Chapter Nineteen: Ascension
Written by Jeff
Columns rose up starkly from the crashing waves in the area that used to be the Outer Rings, each one completely surrounded by water, rising and falling simultaneously in a hypnotic blur. But the column from the vision was different. Dry land that remained exposed around the column’s base made it clearly distinguishable from the others; a place for travelers from around the world to dock and congregate before somehow ascending to the platform above.
As far as they could see, the airship from the Capital was the first to arrive at the column’s base. Hundreds of people disembarked from the vessel, nervously checking their surroundings before spilling out onto the rocky terrain. Drescel was hesitant to land too close to the column itself, choosing instead to put the ship down closer to the shore and walk in for closer inspection.
As they disembarked and took in their surroundings, none of the survivors from the Central Islands seemed particularly frightened by the sight of a massive, bear-like creature covered in shaggy white fur materializing a bridge of solid ice across the turbulent waters with white plumes spewing from its mouth. Perhaps it was because they could see the old, wizened man with crimson red skin who rode on the beast’s back, accompanied by three young women in furs. The survivors from the Capital knew that those with crimson skin were protectors, and were happy to see allies appear first, not enemies.
Still, everyone knew the first fight was coming. They had seen it in the vision. What they weren’t so sure of was how it would begin. None of them expected it to start with one another.
Knowing it was a particularly powerful piece of weaponry, the Irapa had retrieved Finnegan’s Magi revolver from the snow above their compound and sent it along with the rest of the supplies. They had also found the avtimag bomb the man had dropped when he was fighting the Vist and had salvaged it with his gun for this final confrontation. Finnegan was happy to have both of the weapons back in his possession, but he was particularly pleased to be reunited with his revolver. It was capable of blasting brutal, icy holes through its targets, and so, somewhat unsurprisingly, the gun always felt cold to the touch. Finnegan gripped the handle in its holster and it felt as if he had plunged his hand into a freezing river. He closed his eyes and sighed in relief. The sensation was a much-needed reprieve from the fuming murderous rage that was once again beginning to boil beneath his skin as his group met up with another contingent of powerful Magi and Touched.
Soon, the cold sensation emanating from the revolver was acting not only as a balm but as a preventative measure, inhibiting his right hand from unholstering the gun and blasting away at these unsuspecting “allies.” Every part of Finnegan’s body burned and ached for him to incite violence, and he clenched his teeth so hard he heard a molar crack, but his hand remained rested against the icy cool weapon that sat on his hip. Somehow, it was enough to keep his murderous rage at bay. Until he saw her.
These people were traveling with Laureena. They were protecting her - or was she protecting them? Her beast was gone; the orb was nowhere to be seen. But Finnegan knew that Värlof was still inside of her. He could feel it in his blood. Simply being in their proximity was sending him over the edge.
Gradually, the coldness of the revolver thawed in his hand and any trace of relief it had offered was replaced by stinging and searing as if he were gripping an iron in the fire. Finnegan stood between the shaman and Jartow, who were speaking with the leaders of the other group. He knew these people: One of them was the Capital scholar who was there in the ruins when they had found the ancient Settler artifact that had melted out their eyes. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he was there now with a woman that seemed so familiar, Finnegan knew they had met before but just couldn’t place it. It was when she turned to him and gasped in fear, when her expression changed from strong and determined to frightened and small, that Finnegan knew where he had seen her before. She’d had crimson skin then, lying on the ground with her hands up, just starting to plead her case before he had exploded an icy crater into her chest.
Elinea only looked at the man in fear for a moment before turning away, either in disgust or indifference, it wasn’t entirely clear. She and all the others were busy talking, making a plan for how to move forward, but Finnegan couldn’t seem to make out a word any of them were saying. Every new voice was like another dull throb overlapping the next, until his head swam and ached and his eardrums felt like they were going to expand and push his artificial eyes out from their sockets. Finnegan’s gaze was fixated on Laureena, who was positioned away from the others, still in earshot of their conversation but choosing to stand close to an Aquine man instead.
The revolver seared into the skin on Finnegan’s hip, pleading to be brandished, to be used for its intended purpose. He knew that he couldn’t resist the urge much longer, and tried to speak up to the shaman for help, but no words left his mouth. Some of his own thoughts still fought against the corruption, and Finnegan wondered if killing Laureena would end his own suffering; it seemed that simply being near Värlof’s vessel was further amplifying his murderous rage.
Elinea was the first to see Finnegan pull the Magi revolver from his holster and take aim. She couldn’t see that he was aiming at Laureena, but knowing the girl was the target wouldn’t have prevented her from lunging to stop him. In the instant before Finnegan pulled the trigger, the end of Elinea’s harpoon made contact with the steel barrel and changed the gun’s trajectory.
For everyone standing on the rocky shore, everything that happened next felt like a blur. The sound of the gunshot sent people scattering and screaming in all directions, specifically those who didn’t have powers to protect themselves. The bullet went whizzing past Laureena’s arm, and as she looked up and saw who had fired it, her body erupted in fire and tendrils, nearly scorching Danvers, who thankfully had strayed from her side. The icy bullet had missed its original target, plunging instead into an unsuspecting Touched who had traveled with the group from the Capital. The man didn’t have his guard up - he had no reason to suspect an attack - and after so many days untethered from his own specific orb, his barrier powers were no longer involuntary. The entire right side of his torso was blasted away and then frozen over and he dropped to the ground with a thud.
