Risen

Atlantis Rising Trilogy Book III

Evan Currie

Prelude

Atlantis

Elanthielle stared out over the calm seas as the sun set over the horizon, thinking about how life changed so strangely sometimes. Growing up with her mother, alone in the wasteland, she’d never thought about the future. There hadn’t been time, not even as a child.

She’d never gone hungry, unlike many she’d met since then, but every day was filled with the work needed to ensure that they would eat, and drink, and be sheltered through the days that would come. The future, she had since learned, was a thing for people who had time to spare.

The present was all that most could hope for.

Now though, she was seeing through the present and into the future and it was like… a magical thing. Worry about what may come, hope for what might be… She couldn’t turn it off anymore, even though it was a maddening thing that would not let her be.

A full set of seasons, it has been a full set of seasons…

The demons were still out there, of course, but none here on Atlantis had seen anything of them in that long. Not since she’d sunk their great city, their stolen city, of Lemuria.

She tried not to think about how many enslaved humans had died there, nor how many… non-humans who weren’t as hostile she’d always believed had died as well. The world gained a little color, she realized, when she met the brothers.

Atlantis had grown vastly in that time. The resources Merlin had made available were strained near to the breaking point getting shelters built, providing tools to the hunters and the fishermen, educating the farmers, it was true… but they’d managed.

In the wasteland, it would have been a hard dry season to survive. She was reliably informed that farther north, they likely would have frozen or starved… but Atlantis was in a warm environment, food was there to be had as needed, and while storms were occasionally quite severe, they were not insurmountable nor unendurable.

So, the little community had continued to grow. Merlin told her the population every so often, though the numbers meant little to her. She found that, no matter how hard she tried, once a number grew too large, she could no longer properly hold it in her mind in any way that truly made sense.

To her, it was enough that they were growing. They needed new homes regularly, and the strange little set of islands they lived on had to be farmed and fished.

It was a good life.

It should have been enough of a life.

Which brought her back to the future. That thing that didn’t exist anywhere but her mind, and somehow, she still couldn’t stop thinking about it.

After her father and mother had been murdered, by a human serving the demons no less, she’d sworn revenge. On the traitor, of course, but more on the demons who had won his allegiance and directed him to his abominable actions.

Does sinking an entire city even our ledger? Elan wondered darkly. Do I still owe them vengeance? Or is it now their turn?

It was not a question that she could answer, it wasn’t even a question she’d been able to ask just one full cycle of seasons past… but now, she couldn’t get it out of her head.

Rising to her feet, Elan stood on the easily swaying platform she had taken out through the Canals of Atlantis and into the open sea. She had too much time to think now, and it seemed that all she was accomplishing was making her doubt her own actions.

She missed the action, she realized. The ever-present threat of the demons. The simplicity of it all when the foe was there in front of her, her blades in her hand, and her allies at her back. Somehow, she remembered the thrill of it all, while her mind seemed to be pushing the horrors away.

She didn’t know if everyone felt like this as time progressed, as they gained more freedom from their toils… but if they did, Elan was afraid for humanity, for what it meant that she loved the battle so much as she did, that she could miss something so horrific.

I hope it’s just me.

*****

Citadel of the Ley

“My Lady.”

The demon bowed, earning a slight look of disgust from the tall and curved form that sat astride the gleaming black throne, his own misshapen features only made to look all the worse in comparison to her alabaster perfection.

“You may speak,” she said regally, gesturing invitingly as she forced any hint of her revulsion from her speech and features.

The weakest of demons were often quite comely, the change not fully upon them yet. They still existed in the form of the creator’s mind, and thus their beauty was intact. Mid level monsters, however more powerful, were uniform in only one way… their shared hideous appearance.

As their minds were corrupted by the change, so too were their bodies. The form of the creator’s mind bespoke the form of the created, and twisting one had eventual impacts on the other.

Should they survive, however, she knew that they might eventually reach a level of power and perfection that could challenge even the might of the creator’s own chosen… like she herself had after her body had completed the change and she gained the power needed to put herself right again.

Unlike the First Circle, who had been born in the image of the creator’s mind and turned from him without the change, all those below had to endure hell before they could truly ascend.

Such was this one in front of her, mid way through his change. It would be centuries or more before he even had the option to revert himself, to improve himself. If his mind was not broken, and his body still lived, he might be worth the effort put into him.

Until then, well, even the hideous beasts among them could be useful tools in some manner.

“The preparations to correct the broken ritual are complete, my Lady. We may invoke the final summoning as you command it.”

“Ahhh,” She breathed out, biting at her lip as her body trembled slightly from the excitement of the very idea.

The final ward would be the end of this world, and it would mean that she had, at last, competed her assignment here.

It had been an enjoyable one for a time. The wars in the beginning had been legendary, the battles truly epic. The humans here had burned down countless demons as they defended the world, slaughtering in the trillions… but there were a trillion times that waiting to reinforce them, and as it inevitably must be, the humans had failed and fallen.

Once the war had been won, the sheer doldrums of administering to a world only just beginning the change had set in quickly. Since then, well, she had lost count of just how many years it had been. A hundred? Two? Five or more?

It didn’t matter.

The years all melded together when you were as old as she. All that mattered were the good years, those with some excitement and satisfaction to them… and the rest. It had been a long time of ‘the rest’, so she was glad to see the end finally upon them.

Of course, we’re overdue as it is.

That thought brought a dark grimace to her expression, one that set the mid-level demon cringing back away from her though she neither noticed nor cared. The loss of the war trophy that had been Lemuria was a black mark on an otherwise perfect campaign.

Every seer in her employ had assured that the captured city would be useable for centuries longer even without proper maintenance.

That was the true problem, of course. The loss of the city itself was an insult to her and her leadership, but the fact that it was a loss that should not have happened was far more concerning.

Someone, somehow, had not been foreseen despite their actions impacting directly on a specific vision her seers had looked upon.

That meant, of course, that victory was not yet a forgone conclusion.

She smiled very slightly, tongue snaking out to lick her lips, as she felt the tremor of excitement deep inside once more. It had been a long time.

“Very good,” She breathed out, pushing off the black throne and walking down the dais as the demon before he both cringed away and tried to remain respectfully in place.

She ignored him. He was so far beneath her that he wasn’t worth the effort of either swatting aside or stepping over. Her feet ground down onto one of his limbs. Honestly, she couldn’t make out if it were a foot or a hand at this point, pulping it as the demon moaned from both the pain and the effort to keep silent as she walked on past.

Attendants appeared from behind her, bringing a cloak and her personal weapons and equipment should she need them.

Beyond the throne room was an open door that she crossed through, stepping onto a large landing that overlooked the lands beyond the citadel.

They were desert wastelands for the most part, though the white and green of mountains existed to the west of her, and she could see the glittering blue of a large sea to the east and south.

The Citadel was located in the third of the three great wells of power of the world.

Lemuria was at one. The second was in the middle of a shallow sea a third of the circumference about the world from both Lemuria and the third, here at the Citadel. Capturing two of the great wells had been what had cinched the final victory over the human forces, the third was considered largely unsuitable for practical use given the lack of anywhere to build or place foundations of power.

With the two, however, she had held enough power to end the human resistance in a single battle that had raged for forty years of continual fighting.

Now, however, she held only one.

With the human forces vanquished, that was not an impediment, however. The few ragtag fools who continued to fight had no strategic resources left. No magic. No great armors or ships. Not even any true numbers to speak of.

This is how all worlds end, she smiled at the delicious thought. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. Fitting for such feeble things.

Any humans of use had long since been consigned to the change.

The rest? They were the dregs.

No one cared what happened to the dregs. Certainly not her… and, frankly, for the most part… not even the dregs themselves.

As it should be.

*****

Avalon

The entity known as Merlin had been called many things over his existence, a stretch of time that could not be explained to any merely linear being. The most accurate, he supposed, was an Elemental Intelligence… a being who’s every facet was tied, not to a body, but to a fundamental force.

It was what gave him the flexibility and power that he still retained, ages past the time of his creation and after the, presumed, death of those who made, or birthed, him.

Presumed, because even he did know who had done that.

It wasn’t that his records had been lost. That was information that he’d never known. The people he’d worked for, and with, had never told him… assuming they knew themselves, which he had come to honestly doubt.

Of the very few things denied to his roving gaze, his own creation was possibly the more irritating.

Beyond that, he saw so very much.

It was just too bad that so much of what he saw was so very… dismal.

The world, a year earlier, had gained a reprieve. Actions even he hadn’t predicted, though given his understanding of humanity he wondered how it was that he had missed the possibility, had somehow bought the planet and its true owners and brief stay of execution.

That stay of execution was up now, however.

He could feel the change in the wells of power, all of them, though it was clear that the main source was in the Second of the Three.

As it must be.

One last battle is upon us… but we cannot afford another such victory as the last, because it would surely end our history.

Merlin frowned, more a mental state than a physical change as he had very little need for any physicality, and he began to work on a solution that would make this, truly, the last battle.

*****

Elan stepped off her platform as it crunched softly up on the sand, leaving it where it lay as she knew it would take a massive storm to move it against her desires and there was no such thing coming for some time at least. She walked forward to the old redoubt entry, the one that had almost been buried in the sea when they arrived.

Now, however, it was a walk across dry land… mostly… to get to it. The sea had been barred off and pumped out by Merlin’s magic, not that he called it that.

She tried to spend time there as she could, learning more so she could help the city she had helped found.

Caleb, well he was a farmer at heart. She’d taught him what was in the books and the archives about that and left him to it. Figuring the rest out as he went seemed to make him happy, so he rarely came back with questions and only did so when the problem had him truly stumped.

Jol, well he was… not a famer.

Elan blushed a little, remembering some of the things the rather… impressively attributed man had suggested, things she had later found out he’d learned from the Lady of the City which had quenched many of the rather… interesting thoughts they’d generated once she knew of it.

She liked Jol, truly, but the idea of lying with a demon… even a comely one? It made her skin crawl, even if it had been a necessity for him at the time.

He spent his days hunting or fishing for the people of the city, and his nights… doing his best to ensure a continued growth among their population.

All those who had valuable skills were putting them to use, and that was good.

Elan stepped into the entrance of the redoubt, taking the polished steps down into the bowels of the facility, her bare feet making hardly a sound as she went.

It still didn’t keep her from being noticed by the keeper of it, of course.

“Welcome, child,” Merlin’s voice was amused, he took too much pleasure in calling her that despite everything.

Determined not to let him goad her to a reaction, however, Elan pushed on and crossed the entry way and reception area, bare though they were now, heading once more for the library.

“If you would,” Merlin interrupted her, “I would request your presence at the Table.”

That caused her to stop short, head cocking as her eyebrows went up. The Table was not something Merlin often allowed her, or anyone, to sit at. It was not, in fact, a table by any definition she could imagine… but she lacked any better way to describe it herself, and so The Table it was.

“Very well, may I ask why?” She said as she redirected.

“Something has begun,” Merlin said, enigmatically, his presence fading almost immediately after.

Elan suppressed a shiver at those words, and that tone. She had come to know that when the ancient being spoke like that, it meant nothing good for mere mortals like herself.

Still, she made her way through the facility, ignoring the library and archives for the moment, until she came to the room at the center of it all.

The Table.

It was less a table, precisely, and more a floating disk… or maybe it was a floating disk. Honestly, Elan had never been able to see it all in one place such that she could tell what it truly was. It appeared to her as an infinitely curving disk that stretched out as far as she could see in each direction… yet existed in a finite room that was clearly too small for such things.

It gave her a headache whenever she had to think about it.

“Your seat,” Merlin said softly, gesturing to the place at the Table directly across from the door.

Elan reluctantly stepped forward. The chair offered was… again, not like any chair she’d seen prior to entering Merlin’s domain. Instead of being built of wood or stone or any respectable material, it seemed formed of metal… yet gave way like the softest of furs when she settled into it.

Cradling her from all sides, comfortable and secure, Elan yet felt uneasy as she floated there in the air over the ground, expecting it to abruptly collapse under her no matter how many times she sat in it.

“What is it?” She asked, forcing her mind to other things.

“What we interrupted, a full year past,” Merlin said. “Has begun anew.”

Elan hissed, sucking air in at that revelation. They’d never fully learned what the intent was before she collapsed the great city, but it had certainly not boded well for any of them.

“How can you tell?”

“The infection in the world’s lines of power, the magic of this planet from the demon’s perspective… it has returned.” Merlin told her gravely. “I do not know what it brings, but I can say that it will be nothing good.”

“That, I don’t need to be told,” Elan grimaced, hands clenching.

She’d seen the… the inhumanity of the demons far too closely already in her life. She’d heard of what they could do, and what they had done. It was not a stretch for her to believe that there was worse yet to come.

“What can we do?” She asked firmly.

*****

Chapter One

Atlantis

Caleb was enjoying the lovely day. He’d tended his farms with the usual enthusiasm he brought to everything he did… or attempted to bring, at least, and now with the light fading it was time to relax and just enjoy the peace that had been bought for the people here.

He had had a taste for battle, still did really though he was becoming loathe to admit such. It was strange, when he thought about it, tried to remember why it was that he’d wanted to fight back before he’d been thrust into the middle of the real thing.

His imagery of it had been all too deluded, Caleb supposed. The idea of the conquering hero, saving everyone, it was deeply ingrained in his thinking despite it having taken a deep hit during the fight a year ago. Now, he still saw the need, but the desire for it was faded deeply.

Not gone.

Caleb had more than once experienced a longing for that same thrill again, so he knew it wasn’t gone. But for the moment he would be happy with it being faded while he focused on something that he’d always thought was boring.

It was strange, how farming had changed for him.

He’d always tried to duck out of the chores, growing up, even though he knew how important they were. No one ate unless someone grew the food, or hunted for it, or fished. If there wasn’t enough food, well no warrior would fight for long on an empty stomach.

Caleb had decided that if he never saw battle again, but only spent his life here, growing food for the community, well that would be a worthy life.

Unfortunately, he knew that the demons were out there… and, as long as they were, there was no chance that his life would go quite so peaceably.

“Hey, Caleb,” A voice startled him from his reverie. “How are things?”

He looked up to spot Brokkr walking his way, the short and stocky man looking awkward as he moved, though somehow still managing to be quiet on his feet even in the uneven ground and materials of the farm.

“Brokkr,” he said with a nod.

He didn’t know the short man well, he and Sindri had come in from Elan’s last foray out into the outer world. All he knew about the pair was that they were weaponeers of some skill, far more so than anyone else on Atlantis at the moment.

The pair of them had an odd feeling about them too, something he couldn’t quite pin down, but it never failed to leave him on edge.

“Heard you’d been out and about, growing things,” Brokkr grunted, cheerfully as it was, a great smile on his face as he looked around.  “Looks like it’s been a good growing season thus far too.”

Caleb shrugged simply, “I cannot complain. The weather has been fine, and the soil here is getting better with the information Merlin gifted us.”

Brokkr snorted. “Yes, I imagine that old codger could tell you a thing or two about farming. Not my specialty, of course.”

“No, not from what I hear,” Caleb agreed with a tip of his head. “What brings you out to me, Mr Brokkr?”

“Brokkr, friend, no need for any honorifics,” The short man said agreeably. “I was speaking with the council and some others, seeing what good I might be able to offer, and I learned that you acquitted yourself well in a bit of a nasty little free for all before my brother and I arrived, yes?”

“It was an… interesting time,” Caleb admitted cautiously.

“Well, that would make you one of the defenders of this little community, no?” Brokkr said. “My brother and I have some skill in weaponscraft, and we decided that you might do with one of ours, if it pleased you.”

Caleb was silent for a moment after that, uncertain what he should right say. He wasn’t going to turn down a better weapon, though, that much was certain. Still, he’d seen some of their work carried by Elan and Jol. A hammer and staff were not exactly things that he had been trained in.

“What did you have in mind?” He asked finally. “I cannot see myself swinging a hammer or whipping around a stick, you know.”

Brokkr chortled at that. “Not yer style, I suppose, no? I think we can do something to your liking. What are yes trained in?”

“Sword,” He said. “From a very young age.”

Brokkr nodded, though his expression remained amused.

“By my standards, lad, you’re still at a young age,” He said simply. “But we can work with that. Do you have your preferred blade anywhere?”

Caleb sighed, looking out over his crops briefly, then decided that he’d done enough for the day.

“Come,” He said. “Back to my home, I’ll show what I have been using.”

“Perfect, lad, lead the way.”

*****

The heat of the sun baking him through the open window woke Jol as much as the light of it in his eyes did. He blinked, smacking his lips and mouth a bit to get the dryness worked out, and rolled over slightly to push his head back into the shadow, but in the process bumped over the body in the bed next to him.

He blinked a couple times more, thinking back to the night before, trying to remember who the girl was but kept coming up blank. Finally, he just gave it up and pried himself free of her draping arm, swinging himself out of the bed and planting his feet on the floor.

It was almost mid day from the direction of the sun, he noted, and he supposed that meant it was time to get up and find something he could do to make himself useful with the locals.

Jol didn’t really consider himself part of the community here, not yet anyway, as much as he sort of wished he could. The city he’d grown up in, well every human there had been a slave at best. At worst, well even he didn’t like to think about those times.

Now, as many of them as they’d been able to save had come here to meet with an already established group of survivors from another city and it was both heaven and hell for the likes of him. The past year had been peaceful, but that really just put him a little more on edge.

There was no shortage of willing bed mates, which helped take some of that edge off, but ultimately, he just felt at a loss.

In The City he’d been considered a reckless fool. The sort who was known for killing demons if they crossed him, but had enough of a countenance from the Lady that he wasn’t hunted for it. If he died in a fight, well Jol doubted that she would have cared much, but her… interest in him had kept him from being the subject of a hunt at least.

Here, though? He was at a loss.

He hunted, fished sometimes, for his own table and to contribute to the community. Sometimes he helped out with whatever needed to be done. There was always something going on that could use a strong back to help it along, but for all that… he was feeling like a drag on the community, not exactly a new feeling… but now it felt like a bad thing.

He got dressed. His simple tough clothes had a bit of smell too them, which told him it was coming up on time to get everything washed. His hammer, the only thing he truly owned, that hung at his belt before he even approached the door.

Safe location or not, he went nowhere unarmed.

Someday, Jol knew he would die. He just prayed that it would be with one hand around a demon’s throat, and the other slamming his hammer through its skull.

*****

Simone looked up as some motion caught her eye, recognizing the source as the young man, Jolinr she believed he was called, slipped from the home of a single young lady he’d last been seen with.

She buried a slight smirk of amusement and returned to her work.

The lad was known to be something of a bed hopper, which was his concern so long as he didn’t cross the wrong person she supposed. He was a handsome enough boy, though a couple decades too young for her tastes no matter how good he looked. She’d heard about his fighting skills from some of the others who’d been rescued from the City, so knew that he was a good man to have around even for all his issues.

For herself, she’d spent the last year trying to get, and then trying to keep the local community together and growing, both in numbers and in capacity.

It had not been an easy year, but they’d accomplished things she could never have imagined before she’d come here.

Merlin’s help alone made miracles seem commonplace, but more than that, it was the change in attitude that really made it worth the effort she’d poured in. The people had gone from a palpable sense of hopeless survival to something so much more.

There was hope, now, for whatever that was worth. A sense of victory, though she knew that was false.

Simone didn’t know if it was a good thing or not. The hope she could sense left a fresh, exhilarating, taste in the air that she’d almost forgotten over the run of her life… but she’d have hope broken and stolen before. And Simone did not believe she could survive that even one time more.

At any rate, it didn’t matter for the moment.

All she could was do her job until the next world changing crisis descended on them.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, she thought wryly, That will wait until I die peacefully in my bed.

Simone snorted.

