It might be too old for people to know it, but I almost wanted to make a statue version of the "It's happening!" meme for this week's chapters. Decided that everyone would prefer I put more time into writing instead. =P
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Chapter 42
After the chaos of the battle, the peace of Ugustial was almost surreal. Theo took a moment to orient himself as he stared over the white marble and gold trim buildings, illuminated or shadowed by the great discs that shifted above the city. It was beautiful in the Noveni way, and the air itself was crisp in a way it wasn't on Fithe.
But even if they were regrouping and shifting their strategy, there wasn't time to wait around. Theo oriented himself to old landmarks and flew toward the Jadadictus palace. His shielding wall made him look like an Authority and he had spiritual identification for Ugustial, so he was able to enter without any trouble. Yes, the powers of the city hadn't been exactly happy about his involvement with the Wakespire competition, but Theo didn't think they'd make an issue over it.
And if they did, well, he'd just gone through a battle fighting Dominions, not Strongholds.
The Jadadictus palace was a fairly large one, as their top prince was one of the leaders of the city, and thus it had several layers of security. Navigating those would be an annoyance, and punching through would be needlessly hostile... no, the most effective method was social. Theo searched for familiar presences until at last he spotted one.
Isorales was meditating on one of the outer balconies, his wings stretched out behind him as if to absorb the light of the suns overhead. He was still an Authority, despite all the time that had passed, but Theo didn't find himself particularly caring, he just smiled to see the Noveni man again.
"Been a long time." Theo waved as he floated just at the edge of the defenses. "Think you can let me in?"
"Wait, what?" Isorales hopped to his feet, wings flapping awkwardly, and hastened to signal to allow Theo through. "What's going on? Where are the others?"
"That'd be a long story." Theo smiled and clasped the other man's wrist as he floated to land on the balcony. "Sorry we haven't visited before now."
"No, I understand. And honestly, I'd have been a bit shamed... wait, have you ascended again?"
"Like I said, it's a long story."
To his surprise, Theo really wanted to just sit down and chat with Isorales, or maybe go on a long flight together and catch up. But he thought that was the mental exhaustion talking, since he'd been pushing himself to his mental limits keeping up with opponents at a higher tier. No, time still needed to be managed carefully.
Since he had arrived, Theo had been monitoring the skies, waiting to see if any of his allies would arrive. So far, there had been no sign of Fiyu or Nauda: he'd expected to recover from the disorientation and use his weirkey a little faster than they would, but not that much faster. They might have run into complications, such as coincidentally ending up in the same part of Arbai as one of their enemies, or taken different priorities, like returning to Fithe.
"Isorales, I'm afraid I need to jump again," he explained before they could step inside. "There's a war going on in Fithe... is anything happening in Ugustial? Any reason we can't gather here?"
"Of course there's all kinds of politics, but..." Isorales scratched at one of his wings. "Not much compared to a war."
"Good. I need you to help us, and we'll pay you back later, but for now we need a f-"
"You think you'd owe me?" Isorales reached out to grip his shoulders. "No, we still owe you for everything you did for us."
It was a warm moment, but Theo's mind was still scattered across other conflicts and all the potential things that could go wrong. He had to force himself to slow down and not be brusque with an old friend. Seconds had mattered in the battle, but not now. They had returned to the slower grinding war of strategy over long periods of time.
"We need you to set up a signal," Theo asked. "Nauda or Fiyu could be coming here, so make sure to catch them before they leave. Tell them I'll be back, okay? There could be other foreigners, angry and confused, but I don't think it's very likely. Before I get back, can you speak to Jorotafes? We could really use those statues he promised."
"Uh, my grandfather has almost entirely finished his work soulcrafting the statues, but he doesn't like to be rushed..." Isorales had been all smiles at first, but as he absorbed Theo's focus, he folded his wings as if preparing for combat. "Is it really that bad?"
"I don't know exactly how bad it is. That's what I'm going to find out."
There didn't seem to be many anti-weirkey foundations in Ugustial, so Theo didn't have to go far to leave. This time he did return to Fithe, though he made the snap decision not to waste time going back to the site of the Dominion battle. It was unlikely they had all reconvened there, and there was a higher priority concern: the battle against the demons at the tournament grounds.
