Chapter 31 - A World of Echoes

Adam jumped over the gaps between the roofs. As fast as possible, he made his way towards the mysterious warrior. The mass of tightly-woven black curls flicked over her face as she stared at Adam with seething fury. Two curling scorpion-tail Invocations, which enveloped her arm and her stump, were ready to strike.

However, Emily wasn’t about to let this moment of distraction slide.

While running up to the warrior, Emily used one hand to conjure a wide ring of Marrow knives around herself. With a flick of her wrist, she caused her Invocation to spin around her, emulating a circular saw. The warrior growled at Emily and tried fending her off with one of the tail-Invocations. However, Emily was too close. The knives sliced clean through one of the tails, although they broke in the process. Emily lashed out with her chain, but the warrior caught the weapon between her teeth. Grunting like a beast, she yanked the chain towards her; Emily yelped as she was pulled along. The warrior’s last tail curved towards her.

Suddenly, an eight-foot-long wing, with Marrow knives as feathers, cut through both the warrior’s tail and Emily’s chain. The warrior quickly jumped back, barely dodging the other wing of Oliver’s advanced Invocation. Although it took quite some time to prepare, the Owl of Blades was certainly worth the wait. Ironglass bones formed a solid basis for the conjured owl, and the Marrow feathers and talons made it lethal.

Laughing in the thrill of combat, the warrior sprang away to evade the threats. Emily reformed her circular saw of knives and conjured a Marrow scythe for her other hand. She charged the warrior from the left, while the Owl of Blades honed in from the right. The warrior ducked beneath Emily’s scythe and jumped to the side to dodge both her circular saw and the owl’s wing. Howling in mocking laughter, she jumped up and shattered one of the owl’s talons with a mighty kick.

Cursing his lack of speed now that he’d deactivated Osaehin’s Invocation, Adam ran towards them. Now that he saw the warrior again, her manoeuvres became more familiar to him, although he still couldn’t remember where he should know her from.

Nimble and elegant as a cat, the warrior jumped, rolled, and ducked as Emily and Oliver tried to hit her with all their might. A sideways swing of Emily’s scythe and a downwards slash of the owl’s wing finally chased her back. Right in Adam’s direction. He clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. We have you now.

The warrior closed her eyes in concentration and set her feet right. Her throat glowed red-hot by the energy she coalesced inside. Adam’s eyes widened. That’s the same move she used against the snake! Right before Adam, Emily, and the owl could reach her, the warrior opened her eyes again.

And she roared.

A shockwave spread outwards from her mouth, rippled through the air, and overwelmed them like an avalanche. It was a relentless cry of defiance and bestial fury, like an old tiger’s last choice to fight without surrender.

The unforgiving heat and pressure hit the three of them like a wall of pure force and slammed the air out of Adam’s lungs. Both he and Emily were sent flying backwards. Emily’s scythe and the Owl of Blades were torn apart, their shards spreading outwards in all directions, just like the stone roof beneath her.

While Adam was still in mid-air, Oliver jumped towards a roof near the warrior. He stretched out both hands in the Gaolom gesture, his face reddened and contorted in concentration. A swirling, deep-blue sphere of Gaolom energy enveloped the warrior, trapping her inside. The immense gravitational force pulled all the razor-sharp Marrow shards of Emily’s weapons and the Owl to its centre. Bricks and rubble sent flying by the warrior’s roar changed direction and flew straight towards her.

“Hit her with all you got!” Oliver screamed. A blue vein throbbed on his forehead.

Adam and Emily were still in mid-air as their falls were slowed by the gravitational force. By compressing Shrike in a Marrow shell, Emily quickly formed a Shrike-bomb. After cursing his lack of a weapon or ranged attacks, Adam grabbed a large stone slab that flew near him and hurled it towards the warrior. The slab and the Shrike-bomb accelerated even faster towards her due to the attracting force of the Gaolom. Trapped inside the spherical Invocation, the warrior hung in mid-air, with debris and shards of the Invocations nearing her from all directions.

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The warrior clenched her fists and roared in unending fury, causing familiar blood-red flames to erupt around her body. The blazing sphere of fire ripped apart the Gaolom around her. Oliver groaned as his Invocation had no choice but to yield.

The warrior fell down, enveloped by flames, and grunted as part of the flying debris and Marrow shards hit her along the way. As soon as her feet touched the ruined roof beneath her, she kicked off and vaulted straight towards Oliver.

“DAMN YOU!” she screeched in mid-air, morphing the flames around her into the shape of a charging bull.

