The Forsaken Hero

As the tingles of teleportation faded away, I opened my eyes to a world of winter. The Gate entrance crystal hovered in the center of a circular cavern made entirely of opaque ice. The walls and ceiling held countless mirror-like facets, reflecting the flickering torchlight of Enusia’s forces around the room. Overall, the room was nearly identical to the Fire Gate’s proportions and look, save for the bitter cold permeating the dry air.

But before I even noticed the cold, my gaze was drawn to the thick currents of Infernal Energy saturating the room. They curled and twisted around the soldiers, slowly drinking in their fear and trepidation. The moment my feet touched the ground, a ripple passed through the fog of mana, and it drew towards me, flowing across the ground like viscous water. It called to me, curling around my slender body like mist, caressing my soul with gentle tendrils.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the raw, chaotic mana. My skin tingled and my horns itched, my body growing extremely sensitive. I could feel every pulse of blood through my veins, every current of mana through my soul. For the first time in weeks, the constant pain of my shattered soul faded, lost in the seductive pleasure of the Infernal Mana.

It was curious, though. At the Western University, Infernal Mana burned like fire in my soul, naturally rejected by my own mana. Slowly since then, it had begun behaving erratically, even seeking me out and actively responding when I purified the wolf. It was like a switch had gone off in my soul, and now Infernal Mana felt as comfortable as my own.

”Xiviyah?”

I exhaled slowly, basking in the sensation for a moment longer before returning to the present. Captain Bethiv gazed at me, a slight wrinkle on his forehead.

”Is everything alright?” he asked.

I nodded and took another look around the entrance room. The Last Light Company was the last group through, taking up their assigned position as the rear guard. Even after the battle with the infernal creatures and demonkin, they were several hundred strong. As their mages finished bestowing protection from the frigid air upon the soldiers, Bethiv gave the order to advance.

The entire gate seemed to be made from the same thick ice, but the dungeon was so cold moisture was unable to accumulate, leaving the ground very stable. Adaptive Resistance’s protection enveloped me like a blanket, warding off even the coldest gust of wind, only allowing my breath to freeze once it left my lips.

The clash of steel and screams of demon scions echoed through the air, growing more distant with every passing second. The Last Light Company advanced slowly through the fifty-foot-high doors, which hung broken on their hinges, entering the first chamber. The Fire Gate’s dungeon was a mass of lava tubes and channels connecting several caverns. I’d been expecting something similar beyond the entrance, but the truth left my mouth hanging open.

”It’s... enormous,” I breathed.

We weren’t in a cave or under the ice anymore, but standing on a frozen tundra. Small glaciers and rivers of icy water snaked across the uneven terrain, cutting the ground into hundreds of snowy islands. Thick clouds rolled overhead, the occasional flurry drifting to the ground. The Entrance was simply one of many craggy ice mountains rising from the ground, discernible only by the gate’s presence on its forward face.

Towering mountains and sheer cliffs created natural walls encircling the tundra. The gate entrance sat against this wall, at a slightly higher elevation than the rest of the land. The walls extended in either direction, gradually looping around until they met dozens of miles away opposite the door, forming a massive circle hedging us onto the tundra. It was an entire world of ice and snow, feeling as real as the one we had just left behind.

The armies of Enusia, twenty thousand strong, were spread across the landscape. The nearest companies were already a mile away, locked in battle with hordes of demons. Scions and evolved demons poured from cracks and crevasses in the glaciers, emerging from unseen caves and caverns beneath the surface. There were tens of thousands of them, yet their numbers failed to shake the human position.

Gouts of fire hundreds of feet high cut massive swathes through their chaotic ranks, opening the way forward. Although he was miles away, I could see Alex burning like a torch, casting powerful spells and magic techniques, single-handedly breaking the demon lines.

A dark mist spread out before the human soldiers, sweeping across the corpses of the fallen. Seconds later, the dead rose, ignoring their fatal wounds, and marched on broken legs towards the living scions. Within a minute, over a thousand corpses formed an undead shield before the Enusian forces, taking the brunt of the retaliatory strikes and allowing the human mages and arches to lay waste to their enemies. Whenever one died, human or demon, the dark mist drew toward them, animating their corpse and driving them back into the battle.