When Theo arrived in the sky, he judged that the situation was somewhere in between the best and worst case scenarios. Most of the construction was still intact, so the place hadn't been overrun, but the cheerful fairground atmosphere had been demolished. He sensed large numbers of people clustered in a few fortified locations: the main arena, the Blacksilver complex, and Raythe's headquarters. Between them, the space was infested with demons - mostly of the lowest stage, but even as he watched, Theo saw six of the spider-like demons crawl together and sacrifice themselves into a second stage.
On his way down, Theo carelessly threw a cantae bolt through the demon's chest before it could become anything more dangerous. If the threat had been only these, the contestants wouldn't have barricaded themselves in, so some of the enemy must still be around. Theo judged that they probably wouldn't take on a Stronghold without a good reason.
Best to check on the Blacksilver complex first, since what he needed most was information. When Theo floated toward it, to his surprise Homez was the one who flew up to greet him. The man was wearing his stone armor, which was a bit cracked and worn, but was good to see him ready for combat again.
"Thank goodness you're alright." Homez embraced him fiercely, so Theo accepted the stony hug and thumped him on the back. "We heard about the weirkey fracture and some of us assumed the worst..."
"You know more than I do. Has the Demonweaver been seen again? Did we lose any Dominions?"
"Melitta took a serious injury and is being treated at a hidden undersea location, or so I heard. At first Citizen Dominion and Crintak made appearances together, but that isn't the strategy: Tymetron is turning this into a war of logistics. They plan to keep attacking soft targets, rotating their Dominions while never letting ours rest. And I don't know what we can do about it: they can wear us down without risking any of their stronger soulcrafters."
"And the Demonweaver?"
"I know, there's so much..." Homez shook his head as he stared over the tournament grounds. "You haven't been gone so long, but things have really changed. That's the big news, straight from Citizen Dominion: apparently the attack was a double or triple bluff."
Theo frowned. "So they feinted a strike at the tournament, to hide a feint on our Dominions, to strike where?"
"Giatrice and the Gold Wastes, apparently. When others heard the Demonweaver was here, they attacked Tymetron, but the empire was planning on that. Plutalgion is on the field and the Demonweaver returned there, so Tymetron is well-defended. The message from Giatrice was furious, apparently."
"But even their feints might be able to take us down." Theo rubbed his forehead as he considered the plan, which was close to something he'd do: there was no point making an entirely fake attack when a partial attack could still cause a threat. Just deploying one of their aeon-class soulcrafters for a short time had set off a chain of events that could leave Norron crippled.
"Things are rough here too." Homez gestured toward the fortifications that Theo had noted while coming in. "We took out the strongest demons, but there are still some of the Demonweaver's forces out there, and they're a real threat."
"What about Janne?"
"When I was sent here, she had things under control, so I told her to go support the Dominions. Conditions here could be worse: most of the contestants volunteered to stay until civilians could be evacuated. The problem is, we just don't have time or weirkeys enough to move them out very fast, so there are still a lot of people under threat here."
"Stretching our forces even thinner, I get it." Theo tried to analyze the entire region with his gravitational senses, but if the enemy was hiding, they were amid too much other rubble. "I think the big threat is the Demonweaver's forces, since they might be able to set up demons that an Authority couldn't handle."
"Actually, uh... there's one more thing." Homez turned toward the Darkblade headquarters with a grim expression. "I guess Janne and I can't take too much credit, because Raythe was actually the one who ended the battle here."
"He came back first?"
"And he rallied his sect, which includes several Strongholds. We could actually really use them on the front lines, but he insists they stay here, because he thinks that the Demonweaver is still hiding out somewhere. We tried to tell him that she went back to Tymetron, but he wouldn't listen. He's been torturing any Tymetronese soulcrafters he can find to determine her location, with no luck yet."
"Stupid, but we can't convince him." Based on their last encounter, Theo guessed that Raythe was beyond reason at the moment. "We just have to work around whatever he's doing and hope that his presence holds off any more attacks here."
"But... there is one thing." Homez gestured out toward the perimeter. "There are still demons showing up, more than can be explained by our enemies. It's easy for people to believe that the Demonweaver is out there, and all I can do is give them second-hand news about a war an entire ocean away."
"Didn't Janne tell you about the artifacts?"
