Heretic Spellblade 5, page 52
“It’s that bad?” Seraph asked. “That sounds like an impossible task, Nathan.”
“Bastions and sorcerers can trace the buildup of demonic energy in the leylines. Usually.” He grimaced at the reminder of the fog blocking his senses. “That’s why it takes weeks. We need to wait for the energy to build up, then send in cleansing teams to wipe out the demons. It’s an exhaustive task. A larger region takes months to years, or becomes utterly impossible as the portals appear faster than they can be closed.”
For all the destruction caused and lives lost, this breach had been ended relatively easily. So long as no more occurred.
“At least two fortresses have fallen to the east,” Reine said, as if reading his mind. “I apologize for not checking sooner. No signs of a Messenger are present, only demons.”
Nathan let out a ragged sigh. “Well, that was bound to happen given how stretched the Nationalists were. That’s why I asked Alice to send in the army. Stay focused on the incoming Messenger.”
She nodded.
Lunchtime arrived before Reine alerted him. She shouted in surprise and dropped her bowl of stew.
“Nathan, I believe he’s about to arrive,” she gasped out.
“We know,” he said flatly, staring into the distance.
Nathan and his Champions watched as a strange black object rose high into the air in a parabolic arc, before crashing to the ground with a rumbling thump. After a few seconds, the object soared through the air again, traveling a good couple hundred feet.
“Maura?” he asked, turning to stare at the Twins.
Laura had a hand over her mouth, as if holding back laughter. Her sister rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, that’s Atlas. Dude thinks he’s a space marine. Apparently comes from a shithole where everything’s controlled by robots, so he loves to play out his childhood fantasies of jumping around on the moon. I guess he’s having fun?” Maura’s uncertainty crept into her tone.
Meanwhile, Nathan struggled to make sense of anything she said. He understood many of the words she spoke.
Space referred to everything outside the planet. Marines were soldiers aboard naval vessels. And the moon didn’t need explaining.
But what was a robot? Nathan’s curiosity was piqued.
Although he also wanted to ban the Twins from making any references to their own world for a month, at least. The past few days had overwhelmed his willingness to put up with extradimensional nonsense.
Atlas jumped several more times, getting closer and closer. The reason for his incredibly slow speed became far too obvious.
Because while crossing hundreds of feet in a single jump was impressive, many of Nathan’s Champions could have run up to Atlas and back by now. Several times over.
Then Atlas stopped dead. He seemed to focus on Nathan and his group.
Nathan felt his muscles tense despite himself. Magic heeded his call and he prepared to defend himself.
This time, Atlas’s leap covered much more ground. He created a small crater in front of them, then stepped out of it. Dust billowed off his armor as if repelled by magic.
Atlas looked less like a “space marine” and more like some dark warlord striding across the land in his bespoke suit of oversized spiky armor. He towered over Nathan and had to be a good seven to eight feet tall. Thick, black plates of armor encased his entire body from head to toe and were decorated with spikes and thick gray trims.
No weapon appeared to be visible, but Atlas’s gauntlets were the size of a man’s head. Not to mention the magic roiling off him. Nathan didn’t need to use his senses to know that the cause of the current spatial distortion was standing in front of him.
Atlas turned his head slowly, as if taking in the totality of the situation before him. His helmet covered his entire face and lacked any eye slits. Nathan suspected the Messenger viewed the world with a method similar to Reine’s eyes.
Which gave him an idea to act on later.
“This is not what I expected,” Atlas said, his voice artificially tinny and whiny. He raised a finger to point at Fyre. “You, I knew about. And the same goes for the pair of headaches over there.”
“Glad to know we produce some emotion from your depressive ass,” Maura said.
Ignoring her, Atlas pointed a stubby finger at Nathan. “But you’re new. I had assumed you were their puppets in this scheme to claim this cycle. Yet the tethers I sense suggest the opposite. Who and what are you?”