That would be the day… and a miracle in, and of, itself.

*****

Inside the redoubt, Elan looked at an image of what Merlin assured her was the world on which she stood.

She wasn’t, honestly, certain of how it was that she could be standing on a ball… that felt wrong to her, but he assured that it was indeed that shape and that down was not… down? Rather down was toward the center of the ball.

It made no sense at all to her, but admitting her own ignorance was something Elan was begrudgingly becoming rather good at.

She didn’t enjoy admitting that she had no understanding of something, but she could do so when faced with things that defied her comprehension of it all.

Merlin called that admission the ‘first step out of darkness’, which she guessed was supposed to be encouraging.

At the moment, the world was not exactly what had her focus, however. It was the ley beneath the surface of the land and seas.

The world was criss-crossed with lines of power, the Ley, as Merlin called them. Most of them were surging with crisp, clear, power according to the scan she was looking at… but not all.

A sickly darkness was spreading from one of the junction points, centered on a land a long distance from Atlantis. So far, in fact, that she’d had to ask whether it mattered at all. The demons were so far away, normally she’d be happy with and leave it be.

Of course, it couldn’t be that simple.

The dark power was a sickness in the planet, Merlin had explained to her. Elan was sure, from his tone, that he was simplifying it… as though explaining to a child… but as much as she was irritated by that, she was just a little more grateful that he’d done so.

Merlin couldn’t explain exactly what it was, but he had been able to show her where it was centered.

It was a point on the world as far from where she was now as the Demon City had been, almost precisely. That put it a very, very, long ways away. Farther than she’d been able to previously understand, but now she had seen the world pass underneath her as she moved at insane speeds… and it still took an incredibly long time to get back from where she had been without the transportation of the Redoubt system.

“I understand that this is dangerous,” She said finally, frowning in thought. “But I’m not sure what we can do about it, or even if it will matter to the people here.”

“It will matter greatly, if the worst is true,” Merlin told her firmly. “While I have not been able to analyze the exact intent behind this, I can tell you that it shares a great deal in common with the portal spells used to bring demons to this world… only… more potent, I believe.”

“So, they are calling in more demons,” Elan sighed. “Merlin, as much as I hate that, to be honest… does it really matter? They already outnumber us by scales I’ve never been able to get my head around. A few more…”

She shrugged helplessly, “I just don’t see how that makes things worse. Let them spend their power.”

Merlin glared at her sternly, “Something warriors should always be wary of is an enemy that appears to be doing something that doesn’t matter. If they’re doing it, you almost certainly do not want them to succeed at it.”

“I’m not saying that I want them to succeed,” She protested. “I’m saying that I don’t know how many lives it’s worth to stop them, even assuming we could get enough people out there.”

She was quiet for a time before she spoke again, this time more softly.

“We lost a lot of people here the last time.”

“And you will lose more,” Merlin said flatly. “Whether you act, or not, you will lose people. To the demons, the elements, to old age. A warrior cannot be afraid of losing people, child…”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a warrior anymore,” she said, looking down.

Merlin was silent at that. There was nothing really that he could say to a statement like that. The girl he’d first met, all that time ago, she had been a firebrand… but she had also been very sheltered. Trained… reasonably well give the circumstances but blooded only in very straightforward battles.

It was easy to be a warrior in a righteous cause when the enemy lined up neatly for you and were clearly evil. It became harder, however, when you saw the deaths mount among those that war always struck first… the weak, children, innocents caught in the middle of the righteous cause you had chosen.

More than one warrior, in their best of days, had been turned from their path by such pains.

However, this was not the same situation.

“Elanthielle, those people in that city, they were already lost. All of them, including the ones that you were successful in saving,” Merlin told her intently. “Dead now, or dead in a year…”

“But they would have had the year.”

“A year of torture and slavery under the heels of their demonic overlords. Would you prefer that?”

She looked up, the fire in her eyes back, “Yes! It’s another year to fight back!”

“For you, yes. For most of them? They’d already given up.”

“Jol didn’t.”

Merlin smiled, his amorphous avatar melding down into a solid image of the older man he liked to project, “Your friend Jolinr is… not what I could call a typical example of humanity.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to convince me of that much.”

Elan sighed, “but some of them might have been like him.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. You cannot know, you can only make decisions based on what you do know. Given what you were told, what you then knew to be true… would you have done any different today?”

Elan looked down, thoughtful now as she considered that.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I… I was reckless, I could have been more cautious. Taken some more help, maybe not a lot but some… I can’t say for sure what I’d have done differently, but I think I would have.”

“Very good,” Merlin nodded, pleased with the answer. “However, would you have turned your back and left it be?”

“No,” she said instantly. “The threat was clear, and the people there deserved whatever I could do.”

Merlin shrugged slightly, “I am ambivalent to the second point, but I suppose they might be deserving. We will see about that… however, your first point, was quite right. The threat was clear. So is this one.”

Elan sighed heavily, refocusing on the imagery Merlin had put up.

“A portal,” she said flatly as she examined the infected channels of Ley power.

“Similar in signature,” Merlin corrected. “I have no match for the precise data that I have analyzed.”

“So, you don’t know what it is.”

“I do not. I do know that it is malignant, sources from a demonic stronghold, and is growing greatly in power.”

Elan nodded slowly, ignoring the word she didn’t understand in that statement, she didn’t need him to paint much more of a picture than that if she were honest. Her own misgivings and self doubt aside, what Merlin was saying had truth in it.

As usual.

“Very well,” She said. “I’ll investigate.”

“Alone?”

Elan smiled thinly, “I’ve learned some things from past mistakes, if nothing else. I’ll see if Caleb, Jol, and maybe the twins are up to a little trip.”

“Very good.”

*****

Chapter Two

Citadel

The Lady of the Keep rather liked the tower her kind had taken and altered on this place of power, though it lacked some of the sophistication of the purely human built towers they’d occupied in the, now lost, City. That lack was noticeable for those who enjoyed their luxuries, of course, but there was just a feel about human built constructs that set her on edge.

It had been a long time indeed since she’d been counted as human, so long that not only did she not truly recall anything of those days, but she didn’t even recall which universe she’d belonged to before they’d been overtaken by the flood of denizens from the First universe as they reached out beyond their dimensional boundaries.

She had a vague idea that she’d been young, for a human, when she’d begun the change. Most of those early centuries were long forgotten, however, and it was no wonder. Perhaps a single percent of her life had been spent as some misbegotten ape, the rest had been enduring the change that fractured every mind that went through it.

Sanity was an illness that only humans were forced to endure.

Her tower reflected her insanity, and she reveled in the comfort of it.

It could have been built in a nicer location, however.

Surrounded by deserts in all directions, with water visible only to the southeast, and the only true color being the green of the great forests that lay in the distance on the sides of the mountain range that walled off the West.

It was just as well, she supposed. If they were in a beautiful area, the demons beneath her would likely have defiled it long since. There wasn’t really much even their sort could do to the sand and rock that surrounded the Citadel, thankfully.

She hadn’t precisely been spoiled for choice, either, when directing its construction.

Three points on the world were powerful enough for what she needed. This desert, a completely useless shallow sea a third of the way around the planet to the East, and the location that had been where Lemuria rested.

The last great human city had, however, held out longer than most. Beyond the time in which she had directed construction to begin, and thus had eliminated that position from the running. Given the option of building on a desert, or in the middle of the shallow sea north of one of the world’s great continents, well the choice had truly been made for her.

“My Lady.”

“What is it, Shirva?” She asked, not turning to face the speaker.

“Progress continues as ordered. We are nearly ready.”

“Good. Are their any signs of… troubles?” She asked, now half turning to bring him into her direct line of sight.

Shirva, demon of the second circle, swallowed slightly as he resisted the urge to retreat from her gaze. He shook his head, though his expression was quizzical beneath the fear.

“No, of course not… should we be… expecting trouble, My Lady?”

“Always expect trouble, Shirva,” she said, her voice deceptively light. “And you will rarely be disappointed. In this case, however, I am most interested in whether there have been any new movements among the human survivors?”

Contrary to what most seemed to believe, there were more of the little apes running around the world than it might appear. Many served as slaves, or vassals to the various under-lords that ruled over their own little domains. Tolerated mostly because they made for good sport for lower-level demons who could not control their urges, the sanity breaking aspects of the change were not for the weak of mind, body, or heart after all.

Humans were useful at the moment, for labor, food, or plaything. However, they were also occasionally frustrating and could cause trouble well beyond the limits one might expect from such frail little beings.

“The humans? They hardly matter,” Shirva snorted.

“Ants hardly matter, Shirva, until they’re swarming you in the tens of thousands,” Her tone remained light, but somehow there was an edge to it all the same. “I have seen even powerful demons killed by such little pests in the past…”

She left a pause there, not bothering to explain whether the pests she was referring to were the ants, or the humans, before she went on.

“Would you like me to arrange a demonstration for you?” She asked, smiling sweetly.

Shirva did back up this time, his mind unable to prevent his body from acting on its instinctual response.

“No, My Lady,” He bowed his head deeply. “I will confirm that there are no such problems.”

“Very good. You may go.”

“Yes, my lady, thank you my lady!”

She ignored him as he almost, though not quite, managed to trip over himself on his way out, turning back to the view of the surrounding area from the top of her citadel.

Humans. Such fascinating creatures, she thought. Lowly and disgusting, yet… the source of all of this.

*****

Ancient Redoubt

Jol sidled up to Brokkr and Sindri, the two faces he knew best in the room.

“What’s this all about?”

“We dinna know more than you do, Jol,” Sindri answered calmly. “Took us away from our work, it did, though.”

Brokkr just grunted his agreement, leaving Jol to look around at the others.

Elan was there, of course, the cute little slip who’d turned out to be more than she appeared. Jol’s shoulder still had a phantom ache from when she’d put him down back in the city, though the memory of it now brought more of a rueful smile to his face than the frustrated insult he’d taken at the time.

Simone, the village Elder of Atlantis, if she could be described as such, was next. She wasn’t particularly elderly, but there were few of those that survived the conditions under the demons, so she qualified by default. A good-looking woman, whose features bore only the beginning of the weary wear of time.

And Caleb was there as well, Jol noted as his eyes skipped over the young man with little interest. He knew the man, a boy really, was a noted local fighter but he could take him he was certain.

“We have another problem,” Elan said, getting their attention.

“Like the last one?” Caleb asked, his tone having a dark thread to it.

She nodded, “It seems likely that it’s less a new problem than that one come back around.”

“Fantastic,” Caleb sighed.

Jol just snorted. The boy’s reputation as a fighter seemed a little overblown, but that was fine. He was used to dealing with things on his own anyway.

“Where do I have to go?” Jol asked cheerfully. “And are there demons there to kill?”

“I believe that the answer to the second part of that is a most emphatic yes,” Merlin stated as he appeared from thin air beside the projection of a ball behind Elan, a gesture from him setting the ball spinning and growing larger until it came to a stop over something unfamiliar. “As to your second question, here would be where you need to go.”

Jol looked at the projection, puzzled by it, “But I’m here already.”

Merlin closed his eyes, “This is going to be… annoying, isn’t it?”

Brokkr chuckled. “The lad is a bit thick, in more ways than one according to the ladies, but go on and my brother and I will explain the nuance to him.”

“Be my guest,” Merlin said dryly, ignoring the innuendo entirely aside from noting that, other than Sindri, the only other person in the room who appeared to have caught it was Simone, who merely rolled her eyes.

Children. They’re all children. Thousand years of war, and it comes down to… children.

There was something… abominable about that, yet also poetic in a dark and disturbing way, Merlin supposed. He put his misgivings aside, however, because the situation was indeed dire, and if children were the only ones who could save the world… well, he supposed that they might as well try. Doing nothing would be worse.

“This,” He said, pointing to the projection, “Is the location of the third of the world’s three great convergences of power. The first was under Lemuria and powered both the city and the defenses of humanity in the past but also the demons’ own powers since they took the city so many years past. The second is beneath Atlantis itself, originally considered useless due to its’ position in this shallow sea with no resources to speak of being available… That was something that changed during the last days of the war.”

“Oh? How so?” Jol asked, leaning in, now interested. He found the tales of humanity’s last stand to be endlessly fascinating.

“We don’t have time for a full accounting at the moment, however, suffice to say that there was a demonic attempt to use the powers in the area that was discovered,” Merlin said. “Defensive Command ordered an orbital strike on our very position. The result was the total vaporization of all ocean water for nearly twenty miles, while the subsurface rock was turned to liquid by the force. The water rushed back, cooling the rock even as it rippled out from the center of the strike. The circular bands upon which you built the city you call Atlantis are the results of that attack.”

“Our entire island chain,” Simone blurted, shocked. “Was created by a single strike launched from the old ones?”

“Indeed.”

“How did they lose?”

Merlin sighed, “They lost because they were overwhelmed. A person might be incalculably stronger than a single ant… but you would not enjoy being dropped into the midst of certain ant species’ nests, I assure you. You might kill tens of thousands, but they would win in the end. Such was the outcome here.”

She leaned back, shaking her head, mumbling, “Unbelievable.”

“So, we go, and we kill us some demons,” Jol shrugged, impressed by the power of the attack they were discussing but not really concerned enough to think about it beyond that. “I’ll get my hammer.”

Sindri smacked him in the back of the head. “Don’t be a damn fool. There’s to be more about it than that.”

“So, you always say, but I don’t see it,” Jol glared, rubbing his head. “Talking doesn’t get anything done.”

“Talking lets you work out the best way to do things, child, now listen.”

“Sindri’s right,” Elan said, her expression troubled. “I went bumbling into this the last time, and while people tell me it worked out for the best… I could have done better. I wasted lives that I could have saved. We need to act, but we need to act with thought, not merely trusting that we’ll always be right and lucky.”

Most of the others nodded in agreement, so Jol merely restricted himself to a sigh and a roll of his eyes.

“Fine. Let’s get this out of the way then. What is the problem, do we even know?”

“That’s why you’re here, actually,” Elan said, looking over at him seriously. “Do you know what the plan was, back in the City, before I arrived? We know that there was something big that happened, or was supposed to happen…”

Jol frowned, but nodded, “Yes… The lady had something big going on. She didn’t explain it to me or anything, but the orders came from above her.”

Brokkr grumbled, shaking his head, “Above the Lady. That’s not good news, Lad. There’s only one, well… two I suppose… on this world above the Lady of the City… and, in many ways, they were her equals, not superiors. It might have come from the beyond.”

Jol shrugged, not really caring, “All I know is that it was supposed to be the end of the war.”

“What?” Caleb looked up at that, “The war ended… ages ago.”

“I just know what I overheard.”

“It’s not technically true that the war ended,” Merlin said. “It could be argued that, so long as the works of humanity remains, and there are humans to leverage them, the war cannot end. The… ownership of this world is not ceded by mere battles, it was gifted to humans by greater powers than you can possibly know, and while humans yet live, the title of this world cannot be passed on.”

That caused a moment of silence in the room.

“So, they have to wipe us all out. They can’t be satisfied with grinding us under a boot,” Simone said tiredly. “I don’t know why this surprises me even slightly.”

Elan nodded, “It is not something we can ignore… but, without knowing more, rushing in is just foolish. I wanted to suggest that we use the redoubt transportation network to get as close as we can, then investigate in person.”

“Damn right,” Jol cheered. “Now we’re talking.”

“It’s risky,” Simone said. “But at least it doesn’t bring the demons back to Atlantis. How close can we get?”

That was Merlin’s cue to speak up once more.

“The ancient transport network is not what it once was,” he said, sounding oddly weary for the ancient being. “Many places have been cut off, but there were always multiple points around the major convergences of power. There is a place relatively close that is responding to my telemetry requests. It is located… here.”

The projection shifted, showing a small red dot offset from the black threads just slightly.

“Looks pretty close,” Jol noted happily.

“Lad,” Brokkr sighed. “Ask the good intelligence what scale he’s projecting at before you say things like that.”

“Scale?” Jol looked baffled.

“It will be a significant walk, I am afraid,” Merlin said, sounding amused before he grew serious again. “More to the point, while some of you can be provided with communications, for most it will mean going out of contact with myself and the community here. Whoever goes will be on their own.”

Brokkr and Sindri nodded, unsurprised, but Jol was unmoved.

“I’m in,” he said confidently.

“I am going as well,” Elan said.

“Elan, no,” Caleb leaned forward. “You’ve done enough.”

“Not yet,” She said, shaking her head. “Not yet. I’m going.”

Caleb grimaced, but then nodded as well. “Fine. I’m in.”

“I will prepare the community here, in case we need to take action,” Simone offered. “I doubt I would be able to keep up with you anyway.”

Elan nodded, “Thank you. I was hoping you’d agree to that.”

“As for us,” Sindri leaned back, thinking about it. “Ye all still have the skimmer craft we captured from her worshipfulness; I believe?”

“The Skipray?” Merlin asked, “We do.”

“How are its energy levels?”

“Fully charged now.”

Sindri and Brokkr exchanged glances before nodding.

“We would suggest that we take that out, avoid the demon’s main forces, but come in close in case you need more help than a couple extra hands alone could offer,” Brokkr said.

Merlin didn’t change outwardly, but within he frowned in deep consideration. The pair, Sindri and Brokkr, were not human. Few on the island knew this, and he was content to leave it be for the moment since they had no way to send messages to the outside anyway if they were betrayers, he would be able to monitor any such attempt at this range. Giving the pair the Skipray, however, was a rather different matter. A certain degree of trust was required.

They were, however, quite right. Having the extra force that the, admittedly light, fighter craft could bring… to say nothing of a fast means of withdrawal… could easily be the difference between life and death… and success or failure.

Merlin glanced to Elan, knowing that she had come to have some level of trust in the pair, as they had helped her during the last battle at the City, and even provided her with a weapon that she had grown rather enamoured with.

She nodded under his gaze, “I believe that’s a good idea. Objections?”

No one spoke up against it, and Merlin kept his counsel to himself as the matter was settled. The fight was one that the humans had to wage. He knew that Elan was aware of their background. If she opted to trust them then, barring evidence to the contrary, he would follow her lead.

“Very well,” He said, “It is decided then. Go and prepare.”

“We’ll leave in a day,” Elan said as everyone got up. “Get what you need, meet back here tomorrow.”

*****

Chapter Three

Citadel

The Lady of the Citadel had seen a great many things over her life, most of which she knew had been wiped from her memories… either by time, or the rigors of the change. It was a strange thing, sometimes, to know that most of your life was completely lost to you, no matter what you might do.

The rest of the time it was just another day on a muddy ball of rock in the cosmos.

On this day, however, she was looking over the reports from her various underlings. It was something she had to do with far more regularity than she would prefer, mostly due to a far too large number of lower-level demons making up the bulk of her forces. If they were higher level, she’d literally execute them for the failures in proper following of procedure.

For a time, she had done that with the lower-level ones as well… but it became too boring to bother with. A demon screwed up, she slaughtered him, a new demon took his place… and immediately screwed up.

The first times that happened it just drove her rage ever more incandescently hot, but after a time she’d become exhausted beyond the ability to care.

So now she mostly just delegated the executions to demons not yet bored with the whole process. There were always some moderately useful peons who needed an outlet for the violent impulses driven by the change.

She was, at this moment however, seriously considering executing Shirva for incompetence.

How is it he managed to overlook multiple uprisings in the immediate area? How did any of them think that this was not important enough to even mention?

She knew the answer to that, of course. Violence was generally the norm for demons, especially those in the mid to lower tier range. More powerful demons like herself were just as violent, truly, but tended to be more… explicit in its application compared to the random follies of the young.

They probably didn’t even realize it was an attempt at revolt, she sighed in frustration, exasperated.