She had done a good job keeping things under control, but apparently some information had been lost in all the chaos. Thankfully, Theo didn't need to persuade Homez about the demon-summoning artifacts because the man had fought at the Dustwind Plateaus and knew the threat. All he really needed to do was explain the connection to Raythe and the potential Tymetronese spies in their midst. It didn't take them long at all to get on the same page, because given the present situation, they only had a few options.
"We'll try to destroy them if we can," Homez promised, "but it's a risk venturing out of the defended areas. I'd try to tell Raythe, but it sounds like you think..."
"Absolutely not worth it," Theo agreed. "The situation is grim, but he's not likely to help. I'm going to regroup with the others, and when we come back, we should be able to relieve the Dominions. You have to hold out until then."
"We'll do the best we can." Homez nodded to him and then retreated to the Blacksilver defenses.
So in the end, Theo had been partially right yet mostly wrong about the potential attack on the tournament. Tymetron hadn't ever considered it a major threat, just a soft target that could be used to put their broader plans in motion. If not for the unexpectedly fierce resistance, the attack could well have eliminated much of the Norron alliance's strength in one day.
Now that they had survived, however, they faced a longer and more grueling challenge. It felt wrong to leave Fithe like this, but Theo could acknowledge that he was pushed to his limits fighting Dominions and even an Ophaon-tier soulcrafter. He couldn't possibly tip the balance like this, so he needed to take steps that could actually alter a war this broad.
One weirkey step took him back to Ugustial, a surreal moment for him that lost even more time across the Nine Worlds. When Theo flew down toward the palace, he saw that Fiyu had arrived as well and was pacing back and forth on the shadowed portion of the balcony.
"Theo." She moved to him instantly, gripping his arm. "Nauda hasn't arrived yet. Do you think something could have happened to her?"
"It could be a lot of things," Theo told her in as calming a voice as he could. "Krikree is lost on Arbai too, and Nauda might have gone to track her down. But we can't go chasing after them... you remember what happened on Slest? We can't afford to lose that much time."
"I understand, Theo. I do not like it, but I understand."
So he told her about the current situation, and when Isorales joined them, Theo explained the overall war as well as he could. For a moment he entertained an idle fantasy of bringing the entire court of princes in Ugustial back to fight, but he knew he could never convince them. Not only was it not their war, they would go from being the unchallenged princes of a city to being pawns in a war where even Dominions weren't the leaders.
When Theo and his allies returned, they couldn't afford to be pawns, which meant soulcrafting.
Chapter 43
Of course Nauda knew that their plan was to meet one another in Ugustial, since they each held a Noveni weirkey. She had always imagined that contingency plan taking place after some accident, when they could come together in a joyful reunion. Not in the middle of a war like this, stretched so thin and leaving behind allies.
So when she arrived in Arbai, she couldn't help but search. In such a desolate environment, her life sense easily picked out anything unusual in a broad region, which unfortunately only proved that they had been scattered extremely far away from one another. She pushed further, particularly toward one weak life force, worried that it might be Krikree.
In the end, however, she discovered that it was one of the enemy Dominions. Nauda nearly finished off the woman, but she rallied herself first and disappeared into a weirkey.
Did Nauda keep searching? It bothered her that Krikree was alone in the desert somewhere, at minimum without a weirkey to join them and potentially completely isolated.
But in the end, Krikree was better able to take care of herself than a lot of the lives that depended on Nauda. When she couldn't sense anyone else even at the limits of her ability, Nauda accepted it and traveled back to Ugustial.
For a moment she was suspended above the city, wondering where to start... and then a familiar winged figure was streaking toward her.
"Nauda!" Isorales slid to a halt in the air and beamed in her direction. "You're looking great."
"Thanks," she said, "but I might be in a hurry. Are Fiyu and Theo here?"
"Don't worry, they arrived, checked in on Fithe, and decided they were staying to regroup. Come on, I'll show you."
Her old memories of the city came back to her, even though she'd seen Ugustial mostly from the street level or their sleigh. Now that she could easily fly under her own power, she understood how the city was laid out a little better, and it was easy to follow Isorales to the palace owned by the Jadadictus family. It still struck her as ostentatious, but she didn't have time to think about that.
Instead of the main entrance, they landed on a narrow tower off to one side. There, she found exactly whom she had been hoping for: Fiyu and Theo were both there in the middle of soulcrafting. Theo didn't even leave his soulhome, just giving her a stern nod while working, but Fiyu faded back into reality to smile at her.