As Elinea pulled her harpoon back to ram it through Finnegan’s chest, the man’s body went limp and crumpled onto the rocks below, as if all the air had been sucked out of him. She looked up and saw the shaman with his hands to his temples, performing an incantation on the man, and then turned to survey the frantic scene. The rest of the Irapa and several of the Techniks had surrounded Laureena, who was releasing blasts of fire into the air as a warning, screaming at them to stay away. Danvers was pacing in front of her with his hands out, pleading that she wasn’t the enemy. Jartow had sprinted away from the group, trying to corral the frightened Callans who were scattering all across the beach and running towards the column that stood imposingly in the center of the island.
Elinea ran to the Touched man who had been shot and kneeled to see if he was still alive, but his pulse was gone along with much of his upper body. Another Touched woman was already kneeling at his side, her face full of mourning but without tears. The man’s body had fallen in a bent, awkward heap, and so Elinea grabbed him to lay him flat on the ground. But as she went to do this small, kind deed, she forgot about the liptis that had replaced her right hand, and as it came into contact with the corpse, it began to feed on the dead man’s magical essence.
This energy felt so much cleaner entering her body than anything she had absorbed through the liptis before, and her eyes rolled back a little in delight as the parasite sucked it in. Strangely, it didn’t feel as if the liptis was siphoning away energy for itself, as it usually did, but this time was giving it all to Elinea. After several long moments, her eyes opened and she saw that the Touched woman was watching her intently, not judging, but curious. Elinea yanked the liptis away abruptly, horrified at what she had done, but the woman placed her hand on Elinea’s and smiled, shaking her head softly.
“You should take it,” she said plainly. “It will help you, and by extension, all of us. He doesn’t need it anymore.”
Hesitantly, Elinea placed the liptis back on the fallen man’s body, and when it was done, she looked at the skin on her left hand in equal parts fascination and disbelief. The color was changing, regaining an undeniable crimson tint shining through beneath its natural brown hue.
Jartow came galloping back and the shaman climbed up onto him. His three bodyguards lifted Finnegan’s limp body up and flopped it in front of the shaman, whose attention seemed to be focused on the space above his head. He was having a conversation with someone, but Elinea could only hear the side that was coming from the Irapa leader: “I’m sure you are sorry for killing that poor man, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you come back into your body and do it again! He was an ally! Killing him did what? And I’m just supposed to take your word for it that you won’t do it again?”
As the shaman spoke into the air, Jartow took off again towards the column until Elinea couldn’t hear the one-sided conversation anymore. She took off in the same direction, running intently towards the towering pillar of water, and as she did the world around her began to blur and elongate, her legs propelling her forward though it didn’t seem like she was moving the muscles herself. Only the column in the center of her view was in clear focus, so she wrenched her head to the side to try and make out what surrounded her in the blurry periphery. There were countless others who were also running towards the column - far, far more than had arrived in her airship or with the Irapa. And they were not just Callans, and Magi, and Techniks, but also creatures like the ones who had attacked the Capital. They were all running in the same direction as her, moving in as if pulled to a gravitational center.
When Elinea looked back at the column, it appeared as if the unfathomable wall of rushing water was careening towards her, filling the space between at impossible speeds. She tried to pull herself back, to stop her momentum, but she and everyone else on the island was on a collision course. When Elinea reached the base of the column and prepared to slam into the solid stone that stood behind the wall of water, her body loosened and relaxed instead of tensing up, and she did not crash into the column’s surface. She phased directly through it.
There was a flash, and suddenly Elinea’s body was no longer moving forward, but up. It felt as if her body had dematerialized, and the atoms were shooting vertically into the stars, traveling within the great column as a conduit. The light intensified and the speed increased, pulling at the very essence of her being until the pieces were stretched and warped, and then in an instant, everything snapped back into place and her consciousness returned to her physical body.
For the first time in four years, Elinea stood beneath a sky that was clear and vibrant blue. No rain, no darkened clouds; just pure, unfiltered sunshine. She looked down and saw that she was standing on top of water. She picked her feet up and down and no droplets fell from her boots. The surface was solid, like glass. There was no visible platform beneath her, and she wasn’t using any barrier powers - she hadn’t even checked yet to see if any had returned to her from the energy she absorbed from that Touched man. The water stretched on in all directions with no end, a perfect mirror to the unblemished sky above. There was no one else in sight.
As if being superimposed by another reality, the world around Elinea began to change. A new vision was presenting itself to her, and the sight of it filled her with both contentment and desire. She saw herself in a new world, a new existence that surpassed everything she had known in her long life before. She was living with other Touched, creating a culture that thrived on cooperation, and education, and egalitarianism. She was no longer alone, no longer isolated from those who understood her. Visually, the setting wasn’t so different from what she had known on Koa, but everything about her role in the culture had changed. She saw Hallister there, and the blind wanderer, and even Laureena, working together to make a better life for everyone, free from the dogma and colonialism of the Capital.
