[There!] I grinned, finding a tightly bound packet of information wrapped in a cube of runes was buried in his mind. Tiny threads of information connected it to the rest of his mind in exquisitely small pre-made sockets, but I still couldn’t read what was in there. Eh, I didn’t need to do that anyway, as long as he could. Keeping him still by manipulating his nervous system to be mostly shut down, I reached into my own mind and summoned an image, a family photo that used to sit on my desk at work. Constructing a 3-D version of that photo, I set it straight into his brain.
[WHERE IS HE!]
The authority carried by my mental shout coupled with the fact that my magic was literally forcing his body to be unnaturally still almost killed him. The simple shock of the realization that there was absolutely nothing I couldn’t and wouldn’t do to get what I wanted sparked something deep in Casparai . . . fear.
[I don’t know!] He responded, his mind shaking as it began breaking down at the edges. Frayed bits of gray flaked off from the far extent of his frozen mindscape. The blackness at the far edges gave me the heebie jeebies.
I didn’t take that answer well.
[THINK!] I ordered, slamming my will against his. [Ask your database Captain! I can see it in your mind, and if you don’t, I’ll purposely trigger its safeguards. You’ll be a fuckin vegetable.]
His resolve hardened just long enough to mentally spit in my eye. [Fuck you normie! Without me, you get nothing!]
Flashes of images from his memories flew by as his mind frayed even further. I debraided bits of his exposed psyche, untangling his will the more he fought me. Split seconds of him fighting against insects and arachnids larger than construction equipment flashed by. I watched with a mix of awe and disgust as he led even more soldiers against unending waves of acid spitting, flesh tearing monsters that even nightmares would be afraid of. Steeling my mind against the pull of his memories, I refocused on my unpleasant task.
Seeing as I was inside of his head, he couldn’t hear the sick laughter reverberating through my soul. Opening up just a tiny bit of power into his forebrain, I showed him just a glimpse of what I envisioned for him. He saw an image of his body wasting away under my Flesh Sorcery while I used my control over water to artificially drown him and revive him over and over. He watched images of his body seizing as I caused his nerves to fry and then seize yet again as I healed them. Photos of hungry plants and angry pointy insects crawling in and out his orifices entertwined with endless solitary confinement miles below the Earth’s surface. As the horrific vision ended, I pulled his mind just a bit closer to mine to let him feel the unwavering resolve that had kept me alive so far, and just a bit of the anger that kept it hot.
[None of that was a lie.] I threatened as we sat in the tight confines of the dark bowels of the earth. [And every bit of it can come true. All I need you to do is tell me where the fuck my little brother is, even if he isn’t little anymore, and I’ll be on my merry fuckin’ way.]
Casparai pissed himself. Banishing the watery refuse, I watched his fragile mind take a long look at the image of my family. [That one! I recognize that one!]
The frame zoomed in on my father. [He was a prime candidate for the life extension process! My commander’s family bought the rights to him years ago! I overheard that he spent years in your military and was an excellent pilot, perfect for the Portal Corps.]
[Bought, him!?] The grip of magic that held Casparai down tightened as my temper lashed at my restraint. I wordlessly snarled into the ether.
Reaching deeper with another fist full of power into Casparai’s mind, I grabbed the small silvery cube of Centauri magitech and wrenched the threads from their anchors. As Casparai died from his own nervous system revolting, I used the dying threads of his neurons to read the last couple data packets coming from the cube. Tag Marauder, Designation Alpha Shield Tango, all of that was denoted by the Marauder Tag on the Centauri battle suit on the shoulder. My brother’s Marauder tag was a shield with the Greek symbol Alpha, but the Tango meant which sleeper hover pod he was in.
Letting my Earth Sorcery pull me up to the surface, I broke into the sunlight to a scene that wasn’t the hell I was expecting. Big Fugly was curled up in the distance and all of the Centauri were stiffly walking around or working. The gate was silent and gave off the feeling of dense cold, as if it had given its last breath to birth its passengers. And Spot, Spot was sitting in his diminutive form on a strange lady’s lap, twisting and turning under her caresses to give her the best angle for a belly rub.
Her dark eyes were only matched by her raven hair, scarlett streams of raw magic gently flowing off of her in waves, as if a dragon were given human form. Her gaze fixated on me and the sheer presence of her being crashed into me. Flowing robes of silk flapped in the wind even though there wasn’t a breeze.
