Each of Tenebria Coronum’s three Lords of Night observed the outside world through their enchanted magic mirrors, which stood two-and-a-half meters tall and wide enough for someone to walk through.
Valamir the elven vampire, the aristocratic white-haired being who had so easily slain Asmodeus, sipped on a goblet of red blood as he reclined in a cushy velvet chair. His colleague, Baal the Infernal, a being made of twisting, writhing, living red flame, stared unblinkingly into his mirror with two bright points of light in place of eyes. Miretrix was a fairy that hovered and flitted about on four purple wings. She watched the mirror out of the corner of her eyes. Unlike her peers, her attention was primarily on a holographic display; indeed, it was holographic, a piece of technology seized from an Incandestine base.
They were dissimilar in stature but identical in ambition. One day, they would rule the entire universe.
Each of them had clawed their way up to their positions from nothing. By fate and by merit, they had come to claim the seats of the most powerful magicians in Apolaphia. For Tenebria Coronum knew no mercy or kindness; only cruel, ruthless logic, efficiency, and power.
In the public eye, the three held an unlikely alliance. But follow the string of assassinations, sabotage, and heists to their conclusion, and you would find a thinly veiled struggle for power in constant motion.
Baal was currently engaged in conversation with a certain masked assassin.
“This was not part of our deal!” Effie growled angrily, as she slashed her way through the catacombs beneath Al Dherjza. Through the magic mirror, Miretrix absentmindedly watched as tides of undead attempted to bury Rolynd and Effie under a heap of cold limbs, only to be kept at bay by rhythmic pulses of invisible energy.
“It does not seem that you are in any position to negotiate, Ephemeral. If not for our intervention, your armies would be lost, including King Rolynd’s precious Sophia.” Baal replied coldly, speaking with no mouth, his voice emanating from the whispering flames.
“Well, now the entire populace is at risk!”
“Hahahahaaa…” the demon guffawed, “Why is it that we should care about what happens to your people when you have already signed away your entire city?”
“What?!” Effie exclaimed in shock, turning to look at Rolynd.
“That clause is only fulfilled at next sundown. Al Dherjza is not yours yet.” Rolynd said stiffly. Effie was too busy dealing death to the undead to retort, she settled for shooting the Aegis-bearer an angry look.
That’s why the Lords were so quick to arrive. Effie thought.
“How is it not ours, when we have already taken it?” Valamir asked, clearly bored by the whole exchange. He gestured a swipe across Baal’s mirror, terminating the connection between them and the Bloodstones beneath the city.
“…Valamir, what have I told you about using my equipment without my express permission?” Baal asked in a low, low voice.
“Come now, we are all on the same side.” The elf said with a charismatic grin.
Two red orbs turned towards the cold-blooded elf. “…Consider yourself lucky. We do not have time for this inane, substanceless bickering.”
Baal turned his attention back to his magic mirror, where the corpse of a certain rune-carved, reanimated dragon was flying about the Coronum, shooting down Incandestine fighter jets and bombers.
All at once, the three mirrors of the Lords were tinged in stark red. No matter where they realigned the gaze of their magic mirrors, everything about the Coronum’s vicinity was shaded over in the same dire tone.
“It seems that destiny has some trouble in store for us,” Miretrix said.
“Where is the source?” Baal asked, panning through the landscape with his magic mirror to make sense of the scale of their pending doom. The radius of the attack was kilometres across, even partially eclipsing the circular walls of Al Dherjza.
“It must be from above, from that eyesore in the heavens,” Miretrix replied. “My illusory shroud is giving them a false target, that is why the blast is not centred on us.”
“It’s not enough. We’ll be wiped out unless we do something.” Valamir mused. His tone of voice had finally perked up now that they were in mortal danger.
“I will handle this,” Baal said, holding out his hand. The contents of his magic mirror transformed, showing a large ritual chamber of polished, pitted blackstone, hidden somewhere in the Coronum’s depths. The infernal stepped through the mirror, onto the other side.