The others from below had ascended the platform as well, and they too saw visions of a world renewed. In Danvers’ vision he was back on Delvorn, or rather, on a boat in its waters. Laureena was his first mate, and together they did their part to keep the people in their community healthy and fed. He was an important cog in a well-oiled machine; all he had ever aspired to be. Laureena’s vision wasn’t dramatically different - she longed for a world that allowed her to love and belong and grow without needing to burn away the things that stood in her way. Finnegan saw a world where he would never need to resort to violence again to solve problems; where safety and security were no longer his duty to uphold. He saw a world where he could finally let down his guard because the balance he had spent his entire life fighting for had been sought, and won.
The visions of these would-be worlds faded and dissolved and the bright blue sky and reflecting solid sea returned, and with them, the masses of people and beasts who had all ascended to the top of the platform. Elinea jumped back with a start when reality seemed to re-materialize and she found herself surrounded by a group of monstrous insects, Vist, and Techniks in mechanical suits. Bizarrely, none of them instinctively attacked her, still reeling from their own visions. Before their gazes could meet hers, a voice materialized in everyone’s minds:
“What you have seen is the world you most desire, and it is within your reach. But first, you must take it.”
This declaration snapped everyone out of their stupor, and as if on cue, the horrible creatures from the underworld began attacking everyone and everything around them. Though the scene appeared to be pure chaos, the battle wasn’t exactly a free-for-all. The Magi, Touched, and Techniks had never been allied before, but they instinctively found themselves working together against the monsters that would otherwise kill them all indiscriminately. The shaman released Finnegan from his astral timeout and his soul shot back into his body, springing to life on Jartow’s back then exploding off like a ricochet, pulling a blade from his back and impaling a lion-sized insect in a single, graceful swoop. The shaman called out telepathically to the frightened Callans, who were already being mowed down as the easiest targets, and urged them to congregate around Jartow, who was building them a barrier for protection.
Elinea heard Hallister calling to her in her mind and sprinted off to find him. He wasn’t far, and easy to spot hovering in the air, surrounded by a translucent orange sphere. The book he had once given her was open and floating independently in front of him, and he was chanting an incantation in complete concentration. Around the Magi, the blind wanderer and remaining Touched from the Central Islands were doing their best to keep a sea of Vist from getting too close.
In the center of the Vist swarm, Elinea saw what must be their leader. She was significantly larger than the others, and like the Vist was roughly humanoid in shape, though her limbs and neck were elongated and articulated like the body of a millipede. Her face, or what appeared to be her face, was covered in dark slits that resembled closed eyelids, the flesh flickering as she scanned the area with the jerky movements of her multi-jointed neck. Elinea slashed at oncoming Vist as she ran towards her cohorts, and it was clear their attack was focused on Hallister.
“That’s Gezla,” announced the blind wanderer as Elinea slid in next to him behind a Touched barrier. “One of the Immured Eight, and as we can see now, the queen of the Vist. We have to try and take out any of the eight we see as the first priority, or we won’t stand a chance surviving for long.”
“Sure, but do we stand a chance surviving against even one of them?” asked Elinea. “Your info cache made it sound like they were too much even for the Settlers and the Nemarus to defeat.”
“We’re not trying to defeat them, per se,” he said. “Any one of the eight would kill us all if the aim was to try and kill them back. Hallister is attempting to reverse the polarity shift in their containment orbs, something that flipped when the Shift happened. If he can do that, they’ll be trapped away inside again, and won’t be able to attack. Our job is to keep Hallister safe until he can complete the spells.”
Elinea nodded and turned to face the swarm of Vist, her liptis tugging forward, probing to feed on the creatures. She remembered back to Koa, when her powers had faltered and a single Vist had taken her off guard, infecting and paralyzing her arm and causing it to shatter. Now surrounded by the creatures, she dodged their claws with effortless grace, using the liptis to drain a target momentarily before injecting its magical power back into it, frying the beast from the inside.
But for every Vist that Elinea and her compatriots killed, more continued to appear, seemingly endless, as if regenerating. At first, she was baffled that more just kept emerging, but then she saw how: Gezla was constantly shedding grey scales from her body, and as they were inundated with her purple smoke, they grew and expanded into fully-formed monsters in a matter of moments. There was no way they could ever win this fight unless Gezla was contained.
Hallister had been chanting away inside of his bubble, reciting the incantation, but nothing seemed to be happening. Elinea could barely hear his words over the din of the battle, but then the volume started to build, louder and louder until the spell was all she could hear in her ears and it was hard to keep her focus on the Vist. When it seemed that Hallister’s words were so loud that her brain was going to break loose from her skull, the incantation stopped and there was a popping sensation like she had just descended from altitude. Gezla let out a piercing shriek and her arms flailed in the air as if something was pulling at her legs. Her claws scratched at the sky as her body retreated below the swarm of Vist, and when the wailing ceased, all of her army melted down with her. Elinea, the blind wanderer, and the Touched let their arms relax and go slack as they looked on at the strange scene in front of them: A sea of gray scales resting above the still, solid waters, and at its center, a black orb, once again containing its prisoner.
