TWC-specific notes after the chapters, but first I want to talk about my upcoming project.
Throne of Time will be my next serialized story and I'll write about its nature in more detail in my next post. What I need to talk about this post is scheduling. For those who only care about TWC, all you need to know is that TWC chapters will not affected, you'll just get a few other posts before chapters go to a dedicated tier.
Now, I've been working on this for a long while, it's weeks before TWC11 ends, and over a month before my next big promo. You'd think that would be more than enough time... except for how RoyalRoad requires a rush of chapters to start, and it's wiser to begin with advanced chapters on Patreon. This means that I need to be absurdly far ahead, if I want to have enough time to properly edit and maintain quality.
The first nine chapters form a mini-arc that has been written for some time, is reasonably well-edited, and is unlikely to change. My plan is to post those here early, both to give readers a taste and to get ahead of the game. I'll make them available to all patrons, since I don't want to mess with the tiers too early - free chapters if you're interested, otherwise ignore them for a little while if not and the schedule will change later.
So over the next weeks on MWF you'll get early chapters of Throne of Time. This won't necessarily start the regular posting, but the schedule will begin whenever it begins on RR, which will depend on how much I have edited and how I try to time everything.
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Chapter 48
"Should we just weirkey?" Nauda asked.
"No time," Theo answered as they pushed into the wind. He'd considered the same factors that he was sure were running through Nauda's mind now, but he thought their options were limited.
"But if we have to fly this far, are you sure it's faster?"
"He's moving, so we might arrive in the wrong place due to the weirkey lag. This way we can adjust our path."
"There are also some anti-weirkey stones," Fiyu added from beside them. "They may be natural to the hilly area to the south, but in any case, they will limit travel in all directions."
They had left Isorales to protect the tournament grounds as the three of them blazed south as quickly as they could. Some had objected or tried to set up other plans, but Theo couldn't afford to waste time. He had asked Krikree to remain to help defend the others and given some of the sub-Authority contestants the Deuxan sleigh so that they could patrol. Hopefully they could all keep things under control and prevent a secondary attack by Tymetron or demons.
Technically Theo might be leading them south on a wild goose chase, but his mind was filled with a cold dread he didn't entirely understand. There was something about the way Raythe was out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by loyal allies... this felt wrong. Like the end of a story that Vistgil might write.
Fortunately, Fiyu and Nauda had trusted him and hadn't needed to be convinced. The justification he had been preparing to use was that Tymetron knew they had arrived and were now taking aggressive actions that they hadn't previously risked. When that meant a conventional army attacking the tournament grounds, that was something they could counter, but if there was something else in play...
"He's ahead." Theo could feel the shifting masses, distinct from the landscape. Still a long flight off, but within the range of his senses. "What do we know?"
"I feel Raythe and his followers." Nauda had her eyes closed, trusting her flight path to the others, and frowned as she tried to sense further. "A lot of Strongholds, maybe a dozen. There's one life force that doesn't match. Must be from Tymetron."
"Any idea why they're out in the middle of nowhere? Chasing an enemy?"
"Homez said that Raythe was torturing Tymetronese captives to learn the location of the Demonweaver. Must have led them out here."
"They are arguing," Fiyu said softly. "Bodies prepared for a fight, but they have not yet started. I... wait, all of Raythe's sect just froze."
Their masses didn't change, but as Theo strained his senses forward, he could just feel it - Raythe's sect had suddenly locked up. He realized that he recognized the power that wrapped around them: it was the living gold that had taken Homez and so many other slaves of Tymetron.
And in that moment, Theo understood what had truly been happening. Raythe had been brutally torturing captives, convinced he was taking the most effective path to gain power, but torture wasn't any more effective in the Nine Worlds than it was on Earth. All research suggested that people under torture would say anything they thought would make the torture stop, so the Tymetronese had told Raythe what they thought he wanted to hear. That had led him out into the wilderness, chasing after a Demonweaver who wasn't there.
But why? Was this all a random accident, or was there some other hand in it?