“Still conscious I see? Maybe the survivors have some backbone after all.” Her left hand kept petting Spot while her right arched up as if to grab the stem of a wine glass that wasn’t there. From her slightly pointed finger, a cannon of untainted force blasted me away.
My view of the sky was simply gorgeous from where I lay, hurting. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there from the blast. Even my Consciousness Sorcery couldn’t tell me how long I’d been out. My Flesh Sorcery was working overtime to repair the bruised tissue and that was almost as taxing as the rest of my magic was forcefully shunting aside the screaming tide of pain signals coming from all over. And yet, there was a little teeny voice in the back just screaming, get the fuck up, almost as if from very far away. Engaging, Surprise Survival Protocol: Mole Mode.
In the spare time that I’d had on Tuki’s back flying south from Virginia to Florida, I had taken the precaution to program responses for my unconscious and subconscious mind to engage in if shock ever kept my conscious self from action. My magic opened up the dirt beneath me like a mouth and quickly yanked me two hundred feet below the surface while my automated healing kept right on chugging.
My senses went on full alert, sparing no effort to make sure that the alien woman couldn’t touch me like that again. The shocked parts of my mind kept replaying that moment in every spectrum we could perceive. That blast of energy almost bypassed every kind of defensive magic I had. If Svalinn didn’t do its job of draining and diverting overloads of incoming power, that sneak attack would have utterly smashed me to the kind of flat that not even scavengers would have touched my corpse.
The scene replayed again, and again, and a dozen more times. Ten minutes of straight healing and scared meditation later, I finally saw deviousness. The frames of my replayed memory showed tiny connections of red power that were coming from her fingers sinking into Spot as she was petting him. The power that almost killed me wasn’t hers, it was my freaking dogs! That bitch, that witch, stole my dog’s overwhelming strength and used it against me.
I tried to snarl but my jaw had to be repaired first. [Two can play at that fucking game, bitch] I thought, focusing on setting every part of me back together. Double checking to make sure that I was in one solid piece, I pulled Gungnir from off my belt as it flowed into its wicked looking spear form. The spiraled blade gleamed with an unnatural light in the darkness. Down here in the expanse of the Earth, I could feel the ambient mana settling down, a calming pressure that to others would feel oppressive but to me felt like home. Gathering a mass of power, I started to feel the dirt and rock underneath the woman and as I began to sink my mana into it in order to make a giant sinkhole, a few words floated to my ear.
[Oh no darling, don’t do that. My little love tap was simply the price for what you stole. Casparai wasn’t important but he was fun to play with. Besides, witches love to play with sorcerers far more.]
Her tone wasn’t actually audible, but the broadcasted psycho intent of a crazy alien dominatrix rang through my mental defenses, as if all of my efforts were futile and always will be. The feeling of being transparent scared me, but like hell was I going to take this shit lying down.
This Earth is mine, and down deep in it, I was definitely king. Feeling out with Gungnir, I swam down through the dirt and rock until the pressure of the Earth was compacting mana into barely stable gems of power that roiled as I got closer. Stabbing one of them with Gungnir, I focused my will and pulled.
First, the giant gate behind everyone sank, cracking the foundation upon which the warehouse building itself sat, then all of the longhouse looking sleeper-soldier carriers slowly sank into the ground as well. Modulating the shifting dirt on a scale I hadn’t done before, all my will bent to work as fast as I could to pull and place the containers together next to each other but closer to me while I simultaneously diverted the collapsing gate away from them. Stabbing another encrusted compression of power as the energy burned through me, I pulled every soldier running around the surface down and away from the entombed gate so that only their heads were showing.
Laughing at their confusion, I turned my attention from their frantic screams and transmuted their emtombing dirt into solid stone. And for the best, most satisfying part of all, I sank the bitch. Holding my hand up as if I were my own Statue of Liberty, I pulled my hand down and the entire landscape shifted to my will with the compressed stone of Earth mana fueling my efforts.
As the tumbling rock and dirt tore her apart from my dog, I pulled Spot to me, creating a large enough air bubble for us to be comfortable. The witch screamed bloody murder as the dirt and jagged stones pummeled her, tearing her clothes and ripping her jewelry off of her body. Not content to let her insult go unpunished, I blessed her with a wonderful present, her own special prison.