Not far away, Jartow had constructed a domed ice enclosure like an igloo to keep the powerless Callans and Aquine safe, with walls a meter thick and an opening small enough to keep out anything larger than a person. Finnegan and a group of Irapa guarded the entrance, while a band of Techniks had run out ahead to pick off beasts before they could present themselves as a threat. The larger, grotesque insect creatures that approached first were easy enough to take down, but then a new problem presented itself: rats. A plague of vermin the size of chihuahuas appeared, and Finnegan’s blade and revolver couldn’t do anything to halt their flow. The Irapa could barely keep them from entering the ice dome, and more and more seemed to be appearing by the second. Then, Finnegan heard a whooshing sound followed by a million shrieks, and turned to find Laureena blasting the vermin wave, her arms acting like flamethrowers. The smoke from the charred rats seemed to flow to the girl and be absorbed into her. Laureena looked up and saw Finnegan glaring at her and she glared back at the man, paired with a coy smile.
“Don’t worry,” she called out. “I’m not going to try and burn you up anymore - even if you did just try and shoot me back there.”
“The only reason I did that is because the demon that’s still inside of you made me,” he called back, chopping down at the rats like he was cutting a path through tall grass. “I’ve been chasing you for years, Laureena. You expect me to believe you’re different all of a sudden? That you’ve still got all of Värlof’s power and none of its corruption?”
“Värlof didn’t stand a chance against me,” she laughed. “I beat him down just like I’m going to beat down everything that’s standing in the way of me and my grandpa up here. I’m tired of being messed with, tired of being controlled. If we win this fight, then it’s up to us to make the rules, and nothing is ever going to control me again. I know you don’t trust me; you have no reason to. But believe it or not, I think we’re on the same side now.”
Finnegan’s glare intensified before giving her a wordless nod, returning his full attention to chopping away the rats as they futilely gnawed at his impenetrable boko armor. As Finnegan, Laureena, and the Irapa worked ceaselessly to clear them away, they began to see as Elinea had with the Vist that there was seemingly no end in sight, and that there must be an alpha somewhere controlling the plague.
The omnipresent squeals of rats were gradually accented by a thunderous stomping sound, and Finnegan looked up in horror to see that Gormoc the stone elemental had entered the fray. The plague seemed to split at its arrival, with a wave of vermin climbing up the living mountain and engulfing it, but the colossal stone creature shrugged them off and stomped them flat in the hundreds with each quaking step. The Touched already knew that their barriers weren’t functioning at full capacity, and that fact was hammered home when Gormoc’s mammoth stone fist came down on one who was attempting to shield himself from the blow, crushing the crimson man into a crimson puddle.
Dallon Tollstrung attempted to take the monstrosity head-on, the pistons on his exoskeleton suit allowing him to strafe rapidly and dodge the lumbering attacks with ease. As Gormoc swung and missed, smashing its stone appendages into the ground, Dallon chopped at the limbs with the enormous saw blades that extended from his arms, spewing gravel and dust into the air. When the right arm was almost cut through, Gormoc came at the Technik with a haymaker with its left, and Dallon tried to strafe away but his suit didn’t accelerate. Too focused on the stone elemental, Dallon hadn’t noticed the rat swarm chewing away at the wires around his heels, and Gormoc’s colossal stone fist exploded the man into a cloud of bloody metal shards.
Shrieks rang out from inside of the ice dome. Several of the oversized rats had made their way past the guards and scurried inside. Two of the Irapa Magi rushed into the igloo to deal with them, and as they did, one of the people from inside pushed his way out past them. Finnegan recognized him: It was the Aquine man, Danvers, the one who was supposedly Laureena’s grandfather. As he exited the igloo, the girl called out to him.
“Papa! What are you doing out here? I told you to stay in there where it’s safe! There’s nothing you can do out here to help!”
But as she yelled at him to stay back, he insistently made his way towards her, and she burned a path through the rats for him to approach. He sidled up behind her and she paid him little attention, focusing instead on incinerating the endless streams of rats. Finnegan had only seen Danvers momentarily when they arrived on the shore below, but even so, he sensed something was off with the man, and it only took a second before his suspicions were confirmed. As soon as Danvers was safely positioned behind his granddaughter, he placed his hands on her sides and opened up his mouth wide, revealing a mouth full of sharp, rat-like teeth, and reared back to take a vicious bite from her neck.
From the corner of her eye, Laureena saw Finnegan draw his revolver on her for a second time in less than an hour. The shot rang out at the same time a concentrated blast of magma left her outstretched arm and sprayed the former Iso across his chest, though he seemed to know the attack was coming and pulled his helmet down and arms tight in anticipation. The bullet whizzed by Laureena’s head and made a sickening splat in her ear, and she knew that the man hadn’t missed his target. Laureena gasped in thankful surprise when she saw what Finnegan had shot. It was not her grandfather dead beside her but an enormous rat, its head blown clean off with ice crusted around its shoulders.