Truthfully, there wasn’t much of a revolt of course. Just the normal discontent, driven by a couple firebrands that were good at fanning the flames among the slave class.

Hope was something that few of them had left, but few was not none and one of the things she did remember from her long life was a simple truth about hope.

It is contagious.

“Shirva!”

*****

Outer District

The demonic squad chortled amongst themselves as they left the hut, fires flickering in their wake the only movement or source of sound from within.

That hadn’t been the case a short while earlier.

“Did you hear the screaming?” One laughed. “I can’t get enough of it. I need it all the time, it seems.”

“Ease yourself Poll’ck,” The larger of the squad rumbled, amused but calmer than the rest. “Take your pleasures when you can without fouling yer job, or it’ll be the end of you and all yer fun.”

“Yes, yes, we know,” Poll’ck waved easily.

Korj, the leader of their group, was a third circle himself, one above the rest of them. He’d been given their group because he was calmer than many even of his own circle and could ride herd on them. He was even good at it, for the most part, though he had his own urges to satisfy.

“You’re good lads,” Korj told the rest. “Just remember, play is play, but work for the Lady comes first.”

They all grunted agreeably as they walked. None of them were so far gone that they’d intentionally anger the Lady, or any that represented her.

Korj looked up to the sky, noting the faded light appearing in the East.

“Well, the night is almost done, lads,” he said. “We might have time for one more stop, unless you’d like to return to your bunks.”

“Hump the damn bunks, let’s find some more toys to play with.”

Korj looked over the group, noting that they were all in agreement, and he shrugged agreeably. It wasn’t often they got full reign over their day and being able to leisurely enjoy their play.

“Fair enough, there’s enough around here to pick from. Anyone have preferences?” He asked.

“I know a nice little human who lives here, impudent little bitch.”

Korj spared the speaker a glance, frowning, “And she yet lives?”

The demon, not yet having earned a name, was one he called ‘Scuttle’. Scuttle cringed a little, looking abashed.

“She had protectors.”

The squad laughed at that.

Korj didn’t.

“When you say protectors,” He ground out, irritated that he had to drag it out of the demon. “Do you mean other humans, or does she have the countenance of someone of worth?”

That quieted the laughter, and the squad shifted their gaze to seriously consider the cringing demon, wondering if he’d been trying to lead them into stepping on someone’s toes that shouldn’t be stepped on.

“No, no, just humans I swear!”

Korj sighed, relieved a bit that he wasn’t going to have to kill the little shit for trying to get the entire squad killed for messing with some upper level’s personal plaything, but now back to his original query.

“Again, then, she’s still alive?” He demanded.

“They were too strong.”

Korj stopped the laughter this time before it got started. The damn little waste was worth laughing at, no doubt, but this wasn’t the time.

“You let an impudent bitch, and her protectors, beat you and live to tell the tale? Where is this place?” Korj demanded, angry now.

Scuttle flinched away but pointed. “Down that way.”

“Come on, tonight we’ll mix a little work with our play.”

The squad agreeably followed as Korj grabbed Scuttle by a misshapen ear and dragged him along in the lead, laughing and chortling at the larger demon’s treatment of the weakest of their ranks.

*****

“Well, we’re late, Tur.”

The red headed woman sighed as she looked over the bodies within the smoking ruins, unhappy with the deaths but it was a way of life in the districts around the citadel.

It’s the way of life anywhere I’ve seen, she thought grimly.

“Looks like, Sy,” her companion, a massively muscled man who went by the name Tur’k acknowledged, though he wasn’t looking to the fire.

“See something?” She asked, rising to her feet from where she’d been kneeling by a still smoking corpse.

“Maybe.”

Tur was a taciturn man at the best of times, she knew from experience. His words mattered, so when he spoke, she listened… and maybe, she knew, meant probably.

Sien’el looked in the direction Tur was staring but saw nothing out of the ordinary as best she could tell. It was an hour, roughly, before the dawn’s light would scour the land again, burning away at least some of the filth the demons left behind in their wanderings. After a long night, the smell of them was such that she could barely tolerate it, and she’d long since built up a tolerance to the stench.

“What did you see?” She asked.

“Nothing. It’s what I heard.” He said, starting to walk.

Sie fell into pace alongside him, easily trusting that he wasn’t leading her astray. He never had, though to be fair her definition of astray was likely quite different from most. As long as they found a fight with a few demons to kill, she was fine with anywhere they might wind up.

And, in these parts, pretty much any direction was as good as another for that purpose.

*****

It was just another hut, Korj thought as he looked over the target.

Mud walls, thatched roof, really nothing at all to make it stand out from the rest of the hovels that filled up the shanties that had grown up around the citadel. Humans liked to build. He would give them that much credit, he supposed.

Too bad they’re not very good at it, the demon thought as he looked over the current example of the humans’ constructive efforts.

“Are you certain this is the place?” He asked Scuttle for the third time.

He didn’t care if they got the wrong place, exactly, but he didn’t want to waste time here and be forced to put off the more important lesson because the sun was coming up.

Scuttle nodded again, pointing, “I’m sure, boss. Right there, right there.”

Korj nodded firmly, “Alright then, let us go… introduce ourselves.”

The demons with him chortled, an evil sound that he rather appreciated if he were to think about it at all, and as a group they started forward toward the hut.

Most of his squad were still deep in the change, their mental state less one of ‘intelligence’ and more along the feral side of the spectrum, but they knew to follow his lead, or he’d kill them and draw some new recruits that would. Violence on the random humans was acceptable, but there were lines that even the demons had to respect, at least until the last vestiges of value had been squeezed out of the helpless primates.

Getting to the door, Korj left the pleasure of ‘knocking’ to another of his team who’d pleased him during their duties a few days earlier.

“Growl,” He told the semi-feral demon, while nodding to the door, “Open the door.”

Growl lived up to his name, that was really the only sounds he could make at this point. Korj sometimes wondered if he’d ever get his voice back for communications, or if this was the extent of what the change would do to him? Not everyone who underwent the change kept advancing, many got stuck in the ninth circle even if they weren’t killed prematurely. Eventually, if you didn’t make it at least a few notches up the ranks, you’d be killed by someone more powerful than you no matter how old you were.

For the moment, though, Growl was handling himself quite well as he cheerfully lived up to his namesake before charging the door and hitting it with the full force of his compact, but densely muscled body.

It was a rickety piece of crap door, and never stood a chance.

The wood blew into the hut as Growl exploded through it, coming to a stop in the middle of the open interior even as there were muffled shouts and shock and fear from within.

“Scuttle,” Korj gestured, putting thick sarcasm into his tone and exaggerated actions. “This is your show.”

Scuttle swallowed and nodded, squeaking out his response, “Yes sir! I’ll do good, boss!”

Korj watched the little beast, well, scuttle into the room with some disdain.

Living proof that just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean someone who can is your better.

Growl was by far more reliable than the cowardly little Scuttle, and worth ten of the annoying one at the very least.

With Scuttle finally having gone in, Korj went next, the rest of the little squad following him.

Inside the hut, the confused screams quickly turned to ones of terror.

*****

Sie paused along the edge of a rooftop, looking around. She’d heard something there, she was certain.

What was that?

“Did you hear that, Tur?” She asked her larger companion.

“Screams in the night,” he said with a firm nod.

Sie spat, “Demons having their fun, I suppose.”

Tur said nothing. It was so obvious a statement it required nothing to be said about it. Instead, he turned slowly, trying to track the sounds.

It wasn’t easy, the shanty town they were in the middle of was a bit of a hubbub of noise, even at night. A lot of people lived here despite the conditions because it was suicide to try and leave.

If the demonic patrols didn’t find you, then you would die of thirst or exposure in the desert beyond.

The Lady of the Citadel had made certain that there were no safe places to shelter or drink for many days’ travel in all directions. It was a superb method of controlling the population. Work, or die. Want to leave? Nice of you to choose death.

The Lady didn’t even have to order any of their deaths, though she did from time to time, of course. The elements would handle that part for her.

Within the shanties the build quality of the homes and other buildings were… variable. She and Tur were currently standing on an adobe building, neatly reinforced with some other material. Solid and true, and a good place to observe the city from. Around them, however? Well, there was everything from rickety old shacks build from sticks and materials she doubted were any good at what they were being used for, all the way up to some impressive multi-story constructions.

Most, though, were closer to the sticks and straw type construction than the alternatives.

“There,” Tur said abruptly, pointing.

Sie turned but didn’t see anything to grab the eye. Still, it was better than just standing around and she trusted his instincts and senses.

“Let’s go then,” she said, hefting up her spear as she stepped off the edge of the roof and dropped the ten feet or so to the ground, landing in an easy crouch to spread out the impact. Sie was rising back to her feet when the ground trembled a little under her as Tur landed just beside.

“I’ll lead,” Tur said as he unlimbered his axe and because striding down the street.

Sie watched after him for a moment, grinning, “You do that, right behind you.”

She did rather enjoy it when he got all charge forward and take control, most of the time he was content to just go along with whatever she suggested. Of course, she was fine with that too. It was all good, really.

He looked as good going as he did coming, after all.

*****

Feisty.

Korj was amused as much as anything when the humans tried to fight back. It seemed that Scuttle wasn’t completely a loss, since they were almost slightly effective at the attempt too. He’d easily caught the attack that came his way, disarming the human of the short iron dagger he’d managed to acquire somehow.

Best look into that, don’t want too many of those kicking around.

Iron wasn’t rare, unfortunately, and so there was always a black market on the go, trading in Iron for weapons despite the risks of being captured with the material. Korj didn’t understand the nature of it, but he knew well enough that certain types of Iron were potentially dangerous, even to higher level demons.

Few humans had any idea how to properly construct such weapons any longer, though, so the most he generally had to worry about was some minor cuts.

The human who’d tried to stick him with the tiny blade struck at him as Korj held it in place by the arm, ignoring the flailing attempts as he looked around the room.

“So, where is this impudent bitch, Scuttle?” He demanded.

“There! That one! There!” Scuttle was gleefully jumping and pointing.

Korj walked forward, to the cowering human, dragging his attacker with him. He snorted, “Doesn’t look like much. Well? Put her in her place.”

Scuttle lit up at that, prancing gleefully from foot to foot before he started forward toward the cowering girl. Korj casually slammed his captive against the wall a couple times, seemingly doing more damage to the hut than the human, but it did manage to quiet him down a little while the others held down the rest.

They’d watch Scuttle get his little fun with the bitch, then Korj would decide how many of them were going to survive the night.

Some would, he’d already decided that.

A lesson like this, well it needed people to spread the word. This might technically be a spot of fun for his squad while they were off duty, but Korj wasn’t one to waste a learning moment… not for either side.

The girl was screaming loudest now, with Scuttle looming over her, reaching out to grab at the cloth she was holding protectively in front of her. She’d have been better off grabbing a weapon, though that wouldn’t have been much more effective at protecting her than the fabric as it was ripped away, leaving her bared to Scuttle’s mercies.

Korj snorted softly.

Demons had few mercies, even after the change had faded and the pain was gone. That was an emotion that was burned out early.

“Pretty little bitch,” Scuttle crooned as he got closer, enjoying the fear as much as the anticipation. “You’re going to be sorry you weren’t nicer to me.”

The girl was yelling something, but it was honestly too mashed together and hard to understand for Korj to bother even trying to translate in his head.

He wanted to tell Scuttle to get on with it, but experience told him that time was something that really worked to their favor in these situations. It was better to let the humans stew in their inevitable fate than to just finish it off quickly.

“Scuttle is going to have fun with you, little bitch, oh yes indeed… Scuttle will show you-.”

Scuttle’s ramblings were suddenly cut off by his screaming, which at first Korj had thought came from the human. It was only when he shifted his gaze and found himself staring at a massive shaft of a spear sticking right out of the young demon that he realized that things had changed.

“Watch out!” He called the warning, turning just in time to realize that his shout was a moment too late.

A large, bladed axe hacked down into Growl as the promising demon turned in alarm, cleaving head and shoulder from Growl’s body, leaving both barely attached by a flap of maggot infested skin as Growl toppled over without a sound or a motion.

Korj instantly revaluated the situation. That axe, and that spear, were not like the little sticker the human in his grip had tried to jab him with. They were large enough to cause real damage, even to a demon, and they were clearly of at least a partially decent construction.

He tossed his human captive aside and got ready to meet the challenge as he saw a large human stride into the small hut, axe in hand and already swinging.

Another of his squad went down fast, the blade just hacking through his body with disturbing ease even for a demon so early in the change. The close quarters of the hut were definitely not working out in his squad’s favor any longer.

Korj snarled and took the express means of changing that, he kicked out the wall behind him.

“To my side!” He ordered the survivors.

Korj almost blinked at that thought. He’d entered the hut with a full squad and a simple intent of properly chastising some humans while getting in a little stress relief for his squad. Now they were no longer the hunters, however. They were merely survivors of a vicious assault that had claimed three of them already.

The remaining four, plus himself, quickly scrambled out of the hut as they got their own weapons out and readied themselves to meet the threat.

For a moment the darkness of the shadows that enveloped the hut were such that, out in the street with the lightening sky and the occasional torches providing light, they found that they could not see within.

Then a single large, muscled leg stepped out, followed by the rest of the axe wielding human, and Korj found himself impressed despite himself.

That is one big human.

Well over six feet, and nearly that wide it seemed, the axe wielder was spattered in demon blood and ichor, and clearly had an insane grin on his face. That made Korj hesitate slightly. As he was well acquainted, given his dealings with demons, insanity was never something to casually underestimate.

A gurgling sound from within the hut distracted him slightly, and he shifted his gaze again to the shadows as movement was visible without being entirely discernable. A few scant seconds later, however, the source was revealed as a slim and muscled human female emerged, bloody spear in her grip.

Two of them, and they know how to fight. Korj was evaluating the situation. It was still something that could be dealt with. Humans were human, after all, no matter how skilled or big and muscled they might be.

“Get ready,” He ordered the remains of his squad.

They growled and snarled, leaning in as they strained their muscles. The humans followed suit.

“Get them!”

The two groups charged.

*****

Chapter Four

Atlantean Redoubt

Elan let herself back into the redoubt, as ever finding herself impressed with the construction capabilities of the ancients. The impossibly smooth floors and ceilings still left her as awed as they had the first time she’d stepped in one, or the first time she could remember stepping in one.

Thoughts of her state that first time left her thinking about Kaern, which stilled her emotions for a moment. She still had mixed thoughts about that man… if he could be called that. Her first exposure to the world being less… defined than she had wanted to believe as a child.

He would not be the last. Brokkr and Sindri were recent enough examples that Elan wasn’t soon to forget that lesson, but it was a lesson she was still assimilating to some levels.

Sighing, Elan shouldered her bag and the rest of her kit and made her way to the Armory. Merlin had prepared as many of the armored suits of the Ancients as he could, which left them with enough for herself, Caleb, and Jol for this duty.

Weapons were in short supply as well. Merlin was rather peeved that she’d lost her weapons on the last mission, but they were at the bottom of the sea now, so she wasn’t certain what she was supposed to do about it.

Merlin was, of course, waiting for her when she arrived at the armory.

“Back for another one, I see,” he said sardonically.

“Oh, come on,” Elan stamped her feet. “I lost it a year ago, in the middle of a fight with an entire city of demons!”

“You could have stopped after admitting you lost your weapon,” Merlin said simply, “excuses matter little to me.”

“If you were solid, I’d show you an excuse…” Elan grumbled sourly.

*****

It should probably be illegal, or at least immoral, Merlin decided, to enjoy something quite so much.

Elan was as defensive and chagrined as the girl ever got, which was a breath of fresh air to his mind. Normally she was so cocksure and certain of her path, if not that she was going in the right direction then at least that she was going in a direction and that was the best she could hope for at the time.

The losses she’d seen, and endured, in the field had tempered that a great deal, but she was still young and had a firebrand buried deep in her that kept her moving all the same. That meant that it was satisfying to see her on her back foot by times.

The loss of the sidearm wasn’t exactly a minor deal. He had finite supplies and no means of rebuilding them. When the last one was gone, the technology and its advantages would be gone as well.

However, they were not there yet, and the only thing worse than losing all of the sidearms would be… not using them in the first place.

So, chide though he most certainly would, Merlin was far from actually irritated with her  over such a minor thing.

“I’m sure you would now,” He responded to her declaration, amusement positively exuding from him as he did. “But in the meantime, I have prepared a new weapon for you. It is with your armor.”

Elan sighed, clearly fighting the urge to act or say something petulant.

“Thank you, Merlin,” She managed to get out acceptably politely even, though her eyes told a different story much to Merlin’s delight.

“Not at all, my dear,” he said, gesturing to the selection laid out for her.

The armor was the same suit she had worn a year ago, newly repaired and returned to its peak capacity with a charge and full load of consumables, including some that he’d not had time to prepare for her the last time.

The sidearm with it was a match to the one she’d carried, but not the same of course. Sadly, it was currently beyond his capacity to recover items from the bottom of the sea.

Elan settled in quickly and got about the task of checking the gear carefully, much to Merlin’s approval.

Her education was… spotty, that would be the politest term he could manage for it. By the standards of the old culture, she was a feral beast who should not be entrusted with even the most basic of tools, let alone a weapon such as the one she was looking over… however, he’d ensured that her education did cover the proper handling and maintenance, as well as duty use courses that had been commonplace in the past.

She might not properly know how to do arithmetic, or even read with any reliability yet, but this girl does know her way around the gear she uses.

Given the level of education normally required before one was allowed anywhere near these sorts of things, Merlin was honestly and truly impressed that Elan was operating as well as she clearly was.

She’d been taught well, he had long since decided. Not in general facts, but in how to learn in the first place.

*****

Elan examined the weapon Merlin had set out for her, checking that it had a charge and that the restrictions were in place before she did more than pick it up. Then she disengaged the charge core, leaving the weapon in a harmless state while she went about checking the individual sections of the weapon.

Merlin would have done all that, but one thing that all of her teachers, from her father to Merlin himself, had all stressed was that a warrior did not leave the disposition of their tools to anyone else. Yes, you might have someone do the job if you didn’t have time due to other duties, but you always went over the work yourself before taking them into a fight.

The sidearm was well maintained, of course, she’d have been surprised if anything untoward had turned up in fact. Merlin wouldn’t have allowed any faults to make it into her hands, not without something incredibly critical having failed somewhere along the way.

Given the nature of the world, however, Elan expected that it was more a matter of time before something like that did happen.

Until then, however, this weapon is ready for use, she thought as she resecured the charge core and then moved on to the armor. This one she was familiar with more than just the basic object, her fingers traced over slight discolorations where she’d been injured, and the armor had taken enough of the damage to save her life.

The repairs showed each cut and slash and burn, and Elan was aware that they echoed similar marks on her own body, concealed though most of them were by her clothing. The stretch of a scar as she moved a certain way could be echoed on the armor by pulling at the fabric, which she did with a thoughtful expression on her face as she worked.

It didn’t take long, though, to clear the armor for field use and for her to strip off her clothing and start getting suited up.

*****

Caleb scowled at the door in front of him, wondering why it hadn’t opened on command.

“Merlin?” He grumbled, rubbing his face where he’d actually walked into the door.

“Yes, Master Caleb?” Merlin asked, a hint of some emotion in his voice that Caleb couldn’t quite place.

“Is there something wrong with the door?”

“Not in the least.”

Caleb sighed, “Then why didn’t it open?”

“Because I secured it.”

Eyes narrowed, “And you didn’t warn me?”

Now he was certain that Merlin was laughing at him, though it was all in the tone of the voice rather than anything truly blatant.

“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t have time.”

“You didn’t… Merlin, you could have told me at any point while I walked in here,” Caleb snapped, “I know you had plenty of time.”

