Wakespire: Chapters 24-25

Cliffhangers resolved this week! And hopefully more development along certain lines than you were expecting.

-

Chapter 24

How long had he lain there, on the floor of his old office? Not as long as he sat in his chair and realized that it was over. All of his hopes were destroyed. Even if he could somehow get back, his soulhome would have been destroyed in the transition. He hadn't even felt it crumble.

When the dread of decades on Earth became too much, Theo fumbled for his phone and discovered that his pockets were empty. Not so much as a piece of lint. Apparently he had fallen from the Nine Worlds and been left with nothing.

How could that be? After Vistgil had killed him, he'd ended up in his previous young body... but the House of the Lost told him that body no longer existed. Had his body been converted back and automatically reverted to the true age of his soul? Just thinking about it set him coughing, which caused a wet rasping in his throat. He'd been meaning to get that checked, before...

Theo began fumbling through his desk drawers, finding everything just where he left it. He had a letter opener shaped like a sword that he'd kept extremely sharp. His body was so old and frail, it would just take a long cut along his veins for him to bleed out. Yes, there was the sword, exactly where...

If Theo had been the man who had entered the Nine Worlds for a second time, he might have gone through with it. But he had been traveling with his friends for several years and memories of them made him hesitate. And while he hesitated, new thoughts emerged from the misery.

Why was his office unchanged? Time still passed on Earth while he was in the Nine Worlds, even if it was slower. He would have just disappeared from his job, so it shouldn't have been held for him. No, wait, his mind was even more scrambled than he'd thought. This hadn't been his office for years. These had been some of his bleakest years and he'd slipped back into that mindset the instant he returned.

It couldn't be real. Some part of his mind screamed that he was just in denial, but Theo clung to the facts. The creators of the Archive of Misery had no reason to create a portal to Earth, but they very likely could get into his head and prey on his pain.

Theo carefully raised his elderly, shaking hands in front of him. He felt no cantae at all and concentrated anyway. There had to be a reality outside his mind where he could still reach his singularity. No matter what he did, he felt nothing, but he went through every step of building his singularity even if he was just fooling himself...

Suddenly he stood in an empty room. A real singularity raged between his hands, having grown so broad the accretion disk crackled against his skin. His own power wouldn't harm him, but it drew in enough air that his clothes were flapping violently. All around him, he saw cracked stone and devastated shelves, fragments still being drawn into the black hole in his hands.

When Theo released the singularity he staggered and nearly fell. His body was no longer elderly but it hurt all over in a way he'd never felt before. Even if he had no theory about why, it didn't feel like the misery that the Archive threw at him.

"Senka?" His throat was unbelievably dry, so the word barely escaped his lips. She was nowhere to be seen, even when he looked through the nearest doors.

His stomach hurt and he tried to identify the emotion before he realized that it was simple hunger. Hunger more intense than he'd felt in decades, maybe ever. Theo reached into his soulhome and grabbed food from his stores. He wanted to consume all of it and had to force himself to eat slowly with a little water so that his stomach could adjust.

How long had he been trapped in the false illusion? Judging from his physical condition, it had probably been a while. The bigger question was what had happened to Senka: she might have entered her own personal hell, been thrown somewhere else, or left the room if he'd apparently vanished.

Regardless, he needed to move forward into the labyrinth. Theo's body was young again, and flush with an Authority's power, but when he walked he limped like an old man.

~ ~ ~

There was a tree growing from the ceiling. Theo felt like saying "Why is there a tree growing from the ceiling?" which was probably a sign of his deteriorating mental state. No one was there to hear him anyway.

Someone had made a bed of grass on the ceiling, so at first he thought it was simply a tree growing in the wrong direction. The leaves were thin slivers of neon blue that sent a strange shiver through his arm when he touched them. They didn't stretch upward, though... nothing about the tree suggested that it had simply been planted upside-down. In fact, the light blue branches all appeared to be stretching toward the floor.

For a while he thought that he'd stumbled across a gravity-inverting tree, which would be an incredible find. But as his pain-numbed mind began to think critically, he realized that the cantae was all wrong. The tree wasn't manipulating gravity in any way and in fact the leaves collected dust on their upper sides. It somehow just grew in the wrong direction, as if reality was inverted for it alone.