”Remarkable,” Captain Bethiv muttered. ”Those two truly have incredible synergy. The Fire Hero’s raw destruction and the Undead Hero’s army feed on each other. Look,” he said, pointing to the front line. ”The undead aren’t even killing anything. They just force the demons to stack up in large groups so the mages can blow em to hell.”

I squinted, peering closely at the faraway battle. While Bethiv’s observation was indeed true, it was only part of the picture. Alex’s power was even more straightforward than Soltairs. Every time he swung his sword, dozens of demons burst into flames. Occasionally, he released a seventh-level magical technique, creating fires so hot they melted the permanent ice forming the gate’s dimensional walls.

As Alex slew the demons in droves, their souls would fragment, returning to the hells they came from. Small traces of their lingering mana trickled through the air, seeping into Connor and empowering him. As the fight dragged on, the aura of undeath grew thicker about him, slowly spreading out until it consumed nearly half the battlefield. Undead rose faster, stronger, and with the ability to utilize their previous host’s abilities. Dead soldiers executed magical techniques and demons their ice magic, slowly growing into a force far greater than simple fodder.

Chills raced down my spine as Connor’s true strength dawned on me. His magic and magical techniques barely surpassed the fourth level, but his abilities were simply overwhelming. I already knew about the Soul Gaze, and based on the effects and my observation of his mana, I could now guess as to the other two. They were both aura type abilities that seemingly had a complex interaction. The first was his aura of undeath, which raised corpses around him, turning them into mindless slaves. The second was his ability to siphon souls and emit the black mist. Absorbing souls strengthened his spell power and physical strength, seemingly stacking infinitely. It also had the effect of allowing his other aura to raise higher-level undead. At the moment, he had control of over three thousand third-level undead and triple that in weaker slaves. He seemed entirely capable of taking on either the demon or Enusian armies by himself.

With the combination of superior firepower and endless fodder, the demons were quickly driven into submission. The remaining scions scrambled away, retreating into the ice caves and tunnel networks beneath the ground. The army hesitated for a moment, before Connor strode to the front, commanding his forces after them. Human soldiers would be at a massive disadvantage in the unfamiliar caverns, easily surrounded, ambushed, and picked off. But undead had no such constraint. Their lives were less than worthless and they felt no fear. Their only limitation seemed to be that they couldn’t leave the black mist, which, after the previous slaughter, had nearly a mile radius.

Following the undead fodder, the Enusian armies moved into the caverns. Occasionally, a group of demons erupted from the ground, ambushing a company here or there, but they were always defeated swiftly. Soon, even those attacks became more infrequent, until the entire human army was able to move below ground.

”It’s too easy,” I muttered. ”Why would the demons forfeit the surface? There wasn’t a single evolved demon above the fourth level in that fight.”

”Are you sure?” Captain Bethiv asked, raising an eyebrow. ”Can you tell that much from so far away?”

I nodded, my tail curling around my ankle. ”Demonkin have good eyesight. I suppose it’s one of the few graces left for me, at this point. But we fought fourth-level demons in the very first gate to appear. After all the war and death, there should be a few hundred at the very least.”

”No, that can’t be right,” Bethiv replied. ”The Undead Hero has cleared more than five gates so far, so there’s no way the demons are unaware of his ability. If they were planning on fighting seriously later, then they wouldn’t have empowered his ability.”

My mana revolted, preventing me from focusing on his last few words. I stumbled, feeling nauseous, as my soul trembled from the intensity of the warning.

”The demonkin,” I said, trying to collect my scattered thoughts. ”The one who tried to kill us. He said-”

My words vanished, swallowed up as a deafening rumble shook the ground. No, it was the other way around. Across the tundra, water and ice blasted into the air, displaced by devastating tremors rolling through the frozen landscape. Mountains rose and fell, rivers drained into yawning crevasses, and the entire tundra shifted, dropping several feet all at once.

I nearly fell, grabbing onto Bethiv for support. He summoned his aura and held me steady as the ground continued to shake. His mercenary soldiers reacted instantly, somehow drawing their weapons and forming a tight ring around me despite the tremors, which continued for almost a minute.

When at last the ground stopped moving, I dropped to my knees, wretching as my mana writhed once more. The sheer violence of it shook my soul to its core, threatening to break it apart. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.