“Your daughter?”
“Yes, she came here for you after all.”
“Me?”
Jhacrisite nodded and moved his solid seven-foot frame flanked by huge fluffy wings. His steps seemed leaden as if whatever spell he’d cast to heal himself had only addressed superficial damage. His muscular frame littered with runelines and scars, topped with a bold head, belied an age and weariness Ori couldn’t fathom. “She’ll tell you the hows and whys… eventually.” Jhacrisite sat heavily upon a stone plinth that may have once been used for unsavoury activities Ori could scarcely imagine.
With his movements, Ori’s hopes of a swift, almost exponential prison break seemed to wither into dust. He tried to hide the disappointment on his face but failed.
“You know where she is then?” Ori asked.
“The Reaches above this one.” The angel waved dismissively and light swirled from his fingers, a golden translucence bright in the otherwise dim illumination of the Aether Pools.
Seven jagged columns the thickness of tree trunks appeared in a loose spiral. Between these large pillars of light was a network of dendritic filaments branching out and connecting them.
Ori had seen a similar representation from Thraxis, it was Ghigrerchiax and its seven Reaches, each column a magma chamber thousands of feet wide and unfathomably deep. He had traversed and fallen partway down the lowest of the Reaches during his battle against Korrent. Freya shifted to her sprite form and flew around the light sculpture; even Lysara was drawn to its delicate intricacy.
“Even now, she makes her way towards you.” Jhacrisite.
“Wait, if she’s making her way here, that means she’s not a prisoner?” Ori frowned.
“Not yet she isn’t.” The light sculpture expanded, showing in greater clarity one of the branches between their location in the Lowest Reaches and the one above. “I’m going to do something that will draw us some attention, though nothing we wouldn’t expect given the circumstances… eventually.”
“What?” Ori asked. And then he felt it, like a pulse of something that pulled and squashed and washed past him, invisible, intangible and fleeting. Ori looked around, Vision of the Progenitor flaring as if to catch echoes of the phenomenon.
“See there, son? They amass here, the three choke points between our Reach and the ones above, and she comes here.” The angel gestured at a red dot in the golden hologram.
“How come she can just waltz down here without the demons noticing?” Ori asked, bewildered by the idea someone would want to descend through a demonic horde just for him.
“If it’s anything like I imagine, her luck will run out when she reaches this garrison. You can get there before she does, but…”
“But what?”
“They have a Galroga,” Jhacrisite said gravely. Freya gasped. Before Ori could ask, knowledge from Freya’s memories flooded his mind, filling him with dread.
“Fuck’sake.” Ori cursed, visualising the Aether-warped, flesh-crafted Sovereign ranking abomination—a monster with leathery skin, adamantine bones, and twice-looped glyphs of toughness and resistance. A living enchantment of anti-magic fifty feet tall turned mad and vicious by the butchery performed upon it.
Despite the wild swings in potential damage and lethality within a rank, a creature’s Lifeforce—the amount of natural resilience it had to all forms of damage—was the defining aspect of each rank. However, some exceptions stretched the meaning of Lifeforce or rendered it meaningless by other methods. Flesh-crafted creatures like the Galroga were one of those exceptions and could be ten to a hundred times as naturally resistant as anything in their rank.
“I can’t go now, I’m out of breath, my cooldowns for—” Ori began.
“You only need to find her,” Jhacrisite said, and who was he to argue?
"What's her name, what she look like?"
"Rue... Ruenne'del, she has bright pink, naturally pink hair." The angel said with a smile as if in reminiscence.
“Ori?” Freya asked as if checking if he was sure.
“You guys help Jhacrisite free the other angels. Remember, I can recall you to me if I get in trouble. Lysara, can you distinguish between infernal and non-infernal with your senses?”
“No, unfortunately, I can only sense movement.”
“That’s okay, just help them find people. I’ll be back before you’ve freed all the Celestials. Then, it’ll be the rest of the Reaches.” Ori projected more confidence than he felt and turned back to the angel. “Will you be alright?”
“Go, I’ll be fine, especially with your friends. Go get my daughter out of trouble.”
“Oh, before I go.” Ori stopped and mentally reached into his void storage ring, bringing out the piles of weapons and armour he had looted from various armouries. Looking inside, all that remained were the coins, the sinister box and spellbook from the first Imp he’d killed, some random objects, food, a flagon of water, his enchantments, enchantment breakers and enchanting supplies, the Grandfather Clock Source, the dagger with a broken blade, his house keys, wallet, and smashed-up iPhone. He gestured to the pile of items on the floor ranging from gleaming and pristine to rusty and barely usable. “Take whatever you need.”