“I’m sorry, Master Caleb, I wasn’t clear. I secured the door less than one second before you attempted to open it.”

“Less than…” Caleb’s eyes crossed as he considered that, “But… why would you do that to me?”

“No reason.”

The door clicked open softly, gathering a darkly suspicious look from the young man.

“The door is now unsecured.”

Caleb glowered at the air where the voice was coming from, rather irritated by the fact that Merlin had no physical body he could take this up with in more detail. Unfortunately, for the moment, however, he had other things to worry about.

Sighing, Caleb let himself into the armor just in time to see Elan finishing securing her armor and look over to greet him.

“Hey,” She smiled, “Glad you made it.”

He shrugged, “I may not be certain that being a warrior is all it was cracked up to be when I was growing up, but this is important.”

She nodded agreeably, “I’ve been less that certain myself, but I swore an oath. Maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t care. Someone needs to fight them, and right now I think we’re it.”

Caleb couldn’t disagree as he found his own armor being laid out for him.

He didn’t know nearly as much as Elan when it came to the magics that Merlin could concoct, but he had many of the same trainers as she did and he knew that Simone, at least, would skin him alive if he had a chance to check his own gear before a fight and let it go pass.

Sometimes you made do with whatever you could scrape up, but when you had time… you do the damn work.

It wasn’t quite a quote from the older woman, but it was close.

“I’ll get this checked out and be with you in a bit,” he said as Elan secured her sidearm and walked out.

She paused briefly, glancing back at him with a smile.

“I’ll see you out there.”

*****

The transport room of the redoubts wasn’t anything much to speak of. Other than the same eerie smooth surface that the rest of the redoubts had, there was nothing much to see at all. The mechanism behind the transit system was, according to Merlin, not even located in the redoubt at all but rather in another secure area entirely, with plenty of what Merlin called redundant backups.

She didn’t know really what that meant exactly, despite knowing all the words he’d used to say it but suffice to say that Elan found the transit rooms themselves to be… well, boring.

The one at Atlantis was no different than the first one she’d ever seen, just a large open room with markings on the floor in languages (She’d asked, Merlin said that there had been several in use) she didn’t understand. The only thing that really stood out was the fact that there wasn’t a spec of dust… anywhere.

Kaern had explained that, though she still didn’t really comprehend it. From what he said the room converted matter, including dust, directly to light when it was operating. It kept it clean of dust, dirt, stains, and other such things as a by-product of simply lighting the area.

It sounded like a neat trick, but she’d been informed that the technique was currently far beyond the capabilities of their small, but growing, community. So, they made do with torches and candles for the most part out around the islands.

“Is it ready?” She asked the thin air.

“Yes,” Merlin responded, appearing at her side. “I have established connection protocols with the target facility. It has been unused for some time, but all primary systems appear intact and ready to receive.

“Send me.”

“The others are not yet here,” Merlin objected.

“I’m not going into a fight,” She said. “Just going to look around the facility. You can send them after me. Just send me, Merlin.”

The avatar made a show of sighing and looking put out by the command, but finally acquiesced.

“Very well. Stand ready.”

“I am.”

“Transiting.”

*****

Being sent through the Ancients’ travel network was a bizarre mix of disconcerting combined with, well, nothing at all.

From the outside, Elan had been told that there was a flash of light… gone almost before you noticed it, but unmistakable just the same.

Within the transport there was nothing. She just stopped being one place and found herself in another in no time at all. The disconcerting part came when her brain caught up to the change of location. Sometimes nothing happened, particularly when jumping into a dark location. Her brain just reacted like the lights had been turned off, nothing particularly troublesome.

If she moved to a well-lit area, though, there was a phantom sensation of movement that made her feel sick for a short time. Elan found that closing her eyes helped with that, so that was what she did this time.

As it turned out she needn’t have bothered. As she opened them, the world remained dark since the new redoubt apparently had the lights turned off.

Well, that’s a thing…

“Merlin?” She called, “Can you hear me?”

With no response, Elan grumbled a bit as she began to make her way through the dark as her eyes slowly began to adjust. Well, adjust might be a bit strong of a term she realized after a few moments of false images plaguing her. There didn’t seem to be any light at all to adjust to.

“Ugh,” She grunted, feeling her way out of the transport area until she found the next section.

Thankfully the ancients did make all of these things from a common plan, since it allowed her to find her way to the control area… or, at least, to the door to the control area.

Damn. Lock is secured, and the power is off for those too. Great.

That left few options, thought Elan was surprised that the system wasn’t responding since Merlin had said that he’d found that it was.

The door was coated in dust, she found quickly, and Elan was glad of the filter her armor had because she suspected that there was quite a lot in the air too.

Bracing herself, Elan slammed into the door with the full force her armor could impart, only to simply bounce off, much to her consternation. She was pretty sure that she could have destroyed any of the doors on most of the redoubts she’d been in… excepting the one that Merlin referred to as Avalon, which was very clearly a military facility.

Is this like that? Elan wondered, why wouldn’t he tell me?

Something wasn’t right.

*****

“Something isn’t right…”

“What is that you said, Merlin?” Caleb asked, looking up.

“I said that something isn’t right,” Merlin grumbled, more irritated than anything.

“What’s wrong?”

“Elan wanted to transit to the other side ahead of you,” Merlin said. “So I agreed, reluctantly, and sent her along… but…”

“But what?” Caleb sat up straight from where he’d been trying to wrestle on the armor. “Is she ok? Did she not arrive?”

“She arrived, and intact,” Merlin said. “The error checking response was perfect… but…”

“But what?”

“I can’t find her in the facility,” Merlin admitted finally.

Caleb swore a little, working faster to get his gear on, “I’ll get right down there, send me after her.”

“I am not sending anyone else to that facility until I figure out what went wrong,” Merlin snapped. “There would be nothing you could do if you vanished too. Calm yourself, I will work out what happened.”

With that the intelligence vanished, leaving Caleb struggling with the armor as his swearing filled the room.

*****

Jol stretched casually as he ambled into the facility of the Ancients. It almost felt like home to him, reminding him well of the construction of the City. Brokkr and Sindri were with him as the trio made their way down to the transit level, only to find the main room locked out while Merlin was visibly blinking around the area, seemingly checking everything in a bit of a rush.

“Hey, uh… everything ok?” He asked, more curious than concerned he had to admit.

“That remains to be seen,” An iteration of Merlin appeared beside them while other projections continued to work. “Elan opted to travel ahead, however while the transit system provided a confirmation of receipt, I have been unable to contact her since she left.”

“Hmmm,” Brokkr hummed, stroking his beard. “Unusual, but not unknown. As I recall, the systems had emergency redirects in case of issues, no?”

“They did, yes. However, there shouldn’t have been such an issue,” Merlin scowled. “I confirmed all the links between here and there, as well as the reception system. She should be at the chosen destination.”

“I don’t doubt it, but if she isn’t then I would suggest reconfirming those links, yes?” Brokkr said.

“In progress as we speak,” Merlin grumped, not really liking being told how to do his duties, even if the advice was good.

*****

Military door or not, I need to get through, Elan grumbled as she drew her weapon and stepped back.

The sidearm had night sights on it which, when combined with her armor, gave her a full, if odd looking, view of the room she found herself in. It was, as she’d expected, like every other transit room she’d seen, barring the dust that simply coated everything.

This place hasn’t been active for a long time.

Leveling the weapon on the section of the door she knew contained the locking mechanism, Elan grimaced and turned her head away before her finger tightened on the controls and the weapon fired once.

Turning to check the results, she was pleased to see that she’d fired true and burned out the door and lock. With the muscle enhancements of the armor backing her then, she was able to force her way with some effort through the now damaged door.

Let’s see what’s going on in here…

In the dark, even with her suit helping out, it was difficult to find anything even in familiar surroundings. The machines Merlin had showed her all seemed intact, as she’d expected them to be, but nothing was turned on.

She checked the controls that would normally manipulate the systems but got no response.

That would seem to indicate a total power failure.

Curious.

She’d not realized that such was even possible, not and have the transit system functioning at least. Still, she did know where to go to check the connections for that, so Elan holstered her weapon and started moving deeper into the facility.

*****

Avalon

Merlin was very literally beside himself, working on multiple systems at once as he tried to determine what in the world had happened to his young charge.

If she were redirected, it wasn’t due to a break in the network protocols… Which does not leave many options remaining.

In fact, the more he pondered it, the more there was truly only one single answer that made any sense.

She hadn’t been redirected by the system - she’d been intercepted by it.

Another intelligence is active.

*****

Chapter Five

Citadel Shanties

“Oh, they’re brave, aren’t they?” Sie said mockingly as she looked at the five remaining demons standing opposite them, tensed up for a fight. “I can barely see them shake.”

Tur snorted, the big man’s eyes not leaving the monsters in front of him.

They were getting ready for the fight, he could tell. Some of them were clearly holding themselves back from charging waiting, most likely, for the order from the big guy. The monsters were like that, he knew. So wired that they had to charge, even when a wiser sort would consider falling back until they knew more.

The big guy rumbled the order to charge even as Tur lifted his axe and prepared to meet them as they came.

Sie, beside him, planted herself with the spear leading out in front. The thing charging her did exactly as expected, and ran himself through, halfway up the spear’s shaft before death stopped him.

Sie let him drop, flopping forward as his own weight pushed him down the spear shaft until she could just pluck it out of his back, having let the whole thing run all the way through the charging beast.

While she was doing that, however, Tur moved to cover her with his axe and keep them at bay while she retrieved her weapon.

Cleaving the head from the first to get too close was easy, keeping the second from chewing on his flank while it was exposed was where it got tricky. Tur snapped out a kick that set it yelping as it was pushed back, giving himself enough time to get his axe back into position.

Sie moved in to cover his flank then, using her spear to keep them at bay while Tur continued to hack down the ones she allowed through.

The battle took seconds, probably, but it of course felt like longer. It never failed. In fact, that no matter how much he had trained himself to endure, a few seconds of real battle left him soaked with sweat and feeling like he’d just done a full day of heavy training.

“Only the big guy left, Tur,” Sie told him, bringing notice to the fact that they were now ankle deep in the blood and viscera of the monsters they’d just killed. “He looks tough.”

“Good.”

Tur’s grunted word brought a slight smile to her face. Killing the monsters was more than a pleasure for the pair, it was very nearly a holy duty in both of their minds, but they had turned the horror of it into a pleasure over the years. There had been a time when she had been numb to all of the violence.

That time was long past.

The pair started walking together, toward the big demon, their weapons moving into a ready position as they prepared themselves for the fight that was coming.

So, it was something of a shock when the demon in question turned and bolted.

“Hey!” Sie yelled. “Get back here!”

“Less yelling, more running,” Tur growled, already on the move as Sie cursed and took off after him as they chased the fleeing monsters through the uneven and often broken streets of the Citadel shanties.

*****

Nope.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Korj hadn’t managed through the change and survived as long as he had by being stupid. Humans who fought back against the demons, fine. Humans who slaughtered demons at a 3 to one disadvantage?

Just fucking Nope.

There was not a chance in all the hells below that he was going to throw himself into that kind of fight at a numerical disadvantage.

Where is the closest patrol squadron tonight?

He was trying to figure out the best place to lead the pair as he ran, but the shanties were large and effectively unpatrolled for the most part. The inhabitants of the citadel didn’t care for the lives of anyone in the shanties, be they human or demon, so long as the requisite workers were available on demand.

Everything else, by and large, was left up to the strongest and most able to project their will.

Normally, that meant that the demons ruled without question. Powers infernal and enhanced physical attributes tended to win out over what little humans could generally bring to the table, after all.

That said, there were always exceptions.

Recognizing those was one of the reasons he was still alive at this point. Some humans were already insane. They didn’t need the change to lose their minds and be reformed into something else, they lived that state naturally.

He’d learned a long time ago that messing with an insane human was, at best, something of casting the dice. In theory, sure, the odds were still in your favor by a decent margin.

That didn’t help those who lost the roll, however.

So, he ran.

Through the shanties he ran, not looking back, ignoring everything around him. Korj just bolted as he kept his eyes open for any sign of the patrols he knew would be somewhere about this mess he was currently muddled within.

Behind him, he didn’t need to look to know, the two humans pursued.

*****

“He’s heading for the Citadel sphere!”

Tur grunted. That was all he needed to do. There was no particular value in anything more at the moment. Obviously, the demon was running for protection, he just happened to be smarter than most.

They just had to catch him first.

“When you get the chance,” He growled. “Nail him.”

“Got it,” Sie answered, sprinting flat out at his side.

Tur was aware that they had a window to catch this beast, and it was fleeting.

With the black shadow of the Citadel looming ahead of them, the odds of catching him got slimmer and slimmer with every passing moment. Tur pushed forward faster, leaving his companion behind a little as she struggled to keep up, but he knew that in a moment they would lose their chance.

That moment came in an instant as he spotted the demons up ahead, and Korj skidded to a stop as Sie caught up and looked on past him with some disgust.

“He got away,” Tur grumbled, annoyed.

Sie grimaced, reaching under the tunic to draw out a short stick, then fitted the base of her spear to the notched end of the stick.

*****

Korj could have almost wept tears of joy when he spotted the active patrol up ahead, if the change hadn’t eliminated tear ducts among many other more human attributes. Even without that, however, he called out joyously, waving to get their attention as he closed.

He didn’t recognize the group or any of the members, but at the moment it didn’t matter. One thing most demons had in common was a violent disgust with the human form they had all been changed from. He didn’t dwell on the reasons for that, none of them did, but for now it would serve him well.

“Who are you?” The leader of the squad growled at him.

Korj panted a little. Not all human weakness had been torn from his body yet, but waved behind him, “Humans. Dangerous.”

The demon snorted, but shifted his gaze, “Dangerous humans? Weakling.”

Korj might normally have objected to that, but at the moment he didn’t think he’d have much luck combating the idea anyway. He sucked in a breath and got ready to explain, only for a piercing pain to startle him.

He looked down slowly, eyes more confused than shocked, as he saw the wooden shaft that protruded from his chest.

When did I get… that?

The world faded around him, and he didn’t even notice the alarm and sudden action broiling over around him.

*****

“Pah,” Sie muttered as she tucked away the lever she’d used to launch the spear the extra range. “Now I need a new spear. Come on, let’s go.”

Tur nodded, shaking his head as he double checked the range and whistled silently to himself.

That kill had been managed well outside his range, even if he were to throw his axe and get incredibly lucky. He smiled fondly as he watched his partner lead the way out, eyes trailing down her body as the muscle moved under the scarred flesh.

Watching her go was almost as much fun as watching her… well, those thoughts would wait for another time.

“Nice shot,” he said aloud.

Sie didn’t say anything in response, but she did glance back with a bit of a smirk and a tip of her head that he took as both thanks for the compliment and a challenge to do better next time. Tur wasn’t certain if he could ever hope to match her range, but once they got close, he could turn demons into rancid meat easily enough.

Still, He thought with another glance behind them, adding some range might be a good idea. I’ll need to think on that.

The pair vanished into the night, leaving behind a panicked response among the demons left alive. He wished they’d been able to eliminate more of them but taking a squad by surprise and slaughtering them was a good deal different from attempting the same thing on a group that were ready for the fight.

Nightfall would bring them plenty of chances to make up for it, he knew.

*****

Unknown Redoubt

Elan delved deep into the utterly black surroundings of the old redoubt, glad of her suit for protecting her from the dust she was kicking up and for providing at least some light to see by, even if it was a very odd tint of color and had a drop off that made things somewhat difficult to make out at a distance.

Normally, she didn’t need to go this far into the ones she’d transited to in the past. If the transit system was working, most everything else generally seemed to be as well on most of them. She didn’t know what made this one different, didn’t know if she’d even would up where she intended to be.

She didn’t know much of anything, really, and while that was less of an unusual sensation than she’d like to admit, or just like really, she was getting unfortunately used to the feeling.

Power generation for the facilities was something of a black magic secret so far as she was concerned. Merlin assured her that it was no such thing, but he also admitted that he couldn’t explain it to her in a way that would be truly comprehensible short of a rather long and protracted education.

So, as she kept saying, black magic secret.

Still, the function might be shrouded in ancient mysteries, but the maintenance requirements were not quite so odious. She easily located the room that housed the master controls that she’d been told prevented any power oddities from going out of control and began to feel her way around.

I was right… She thought, victoriously, as she found that several minor plus the main switches had all been disengaged. One by one she re-engaged them, starting with the minor ones and leaving the final main system to the end.

When she pushed that one home, the lights snapped back around her in the eerie and slightly mystical way that the lighting in the redoubt had. There were no actual lights, the light just… shone from everywhere all at once, leaving nothing unilluminated and no shadows anywhere to be seen.

That last bit had driven her mad for a time when she first started using the redoubts, until she’d identified the source of her discomfort. Once it was known, well it had become much easier to deal with.

With the lights back, Elan thought about dropping her helm but quickly decided against it when she saw the swirling clouds of dust that roiled in her wake as she moved.

It’s been a really long time.

“Well, well, well… who do we have here?”

Elan dropped into a crouch, spinning about as a hand dropped to her sidearm while she grasped the collapsed cylinder that was her only other weapon in a reflexive clutch.

*****

Avalon

Merlin scowled, checking the system again.

Everything checked out, and it was maddening because something had clearly gone wrong so it shouldn’t.

It was a rarity that, within his domain as this was, he would be left with such an utter loss for what to do next. There wasn’t anything in the systems that could point him to Elan or her fate, everything there was reporting exactly as it was supposed to.

“Nothing?” Simone asked, concerned.

“Nothing,” Merlin admitted. “Everything I have says that the system is in perfect functioning order, at least along the path I sent her. Someone, or something, must have intercepted her from the transit path, but they didn’t leave a trace.”

“Disturbing,” Simone mumbled.

“More than ye know, lass,” Brokkr said, frowning as he considered the situation. “As best I recall, and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Merlin, but I dinna believe that anyone has ever penetrated the transit network like that.”

“You’re not wrong,” Merlin admitted, still grumbling. “Not even at the height of the way, when the facilities were captured, was the system compromised. Hubs have been destroyed, of course, but nothing like that has ever happened.”

“Not from an outside attack,” Sindri nodded, speaking up. “But what about from within?”

Merlin nodded, “I have been considering that. There are other intelligences, some might have the access… but none should have the reason to hide from me. That is what concerns me.”

“A rogue Intelligence?” Brokkr snorted, “Oh aye, that would concern the terra out of me too.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Jol grumbled. “Does it work?”

Merlin looked at the young man briefly, but made his projection shrug simply, “The system functions perfectly, yes, assuming that the transit isn’t intercepted again.”

“Fine, so send me through,” Jol volunteered.

“Lad, are ye insane?” Sindri objected. “We might lose you too.”

“Either I end up where we need to go anyway,” Jol shrugged. “Or I wind up where Elan is, help her figure it out… probably with my hammer… and then we go to where we need to go. Either way, it’s farther ahead than just standing around yapping about it.”

“Or option three,” Sindri said sarcastically. “Whatever is behind this sends you to some random destination and we never find your sorry backside again.”

“Or whoever did this didn’t even let Elan arrive in the first place, just scattering her ashes to the winds,” Brokkr said softly before looking at Jol. “And they opt to do the same to you.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Jol said firmly. “You all are the ones who said that this is an important job. So, we don’t have much choice, do we?”

That brought a moment of silence as the group considered his words.

He is not wrong, Merlin thought, worried.

The problem that he was having was that, honestly, Elan was the most intelligent and, sad as it was to say, the most educated of the group, barring the two non-humans. He was far from convinced that even she would be able to do much on the other side of this, but he was certain that her odds were far better than the others.