The sublime tree was entirely wrong for his soulhome, but it was extremely powerful. Theo used a gravitational field to lift himself to the ceiling and used a shovel to try to dig out the tree. Its roots appeared to be stunted within the grass circle, which was effectively a large flower pot. Eventually he just tore out the entire stone base and pulled the whole mess into his soulhome.

That had been the most powerful sublime material he'd found so far. Most of the others had been mildly useful, though he needed to sort through them. Theo walked toward the next door.

~ ~ ~

"You know," Theo said, "if they wanted to be really nasty, they should put in a normal trap. Just spikes or fire or something. I'd probably just ignore it, assuming it was another illusion or forced pain."

He walked through another door and endured a wave of disgust.

"That's what I would do if this was my labyrinth. That and invisible teleport mazes. Those are the worst. I'm talking to myself now... am I doing it just to hear something, or am I going crazy?"

No one answered.

~ ~ ~

"Theo?"

He didn't really believe it, when he saw her. It had been a door like any other, just retracing his steps after a long and painful dead end. The vision of Senka floating in front of him seemed more like some sort of illusion setting him up for an even more cruel reality than something that could possibly be real.

"I thought I'd lost you." She hit his chest with almost no impact and wrapped her doll-like arms around his neck. "What happened?"

"I got... trapped in something." Theo patted her on the back as an automatic reaction. She soon pulled away, a bit embarrassed at her emotional display, and thrust out a hand.

"You'd better have food, because I'm so sporping hungry."

"Right, sure." He found some manna for her and they both sat down in the middle of the chamber. This one was a simple stone hexagon with a constant aura of anxiety and faint wails of agony, but after everything they'd been to, he didn't notice all that much.

For a minute Senka just tore her way through some food, then she managed to speak between bites. "Really, what happened to you?"

"I think it was some sort of personalized trap. It made me believe I was back on Earth." Theo sat back against the wall and stared at nothing. "I'm not sure if that was really my greatest fear or just a source of misery that the Archive mined. But I was in there for so long... I'm not sure how I could spend days wallowing in that."

"From my perspective, you just disappeared. It was like all the effects in other places, but much more intense."

"How do people even build things like this?"

"It's such a waste of time. If you have a lot of sublime materials with different effects, you can experiment with combinations, then soulcrafting them in..." Senka's confident words trailed off. One hand groped at the air helplessly. "I've lost it. It's not any amazing lost soulcrafting, just tedious work. Not very useful for strength."

"But useful for traps, I guess."

They sat in silence for a while and Theo let himself eat some more. His stomach was no longer cramping, so he thought that he'd mostly recovered physically. How bad things were on a mental level, he wasn't sure he'd know until he got out of the Archive of Misery.

"Was going back to Earth really your greatest fear?" She asked the question very softly, serious instead of needling.

"Now that I've thought about it, I'm not sure it was about fear. It was about tapping into all the bitterness in that period of my life. Maybe I still haven't worked through it."

"What made it so awful? Your world seems like it has a lot of conveniences, from what little you've said about it. Did you do it to yourself, or were you just afraid of death? No immortality on Earth, right?"

It was bizarre to hear Senka talking like this. Theo wanted to stare at her but instead just sat at her side while they both stared at nothing. He wasn't sure why it took him so long to respond. "No, I... wasn't afraid of death. I didn't like getting older, but that's part of life. I just... didn't want to live a dull and empty life. Visiting the Nine Worlds gave me a taste of something so wonderful, the life I had before just didn't seem to matter..."

"I was afraid of death." Senka was staring straight forward, her eyes never even flickering toward him. "The idea that I could just stop existing, that everything I am would just come to nothing... I couldn't let that happen. I'd do anything to prevent it. No matter how much strength I found, that specter just..."

He wasn't sure what he could say to that. If she had been a friend he would have put an arm around her shoulders, but he wasn't sure how well he really knew Senka. And yet, sharing these words an in empty room, he felt like they had more common than he'd thought. Slowly, his hands trembling almost as if he was old again, Theo grasped one of her hands.

"I'm here," he said. "I can't promise much, but I'm here."

