The Forsaken Hero

Fate no longer reserved his power. Every swing of his sword carried the power to topple mountains. Arantius met him without flinching, drawing deeply on my mana to contest. I feared he would be cast asunder beneath the ninth-level avatar’s fury, but his blade never wavered. Their clashes unleashed hellish windblades and shockwaves that tore across the city, obliterating blocks and slaughtering soldiers and demons wherever they fell.

My power couldn’t protect them all. Fatesworn demons screeched, and mortals screamed as they were ripped apart from the inside. The Radians died in even greater numbers, bursting apart from the sheer pressure and force of the shockwaves. Their blood splattered across streets, flowing into fissures and cracks that opened as the earth heaved and the city shattered.

Every few seconds, a pulse of golden starlight erupted from the small golden sphere hovering in the center of the market. Fatesworn corpses, demon, elf, and human alike, shimmered, gathering golden light until suddenly, they were alive again. Their wounds didn’t knit together, their blood didn’t roll back into their veins. They didn’t even stand up again. They were just there, fighting. Holding the line against the terrified, heart-cursed Radians lucky enough to survive the battle raging overhead.

”Oh, how long it’s been!” cried Arantius over the thunderous roar of the battle. ”I haven’t felt such power since the fall. The shackles of weakness have been loosed, usurper. I tire of losing to you, but no longer. Now, with the ascension of the Oracle, we stand on equal footing.”

Losing? He’d only been eighth-level, and had held the literal avatar of a god at bay. He called that losing? Just what did this ancient remnant think victory looked like?

He vanished. Fate threw up his blade and caught Arantius’s. Their swords ground together, and this time the god broke away, flying back several hundred feet. In a blur of starlight, Arantius gave chase. The tip of his blade slipped off of Gate’s crossguard, slicing a long, shallow cut across the face that once belonged to Verity. Silver sparks danced across it, and the laceration faded, but Fate’s eyes showed shock.

It lasted a fraction of a second, for Arantius brought his sword down with both hands. An explosion lashed out, expanding in a ring that tore through the skies, followed by multiple sonic booms. Fate shot like a meteor into the ground, crashing into a noble’s mansion several miles away. A plume of dust and fire surged up, enveloping several blocks. I raised an arm against the ensuing wave of ash and dust that swept over us in seconds. I recast the Shining Aegis, watching it roll over us and hide the battlefield.

A golden pulse washed across fate, and I gasped as my soul was filled with mana again. Everything I’d just spent on the Aegis had returned to its place in the cycle of my soul; only the barrier still shimmered overhead. I was grateful I had cast the spell before summoning Arantius, for if I’d been forced to take all the power he and the other Remnants carried each time, it might very well have killed me.

”Lady Xiviyah!” Captain Jackal approached, his scarred face twisted in worry. ”We’ve just received word that a massive Radian offensive has mounted against us near the castle. We have remnant support, but our skyships can’t approach. The skies are too turbulent.”

”Is it the king?” I asked.

He nodded. ”King Vorinthe has taken the field of battle. He’s brought every soldier, every reserve, from across the city, all but abandoning the garrisons and manors to fend for themselves. With that, we should be able to take control of every strategic position in a matter of hours, but we don’t have the numbers to contest them directly. Commander Bethiv and Lord Incinderus have requested you support them directly.”

I glanced across the market to where the two commanded the battle. They were surrounded by several extremely advanced illusory maps whose kind I’d never seen before. They depicted every single soldier, every spell over sixth-level, and actively updated in real time. I supposed they must need something like that to fight a battle of thirty thousand against a million.

”Even with my magic?” I asked, looking back at Jackal.

He hesitated, then nodded. ”It’s not a matter of dying, but time. We just can’t kill enough of them, and once your spell revives our soldiers, they are surrounded and cut off, unable to make much of a difference against such numbers on their own.”

”I understand. Verity,” I said, reaching out through our bond. ”Please, I need you.”

”Fine. Not like I can do much against those two monsters anyway,” she muttered, materializing next to me. ”I can’t even get close without being blown away.”

I gave her a wry smile. ”Too bad you didn’t advance to ninth alongside me.”

