Riven lived a charmed life. Or something akin to that at least, when it came to certain matters like surviving a fall from a mountainous tree made entirely of Coral.
He was pelted by bits and pieces of flying Coral, caught in a storm that surely would have torn him to pieces if he’d been just another unlucky sap caught in the maelstrom like the villagers who were surely trapped in the madness. But he had his Essence. Soon as his pain reached a threshold—one he’d have to call survival—his golden aura flickered to life.
For just a moment, Riven had wondered if he’d float. If his shield could stop fire and lightning, maybe it could stop gravity. He had been disabused of that ridiculous notion almost a soon as it had popped up in his addled mind. Yes, he could only have been addled to think so.
At least, the shield stopped more Coral shrapnel making mincemeat of Riven. Hard to be grateful though. He was already peppered with a score of wounds, little stings that pulsed as though a Sept worm was trying to burrow into his flesh. Now that he no longer needed to protect his face from the Coral pieces, he had all the time in the world to gasp and moan and curse. And whine too, if only to himself. Chasm, when was his misery going to end?
Riven wasn’t sure when he hit the ground. Everything was white around him, and while his shield refused to stop gravity’s pull, it still negated any force at impact and that made it impossible to tell he could now stand. Which he proceeded to do. Or was already doing. Or maybe even had been for some time. Who could tell? Certainly not Riven and his inability to make sense of up or down, much less where he was supposed to go or be.
“You seem lost, dear.”
Mhell’s voice made Riven twist around fast enough to pull a muscle somewhere near his waist. He cringed at the sudden pain, though it went away soon, leaving him enough time to gawk at the Necromancer. “What are you doing here?”
“I found your missing Spectres. Just wanted to let you know, dear.”
“Oh.” Damn, he’d forgotten all about them. Forgotten all about his real purpose here in this wasteland—find the Spectres and maybe later, find the research facility on his own if time allowed. When had he lost all sense of what he had first aimed for? “Are they with you?”
“Don’t be silly. I am only aware of their location. Accosting is entirely on you, dear.”
“I—I need to find the demon first. And the others, and the villagers too.”
He could have paused to ask what she was really doing here. Could have taken a break to question how she had evaded the whole fiasco with the demons and the Guards nearby and ended up right where they had all landed from the broken Coral tree. Could have sought some advice on what to do as well, maybe?
Riven forged into the misty gloom. Coral crackled under his feet as he stared around, trying to make sense of the terrain. Broken branches here, a large crack in the distance, puddles from who knew what source of water there. Really, it was no different from navigating a minefield where the slightest wrong step would set off a deafening noise that would draw all attention to Riven. Sure, he heard the sound of the distant battle, but it was still far off, distant enough that he didn’t have to worry about getting hit by stray bullets. Or stray demons, for that matter.
The mist faded for a moment, and Riven froze. The battlefield opened up before him. He hadn’t kept track of how long he, Viriya, and Rio had been busy trying to fight off the Infernal and rescue the villagers, but the battle was still raging. The demons were pushing back the Guards, massively outnumbering the humans. It was a wonder, an outright miracle, that the whole company hadn’t been overwhelmed yet. The guards were pushed back, step by step, their screams and cries getting lost in the shrieking and yelling of the demon horde.
There were far too many. They’d fall soon enough if something didn’t happen to put a stop to it. But what was lowly Riven supposed to do about it? He, who couldn’t even take on one damn Infernal, who couldn’t help a few dozen men, women, and children trapped in a tree? No, it was impossible.
Riven turned. Then ran back into the mist. Maybe he couldn’t do anything, and maybe hope looked lost and forlorn, but it didn’t have to stay that way. He’d find his friends, then they’d think of something together. So long as they weren’t—no, of course they weren’t dead.
He tripped over a branch and fell into a crack, the fall too fast for his shield to come up and protect him. Chasm, he’d twisted his arm, and it hurt like hot wires were driving into his very bones. Taking a deep breath and fighting against the tears, Riven forced himself out of the hole and kept running, more cognizant of where he stepped now lest he repeat his little fall.
Wasn’t hard to find Viriya. She was lying in a little hollow, seemingly dead.
Riven pushed past the ring of branches forming a fence around her. He fell to his knees and checked her pulse. She was alive. He could breathe now. She was wounded though. Her arm was twisted worse than Riven’s, her leg was covered in blood, and her bun had come undone to veil her face in hair. He was too afraid to push it back and see whatever it hid.
“Hey, Viriya,” he said, nudging her shoulder. “Get up. We have to move.”