Her eyes darted to Finnegan, worried that she had just incinerated the man who had saved her life, but he was already standing up and examining himself. He was unscathed, the magma she had released at him smoking away on the glassy ground. His armor had completely blocked her attack; she didn’t think that was even possible. But then she looked closer and saw what the armor was made of. It was the same wood as Calix’s snowshoes. Finnegan was with the Irapa, of course his armor hadn’t burned.
She was surprised that she felt genuinely grateful for not roasting the man - that’s all she had wanted to do to him only days before. But as she thought about it, she realized that she still did want to disintegrate the man, or at least, a tiny part of her did.
The sensation crawled through Laureena’s veins and made her whole body itch from the inside out. Värlof’s presence was unmistakable. The smoke from the charred rats continued to suck in towards her and she felt it enter her body, but she knew it was being absorbed and processed by a foreign entity. Everything she killed was making Värlof stronger. Laureena looked at the plague of rats again, afraid to continue torching them, but their trajectory had changed. They were no longer focused on getting into the ice dome but instead scurrying away in all directions. Finnegan must have killed their leader and broken its control over its minions.
Not long after the icy decapitation, a new head began to reform on the giant rat’s shoulders, and Finnegan promptly blew that one off as well. Before a third could start growing, Elinea, the blind wanderer, the Touched, and Hallister joined up with them, and the floating Magi began reading aloud from his ancient spell book above the rat’s headless corpse. The blind man informed the group that this was Slint, an immortal shapeshifter and one of the Immured Eight. Hallister was able to make his way through the reversal incantation faster this time, and as the words built in intensity in everyone’s ears, Slint’s body appeared to suck in on itself as if a black hole materialized in its belly, and all that was left in its place was a dark, dormant orb.
Slint was neutralized, but Gormoc was still wreaking havoc in the periphery. Several Magi from Vlyk, former members of the council who had traveled to the platform independently, had tried and failed to subdue the stone behemoth and now lay dead and broken on the battlefield. The offensive efforts of the Magi and powerful cannons of the Techniks had little effect against the stone behemoth, who stomped past the attacks unscathed and batted them away like flies, shattering mech exoskeletons and the bones beneath as it made its way ceaselessly towards Hallister.
The stone god didn’t appear to be the most intelligent of the Immured Eight, but it saw what Hallister had done to re-imprison Slint, and so it rightfully made the Magi its primary target. Fearful of the monster breaking through his own barrier, Hallister wasn’t willing to risk taking any attacks head-on, and as a result, he wasn't able to properly focus on the incantation that would return the creature to the orb that floated around it.
Gormoc’s path was only blocked when Jartow finally agreed to shift his attention from protecting survivors to running interference, knowing that there was no one else who could go toe-to-toe with the living mountain. Laureena joined in, blasting and melting away at the stone elemental’s limbs, though they seemed to cool and re-solidify within moments of liquifying. Together, Jartow and Laureena were able to contain the creature in a tornado of ice and flame, giving Hallister the time he needed to perform the reversal and send Gormoc back to the banishment realm within its orb.
The heaviest casualties were caused by Shænlør, undead bog witch and priestess of pestilence, who stood cackling amongst the corpses of countless would-be attackers. Skin boiled and oozed away beneath mech suits, Magi robes, and Irapa armor, the very air around her thick and green with disease and rot. Here the Touched barriers were vital, as no one else could dare get close to the witch without suffering a horrible, disfiguring death. It took seven Touched to hold Shænlør in place and keep her from spreading her pestilence further while Hallister recited the incantation, and in the time it took for the Magi to return her to her orb, three of those Touched were infected through their barriers and decomposed like year-old corpses in a time-lapse film.
It was in dealing with the last of the eight, known only as the Black Rider, that Hallister began to notice something unnerving in Laureena. As she blasted away at the horrific oozing centaur, its color so dark that merely looking at it seemed to pull you into the abyss, Hallister recognized a specific glint of fury in her eyes. She hadn’t had this look on the platform before - he’d been watching her carefully - but as the battles went on and she absorbed more and more smoke, her demeanor had shifted noticeably. He recognized it from his keep, when she was thoroughly a puppet of Värlof, the fire deity’s rage flowing through her unrestrained. He could see Värlof in her again clearly now, and it frightened the Magi to his core, but he kept his focus on re-imprisoning the Black Rider, and soon Laureena’s flames were blasting through the air with no specific target as the terrifying creature was sucked back into its orb.
With the Immured Eight once again contained in their orbs, Laureena’s eyes scanned the scene wildly for more targets to set aflame. There were still plenty of dangerous creatures from the underworld scurrying about, but the remaining Magi and Techniks were more than skilled enough to dispose of them. Laureena was looking for something bigger, and Hallister was looking straight at her. As he did, Hallister saw a light begin to appear around the girl, like a yellowish mist illuminating the placid, blue environment, and he knew it was the Remnant, surveying the scene.
