Book 8. Chapter 90: Occult God Keith |
She wasn’t going to go down easy, that’s for sure.
Walking out like this was the world’s grandest parade, rectangular banners flown high up by her Feather underlings, all while her actual form on this world towered over them all. To every sense I had, she was taking this like a festival rather than a potential chance at being killed.
But deep down, I knew there was some panic in her. I could feel it. This was as close to death as she’d ever gotten in her life.
The signs were there. Despite my best attempts to keep her monologuing, even having Cathida take the cockpit seat here and deliver the most grand-sounding one she could think of with my voice at the best possible heroic range, Relinquished still cut the entire speech short to sound the drum of war early.
But that was fine. As the two armies rushed to crash into one another, I stared directly at her, and she glared back at me.
Under the theater, under all the pomp and narrative that was forcing her hand, there was something real between us: We had to kill the other.
Before the satellite fortress above us reached position.
It was a no-holds-barred death match in the most primal way.
She’d been haughty the first time we met in the digital sea. Sure of herself, toying with me, confident she was playing around with a pawn.
She reached a finger up and pointed it directly at me.
I pulsed the fractal of Resolve and shockwave at the same time, catapulting everyone around me off the sides. Their armors would handle any collision against the ground or others, I just had to get them out of the way.
My own hand reached up and I dug into Urs’s skills, drawing out his defensive power ahead of me. And then empowered it in a way he hadn’t been able to - using Talen’s innate knowledge of the occult and willpower.
All things put together made the barrier appear as if it had been what had tossed everyone away from me, a good little underhanded distraction.
The barrier unfolded before me like a flower petal, pulsing blue and purple. Layer after layer sprang into the world, each one built to repel and adjust against different threats.
A beam of light and power tore across the world from her finger, melting the snow as it passed, even burning her own army on the way. Everything near it was ripped apart, and everything further off was blown away from the atmospheric shockwave following after it - until the beam slammed into my defenses.
I pulsed Resolve through my spellcasting and focused it. My willpower wasn’t anywhere as strong as Fathers, but I had Talen’s skills and training wrapped into my very soul to pull on, and it was his willpower I flared out and pooled into the defense Urs had researched and mastered.
The beam continued, seeking to break into the barrier, managing to fracture and break through the first layer only to be held off at the second, until it broke apart instead as energy dissipated away. My defense remained standing, multiple layers still ready and untouched.
All that was left in front of me was a massive half-tube of melted metal on the ground leading from me all the way to Relinquished. She tilted her head slightly, as if mildly surprised I had both survived and done so with just a single layer of defense breached.
Relic knights all stood back up from the shockwave I’d used to save their life. A few of them had the discipline to turn and continue rushing into the front lines. Others simply stared up at the massive occult barrier I’d brought out.
There was a faint cheer coming from all around me, muffled by relic armor helmets and the unending wind, but all that was going through my head was getting them further out of the way.
To Relinquished, this entire army was nothing but fanfare. It didn’t matter if they won or if her machines slaughtered every man and woman fighting on this field, all that mattered was that I died so she could safely flee from Wrath.
And that meant she’d kill anyone in the way, regardless of allegiance. She hadn’t hesitated to mow down even her Feathers in the line of fire, she absolutely wouldn’t bother with avoiding any humans.
I dove upwards into the air. It was the only place where she couldn’t target my army in her attack.
Which was a good move given she tried to swat me out of the air almost immediately after. She flicked her hand, and her massive blade sailed straight for me.
This one, I knew I wouldn’t be able to block using Urs’s shields, so instead I floated off to the side, and took a page from To’Naviris on using occult hands to grab things: In particular, the hilt of that massive blade. I swung it around myself, the thing a dozen times my size, and hurled it right back down at her down from the heavens.
She swatted it with her hand, almost bored, the blade cutting deep into the ground near her, now bent halfway through as the physical forces were too harsh on the metal.
Well, I figured my next trick wasn’t going to bore her. While I’d been busy redirecting her blade, occult ghosts had been flying out in the thousands from me, flying to surround her from the air, each holding a blade. Then launched it right down at her.
The Winterscar carbon fiber hand-tailored blades with armguards had been excellent duelist weapons to handle one on one duels against an enemy knight. I had handed those blades down to the knights that could make better use of them. This kind of fight would be far above their pay grade and purpose.
The blade I had in my hand for this fight, the same one mirrored a thousand times over with the fractal of mirror, wasn’t just any blade.
It was Talen’s nameless blade. Seven hundred years old and constantly held in his hand through his entire life. Forged by Urs, and imbued with the true fractal of division in a manner only someone of his skill and understanding could do so.
And that blade empowered by Resolve was something far more dangerous than Atius’s blade.