The conjured coffin of solid granite had only two tiny air holes. Pulling that down to me, I quickly used Earth Sorcery to slap runes of power extraction, confusion, sleepiness, mental weakness, and then nausea to top it off. I didn’t have enough power at my disposal to solidly cover the entire thing in a thick layer of platinum, but I reasoned that she wouldn’t be able to work magic in there if she couldn’t concentrate in the first place. But it wouldn’t hurt to put some damn effort into making her less of a threat. Growling at how long it was taking, I did manage to mostly cover her coffin in a very, very thin layer of platinum just before I felt her giant monster draw near.
Taking Spot and I up to the surface, we came face to face with Fugly, standing over his buried charges. The soldiers looked pale, those that weren’t wearing helmets, and all of them were screaming for mercy or help even as the humongous creature breathed pure stank in my face. Casually tossing up another stone of power that I swiped on my upward journey, I looked the ugly monster in the eye.
“You know I’m the Alpha here!” I shouted up at it, mentally sending the same emotional tones as my words. Its hot breath curled my toes because it stank so much. Wide nostrils flared as acidic saliva dripped and hissed from where its questing tongue tasted the air. “You can either fuck off or die. I prefer fuck off but dying works. Spot’s always hungry.”
At my last words, Spot took it upon himself to grow as big as he could, gouts of flames erupting randomly from his body. The tip of Gungnir began to pulse with white light, a low but loud and ominous hum coming from it. As the beast continued to stare at me, I had enough. Slapping the power stone to Gungnir, I braced the butt in the dirt and used Earth Sorcery to reinforce my stance. Stone crept up beneath me to grip my boots and calves, ready to pull me back down or launch me forward.
Strands of molten earthen power creased up the grain of the wood as Gungnir sapped all of the power from the nearby earth, the spiraling three bladed crystal tip flared with light, channeling the condensed power at Fugly. As the monster opened its jaw and took a deep breath, I grinned.
The silent jet of power didn’t blast Fugly like a fireball or a cannon, it evaporated a hole so big I could shove a car through it. Not even waiting for the rest of the body to fall, Spot tackled it so it fell to the side instead of on top of me and began eating as if I had starved him on purpose.
“Damn it dog! No! Bad Spot!” I yelled, sprinting at the tangled up mess sprawling across the open field. Jumping up, I stabbed Gungnir into the corpse, doing my best to drain as much leftover power from the body before Spot ate it all. My Flesh Sorcery leaped at my call, channeling the stored bio-power from the dying body into me through the medium of my weapon, but the crazy part was the crystal tip was also draining the blood and the wood was drinking it in.
Without prompting, Svalinn extended blades of bone from just below the crown of the blade that stabbed into the beast as well, drinking up blood and power from the body. As Spot messily continued his eating, slopping bits of flesh and blood and sinew everywhere, including on me, my Flesh Sorcery cried out with joy as chunks of energy flowed into me from the simple contact.
Just what was I becoming?
Before I had time to delve into my introspective thoughts, a soft melody floated from everywhere at once. I couldn’t make out the words or even the language that it was in, but Spot just ignored it in favor of the vile but mana-chocked feast in front of him. Nothing good could follow that almost-Gaelic music with a shrill overtone that slithered down your spine, so I threw myself into draining as much power as I could from Fugly’s body. I walked into this fight with full power and Gungnir’s epic blast cost me most of what I had in me as well as all of my weapon’s stored power. Svalinn was still pretty much good to go, and from what I could tell at a glance, it wasn’t draining power from the corpse but actually eating, as if the piecemeal soul of Rath that I put in there was hungry.
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Pulses of crimson energy beating in time with the dying heart of the beast washed into me. I checked to make sure that they were processed, purified by my spear and armor and stored in the crystal batteries. I checked around for a ley line.
[Being so used to having unending power may actually be the death of me some day,] I cursed, feeling a bit better as my internal tank of power filled up. My hope though was that it wasn’t this particular day. With every slavering bite Spot took, I watched in the magical spectrum as the vast quantities of chimeric power that were being added to his own, replacing what the witch stole from him in her initial attack against me. The pressure of available energy being funneled suddenly lost its power, slowing to a trickle. The damn singing had gotten a bit louder and as I turned my head to see the landscape of my probably temporary victory, two man sized portals opened up.
The first portal was an off-white, like freshly shined pearl or super organic milk. Streams of light burnt their way through the fabric of reality, searing their way into existence. The second portal appeared in a flare of purple smoke mixed with black thorns that cut their way into our reality. At the same time, two visitors lightly stepped out, their feet not disturbing the churned earth.
“She’s not here, hehehehe, does this mean I’m free?”