The Lord of Night took the place of magical reagent on the magic circle. With a wave of his flaming ‘hand’, the necessary reagent appeared in several other places. A trail of fine yellow dust was automatically dispensed from the ceiling, completing the magic circle. With an echoing grunt of exertion, a piece of Baal’s soul was consumed as the spell echoed out from the chamber, passing through the entire floating fortress in a wave of ethereal orange energy. Every surface throughout the Coronum was imbued with glowing orange light that rippled like magma from deep beneath the earth.
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Baal crushed a polished violet soulstone in his grasp, replenishing the lifeforce that he had just expended in casting his spell. He returned through the mirror, his work complete.
A few seconds later, an orbital strike fell to earth in the form of kinetic bombardment. For kilometres around, the sand was turned into a crater of molten glass… Except for one spot that went miraculously untouched.
Tenebria Coronum was seemingly overwhelmed by a wall of plasma, the gargoyles of its stone arches cracking and crumbling away. Metal fixtures and streetlights melted like ice cream. Those unlucky enough to be caught outside without magical protections were turned to ash.
Yet, once the blinding light cleared, the floating fortress still stood in one piece. Blackened, buckling, but still functional. Undoubtedly some peripheral enchantments had been scorched off, but they were of negligible cost to the Lords.
If one were to look at the ground beneath Necropolis, one would see that a significant portion of it remained as rust-coloured sand.
Most of the energy had been absorbed by Baal’s infernal ward.
High above Necropolis, the Intercessor gleamed. Its red eye stared down on the world with renewed malice. With the clouds gone, Lucina’s next shot wouldn’t miss.
The coat of ash covering Necropolis shed itself, revealing a pulsing network of red lines, like the pulsing veins of an angered visage; energy that the giant magical construct could barely contain. However, this energy would normally be thought useless to a magic-using society. After all, power was not necessary for spells to be cast. At best, the energy could be redirected into some kind of enchantment. But using only a fraction of the energy of Lucina’s orbital strike, which could only destroy a city, against the mountain-sized Intercessor would surely have little effect.
Looking into their mirrors once again, the Lords saw everything once again taking on a faint red tint.
“We cannot keep this up forever,” Baal warned them.
“Miretrix?” Valamir asked. “Is your new toy ready?”
Miretrix, who had been playing with her holographic display all the while, seemed to be in the process of finalising something. A spherical design that the other Lords recognised as magical in nature.
“It would seem so.” The fairy said. “These outworlders were fools to let a ‘supercomputer’ slip from their grasp. Who could have imagined that a little computational power was the deciding factor in solving subdivided three-dimensional magic arrangements?”
“Hey. Give credit where it is due. I don’t go around making human thralls for kicks.” Valamir bristled. “That researcher’s blood was getting rather sour… All these Incandestine spend too much time around Elders,” the egotistical elf complained.
Miretrix ignored her colleague, pressing a button in the centre of her holographic display. At once, beams of light lit up the area surrounding the Coronum. The beams themselves were produced by spells, cast by machines that Miretrix had engineered to automatically do as she demanded. Laser etching devices would near-instantly create perfect two-dimensional magic circles in whatever size she desired in hidden spaces throughout the city. Incandestine teleportation pads would bring reagents from her personal warehouse, manned by sorting drones, to those hidden magic circles. Everything was precisely automated to a frightening extent, the machines simply needed power to function, and now they had it thanks to Baal’s ward which had supercharged the artificial leylines powering Miretrix’s machines.
Indeed, with the powers of science and magic combined, surely nothing could stand in Miretrix’s way.
“The legendary divine spear, Gungnir, said to never miss its mark, The Essence of Destruction, ‘antimatter’ as the Incandestine call it, the Essence of God-slaying, not ‘meaninglessness’, but the inversion of meaning itself. And finally, the Essence of Stability, which brings these discordant parts into one whole. Individually, these reagents would be impossible to create in a form stable enough to use, but with higher-order, cascading magic circles, what we have thought impossible is now child’s play!” Miretrix declared triumphantly, giving the final order to her supercomputer.
Outside, the bubble-like magical arrangements fulfilled their function. Only twenty basic reagents were physically placed, held in place by commandeered Incandestine drones. The outermost magic spheres were centred on the location where reagent was needed in the inner magic spheres, and so forth. In essence, the product of one spell was instantaneously the reagent of a bigger picture. Miretrix’s arrangement cascaded to achieve magical power never before seen on Apolaphia.
