingman?” she asked.
Ray grinned at her. At them. It was good to be back in the presence of friends. “Well, you said it yourself, Gritty. Wing man.”
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Behind them, the rest of the weird coalition stretched out. On one side were the Everstead soldiers who had supposedly surrendered, more or less. They were abiding by the orders Kredevel had given. Though, Ray figured those were less orders and more along the line of threats.
Since the Sylvans with Kredevel had the Lord of the Second Floor still in their chained grasp. Oh, yes. They could kill the Floor Lord at any moment. Then the Everstead soldiers, who had no doubt contracted the Flesh Plague now due to their proximity to the Infected on the right, would be screwed.
The last of them were the Denizens who had joined up with Kredevel’s forces. Joaquin was at the lead. He nodded at Ray in greeting.
All in all, it seemed the casualties were at a minimum. He figured the Infected were the ones who had suffered the worst in the battle, but they didn’t seem cowed and their numbers were still significant.
“You didn’t say much over the chat,” Kredevel said. “But now that you’re here, we can begin.”
Ray nodded. “We’ve got a lot to discuss.” He shot the captured Floor Lord a look. She was staring at the ground, apparently uninterested in anything going on around her. “You won’t believe what I saw and found out.”
The procession remained halted for a while as Ray found a little clearing where they could talk more in private. Joaquin and a younger Denizen named Constance whom Ray hadn’t met before joined Gritty and Kredevel and another Sylvan called Ferron to discuss matters.
“No fucking way,” Gritty said once Ray had finished. He had politely but firmly asked them to hold their question and interjections until after he was done describing everything he had experienced. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m deadly serious,” Ray said.
“They have an open-air throne room? That’s insane.”
“Wait. That’s the thing you find insane?” Constance asked.
Ray snorted. “Don’t worry, that’s just good, old Gritty being Gritty.”
She scowled at him. “Who you calling old, wingman?”
“And you’re sure they’re mimics?” Constance asked, turning to Ray.
He nodded. “Positive. The Sylvan Floor Lord who came down used a revealing ability, and that turned everything back into their original forms. It revealed all the Mana that was in the room too. Trust me, I’d recognize Imitators and their Mimic Mana anywhere.”
They weren’t the only ones shocked. Everybody in the little group took their time processing all that Ray had revealed. He couldn’t blame them. Back in the throne room, he had been almost caught out by the shock too. Most of the people here probably didn’t have their Intellect at Tier 4 to help.
“So the people were never people,” Constance said. “Just monsters pretending to be people using… Amplification Mana, you said?”
Ray looked past their little clearing. He couldn’t see the rest of the troop or the Floor Lord they were holding captive, but he had no trouble imagining her with the Tower Node that allowed Amplification Mana. “I think that’s part of why the leaders of the Everstead want the Floor Lord back. Not to heal them from the Flesh Plague, but to get back their Tower Node.”
“To think that my own kind are in on this Flesh Plague business,” Ferron, the other Sylvan said. “Willing to let us rot in ignorance and allow us to kill ourselves all to preserve this illusion they are so determined to maintain.”
His face twisted. Kredevel echoed the expression, though his also had a feeling of resignation about it. He hadn’t discounted this possibility. He couldn’t, not after what he had gone through in the hands of Olgolair on the First Floor.
“This changes things tremendously.” Kredevel’s voice was completely serious. “Everything we thought we knew no longer applies. These Everstead do not need to remain our enemies any longer.”
Ray nodded. He was thankful that Kredevel was rerouting the conversation into more productive lanes. They didn’t have time to remain shocked or depressed.
“We’ll need their help,” Joaquin said in agreement. “Although, I’m not sure how we can go about convincing them that Ray is speaking the truth.”
“Wait, hold on.” Gritty made a time-out sign with her hands. “Why do we need to convince the fake schmucks about anything? You guys sound like you already have a plan without even saying anything about it.”
“It’s the issue I already mentioned, Gritty,” Ray said. “We’re going to need more help if we want to beat the Sylvans at the palace and all the Everstead there. We can’t do it alone. Or at least, we can’t do it while fighting a huge Everstead army at the same time. So if we can convince the Everstead that we aren’t actually their real enemies, then we’re golden.”
“I can’t kill more of these Everstead?” Gritty asked with a small pout.
“Not the ones here, no. You’ve been keeping yourself quiet so far, haven’t you? Nothing’s really changing for you.”
“Yeah, well, I was just hoping it would change for the better. But sorry, I didn’t realize changing for the better was a foolish hope.”
Ray shook his head. Some of the others stared at her brazen bloodthirstiness, but this was nothing new. Sometimes, he had a hard time reconciling how she could be skilful in her infiltration abilities and be a barbaric brute at other times.
“We’ll need to deal with the Everstead, one way or another,” he said. “And I think I know just how we can do that.” They all looked at him questioningly, so he cleared his throat. “We’re going to make the Floor Lord confess.”
----------------------------------------
Kredevel sat before the chained Floor Lord with a tilt to his head. It was strange how he was in the position of power here. His last meeting with a Floor Lord had ended rather poorly for him. To think he would be the one in a position where he could kill one with impunity was… hard to believe.