“Silence filth. If you ever shut up you’d feel that the Mistress isn’t far. Her aura is strangely weakened but still here. And we don’t get to exercise unless we obey her first.”
The one who spoke first, a lanky woman with pitch black skin wreathed in glowing purple tattoos and too many spikes to be nice to snuggle, sulked at her partner before taking a good look around.
“Maalik, I don’t see her but maybe I can play with them first?”
Her glowing yellow eyes honed in on me as she drew two whips from off her belt and cracked them. At the ends of the whips hissed cobra heads, genuine heads of living cobras with venom dripping from the fangs. In her slitted pupils, all I could see were visions of agonizing torture taking places over countless decades, dripping poison that burned like acid while being suffocated by the sinister fog that wreathed her body. The vision zoomed out to an underground castle wreathed in crimson fire that screamed as it burned around and through endless lines of cages filled with damned souls. Before I could completely engage any sorcery to defend myself, a brightly glowing man with golden wings and two blazing swords appeared between me and the she-devil. What could only be described as an angel stood with his back towards me.
“I may not be guarding Eden anymore with Uriel since the Fall, but I’ll be damned thrice over before I let you take another mortal. Your whips don't need another face, Enera.”
“Fine,” she pouted, lewdly caressing her whip. Snapping it near but not at her partner, she turned to sigh at the destroyed landscape. “Let’s find Mistress and then have some fun.”
Not that I wasn’t glad for the timely heavenly intervention, but something about this angel seemed . . . lesser. His presence didn’t weigh as much or burn as bright as the last one I met. To my recollection, Gav’riel was the personification of a compressed nuclear reactor fueled by pure holiness while this guy was his baby brother who just learned how to play with matches.
And her . . . freaky smoke and whip bitch over there, she was an F5 hurricane of acid rain and pain that I did not want to tangle with. Ever. As both moved away, I redoubled my efforts to take in as much power as possible. Multi-tasking under pressure, I also compacted a mental series of commands that was going to go to Spot in just a minute. I solidly concluded with my puckered butthole that my best bet would be to get the fuck outta here.
Obviously, both of these supernatural creatures were way above my weight class. Maybe, just maybe, they couldn’t mess with me just like Gav’riel, but the fact that they showed up right after I buried their Mistress means that something great is not on the way. Days like today just have a way of going downhill.
Sensing that I had gotten all that I was going to get energy-wise from Fugly’s greatly diminished corpse, I used a bit of my Flesh Sorcery to repel the gore covering me and then dove into the ground like a fish. Going down deep into the earth where I stashed the giant black sleeper pods, I inspected each one in the light of Gungnir’s glow.
I whispered furiously in my head. [Tango, tango, fucking Tango, which one is fucking TANGO?! Got it!]
Pushing the entire black container up to the surface with my Earth Sorcery, I deposited it next where Spot was still wolfing down what he could. Checking my magical senses, I could feel the angel and the demon rooting around in the dirt far enough away from me to get to the witch, so I shaped Gungnir back into a spear and blasted the hinges off both sides of the longhouse sized pod.
“Spot, get those tops off!” I ordered, taking a couple steps back. Reluctantly stopping his gorging, my faithful dog got a good grip on the top parts and ripped them clean off.
I climbed on top of the container and looked down, quickly duck walking across to find my brother. “Too fat, that’s a chick, whoa, didn’t know catgirls were actually a thing, uhm, lizard man, let’s take this helmet off here, dude with two heads, nope, and that’s definitely too weird.”
My constant diatribe was the only thing keeping my anticipation and anxiety from driving me insane. The one side of the pod didn’t have my brother in either the top or bottom layer. Most were some kind of mutated or ‘enhanced’ human, and some were just plain aliens with no rhyme or reason to their strangeness.
Rounding the corner, the first face I saw was my brother’s. Brown eyes, his face a little larger than I was used to, proportionally speaking, and that dopey expression on his unconscious face. Other than meeting the standard height and weight for a Centauri, it didn’t look like he had any other kinds of genetic changes. Carefully cutting him out of the harness, his body fell forward knocking me to the ground.
“Fucking fat ass!” I yelped. Grunting with effort, I took a deep breath and screamed into his ear. “Wake up bro!” Pushing him off of me and onto his back.
No response.