”You’re not there yet. There’s still time. But hopefully, I won’t be around to do it. Honestly, I’d already accepted the idea that my journey in Enusia had ended, but now that the goddess says there’s hope...” She shook her head. ”Sorry, now’s not the time for such things.”

”We’ll get your body back, Verity. I won’t let Fate take it from you,” I promised. ”Fable, are you ready?’

The great wolf positively glowed, matching the golden hue that suffused my skin, hair, and eyes. The paving stones shattered under his paws, even though he didn’t exert much force. I felt the hum of power running through his muscles as I ran a hand along his snout. Verity grasped me with a current of power and lifted me onto his back.

”Jackal,” I said, turning to the soldier. ”Please, keep an eye out for Fyren. He’s not...he’ll come back. I know it. And Luxxa, you and the others stay here. I’m sorry, but this is no longer a fight you can participate in.”

They all saluted and, to my relief, didn’t argue. Though Luxxa looked like she was about to, Jenna grabbed her arm.

”Be safe, my lady,” the wind mage said, giving me a worried smile.

I patted Fable’s neck, and we left the Shining Aegis in a single leap. ”H-Hey! Slow down!”

Verity laughed, a sound warm and out of place among the horrors of the blood-soaked city. ”Seems like you’re not the only one adjusting to new power.”

As we rose over the city, headed for the castle, a storm demon suddenly appeared beside us, bleeding an aura close to Arantius’s.

”Xiviyah! What a pleasant surprise,” Zephyriss said, flying a lazy loop around us as though we weren’t careening across the sky. ”Come to join in the revelry?”

”Zephyris, you’re--”

”Strong?” she winked. ”Naturally. I am a demon lord. Now that your soul is ninth-level, it allows the form I take outside to match. It’s only the early stages, but enough for now. These skyships are so fun to play with! I can’t believe no one had the idea to invent them earlier.”

”Er, yeah. I’m glad you, um, enjoy it,” I said, not quite meeting her gaze. I’d seen how she ”played” with them, and I didn’t envy the soldiers. I didn’t have to imagine their terror as the demon lord smashed into their side like a bullet and the deck literally disintegrated beneath them. I’d experienced it too many times myself, and they didn’t have Fable or Borealis to try and catch them. Their screams must have echoed in the winds as they plummeted to the city hundreds or thousands of feet below.

The battlefront had pushed deep into the city. The streets ran with corpses, almost all people and soldiers of Roann, but a few white robes and golden insignia marked church reinforcements. Entire city blocks burned or collapsed into heaps of rubble. Fatesworn established forward positions and supply depots in guard houses, barracks, and even noble mansions wherever they took them. They looked up as we passed over their heads, tired and worn, having faced death and returned many times. But every single one of them raised their swords and a rallying cry, lifting our spirits and speeding us on our way.

”There,” Zephyriss cried, pointing as we approached the palace spires. Few of them stood any longer, their elegant peaks and flags having crashed through the castle roofs below. Arantius and Fate fought over the courtyards, and below, the streets were choked with Radians. Their armor was dull and blooded, and thousands had perished before ever seeing the fight, but they marched un relentlessly. They wound for miles in every direction, charging toward the Fatesworn vanguard who held a series of fortified noble mansions a mile from the castle gates.

”Xiviyah! Defeated one!” cried a loud voice, magnified with magic. Vorinth’s voice. ”The day of your reckoning has come! Face the judgment of the king of Radia!”

A tremendous bloom of mana blossomed to our right, and a searing beam of sun magic sliced through the air. Fable dove, narrowly avoiding it, and ended up in a crowded square. He claimed his true form before we struck the ground, swelling to a behemoth easily twice the size I’d ever seen him. He dwarfed the Astral Fleet’s greatest skyships, measuring close to two hundred feet from his nose to the tip of his tail. He swept around in a circle, unleashing the aura of a ninth-level monster, causing hundreds to be crushed beneath his weight, or simply fall dead from the weight. His paws crashed through buildings like sandcastles.

My heart pounded as his presence, my own sweet wolf’s, gripped me in primordial dread. I might have been fleeing the power flowing to me, desperately sending it to every remnant and demon under my command, but he had not. Fable was very much ninth-level, and from the anger burning in his heart, he was intent on demonstrating that.