CHAPTER 41
“I feel that should be my line,” Nathan said, bemused. “You’re apparently a big deal, but you’ve done next to nothing so far and don’t even know who I am.”
Atlas shrugged, which was an immense motion given his armor. “It has been centuries since I set foot here. My employer provided me with an in-depth list of every figure of potential historical importance in this era. While many of your companions are on it, you are not.”
“Is that a good or bad thing?”
“Good,” Laura said.
“Bad,” Maura said.
The sisters stared at each other, then frowned.
“Uh, what?” Maura asked. “If the boss is overlooking him, that means he’s not considered a danger to his plans.”
“It could also mean that our former overseer doesn’t know what’s going on. Duh.” Laura smirked. “We’re a dozen moves ahead of you, Atlas.”
“Perhaps in an alternate timeline, where you possess a brain,” Atlas droned, but he tapped his chin noisily. “Tell me, are you perhaps one of the partner’s Messengers? There’s been a rambunctious newcomer and you remind me of a description she gave, although it was awfully generic.”
“I’m not a Messenger,” Nathan said.
“Ah, my apologies. You’re in the company of several and are maintaining your composure, so it’s a natural assumption. Occam’s Razor and all that.” Atlas thought for several more seconds. “What are you then?”
Nathan’s group seemed utterly lost. They had prepared for battle and were instead witnessing an oddly civil discussion.
Not that he was complaining. Picking a fight with an unknown Messenger without gathering more information was the height of folly. Now, more than ever, Nathan needed to know as much as possible.
“I’m a Bastion,” he said.
Atlas stared at him. “Working with Messengers?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… I want to say impossible, but the power I sense within you…” The armored Messenger fell silent.
“Okay, is the dumb conversation over? Can we chop his limbs off and beat him to death with them?” Maura asked. “Because that’d be swell.”
Atlas turned his head to stare at Fyre, who merely blinked repeatedly in confusion.
Then her expression shifted, and Nathan knew Kadria had taken control of the prophet.
“Why are you so surprised, Atlas?” Kadria asked. “This is exactly what we planned. Messenger like us can’t wrest the goddess’s power away directly—our employer would never have erased Sofia if it was that easy. We need to act through others. A Bastion’s connection to the binding stones, and therefore her power, is the key. Nathan’s simply a touch more than a tool.”
“A touch…” Atlas repeated slowly.
Then he lowered his arms, as if visibly demonstrating that he had concluded his thought process.
“I see. This explains a lot. I have struggled to understand the purpose of my order. It’s unusual to be directed to interfere with a world, rather than destroy it.” Atlas took a step back, but didn’t raise his guard. “But now the meaning of my orders is much clearer.”
Nathan felt the amount of magic surrounding them fall, though. As if the Messenger was releasing the many spells he had cast across the region.
“Your orders? Atlas, this is our chance to escape,” Kadria snapped, taking a step forward and flexing Fyre’s wings menacingly. “What do you know that I don’t? We planned all this together. You even helped me create this cycle.”
“Did I?” Atlas stared at Kadria. “We’ve had extensive discussions about this new cycle lately, but I do not recall that. If your knowledge is asynchronous with mine, that only proves that you’re not the Kadria I should be dealing with. And, perhaps, that I shouldn’t be talking with you at all.”
Kadria froze, her eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.
“I bid you adieu,” Atlas said. “Do enjoy the departure celebrations.”
Then his body burst into a spectacular display of prismatic light. Soon, all evidence of his existence vanished, save for the craters he left behind.
“Uh, what the fuck?” Maura asked, voicing everyone’s thoughts. “He’s gone, right? That’s not some trick? I can’t sense shit.”
Nathan’s senses roared back to life with Atlas’s departure, and he could suddenly sense the immense power roaring through the leylines. He gulped.
While Nathan had a lot of thoughts about that conversation, and the implication that Atlas’s boss was actively interfering with Doumahr now, a much clearer problem presented itself. Namely, those “departure celebrations” that Atlas mentioned were quite literal, in the sense that something was about to arrive following the Messenger’s departure.