"Thank you." The words were almost a whisper, then Senka gathered herself. "We're getting closer, Theo. Don't let it stop you. If we just get to the river, this will all be over."

Since he didn't know what to say to that, he just gripped her hand.

~ ~ ~

At the end of what he estimated was yet another day, Theo sat down and soulcrafted. He didn't trust himself to make any complex soulcrafting decisions, so he focused on making bricks. Soon he'd have enough to begin fusing them into full walls, which raised the question of where to start on his fourth floor.

One logical decision would be to start with the walls around his central shaft, which would theoretically continue up through his later floors. That would make all future rooms faster to complete. Yet if he spent all of his carefully-crafted bricks on the central walls, they wouldn't gain him much. It might be wiser to start with a corner room, where he could at least place a new material. There would be no complex cantae flow or elaborate effects, but he could integrate something new into his soulhome and get a little boost.

How had he made so many bricks? Theo often tried to keep track of how long he had been in the Archive of Misery and he was afraid he was losing track. He was fairly certain that it couldn't have been anywhere near a full month, so hopefully he should arrive in time to help everyone else. But judging from the number of bricks, it had been longer than he expected.

There was one major positive: the Archive of Misery was getting easier to navigate. His acclimatization chamber was slowly helping him adapt even to these rushes of pain and emotion. He was glad that he'd put so much effort into its details. A lot of acclimatization rooms could only help deal with small differences in temperature or atmosphere.

By contrast, Senka seemed to be getting worse. He'd tied a rope around her leg before soulcrafting in case she decided to wander off. Currently she was sleeping, but at any moment she might babble nonsense and sprint in the wrong direction.

They had to be close to the river. Because if they weren't, he wasn't sure what was going to happen.

~ ~ ~

"I'm so tired... have we been through this one before?"

"Senka, Senka!"

"If you're trying to cheer me up, it hurts too much t-"

"Skorpyborp!"

"Oh god, I've lost Senka..."

"Let go, ya fumpet!"

~ ~ ~

Theo didn't walk anymore, just neutralized his gravity and floated between rooms. New waves of pain or emotion struck him, but he could mostly weather them now. Could he have survived all this as a young man? He honestly wasn't sure whether his lifetimes of experience made him more or less resilient.

The river was close: he could hear water rushing around almost every room now. Senka hadn't ever come back, proving even more annoying than before and constantly trying to run away. He'd actually begun using her as a navigational device - if her curse was trying to propel her away from the river, then the opposite direction might be the best path. It wasn't perfect, but it had guided him into new territory so far.

When he finally arrived, there was no final challenge or great puzzle. The next door simply opened into an empty field with a pure white river running through it.

Both field and air dissolved into a blue haze of dimensional energy, similar to what had surrounded by the entrances to the Chasm of Lamentations. These didn't show anything on the other side, so Theo decided to stay close to the center. Based on the design of the Archive, he presumed that these were exits only. If he tried to explore further into the field, he might simply find himself in another world with no way back.

After so long, the river itself was underwhelming. Powerful, but not a raging torrent like the Chasm of Lamentations. Negative emotions wafted from it constantly, which would have been miserable without his acclimatization chamber. Or, honestly, he might just be numb. Either way, he understood why ancient soulcrafters would have gone to so much effort to lock it away.

"No, no!" Senka began to run away and he automatically flattened her with a gravitational field. "I can't I can't!"

She began using cantae to lift herself up, which she usually never did while in her cursed state. Briefly Theo just stared at her, wondering if perhaps her real self was leaking through. Was it possible that she had realized that this river somehow wasn't what she needed? No, if he took that path he would second-guess himself endlessly. They had gone through so much effort and pain to get here, he had to follow it through to the end.

"Sorry, Senka. I hope you'll thank me for this later." With that apology, he threw her into the river.

Senka thrashed and spluttered, going under repeatedly, and for a while he worried that she was actually drowning. Then, all at once, she went still. He would have been concerned if she hadn't rolled over onto her back. Despite the rushing water flowing from one side of the dimensional rift to the other, she remained as still as a stone.

"I'm not going to thank you," she said, "but that's just out of stubborn spite."