“We have discovered the truth, Floor Lord,” Kredevel said. “And we are here to condemn you for it.”
His instincts drove him to ask questions, to demand the reasons why the Floor Lord was so willing to sacrifice her own people. He wanted to know if every Floor Lord was thus. If the Tower Lord saw them as nothing more than expendable pawns.
But there was no point. Kredevel had only been in the presence of the Floor Lord for just a few hours, and he was already quite aware that she wasn’t the answering kind.
So instead, a clear statement that proved his superior position was the correct choice.
The Floor Lord did indeed look up, the eye that wasn’t swollen shut shooting him a piercing glare.
Kredevel continued, undaunted. “We disparage your transgressions against our fellows. We decry your cowardice in the face of your enemies. We detest the notion that you serve some foreign Paragon to the extent that you even abdicated your duties as a Floor Lord. Fyrlea, a Floor Lord? Please. You are nothing more than a husk of ambition, worthy of nothing but death.”
That certainly got her attention. It wasn’t just the fact Kredevel and the rest were going to kill her. That wasn’t what bothered the Floor Lord.
What she truly took umbrage against was the fact that they were judging her.
“I will warn you,” Fyrlea finally said. Her voice was as implacable as her gaze, deep and strong and unshakeable. “Continue thusly, and your kin will be forced to stain their hands with your blood. If you wish to spare them such a traumatic experience, then stand down.”
Kredevel showed no reaction, though internally, he was certainly twisting. She was pushing the exact buttons that riled him. Almost as though she knew him.
All throughout the First Floor, he had vacillated because he knew that his chosen path could possibly bring him into conflict against his fellows. He didn’t want to fight his kind. The Sylvans as a whole were not his enemies. Praise the Burgeoner, but they were his brethren. How could he possibly take up arms against them?
But it didn’t matter. Over the course of his journeys, Kredevel had learned that just as the humans warred mong themselves, the Sylvans might need to do so as well. For their own good.
“Unlike you, Floor Lord,” Kredevel said, leaning forward a little, “I at least know that I am in the right.”
“There is no right or wrong in this, fool,” Fyrlea said. “Morality is merely another tool used by the triumphant against the defeated. Wield it when you actually win.”
“We will win. You pretend as though you know what we are about to face, when in truth, you remain clueless. You haven’t seen what has happened. You cannot know.”
Fyrlea smiled, displaying spots in her mouth where her teeth were entirely missing. “Can I not?”
Kredevel used Projected Growth to create a cage of Growth Mana around his captive. This time, he didn’t simply encase her with it. He crushed her. The spiralling growth constricted the Floor Lord’s body, pressing in like a tangle of pythons all seeking to turn her body to pulp.
Fyrlea’s lone good eye was bulging a little. “You pathetic little upstart.” Choked though her voice had become, it was still filled with conviction. “Allying with Denizens. With these creatures that aren’t even real. You scramble at power, but you couldn’t even dream of the true might.”
Kredevel didn’t reply. He focused on his skill, using it to slowly but surely squeeze the life out of this one Sylvan he had no regrets about killing.
“They will end you,” she wheezed. Her every word was forced out, rocks falling down a waterfall to be crushed at the bottom. “The Lord of the Third Floor. The ones who have come with him. All the fools they control. And once they are sacrificed, the Fleshcrafter himself shall—”
Fyrlea’s words turned into choked whines as the compression turned too great for even someone like her to speak.
“Enough!”
Kredevel released his skill. The Growth Mana projections fled as quickly as they appeared, and Fyrlea collapsed to the ground, twitching, coughing, and heaving.
The leader of the Everstead came to stand next to Kredevel. He had used his Mimic abilities to cloak himself and prevent the Floor Lord—no, Fyrlea, the madwoman who deserved no titles—from seeing him. And so, she’d had no qualms about spilling the truth.
Just as Ray had planned. Sometimes, Kredevel felt as though his friend was a rather evil genius.
“It would seem you are correct,” the Everstead leader said. The weariness he wore on his face made him look like he wanted to be anywhere but here. “I… I cannot believe it. I do not know how anyone could be made to believe it.”
Well, that was why the other Everstead were nearby. More of them appeared, shedding their camouflage to show that they had been standing well within earshot.
Fyrlea never looked up. Clearly, she was even more humiliated. Not only had she been forced to submit to her captors, but she had also been tricked. Deceived into believing she was about to die, she had thrown caution to the wind and revealed everything she held dear in a fit of final emotion.
Kredevel spared one last look at the Floor Lord before moving on to speak with the Everstead commander in private.
“You see the truth?” Kredevel said. “We have been fighting for no good reason. But things can change now. We can work together instead.”
They continued walking, eventually reaching the spot where Ray was watching from the distance.
He looked squarely at the Everstead commander. “What’s it going to be?”
The commander closed his eyes. His forces were gathering too, and they had the same sensation about them. A reluctant agreement, a near-forced disbelief.
“Yes,” the leader of the Everstead military said. “We will help you.”
“You’ll be helping yourselves just as much, believe me,” Ray said.
The commander’s words had been resigned at first, but they turned a lot more certain. “That we will.”