She didn’t move. It was difficult to tell if she was even breathing. Riven’s face burned. A vision of Glaven floated in front of his eyes, his brother lying serene in his bed, unaware of the world, all the prime time of his life seeping away like water down a sink. No, Riven was not enduring another failure like that.
He shook Viriya harder, her head flopping around and hair bouncing over her face. “Hey! Viriya, wake up. We have to move. We need to get going. We have to survive, damn it.”
She didn’t move, but he wasn’t daunted. He kept pushing her. And pushing. And pushing. And then she coughed.
Riven grabbed her by both shoulders in a vice, steadying her as she coughed more, hair fluttering in front of her face like a curtain reluctant to part. “You all right?”
Viriya pushed the hair out of her face, and stared up at him. Her eyes were screwed nearly a shut, a thin slit letting her glare up at Riven with her emerald eyes. “Do I look all right to you?”
Riven laughed. “You’re fine.”
She pushed off his hands and forced herself into an upright sitting position, having to fight past a few more coughs along the way. “Where are we?”
Riven’s hands were burning. His face felt the same as well. It was fine. All chalked up to a moment of desperation. “Chasm, if I know.”
“Well. Looks like you’re fine too.”
It took him a moment to get the jab, and when he turned to respond, Viriya was no longer paying attention. She stared around everywhere, eyes hard, sharp, and fully open like she was about to cut a hole in the mist with them. Then she walked away.
“Where are you going?” Riven asked.
Viriya didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. A few steps over broken branches, past cracks and puddles, and through more mist finally landed them both at a spot where the mist was gone, as though they stood in the eye of a cyclone made of fog. The centre of the storm, where the Infernal reigned.
“Shit,” Riven muttered.
He’d panic more, but the demon looked even worse than Viriya did. At least half of him was broken in one way or another. One arm was chopped off or crushed, the forearm missing from the elbow down. Far too many holes peppered his whole body, all spewing a slow trickle of fading Sept. One leg was unharmed, but the other was twisted back, Sept gushing out of both sides of his knee. Where his heart would have been had he still been a mortal, a Coral branch now called home, the thick end facing Riven and Viriya while the other side was impaled into the ground. That he was still alive and blinking back at them with undisguised malice said a lot.
“Have you never learned how to properly die?” Anvarroh asked.
“All the best knowledge comes from demonstration,” Viriya replied, before stepping towards him. Wounded and injured as she was, her feet didn’t falter, her shoulders didn’t sag, and her back was straight and unbendable as ever. Unconquerable and indomitable.
Riven considered joining her, or searching for Rio. The demon could still pull out some tricks no doubt, and Riven’s shield would keep them both alive. But where was Rio in this foggy mess? Why wasn’t he still here? Was he too knocked out the way Riven had found Viriya? He refused to entertain the possibility that Rio might have died. Impossible. That languid bastard could slip from death’s grasp no matter what.
But he turned away anyway. Survivors. There might be survivors from the cages somewhere around here, and he had to look for them. That had always been their main priority.
He rushed through the mist again, resisting the urge to call out. What would he say? Villagers? That was silly. Survivors? Ridiculous. Bastards who were giving Riven a hard time and why couldn’t they have learned not to have been kidnapped away by the demons and found better places to hide? Very succinct.
He didn’t go far. The mist cleared to reveal Mhell, and he nearly crashed into her before he could pull himself to a sudden stop. “What are you doing here?”
“You asked the same thing last time, dear. I am not fond of repeating myself.”
“That’s a terrible answer. Even worse than the last one.”
She frowned, black cracks fracturing across her face. Her white eyes seemed to be gathering the mist to them, forming a milky corona. “Why, can’t you tell? You’re running in the wrong direction.”
“I need to find the other survivors. Have you seen any of them nearby?”
“Pointless.”
Riven stared. “Pointless?”
Mhell’s eyes were burning white now, tapering to a point like an icicle. “Your fight is that way.”
“I don’t want to fight. I was never here to fight. The demon can do whatever in the world it wants so long as he’s not harming the people.”
“But he isn’t, is he?” She crossed her arms and stepped closer, her burgundy dress with its many folds swishing over the broken ground, her hornlike hair seeming to draw in Coral from the air and grow larger. “Even if you were to rescue said villagers, what then? Would you run and leave them all alone, allowing the demons to do this all over again? Who will save them then, Riven dear?”
Riven swallowed. Her words scratched at his mind, tore down whatever weak walls of logic he’d thrown up to get away from that hopeless fight. Saving was better than killing, wasn’t it? Yet, Mhell’s vice kept jabbing into him long after she had paused. Riven dear.