Hallister called out to the blind wanderer and spoke into his mind, and the blindfolded man placed an orb into Hallister’s hand. It was the orb that contained Feeg, the ever-consuming, ever-expanding electrical gelatinous blob. With a telekinetic shove, Hallister rolled the orb into Laureena’s vicinity, then began to recite the incantation from his book once again. Laureena felt something tug uncomfortably inside of her and her eyes searched for the source. Hallister was reciting the reversal spell again, but there weren’t any more of the Eight around...except her. An uncontrollable anger - Värlof’s anger - exploded inside of her, but a part of her deep down knew that Hallister was right in trying to remove Värlof from this world forever, even if she and the deity were inextricably bound.
Hallister’s plan was to use the incantation one final time to trap both Värlof and the Remnant inside of the orb with Feeg. Once inside, the gelatinous blob would hopefully dispose of them both, or at the very least, they’d all be stuck inside together. But before Hallister could finish the incantation, a bolt of concentrated light shot out from behind Laureena and pierced through Hallister’s barrier, passing through his chest like a laser beam. Hallister’s orange-hued sphere of protection popped, and the man looked down in horror as the crimson pigment in his skin bled out onto the glassy blue ground beneath. His eyes looked up in surprise just in time to see an enormous wave of molten fire flying in his direction, his hand lifting in vain to try and create a shield that did not appear before his body was ignited and disintegrated in an instant.
Laureena’s hand lowered and she let out an anguished scream. She had not released that blast of fire at the Magi of her own volition; Värlof had. It had wrenched control of her once again, forcing her to kill her ally against her will. Flames were swirling around Laureena now, and Danvers called out to her desperately, but she pleaded that he keep his distance. All of the allied forces turned to her in shock and readied themselves for another battle, fear brimming in their eyes now that Hallister - their only true weapon against the eight - was gone.
Surrounded, eyes streaming with tears, Laureena turned to where the bolt of light had originated and screamed out to the Remnant.
“How can this be your plan? What is the purpose of any of this?”
The yellowish mist that had congregated in the area began to morph and solidify until a figure appeared, tall and slender with impossibly unidentifiable features.
“The purpose?” repeated the Remnant. Their eyes gazed over the battlefield, and the slightest look of smug satisfaction registered on an otherwise unreadable face. “The purpose of this gathering was merely to reach a new outcome in an experiment that has been conducted many times before, always under divergent conditions. The last time this world was reformed, the Settlers chose the Callans to be the centerpiece. This time, I decided to let everyone have a fair stake at the prize.”
“You speak of the Settlers as if you aren’t one of them,” said Elinea, pulling in closer to the illuminated figure.
“I am a sentient construct created by the Settlers, formed ages ago to oversee an experiment they abandoned. I too was abandoned here and cannot leave. This world is my banishment realm; the task of distributing power and overseeing a broken system my eternal chore in purgatory. The Settlers will never return here, and so I have conducted the final experiment on this world in their stead. You should be pleased with the results: The battle for supremacy appears won, and this world is now yours to do with as you please. Assuming you have a solution for Värlof, that is. It won’t be interested in sharing dominion with any of you.”
The blind wandered pulled Elinea in close and whispered in her ear.
“Hallister’s body was destroyed, but his spirit is still here. He’s speaking to me. He has another plan.”
The remaining Magi, Irapa, Techniks, and Touched surrounded Laureena, but none were brave enough to attack first. Finnegan’s hand rested on the avtimag bomb attached to his belt, wondering if it would solve the problem of Värlof once and for all, but he found himself unable to pull the pin and throw it at the girl. He knew she was fighting an invasive presence in her body, just as he was, and though the avtimag might purge it from her, it would surely destroy her in the process as well. The bomb was a last option, and he wasn’t willing to use it just yet.
The corruption inside of Laureena prodded and pulled at her limbs, provoking her to violence, but she fought the urges and curled up on her hands and knees on the glassy ground, breathing heavy, labored breaths. In her mind, she heard a voice. It was Hallister.
“Do you have control over Värlof?” asked the Magi.
Laureena let out a desperate sob. “No.”
“Do you want to end this?”
She gritted her teeth. “I just want to do what’s right. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
Elinea was not part of the mob gathering around Laureena. She was moving away from it, walking towards the Remnant. The being of light extended open palms to her, as if welcoming her in.
“Why did you show me those visions back on Koa?” she asked. “Why did you bring me back to life? You clearly have some plan for me, but in all this time I haven’t been able to figure out what it could possibly be.”
“I cannot see the future,” said the Remnant. “Not exactly. But I can make accurate predictions, using data. I knew you were different from the very beginning, when I gave you your powers as a Touched, so long ago.”
“I don’t even remember receiving my powers,” said Elinea. “I don’t remember my life before.”
“All by design,” said the Remnant. “The pieces were put in place for a reason.”
“And what reason is that?”
“To help me escape. To free me from this realm. You can move between the realms, Elinea. Your death - your limbo between worlds - I saw it come to pass. I saw you return from the furthest dimensions. But I could not see you while you traveled between those realms; I could not see how you accomplished the feat. For all my power, you have the one ability I truly covet. And now that the final experiment has been conducted, I will learn how you accomplished this feat, and I will leave this wretched place forever. I will finally escape this banishment realm.”