As he continued flying at top speed, Theo got close enough that his eyes could begin to make out details. Raythe's followers might have been frozen in place by golden seals, but he surged forward, impaling the Tymetronese soulcrafter on his sword. The man was just an Authority, so he didn't have a chance... why hadn't he run?
"How did you do that?" Raythe screamed, just audible. Theo couldn't hear the response, but he didn't need to: whatever Raythe thought he had done to disable the living gold, it had never been remotely enough. Tymetron could have annihilated his sect at will, so why was this the moment to reveal that trump card?
Then Theo had arrived, skidding in the air beside Raythe, his frozen sect, and a single enemy soulcrafter. There was no threat in sight and yet Theo's mind was still choking on dread.
"Search the area beyond this," Theo told his allies tersely, even as he began sweeping his mass sense over the surrounding area. "There has to be something..."
"You!" Raythe pushed the Tymetronese man off his sword and swung it toward Theo instead. "Get back! You could be infested with deadgold too!"
There was no time to argue with him about whether he was mistaken - Theo briefly glanced at the rigid soulcrafters around them and confirmed his hypothesis, then dismissed them - what mattered was that they were all missing something. It was remotely possible that Tymetron had been happy simply to make Raythe irrelevant, but Theo couldn't afford to assume that.
"Whatever you're doing..." Raythe swung his sword back to the dying Tymetronese soulcrafter. "It will fail! You didn't count on me chasing down your plan to stop you!"
"Idiot..." The soulcrafter spoke through blood, a bitter smile on his face. "We needed you here."
"What does that mean? What does that mean?"
The only response was a bloody chuckle.
"Every time you don't answer, I'm cutting off a limb!" Raythe swung his sword for one of the legs, but Theo moved in first, creating a portal and shoving Raythe into it. At Theo's maximum portal range, that put Raythe out near the hills, where he let out a cry of rage and began flying back. Hopefully that would buy enough time.
In that time, Theo didn't attack: he bent down beside the dying soulcrafter. It might be completely useless, but if anything would be effective in these final moments, it might be mercy.
"Why sacrifice your life for this?" Theo asked gently.
"To save Tymetron." The soulcrafter spoke with surprising sincerity; he was no slave or conscript, he truly believed in his empire. "Plutalgion himself asked me."
"To do what?"
Raythe had returned, but Nauda intercepted him, grabbing his arm before he could swing. As Raythe ranted and the two of them struggled, Theo bent lower, trying to make out the words the dying soulcrafter was saying.
"A favor that could win us the war..." The soulcrafter's smile was bloody, but strangely satisfied as they died.
Theo remained there, ignoring Raythe and everything else around him except his gravitational senses scrutinizing the area. It was possible that the Tymetronese soulcrafter had been lying to him as well, and he shouldn't base actions on the idea that those cryptic words were true. Yet they seemed to confirm that this mattered, that Tymetron could lose all their soulcrafters on the field and somehow still find victory...
"Idiot!" Raythe screamed. "We could have gotten the Demonweaver's location!"
"No..." Fiyu spoke far softer, but Theo heard her over Raythe. The Ichili woman was staring southeast, in a direction that Theo hadn't fully explored yet, so he stretched out his gravitational senses after hers.
And understood that it was too late.
The Demonweaver's forces could harness demons temporarily, if not control them, but that had always been a distraction. Their goal, far from the main battle that drew everyone's attention, had been to cause the demons to sacrifice themselves naturally. Now the words "we needed you here" made sense, because demons would only fuse into a higher stage if they were opposed by sufficiently strong soulcrafters.
Raythe's very presence must have caused six titans to be generated, but that was in the past: the third stage demons had already sacrificed themselves into a fourth stage demon, which was now charging across the landscape toward them.
When it came into sight, it was identical to the demon Theo remembered from his nightmares: crimson skin, crushing stone feet, horns arcing like blades. He froze in that moment, his mind filled with visions of his old allies dying. Eratius had fallen in pieces, Khaluu had burned alive, Brigana had sacrificed herself to save him... they had been Strongholds and they had died instantly, and now an identical demon was charging toward them.