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“Follow me,” Mhell prompted, before hooking an arm through his and leading him back the way he had come.
The mist enveloped them, shutting away sight. Sound too perhaps, since Riven couldn’t hear a single peep of any kind of struggle. Viriya wouldn’t be cowed so easily, so they either weren’t fighting or—
But no, there was that star. An emerald glow in the distance, sparkling bright and shading everything with that brilliant green hue, dark as a sparkling forest. It was stationary though. Not moving as it always seemed to be, as Viriya always seemed to be, in such circumstances.
Mhell led him right to Viriya, who turned, then gasped. She jumped back, facing them both with her raised gun, her star gleaming too bright to look at.
“Who are you?” she asked. Her eyes darted between the Necromancer and Riven, and a sudden understanding bloomed. Riven had told her everything after all. “Mhell?”
The witch smiled at Viriya. “It seems my reputation precedes me. Do I have you to thank for it, Riven dear?”
“Er…” Riven was too busy staring at the demon, or where it should have been, to answer her.
Anvarroh had erected a miniature bulwark of Coral around him. Spikes had erupted out of the ground all around him, just as they had been around Viriya when Riven had found her, and they were growing larger every second. They were twisted over and around each other, forming an intricate mesh of Coral that nearly obscured the Infernal from view.
“What do you want?” Viriya asked.
Riven would have allayed her aggression, but she had a point. He had no idea what Mhell wanted either.
“To kill the Infernal, dear,” Mhell said. “ Same as you.”
“Why?”
“He wants to destroy everything that I want to protect. Same as you.”
Viriya’s mouth worked as though she had more question to ask, but she turned her focus to Anvarroh instead. “Any ideas.”
“A few.” Mhell stepped forward, unlinking her arm from Riven’s. “Follow my lead. I can make an opening if you can end him.”
Viriya stared at the growing Coral. “I can.”
“Excellent. One moment, then.”
Mhell stepped closer to the encased demon. What was Riven supposed to do, just watch the whole thing like a captivated audience? They should have provided a brochure or something for that. And a companion. No show was ever fun unless there was someone else to talk about it with.
As Mhell neared the demon, Riven edged closer to Viriya. He could protect her. Shield her from the Coral or whatever the demon decided to throw at her. Something told him Mhell had no such need.
The spikes shot out all of a sudden. Mhell had stepped close enough and Anvarroh had noticed. But they never hit the witch. Her hand blurred out, a grey aura suffusing the air in front of her. The Coral entered and then disintegrated. The faint pink turned to rotten brown and grey, before flaking off. The spike fell apart. All Mhell got was dust at her feet.
What in the world was her Spirit? Some sort of dissolving, like what she had done to the ground yesterday, perhaps. He had no clue. All he knew was that Anvarroh wasn’t going to stop Mhell.
More Coral spikes shot out towards the witch, but the grey aura dissolved them to nothing. The Coral dissolved into grey-brown flakes, so many they formed a veritable storm around Mhell even as her grey aura reduced them to nothing. When she reached the thicket of Coral and placed her hands on it, that too dissolved. The demon’s little fort collapsed around him, becoming piles of wilted, dead Coral.
Dead Coral. Riven had seen dead Sept of course, but dead Coral was another matter entirely. He’d never even heard of it before.
“Now,” Mhell said.
The demon was wide open. Vulnerable. Bleeding Sept and suffering from grievous wounds he would never be able to recover from. And into this hole, Viriya charged.
Anvarroh raised himself and rushed to meet Viriya, twisted leg and all. They met, and fought like beasts. No more grace, no more little moves reminiscent of ballet dancers, no more clever strikes and parries like master fencers. Wounded, beaten, and injured, they fought like animals, adding snarling to the pot for the perfect touch.
Viriya ducked under the demon’s swing and punched him in the guts. Her green star was fading, flickering out like a dying lamp.
The demon recoiled at the hit, then hammered his still-there fist on Viriya’s shoulder. She fell, then lashed out with her at the demon’s injured leg and knocked him to the ground with a shriek of agony. Anvarroh kicked back, throwing Viriya to what was left of the Coral barricade, the spikes rapidly falling apart under the influence of Mhell’s grey aura.
Growling, Viriya pulled out a large spike of Coral still mostly intact. Before the demon was aware of what was happening, much less react, she clubbed him in the face with the Coral piece. Anvarroh went down, and the Coral spike disintegrated in Viriya’s hands. Then she jumped on top of the demon. Her hand flashed green, spluttering like a torch flame caught in the wind, and she punched Anvarroh in the neck.