“If he’s not gone, then he’s at least canceled all the spells he used to hide his presence,” Nathan said, voice steady despite what he knew was coming. “The leylines are clear again. Reine, I assume the same is true of the spatial distortions?”
“Almost. There’s one near us. I don’t… I don’t understand,” Reine said, her voice quieting with each word.
“Everyone, prepare yourself for a battle. Keep Reine safe,” Nathan said.
Fyre still hadn’t moved from the last position Kadria left her in. The Twins were waving their hands in front of her eyes, but turned to stare at Nathan upon hearing his words.
“The hell does that mean?” Maura asked.
Her answer didn’t come in the form of words, but a blinding flash of golden light that eclipsed the fields. Nathan shrouded his eyes and stared to the west.
The leylines rippled with a familiar power. The same that he had sensed back when Fyre demonstrated her power at the Pearlescent Canyon.
Omria’s power poured through the leylines, so thick and dense that Nathan struggled to make out anything else. Atlas had been obscuring it with his spatial magic, preventing Nathan from realizing that Charlotte had been active, potentially for days.
Twice now, this had happened alongside Messenger invasion. Fyre’s demonstration had been swiftly followed by Siv’s breach. This time, Charlotte might have done the same thing and let both Atlas and Thanatos into Doumahr—except Atlas had gone out of his way to hide this fact.
Interference, huh? Nathan immediately knew that the Messengers’ boss wanted to cause conflict between him and Charlotte. Why, he didn’t know, but he knew that starting a war would be a mistake.
As expected, with Omria’s power came her prophet—or one of them.
The light faded and an army, ten thousand strong, stood on one side of the field. Falmir’s blue uniforms and resplendent banners stretched from end to end. Gleaming mounted knights stood alongside companies of spearmen. At least a dozen duogem Champions preened in front of their lines.
Above them fluttered Charlotte, wearing a frilly navy-blue dress with heavy gold trim that left little to the imagination. Her breasts practically spilled out of the low-cut top, and the fluttering allowed Nathan to garner glimpses of the lacy white lingerie beneath. Rather than physical wings, solid gold tendrils of light waved in the around behind her.
“Servants of the Empire, your savior has come. Fear not the Messenger, for Omria herself shall…” Charlotte trailed off, as if only now taking in the situation.
“Um, is this going to be a war?” Fei asked, raising her scimitar. “Because that’s a lot of soldiers.”
“Not really,” Narime said grimly. “It’s mostly a lot of corpses, if they do anything. There isn’t a single trigem there. Falmir didn’t realize we were here.”
Nathan barely heard their words. Instead, he found himself spellbound by the gorgeous woman floating high above him. Her figure matched his memories, and her face was as beautiful as he remembered it.
And unlike the weak, pathetic princess he’d seen years ago, when the Twins first invaded, this Charlotte had the powerful, majestic presence he always associated with her. His heart stung.
Then someone slapped him and he came back to his senses.
“Stop thinking with your dick, moron,” Maura snapped, genuine rage visible on her face. “She’s got a glamour on her. It’s a shitty piece of mental magic. If you get taken in again, I’ll rip your fucking nuts off. You held us off for fucking years, but she waves some royal tits around and you fall head over heels? Fuck you!”
Nathan rubbed his cheek and scowled. Knowing that he’d been taken in by mental magic hurt.
But even being aware didn’t help. Charlotte looked, sounded, and felt like the princess he had always loved. Even now, with his marriage to Alice and Anna imminent, his heart fought with his mind.
So he did what he had always done. He killed his heart and ran on as much hard logic as he could. Right now, hard decisions needed to be made to avert catastrophe.
Falmir’s army began jeering at them. Few of them understood what would happen if they started a war here and now.
Nathan did. If he needed to fertilize the Torrovium Fields with the bodies of ten thousand more soldiers in order to protect Doumahr, he’d do it.
