While Duke Alistar struggled to save his comrade, I struggled to keep down the smirk threatening to spread my lips wide. The duke’s soldiers had acted exactly as I’d commanded them, to accidentally strike against the duke in moments of chaos. It had worked out perfectly, resulting in me appearing something of a hero to those I now flew by.
“Can you heal him?” Duke Alistar asked, shouting over the wind. I cast a quick glance back to see the initially frantic noble in control of himself once more. The wild, panicked look in his eyes seemed to have been buried deep down. I’d hoped the effects would have lasted a little longer.
“Only if you desire to be shot from the sky,” I screamed back, knowing full well he couldn’t. Just then, a horse-sized hell insect angled down away from the golden knight it had just slain and darted toward us. I raised a shield of thinly spread lunar energy, and it rammed into it. I pretended to struggle against the creature’s onslaught until the duke noticed.
“I cannot help,” he said. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I imagined it was a last-ditch attempt at saving his comrade. Staunching the blood flow, perhaps? “My core was sealed somehow.”
“By the Gods,” I swore, putting a heavy undertone of desperation into my words. “Are you at least still able to contact your Knights? I know you have a method.” The wind still howled in my ears even as the insect slammed into my barrier again and again. It wasn’t all that taxing, though it was beginning to get irritating. I silently urged the duke to speak faster and repeated my words, this time adding some energy to them so they reached his ears regardless of the wind.
He simply shook his head. He tried to say something, but I’d allowed the shield to break and kicked the wyvern I’d snagged from one of the Cael Knights into a downward dive. I directed energy to my lips and into my words again, transmitting my request directly to the duke.
“Give me access to the communication method. Let me direct your Knights. We can still win this.” The duke hesitated, but in that moment, I knew I had him. Though I doubted he knew I’d planned to render him useless the instant I’d spotted the fool’s runic summoning portal, it no longer mattered. His military force could not win without his golden core. Even if they could, they would still require a method of fast communication. From what I’d seen, there was an extreme reliance on the Duke’s method of communication. Though I still had no idea how they were communicating, I had a suspicion it was directly linked to the duke’s position as patriarch of House Alistar. Either way, he didn’t have much of a choice. He would surrender the communication method to me right there and now, or all his knights would die very horrible deaths at the pincers of the “hell” insects.
Which was, also, quite the lie on my part. It was true the fool had spoken in Runic, but there was no such thing as summoning monsters from one of the nine Hells. At least not from any level of power I’d ever seen. And if the monsters had been summoned from one of the Hells, it wouldn’t have been bugs.
When I’d noticed what the creatures actually were and sensed the type of energy coming from the portal, I’d nearly laughed. The fool had somehow opened a summoning portal to Ordite and introduced a subspecies of Dash’Ora to the world. It was, unfortunately, probably a one-way summoning and I wouldn't be able take it back, not that I particularly wanted to try given I barely understood the basics of magic and summonings, but I would need to find the city lord and take whatever runic script he’d obtained.
Fortunately, Dash'Ora had a unique ability to corrupt heart energy cores with the ichor smog radiated into the air by their mere presence. Silver cores and under would be minimally effected since they weren't able to circulate enough new heart energy amidst the corruption to truly affect them. But golden cores and above, if not properly fended off, would drown in the corruption of their own circulation.
“Now,” I shouted, deciding to put a bit more pressure on the duke. “We need to get him to safety or he’ll die soon. He has moments. Decide now so I can call over a healer.”
That seemed to tip the duke over the edge, and he nodded, tapping a hand against the center of his golden armor. A small, golden coin separated from the armor out of nowhere. An intricate design quickly etched itself out on the coin. It took only a second for me to recognize the crossing sword and axe encircled by a crown as the insignia of House Alistar.
A passage from The History of Lysoria came to mind when I saw the noble insignia:
“There are three ways a traveling noble is authorized to prove his or her identity. The first is through an authenticated House stamp. This can be used to prove letters as well. The second is through the family ring, which is always imbued with methods of identification particular to the family and nation. The third method of proof comes in the form of the House Coin. There are usually only three House Coins. One for the patriarch, the matriarch, and one for the successor. House Coins are the most often used method of identification. Be mindful, however, as House Coins are considered to be artifacts and contain effects known only to the main bloodlines.”
Before he could drop the coin or lose it in any manner, I pulled the reins of the wyvern and leveled out. I held a hand upward and loosed a tremendous bolt of lunar energy at the spearing creature. A tiny hole punctured its way from head to tail of the beast, ending its life. The creature soared above us with old momentum as it plunged toward the ground.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I held out a hand. The duke hesitated, but I snatched the coin from between his fingers when he didn’t move quickly enough. With his heart core sealed by the Dash’Ora King’s energy ichor, it was as easy as taking something from a mortal.
My own core thrummed in my heart, all the black muck quickly being eaten and sucked within the luminescent silver. The duke’s inability to deal with energy ichor was a pitfall of his own ignorance. It was a pity for him that he’d never met a Dash’Ora, but it was to my benefit. I wouldn’t even need to exert the effort in dealing with him, regardless of whether I used this to gain his complete trust or simply chose to rid myself of him.