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The High Human strode through the caverns of the Lower Reaches, his steps light and confident. A low, whirring exhaustion filled him, but beneath it lay a certainty that his plan was achievable. Instead of confronting the nearest choke point and the forces garrisoning there head-on, Ori had decided to loop around, passing through an adjacent branch and garrison before circling back to intercept an angel’s wayward daughter. This route offered a better chance of avoiding Sovereign rankers, especially the Galroga.
In the two hours since setting off, Ori had encountered little resistance, allowing him to regenerate Breath and conserve his mental energies. He moved through passages and caverns without stealth, intermittently stabbing and slicing infernal creatures with his Array as they crossed his path, his Aetheric and Astral limbs flanking his form like Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. So far, he had rarely encountered anyone in the Greater ranks, with most impediments being demons caught unaware or stationed between various underground keeps, which Ori had no time to deal with right now. As he moved at a brisk walk, the scale of the prison became apparent. He realised there were likely tens of thousands of demons here, ready to bubble out like an overflowing ant colony, but that number alone no longer instilled fear.
“He’s there, the demon bane!”
“Send word up the scrag. We’ll hold him off.”
“Look, Hinx, it’s just a Level One.”
“Raise shields, and prepare to collapse the cavern on top of—”
A long tendril of prismatic light turned the speaker barking out orders into scintillating motes of sparkling dust. The demons around him had little time to comprehend their peril as Cosmic-aspected Channel Lightning hosed down the remaining infernals, each turning into silver ashes, their dust hanging in the air far longer than the echoes of thunder, their final screams and the sizzling sound of instant petrification. With the thought of cave-ins and cavern collapses, a new urgency drained much of Ori’s earlier confidence.
He ran at a dead sprint, hoping to overtake runners sent towards the large garrison.
Unfortunately, the ground rumbled.
“Fuck’sake,” Ori roared, expending a sixth of his Breath to cast Mind over Motion, his powerful strides leaping over a rocky surface that now blurred. Streams of silt fell from cracks in the cave as boulders fell in slow motion. As the world fell around him, he screamed, the full force of his fury, fear, and determination tearing his throat apart. Unsummoning his Array, ghostly fists pushed and smashed rocks, turning them into clouds of dirt Ori could only hope were loose enough to run through. Meanwhile, Ori used Polydexterity in a new way as the gaps grew smaller, the tunnel ceiling shrinking every step. His newfound agility and balance saw him contorting and sliding, hips and physical arms swinging wildly as he sought dynamic stability under the rumbling earth and falling ceiling. Just ten paces more and the roof of the cavern seemed intact. However, it was then that Mind over Motion’s effects ceased, and Ori was swallowed whole.
From an opening that suddenly rumbled before dust and rock billowed out of its entrance, an army of over two hundred infernals waited with bated breath. There were imps, demons, hellhounds, succubus, incubus, fallen humans, and fiends from levels ten to seventy. Each of them waited, cognisant of the rumours of a Demon Bane. Some had scoffed at the murmurs, others were curious, if not amused, while a few had a better idea of the extent of the losses and just which Wardens had already succumbed. Those were the ones who saw the cavern collapse as an ill omen, wishful thinking to believe such an impediment would stop one that could kill Sovereign Ranking infernals with apparent ease.
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And in the end, they would be proven right.
An imp moved closer to the entrance as the dust settled, its squinty eyes narrowing to slits as it attempted to peer into the gloom. It gestured with its head, and a band of twenty larger demons, each carrying oversized bludgeoning instruments, formed behind and around it as the apparent leader braved its way through the settling dust and silt. They made it twenty steps before the ghostly sight of six limbs hanging in the darkness lit up the gloom. Before they could turn and scream, the two-foot-long, needle-like blades of Ori’s Array, all six glowing with the cosmic light of Radiant Weapon, pierced and slashed with incomprehensible viciousness. Those watching from the army beyond reacted slowly and in a disorganised fashion, their minds unable to understand or keep up with what was happening, their leaders uncertain and afraid. Some slowly backed away from the line of shields, others threw spells into the dark tunnel. Within seconds, the ghostly arms had slaughtered the nearest twenty demons, and renewed screams emerged from the rank and file as more demons within the massed ranks fell to shining blades wielded by phantasmal hands. As Ori’s Modern Warfare affinity targeted the leaders and commanders first, Demons switched their attentions to impervious hands that just as often as not, teleported from one location to the next.