“That’s what caused the Shift,” said Elinea, more stating than asking. “You tried to reverse the containment on yourself, tried to reverse it on the entire world so you could escape.”
The Remnant nodded. “Yes. But it was merely a piece of the puzzle. One of many steps towards generating a solution.”
“And it didn’t matter to you that doing so would wipe out an entire civilization of people?”
The Remnant’s tone and expression were always flat and unreadable, but their response to this question felt particularly cold.
“This world doesn’t matter to me at all.”
With that, the Remnant put out their illuminated hand and rested it on Elinea’s forehead, just as they had in the orb chamber on Koa four years before. But instead of giving Elinea another vision, this time she could feel the Remnant digging through her thoughts and memories, searching for her experiences inside the banishment realms, trying to find the answer to how she had moved from realm to realm. The process was significantly more unpleasant than when Hallister had done the same inside his keep; he was cautious and gentle, but it felt now like the Remnant was angrily tossing a room, looking for clues. As the Remnant prodded Elinea’s mind, both of them heard Hallister’s voice.
“I’m afraid you won’t find what you’re looking for in there,” said the Magi. “I gathered that was what you were after when you told us this world was your banishment realm, so I wiped it clean from her mind. There is some other information we’d be happy to share with you, however.”
The Remnant opened their eyes and looked down at Elinea, who held her liptis hand wide open. Inside the talons was the Settler information cache, plucked from the eye cavity of the blind wanderer. It did not glow a radiant yellow as it had before, nor did it float in the air, free from the laws of gravity. All of its magical essence had been absorbed by the parasitic insect of the great boko tree, redirected into a glowing spear on Elinea’s left arm. She didn’t jerk the blade towards the Remnant, but rather slid it upward smoothly, passing through the being’s unicolor robes and piercing the light with only the faintest hint of friction.
Though the force of the explosion knocked everyone nearby off of their feet, it sent Elinea careening into the sky like a bottle rocket. Luckily, the barrier powers she had accidentally absorbed from the fallen Touched at the base of the column kicked in and kept her body from being shattered apart, but it didn’t do anything to stop the force from the explosion from sending her soaring off into the distance. Elinea regained her faculties mid-air and found that she was falling steadily, confused as to why she still hadn’t hit solid ground. She looked up and saw that she had been blown directly off the side of the platform; the solid water floor and reflecting blue sky didn’t stretch in all directions as she had thought, but was actually an illusion like an infinity pool.
Elinea fell and fell, coming in and out of consciousness as she did, unsure how she could possibly plummet so far. And then the sea below came up at her all at once and her body slammed into the water, but once again her newly-absorbed Touched barrier kicked in, keeping her from being crushed by the impact. But even with the shield, the collision wasn’t soft, or painless, and the air rushed from her lungs as she plummeted into the violent waves. Her arms flailed and instinctively she tried to step up onto invisible platforms using her Touched powers, but they weren’t responding anymore. Whatever she had absorbed must have been used up by the impact. She looked up through the icy water and felt it chill her to her very core. Out of air, she gasped involuntarily and the water filled her lungs. She knew the sensation. She had seen this vision before. Elinea’s body stopped struggling, and her vision went black.
As the explosion knocked everyone off their feet, the attention of those left on the platform naturally shifted away from Laureena to the source of the blast. In the place where the Remnant had stood was now a vast array of glittering gold particles in the sky, illuminating the scene like a galaxy in broad daylight. A voice boomed from the shimmering constellation, and there was no doubt it was directed at Hallister, wherever he was.
“YOU THINK YOU CAN DESTROY ME, MAGI?” I CONTROL THE FATE OF AN ENTIRE WORLD. LOSING MY FORM CHANGES NOTHING.”
Laureena stood up and looked for her grandfather, and she found him on the perimeter of the group looking off into the distance where Elinea had been blown away. His eyes returned to the scene and caught hers. Hallister’s voice appeared in her mind.
“Now’s the time, lass. Are you sure?”
She nodded, then mouthed the words to Danvers: I love you, Papa.
Laureena set off in a sprint towards the place where the Remnant had stood, pushing through the crowd until she was squarely in the middle of the floating yellow particles, their light twinkling and illuminating her skin. She looked to Finnegan, who had his eyes trained directly on her, and gave him a stern directive.
“I’m setting us free. Do good.”
At exactly the same time Finnegan reached down to feel for the avtimag bomb at his side and found that it wasn’t there, the sphere appeared in Laureena’s hand, blinked there telekinetically by an invisible assistant. She pulled the pin, and though the sparkling yellow particles around her began to scatter briefly before the bomb exploded, they weren’t able to drift far enough to escape the dome of pulsating blue light that emerged from her hands. Laureena gasped at the burning sensation of the avtimag material on her skin, but it wasn’t any worse than the sensation of Värlof burning away beneath it. She felt the blue light leeching the magic essence from inside of her, and knowing that the ability would soon be lost, opened up a door to Värlof’s banishment realm. There was a slight bit of fear that she wouldn’t be able conjure it - Värlof’s containment orb had been shattered by Morwell back on the Northern Plateaus, and she didn’t know for certain if she needed it to return to that dark place. But deep down, Laureena was sure the power to move between realms came from within herself, not from the orb. That power was likely the reason Värlof had chosen her as a vessel, and now, it would be the source of its demise.