"Then you're back." Theo smiled and sank down on the riverbank beside her. "Should I be worried about this splashing on me, by the way?"

"It wouldn't destroy you like in the Chasm, but you'd have a pretty unpleasant experience."

"But you're fine."

"Yeah." Senka dipped underneath the water for a time and then poked her head back up. Instead of floating unnaturally, she was treading water now. "These five rivers were used to bind me, so they can also unbind me. I'll need to marinate for a while, but it won't take as long as before. As soon as I'm done, we should be able to leave the rift."

"Does that mean you have your memory back?" Theo asked.

"Unfortunately not, at least not directly. What I'm getting back is... part of myself, I think. Toss me some food." When he threw her a fruit, she consumed it in an instant, then frowned. "It tastes like nothing. That's better than all food being an absolutely miserable ordeal. I think some aspects of the curse designed to hurt me are fading."

"Is that all? Not to complain, but after going through all this..."

"Don't worry, we still dissolved another fifth of the curse." When Senka grinned at him, her teeth looked very sharp. "My soulhome uncrunched itself, just a little. I can't store much cantae, but I can manage... one burst, maybe. That could be useful. And I'm remembering... some of myself."

"What do you mean?"

"They tried to rob me of my very identity, to humiliate me. Some of that's coming back now. Oh, those fumpets... wait, seriously? Nlermit all! Those sporping fumpets... nlerm, this blooky curse..."

Despite himself, Theo laughed. Her voice contained a deep and abiding wrath, but filtered through the nonsense words it was absolutely absurd. At first Senka glared at him, more maliciously than he'd seen in a long time, but her glare dissolved and she chuckled as well. She dipped her head under water a few times and then came up looking more contemplative.

"It's not really important, but I was actually Noveni."

"Wait, really?" He looked over her cursed body, trying to see it. "Is there no connection between your forms, then?"

"I think my skin was this color, but my hair..." Senka ran her hands through it and then smiled while holding up several locks that had turned black. "That's an improvement. I probably won't get my real body back until the curse is completely gone, but this is a step closer."

"So you do have some memories back."

"It feels like some things were specifically locked away by the curse and I don't think those are coming back. But little things, like my favorite food growing up... or the color of my wings... or locations where I may have left little caches of sublime materials for myself."

"Wait, really?" Theo sat up sharply and Senka immediately laughed at him.

"Glad you have your priorities straight! But no, I wasn't sporping with you. It's probably too much to hope that any of them still survived after so long, but we should try to check them all. There might be some materials you and your allies can use, or I might find some physical evidence about myself."

"Unless the people who cursed you made sure to destroy every cache."

"Maybe some, but I remember how paranoid I was now." Senka dipped under the water one more time and then floated into the air. "Alright, that's everything I need. I don't know about you, but I want to get out of this miserable place."

They couldn't simply weirkey out, but the hazy edges of the dimension blurred all around them. Theo glanced back at the door to the Archive of Misery one last time, then walked with Senka through the barrier.

-

Chapter 25

How many hours had it been? Nauda had endured through many tense situations, including pitched battles, but she was exhausted in ways that she had never expected. The initial attack by unknown soulcrafters, which she had expected to quickly escalate into fighting, had instead become a tense standoff.

An hour earlier, one of the Jadadictus Rulers had been taken down. Nauda and Fiyu had been defending their western flank from another avalanche and there had been a stealthy attack from within the clouds. By the time she turned back, the Noveni woman was already injured. Now she lay along with the unconscious Isorales, which just meant that they had even more people they needed to defend.

The worst thing of all was that it was obvious by now that no help would be coming immediately. If anyone from the city had been patrolling this region or watching them, they would already have arrived. So their attackers were free to attack opportunistically and wait for the defenders to wear down. Clearly there was no justice to be found on Noven, either.

Fiyu was the calmest among them, kneeling in the center of their position and focusing on her senses. Nauda simply wasn't capable of waiting patiently like that, and she couldn't leap into action from such a position. Instead she paced. After a while, she paced toward Fiyu.

"Could your stealth technique cover all of us?" Nauda asked.

"I believe it could," Fiyu answered without raising her head. "But we have no means of returning."