"Nauda, you have arrived!"
"I was looking for Krikree or other survivors," Nauda explained, at least partially to Theo. "What's the situation?"
"I don't know where she is," he answered, "but the situation stabilized at the tournament grounds. The problem is, Tymetron is trying to grind everyone down without using one of their aeon-class soulcrafters again. And it sounds like they might get away with it."
"So we're staying here until we recover?"
"It is more complicated than that," Fiyu said sadly. "We can survive in battles between Dominions, but Tymetron is sending more than before. Our plan is to soulcraft new advantages while we recover, then use them to tip the balance."
"We start at the tournament grounds," Theo added. "Right now, both sides are betting that they can neutralize the other without risking their top soulcrafters. If we can sweep through, we can gather all the contestants and mobilize them."
"Then it sounds like we have a lot of work to do." Nauda started to sit down, but Fiyu shook her head with a smile.
"No, Nauda, do you remember the sublime statues that we were granted in return for our help? Isorales's relative has finished them, and we have already acquired ours. You should take yours as well, it will surely do you even more good!"
Of course Nauda hadn't forgotten, but she hadn't been thinking about that. She turned to Isorales, who was just smiling to see their reunion, and he quickly gestured for her to follow with an arm and two wings. They left the chamber and flew toward one of the largest domes in the palace, a grand ivory and gold affair.
"Sorry that it's been so long," Nauda said as they flew. "I feel bad, that we come back only when we're strong enough to take the materials from you."
"Not at all," Isorales reassured her. "It isn't as though our family doesn't have weirkeys. I could have taken the time to find you, but... well, I think life gets in the way for everyone. We can catch up when you aren't in such dire straits."
"It's been... what, three years? What have you been doing since the Wakespire?"
Isorales winced. "Business with my family, of course, and conflict between cities that wouldn't interest you. Can't help but notice that all three of you have gotten to Stronghold... if you were in our family, my grandparents would be harrumphing about how you're decades too early."
There wasn't much time to reminisce, because they'd reached a subtle door that Nauda hadn't noticed at first. Inside, the halls of the palace were plush and quiet, just like she remembered. Isorales led her around a few turns until they reached a room without carpeting, just a stretch of marble. It was rather messy, covered in fragments of sublime material.
And there, in the center... was Nauda herself. They had taken her exact measurements down to a spiritual level in order to prepare for it, so she had assumed that the statue would be life-sized. Instead it was twice her height, which she supposed wasn't much compared to her soulhome, but still... it was so much more life-like, down to the sheen of her skin and individual eyelashes. How had all of that been carved from sublime stone?
At the base, small compared to the statue, was Jorotafes Jadadictus. The grandfather of the family was a Stronghold, and once that had been an incredibly intimidating rank to her, but now she found herself wondering how he would compare to all the Strongholds she'd fought. He turned to look at her and grunted.
"Youths," he scoffed, "always rushing art. I suppose you're here to demand your statue as well?"
"If it isn't too much trouble," Nauda said, doing her best to give an agreeable smile. "Believe me, rushing perfection is the last thing I want, but I fear that we are young Strongholds who desperately need every advantage we can get."
"Well, this will be quite the advantage, I assure you. You sit tight and don't throw out opinions."
He returned to the statue and Nauda realized that one of her feet was still unfinished, shockingly rough compared to the eerie smoothness he had achieved with the rest of the stone. Based on how fast he was working, Nauda strongly suspected that Jorotafes had not been working on the statues for three solid years... there had been some procrastination involved, and he was simply disgruntled to be rushed.
Still, he wasn't going to finish immediately, so Nauda sat down to begin soulcrafting. Before the Demonweaver's attack, which felt like ages ago, she had been working on integrating the lifetangle into her soulhome. It was a remarkable material, adding physical strength but even better suited for an Immortality Conduit. Until she worked that out, she had been coaxing it to grow around the waist of her statue as a looping, tangled belt that could support her.
Now she saw that this might have been an error, favoring the long term over the immediate need, because her materials had exceeded the number of available chambers. Fortunately she'd been soulcrafting Stronghold-tier bricks during idle moments, so she wasn't starting from nothing, but she needed to assemble those into chambers in her main soulhome. Until she did, there was no effective place to put her statue.