When Laureena usually shifted between realms, it was as if she opened a slit and then slid her way through. This time, she opened the slit and then grabbed the edges with both hands, pulling the door open around her like she was swinging a matador’s cape. The entryway swirled around the now-dull floating particles caught in the avtimag field and then the doorway sucked in on itself, and both Laureena and what remained of the Remnant were gone.
Danvers let out an anguished scream and reached out to where his granddaughter had stood, but he knew that she was gone now, sacrificed to save everyone else. Part of Danvers ached to simply drop onto the ground and howl and cry, but instead he found himself running off in the opposite direction as fast as he could, finding the edge of the platform and recklessly diving off, desperate to save at least one life if he couldn’t save Laureena’s.
The splash in the water below was barely visible in the roaring waves, an incredible feat considering the distance and speed with which Danvers’ body had dropped from the platform. The newly-transformed Aquine dove down deep and then curved back up towards the surface, grabbing Elinea’s lifeless body in one hand while swimming effortlessly with the other. Even with the dead weight, the two bodies moved towards dry land with incredible speed, and once Elinea was plopped down on the rocks, Danvers began to blow furiously into her mouth, forcing air into her chest. After many desperate exhalations, the woman convulsed back to life, releasing a torrent of salty water from her lungs.
Elinea gasped for air, limbs flailing, and an arm was put out for her to grab onto. The skin was slick and green and finned, and she was shocked to find that it was Danvers who had resuscitated her. He was crying - sobbing uncontrollably - but there was an undeniable look of gratitude in his eyes that Elinea was alive.
“You saved me?” she asked, still coughing and spitting out water. He nodded, tears streaming down his face. “You dove off the platform?” He nodded again. “How did you know that you would survive?”
“I know all sorts of strange stuff like that now,” the man said somberly. “I figured it was time I actually did something useful on this little adventure.”
“You saved my life, Mr. Danvers,” smiled Elinea. “Thank you.” He smiled back, but the tears continued to flow, and she knew without having to ask that his sorrow came from Laureena.
Hunched together on the rocky ground, Danvers and Elinea looked up at the column in the distance and saw that something had changed. The water was no longer moving up and down at the same time. It was only falling. All of the water that had been collected at the top of the platform was gushing back down, and they both knew that the island where they stood wouldn’t remain above sea level for long.
On the top of the platform, Jartow was desperately creating sheets of ice to keep people afloat, sending solid pillars down into the base beneath the water to keep them from being swept away. Once the Remnant disappeared, the ground gradually became less and less solid, like walking on slush, until everyone broke through the surface and found themselves fighting against a dangerous tide that threatened to send them down the drain with the rest of the bathwater. Jartow seemed to know it was coming, and moved with uncanny quickness creating solid ground that was anchored against the current. Together with remaining Touched and Magi, they used their skills to pull the survivors from the rapids and drag them safely onto the ice sheets.
Above the edge of the platform, the Capital airship rose up into the sky, and those marooned on the ice sheets let out a thankful cheer. The blind wanderer put his finger to his ear and spoke into the comm device.
“Drescel, how did you get back down to the ship?”
“Back down?” laughed the crab man. “I never went up. I wasn’t stupid enough to run towards that column with the rest of you. I’ve been waiting on the ship until you took care of business. Someone had to think about getting you down from there.”
“We’d better get started then,” said Elinea, her voice raspy through the earpieces. “There are lots of survivors. This is going to take several trips.”
From up high in the airship, Elinea could see the storms dispersing beneath the platform, revealing the scarred world she had fought so hard to protect below. The landscape was altered forever: Islands ravaged by years of uninterrupted rain; sinkholes breaking away to an abandoned underworld; columns supporting a platform to an overworld that would never be completed. Three levels, all broken but still alive. Those who ascended the platform had been shown visions that promised a better future. The potential to turn those visions into reality was now theirs, and theirs alone.
Fate Index:
1. Interspecies relationship becomes a little one-sided
2. The world’s problems are a projection of one character’s mind
3. Extended stream of consciousness
4. Fantasy deathmatch
5. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
6. People begin to question their belief system
7. Protagonist gets overzealous and makes a major mistake
8. A creature’s weak spot gets found by accident
9. A great artifact of the past is found, calling to a new owner
10. Social faux pas has serious consequences
11. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
12. Betrayal
13. Protagonist finds powerful item or treasure
14. Magic finger traps, but for the brain or heart
15. Current location revealed to be (a) hell
16. After a long string of losses, a character begins to succeed only to jeopardize someone else's success
17. Protagonist reveals a secret
18. Someone dies trying
19. Virtue of protagonist is tested by an ally
20. Nothing happens when something is supposed to happen
Outcomes Used:
7. Protagonist gets overzealous and makes a major mistake
18. Someone dies trying
Added outcomes:
A lesson is not learned
(thanks to Missy)
Holiday episode
(thanks to Ben)