Ignoring everything, I put my hands on his head. My thumbs dug into his wide forehead as I dove into his mind. Steel. All I found in there was steel. Every thought, every feeling except for the unconscious was held in perfect stasis, but it was some kind of mental metal that kept him unconscious. Even I couldn’t tell if it was literal or figurative steel in there. My Earth Sorcery kept telling me that it wasn’t metal in there keeping him this way and my Mind Sorcery kept telling me that it wasn’t his mind. Then, my Mana Sorcery pointed my senses to a grouping of flowing silver needles that were in line with the nerves in his neck.
Fearing that my touch would burn his nerves out like Casparai’s, I withdrew from my examination. As far as I could tell he was ok but, this didn’t have the feel of something voluntary, it stank of someone taking advantage of naivety. My little brother was a total nerd just like me, and would have jumped at any kind of opportunity the enterprising Centauri put in front of him. What nerd could resist gaining magic or centuries of life or even the chance to travel through space like it was a damn open highway? I know I wouldn’t have missed that chance for the world. But what stopped the Centauri from having hooks in their travel package, nothing. But hooks I could deal with. What I couldn’t deal with were the two beings behind me who had already brought up the platinum coffin of their master.
“Oh my, did you find what you were looking for?” Enera’s smoky voice sent all the wrong kinds of shivers down my spine. The wind carried her sultry tones far too well. I reacted so fast that I shocked myself, tamping down on my rebellious sex drive to keep from looking directly at her.
“I believe he has my pet, and if he had but asked, I might have even let him have it. That was however, before he killed my favorite one.”
Turning around, the silvery prison stood upright in the dirt thirty feet from me, demon on one side and angel on the other. Now that they were a bit closer, I could see a thin golden tattoo on Enera’s neck just over where a jugular would be, if demons had jugulars. A matching purple one was on Maalik. Through the eye holes of the prison that also functioned as air holes, I could see the witch’s eyeball staring straight at me.
“How’d you?”
“Use magic while inside this? Hmmm?” she laughed,unconcerned about the state of my pucker. “Simple mana manipulation exercise. Not all magic requires power. Some require knowledge, others require simple talent. What’s your name, young sorcerer? Beast tamers don’t have that kind of power offhand.”
“How’d you know I said beast tamer to the Centauri?” I shot back, trying to keep the upper hand.
Her arrogance irritated me, the clear disdain for me bleeding through her words. She looked at me like an ant, an amusing bug that could be squashed at any moment. “Because they’re mine. I bought them. How else do you think the great leader of the Alpha Centauri regime keeps back the hordes of undead that constantly assault the fringes of their empire?”
“Huh?”
“They don’t pay us in gold dear, they pay us in lives. Earth is not the first harvested world for the Centauri and it won’t be the last.”
My mind was scrambling. Reeanth told me that the Amazons were the footsoldiers of the Hags, what I’m assuming the witches are, which means that’s probably who this lady is. So what in the world are they doing with Centauri soldiers? My lack of information is going to get me killed one day.
“Now please let me out. I’ll make a mess of things if I do it. Wytchfire will do the trick but it’s certainly hell on one’s complexion.”
Wytchfire, the stuff that cleansed Terra, the former paradise mirror Earth from long ago?
“Hold on lady,” I interrupted, gripping Gungnir tight and fully activating Svalinn, wide bladed teardrop shields forming on my forearms. Fully prepared to go down swinging, I blustered for time. “First off, you ain’t going nowhere. Those two limp-winged dicks can’t touch me and you know it. Second off, this is my brother, and he is going with me. So I can either have Spot eat you now and shit you out later, or I can take my brother and we all leave in peace. Whatcha say?”
Forcibly using my Mental Sorcery to keep me calm and my Flesh Sorcery to keep my face from giving any tells, I pulled on all of the power in and near me and pushed it into my epic weapons. This was a total fucking bluff. I had nothing that could do a thing to either a demon or an angel.
Probably.
Although, Svalinn hasn’t been fully tested yet. Who knows what having pieces of a dragon’s soul in it that probably could eat many different varieties of creatures could do? And let’s be fair, Gungnir was just badass all around. But what hurts an angel other than another angel? What hurts a demon other than another angel, a demon, or a fucking priest? All of which, I’m fresh out of.
One part of me wished Reeanth and Johnny would hurry their fat asses up, but even then they wouldn’t get here in time dragging that bear behind them. The other part of me contemplated the uselessness of that venture. In front of me was a literal angel.
I know what Angels are. I’ve been to church and read the Bible. They ain’t nice people singing happy hymns like baby cherubs spreading joy. Angels are heavenly shock troopers of the Big Man himself if I remember the stories correctly. They made people blind, rained fire and brimstone leveling cities to the ground, killed thousands of children in a night with a silent blade, and that was only half the problem. Who knows what demons can do?
