The Forsaken Hero

”What the hell is going on here?”

Connor’s voice was raspy, as emotionless as his always expressionless face. He lowered his scythe and looked over his shoulder at the few living soldiers behind him. They stiffened under his gaze, their faces pale as the Undead Hero’s own, hands trembling on the grips of their weapons.

”Y-yessir?” one stammered. He wore a shining emblem that proved him a high-ranking officer, but he looked as nervous as a new recruit.

Connor’s black cloak swayed as he half-turned around, fixing the man with a lifeless gaze and enunciating every word. ”What is going on here? Where are the gate’s native demons, and why in the world is there an apostle in the sky?”

The soldier swallowed hard. ”I-I don’t know, hero. The message from the Fate Hero only said we had to invade this gate as soon as possible and kill any within.”

Connor dropped his scythe, letting it dissolve into shadows, and rubbed his temples. ”Damn it all,” he muttered, ”I get a single hour of warning, then I’m teleported across the world to clean up Victor’s mess. What was Verity even thinking? And how the hell did Victor even get hurt anyway?”

”Hero!” the officer called, his voice taking on an edge of panic. ”The Apostle’s massing his forces. It looks like they plan to break through the traitors defending the gate core. Should we move to stop them?”

”I suppose,” Connor said, resummoning his scythe. ”But leave some of the treacherous humans alive. We need to figure out what the hell they’re even doing in this gate in the first place, and what, or who, they’re protecting in there.”

A massive burst of fire dragged my attention from the hero and his forces, and I willed my viewpoint over to where Gayron stood amongst his demons. It was like moving my perspective in a vision, yet even easier, and with simple thought, I was in the army of the demons.

The infernal and divine armies had tens of thousands of soldiers, but demons were outmatched in quality. However, they didn’t seem disheartened by that, and the apostle’s words were as fiery and arrogant as ever.

”They’re fighting themselves?” he asked a female-looking evolved demon.

The demon, a fire demon with the appearance of a fiery human with long, burning hair, nodded. ”Those defending the Core Gate from our advance seem to be of a different faction than the humans who chased us into the gate.”

Gayron looked out over the tundra, focusing on the chasm where the Core Chamber lay. ”Why the hell would they be fighting each other? Don’t they know...” his eyes widened slightly, then his expression twisted into a vicious scowl. ”There’s that water bitch there, the one following that damnable slut around like a dog. What game are they playing?”

A spike of anger shot through me at his treatment of Korra, my hands balling up into fists on the other side of the gate. The Ice Spirit responded to my fury, and the gate core shuddered in my hands. Before I could react, a pulse of mana traveled from the core to the tundra above, moving as fast as thought itself.

Gayron threw his hand out toward the Last Light Company. ”Kill them all! But leave the Oracle alive for me to–”

His lashing tail froze as the ground erupted beneath him, ruptured by the emergence of almost a dozen frozen stalactites. They shot out of the ground like bullets, spearing several demons and grazing the apostle’s side. He threw himself out of the way, and clutched at his ribs, his hand coming away red.

”What the hell?” he yelled, turning to look at the field of icy razors. They sank back into the ground, leaving the tundra unblemished save for the deep pools of infernal blood staining the snow. The demons impaled by them sank with them as they retreated, lying limp and motionless on the ground.

I stared in shock at the scene, struggling to comprehend what had happened. Where had that attack come from? It had been strong enough to break the apostle’s guard and catch them by surprise, yet I found no lingering trail of mana such a spell would surely leave behind. I could only feel a faint resonance in fate, a slight distortion like a gentle ripple spreading across a smooth pond.

I was wrenched out of the network of mana established by the ice spirit by a burning, fiery pain crawling through my soul. My consciousness returned to the core chamber to the sound of my own screams, and I fell to my knees, head still spinning with the information flooding in from every corner of the gate. I struggled through the pain and severed my connection with the core, finally cutting off the overwhelming sensations.