When the first Chain Lightning was cast from inside their ranks, disintegrating lesser infernals by the dozen, the army broke. The High Human emerged from the shadows, his burning aura aspected with the void now reverted to its normal harmonic colours, Light Shield catching the few intermittently cast spells as shining eyes gazed upon a deteriorating battlefield, his focus upon dismantling the last pockets of organisation and leadership before turning towards cautiously hunting down the routed foe.
Ori’s anger was second only to self-recrimination. Of course, they could start laying traps, and closing off routes. If it weren’t for a last-second Light Shield empowered by Attack as you Defend, Ori would have died. A near-death experience was likely a cheap price to pay for the obvious lesson that the infernals’ disorganisation and distaste for changing tactics couldn’t be depended upon. Still, knowing as much wasn’t enough to assuage Ori enough to let these demons go.
Ori walked with strident steps through a scattered army, ignoring the dead and dying. The infernals, driven to madness by the presence of the Demon Bane, fell to his Aetheric and Astral hands, which flittered around the wide rocky cavern, reaping lives with the precision of three minds acting as one. Light Shield caught spell after spell—arcane energies of shadow bolts and death-aligned curses splashing around the hovering barrier that should have collapsed under the weight of fire ten times over. However, empowered by each strike, every spell Ori cast, and his absurd class trait, he continued through the screaming and dying, uncontested in an underground clearing that rose from the middle, with stalagmites and stalactites providing plenty of cover for the scattering foe.
The Duælist was learning, the class bending towards Ori’s whims even as it influenced him in turn. Meanwhile, as the legend of his High Demon Bane grew, Ori remained mindful of the toll. His mental spell-casting burden was already overwrought after facing the Sovereign-ranking High Troll, and he struggled with emotional detachment—from the stink, his disdain of their nature, what they had done to him and others, and the fact he had to kill them at all. Despite Freya’s warning, Ori used his Cosmic affinity freely, his intent to disintegrate and leave behind no trace of their bodies manifesting in the glowing dust of their overkill. He oscillated between a neutral professional detachment and the dissociation that this was just a video game, just farming XP and that he needed to go back and loot before facing the boss. It was a dangerous belief even at the time, but it made the field of bloody, partial remains and mangled corpses easier to ignore.
Chain Lightning fried a torrent of infernal bats before they could surround him, their pitiful screeching unnerving him as much as anything else that day. It was then that his empowered Light Shield collapsed under the weight of several sticky, napalm-like fireballs. The heat from their viscous fire penetrated even his remaining protections. Before his Dreamwalker’s Lesser Aegis was overwhelmed, a new Light Shield sprang into place, its rapidly expanding, dome-like field pushing away the insidious fire. The instantaneous casting speed, afforded by placing the skill in his core, paid off. With time to breathe, Ori wove Purifying Light and Light Shield using Duælist’s Weave. The resultant dazzling force field surprised even him. Balefire extinguished under the pressure of the light, the Cosmic and Celestial aspects interwoven into something new and supremely effective. He felt a shift within his Mana Nexus, the spell constellation evolving and learning based on his spell usage and synergies.
The High Human crested the rise from the cavern, Vision of the Progenitor searching for traps and ambushes as much as foes to kill. As he moved, Lesser Echo Print fouled hastily written enchantments in the earth designed to collapse tunnels, cause fires, or maim foes. His high perception caught the distant screams that rattled through the passages. He was near the location on the map where Jhacrisite indicated his path would intercept with hers. He could now see the second Reaches, the ancient magma chamber, and the ravine beyond the rocky tunnel’s mouth. The cries of the demons, shouting ‘Demon Bane’, echoed through the passages. Polydexterity and Vision of the Progenitor worked overtime as he continued to watch for traps.
“Where is she?” Ori grumbled to himself. Suddenly, a presence as if someone had stepped out of nearby cover to stand at the very edges of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He turned around, certain of someone being there, before he stopped to find a girl or young woman standing right before him.
“Where is whom?” she asked from less than two feet in front of him. Ori nearly jumped out of his skin in terror, so used to Vision of the Progenitor’s near one hundred per cent coverage that he was thoroughly unprepared to be snuck up upon.
“FUCK’SAKE!” Ori almost squealed in surprise. She was short, with pale skin dusted lightly with freckles framed by braided, vividly pink hair. A set of mesmerising huge eyes with a blend of green and blue irises gave her an otherworldly gaze. She had delicate features with pointed ears, adding to her elf-like nature. Her burgundy woollen sweater and a leather back sheath housed a greatsword at least as tall as her own four and a half feet. Ori twisted his head to look around her, expecting to see one thing, and finding another. Instead of the white, feathery wings of an angel, diaphanous fairy wings were folded beneath her sword. All the while, he felt his insides churning in the presence of this person. It was as if his conflicting affinities for Fate and Freedom were supercharged or oversensitive, a warning or exaltation.