Talen had used this to cut straight through Father’s own occult edge, through the shield, and his entire chassis with hardly any effort. Leaving To'Avalis's stolen shell a wreck that would never function again.
The only thing that had saved Father himself from death in that blow was by hiding inside the shell’s heel when he controlled it, putting him at a far enough distance from the slice to survive.
And now I had a thousand copies of this blade, surrounding Relinquished.
Resolve pulsed out of each mirror image. And right on the tail of my ghosts, an equal number of Superiors flew behind, channeling power into their spear, tapping into my own energy to feed it.
We’d combined a few thousand realities into this one focal point, to see if overwhelming numbers would manage to do a dent to Relinquished. Thousands of other realities lost their Superiors, as they focused their attention moved to this singular reality.
The mirrors of Talen’s own blade struck down at the goddess from the heavens, and an equal amount of spears built to break demigods stabbed after.
Hundreds of her nearby Feathers were caught in the rain of power. The swords sliced cleanly through them, puncturing holes as they passed through. Maybe even a thousand of the lessers that had happened to race too close to their goddess’s feet were equally ripped apart.
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The massive blade she’d thrown at me earlier was peppered through, cut until it collapsed down, looking more like a sorry target practice plate having faced an airspeeder’s gatling gun.
The real damage came a moment later: If the blades had been surgical slices into reality, A01’s copied spear were living bombs.
The ground was ripped apart as they hit in the hundreds, like an orbital barrage of power. The world blew up into a cloud of white vapor, quickly freezing in the air as they exploded upwards into a cloud.
The harsh wind quickly carried the massive cover away.
Relinquished remained standing there, her general defense shield surrounding her like a bubble on all sides, occult crackling around it as if in anger. Everything around her had been filled with small craters where impacts had cleaved the ground.
But she remained on the one unbroken piece of terrain, completely unharmed.
All right, so this might be a tiny bit harder than I expected. I had all the power, but so did she.
Her hand came to her side, and a blade formed in a flash of occult, looking like her old one and exactly as massive. Her gaze looked up and locked with mine, as if also coming to the same conclusion that this fight would take longer than she expected. We both held our position, calculating what among our repertoire of spells and skills we could use to kill the other from what we’d learned.
The defensive shield I’d manifested earlier was something neither Urs nor Talen could have done by themselves. It took both their skills merged together and spearheaded through me to pull off. I was stronger than the past emperors, because I was all three of us put together.
But I also had it harder than she did. Relinquished just had to kill me.
I needed to kill more than her body. I had to kill her very soul. Which meant slicing through her soul fractal with the fractal of true division and doing so without her escaping away through the unity fractal.
She had the power needed to protect herself from that fractal with a counter-shield, given she’d just held off an entire swarm of both blade and spear thrown at her.
And I’m certain she had an occult shield surrounding her soul fractal within at all times.
Below, the first lines of my army slammed into the early Feathers that had raced ahead.
Spell and blade raged out, multi-colored attacks of fire, power, and spellcraft were lobbed in all directions. Fortunately, the Icon had planned for that kind of skirmish, and the vanguard had all been Deathless.
Unfortunately, Feathers were still Feathers. A single one could fight off five Deathless, unless that Deathless was from the first or second generation.
Still, the Deathless here took on the charge with determination, having long since lost all fear of death for this moment.
Keeping my blade held horizontally, matching Relinquished staring up at me with her own blade, Resolve pulsed out of me along with Urs’s quantum fractal, and a few hundred mirrors appeared, drew their own copies of Talen’s blade, then lanced them down into the battle, catching the first wave of Feathers mid-jump.
This wasn’t a directed attack at Relinquished, but rather a sweeping wave outwards into the enemy lines.
Each blade caught a Feather and punched straight through the chassis. Breaking their shields, cutting into critical parts of their shell, and ripping the very concept of that area in half. They landed into the snow, scrambling against the malfunctioning parts. Trying to repair it.
Some took too hard a hit, too near their soul fractal and they hit the ground barely functional. Others had been stabbed through the gut or in the arm, and they’d managed to get back on their feet.
But their shields had been broken and parts of their system were no longer responding as quickly.
The Deathless dove down on the weakened frontline like a wave, clearing them out with finishing blows. Just in time for the wave of lessers to crash in with the rest.
I stayed high up in the air in case Relinquished tried to throw anything my way.
She watched the loss of her Feathers with detached interest, an eyebrow raised as if considering something. Then glanced back up at me. I could tell she was debating options on how to kill me fast, and this display had given her one more datapoint to work with.
On my end, I had already prepared a few possible options and these opening moves unfortunately narrowed those options down to two directions:
Exhaust her source of power until it was wavering, and then lance her through with as many mirror images of Talen’s blade that I could manifest all in the same instant.
Or slice through her soul fractal in a way that she couldn’t see, bypassing her defenses somehow.