"Another demon?" Raythe redirected his sword toward it scornfully. "That was their plan? Without soulcrafters guiding them, they're useless!"
The fourth stage demon was close now, eyes burning with unholy blue fire. It opened its maw and the flames within threatened to consume him...
And Theo was in the air. No one had pulled him there, he had moved on his own. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he wasn't the boy he had been years ago; he had faced that trauma and moved on from it, so he wouldn't freeze now when his allies needed him. Fiyu and Nauda were in the air beside him, justifiably concerned.
The landscape beneath them was a hellish sea of flame that had incinerated many of the weaker soulcrafters instantly. Raythe must have used his sword to deflect the attack, because he stood in a clear space, but it looked as though the fire had scorched him badly. And the worst of it was that the demon had ignored him, instead tearing into the soulcrafters who were still frozen by the gold within their soulhomes.
It was terrifyingly fast for such a bulky creature, annihilating the frozen soulcrafters before Theo could do more than begin to generate a singularity near the edge of the battlefield. Fortunately, the demon had yet to pay any attention to them, instead turning on Raythe. He let out a cry and swung his sword in a swath of dark flame.
Fragments of the sword tumbled through the air. One of the great horns had already pierced through Raythe's chest, lifting him overhead. His eyes went dead as his blood poured down over the demon, which was coated in a new layer of red.
"Theo...?" Fiyu was beside him, gripping his sleeve.
"Do we have a chance against that thing?" Nauda asked.
Theo took another deep breath, refocusing. His first impression must have been shock, because this demon wasn't perfectly identical to the one that had ended his first life. It had the same muscular form, but the horns had lines of gold running through their spirals and it stood more on its hind legs than the one he remembered, which ran on all fours.
"We can't let it attack everyone else," Theo said quietly. "I don't know how strong it is, so be careful."
They'd just seen the demon tear through Strongholds and a Dominion, so it was a mark of either trust or madness that Nauda and Fiyu were prepared to fight alongside him. The three of them hung in the air above the ruined landscape, where the demon now turned to look up at them.
The creature didn't speak, didn't growl, didn't give any indication that it was alive. Yet more so than any other demon Theo had seen before, its eyes seemed to hold depthless hatred.
All of them moved at once as the demon launched itself into the air. They split in opposite directions and unfortunately the demon proved able to fly, turning sharply to pursue Fiyu. While still building a singularity, Theo cast the best gravitational field he could, but it seemed to slip off the demon, which had greater anti-cantae properties than any he'd ever fought.
Well, any that he'd survived.
Fiyu pivoted in midair without slowing down and unleashed a narrow lightstorm into the demon's face. Her onslaught knocked it backward, but the demon pivoted out of the stream, only somewhat singed, and hurtled directly toward her. In panic Fiyu tried to swing her lightstorm to strike it, too slowly to stop it from closing the distance.
Nauda tackled the demon from above, driving it into the ground with surprising force. Even as they landed in a crater, she slammed her gauntlet down into its face, and Theo did his best to increase her mass and anchor her so that her blows could land heavier.
But she only got off two before the demon slashed back, its claws raking her arm even she punched. Nauda fell back in pain and Theo pulled her away with a reversed gravitational field, dropping her into the sky as claws slashed through where she had been moments before.
As the demon flipped to its feet, the situation looked bad for them, with Fiyu still off guard and Nauda cradling her slashed arm. But instead of pursuing either of them, the demon paused with eerie stillness, its head tilted almost like a doll.
Abruptly it leapt: not toward any of them, but toward the hill where Theo had been secretly building his singularity. He clapped his hands together, tunneling it away into the heavens, only to see the demon streak upward in a red blur.
Before it could arrive, Nauda leapt after it, grabbing the demon's leg with her good arm. Fiyu struck a moment later, blasting it at close range with another lightstorm. While it was distracted, Theo tunneled the singularity back to ground level, hoping that he could build it up to an adequate size to finish the demon off.