"What if I could pull our sleigh out of the rubble?" Nauda knelt down nearby and pointedly didn't look toward its location. "If they didn't know what I was doing, I might be able to get away with it in the confusion."

"I believe they are paying very close attention to us and would not be fooled."

"But we can't let this continue. Could you get there on your own?"

"They are also watching me, but..." Fiyu abruptly yawned, stretching her arms in a broader way than she ever had before, and shifted down onto her side. From that position she looked up. "I am not really tired, Nauda. I am being deceptive."

"Sure, I get it." Nauda reached into her soulhome and pulled out one of their small tents. "Here, use this."

Fiyu crawled into the tent, her body already disappearing as it passed inside. As soon as she had entered, Nauda felt a slight current of wind as Fiyu departed invisibly. Hopefully the movement would be obscured in the general movement of the tent flaps. While trying not to look toward the sleigh, Nauda closed up the tent carefully, just as if Fiyu was really going to sleep.

Behind her, Fiyu must be creeping toward the region still covered in the landslide. She could no doubt make her way over the rocks, with her senses warning her about unstable sections. But how could she get the sleigh free without being noticed? Nauda got up and went to talk to the Jadadictus soulcrafters, trying to think of a plausible way to attract a bunch of attention.

"Don't try it!"

She looked back over her shoulder and saw one of the Dortorus Authorities hovering over the landslide, surrounded by tendrils of light. Nauda's heart leapt into her throat as the light spread out, seeking for an invisible Fiyu. They connected with nothing, but there was no way of knowing if Fiyu was trapped within his range.

"Stay where you are," the man commanded, "or I'll destroy your transportation."

"Does no one on Noven have any honor?" Nauda spat out the words with more real invective than she'd intended. She marched to the side of their group and pointed her staff toward him. "From the very beginning of the Wakespire, you've treacherously attacked everyone who stood in your way!"

"Some in the Dortorus lineage might have behaved dishonorably, but I have not." The man glowered at her, but he hadn't stopped searching with his physical light. "Yes, some have acted ruthlessly. I cannot approve of this. But we have no choice, when traitors are trying to rob our city of a sublime legacy."

Nauda had honestly expected their words to be a mere prelude to fighting, so she was surprised the conversation went anywhere. She lowered her staff to her side before responding. "What do you mean? None of us have done anything but participate fairly."

"The soldiers may not know, but their princes work treacherously. There is a rot in the city's nobility, and we need to tear it out. The Jadadictus lineage is clearly infected, seeking to undermine the competition. All we have done to stop them is injure a few soulcrafters: no deaths, not even any permanent injuries. And in return, we've been attacked, and one of our own crippled during the Ritual of the Climbing Suns."

"Alright, let's talk about that." Nauda saw that the Jadadictus soulcrafters were anxious, like this was just a pretext, but she wanted to hear the man out. "What's your name?"

"I am Cannium Dortorus. I have never wanted to be anything other than a defender of the light of Ugustial."

"I'm Nauda, from the world of Tatian. I have no stake in any of your conflicts. If you really believe you're fighting for your city, then show me some actual evidence. Right now, you just look like thugs beating down everyone who's standing in your way."

Cannium glowered and his light expanded around him, but he did answer. "A member of our own lineage was murdered and his identification used to rob one of our vaults, even though such a thing should not have been possible. Some believe this to be treachery from the undercloud Terefilia faction, wanting to take back the legacy they believe belongs to them."

"So you think they started this?"

"And then they crippled one of our Rulers mid-ascension!"

"Then why are you attacking the Jadadictus teams?" Nauda gestured back toward the miserable soulcrafters. The gruff man looked furious about the conversation, but the others sagged exhausted and drained. "They're doing nothing but trying to participate."

"They may believe so, but forces of darkness are working behind the scenes." Cannium raised a fist, which glowed with inner light. "They don't want to steal just a few sublime materials, they want the entire legacy. And they're willing to manipulate anyone to do it, Jadadictus or Terefilia."

Before Nauda could decide how to respond, Fiyu appeared atop a pile of rubble. It seemed that she had retreated from the Authority's position or decided she couldn't get close enough to the sleigh, but she was still easily within the range of his light attacks. Despite the danger, she smiled up at him.