She worked for half a day before Jorotafes declared that his work was complete. Nauda thanked the old man profusely, but couldn't linger to hear an entire speech about the youth of today. When she drew the statue into her soulhome, she was surprised that it shrank until it was precisely her height, an exact match to the woman she'd been during the Wakespire.
That, almost more than the artistry itself, impressed her: it must have been difficult to get stone, paint, and other sublime materials that would all compress exactly the same amount. The result, however, was surprisingly powerful. Given the level of cantae it put off within her soulhome, she didn't think that she could have maintained it, if it hadn't been so perfectly suited to her. This was a truly unique material that would be unusable to anyone else.
And she didn't have a place for it. Nauda tried to set up a tent from sublime canvas, but it was an old material she'd picked up a few tiers ago in Norro Yorthin, and the cantae from the statue blasted a hole in it.
Just having it in her soulhome made her feel a little better, but that clearly wasn't enough at her level. She needed a finished chamber that could contain the power, using it to reinforce her body in miniature. Nauda looked over her half-finished walls and then went to join the others in discouragement.
"I don't think I can do it," Nauda told Theo in a low voice. "It will take me at least a couple days to finish a chamber for the statue."
"Take them," he told her simply.
"Are you sure? Isn't Fithe falling apart behind us?"
"We can't affect the war if we go back as we are now. I'm not telling you to take a vacation, I'm telling you to soulcraft as hard as you can. Not as if your life depends on it, but as if everyone else's does."
From across the room, Fiyu bobbed her head in agreement. Nauda forced herself to accept the logic and got back to work.
The problem was that soulcrafting used up her spiritual reserves, and if she simply pushed harder with willpower, she would begin making errors that could hinder her, or prove catastrophic in future ascensions. After long enough mixing sublime mortar and putting together bricks, her spiritual hands started slipping. She began rotating different soulcrafting tasks, foregoing sleep until she couldn't resist any longer and then returning to her new chamber while she was still fresh.
Despite all her focus, she couldn't stop herself from thinking about Norro Yorthin, the Asplundat Movement, and everyone else fighting against Tymetron. She hoped that they weren't buying her time with their lives.
~
Telling Theo that he would handle the situation was one thing, but as Homez stared out over the tournament grounds, he wondered if he'd signed his own death warrant.
For a brief time the United Norron Tournament had seemed like a reprieve from the war: a simple competition that would bring everyone together. And that hadn't been an illusion, because most of the contestants had banded together when the demons attacked and saved many lives.
Or at least put off their deaths a little longer. Every time Homez received news from the war, the less likely it seemed that they would be getting any backup.
Scouting was intrinsically dangerous, but if they didn't leave the fortified buildings, the demons would just keep coming. Homez tried to gather some of the stronger Authorities and execute sorties on occasion, though they only had guesses about the locations of any of the demonic artifacts.
In the end all they discovered was another group of civilians: they had fortified themselves in the basement of one of the outlying buildings, which had collapsed during the fight. They'd survived up to this point, but how was anyone supposed to extract them without triggering a response from the Demonweaver's remaining forces? If they controlled a titan stage demon, they were substantially stronger than most Authorities, and the only Strongholds and above were in Raythe's sect, which refused to cooperate.
Homez looked around the Blacksilver complex and wondered what other options he even had. Eventually he spotted the little imp who was usually with Theo and his group, hovering sullenly in a corner. With few other options, he walked over to her.
"Senka, right?" Homez asked.
"More or less," she said.
"I was hoping so. Sorry if this is rude, but... what can you actually do?"
"Not much. If you count on me to get you out of this, you're going to have a bad time."
That was what he'd been afraid of, but Homez knew he couldn't do it himself. Even if he could convince himself to risk being captured by the demon-users, they simply outnumbered and outclassed him by too much. There were other Authorities still in the arena, so perhaps...
"Excuse me."
The voice came from his left, and far lower than he expected. Homez looked down and saw a large beetle, which unnerved him slightly even though he knew it was a Slescan. His eyes found the beetle first, because it was in the lead, but the one speaking was a more humanoid creature who reminded him of Krikree.
"I will translate," the Slescan said. "Going across the surface might be risky, but there are some among us who can dig tunnels..."