The instant my fingers wrapped around the golden coin, a current of electricity invaded my senses and sprinted through my body like an arrow aiming for my core. I reacted quickly, circulating energy through me with due haste.
I didn't need to bother. Before I had managed to so much as stir my energy, the wave of electricity ceased altogether, and a black message of red text appeared before me.
[System Warning: Foreign System is invading the Host's body. Activating protections. Removal of foreign system successful. Analyzing foreign system… Main System detected. Main System Artifact Detected. Convert Artifact to the Desire System?]
[Yes]/[No]
I tapped the [Yes] button. So the Duke was connected to the Main System? No, that was unlikely. He had a golden core, and I’d already established through Nasq that Paragons, and by extension, I assumed anyone under the System’s leveling influence, couldn’t have a core.
I turned the coin around to view its identical back. Always more questions.
Perhaps it was just the coin, then. The Desire System had referred to it as an Artifact in the same way it had the Slave Mark. It didn’t necessarily imply the duke was part of the System.
[System Announcement: Artifact conversion successful.]
When I pressed my fingers against the House Coin once more, there was a similar electric spark that ran through me. This time, however, I recognized the Desire System’s impulsive but gentle feeling as the current intermingled with the vibrations of my silver core. At first, I blocked it from completely mixing, taking my time to analyze the effects on my core and energy. When there didn’t appear to be any chance of corruption, I let it through.
A connection attached between my core and the House Coin. Once it stabilized, my senses touched hundreds of other lines linked to the House Coin. I couldn’t tell which line indicated what person, so I chose to simply send out messages en masse.
“Listen up, this is Lilliana Silverwater. Duke Alistar is out of commission and has temporarily handed over the House Coin to me. Marquess Sharma has summoned creatures from one of the nine Hells in a desperate attempt to eliminate us. But we can still win with fire,” I said telepathically to everyone Duke Alistar had linked with his House Coin. With a conscious effort to block and restrict all incoming messages, I proceeded with the tactical commands. “Knights who are grounded, you are receiving reinforcements to the rear of the Cael knights. Both sides should collapse on the smallest area of knights and push through until you meet each other. Together, you hold both greater numbers and greater power, but you must meet up. Airborne Knights, the Duke and his second-in-command are both severely injured. I’m attempting to bring them to a healer, but I’m not able to break through the net of Hell bugs. Use fire to forge us a path so I can save your Lord.”
Then I pressed my heels into the wyvern and leaned forward, my will sinking its claws further into the creature's mind. “Down,” I commanded silently, and the wyvern obeyed. We dove down once more, avoiding a group of small, red-scaled arachnid creatures with short bee-like wings by dozens of meters, only to end up in the middle of a horde of the original red-scaled creatures, their massive bodies converging on us like rocks of an exploding volcano.
Droves of fire erupted around us from all sides, and I glanced toward the Golden Knights spewing fire from their bronze cores with a thankful smile that hid my inner smirk. Fire wasn’t any more effective against the insects than other basic energy attributes.
But it was quite effective on mortals.
I led the wyvern along the path created by fire, right up until I discreetly jerked on the reins to the left. The wyvern screeched in defiance for only a second before my Will overtook its survival instincts, and the creature flew directly into an approaching blast of fire. I allowed it to curve and avoid a heated death at the last moment. I ducked under the blast of fire, my clothes and hair singed from the closeness of the heat.
A pair of hair-raising screams went off behind me as Duke Alistar and his comrade were not saved from at least the bottom part of the fire stream. My last-second dodge had made it so that they couldn’t dodge. The wyvern we rode echoed with a shriek of its own, the end of its tail completely burnt off.
“Shit,” I swore, finding myself all but falling through the air as my wyvern lost its ability to properly fly. It twisted and spiraled, unable to find balance without its tail. The duke’s comrade was the first to fall. The Duke stared at me with wide eyes. I couldn’t tell if he knew I’d planned something, or couldn’t believe that he, one of the most powerful beings on the continent, would die from a simple fall. Had his core not been blocked, he could likely have flown with air-attributed energy. Most gold-level core Awakeners could.
We flipped and tumbled through the air without any purchase, both clinging to the wyvern’s saddle. Despite all my prowess and power, no amount of heart energy I could currently wield would save me from a ten-thousand or more foot fall. I waited for the Duke to lose his grip to act.
It took longer than I expected from a mortal. He clung to the wyvern, to his lifeline, with every ounce of his being. Eventually, the wyvern’s neck lashed backward at my silent instruction and slammed haphazardly into the duke, who was sent flying from the creature. I watched him quickly drop, turning and twisting to keep my vision on the duke.
When I couldn’t see him through the thick fog of the night, I relied on the moon’s lunar energies to empower my core and physical strength. I grabbed hold of either side of the wyvern’s saddle, planted both my feet flat on the leather material, and waited for a good angle.
I saw the opening after nearly fifteen precious seconds passed. Without waiting another second I launched myself like a spring toward one of the larger Dash’Ora.