She moved around him in a circle, her intense gaze full of curiosity and genuine interest.
“It’s not the best plan to sneak up on someone, especially here.”
“I did not sneak. I don’t need to,” she said in a strange mix of pride and indifference.
“Well, you still scared the shit out of me,” Ori said, catching his breath. “Are you... Are you Ruenne’del?” Ori asked, her vivid pink locks the only meaningful description of the target he had managed to gather from the angel before he left.
“I have been called such.”
“Okay.”
“You’re shrouded.”
“Yeah?”
“Then, I seek permission to divine you,” she asked in a lilting accent that sounded almost Irish, her deep, almost scratchy voice causing his earlier impression of a young girl to fall away; she moved too sure of herself, her intensity, her posture, and poise that of someone his age or older.
“No. No way.” Ori scoffed at the notion of being divined by a stranger.
Ruenne frowned. “Then you’ll tell me why we’ve been looking for each other.”
“Your dad told me to find you before you got yourself captured. As for your reason? You tell me. I have no idea. Come, we need to get out of here.” Ori gestured to the Reaches just beyond the path.
“My dad? I’ve not known any who’d make such a claim.”
“Oh yeah?” Ori said, confusion and doubt clouding his mind.
She shook her head. “Who is he?”
“He calls himself Jhacrisite, the Paragon of Providence.”
“Oh.” She suddenly looked as small as her stature, her gaze shifting away, her thoughts distant.
“You know him?” Ori said, noting her change in attitude.
She shook her head and sighed. “No. But, I suppose it is time… I meet my father.”
Ori shook his head at the wild family melodrama playing out in the middle of a demonic prison. He moved towards the Reaches, contemplating which of the two remaining routes he should take to return to the celestial prisons. He turned to see the woman hadn’t moved. Her eyes glowed grey, the light completely replacing her pupils. His Quickened Perception caught a dense concentration of Fate-aspected mana flaring into a spot at the centre of her forehead. Then he saw a spell form solidify into the shape of a third eye, and echoes of reality spilt past him, making him dizzy. Ori stumbled, the ground not quite feeling as solid as it should have.
“What was that?” Ori wheezed.
“I was looking for you. But I won’t know why until I divine you.”
“Alright. Not happening.” Ori said. “We need to get out of here.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, we do not need to get out of here. Not yet anyway,” Ruenne’del said, gesturing to the Reaches beyond the cave exit. “If we go there now, we will die.”
“What, really? Why?”
“Galroga and two Wardens.”
“Fuck’sake.” Ori cursed, his mind spinning through contingencies. Without Will of the High Human and a long night’s sleep, Ori doubted his chances against another Sovereign Ranker, let alone a Galroga. With the added complication of babysitting, or having to fight alongside someone else, he seriously considered alternatives like digging through metres of rock to trace his way back through a caved-in tunnel. “Will it come in?”
“Too big. They’ll get bored. Wait a day.”
“The thing with the eyes, is that how you know it’s there?” Ori wondered.
Ruenne’del shrugged and folded her arms. “Seers see,” she said as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. He glanced at her oversized sword, then shook his head. Finding somewhere to hold out for a few hours to recharge seemed like the best option, although despite Thraxis’s walkthrough, he had no idea of any safe rest stops beyond the Lower Reaches.
He turned around, his feet taking him back to the site of his earlier massacre to find any barracks, stores, or armouries with a door. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that this time Ruenne’del followed.
“I’m Ori, by the way. Ori Suba. Would you like some water? Need any healing?” He offered, summoning the flagon of water to his hands.
She eyed it distrustfully before nodding and taking several gulps before returning the flagon to him.
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They continued to walk in silence, Ori’s shoulders tight with the feeling of walking with an armed person you didn’t know at his back. “You alright?” He asked, unnerved by how her intense gaze rarely, if ever, left the back of his head. While he might have put it down to pure curiosity, the churning in his gut didn’t cease.
“I am... Trying to pick apart your shroud.”
Ori stopped, pushing down a bubbling annoyance. “Please don’t.”
“Are you the High Human?” she asked suddenly. Caught off guard, it was all Ori could do but flinch.
“Even if I was, wouldn’t that be a good enough reason not to let you divine me?” Ori said.
Ruenne’del shrugged and then continued to stare through the back of Ori’s skull.
Ori sighed, exhausted as he considered the long night to come.