"Perhaps we are not enemies," Fiyu said. "All we wish to do is compete fairly. Perhaps if you tell us all you know, we can-"

"No more words from you!" Cannium launched a beam of light that demolished Fiyu's position and forced her to jump to the side. "You're the prime suspect, monster! Your power... this isn't even shadows from below, it's pure darkness from the pits of the deepest abyss!"

"Oh dear." Fiyu raised her hands in a gesture of peace. "Please understand that I do not mean any harm. When I first left my world, your light seemed very terrible to me. But I have come to understand that different people are reassured by different things, so-"

"Enough!" Cannium unleashed a monstrous storm of light that curved through the air, rapidly surrounding Fiyu's position before closing in. She remained there for a little too long, still trying to reason with him before the light crushed her.

Nauda thrust out her staff, binding Fiyu in place, then jerked her backwards. Since Fiyu didn't resist, she was whisked to the side just before all the light descended. With an adroit flip of her staff, Nauda drew Fiyu to her position and they both retreated as the Authority began firing on their position.

"Maybe this isn't a good time to explain cultural relativism?" Nauda suggested.

"I had hoped he would listen." Fiyu lowered her head sadly, but it did seem that she was ready to fight.

Too late, Nauda realized that there was another Authority rising from the clouds.

Her plan had been to retreat from the unstable area and join the Jadadictus soulcrafters in a better defensive position. But while they had been talking, the Dortorus group must have sent their second Authority under the clouds to get in their way. This one was a thin woman who was one of the weakest 10th class members, but her Authority-tier cantae could still be deadly to them.

Trails of light pursued them from behind while cantae bolts approached from the front. Nauda tried to juke to the side and lost her footing on one of the shifting rocks. Fiyu grasped her arm before she could fall, but there was no time to dodge, they'd be crushed between the attacks...

Bronze rings swooped in at the last second and intercepted them. Each was a full pace across, a thick bronze band with cantae burning in the center. The cantae bolts on one side were repelled, while the tendrils of light seemed to be snuffed out when they touched the bronze. Two rings circled around Nauda and Fiyu, defending them, but a third retreated.

Nauda followed its path... back to Isorales. He was hovering now, cloaked in an Authority's cantae. For the first time since she'd seen him, his gaze looked determined.

"Your accusations are baseless," Isorales said sharply. "Have you considered that, if there is really a treacherous force working against the city, that it might be turning us against one another?"

"Ridiculous!" Cannium retracted his light, refocusing now that he was facing another Authority. "Why should I trust you, when you willingly consort with dark forces?"

"You should have come to the princes with your suspicions instead of-" An assault of light interrupted Isorales's words.

The third bronze ring intercepted it, smoothly sliding into position. This time Cannium didn't let up, sending repeated spears of light that hammered the ring back toward his opponent. But he should have been looking at the rings beside Nauda.

They leapt from their positions, lashing out at Cannium with startling speed. He managed to block the first, only for the second to catch him in the chest and send him tumbling. Immediately the other Authority cried out to attack Isorales from behind, but the rings kept spinning, circling around to threaten her as well. In fact, all three rings seemed to be spinning around him with increasing speed.

As Isorales rose higher, the rings rotated to horizontal positions, forming a disc of bronze around him. That disc expanded greatly and one edge sawed deep into the mountain. Nauda didn't understand what he was doing until she saw several Rulers fleeing up the side: they must have been creeping close in the trees, planning to join the battle.

And it was going to be a battle. Isorales was stronger than she'd expected, but he was up against two Authorities and several Rulers. Plus, he was a fresh Authority while their opponents had experience on their side. Unless Nauda and Fiyu could tip the scales, he'd be overwhelmed.

Cannium and Isorales clashed in the air, while the female Authority ran up the mountain toward Fiyu. Nauda watched in panic as Fiyu fired a lightstorm at her, only for the Authority's more powerful bolts to tear through it. She didn't have time to pull Fiyu out of the way again...

Instead, Nauda launched herself forward. She thrust out her staff, managing to bind one of the bolts in midair and misdirect it. Still moving, Nauda flipped her staff around and slammed the other end into the Authority. The Dortorus woman arced one of her wings around herself and the feathers deflected the strike as if they were made of stone.

