Asteria lowered her hands, barely refraining from groaning in relief as he nodded to her. The seventh test portal collapsed into a shower of blue sparks, dissolving under the demand of Ulysses’s ward.
Orion stood a few paces away, eyes closed. The Wraithgem pulsed against his chest, casting a brilliant violet light as it ran millions of calculations per second, feeding data from the collapsed portals into a rapidly evolving four-dimensional model.
"The grid is structured across multiple planes," he murmured, opening his eyes. Once he had a full dataset, he projected a wireframe half-sphere into the air, crisscrossed by crimson lines, some layered atop one another, and others spaced half an inch apart. “As expected, Ulysses anchored the suppressing field to the wards of Valderun, so he doesn’t need to power them himself, but that also means he has no control. Any spatial tear tries to push the threads apart, triggering a violent rebound.”
"So we have to slip between them, yes, that much you already said,” Asteria said, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. She looked at the projection, and her eyebrows rose as she beheld his latest version, which resembled a Möbius strip. "You intend to weave that through the gaps?”
"Yes," Orion confirmed. “It’s the most effective way to take advantage of the ward’s topology. If we can fold the space into a slipknot and step through, the geometry should resolve itself on the other side.”
He knew his mother didn’t have the physics background to understand why he’d chosen this specific configuration, but her instincts for spatial magic were stronger than his, as was her experience. She got the how well enough.
Still, she didn’t seem entirely convinced, so he motioned for her to speak. If there was something wrong with the spell, it was better to find out now than during the casting. “I’m just worried. The last time you attempted spatial translation on a whim, you severed your foot.”
The memory wasn’t one he cherished, yet it flashed viscerally through Orion’s mind. He recalled the desperate retreat across the Floating Bridge, cornered by the Matriarch Behenien. He recalled the chilling touch of the spatial shear as his formula sliced directly through the fabric of reality.
The cut had been so perfect that his own biology accepted the newly maimed leg as its natural, healed baseline. Standard magic had failed. If Eire had not crafted a stone prosthetic and if Asteria had not led him to a troll-infested ravine for Amber-Heart Mold to brew a Tier Four restoration elixir, he would still be hobbling.
"I remember," Orion said quietly. "And I have no intention of accidentally amputating myself again. But the spell is different this time. The Floating Bridge was a direct cut. This is a fold. We are bending the fabric of space around us, and I’m much more powerful and better attuned to the requirements of spatial magic.”
Though he’d forsaken teleportation since that day, he hadn’t abandoned the entire school, far too aware of its utility and its compatibility with his own Knowledge.
Developing spells like [Gravity Cannon], [Relativistic Lance], and many more had allowed him to gain insights into the school that he couldn’t have known before.
Asteria held his gaze for a long moment. She had the authority to forbid the casting, just as she had forbidden him from teleporting further after the incident. But the stakes had expanded far beyond a single missing foot.
“I suppose it shouldn’t be impossible, since I’ll be providing the fuel,” she muttered, as if trying to convince herself.
Given that they were unlikely to get more than one attempt at this if it actually worked, and they’d already wasted enough time studying the wards, it was decided to get ready, as if this were go time.
Dozens of witches flooded the room, among whom Orion recognized more than a couple, though he didn’t spot Pauline.
He’d expected to meet up with his erstwhile protector, even if he didn’t need her as much these days, but his mother had been tight-lipped about where she was. He’d been able to glean that it was a mission, and considering that Asteria was a Veil Priestess, it could have only come from the High Priestess herself to command such secrecy.
Seraphina’s gift of foresight was likely at work here, but he knew he wouldn’t get any more, so he kept his questions to himself.
The rest of Team Obsidian also filed in, having done their best to get a few hours of sleep and replenish their supplies after the frantic rush out of the Forgelands.
Once his mother gave him the signal, Orion planted his feet shoulder-width apart. He reached out, pushing his consciousness into the Wraithgem to prepare the empty spellform.
Asteria placed her hands on his back, and he braced himself.
Collaborative spellcasting was nothing new to the witches of the Sanctum, but given his unique circumstances, he’d taken part only rarely, and certainly not with such stakes.
Still, he knew the theory, so he relaxed his muscles and prepared to let her in.
The Field thrummed, and a torrent of spatial mana erupted from her palms, flooding into Orion’s body. It was a staggering volume, easily ten times what he could conjure, and the sheer pressure threatened to instantly crush his cognitive functions.
The Wraithgem intervened, absorbing the overflow and acting as a heat sink. Orion gritted his teeth, blood weeping from his left nostril as he channeled the roaring river of power into the logic gates he had drafted.
Groaning, he forced the energy into a Möbius curve. The air at the center of the ballroom began to warp. The marble floorboards splintered, groaning under the sudden force.
With thousands upon thousands of data points flooding his mind, he found the microscopic gaps in the crimson grid covering Cyril and focused on Valderun.
For a moment, he thought he wouldn’t make it. He was losing mana fast, and the spell wasn’t even complete, but another push from his mother gave him the time he needed to find the gap between threads closest to the Senate. It wasn’t inside the Collegium, as he would have preferred, but being inside the city at all was better than the worst-case scenario.
So determined, he threaded the slipknot through, tightening the non-Euclidean geometry.