She moved first, breaking my thoughts.
Her blade moved from her held horizontal position, and she cut at me. Vertically. A wave of occult sliced out, moving far further than her blade’s true range.
And in an instant I saw what I expected she’d do at some point: Check if she could force me into bad positions.
It was easy to move to the side and avoid that hit, but that meant the soldiers ahead in the path would take the brunt of the damage. She was testing to see if I’d do everything possible to save lives here, and if I did, she’d have a lever to pull on.
I raised Talen’s blade and sliced down myself, launching an arc of occult vertically, mirroring her own attack. The two waves hit one another, breaking apart. Protecting the front line from being killed off in the crossfire.
Relinquished watched me for a moment. Then smiled wide.
Her hand lifted… and pointed straight at the Winterscar knights off to the side of the battle, fighting in the frontlines already.
Right where Lord Atius and Kidra were fighting back to back.
****
Talen’s shuttle and crew were able to approach and dock. Tenisent spoke, The system within it may be intelligent enough to know we are not the enemy perhaps. It must have been able to do so with them.
“Perhaps it is attuned to the same method pillar hearts are? In which it searches for human souls?” To’Wrathh angled herself for this open invitation, silently floating past the battlements and weapon turrets still opening fire on distant targets far below and ahead of their orbit.
Or perhaps something within is waiting for us directly.
They would soon know.
In the darkness, she eased closer and closer, now the entire fortress took up her entire sight. Ancient turrets still alive and moving to target distant threats. Lights across the hull illuminating different sections. Faded paint that once wrote out massive lettering, now nearly unrecognizable given the amount of orbital sand and particles slowly eroding it all away.
And soon, all she could see ahead of her was the docking tunnel, extended out and waiting.
Her white hand reached out for the ancient metal and fabric ahead.
Contact.
Her grip was sturdy, and with a pull she moved herself into the pathway, floating along within the extended tube. The moment she slipped completely within, the doorway behind her began to shut, the tunnel extending back inwards.
There was a hiss of air as the airlock doorway behind her sealed and pressure began to readjust.
To’Wrathh kept To’Orda’s shield raised and ready.
Lights ahead of her turned on. Darkness vanished click after click, as dull grey metal and operations controls up ahead were revealed.
Gravity began to strobe around her, and soon her heels clicked onto the metal ground, weight starting to increase.
There was an alien lurch as well, not part of the artificial gravity. A compensation against something else instead. She could hear through the air here the sound of metal groaning, and machinery rumbling.
What are these reports you are searching through? Tenisent asked, noticing where To’Wrathh’s attention had wandered.
She finished her calculations from her sensor suite and came to a single conclusion she shared with Tenisent: “The station is accelerating again.”
It was waiting for us to board before it left.
“Highly likely, yes. That it begun it’s burn the instant we were within cannot be a coincidence.” She cautiously walked the rest of the tunnel way, past a conveyer belt that was built to unload supplies and cargo through the tunnel.
Beyond, they found a hanger bay.
Nothing else was here to greet them besides ghosts and history. The room filled with open containers and waiting machinery that was one day abandoned halfway through a normal work day.
It wasn’t just quiet, the entire station showed no wireless signals to her senses, making the silence here feel outright opressive. No communication was possible with the station. Or it used a completely alien method of speaking.
Reconnaissance first. Tenisent spoke. Keep the shield up at all times.
She nodded at that plan, swiftly moving through the empty hanger until she could find a terminal. As she approached, it automatically lit to life.
A logistics and control terminal, made to inventory cargo brought in, and operate machinery here. The screen loaded up with a logo of a long gone human corporation, before it returned to the standard desktop.
She found a data port she was familiar with. Of course Relinquished would have never developed new technology on her own or updated data connections with more advanced methods than the ones available in this era. Her systems were more or less the same as they had been thousands of years before.
She plugged herself in with a single wire.
And ran into a wall instantly after. It was as if a hand had slammed down before her path and held the path sealed.
This must be the autonomous guidance system in charge of the station then. Or one part of it.
Or perhaps this barrier had always been there, barring the way past the basic functions she could access from this terminal. There was the tint of the occult to it, something that prevented her from even making attempts to bypass.
She considered unleashing the Icon’s modified virus.
We cannot risk it. Tenisent spoke. The station must remain intact. If we trigger some form of self-destruct sequence, all hope is lost.
To’Wrathh nodded, choosing to disconnect from the terminal.
We must find the helm. Tenisent spoke. We should begin by searching through the expected center of the station.
“But as a civilian terraforming platform, it may be more likely the bridge control would be an observation deck of some sort in addition.” To’Wrathh considered.
They didn’t quite need to consider that question in the end.
Far ahead of the hangar, past the abandoned cargo and dust that filled the air, a doorway flashed green and opened up.