With an explosion of unnatural power, the demon kicked Nauda away and evaded Fiyu, shooting directly toward the singularity. It wasn't like the mindless demons that pursued whatever target was closest: it was smart and perceptive enough to realize that the singularity was the largest threat and focus on it. He might not have enough time to tunnel again, and the demon was so close...
Rejecting that path as a dead end, Theo instead flattened his hands together and let the energy that had been built up explode, just as the demon arrived. The shockwave swept over it, and the demon crashed through the hill, but as it pulled itself to his feet, Theo would have sworn that it looked smug.
Was he insane for even trying to fight it? Theo had pushed himself to this point, refusing to let his past memories slow him down, but it was possible that he was being just as reckless as Raythe. Based on the formula of demonic strength, a fourth stage demon was probably stronger than a Dominion. That meant that the three of them fighting it sounded like suicide... and also that there was no one who could step in and save them.
"What's the plan?" Nauda appeared beside him, and he saw that she was healing her injured arm.
"I did not try my cantae blade in order to be cautious," Fiyu said, "but I believe that could injure it."
Seeing the two of them determined to keep fighting convinced Theo. Previously, he and his allies had been wiped out without even touching a demon like this. So far the battle hadn't gone in their favor, but it wasn't impossible.
"Test stealth cautiously," Theo told Fiyu, "and Nauda, see how it reacts to wards. Stay close together and be ready."
They nodded and disappeared together, leaving Theo as the only one for the demon to focus on. It seemed to be glaring solely at him, yet something about the shifting of those eyes... he knew that it was suspicious enough that it wouldn't be taken off guard easily.
For now, Theo flew skyward as the demon pursued aggressively. It wasn't a rematch, but if he wasn't careful, it could be a repeat.
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Chapter 49
In the air the demon was shockingly fast, and it would have caught Theo if he hadn't fully utilized gravitational fields to increase his speed or abruptly change his velocity. As he evaded, staying just ahead of the demon's claws, Theo kept hurling cantae bolts. They didn't pierce, but he could feel his cantae drilling into the demon's flesh, breaking it down just a little.
After trying to grasp him multiple times, the demon abruptly breathed a column of flame just where Theo had been intending to dodge. He struggled to brake with his cantae and reverse direction, and in that time the demon plunged toward him with murderous ferocity.
Directly into a portal.
The other portal opened just above ground level, where the others had been waiting, and delivered the demon directly into the earth. Theo hadn't fully explained his plan, yet Nauda had understood and she was ready by the second portal: her gauntlet smashed into the demon's face the instant it appeared. As it flew backward, a long slash from Fiyu's cantae blade opened up along its side.
This wasn't impossible. Theo began preparing more portals with one hand while he levitated rocks with his other, readying an orbital bombardment. At this speed of combat, it would take longer than he liked for the rocks to get high enough, but hopefully the demon's unnatural sense for cantae wouldn't detect purely physical projectiles in the same way.
The demon rebounded, apparently unaffected by the cut along its side, and rushed toward Nauda. She had built up a thick line of wards in front of herself, but the demon plowed directly through them, only gritting a maw of teeth.
In that moment Nauda kicked it in the chest, but the demon barely rocked backward, then one claw grabbed her leg. It pulled her in, other claw striking at her chest. Somehow Nauda managing to block and the force of the blow only slammed her into the ground instead of tearing her apart.
She bounced off the stone, briefly stunned, and the demon should have fallen on her. Instead it froze again, eyes twitching suspiciously, and abruptly dodged back. An instant later it swept its head to the side, unleashing a broad swath of flame that covered half the field in fire. Somehow it sensed where Fiyu had been lying in wait, at least roughly, and countered.
Except it didn't realize that Fiyu could also make herself briefly incorporeal. She emerged from the flames, visible as a shimmer, and thrust her blade into the demon's chest.
Unnatural ichor spurted, but the demon struck in the same movement. The blow caught Fiyu across the face, sending her tumbling to the ground. It didn't hesitate for a moment, already unleashing a stream of fire toward where she fell.