“Silence,” Charlotte said.
Her voice washed over the plains as if she had spoken directly into Nathan’s ear. He repressed the shudder it tried to produce in his body.
The soldiers shut up and instead prepared to advance. Charlotte ignored them, however.
She waved an arm and blinked across the field. Her figure appeared only a few steps in front of Nathan, just as beautiful as he remembered. Even her perfume matched her old one.
“Nathan, it really is you,” Charlotte said with a beaming, all-too-familiar smile.
He closed his eyes for a moment to center himself.
Then, after opening them, he said, “Princess Charlotte, this is the territory of the Anfang Empire. While Empress Alice II welcomes your efforts to assist in our demon suppression efforts, we have the situation well in hand. We require you to withdraw.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, as if his words went in one ear and out the other. “There’s a Messenger coming. I don’t know why you’re here, when you were at Mortiswatch earlier, but we can face him together. Just as everything should be.”
So she had scryed him. Nathan had suspected the gap in spatial distortion had been intentional, and this proved it.
Had Atlas set this encounter up? That implied he—and possibly his employer—desired war between the Empire and Falmir.
Or, more likely, a violent confrontation between the prophets. Fyre barely restrained herself. She’d returned to normal, but now glared at Charlotte with jealous fury. Her fists balled at her sides and her wings flared out to their full width.
“Both Messengers have been dispatched,” Nathan said. “We encountered him shortly before you arrived. I imagine that’s why you were only able to teleport here now.”
Charlotte’s mouth opened and closed several times. He had to admit it was an unusually adorable expression on her.
“We… we can suppress the portals together, then. The greatest Bastion on Doumahr alongside Omria’s true prophet.”
Nathan didn’t need to use his imagination to hear the jealous tone in the word “true.” Charlotte and Fyre exchanged brief glares, and he swore that his skin heated up.
“All known portals have been suppressed,” Nathan said, looking at Reine for confirmation.
His spymaster nodded. “There are some minor portals still present, but all binding stone breaches have been closed by the combined efforts of the prophet Fyre and the trigem Champion Astra.”
“I didn’t ask you to speak,” Charlotte snapped.
Reine physically flinched. Fyre snarled at Charlotte and received a smirk in return.
“How appropriately beastly of you,” Charlotte said.
Nathan definitely didn’t need to use his imagination to see the mood of his Champions dip. Even the non-beastkin tensed.
“As I said, Princess Charlotte, the situation is in hand. The Imperial Army will take it from here,” Nathan said. “Take your armies and leave. I can notify Her Majesty of your good intentions, if you desire.”
“What?” Charlotte’s expression fell as she stared at him. “Nathan, it’s me. What are you talking about? Just… just give us a minute to speak alone and you’ll understand everything. If you fight alongside me, it will all be fine. Doumahr will be safe. Falmir will be ascendant. It will be—”
“War.” He met Charlotte’s confused, desperate gaze. Her gloved fingers tried to grasp the air between them, as if she wanted to physically grab him. “There’s nothing for us to do together, Princess Charlotte. Doumahr will remain safe so long as the Kingdom of Falmir doesn’t start another war.”
“The Holy Kingdom of Falmir,” she corrected, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Her hands fell to her sides and balled into fists. Charlotte seemed to glare into space, her eyes tearing up.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” she mumbled. “I… I need to do it again. Wait for me, Nathan.”
Terror gripped his heart for a second. Do it again?
From anyone else, those words would be nonsense. But Nathan knew better than anyone what the woman standing in front of him could do with the bizarre power she claimed to control.
Before he could do anything, the world froze.
Then it exploded into a hundred shards, each of which showed him the scene on the Torrovium Fields.
Most of them looked identical, or close enough. Sometimes, a Champion was missing. Fyre’s appearance changed in some. Charlotte almost always wore a different dress, and in at least one her outfit left nothing to the imagination, as he could see her underwear through it.