She had just had the interest and drive to learn as much as possible when she’d been with him, and he’d been more than happy to educate her on the things she needed, albeit in a drastically reduced manner that cut far too many corners for him to be entirely comfortable with… but such was life. Sometimes, you did what you had to do, not what you wanted to.

The signals he was monitoring from the lines of power were conclusive, however, and growing in intensity.

Something had to be done.

“Fine,” he said, cutting into the squabbling that the others had broken into. “I’ll send you.”

“What!?” Brokkr blew, “Are ye daft?”

“He’s right. We need to work with what we have, and he’s what we have,” Merlin said, “Jol… I have something for you to wear while you transit.”

“Uh… alright?” Jol looked confused.

Brokkr and Sindri, however, got it quickly.

“Ye’r gonna track the lad?” Sindri asked.

Merlin confirmed the speculation with a firm nod, “If he’s intercepted as well… we’ll know it, and we’ll know where he went.”

*****

Chapter Six

Unknown Redoubt

“My, my,” The ethereal woman said, a touch of a smile on her lips. “You are a jumpy one.”

Elan backed up as the projection entered the room, walking past her to look at the systems Elan had just re-engaged. She looked irritated by it all, shaking her head and sounding rather put out when she spoke.

“Every breaker in this place blew, including all the backups,” She complained. “Leaving nothing but the emergency isotopic thermal system running. A completely inadequate power supply for even a fraction of this facility.”

She turned around, eyeing Elan up briefly. “Well now, you look all nice and official, don’t you? Young though. Unit, rank, and identification pattern please?”

“Pardon me, what?” Elan asked, blinking in confusion.

“Your unit number, your rank, and your IDentPattern,” The ethereal projection repeated patiently. “I would very much appreciate knowing to whom I’m speaking with.”

“I don’t have any of those,” Elan said. “The name is Elanthielle, I’m supposed to be in the third sphere primary transport hub.”

The projection looked non-plussed by that statement.

“Well, you’re a long way from there,” she said after a moment, frowning at Elan. “What do you mean you don’t have any of those? That is an elite forces armor and sidearm, one does not just pick either of those up and start using them.”

Elan shook her head, “Who are you anyway, and what do you mean I’m a long way from my destination? It’s very important I get to the target.”

“Well, you’re not going anywhere right now,” The projection said. “Not the least of which because you are clearly not authorized to be in this facility, so I’m hardly authorized to let you simply go. I am the Intelligence in command of the Second Sphere, Northern Network. You may call me Nimue.”

Elan frowned, but nodded slowly, “Elan. Call me Elan.”

“Very well, Elan,” Nimue said slowly. “Now, how is it you came to arrive here?”

“I don’t know,” Elan admitted. “I left through a redoubt transit system, I already told you my destination. I should have arrived there, not wherever this is…?”

“The location is Secret,” Nimue responded, turning to look over the power systems. “You must have been automatically diverted. The system likely detected your armor and weapon and flagged you as an Elite Member of the People’s Military. Curious…”

“I need to go,” Elan insisted. “It’s very important that I get where I was going.”

“I cannot help you with that at the moment,” Nimue responded simply as she examined the racks and racks of controls. “This facility is still operating on minimum power, even with you resetting the breaker circuits. Even if you were not a security risk, I am very much afraid that you aren’t going anywhere.”

*****

North of the Citadel

A flash of light heralded the arrival of Jol as he stepped from one part of the planet directly to another via the transit system, finding himself in a large empty room essentially identical to the one he’d left.

“Elan!” he called. “Elan, are you here?”

With no response, the muscular young man hefted his hammer and started picking his way through the facility.

“She is not here.”

“Demon’s blood!” Jol yelped, nearly jumping out of his skin as he twisted around in time to see the projection of Merlin appear. “Are you mad? Don’t do that!”

“Apologies,” Merlin said simply. “You arrived correctly. This is where Elan was supposed to go… but not where she wound up.”

Jol grimaced, lowering his hammer limply in his arm.

“Damn it.”

“Indeed. I will continue to endeavor to find the girl,” Merlin said. “However, for the moment, it is important that we gain eyes outside.”

“I understand,” Jol said, with some reluctance. He’d hoped that whatever happened to Elan would be repeated and that he would have been able to find her. “Anything you can tell me?”

“The area around the Redoubt is secure enough,” Merlin said. “It appears to be a desert, so be certain that you bring water and beware of too much exposure to sunlight. While not as harmful to humans as it is to demons, the sun can kill you out there in a remarkably short time.”

Jol nodded, “I’ll take care, and won’t be going far to start anyway.”

“Very well,” Merlin nodded in a direction that led out through the facility. “You should find the exit in that direction. Caleb is preparing now. He’ll be joining you shortly. The brothers will be taking the long way, however.”

“Ok, thanks.” Jol said, starting to head up and out of the facility. “Let me know if you find her.”

“I will indeed, Master Jol. Good fortunes be with you.”

*****

Citadel Shanties

“Well,” Sie said tiredly. “That kicked up rather more of a stink than expected.”

Tur shrugged, “Killing that last one right in front of a patrol leader might not have been the best idea.”

She grimaced, “How was I to know that patrol was being led by some muckity muck who’d take it personal?”

Since the night before the demons from the citadel had been like bees from a hive someone had kicked over. They’d swarmed through the Shanties, looking for anyone who might have caused the deaths from the previous night.

The results hadn’t been pretty for the already downtrodden humans eking out a living in the ramshackle communities surrounding the citadel, but few things ever were it seemed. Dozens had been killed, many more than that tortured and left alive as a warning as the demonic filth rained down their brand of terror on the people there.

Sie hated it when that happened but had long ago made a sort of peace with the inadvertent effects her actions inevitably had. It wasn’t like the demons were good neighbors when things were quiet either, as the previous night had also shown.

There was just a line somewhere that, once crossed, could never be uncrossed… and the demons had obliterated that line long before she was born.

“We’ll have more recruits,” Tur grunted, gaining a nod from her.

That was the one good thing, the iron bar in this house of horrors. The more the demons rained down their horrors on the people, the more people refused to take it anymore. They were a beaten people, she knew, but even the lowest of the low had limits after which they just had nothing left to lose.

It was a sad state of affairs, Sie knew, but the more the demons killed… the more they sewed the seeds of their own destruction. Probably it wouldn’t be humans, those days were long past to her mind. Humans were a lost people now, with no real hope of ever being found, but somewhere out there, Sie was sure, there would be another people that the demons would target and that would be their end.

It was the one thought that kept her going, really. That even if she lost, sooner or later someone else wouldn’t.

“Come on,” Tur said, getting to his feet.

“Where are we going?”

“North,” He grunted. “We need to get you a new spear.”

Sie nodded and got up, trailing along with him.

Finding good wood for spears was growing difficult, but there were still sources in the norther section, near the river.

“We should build a few this time,” she said.

“They’ll have to use stone heads,” Tur warned. “We don’t have enough iron to waste like last night.”

“I know,” She grimaced.

That was stupid of her, and she knew it, but after what the demon had been about to do to that family, she’d not been able to stomach losing it and had acted out of her frustration. Stone tip spears would be easy enough to make, and they were good enough to kill lower-level beasts.

She needed something else to go with it, though.

“Maybe I should get a sword,” She huffed.

“From whom?” Tur asked. “I know of no one I would trust with such a commission. Any of those who could do it, I’d expect to turn you in for even asking.”

“I know.”

It was downright depressing, but true.

“We will work something out,” Tur decided as they walked. “You’re right, you need more than your dagger and spear. Come, it will be a distance before we’re done for the day.”

Sie nodded and fell into step beside the large man as they headed North, out of the sections of the shanties directly adjacent to the Citadel.

*****

Citadel

She was leaning back in her throne, bored as she listened to the complaints from various members of the council that oversaw the area around the citadel.

“These humans are out of control!”

She quirked up an eyebrow, gaining some interest at a statement like that. Leaning forward, she turned her focus to the speaker.

“Oh?” She asked softly. “That is an interesting statement. What causes you to make it?”

The speaker, a third circle who was beginning to lose his inhuman traits as the change started on refining him rather than brute forcing his mind and body into something more, looked surprised at having gained her attention as he turned from the group he had been arguing with and stammered out his explanation.

“M… My Lady, I apologize, I did not think that you…”

“Were paying attention?” She asked lazily, her smile anything but friendly. “Yes, I noticed. You haven’t answered my question.”

The demon shuddered but managed to keep his composure well enough that she was almost impressed. Of course, the fact that he was whining about the humans being too much trouble for him really ruined that look.

“It… It’s just that, well, My Lady, just last night a Third Circle was murdered by a cowardly human right in front of my eyes!”

“Truly? Well, now, that is impressive. What happened to the human?”

“We… ah… we don’t know.”

“Oh, you let them escape. I see…” She nodded, eyes narrowing.

“No, My Lady, not at all! They killed him with a spear, thrown from beyond our sight…”

Her eyebrows raised, her tone dry as she spoke now, “A human. Threw a spear. At night. From so far away that you and, I can only presume, an entire squad were unable to see? What a fascinating story.”

“I swear! It is the truth, My Lady! I swear it!”

She leaned back in her throne, shaking her head. “The fact that you let this human escape… displeases me, Horma. Yes, I know your name.”

He choked, eyes wide.

In actuality, she didn’t have a clue about his name until she’d focused on him. The extensive warding of the throne room included a True Name ward, however, such that anyone who voluntarily stepped within her domain could not hide that little fact from her.

It gave her a significant advantage in the viper’s pit that was the Politics of the Circles.

For the moment, however, Horma’s little story did bring up a rather important point that did have to be addressed.

“It is unconscionable that Horma here let this human escape. Do we know any humans who are wont to use spears in this manner?” She asked, now looking around the room intently.

“Yes, My Lady. There is one,” her advisor spoke from her side. “We do not know her name, but she has been reported in the past.”

“Oh ho, a woman you say? Now I’m even more fascinated,” She grinned lasciviously as she leaned in, pushing her arms together to enhance her own attributes. “Is she pretty?”

“Few have seen her clearly, not from close, and survived. She travels with a large human male, again no names are known. She is noted for wielding a spear, while he prefers an axe.”

The Lady considered that thoughtfully. “So that is the most we have?”

“Yes, My Lady.”

“Very well, post a reward,” She ordered. “No restrictions on claiming it. Anyone who can give us her, him, or both will be granted a position within the citadel… under my protection.”

“Any? My Lady! A human may…”

“Then a human will have a place here, and on that is over most of you!” She snapped suddenly, her tone shifting to one of deep menace. “Find her first if you object to that or get used to being ordered around by a human, because if a human turns her in and you violate my edict on this, I will make you wish the change had killed you. Am I being quite understood?”

The demons present nodded fearfully, edging away from her now that she’d unleased her frustrations and irritation with the frankly petty business they had brought to her.

“Good! Now get out of my sight and bring. Me. That. Woman.”

The demons fled, leaving her with some despair for any sort of competence within her ranks, but that was the price of operating out on the fringes of the ever-expanding circles. There was far more freedom to be had, of course, and the pleasures of conquest… as well as the hedonistic fruits of her labors, of course…

However, most of the forces she had were barely into the change, and worthless for anything other than fodder. Of the rest? A great deal were fools and cowards, sent out to the fringes to die by those with more influence and power than she.

If not for the very nature of the change itself, turning enemies slowly into slaves, then peons, and finally into true allies… well, if not for that, she felt certain that the expansion of the Circles would have ended a long time previously.

That wasn’t the case, however, and she had so many more bodies to throw into the grinder than her enemies could ever possibly match, that victory might be slow in coming… but it was ever inevitable.

Rising from her throne, she walked out to the balcony that overlooked everything, this time turning her gaze metaphysically upward.

Even the forces of the Light, may they burn in the Circle’s Hells forevermore, knew this to be true.

The so-called Angels fled universe after universe as the Circles’ Hordes swept them on ahead like debris caught in a wave.

Someday, though, she knew, Someday, they will run out of places to flee too.

It was a paradox of the infinite reality that ultimately, even they would run out of places to hide, and the last conquest would be of the creator’s domain.

That was something she was looking forward to greatly.

She did not know when it would come, but one day she knew, the Circles would crash through the Gates protecting that realm and then, oh yes, then there would be a reckoning.

*****

The sand and rocks crunched underfoot as Jol stepped out into the open air, having been forced to dig himself out of the Redoubt over the past few hours.

Most of the stones that had filled in the entryway were large enough to give him problems, but at least they’d been small enough to handle for the most part. He was sweating and panting by the time he’d climbed out, doing what he could to brace the tunnel he’d cleared behind him.

The sun was low in the sky as he looked about, and the ground was mostly scrub and sand from what he could see. Mountains in the distance were capped in white, with a band of green that covered their base, but they were so far away as to be practically an illusion.

More interesting, as he turned down another direction, was the black line of some sort of tower drawing a scar in the sky even from where he stood. Combined with what looked like lights and possibly small buildings in that direction, Jol was fairly certain he had located the source of the problems.

Demons always seem to surround themselves with humans, Jol noted, wondering what the reasoning was there.

It wasn’t something he’d really concerned himself with most of his life, it had just been a fact of the City. However, after talking with Elan and the others, he’d learned that it seemed to be the commonplace pattern. Demons just naturally appeared to surround themselves with humans and be more comfortable within human domains.

Given their apparent hatred of all things human, he found that a curious fact, though not one he’d considered too deeply. That wasn’t really his style, after all. What was his style, was finding a good fight and maybe putting an end to a few of those demons.

With that in mind, Jol checked his gear and made certain his hammer was still at his side, then he started walking down in the direction of that black tower and the buildings that surrounded it.

*****

Chapter Seven

Unknown Redoubt

“I can’t be stuck here,” Elan objected. “You don’t understand, it’s not just me! People, perhaps everybody, are at risk.”

Nimue didn’t respond immediately as she continued to check over the facility, noting everything that was currently secured or entirely shut down.

“My dear, you may rage at me all you like, but that does not change a single thing,” she said after a moment without even looking up. “I could no more send you on your way than I could simply snap my fingers and remove the invaders in a single instant. This facility is not fully functional.”

“You don’t have fingers, you’re a projection,” Elan stated dryly.

“All the more to my point,” Nimue countered with a lifting of her projected lips. “It’s much harder to snap fingers when you don’t have any, now isn’t it?”

Elan huffed out an irritated breath, throwing up her hands briefly before clenching them into fists and slowly lowering them as she calmed herself.

“Fine. What are you doing, then?” She asked.

“I am attempting to ascertain the level of damage to the facility, and the reason for it in the first place.”

“Ok, great. Can I help?”

That caused the projection to pause, looking back at her curiously.

“Now you want to help?” Nimue asked, amused. “What happened to having to get out of here?”

Elan rolled her eyes, “If you’re not lying to me, then helping get this place working again will get me out of here faster, now, wouldn’t it?”

Nimue cocked her head slightly, smiling at that. “Not necessarily, but let’s say it would… what if I am lying to you?”

“Then I figure it out and rip the guts out of this place and walk home.”

That brought an amused laugh from the projection, “While I am not certain where you came from, I can reasonably say that you would find it a considerable walk indeed… Not to mention a couple decent swims, most likely.”

Elan just stared, unmoved by the declaration until Nimue sighed and rolled the eyes of her projection.

“Very well, I doubt I could bring everything back without a hand anyway, and probably can’t even with one,” She sighed. “Go check on the tell tales on that side of the room and call out if there’s any that are in the red. We’ll ignore yellow for the moment.”

Elan nodded resolutely and headed over as directed, scanning the vast array of lights for those that were out of order.

“While we’re at it,” Nimue said from the other side of the room. “Why don’t you tell me about yourself.”

“What? Why? Elan shot her a suspicious glare.

“Because I am curious,” The projection told her. “Why else?”

Elan could think of many reasons, in point of fact, but educating the who might in fact be her captor didn’t seem like a bright idea.

“There’s not a lot to tell, if I’m to be honest about it,” she said instead, after some thought. “I grew up alone, just my mom and me at first. Father joined us later… but we didn’t get long with him.”

Her tone must have belied the sadness she felt, because Nimue nodded soberly.

“I am sorry to hear that, truly.”

“It was a while ago,” Elan said, trying to play it off as she attempted to force her guts to relax and her face to stop twitching at the memory of her parents.

“That doesn’t mean a lot sometimes.”

“No, no it doesn’t.”

They worked mostly in silence for a while after that, aside from Elan calling out the codes for systems showing in the red and Nimue acknowledging them.

“What happened later?” Nimue asked suddenly.

“What?”

“Later. What happened then?” She repeated, “I doubt that you acquired that armor or the weapon at your side just randomly, or from your parents as you describe them.”

Elan smiled slightly, a sad smile but a fond one too.

“No. My father taught me sword play, my mother taught me almost everything else,” she said instead. “Hunting, fishing, survival. She taught me to swim, not that the stream we lived near was deep enough for much of that. To cook, to clean, to care for injuries… yeah, no, the armor and weapons they came later.”

Nimue nodded, getting more of a picture from the young slip of a girl wearing the armor of the Elite Forces, though it was a picture that only enhanced the mystery she felt about the girl.

“The armor was a gift, as was the weapon,” Elan said.

“Impressive gifts,” Nimue responded, shooting a glance in the girl’s direction.

She was telling the truth, Nimue knew. The biometrics she was already receiving from the suit gave her a good handle on the girl’s honesty and so far, she hadn’t lied once.

Not even when she was talking about a threat to the world, Nimue thought with concern.

“Necessary ones,” Elan admitted. “I’d be dead without them, and so would hundreds… no, thousands of others.”

Elan sighed, grimacing a little, “Or maybe not. More people died in that last fight than I saved. I… I don’t know, maybe I caused more deaths than I saved.”

“That is something I have heard from many others who wore that armor,” Nimue said softly. “Doubt creeps in, when you have time to second guess your actions.”

Elan just nodded at first before she whispered, “Yeah, it does.”

“Do not let doubt stay your hand, or make you hesitate in a crisis,” The projection advised as they continued to work. “Doubt is good, after the battle. It makes you think about how you could have done better, and gives you options for the future. Before, and during the battle, however, doubt is a poison that will slay you and everyone you care for.”

Elan considered that, “Someone told me something similar, though they were talking about fear I think.”

“All of the negative emotions are good things, Elan,” Nimue said. “In their proper place. So long as they are yours, and you are not theirs, then those worries, concerns, fears, and even hatred will be tools that lead you into your future and your victories. When they take control of you, however, you become their tool and that path only ever ends in one way. Do not walk that path.”

Elan snorted slightly, “Right now I already have a path, and I need to get back on it.”

Nimue smiled slightly but didn’t respond to that. Instead, she waved a hand, activating more systems and bringing the facility closer to what might be considered full activation, given the current limitations.

“I cannot tell the future, that is not my element,” She admitted. “But if it is to be, then I am sure that you will find your path again, no matter what is in your way.”

Elan shot her a glance, “That might not be something the person who is in my way right now should be telling me.”

Nimue just smiled, “There are many who might not call me a person.”

“You’re a projection, whoop de doo,” Elan said blandly. “You’d hardly be the first one to annoy the crap out of me. Doesn’t make you any less of a person, far as I’m concerned. Every human in my life seems to do the same thing at some point or another, why not projections?”

“Indeed,” Nimue chuckled softly, eyes focusing on the girl for a long moment.

Which one of us has she met?

*****

This place is a shit hole.

Jol walked casually through the ramshackle buildings, the barely standing huts, and other ‘facilities’ he was trying hard not to think too much of considering the smell that came from them. The City had been hell, but a much more upscale hell than this one he found himself in.

What is it that we did to deserve the horrors we endure? he wondered wearily as he watched kids playing in the dirt and remembered his own childhood in the City.