Theo flashed in the way, grabbing Fiyu and turning his back so that his coat absorbed the majority of the fire, but it still burned. He kept up his momentum, shooting as far away from the demon as he could. It was still pursuing them, and so Theo cast a portal in the way, intending to send the demon off in the other direction.
It caught the portal in midair, claws and feet grasping the circle of cantae. With a burning snort, the demon shattered the technique.
That had at least bought them a little time: Fiyu was stirring and beginning to control her own flight again, but the rainbow surface of her mask had an ugly crack through it.
"Are you alright?" Theo asked as he kept an eye on the demon.
"I do not think stealth will be effective," she answered, faintly but with determination. "We must try something else."
"We've slowed it a little. I'll try another singularity, if we can pull its attention in several directions."
Fiyu nodded and they flew in opposite directions before the demon could catch up. Meanwhile Nauda had risen to her feet and it looked as if she was partially healed, though still clearly wounded. The three of them instinctively used a triangle formation, rotating around the demon in the center.
Nauda and Fiyu attacked from opposite sides, attempting to stay at range and weaken the demon by a thousand cuts. While it was distracted, Theo began generating another singularity above, trying something different this time, hidden within the clouds. He didn't get very far before the demon noticed and shot after it.
This time Theo was more prepared, tunneling away the partial singularity at the last possible second across the battlefield. That didn't seem to bother the demon at all, which continued to pursue, even as Nauda and Fiyu tried to menace it. Theo desperately began dropping his rocks, but the demon sped through the orbital bombardment with troublesome ease, getting closer and closer to the singularity with each step.
Again Theo tunneled it away... and too late, he realized that the demon had stopped pursuing. Instead of anticipating the next location, it pushed all its speed into lunging directly at Theo. He had barely realized when the claw tore through his chest.
Theo cried out in pain and tumbled backward, the demon in close pursuit. Instead of stopping his tumble, Theo increased it with gravitational fields, spinning himself around rapidly so that when he reversed direction, he slipped under the demon's attack.
And his fist hit its jaw with a torsion punch.
Both of them hurtled in opposite directions, the demon plowing through a hill while Theo bounced off the ground and used a gravitational field to throw himself into the air instead. When he regained his stability, he was astonished that he had managed to keep building the singularity through all of that. Every layer of his armament coat had been torn through and the claws had cut deeper into his chest than he wanted to think about. If not for all the defenses he'd built up, he would have been dead.
Across the field, he saw that one of the demon's horns was visibly cracked. Though the creature still wasn't slowing, Theo could feel that they were eroding away its anti-cantae essence.
The singularity was back in the sky, and though Fiyu tried to intercept the demon, it evaded her lightstorms on the way up. Theo swiftly placed a portal on the ground, then cast another in front of the demon. It barely spun aside from the portal, continuing upward, then slipped around his second attempt more easily. When Theo placed a third portal above the demon, it evaded scornfully.
Nauda flew through behind it. The demon realized a second later, but not fast enough to avoid her locked fists slamming into its head.
As the demon plummeted as a meteor, Nauda turned to Theo and mouthed "Finish it." He knew that she didn't meant the demon and focused fully on his singularity.
When the demon landed in another crater, Fiyu was on it in an instant, driving her blade deep into its back. Again, she dealt a serious blow but couldn't evade the retaliation, which sent her tumbling across the ground. She lay still and Theo's heart leapt into his throat, but he had to trust them and focus on the final blow they needed.
Before the demon could finish off Fiyu, Nauda landed in front of it. She didn't attempt to strike directly, instead caught its swing, her fingers locked with its claws. When it swung again she grabbed the next strike as well and they tested their strength against one another. The demon couldn't pierce Nauda with its claws, but it was driving her back, step by step.
Abruptly Nauda jerked the demon's arms toward her and it slammed into a wall of wards she'd made with her foot. In the brief moment it was stunned, she landed another blow to its face. The horn that Theo had cracked broke in half, tumbling to earth.