Nauda was taken aback, but she wasn't willing to give up so easily. Her momentum was still throwing her forward, so Nauda used the deflection to flip her staff again. This time she thrust the tines around the wing, aiming for her opponent's leg.

To her surprise, Nauda actually landed the blow. Her opponent grimaced and stumbled before firing cantae bolts. Nauda managed to dodge one and the other caught her shoulder. Only the bondsfungi reinforcing her body kept the Authority's cantae from tearing through her, and it still hurt. It was remarkable that she could keep up at all, so she needed to end this quickly.

Nauda struck with a wave of nullification, staggering her opponent, then swung horizontally at her wing. This time, her staff plowed through the fragile feathers and struck the other woman in the side. The Authority was sent flying over the clouds, struggling to regain control of her flight.

Behind, Nauda dropped to one knee, gasping for breath and barely holding herself up with her staff. This Authority was much less dangerous than Cannium or many of the others she'd faced, perhaps because she'd used a heavenspear or another material to reach the position.

That should have been encouraging, but it only made Nauda realize how far she had to go. Her soulhome was nothing compared to the polish of Fiyu's. Theo had managed to defeat a stronger Authority while still at Ruler. Even Isorales and Cannium showed signs of far more potential. Nauda realized that if she continued focusing on raw materials and didn't equal their soulcrafting sophistication, she would end up like this Authority and be left behind.

Or she could end up dead before the day was done. As Nauda pulled herself back to her feet, she saw how the battle would go. Unless someone flew to the rescue, it wouldn't end well.

~ ~ ~

It would not be enough, but Acquaintance Isorales was proving more formidable than Fiyu had anticipated.

The three rings he controlled were a powerful armament that had yet to be damaged despite their use as both offense and defense. He controlled them as if he was absolutely aware of their position; it reminded her more of an Ichili sense than any other technique she'd seen on Noven. Perhaps most essentially, he clearly had mastery over their technique instead of clumsily using an armament that someone else had given him.

Unfortunately, he was still new to his power and outnumbered as they all were. Friend Nauda had briefly balanced the scales but was now accumulating injuries. Fiyu had managed to knock some of the enemy Rulers off the mountain, but she was unable to help against the Authorities. In fact, she was more of a liability than anything, because Adversary Cannium continued to pursue her at every chance.

She felt the hate all through his body whenever he saw her. He truly seemed to believe that her darkness was fundamentally evil. It was very distressing.

Overhead, Fiyu saw the battle finally tip in the wrong direction. Acquaintance Isorales had defended himself with two of his rings, but Adversary Cannium had anticipated this and used tendrils of light to bind his rings in place. Now Acquaintance Isorales was attempting to strike him with the third ring but rapidly weakening.

"Excuse me." Fiyu fashioned a lance of darkness and threw it toward Adversary Cannium.

He whirled on her, as she had known he would. Adversary Cannium growled and began emitting shafts of light that tore through the mountain around her. It was the most that Fiyu could do to avoid being struck, and few of her skills could face such immense power. She slipped into her stealth again, less because it would help her escape and more because she knew it would enrage him.

Acquaintance Isorales appeared to have given up attacking with his third ring... no, it was slipping alongside the others. Two of his rings were still grasped by tendrils of light, but he pulled them into position. When all three came into alignment, the bronze glowed from within.

A beam of sapphire cantae shot from Acquaintance Isorales through the rings, blasting Adversary Cannium in the side. It couldn't immediately overcome his light defenses, but the impact drove him down, all the way through the clouds. The beam persisted for a surprisingly long time until Adversary Cannium was nowhere to be seen and a large hole gaped in the cloud layer.

Suddenly alone in the air, Acquaintance Isorales slumped to the side of the mountain. Fiyu leapt to his side, but he did not seem to be injured or exhausted. He regarded her with a strange expression and she noted that his wings were going slack again.

"Thanks for helping... I couldn't have taken him alone..."