It was all fun and games, until you caught the eye of a demon.

There was something insidious about the things that were called demons, he’d known that for longer than he could remember. From long before he’d learned the horrifying truth of them, that every single demon was once human. Infected. Changed… but human, once.

He knew well enough that being human didn’t make you good, he’d known many a person in his short life that were just as bad as the demons. Some of the things he’d seen, and endured, as a child… well, he’d rather not think too hard on them now, but what he was seeing around him was more than enough to bring them all rushing back to the front of his mind.

The people were terrified, he could see that at a glance. Didn’t have to walk any real distance to learn it. He probably could have smelled it from the redoubt itself, if he’d tried hard enough. They were beaten down, didn’t know where their next meal would come from for the most part, and any hope that was left in them was nothing by an ember, buried deeply in ash.

They, however, were not of any interest to him.

Jol had learned the hard way that people weren’t usually worth worrying about. Most of them were already eyeing you up to see what they could take, and of the rest? Almost all of them rest were too weak to try, otherwise they’d be doing the same thing.

Killing demons was a service, but it was mostly a service to himself and what he’d lost already in his life.

So, when he approached and the children ran away, shooting terrified glances in his direction, he left them be without a glance. Their parents would care for them, or someone would, or no one would. It wasn’t his problem.

The tower there, that black line that cut the sky the in two, that was his problem he was willing to bet, though he wasn’t entirely sure yet.

The gadget he’d gotten from Merlin was pulsing softly in his hand as he walked, not that he knew how to read it of course. Thankfully, he didn’t need to. Merlin would figure it out when he got back.

Jol was actually bored with this walk through the demon infested wasteland more than anything, which was probably why he didn’t turn and walk the other way when he heard the fighting.

*****

Sie swore under her breath as she realized how outnumbered they were, and just what the situation had devolved into.

She’d never expected to be betrayed by one of their contacts, let alone have two entire squads coming after them, but that was just the situation they’d wound up in and she’d be damned if she could see a way out.

Or, more likely, Sie thought grimly, we’ll both be damned if we can’t find a way out.

Tur had slain a pair of lower-level demons who’d tried to cut them off as they withdrew, his axes spattering ichor across the street with violent abandon as she kept another three of his back with her spear reaching out farther than she was tall to hold them at bay.

She had three such weapons on her this time, two stone and wood ones on her back, and one with an iron tip in her hands. Using the iron to burn the flesh of the demons as they tried to lunge in and kill them was the only way she had to hold them off since they were proving too smart to just charge in and be kind enough to impale themselves for her.

That forced her to keep moving her spear, otherwise one of them would catch it and hold it tight against her efforts, and then the rest would be upon them.

At this rate, though, she expected that was just the inevitable end of the fight anyway.

“We need to run,” She called over her shoulder as Tur half turned and surveyed the situation on her side of things.

“There are not many directions to run,” He growled, jabbing his blade in the one opening in the enemy line that they could see. “And I would wager good iron that if we run that way, it would be to our death.”

Sie nodded grimly, it was a pretty obvious opening and that almost certainly meant it was a trap. The problem was that, at the moment, she didn’t see many other options.

“We going to make a last stand then?” She asked uncertainly.

“Not if we can help it,” Tur grunted, parrying back an attack as they continued to fight off the attacking demons, staying back-to-back as best they could manage. “Start pushing that way, there…”

Sie checked, noting that he was pointing opposite the ‘opening’ that they were trying to avoid for the moment.

“Right.”

So, they started moving, slowly and without being obvious about it, away from the opening in the hopes that they could force another one where they needed it.

*****

Well, well, well, Jol thought as he stopped and leaned on the side of a hut that built a little better than most. The locals do know how to party.

The fight was making enough of a racket to bring every demon for miles around, most likely, so he didn’t think it would be healthy to hang around for long, but it was interesting to see some other humans actually fighting. In the City that had been a rarity, Elan being one of the first he’d met who both fought and won.

He’d heard good things about Caleb and some of the others from Atlantis but hadn’t been there to see it with his own eyes, and Jol was very much a hands-on sort of person. If he didn’t see it, he really wasn’t willing to say it happened with any confidence.

This pair, though, they were the real deal he decided quite quickly.

That left him with a bit of a quandary, of course, since he was technically in the area to scout around, not get into fights…

On the other hand, they look like they might be useful and having a couple like them owing us a favor might be worth the risk…

Jol hadn’t even noticed that he had mentally considered himself and the rest of the newly forged Atlanteans as ‘us’.

Decision made, he hefted his hammer and started circling around the fight as he saw what the pair were up to.

Getting ahead of them was easy enough, he didn’t have anyone trying to kill him which always meant that you could move a little easier in his experience. Figuring out what to do when he got there, however, was a bit of a different matter.

Well, the local boss seems to have a real hate on for this pair. That’s a lot of demons.

He was looking at what had to be several squads establishing a perimeter around the fighting, keeping others out… but more importantly, he suspected, keeping the pair of warriors in.

Moving quietly was something he’d learned to do at a young age and, while he had a less easy time going unnoticed since he’d matured, he still knew the skills. Jol got up behind one of the closets demons and the only sound he, or it, made was the crunch of his hammer shattering bone in its skull.

It was a surprisingly quiet sound, all other things considered, Jol thought as the demon crumpled and he moved on to the next.

The fighting was quickly getting close, and that meant he was on a bit of a time crunch, but that was ok. Jol was used to working under pressure.

*****

Sie and Tur tensed as they got close to the perimeter, expecting to be met with fierce resistance by the demons surrounding them, only to find that when the resistance came… it was only a small group, and they seemed just as confused by the situation as the pair were.

Tur choked up on his axe, getting in close with them before they could recover from whatever it was that was bothering them, and used short fast hits to put them down while Sie was still keeping the ones to their rear off them.

“Something is wrong here,” Tur growled over his shoulder.

“What is it?”

“There are not enough demons!”

Sie laughed, not looking back as she stuck a demon who got too close with the iron tip of her spear, “That’s a good thing, Tur, not a bad thing!”

“There should be more,” Tur insisted. “This is a squad leader.”

Sie risked a glance, noting that Tur was indeed standing on the body with the markings of a squad leader from the Citadel and there was nowhere near enough demons to account for his squad around them.

“Maybe they underestimated us and broke up their groups?”

“Maybe,” Tur grumbled, not sounding convinced.

“Or maybe,” A new voice spoke up, chuckling, from just above them, causing them both to start. “Someone decided to lend you a hand.”

Sie spotted the man, more of a kid really, grinning down at them from where he was perched on the ridge of a wall, a bloodied hammer in his hands.

“You did this?” She called.

“I don’t like to brag… actually, I really do, so yes, yes I did.”

Tur growled, “You’ve brought bad things down on your head, boy.”

“Just say thank you,” The kid retorted, jumping down. “The way is clear back this way, unless you think we can take them all?”

Sie shot the kid a glare and elbowed Tur before he could consider that.

“No, we’re leaving,” She said. “Move!”

“Yes, my Lady,” The boy grinned at her, “Moving, my lady!”

“Smart ass…” She grumbled as the three of them broke contact and run for it, up the now deserted street through the shanties, heading North and away from the Citadel… and, hopefully, from its demonic forces.

*****

“They escaped.”

The Demon of the Second growled, unhappy with the outcome. Actually, unhappy was a severe understatement for what he was feeling at the moment. He was livid, apoplectic… immobile with rage.

“They had help. We did not account for an outside attack, my Lord.”

“Excuses are not of any interest to me,” Lord Valmin snarled. “Her Lady will not be happy.”

That, at least, bought him a reaction as the demons listening in cringed back in outright fear.

As they should, Valmin grumbled to himself.

He was plenty afraid of the Lady of the Citadel, and he was a full Lord of the Circles himself. However, for the moment, that really didn’t matter as much as he wanted to focus on it. The issue was the human resistance in the area, and the fact that it could not be left to fester.

Valmin had been around a long time. He’d seen the humans of this world before they’d been properly broken, and that was a mass of headaches he did not want to be dealing with this late in the cycle. With the endgame upon them, it was vital that they not allow petty distractions to crop up and affect how the plans moved forward.

“Set scouts upon them,” He growled. “Track them, no matter how far they go, I want them found. Do we have a description of the third human?”

“Only a vague one, aside from his choice of weapon being a hammer.”

Valmin stared blankly, “A… hammer? Truly?”

“Effective enough, apparently,” the lower demon responded. “It crushed several skulls in the brief exchange.”

That… was slightly disturbing.

“Show me.”

“W-what?” The lower demon quailed slightly.

“The bodies, show me,” Valmin growled, lumbering forward.

“Ah, of course, this way my Lord.”

Valmin followed the lower beast of a demon over to the bodies in question and began examining them with a casual air. He flipped the closest over to get a better view of the wound and glared at the corpse as though it had just insulted him.

“This was no mere hammer,” He said. “Tell the scouts not to engage these humans. Locate them, but do not be seen.”

“Yes, my Lord… but… why?”

“Because I ordered it!”

*****

Without obvious signs of pursuit, the trio slowed a bit to get their breath and began making random turns through the shanties in order to more completely leave their demonic pursuers behind.

Sie took the opportunity to turn some of her focus on the young slip who’d helped them out.

“Who are you, anyway?” She asked, eyes skimming over his form.

He was a well-built boy, she’d be willing to admit that. Might even make a good-looking man if ever reached his full growth.

“Name’s Jol,” He said. “You?”

“Sienn Al,” She responded. “Just call me Sie. This is Turroch, but he just goes by Tur.”

“I can see why, I’m not sure I can say his full name,” Jol grinned at her, earning a disgruntled snort from Tur, who only then bothered to give the kid any of his attention.

“Somehow,” Tur said disdainfully. “That fails to surprise me.”

Jol lost his grin, shooting a minor glare at Tur, which caused Sie to step in between them.

“Calm down, the pair of you,” She told them, “This is hardly the place for whatever spat you were about to kick off.”

Jol shrugged and his grin returned, “Fair enough.”

Tur just snorted again, but at least he kept silence.

“Thank you for your help, Jol,” Sie said. “We haven’t heard of you, though, so we’re a little concerned right now, given the fact that one of our contacts just turned on us and sold us out to the Citadel.”

“Citadel, huh?” Jol asked, turning to the black line in the sky behind them. “That what you call it here? Good name.”

Sie narrowed her eyes as she processed that statement. It almost made it sound like he wasn’t from the area, or anywhere near it. Everyone knew about the Citadel.

“Not from these parts,” Jol went on cheerfully, confirming her thoughts much to Sie’s surprise. “Some friends asked me to check things out, see what was happening. When I saw you two fighting the demons I figured, why not get some local guides?”

Tur shot him another glare at that, “We’re not your servants, boy.”

Sie waved him down, however, her own mind was racing. As far as she knew it was impossible to cross any of the terrain around the citadel. There was nothing but deserts for as far as the eye could see in several directions, mountains impossible to climb in another, and an endless sea the only other option.

“I didn’t know there were any other places with humans,” she said carefully, now feeling herself reluctantly winding back up as she tensed for a fight if this boy were a demonic plant intended to get something out of them before bringing down another ambush.

“There are,” He said simply. “Probably more than I know. I grew up in The City.”

Sie blinked, she’d almost heard of that perhaps?

“I… I think I’ve heard of that. I don’t know where, though,” She admitted.

“It was a long way away,” Jol said. “I’m surprised you did hear of it, but I suppose demons talk like anyone else.”

Yes, Sie thought as she considered that. A demon mentioned it while we were watching them, getting ready… something about an incident?

“What happened at the City?” She asked.

Jol’s grin widened a bit, but there was something else behind it that didn’t feel quite a jubilant as he was apparently trying to put forward.

“Someone came from outside,” He said. “And they brought the whole tower down, sinking it below the waves.”

He settled slightly, his expression almost wistful, “Never seen so many demons die at once before.”

Jol’s expression soured slightly, though. “It was just too bad that so many people had to die as well.”

“Someone… came… from… outside?” Sie asked slowly, almost tasting the words as she spoke them.

That seemed too good to be true, and she quickly decided that it likely was just that. It was a trap, it had to be a trap, right? She glanced at Tur, getting a careful nod in return, and was relieved to see that he had much the same line of thought.

Jol, however, just nodded along without seeming to notice the interaction as they walked, his head swiveling as he eyed the shanties carefully for any threats as he continued to speak.

“Slip of a girl, she was,” he said cheerfully. “Damn good fighter though and using the weapons of the old ones. The things the demons still whisper about, when they’re frightened.”

“That’s impossible,” Sie blurted, unable to stop herself. “Those are just stories.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Jol confirmed. “Until I saw her with my own eyes. You’d believe it too, trust me.”

Fat chance of that, Sie thought darkly. I trust only Tur, there’s no one else in this world worthy of it.

*****

Chapter Eight

Unknown Redoubt

“There,” Elan said, sounding frustrated despite her success. “I think that’s got it. Check the systems.”

“Indeed,” Nimue responded from a distance. “Confirm that the lights are all correct.”

“Everything is steady and I’m not seeing any red at all.”

“Excellent.” The projection said as she drifted across the floor. “Then we merely need to re-initiate the systems manually.”

Elan brushed her hands off as she got to her feet, “So let’s do it.”

“Not quite so easily done, I am afraid,” The projection said, sighing. “Many of the instrumentation clusters that need to be reactivated are outside the redoubt.”

Elan stared at her for a moment before rolling her eyes, “Oh come on, you aren’t seriously going to claim that you can’t let me out of this hole because your systems aren’t active to identify me, but you can’t activate the systems without letting me out of this hole, are you?”

Nimue chuckled softly, “Nothing quite so trite, or easily solved, I’m afraid. My rules are quite strict, but I am no mere automaton that cannot recognize when rules need to be discarded in the face of reality. No, I’m afraid that the problem is our current location.”

Elan did not like the sounds of that. It made the situation sound worse than she’d been thinking… and she’d been thinking that she was at the mercy of an unhinged projection with complete control over the environment she was depending on to live.

“I really don’t want to ask, but… What’s wrong outside?”

“Strictly speaking? Nothing… however, that doesn’t mean it’s good for us either.” Nimue sighed. “Come.”

Elan grumbled a little but fell into step behind the projection as she was led out of the security and administrative sections into the more familiar public areas of the redoubt.

“These facilities were built for many purposes,” Nimue said as they walked. “Transport being but one and, in many cases, the very least of them. Planetary Security was another, which necessitated building the facilities in occasionally… uncomfortable locations.”

“I know I’m going to regret this, but… how uncomfortable?” Elan asked as they approached the entrance.

Nimue didn’t respond immediately, instead opting to pass her hand over the access control board and open the doors that led out into the cavern beyond the facility. Elan, puzzled, walked up to the doors and looked out.

Almost immediately she shivered, a wave of cold passing through that she could feel even in her armor. The next thing she noticed was the smooth hewn structure of the cavern beyond and the steps that led up to a blue-ish glow that she’d never seen the likes of before.

“Is it… magic?” She blinked.

Nimue laughed, startled by the question. “No child. Have you never seen ice before?”

“What’s Ice?”

“Frozen water… no, never mind,” Nimue waved her back and shut the door, sealing the cold out. “What is important is that the entire facility has been buried, deep beneath an immense glacier.”

“I have no idea what that is either,” Elan deadpanned.

“Water, child. Solid water. It was miles of it, probably, at one time.” Nimue sighed. “But it has been melting for a long while. In another thousand years perhaps I will see the sky again. For now, however, the external systems are effectively impossible to reach.”

Elan scowled, “There has to be a way.”

“I have no doubt, but no such way is listed in the maintenance manuals,” Nimue responded, clearly frustrated. “I have gone over them many times, looking.”

“When did you…” Elan started before she remembered who she was talking to, “Projection. Right. Never mind. What about the people who did the work before?”

Nimue blinked, “They are long gone, of course. Did you truly think that there were others here?”

“Not what I meant,” Elan sighed. “I mean did they leave anything? When we build anything on Atlantis, there’s also two sets of notes. The ones from the designs, and the ones from the people who actually do the work. I’ve never seen the two match perfectly.”

Nimue grew silent, considering that, “You may have a point, though it is likely to be at rather long odds…”

“Do we have a choice?” Elan asked archly.

“No, I suppose we do not.” Nimue was somber as she said that, before sighing heavily. “This way, child…. And… I am sorry for this.”

“For what?” Elan asked, instantly suspicious.

“You will see.”

*****

Avalon

If she were intercepted, that would mean that another facility is in operation yet not in contact, Merlin scowled as he examined the logs of the communications and transport system.

The Linked-Space system that transmitted matter over the network was specifically designed such that it was all but impossible for it kill someone that was being transported. Elan essentially had to still be out there somewhere, which was the core of the problem he was dealing with.

If she hadn’t turned up at the intended destination, then it was because something about her transport had flagged another system and caused her to reroute. Really, only her armor and weapon could have done that as best he knew. However, it hadn’t done so the last time she’d transported with the equipment, which meant it was something unique to the path this transport would have taken.

Which installations are part of the network this time that were not on her previous route?

Merlin called up the list, slowly working his way though the names and numbers until one stood out and he froze.

Oh… Oh my.

This… could be a problem.

*****

Unknown Redoubt

Elan grimaced as she looked into the rooms. The bodies within were dry husks of the people they’d once been, flesh turned to leather over time, drawing back the flesh around the mouths to expose terribly grins as she carefully walked among them.

It was the first time she’d encountered bodies inside one of the facilities. Normally they were clean to a fault, and she wondered if it were simply that the people had fled them… or, had they been converted to light by the machines, the protections Merlin had told her about were geared to the living… Not those who’d passed.

She pushed that thought from her mind for a moment, however, and began to carefully look through the books and belongings that were strewn about the area.

Reading had been something her mother had taught her growing up, but Elan had learned the hard way that the Ancients had many languages, and many words for things she didn’t know anything about. Learning with Merlin had brought her closer to proper literacy, but her understanding was still somewhat eclectic in nature.

She was well versed in technical languages, particularly when it came to weapons and personal armor, for example, much less so when it came to the sorts of things she was looking for now. Elan didn’t like it, but she knew that she would have to rely very strongly on the projection when it came to decoding anything she might find.

“This is… was,” Nimue corrected herself. “The Maintenance and Engineering team.”

Elan looked over the bodies that were strewn about the room in positions that looked almost… comfortable.

“What… happened?” She asked. She couldn’t help it, despite everything in her telling her that she didn’t want the answer to the question.

“This facility was ordered sealed shortly after a local dimensional breach,” Nimue said softly. “We remained untouched by the invasion and the biological weapons it unleashed but, with no orders to the contrary, food ran out first. The choice was to breach containment or die here. Three weeks after the food ran out, the medical staff passed out high grade tranquilizers sufficient to kill several men. Containment was maintained.”

Elan stared in shock, she’d heard of crazy things in her talks with the people who’d been fighting demons for so long, and in her lessons with Merlin, but… they could have just left.

“Why?” She blurted. “Was it really worse out there in the world?”

Nimue just stared at her blankly for a moment.

“Containment was maintained.”

Elan shook her head, not really making much sense of what the projection was saying but deciding quickly that there wasn’t any point arguing with her on it. There were more important things to manage at the moment.

“Fine, whatever,” she said as she picked up notebooks, large bound manuals, and the little portable devices that Merlin had shown her during their lessons. “Maybe there will be something in here we can use.”

“Perhaps,” Nimue said, eyes not leaving the dead.

“Come on,” Elan smacked the projection through the shoulder, getting a startled look. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Yes… of course.”

The projection turned and followed the young girl out of the maintenance barracks, and back toward the main facility.

*****

It didn’t take long for Nimue to find that Elan had a point concerning the manuals.