It hadn't struck before the demon breathed fire into Nauda at point blank range. She screamed and tried to pull away, but her hands were still locked with the demon's. A second later Nauda stomped the ground, her wave of nullification erasing the fire and also seeming to knock back the demon. Once more it tried to breathe fire, and she interrupted it with a stomp, but how long could that last?
The singularity in the clouds was ready, and could have consumed a Dominion, but would that be enough? Considering the demon's incredible cantae resistance, Theo knew that could be a fatal assumption and began rebuilding the power. When they clashed, he would have to be ready to end it.
Meanwhile, Fiyu was on her feet and unleashing a steady stream of light bolts into the demon's back. For a moment, battering the creature between them with stomps and light, it almost seemed as if Nauda and Fiyu could overcome it alone. But somehow it managed to kick Nauda in the chest, driving her into the ground, and reversed direction toward Fiyu.
She held her ground, flattening her hands together and compressing her lightstorm into a blindingly intense line. It seared through one of the demon's arms, but it twisted forward, abandoning the arm and striking Fiyu with its other claw.
When she hit the ground, it wasn't obvious if she would move again, and Theo realized he had spent too much time preparing. Even if he tunneled the singularity that instant, it wouldn't arrive fast enough.
But before the demon could finish Fiyu, Nauda threw herself in the way. She slammed her arm directly into its jaws, and though it bit down savagely, she just kept pushing. Her other arm pummeled the demon's chest as they struck at one another in a brutal match that Nauda could only lose.
Eventually she fell to the ground, covered in blood. Fiyu had managed to push herself up, but she only stared at Nauda in horror, either too stunned or too shocked to do anything.
That was when Theo tunneled his singularity into the demon's chest.
Everything should have ended right then, except somehow the demon resisted. Its chest was crumbling like sand, particles of its body being drained into the singularity, yet the demon managed to push the rest of its body back. It took one step, then another, and Theo realized it might actually escape.
He landed on the ground, placing himself between the demon and his allies, and began to push. The demon stumbled, for the first time roaring as the singularity absorbed more of its chest. It tried to unleash fire, but Theo's singularity had built up enough that even the demonic flame was consumed and the singularity grew larger.
Even though the demon's body was half-destroyed, it still persisted, the fires of its eyes fixing on him with unending hatred. Theo watched in astonishment as the demon reached out with its remaining arm and grasped the event horizon, touching what should have been a purely nominal barrier as if it was solid. He realized that it was denying all properties of gravity, treating the technique as cantae alone and tearing itself away.
Sweat was rolling down Theo's face, he wavered in the air, and his soulhome was emptying. If it had continued like that, his soulhome would eventually have run dry and the demon would have overcome the singularity.
That was the moment when Theo released his remaining power and allowed the singularity to blossom into a binary.
When the demon had fought his initial singularity so effectively, Theo had realized that wouldn't be enough. So on his second attempt, he had begun with the binary on his Stronghold floor, making the two orbit so closely together that they looked like a single black hole. But now they separated, taking on the true form from his soulhome, Corporeal and Ethereal circling together and reinforcing one another.
The shifting binary began consuming the demon's claw, then its arm. It tried once more, but all of it was dissolving now, and with a final look of hatred it tumbled directly into the void.
A surge of new power made the binaries explode in size. Too exhausted to deal with controlling the new power, Theo closed his hands and finally dismissed the technique.
Silence reigned over the battlefield. He waited for some new enemy to emerge, but there was nothing.
They had won... but Nauda lay on the ground, still and unmoving while Fiyu wept over her.
-
This is another sense in which the series has come full circle: Theo fighting the same sort of demon he met in the prologue, at the same tier, with a different result. When I started I dreamed of this as a culminating moment showing that in soulcrafting, quality matters more than quantity. Since then, I've come to feel that progression fantasy as a genre has no interest in this sort of thing and it would have been better to make number go up more, but I hope those who are still following the series enjoyed it.
This concludes the action of this book, but there's more denouement than usual. You will see why next week.