Fiyu desperately wished that Friend Nauda had been present to encourage Acquaintance Isorales, because she was ill-suited to the task. She suspected that his mind was injured due to improper treatment from his relatives. That was something she could not resolve in a few seconds, if at all. Yet she needed to do something before he ceased to apply himself.

"You have done well," Fiyu said. She picked up one of his fallen bronze rings, which was surprisingly heavy, and proffered it to him. "You must continue to fight with us."

"The ascension went smoothly," Acquaintance Isorales said weakly, "but I don't have any Authority-tier techniques. You should run while I hold them off..."

Clearly words were insufficient. Fiyu had seen others use a physical blow at such times, but could not bring herself to do such a thing. Instead, she hung the ring around Acquaintance Isorales's neck. He stared in surprise and all of the muscles in his jaw went slack.

"You are the only Authority on our side and you have done well. You must keep going."

Too late, Fiyu sensed someone shooting out of the clouds. Adversary Cannium had returned, and he'd flown up beside the other enemy Authority. Both of them were gathering their cantae now, ready to rain fire down across the mountain. With Friend Nauda injured and her other allies drained, Fiyu did not know what she could possibly do.

With a lurching step, Acquaintance Isorales threw himself back to his feet. His rings flew upwards and hovered in a triangular pattern. Cantae spread between them the instant before the enemy Authorities unleashed their own attack. His shield managed to deflect the assault, but the rings were being pushed backward, blow by blow...

Just when Fiyu began to despair, she felt someone flash across the sky. Both of the enemy Authorities staggered and their assault petered out. Who could it have been?

Fiyu eagerly expanded her senses, trying to keep up with the rapidly moving body. She had hoped that it would be Relative Guchiro, but it did not seem to be. Instead it was a smaller man... could it be Friend Theo? But there was something odd about the shape, and there were other bodies as well...

To her surprise, four Noveni flew up from the clouds. They were no one she knew well, but she did recognize them as the Terefilia team. Their leader, an Authority, unleashed twin whips of crimson light that struck aside the rest of the cantae assault. One of the others began throwing out accusations and the Dortorus soulcrafters had no choice but to retreat.

Since the battle was over, Fiyu rushed to find Friend Nauda. She appeared to be seriously injured, but to Fiyu's surprise, her friend withdrew something from her soulhome.

"You're hurt... try this..."

Fiyu gingerly took the object, which was revealed to be... pellets of manna bonded together by honey? This made little sense, but Fiyu nibbled on the edge. "It tastes good, Nauda, but why?"

"It's supposed to heal you." Friend Nauda finally got her staff in a firm position and used it to hold herself upright. "I suppose I'll have to work on it more."

If anyone needed the manna cake, it was clearly Friend Nauda. Fiyu ate the rest, hoping to have something encouraging to say, and she did feel new cantae flowing through her. Not dramatic, but it did seem like a foundation on which her friend could build a useful technique. Before Fiyu could offer her any compliments, the situation on the rest of the mountain developed further.

"This is no alliance." One of the Terefilia Noveni spoke to Acquaintance Isorales while the others kept guard for remaining attackers. "We simply saw a chance to strike at our enemy."

"Why shouldn't we work together?" Acquaintance Isorales asked. "The Dortorus lineage has the overwhelming advantage and they're clearly targeting all of us."

"All we want is to recover the sublime legacy of our kin and return to our own nation. Do not get in our way."

"Wait." Friend Nauda squared her shoulders to look strong, though her back muscles were clearly aching. "They were yelling a lot of things about some conspiracy. Did the man who interrupted the ascension have anything to do with your group?"

The Terefilia Noveni shifted uncomfortably and glanced at one another before the leader answered. "We did not plan that attack and are still investigating how a rogue element could have interfered. As far as we are concerned, this entire city is corrupt. All we want is the sublime legacy that should have been our birthright."

Though Friend Nauda and the others continued to try to talk to them, Fiyu could feel the tension rising in their wings and knew that there was little chance. For a brief moment, both groups had fought together and might have cooperated. Now, they returned to their factions. If there was any truth to everything that Adversary Cannium had shouted, it would not be found here.

With the battle finally over, Fiyu sank to the ground and let her shoulders slump. She was grateful to the Terefilia soulcrafters for saving her, but they were not who she wanted now...