The Infernal grabber her face then threw her back. She crashed through the Coral barricade and landed with a heavy thump.
Riven grimaced, then rushed forward. Thank the Scions, she was still breathing. Breathing, and glaring.
“Stall him,” she croaked out.
“What?”
Viriya pushed herself back up, then ran away.
Riven gawked after her. Maybe she was a little miffed he had been a useless spectator in her little fight with the Infernal. He couldn’t blame her for running. It was his turn to deal with the mess.
But his neck prickled, little hairs standing on end. The demon was standing back up.
Mhell did nothing, other than stand serenely and let her Spirit do the work for her. Anvarroh tried to summon his Coral again, but they crumbled to dust as soon as they formed. Mhell’s aura had swept over the both of them. Well, at least there was that.
Riven quickly drew his gun. Heart thundering in his chest, he aimed at the demon who was lumbering towards him, dragging the twisted leg still bleeding Sept everywhere. Riven fired. His shot burst out and struck the demon in the chest, but it wasn’t glowing. Not anymore. Damn, it must have been Mhell’s aura that had sucked the life out of the Sept.
Anvarroh dived at him. His Essence had, of course, abandoned him. He made to turn and dodge away, but the demon got a hold of his leg, and Riven thumped to the ground. His face hit the dirt hard, and he winced at the sudden pain, tasting blood on his lip.
The demon pulled Riven, and he slid along the ground, the rough surface tearing away his jacket. Anvarroh jumped on him, his body smothering Riven, the bar of Coral jutting from the wound in his chest pinning him to the ground, one good hand pummelling him over and over. Riven tried to cover his face, but it didn’t help. One blow landed on his arm, and he screamed out at the bloom of fire in his bones. Another hammered his ribs, lightning bolts shooting through his ribcage. One more glanced off the top of his head, but still leaving enough impact to make his brain try to turn into mush.
Riven was screaming and crying, trying to kick back with his legs, but the demon was too close. It wasn’t working. He was having more and more trouble breathing every second, and the pain was shooting up from everywhere. Death awaited him like this. No, not if he could help it.
He jerked his hands away from his face. The demon took the bait. That Scions-damned Infernal went straight for his face, and he jerked his head to the side. The demon’s hand struck the ground with thump, the rush of air chilling Riven’s hair. His hands were ready. Before the demon could pull his hand away, Riven’s grabbed his wrist and locked it in position.
“Got you,” Riven gloated.
Anvarroh answered by barging his head right into Riven’s face. He turned his head at just the right moment to prevent his nose from getting crushed, but the rest of face lit up in torture.
When the demon’s head landed in again, Riven faced him straight on. No hiding away. His grip on the Infernal’s hands had not loosened. He jerked his head up as much as he could to spare his nose, opening his mouth so that the Infernal’s forehead collided with his teeth and tongue. They had to have shattered if the pain was to be believed. Hs tongue had turned into a river of magma in his mouth. But it was enough. Riven still held onto enough awareness to bite down on the demon’s face, chomping with his teeth regardless of the agony it cause him, then tore his face away as Anvarroh jerked his head back.
The demon screamed, the sound tearing at Riven’s eardrums. He spit away the scales and Sept he’d bit off, the sour, burning taste of Deathless crawling into his guts like a carpet of termites. He faced the demon, who kept shrieking. Then his head fell forward again, too fast for Riven to react.
Not too fast for his Essence though. A golden shield came up, the size of a plate right in front of his face. The taste in his mouth changed as the demon’s face froze in the golden aura. He spat away again. Was that taste… Sept? He could use Sept from the demon?
As Anvarroh, dragged his head back, readying for another hammering, Riven let go of the demon’s hands. Instead, he thrust them right into the Infernal’s chest wound around the bar of Coral. Sept. So much Sept.
The demon pulled his hand back, then shot his fist into Riven’s face. But the Sept was there, and so was his Essence. The shield shot up, freezing the demon’s fist in place. He pulled back and rammed it down again, only to hit Riven’s shield. Riven grinned. The sensation of the Sept was like digging through bloody ants but his shield was up, and that was all that mattered.
Anvarroh grabbed Riven’s hand. The grip was iron, strong enough to crush his wrist. He shrieked, and his Essence did nothing. It didn’t squeeze into the space between his wrist and the demon’s grip, pushing the called hand back. That wasn’t how it worked. His hand would be crushed to powders worse than the dead Coral and Sept.
“Get back!” The shout pulled away the attention of both Riven and Anvarroh.