“The notes here vary quite a lot from the official records,” She conceded. “However, I do not see anything that might obviously help us yet.”

“So, we keep looking,” Elan told her, frowning as she flipped through one of the bound books. “This… isn’t a maintenance book.”

Nimue turned looking at it briefly, her projected eyes widening, “That should have been in the barracks.”

“Mmm,” Elan hummed, fingers tracing the title. “It’s a book of power. I’ve seen one before, read one. I can’t read this one, though.”

“You read one?” Nimue asked sharply, looking over.

“Ein Taki Amin Kine,” Elan whispered, feeling a shiver run through the air as the power behind her words made itself known. “I walk the path.”

“Those books were unreadable, to anyone,” Nimue said sternly. “The fact that you could read one… Who, no… what are you?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Elan shrugged. “I think I’m just human, but things have been weird these past couple years. Seen a lot of things that make me wonder if anyone is just anything. What are you, Nimue?”

The projection looked at her for a moment, considering, before speaking.

“The Elemental Intelligence, Nimue of the Waters of this world.”

Elan blinked, mildly impressed. It sounded like a cool title, though she couldn’t really claim to understand it at all.

“Well, I am Elanthielle of Atlantis,” She replied. “Protector and Knight.”

Nimue nodded slowly, eyes not leaving the girl. “A good title.”

“I… think so, yes.”

*****

North of the Citadel

The trio had checked their trail several times, coming up empty on any pursuers no matter what they did, which was almost enough for them to relax a little.

Almost.

Sie was still eying Jol with distrust, not that it seemed to bother the younger man. He, in fact, appeared blithely ignorant of her sidelong glares as they found a place where they could shelter for the coming night, and make plans for the daylight.

Once they were settled in, it was Jol who broke the silence.

“Hey, you two know much about the Citadel?” He asked.

Tur looked over at him briefly before taking a bite from some dried food he’d removed from his pack, “As much as most humans, I suppose. Why?”

“There was a…” Jol hesitated, his expression firming, and tone growing a little sardonic. “Her Ladyship of the City, she escaped when the city went down. I was wondering if you know whether she came here?”

Sie and Tur both looked over at him slowly, Sie speaking first.

“A demon Lady, you mean?”

Jol nodded somberly.

“What would you care?”

“I need to know, that’s all.”

The pair exchanged glances, meaning shooting between them over the scant second or so they looked at one another.

“When was this?”

“A full season’s past,” Jol answered. “More or less.”

Tur sighed, pensive, before he finally rumbled out his thoughts.

“Maybe.” He said after a time, drawing a surprised look from Sie.

“You know of this one?” She asked.

Tur just shrugged, “I am not sure. However, there was a bit of a stink around that time. Something very… big happened.”

Jol snorted, “Losing the City? Yes, my friends, that qualifies as big.”

“More.” Tur said with a shake of his head. “Much more than just a loss of demons, or even some great city. Something else. Something changed their plans.”

Sie’s eyes widened slowly, “Oh hell, you’re right. I remember now. Every demon in the Shanties went quiet, like they were afraid someone was coming to get them.”

She looked over at Jol with a hint of disdain. “I suppose you think they were afraid of you, or that outsider you talked about?”

“It’d be nice,” Jol with with an easy grin that quickly vanished as he considered it. “But no. Knowing them as I do, they were probably more afraid that the upper levels were going to come down and slaughter them all for failing to stop her.”

“And who is this oh so impressive ‘her’ that can cause all that mess among demons?” Sie asked sardonically.

“Elanthielle of Atlantis,” Jol told her with a returning smile. “A lot of power in a rather impressively small package, though she has been growing up nicely over the past year I must say.”

Sie snorted, rolling her eyes, “Men.”

*****

Redoubt North of the Citadel

Caleb looked around as he stepped out of the redoubt, eyes drifting to the South where he could see a black line against the sky where a tower stood.

In his experience, towers were bad news. Only demons lived in them, and the humans who lived around them were rarely in particularly good sorts. The presence of such a place didn’t surprise him, however. It almost expected as much given that they were looking for something rather big and nasty that was being done by the demons.

Finding a large group of demons at the center of the mess seemed… well, obvious in hindsight if nothing else.

Merlin still had no news on Elan, which was worrying him greatly, but the entity seemed confident that she was alive, or at least had survived whatever it was that caused her to become lost if nothing else. Unfortunately, there was little that he could do to help the search for her, so instead he was following in Jolinr’s steps, investigating the original issue that had brought them together.

Whatever the demons were up to, Elan, and Merlin, were convinced that it was a threat to Atlantis… and not merely an indirect one of the sort that one might normally expect. Anything the demons wanted, after all, was bound to be bad for humans eventually. No, they believed that it was a more serious and immediate threat that had to be dealt with quickly.

With those two pushing for something, Caleb was confident that something had to be done. They had the track record to back up any hunches they might want to look into, so far as he was concerned at least.

Simone was running into a bit more trouble getting the City moving, but that was not entirely surprising either. The population of Atlantis was composed of survivors, and most of them were surprised to be survivors. They didn’t want to push their luck, and he really couldn’t blame them.

History was not on the side of those who battled with demons.

Ultimately, you either died… or you lived long enough to fall prey to their corruption and become a demon yourself, in all but name.

He would rather die, personally, but Caleb was certain that more than one of those poor bastards who’d fallen to the corruption of demons had sworn the same thing at some point in their lives before that.

Demons were insidious, and never to be underestimated.

He looked around the arid wastes that surrounded him, standing there outside the Redoubt, and sighed.

Of course, Jol ran off without me, He shook his head, unsurprised yet rather irritated by the fact.

Looking to the South, Caleb expected that the other man would have headed in that direction, given that he couldn’t see much of anything in any other of the expansive views around him. That left him with the decision on whether he should run off to the South, looking for the damn fool, or wait and see if Jol came back anytime soon.

Why does he do this? He knows we’re better off sticking together…

*****

Chapter Nine

Unknown Redoubt

“This is promising,” Nimue said as she examined the scanned material from the Engineer’s notes.

“What do you have?” Elan asked, looking up from the book she’d not been able to read.

Nimue looked at her, puzzled, before answering the question, “I thought you couldn’t read that?”

“I… don’t know?” Elan offered, holding the book up. “It’s strange, there are passages I can read, if I look at them long enough. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Nimue was silent for a moment, pensively considering that bit of information.

“Those books, and the other you mentioned, are very old,” She said. “Older than I by some margin, and that is no small feat. The language is not one that has ever been decoded, and even during the height of civilization, those books were debated to possibly be hoaxes because no one had ever been able to understand them.”

Elan looked down at it, visibly confused, “But it’s not that hard…”

“Child, just because you can do something well does not mean that thing is easy to do. We all have differing skills,” Nimue chided her. “And we will return to this, but later. For now, we have the current issue at hand.”

“Right.”

Elan certainly wasn’t going to disagree as she flipped the book closed and looked over at what Nimue had been going through.

“What did you find?”

Nimue brushed her fingers insubstantially across the notes she’d been looking over.

“The primary maintenance engineer made detailed notes regarding the installation and emergency servicing of the pieces, and it appears that it may in fact be possible to re-initiate them from inside the facility… though no one has ever done it, for obvious reasons.”

“Great,” Elan said, getting up. “Tell me what to do and we’ll get this done.”

“Child, even if I knew what to do, precisely, I am not certain I would be able to properly explain it,” Nimue responded, sounding frustrated.

“We have to try.”

The Projection sighed.

“Very well.”

*****

Shanties, North of the Citadel

Jol and the pair of Sie and Tur sheltered out the night in a rubble strewn wreck that had likely once been a proper building. There was enough cover to hide them from anyone casually checking out the area, but also more than enough ways out to prevent them from being cornered in the worst case of things.

Sleeping wasn’t something that came to Jol as they waited out the night. He didn’t know the other two nearly well enough to trust them with his safety in hostile territory, or even well enough to entrust them to merely not try to rob him or some such. He’d seen a lot of bad people fighting demons in his days, probably more than he’d ever consider calling ‘good people’, in fact.

Just because someone was the enemy of the demons did not make them his friend, that was an old lesson, learned hard.

They stayed in shelter and silence, though, until the sun began to come up. Only then did he shift around and risk moving as he checked out the area with new light exposing the details. The local environment was not exactly kind to demons, though he wouldn’t call it kind to humans either.

Sunlight, blazing down as it did here, would burn the demons first, there was no question of that, but humans wouldn’t fare much better after a couple days if they weren’t careful.

He clambered quietly back to where he’d rested, dropping into place as he caught the two sets of eyes tracking his motions.

“Well, it looks clear,” he said simply. “They’re probably holing up for the day, assuming they haven’t given up on you for now.”

Tur snorted, “Unlikely. This was unprecedented. The demons will not expose themselves like this only to simply give up.”

“He’s right, we really pissed them off this time,” Sie replied somberly, “They’ll be back.”

“Well,” Jol said, “Best we not be here, then. You need a place to hide out for a bit?”

“You have such a place?” Tur asked, his tone sarcastic. “Did you not say that you were from elsewhere?”

“I did. And I do.” Jol got up. “Come on.”

He left the ruins, leaving the pair staring after him for a moment, but didn’t look back. Jol figured that it was time to find out whether they were interested or not.

Sie and Tur exchanged meaningful looks briefly before they nodded and got to their feet, following after the boy. They didn’t know what he was on about, but it was clear that the area was too hot for them right now anyway, and anywhere was likely better than where they’d been.

*****

Avalon

Merlin did not like what he was seeing as he examined the network. Breaches in the network had caused for an unusual traffic pattern that he’d not properly accounted for, which had almost certainly led them to the current problem.

Elan’s transit path should have been a direct one, going due West, almost perfectly so, from their current position to the intended target. However, there had been breaches in the network along that path, forcing the system to automatically route the transit around through networked sections that were not breached.

That had sent Elan North, far North in fact, to an Island that was currently buried under a Glacier sheet.

On its own, that would simply have meant a few milli-seconds delay in transit, at most. However, the facility her signal should have been redirected from was apparently offline.

That was a bit of an issue, but again, not strictly a problem since the transit connections were still fine.

The facility wasn’t just any transit hub; however, it was another place much like Avalon itself. With similar access limitations that, given the range from where she’d been born, Elan was highly unlikely to meet. He had only been able to clear her through some creative loopholing of his own restrictions combined with the genetic match to one of her ancestors who was a base commander.

If she were stuck at this Northern Facility, it was highly unlikely that the facility would be willing to unlock for her… and there was not a single thing he could do about it.

For all intents and purposes, Elan was lost.

Merlin didn’t know what he was going to tell the others. The little child warrior had done so much and been the center of two great victories for the local community. He was unsure how they would take this, but it seemed like there was nothing else for him to do.

Damn this whole situation.

*****

Unknown Redoubt

Elan coughed. The dust seemed to want to get everywhere no matter what she tried to do to stop it. It certainly didn’t help that she was crawling through a small access area that was clearly built with limited use in mind, and her armor wasn’t exactly making her less bulky either. She’d considered ditching the gear and going in lighter, but given the situation she wasn’t certain that she could fully trust Nimue, and frankly if the dust got much worse, she was going to use up some of her environmental consumables.

“I think I have it,” she said between coughs as she pulled out a dull looking crystal shard from a bank of similar looking ones, replacing it with a shinier one that Nimue had given her from the stores.

“Indeed.” Nimue answered, her voice reverberating in the air and shaking more dust loose. “Systems have begun to return query requests. Initializing full system reboot.”

Elan looked around, waiting, but nothing seemed to change.

“Is that it?” She asked after a moment. “Is it done?”

“It will be some time before a reboot can be completed, child,” Nimue told her. “You might as well come out.”

Elan grunted and low key cursed under her breath as she struggled backwards through the maintenance shaft, wriggling her way out of the tight confines and back onto the floor of the main facility.

Laying on the ground for a bit, she just took deep breaths that were uncontaminated by the dust within the shaft while she studied the irregularities of the ceiling.

Nimue appeared beside her as she was debating whether the ceiling was looking cleaner, or if it were just the new lighting responsible.

Probably both.

“Security scanners have rebooted,” Nimue deadpanned. “They do not like that you are wearing Class X powered armor and carrying an Elite Forces Sidearm.”

Elan rolled her head to give the projection a dry look, “Suck it up, cause I’m not undressing for you, even if you ask nice and offer dinner.”

“Mmm,” Nimue hummed. “Thankfully, as you are currently inside the facility, you fall outside their official control arcs, so that should not provide any issues to speak of. Internal security might become an issue.”

Elan’s eyes narrowed, “Did I just help you turn on weapons that you’re going to use to try and kill me?”

“Try?” Nimue countered, her tone dryly amused. “Confident in yourself, aren’t we, little one?”

“I’ve survived two demon hordes trying to kill me, traitors, and one high level demon who…” Elan frowned. “You know, I’m not actually certain what she was trying to do. Kill me, yeah, but almost as a side effect. That one was strange.”

Nimue examined the child a little closer as she considered that information.

A great deal of fighting for one so young, but of course times have changed from the height of Civilization.

“All rather impressive, I have no doubts,” She said aloud. “But no, the internal security is more directly under my control since it presumes that anyone who has accessed the facility has been cleared through on some level. There will be no shoot outs within my facility, am I quite clear young lady?”

Elan snorted as she sat up, brushing as much of the dust off herself as she could, “Sure, sure.”

Nimue was about to chide her for the less than enthusiastic response when another system alert caught her attention.

“Ah, excellent. External scanners are online, diagnostics running now.”

“So, you can, what? See the Ice?” Elan asked, confused.

“My primary scanners are more than potent enough to look through such a minimal barrier as that… speaking of which, scanners now reporting. Hmmm… The Glaciers have begun melting and are receding from the region. Another few thousand years and it should be open air above us again…. Oh… perhaps not.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

Nimue pouted, “Nothing really, I suppose. The Glacier managed to dredge out several hundred feet of dirt around the facility. Once the sheets have fully withdrawn, I believe that the facility will be entirely submerged in a newly minted freshwater lake. Well, that will be somewhat annoying.”

Elan shook her head. Being buried under ice and water sounded more than annoying to her, but she’d learned the hard way that the projections didn’t view things the same as she, or any human might.

Nimue, however, was already moving on as she considered more information coming in from her slowly reactivating systems.

“Wait now… what is this?” Nimue demanded, her tone becoming sharp as she abruptly vanished entirely, leaving Elan standing alone in the hall.

“What is what? Hello!? Hello!” Elan called out, frustrated, before she turned and began stalking her way back to the facilities primary control center.

Stupid projections.

*****

This won’t do. This won’t do at all.

Nimue was fussing over a machine that was spewing out data faster than Elan could follow when she arrived in the center, irritated by the abrupt dismissal of the projection.

“What’s going on?” Elan demanded as she grabbed a chair and gratefully sank into it, just to get off her feet.

Nimue barely glanced at her, “I’m monitoring a resonance frequency in the planet’s Ley Lines, one that most certainly should not exist.”

“Right,” Elan nodded. “That’s what I was going to check out. It should be focused on the transport facility I was being set to.”

Nimue blinked, then ran a quick log check of the intercepted transport that had brought company to her domain, then confirming the location against the resonance wave she was scanning and its probable focal points.

The two matched.

Point for her, Nimue thought, though she had no idea what the slip of a girl thought she might be able to pull off with such an action. Whatever was causing a wave of this magnitude was going to be beyond the powers of a suit of powered armor and a pistol, even if both were Elite assigned materials.

“What damned fool sent you on such a mission with so little proper equipment?” She demanded, highly irritated by the entire situation.

Elan leaned back a little, surprised by the sudden heat from the projection.

“We don’t exactly have a lot,” She defended, wondering if she should tell the troublesome intelligence or not. “Besides, it’s more of just going to see if we can work out what is going on. Right now, we just don’t know enough.”

Nimue snorted, “I can tell you some things you apparently don’t know right now. What we’re seeing here is a dimensional collapse waveform.”

Elan looked at sea, but the projection just waved off her confusion.

“I do not expect you to understand it, do not worry,” Nimue told her. “However, in the simplest of terms, someone… demons most likely, of course… have set up a pattern in the Earth itself. When the pattern fully comes into sync with the vibration of the dimensional barrier separating this world from whatever plane they’ve targeted, the barrier will be shattered.”

Elan just stared.

“Seriously?” She asked after a moment’s silence. “That’s the simplest you can put it?”

Nimue sighed, shaking her head, “Primates, I swear… Very well, child. The simplest explanation is that the demons are about to kick down the door between our world and one of theirs… so that they can bring through armies unlike any we’ve seen thus far.”

Elan whitened as she considered that.

“But…” She objected slowly, “they already all but wiped us out. Why bring through an army?”

“What do you do once you’ve eliminated all the pests from a building?” Nimue asked dryly. “You get ready to move in.”

“Oh.”

Elan’s voice was quiet, small. She was frozen from the concept alone, unable to fully process it for the longest moment of her life. Then it finally fully impinged on her conscious mind, and she bolted upright.

“We have to stop them!”

“With what, child? You sidearm won’t even reach the harmonic, it’s in the Ley already,” Nimue snapped, irritated. “There are no physical weapons left, I believe, that could affect such a thing… and even if there were, those that could have stopped this would not have left this world intact in their wake.”

Elan was on her feet, angry now and frustrated, “There must be something! I need to get back or get to where I was going!”

She turned, eyes falling on the projection.

“Send me back!” She snapped, glaring at Nimue.

The projection glared right back.

“No.”

*****

Chapter Ten

Redoubt North of the Citadel

“That idiot better not be goofing off,” Caleb swore as he kicked at the ground, eyes sweeping the horizon to the South.

He’d been waiting for over a day, hoping that Jol would come back so that they could coordinate their actions, but it didn’t seem like that was happening any time soon. He was even starting to get a little worried about the other man, annoying though he was with his flirtatious attitude and clear eyes for… many women Caleb knew.

Merlin was no help, since the Redoubt’s ability to sense others wasn’t nearly so specific and even with the tracking system that they were both carrying, there were significant range limits.

So, Caleb had been relegated to hanging around the redoubt, waiting for Jol to return, and mostly just doing minor repair tasks as delegated by Merlin. He figured that they were important, or he hoped so at least, but he still didn’t want to be stuck doing this sort of work when there were more important things happening out beyond the ancient redoubt.

However, for the moment, he gritted his teeth and went about the repairs Merlin had him doing, interspersed with the occasional bout of venturing topside to look around and see if anything had changed.

Nothing seemed to.

He was about to head back down when Caleb caught sight of motion on the horizon, and he immediately dropped to one knee and took some cover at the entrance to the redoubt, peering off as he tried to identify the motion.

It quickly resolved into three forms approaching on what seemed like a direct course, putting him on edge since Jol had left alone.

Did the brothers get here already? He wondered, but if they did, where did they had the flyer?

The brothers, having taken the Skipray, were supposed to arrive sometime later after he, Jol, and Elan had gotten into place and hopefully scoured up some information from the local situation. However well that plan had gone, however, left him uncertain as to whether the brothers even could have gotten here by this point.

That all became a moot point as the figures got closer and he got an idea of the sizes. Only one of them was perhaps short enough to be one of the brothers, so he doubted it was either of them as Caleb had rarely seen them running around solo.

Taking cover and getting his weapons ready, Caleb elected to settle in and just wait. If it were someone who had no business accessing the redoubt, well he would ensure that they didn’t access the ancient location.

Anything else, well he’d decide that once he knew more.

*****

“Just up this way,” Jol said, nodding up ahead as he led the pair across the desert.

The sun was up, and they’d run through their stored water already, so he was glad to see the markers he’d picked out lining up, telling him that they were nearly back to the redoubt. While he wasn’t certain that the local facility had water, he knew that Merlin could transport in some as needed from Avalon.