Oliver’s face paled. In a lightning-quick reflex, he formed a shell of Ironglass around himself. Simultaneous with the bull Invocation’s mighty horns, the warrior headbutted Oliver’s shell. With a thunderous boom, Oliver’s shell was sent flying backwards. Adam screamed as Oliver was hurled away inside it and disappeared out of view in the streets between the buildings. Straight towards the savage melee between the Pure’s rhino cavalry and Dorenland’s defenders.

The warrior landed. Ignoring the cuts and grazes across her body, she looked at Adam over her shoulder, eyes smouldering with rage. Somehow, Adam immediately knew he’d seen her like this before. It was like an old, forgotten memory was triggered, along with a vague, tugging sensation inside his head. A word came up, and similar to Schultora and Osaehin, he knew it was a name. Desdemona. Adam shivered and grabbed the side of his head. Rationally, there was no way of telling right now if it was her name. Yet he was certain, somehow, as if he had always known her.

“I’ll go after Oliver!” Emily said as she jumped down and formed chains of Ironglass to swing between the buildings. “Keep her occupied!”

Adam shivered as she disappeared into the chaos below as well, and had to stop himself from following. No, they’ll be fine, might even be in a better position than I am. Every part of his body hurt and he’d already used a significant part of the heat inside his left heart.

Desdemona cracked her neck to the side and rotated her arm a bit as if she was just warming up. “Amusing. Nice of you to introduce me to Oliver and Emily.” Her hips swayed to the side and she casually let her sword’s blade rest on her shoulder. “Not a surprise you ended up falling for her.” She gave a subtle, knowing smirk and shook her head. “Poor, stupid girl. She must have a lot of trust in you, leaving you with me.”

Suppressing a vague pang of guilt in his stomach, Adam gave a grim, barking laugh. He spat out some blood from when her roar had hit him and looked her in the eye. “Har har. Don’t worry, I’m sure she just ran away because of your smell. I thought you were the damn snake at first.”

Desdemona narrowed her eyes at Adam, while a wound in her cheek gradually closed by her own Corpiogenesis. “What I don’t understand, why did you vermin go through all the trouble to be here? Out of all the Nodes in the Realm? What does Caine know, or what happened back here that you’re after?”

Huh, what does Caine know? “Ah, ‘why are we here,’ an excellent question! When we’ve finally figured that out, I’ll send you a damned card to let you know!”

Adam looked at the fresh troops of the Pure who stormed through the breached fortress gate and something clicked in his mind. A couple of years after this battle, he and Caine had argued about it in a tavern. ‘Nonsense!’ Caine had said back then, slamming his mug on the table with the epitome of drunk coordination. ‘The Pure swarmed through the walls, err, gate! I mean, yeah, and the Novaseers had to wipe them out. I saw it from the damn tower!’

‘The gate? How? I was right there on the walls, you buffoon!’ Adam had replied back then, swinging his own mug. ‘How do you expect me to miss that? You’re confusing Eulenschloss with the battle of Taleshire!’

I might be Tainted, but why would Caine alter this detail in my memory? To make me wrong on some battle that happened years ago, just to win a stupid drunk argument in hindsight? I think not. The Pure never breached the walls here, but Caine thinks they did.

Desdemona frowned at Adam as he opened his mouth a bit; an idea began to form. He remembered the network of Nodes, all connected to each other. He remembered the pyramid library, with all its bizarrely detailed knowledge about Catherine, and how another pyramid brought them to the past. He remembered how the Shepherd’s and the giant’s sorcery seemed to be based on written words, on scrolls and books. There’s a third type of sorcery… and all the written information within a pyramid’s library creates this illusion. No, a simulation rather. So, this ‘Realm’ probably forms a network of pyramids, of simulations, all based on information.

Adam laughed. After days of trying to fit the puzzle together, of figuring out where they were, it finally started to make sense. The mystery of how they could’ve been transported out of Gotterburg dissolved as they, in a way, maybe never truly left the place. Adam remembered how different Caine and Agatha’s faces looked, how Caine was uglier, but Agatha looked more beautiful than ever before. Because that is how Caine remembers them! He was probably insecure about his own looks, while he was in love with Agatha. And the Pure never breached the gates of Eulenschloss, but they do in here because Caine believes that’s what happened! And what is the Taint, inexplainable within the domains of both Instinct and Novaseering? The adjustment of memory; the concept that connects it all, and is probably at the core of this third type of sorcery.

“Did you finally lose it?” Desdemona’s deep voice barked. She frowned darkly at him. “What are you laughing about?”

“Because I figured it out.” Adam smiled while Desdemona raised an eyebrow. “Right now, we are within Caine’s memory, aren’t we?”