Viriya was rushing back at them, waving her arm. But far faster and farther ahead of her was a spear of coral, a broken branch with jagged ends flying straight towards the two of them. Its centre glowed green, as though Viriya had set a Sparkling emerald atop as some kind of rider. Her Essence had locked the Coral branch to the demon, had to be. It charged in too fast for either of them to react, lancing right into the demon’s neck and throwing him back.
Riven pulled hands to his chest, fingers twitching at how close they had come to being crushed by that branch. Free of the weight pinning him down, he got up, shaking all over. Scions, but he wasn’t made of stern stuff.
Huffing and puffing, Viriya came to a pause beside Riven. “Come on. We need to make sure he’s dead.”
Riven was too tired and too amazed he was still in one piece to point out how the Infernal had literally been impaled by Coral through the chest and that hadn’t killed him. Didn’t matter. He touched his raw, wounded face gingerly, then winced at the pain. Viriya had already started towards the demon, and he hurried to catch up.
It became clear why Viriya had expected Anvarroh to be dead this time. When they found the demon, there was only his broken, torn, and battered body beside the branch that had impaled into the ground. His head was nowhere to be seen. Viriya’s little trick had decapitated him clean.
“Where…?” Riven stared around but saw nothing immediately.
Viriya wasn’t helping. She was staring off into the distance, and he followed her gaze to the spot where the mist had lightened to give a glimpse of the beyond. The warring, fighting beyond, where the demons were struggling with the Guards. They were still alive. Still fighting, still doing their best not to cede a single inch of ground. Riven’s first task back in Providence city would be to harass Father about giving each and every single Guard here a medal.
But they’d be overwhelmed any moment now. Any second, the massive demon army would circle around and try to hit the Guards from the back. They certainly had the numbers. Only a matter of time before someone with a brain there realized the same thing and forced the demons to it.
Riven caught sight of something in the distance. “There!”
He pulled Viriya from doom gazing and towards the demon’s head. What else could it be? When they reached it, they both halted. Anvarroh was staring right back at them, a furious scowl etched over what was still left of his broken face.
“He’s still not dead?” Viriya voice had a jagged edge. A crumbly edge like it was about to break any moment. And who could blame her? It was ridiculous.
“No, I’m not dead, you fools.” Anvarroh waggled his black tongue out at them. With one cheek mostly missing, it looked like a parasite trying to worm its way to freedom. “You cannot kill me. And even if you could I will not allow it.”
Despite it all, Riven laughed. “You’re just a head. And a… disfigured one at that. What are you going to do, give us big, round eyes full of pity. Maybe some tears to add to the effect?”
“Curse you to the depths of the Chasm,” Anvarroh answered. “You have each other to save. I have one such as that as well.”
“Kill him!” Mhell yelled from behind. “Kill him now!”
Riven turned to stare at her. She was little more than a shadow in the fog, but the light in her eyes was brighter than ever, whiter than ever, and she was staring everywhere “What?”
“He’ll call for help. We mustn’t allow that. Kill him, quickly.”
Viriya didn’t argue, though the notion of him summoning anyone for assistance both frightened Riven and made him sceptical. Who was he going to call, one of the demons still fighting in the battle with the Guards? But then, what if it was another Infernal? Just killing one had reduced them to powerless idiots grasping at straws. If Mhell hadn’t been here, they’d likely have died.
Grasping the demon’s head by the hair and raising it with one hand, Viriya stared at his scowling face. Her face twisted in disgust. But the demon screamed. Viriya jumped, almost dropping the disembodied head, but catching it by the long white hair before it hit the ground.
The demon laughed at her reaction. “Enough of this. It is time.”
“I told you to kill him already,” Mhell insisted from behind. Her voice was panicked.
Viriya stomped on the head with her boot, but the Infernal only laughed harder.
“Too late,” he crowed. “Far too late. It’s time you met my master.”
“Master?” Riven asked.
“A Cataclysm!” Mhell’s voice had dropped, tinged with defeat now. “He summoned a Cataclysm.”
Viriya pulled her foot off the demon’s face as Riven’s heartrate spiked. He stepped back. A Cataclysm. Impossible. It couldn’t be. There was no—
The world darkened. A sudden wind shook everything, a stormy gale that threatened to bring down everything and blow Riven away if he didn’t take shelter soon. A sudden scent of rust filled the world, a stench of decay so strong, it made his eyes water and nose itch before fading in intensity. He stared up along with everyone else as a groan shook the whole world. The sky parted, revealing the great dread of the world.
A Cataclysm had come down to the mortal realm.