Hiding the serious urge to nervously gulp, my only saving grace were lingering deductions from what Gav’riel said and did near me, and holy shit I hoped I was right.
Carefully flexing my will, I caused the dirt underneath the platinum prison to swallow it up again. Damn I love that tactic, so freakin useful. Pulling out the knob of wood that I took off Yggdrasil, I threw it into one of the torn out sections of the witch’s beast while mentally ordering Spot to back off his feast. Making sure that her minions went right back to cursing and digging her I out, I made sure to get scarce. Dragging my limp deadweight brother over to it, I flooded the magical backup plan with mana very carefully, right at the maximum flow that Yggdrasil piece could handle. As that was going on, I took out the razor thorny vine caltrop seeds out and planted them all around and linked them all together. True to form, the vine seeds planted and the thorns speared into the corpse, absorbing it directly and converting it into energy. Taking a hold of that process, I forced most of the energy being broken down into myself where I held it and fed it into the Yggdrasil that, WASN’T GROWING. The stupid thing just kept drinking down the energy like pouring water down a drain.
“Come on . . . come on . . . come on!” I muttered, using Nature Sorcery to communicate what I wanted to the knob of living wood. “Connect you damn thing, you’re the same thing.” I was working off of half-assumptions and hunches here, but if this bit of wood was a part of Yggdrasil, and the World Tree is always connected to every part of itself at all times, then this piece of wood when activated should give me access to all of the mana powering my under-tree hideout. I had faith that Yggdrasil, the tree that held up the universe, included quantum entanglement as part of how it worked.
In fact, I needed it to be so. The idea that all of Yggdrasil, even disconnected parts, are still one with Yggdrasil. Affecting one affects the other. If I could just tap into the overcharged environment from back home using the Yggdrasil knob as a sympathetic semi-permeable portal, I might be able to pull off a miracle. The big generator at my hideout worked there still, and maybe I’d get a less than perfectly efficient flow, but this means that I could plant the knob and have access to all the power I needed! Not to say that this would help me in my specific situation as I didn’t count on fighting Higher and Lower beings, but it was a proof of concept. Also, it might let me escape in a last ditch effort to travel back home to where my seat of power truly was.
Wait, I had people coming this way. Not today, but in two or three days, my own group of idiots would stumble over here into a camp of Centauri soldiers and an unhappy witch. Fuck. Doing this the nice way might not be the answer for once.
Double fuck. I cursed over and over in my head as I felt my options narrow more and more. [Scorched earth tactics. Damn it!.] Leaving the whole mess of plants right where they were, I cut my palm and leaked some blood on the World Tree bud, binding it to myself. Taking a second to see where I was mana-wise, I pulled all of the mana it didn’t need to survive and pushed it into Gungnir and Svalinn. The lynchpin here was the damn witch. Ordering Spot to guard Andy, I dove back into the earth. Watching an Angel and a Demon cooperate to dig out an alien witch is not something you see that often.
[If she dies, do you both go free?] I asked, sending my thoughts to the angel. I figured I’d get a better response from him.
With a grunt that I translated as a ‘yes’, he kept digging. Flexing my magic again, I forced her coffin to sink another hundred yards.
[Dig a little slower dude,] I thought at him, my mental tone pleading to pull at his nature. [Trying to help us both out.]
[If I go free, Enera does too, and the Host has a duty to bind those who seek to interfere with Choice.] He sent back. [I failed at the Gate with her, and was bound to her in my Failure.]
[The witch or the demon?]
[The witch you imbecilic monkey! You think I’d let even a Fallen such as myself be bound to a demon willingly?! I was under Uriel’s command in guarding Eden, so my duties were transferred to guarding the gates of Hell after Eden fell, and when Enera escaped from her duties there, I was cast to the witch.]
[So if I get rid of the witch, you’ll take care of Enera?]
[I will remove her from this dimension, yes, but she will always hate you, and chase you if given the chance.]
[Done.]
Grabbing the coffin with my Earth Sorcery, I forced it down as deep as I could handle it. With the pressure of Mother Earth all around me and the shimmering stones of condensed power shattering from my presence as I went ever deeper into the bedrock, the agony was sharp, but my sorcery never felt more alive. Slowly forcing a fist closed, reality mirroring my intent, I couldn’t even hear her screams.