A beam of u̴̝͎̲̟̓̀͝n̸̢̠̞̲͈̋h̸̫̫͚̎̈́͝͠ỏ̷̟͖̥͖̉̉̉l̷͕̋͗̃͝ỷ̴̢̥̒͗̌͆́, ĉ̵͇̗̖̄̅h̸̦̃̉̕͝a̷͙͛̒͝ǫ̷̧̘̱͐̔̒̓̚͘t̸̨̟̳͐͒͜i̵̹̟͍͛̌̽́̃c̶͉̏̌ ̴̩͋̈́̀̊̄ energy manifested itself at the centre of the final and largest magic sphere in the centre of Miretrix’s spell. It burst forth in a perfectly accurate beam of substance that should not exist in this reality. It bore an ì̵̘͚͕̈́́̈̈ñ̴̞d̴̢͓͚̝̝̮͐͋̍͑͘ë̷͓̯̘͈́̈̕s̵̬̣̭̭̅͂͘ć̵̼̚ŗ̷̢͖̹̽̏ì̸͕̳̩͇̂͝b̶͚̭͓͈̰͌͊͠ͅą̴̓̓͑͆͂͝b̴͓̫̻̀͒͘l̷͙̗̯̫̰̈̈͛̇̔͒͜e̷̺̣͚͓̤͒̅ ̸͚̰̲̠̠̿͜ c̵̞͔͎͈͕͑ö̸̧̼̱̭́̈́͐̈͑l̷̤̺̺̱͕̒̒̾̌͛͝ọ̷͛̉̀͗̕ͅͅu̵̺̒̆r̴̛̼̰͉̅̂̋͑̈́ that should not exist, carrying with it an i̶͕̞̲͈̬̖̐͆͒n̷̡̽͊̄̒͐͠d̶̡̪̊̾͗e̷̢̙̠̜̜̅͌̄̏ͅṣ̶͇͌̃͝c̵̗͍̙͇̜͈͗̓̓̐̍́r̴̨̙̠̓͒͝͠i̷̖̬̣̎͆b̸̼̼̆́̽a̴̮͖̺̥̩͇̅b̸̢͉̖̙̋̆̃͝l̴͔̯̾̒̅y̷͙̓̈́́̾ ̶̯͖̝̮͊̕͝ơ̵͙̳͂͑̐̈́f̵̡͔͕̜̖̆͑̅̈́̔͝f̵̤̪̼̪̲̄̔͋̍̇̚ē̸̺̱̯͊̊͛̉n̸̰̻̎̀̿́͗͘͜s̵̛͈̯̃̌̎́i̴̦̫̻̦̘̯̽̽̌͗̿v̷̫̳̲͠ḙ̴̓̉̂̍̀͘ ̴̡̟̓͒̃s̴̜̺̝̣͂͛́͜ȯ̵͔̀ứ̸͉̖̜͗̊̈́̊n̴̨̼̥̲̙͎̍̑͗̑̀d̶̦̺̟̠̎͒̊ ̴̣̬̺͇͖͐͑̌̕ that should not exist. The weapon’s paradoxical existence not only defied physical laws but also defied comprehension by any lesser lifeform. Flocks of circling scavenger birds that had gathered around Al Dherjza fell from the sky, blood trailing from their ears, their protesting minds and souls broken irreparably. Plants catching the tortuous unlight of the spell withered and mutated, even as far as the Ellenian forest. Any Apolaphian unlucky enough to catch direct sight of Miretrix’s spell was temporarily blinded, driven inarticulate with madness and pain.
That weapon that so paradoxically defied description and imagination plunged straight through the Intercessor, ignoring whatever defences it may have had, gemstone-powered or not.
And the very instant that it pierced the Intercessor, annihilation sprang forth. Antimatter annihilated matter. It was no exaggeration to say that a sun was born from the corpse of the Intercessor in the night sky above Al Dherjza. And when the light cleared, all could see the moon through the gaping hole in the flying metal mountain… shattered into jagged pieces like a dropped plate in the starry sky.