After a few agonizing seconds, I discovered the source of the pain. In my distraction, I’d idly misdirected the Astral Breath spell, messing with the natural flow of my mana. The resulting kink was like a misplaced suture, leaving me wracked with pain.

Gritting my teeth, I tore the healed portion apart again, nearly biting off my tongue at the resulting flare of fire. It was as excruciating as the original wound that damaged my soul, like rebreaking a bone that hadn’t set properly. It was fortunate the mistake was small, and I could successfully reverse it, but that didn’t make it any less painful. A reminder of just how precarious my situation was. I couldn’t afford to mess up again.

But neither could I abandon my friends fighting for their lives outside. With one eye on the Astral Wind, I tentatively held up the gate core again, returning to the battle raging above. In the five minutes or so it had taken me to repair the damage of my negligence, the demons and divine armies had launched their assaults. The tundra ran with blood and echoed with the screams of the wounded dying, but I flew to the side of the last Light Company, searching among their ragged ranks for Korra’s short brown hair and familiar blue aura.

I found her on the front lines, dipping and weaving around the blades of a fifth-level blade demon. The demon stood on six spindly limbs with no clear distinction between its arms and legs, hacking and slashing at her with growing frustration. She slipped between its attacks with ease, landing magical arts against it with every step. Watery threads resembling serpents climbed up its legs, strengthened by every additional art until the demon stumbled under the accumulated weight of her technique.

Not missing her chance, Korra dove forward and struck the demon’s core with a fifth-level magical technique, shattering its defenses in one blow. It should have been capable of withstanding several attacks of that power, but her arts left its steel blades weakened in addition to slowing its movements.

As the demon fell to the ground, Korra landed another swift punch on the now-exposed core, cracking it in half. She leaped back with a triumphant smile as the demon thrashed in its death throes, narrowly avoiding the wildly swinging blades.

I started to breathe a sigh of relief at finding her safe, but my heart skipped a beat as a titanic demon loomed up behind her, towering nearly fifty feet in the air. She must have sensed its presence, as she threw herself out of the way as a colossal fist descended upon her, blotting out the sky with flames and fire.

The sixth-level evolved demon roared as its fist punched through the tundra’s permafrost, cratering the ground for dozens of feet in all directions. Korra stumbled as shockwaves rolled through the ground, but she kept standing by virtue of her insane agility alone.

But off-balance as she was, not even Korra could avoid the demon’s follow-up attack. Its flaming tail swept toward her with the finality of a broom descending on a bug, leaving her no opportunity to dodge.

My heart leaped in my throat, and I tried to call out to her, but the words echoed futile in the core chamber, almost a quarter mile beneath the surface. Again, as my distress peaked, another pulse of mana leaped from the gate core. I barely noticed, caught up in the terrors of the battlefield.

In the instant before the massive tail collided with Korra, the ground erupted again. Thick pillars of ice jutted out of the ground, stabbing at an angle toward the sweeping tail. The demon screamed in rage and pain as its tail crashed into the wall of icy thorns like a cavalier into a line of pikes, with the same devastating effect. The ice tore into the demon’s flesh quickly, ripping lines of carnage through the titanic appendage even as they brought it to a halt just inches from Korra’s face.

Korra reacted instantly, recovering her balance and leaping almost twenty feet away. Her aura rose about her in a tempest of water and mana, propelling her high into the sky. She cried out a wordless battle cry as a massive water dragon formed around her and slammed directly into the stunned fire demon’s chest. Her magical art, adaptive from a sixth-circle Glacial Lance spell, ripped through the considerable girth of the demon, cleanly severing its spine as it emerged a bloody, icy lance out its back.

Panting from the effort of using such high-level arts, Korra landed softly, her eyes flitting about wildly for the ally that assisted her. She frowned after a moment, finding herself alone in the heat of the battle. ”Xiviyah? Was that...you?”

Even if I could speak to her, I didn’t know how to answer her. How could I, when I didn’t even know myself?