A mirrored wormhole tore open in the center of the room. It reflected the ballroom in a thousand fractured angles, completely ignoring the suppressing field trying to crush it.
"The breach is stable!" Orion yelled over the roar of the wind generated by the spell. That was more a consequence of the excess mana venting away than any proper effect.
Team Obsidian moved without hesitation, and the witches weren’t far behind. Garrick charged through the mirrored glass, with Jordan and Esmeralda close behind. Erethemor lowered his horned head and slipped into the distortion.
"Hold the anchor!" Orion shouted to his mother as he stepped into the slipknot.
The transition was a nauseating inversion of gravity and spatial orientation, and Orion felt his internal organs shift as the tunnel’s structure pressed against his mind, forcing him to close his eyes lest he fall apart. He clamped his mind around the Wraithgem, refusing to let the spell collapse.
A second later, his boots slammed onto solid ground.
The wormhole snapped shut with a resonant crack just as Asteria stepped through, the displaced air rushing back to fill the void.
Orion stumbled, catching himself on a stone wall. He wiped the blood from his lip, and his overlay immediately booted up to map the new environment.
They stood in a narrow, shadowed alleyway. A silver-blue fog drifted through the streets, clinging to the buildings. It was saturated with the Arcane mana unique to the capital, an ambient energy so versatile it could stabilize temporary magic into permanent fixtures.
Beyond the alley, Valderun’s skyline soared above the bank. Many buildings were coated in shimmering spells that reflected light like glistening blue-and-white scales, giving the metropolis an ethereal look.
"We made it," Jordan whispered.
Orion peered around the edge of the brickwork. At the end of the avenue stood the Magisterium, carved from white and blue marble, its facades adorned with vibrant bas-reliefs depicting the history of Cyril’s factions. The towering entrance hall was dominated by a colossal gem-carved mage.
It was ironic that this was where he returned first, given his first experience in the city, but that wasn’t important now. It was also completely surrounded.
Hundreds of Silver Shields manned the plaza, the elite guard clearly out in force to defend the building against some sort of threat. They stood in rigid formations, warding the grand staircases and side entrances. He could even spy dozens more covering the roofs, and he didn’t doubt many more were within.
For a moment, Orion considered the possibility that they were acting on Antares’s behalf, but he immediately dismissed it. If that had been the case, they wouldn’t have been guarding the path to the Collegium; they would have stormed it.
His mother agreed, though she looked grim. “I can sense several clusters across the entire city, especially around Embassies. Elder Yue won’t be able to help us without a bloodbath.”
That was unwelcome news, but they’d already expected Ulysses to have found some way to stall the other factions.
"There is no path through that," Garrick muttered, stepping up beside Orion. His eyes narrowed, and he let out a frustrated sigh as a patrol came down the most direct route to the Collegium.
“There is another thing,” Esmeralda muttered. “The non-violence wards are still active.”
“Yeah, I can feel them," Orion confirmed. The citywide charms of Valderun were absolute. It was impossible to initiate violence or act with the intent to cause physical harm to another sentient being within the city limits. “Even if we could take them, we’d be stopped long before we got them all, and they aren’t under the same restrictions.”
“That’s why we shouldn’t strike them," Erethemor rumbled, a feral grin revealing his razor-sharp teeth. Smoke billowed from his jaws in preparation. “We'll strike the city itself.”
Garrick instantly grasped the dragonkin's meaning. He looked at Esmeralda. "Can you make it loud? Something that gets the attention of every watchman in the district?”
Nobody asked the dragonkin. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was to be loud and chaotic.
It still wouldn’t be easy. These weren’t conscripted soldiers but professionals, more than capable of understanding the risk of focusing on the source of chaos while leaving their quarry exposed.
“We shall join in,” an older witch said. There was a strange light in her eyes, and it was reflected in all the others.
Orion suddenly got the strange impression that being able to attack the center of the Collegium’s power with impunity for the first time in centuries was probably something more than one witch had longed for.
He eyed his mother, who nodded. It was the best plan they had.
Until they could get into the Collegium, they’d only be able to defend themselves, and even then, they’d have to hope Antares still had enough allies left for Ulysses not to be able to blast them out of existence.
"Just get to the Senate, kid," Garrick said, rolling his broad shoulders. "We will buy you time.”
And with that, they slipped out of the alley, moving away from the Magisterium and blending into the subdued crowds along the wider thoroughfares.
The witches left a few moments later, heading in a different direction, and only Orion and his mother remained.
Mere minutes later, a deafening roar shook the city.
A pillar of superheated dragonfire erupted five blocks away, rocketing toward the foggy silver-blue sky. The ambient Arcane mana field fed the flames, turning them a brilliant violet.
The heat soon reached them, followed by the sound of bubbling stone. Orion didn’t need to check to know that Erethemor was melting the ornate statues into pools of glowing slag.
A second later, a shrieking crimson mist exploded across the facades of the noble manses. Esmeralda manipulated several blood crystals’ worth of blood to craft towering illusions that writhed across the shimmering blue spell-structures.
They had no substance and thus violated no wards, but the sheer visual horror sent the civilian crowds screaming in panic.
Not long after, the ground began to shake, and several flashes of silver light erupted in the distance.
“Let’s go.”