“You had better not be lying,” Sie swore as the trio trudged through the wastes. “If I have to crawl back to the shanties, I promise you I’ll be drinking your blood to make it there.”

Jol snorted, “Promises, promises, my lady.”

She just rolled her eyes, though Jol earned himself an annoyed grunt and minor glare from Tur over the comment.

“Anyway, it’s just up this way,” Jol said. “But we should be careful, because some of the others might be…”

A blast from off to the side caused them all to hit the ground, hard, as they were showered with dust and rock fragments.

“Do not come any closer!”

Jol rolled behind cover automatically, before popping his head up and glaring.

“Caleb! Is that you, you crazy…?”

“Jol?”

“Who else would be coming out into the middle of the demon bedamned wastes like this you nut!?”

“Who is with you? It’s not the brothers!”

“It’s a couple locals, they were about to be killed by some demons, so I saved them!”

“He did not!”

Jol glared over at Sie, who had spoken up, “Seriously?”

“Don’t worry, I know him,” Caleb called back as he appeared from behind cover. “If he said it, I know better than to believe it.”

“Seriously?” Jol demanded, looking between them as he got to his feet.

Sie ignored him, eyes on the other young man who had somehow blown up a large boulder, apparently as a warning.

“I am Sien’el,” She greeted him, keeping her hands visible. “Please, call me Sie.”

“Caleb,” He returned, gesturing to the group. “Come on ahead, no more attacks I promise.”

Sie and Tur exchanged glances but there was little else to do, really, so they got up out of cover and followed Jol as he made his way up to where Caleb was waiting.

“You should have waited,” Caleb growled. “I’ve been here over a day, wondering if I should head out on my own or wait until you got back. This isn’t how we do things, if we don’t talk, we’ll never get anything done.”

“We don’t have time for talking,” Jol growled. “It’s time for action!”

“Right, what action? Where?”

Jol hesitated, causing Caleb to sigh and roll his eyes.

“Exactly.” He grumbled, looking over to the other two, “Apologies. My friend here…”

“Not friends,” Jol grumbled.

“My pouting friend here,” Caleb amended. “Can be a bit annoying, but he is useful in a fight… and, like it or not, we’ve got a big one coming, or at least that’s the general word.”

Sie and Tur frowned, an exchange of glances enough for hours of talking in seconds passing between them before Tur spoke.

“What fight?” The big man demanded more than questioned.

Caleb looked him over briefly, “You are?”

“Turoch,” He replied, ending the name with a guttural sound. “Call me Tur.”

“Right. Well, Tur,” Caleb said. “That’s the thing. We don’t know. What we do know is that the demons here are up to something, and it’s big. That brought us around to see what… well, most of us.”

He frowned, shaking his head.

“No sign of her yet?” Jol asked softly.

“None. Not even Merlin seems to have any ideas,” Caleb said quietly. “She just vanished.”

“Who is this?” Sie asked, her curiosity winning out over caution.

“Elan,” Caleb answered. “The first of us. She was supposed to come out here ahead, get a better idea of things… but she never arrived.”

Sie was certain that she was missing something in that explanation but couldn’t tell what exactly.

“Was she ambushed on the road?” She asked after some thought.

“No, that would have been a trick,” Caleb smiled slightly, before sobering again. “And if it were that simple, well I’d put iron on her leaving her ambushers rotting in her wake.”

Jol laughed, “And I wouldn’t take that bet. Not too many humans can go toe to toe with a demon’s Lord, or Lady in this case, and fight them to a draw.”

“She’s done that, and more,” Caleb agreed. “But whatever happened this time… didn’t give her a chance to fight back. She just vanished. Merlin says she’s still alive, he might know where she wound up too.”

“Well, that’s good,” Jol said. “Tell him to send me out to where she is, I’ll grab the girl and bring her back.”

Caleb glared at him, expression dry, “Really? You think we haven’t considered that? The location is isolated and there’s no communication in or out. Since she hasn’t come back on her own, it’s fair to say that the transit system there isn’t working, for whatever reason. We can’t go get her, and it’s looking like she can’t get out.”

“No, I don’t believe it,” Jol said. “There must be a way. If she’s alive, we can get her.”

“Without knowing why she hasn’t come back on her own, we can’t send anyone, or they’ll be trapped too. For now, we move forward without her,” Caleb said firmly, his tone brooking no argument as he shut Jol down with a glare.

Jol clearly wasn’t happy about it, but there wasn’t anything more he could say, so he kicked at a stone before turning around and sitting heavily on a boulder.

“I don’t like it,” he said petulantly.

“There’s nothing to like. It just is,” Caleb countered before turning to the other pair, and sighing. “I apologize. We’re not happy about losing Elan, it has both of us on edge. Come, there’s water and food inside.”

Tur and Sie looked to one another for comfort and confirmation before they followed Caleb back to the rough cave entrance he led them to. Jol took up the rear as the foursome vanished into the shadows hidden from the sun.

*****

The rough-hewn look of the cave gave way a distance in, turning to smooth precisely formed walls, floor, and ceiling. Sie reached out her hand as they passed, touching the wall and letting her flesh pass over it as they walked, the cold surface as smooth as anything she’d ever felt in the past.

“What clan built this place?” She demanded.

“Clan?” Caleb looked back over his shoulder, pausing as he led them in.

“Demon clan. Only they build things like this.”

Caleb snorted, “Demons don’t build anything. They steal and claim what they stole as their own. This was built by humans, a very long time ago.”

“That’s impossible,” Sie objected as they stepped through a doorway into an expansive interior compartment, her eyes going wide as she looked around.

Jol merely snorted softly, “It’s true. Her Ladyship in the City made a point of tormenting… people… with stories about what humans used to be able to do. This, what you’re seeing here? It’s the least of it. Trust me.”

“If humans could do this, how did we lose?” Tur demanded, his tone sharp despite his low gravely voice.

“That,” A new voice startled them. “Is a long and tragic tale.”

“Merlin,” Caleb half turned. “Any news from Elan?”

“Alas, no, young Caleb, the prodigal daughter remains missing.”

“What the hell is that?” Sie had her spear out, brandishing it ahead of her as she moved to keep distance between herself and Merlin while Tur got his axe ready for a fight. “Is this an ambush?”

“Pax,” Merlin brought up his hands, “I apologize for appearing like this, I was unaware that you weren’t more informed. I am Merlin, an Elemental Intelligence created by your ancestors. Welcome.”

Sie’s eyes shifted around the room, keeping track of any movement as she made sure that no one was moving to block the way out. Tur kept to her left side, turned slightly as he stood ready to guard that flank.

“Why should we believe you?” Sie demanded.

“You should not,” Merlin responded, sounding almost affronted by the question. “Do not put your faith in me, or anyone. Judge me, as everyone, by our actions, not our words.”

“Heh,” Turroch chuckled softly. “Good advice… and not something any demon I’ve ever met would offer.”

Sie nodded slowly, relaxing her grip on her weapon slightly but still keeping it at the ready.

“True,” She said after a moment. “But you’ll pardon if it takes us a little while.”

“Of course, in so far as we have the time for you to take,” Merlin said before turning to Caleb. “The harmonic has increased. If it continues as projected, we will be looking at severe damage to the local space time within three days.”

“The local what?” Sie interrupted.

Merlin only glanced at her before returning his focus to Caleb, “If breached, I cannot predict the damage that will happen.”

“Understood,” Caleb lied through his teeth, though he figured he understood enough. It was bad, they had three days, and the consequences were likely to be nasty.

“Well, I bloody didn’t,” Sie grumbled. “What is this local space time nonsense?”

Merlin sighed, turning his attention to her, “Something centered on the tower to the South is growing in power. If left unchecked, it will cause severe damage to the… area around the tower.”

She snorted, “So let it. Bring the whole Citadel down around their ears, the demonic bastards.”

“You misunderstand the scale I am referring to,” Merlin responded coldly. “‘Local’ doesn’t mean local to the... Citadel, is it? No, local means local to this planet we all stand upon.”

“This… what?” Sie asked, puzzled.

Caleb sighed, “He means the world. The whole world. Everyone on it.”

******

Merlin was, in all actuality, a patient being.

It was truly part and parcel of being what he was. Patience wasn’t merely a requirement; it was part of his core element. That being said, infinity was a mathematical concept, not one that worked in the real world… and his patience was similarly limited.

Dealing with the Atlanteans was already trouble enough, but he’d had some time to educate some small few of them and earned trust from them as well. These two new people were just that, new, and thus a problem in the moment.

“We do not have time for this,” He intoned deeply, causing the air to reverberate with his words. “If action is not taken, the consequences will most certainly be disastrous.”

“Why.”

Merlin turned, exasperated, as he stared at the big man who’d been introduced as Tur.

“Must I really bring up the multi-dimensional math to show why the consequences-…”

“No,” Tur growled. “If the demons are causing this… whatever is it, and it will destroy the world, why are they doing it?”

Merlin was taken aback at the question, if only slightly.

“That is a good question,” He admitted. “However, while I cannot fully answer it, I should correct the notion you have about it destroying the world. I do not believe the consequences will be to that scale. Damage, yes, destroy? Unlikely.”

“Still begs the question, why are they doing it?” Caleb pondered.

“Demons like to destroy things,” Jol growled.

“But… surely not the world they live on?” Caleb asked, looking around, “Right?”

Those with closer contact with demonic types shifted uneasily, unwilling to answer that question as they themselves found that they weren’t certain they could do so definitively.

That silence spoke volumes, and Caleb sunk in on himself as he considered that for a moment.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Jol said. “Look, I don’t know that they’re that insane. Some are, but not the ones on top, I believe. But they are more than crazy enough to do something that wipes us all out, just as a side bonus. We can’t ignore this.”

“Agreed,” Merlin interjected. “However, the true problem is pinpointing the source for the moment.”

Jol nodded, “How do we do that?”

*****

Chapter Eleven

Unknown Redoubt

Elan and the projection of Nimue glared at one another across the compartment they were inhabiting, neither willing to give an inch even in the silence that grew between them like an icicle slowly dripping down from the ceiling.

“Why not?” Elan finally demanded hotly.

“Because there’s nothing you could do even if I were to let you go,” The projection snapped. “And I don’t make a practice of sending children off to their deaths.”

“I don’t care who you think you are,” Elan countered. “But I’m no child, and I’ve spent the last two years fighting demons! Risking myself is what needs to be done, and I will do it.”

“Risk is one thing, whether I like it or not,” Nimue snapped back. “Perhaps if you had any slight chance of success, I might opt for another answer, but this is beyond you child.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

“There is nothing I can do,” Nimue hissed angrily. “Have you not bothered to listen?”

“So, I can’t do anything, you won’t do anything,” Elan said, ignoring the indignant sound at the word ‘won’t’. “What happens when the door gets kicked open? Do we all live happily ever after then?”

Nimue just glared at the girl now, knowing what she was doing and hating the fact that there was no reasonable answer to the next question she knew to be coming.

“No,” Nimue bit out. “We die.”

Elan’s smile was fairly nasty, Nimue decided at that point.

“So, if I’m going to die anyway, let me do it on my feet,” Elan growled out through bared teeth. “There’s no kindness in dying here, in a hole, just so that I can say I lived a short while longer.”

Nimue would have clenched her fists, if she had physical ones. There was little satisfaction in doing so to a projection, unfortunately.

There was not much she could counter the girl’s impassioned speech with, Nimue knew it even as she tried to find something that would turn the girl from her suicidal goal. If death were to come, it didn’t matter if it came days, months, years, or even decades later in this case. Not when there was no hope left, not for yourself or your descendants.

That didn’t mean she was in anyway willing to set a child against the world with so little to protect herself with.

A single sidearm and a suit of enhancing armor? What idiot…

Nimue pierced Elan with a needle-sharp stare.

“Merlin.”

Elan flinched back, “What?”

“You got your equipment from that senile old fool,” Nimue spat out. “Merlin. He’s the only one I can imagine who’d set you lose on a world as bad off as this, and only give you that equipment to protect yourself with. The military intelligences would have you in projection armor, at the very least, in addition to your enhancing armor, and armed such that I’d have been afraid to keep you here.”

Elan couldn’t help but think that sounded pretty good, actually. She’d have to see if she couldn’t find one of these ‘military intelligences’ at some point.

“What did that senile twit think he was sending you to stop anyway?” Nimue rantd.

Elan shrugged, “Didn’t know. Just knew something was wrong, and the general location. I was just going to take the lead on a scouting group.”

Nimue sighed slightly, “Well at least he hasn’t completely lost his anions…”

Elan had no idea what the hell that meant, but the projection didn’t care even if she noticed.

“I can save you the trouble and just tell you what it is,” Nimue, before cocking her head to one side. “Which I did. No need to scout.”

“No, now there’s a need to plan the raid.”

Nimue masked a slight shudder. There was something wrong with this child’s smile, she decided. Not feral, but close enough to make her realize that she apparently had primal instincts that she’d never noticed before.

Strange. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to have primal instincts without ever coming from a primal line.

Still, she had to reason with the child.

“Elan,” Nimue sighed deeply. “There is nothing to raid. It is a pattern set within the Ley, to attack such would be the same as attacking the world, even if it were possible in the first place.”

“There has to be something that can be done,” Elan countered. “You said it yourself, it’s the end if we do nothing. We have to try.”

“Of course, there are things to be done, irritating child,” Nimue snapped, her internal tensions showing through her projection. “It’s that there’s nothing we can do that is the problem.”

She turned away, glaring off into nothing a million miles beyond the wall she was facing as she visibly calmed herself.

“Child, with our current resources, there is no answer.” She said wearily.

“What would you do if you had what you needed?” Elan pressed.

Nimue rolled her eyes, turning back to the girl, irritated but willing to play the game. It was better than just screaming at one another, if nothing else.

“Simple, analyze the pattern and inject a canceling wave into the Ley. Two waves that are opposite to one another will cancel each other out,” She responded. “But we don’t have the equipment to properly calculate the canceling wave, and we don’t have the equipment to insert it into the Ley, nor do we have the resources needed to properly secure ourselves against the retaliation because if we tried any of that, they’d locate us and lay siege within the hour.”

Nimue turned away again, “I’ve seen it happen.”

*****

Avalon

There really was only one facility that Elan could be at, Merlin realized with equal parts dread and hope. Of all the research intelligences, why did it have to be her?

He and Nimue always seemed to be at odds with one another, at least whenever it was that they couldn’t manage to avoid the other. Merlin rather admired her abilities, if not her personality, but the pair of them just seemed like a bad mix.

Only her research station on the Northern Plateau was on the transit line he’d traced Elan’s passage along. At least her’s was the only one that fit the general profile he was working on. Damaged, out of contact, a rather high security rank, and several other factors narrowed it down to a list of one.

That one, however, was Nimue… and that might be an issue.

The other projection was brilliant, of course, there was no questioning that. Merlin certainly wouldn’t, but he wasn’t convinced that she would be of much benefit due to her propensity for arguing over minutia until it was long past time to act, even with imperfect information.

Unfortunately, helpful or not, he needed to see if she were active, and so Merlin reluctantly sent a simple ping communication through the system to the facility in question, and then he waited.

*****

Citadel

The Lady of the tower rarely made her way down to the lower levels. There was nothing for her on those levels that could not be ordered up to where she wanted them with more ease on her part than bothering to descend, but some things she would opt to visit anyway. Not, usually, because they couldn’t be brought up, of course, but mostly because she didn’t want certain things befouling her personal residence.

This was one such case.

A sad case, actually, as she descended below the ground floor and into the many extended levels that existed under the surface of the outer world.

Stepping through the heavily secured iron barred doorway, she sighed as she looked upon the reason for her visit.

“Hello sister.”

“Ser’Goth,” The Lady said darkly, looking at her bound counterpart, the burns from the iron chains having left horrible scars on the other’s flesh. “I see you’ve continued to attempt escape. You should know better than most that you cannot escape the punishment for failure.”

“It is what we do,” Ser’Goth smiled at her. “You would that know better than most, Ser’Lis, wouldn’t you?”

Lis sighed deeply, actually not enjoying seeing her counterpart in this state despite having ordered it herself for the other’s failure at The City. She took a seat across from the bound one and stared in silence for a long time.

“You failed, and there is nothing I can do about that,” She said. “But I do not enjoy seeing you in this anymore than you like being in it.”

“I somehow doubt that dear sister,” Goth said with a knowing grin that barely hid the pain in her eyes. “But it is good to have a visitor.”

Lis nodded slowly, “Things have been going to plan, despite the delays. I think you’ll be pleased to know that… but I need to know more about what happened in the City.”

“Why?” Goth asked, leaning in.

“Because I said so.”

*****

Northern Plateau Facility

Nimue twitched slightly as she received a single tone communication from Avalon, but otherwise ignored it as she focused on dealing with the child Merlin had sent so blindly in her direction.

“Ok,” Elan was saying. “So there is a way to stop this, but we don’t have the resources to do it the way it’s written down.”

“Precisely, therefore-.”

Elan waved a hand, cutting her off mid-word.

“So that means we need to figure out a new way to do it,” The girl said, as if it were that simple.

Nimue huffed, “Child, I do not believe that you have any idea just how complex a problem this is. Even just calculating the off-axis waveform is an immense task, and one that we simply do not have the computing cycles for.”

Elan nodded gravely, “I’ll take your word for it. So why do we have to do that?”

Nimue blinked, then shook her head, “Why do we have to do what?”

“Calculate the off-axis wave or whatever it was you said?” Elan asked. “Why do we need to do that?”

Nimue sighed, the whole conversation was beginning to wear on her.

What is it with this child?

“To properly build a counter-form to the wave, we need to calculate the original wave’s shape from the vector we intend to inject the counter from.” Nimue explained slowly, trying to stay as simple as possible. “Otherwise, we won’t be able to cancel it completely.”

“Don’t we have a record of the wave already? Why can’t we just, I don’t know? Flip it? reverse it?” Elan asked, looking puzzled.

“We have the scan of the wave as it was setup from the original injection point,” Nimue responded. “Which might be enough, but only if we were to inject our counter from the same location.”

Elan nodded slowly, “Alright. We’ll do that.”

Nimue stared blankly for a long beat of time.

“Child,” She finally said, her tone dry as the desert sands, “That will certainly be a location completely packed with upper-level demons and a vast army of lower-level filth.”

“I know,” Elan said, her tone firm. “But if that’s why we need to do, then that is what we’re going to do.”

“Absolutely not!” Nimue protested. “That is almost certain suicide!”

“Almost certain, yes,” Elan responded. “Which is better than the certain suicide of going without the information you’ve provided, and the certain suicide of doing nothing. Unless you have a better plan to offer, we’re going to start moving ahead with this one now.”

Nimue stared, baffled, as the slip of a girl got to her feet and left the compartment, heading in the direction of the transit room.

“Where are you going!?” Nimue called after her, confused deeply by the situation. It really wasn’t going the way she’d been thinking it would.

“Back to Avalon,” Elan called.

Nimue re-projected herself alongside the striding human, “And just how do you think you’re going to get there?”

“You are going to send me.”

“I already told you no.”

“You told me that you won’t send a child off to die,” Elan countered. “If you don’t send me back, then Caleb and Jol will be blundering around the target area, scouting out information that we no longer need from them. They’re about my age. Do you intend them to die?”

Nimue flinched back, processes going cold at that question, before she recovered and rallied.

“I have Merlin’s contact now, I can just send the information to him,” she said smartly.

“And condemn us all to die for doing nothing?” Elan asked tartly.

Nimue was honestly and truly losing her patience with this one.

Elan, however, wasn’t content to leave the projection to stew.

“We have the beginnings of a plan now, we can start getting ready,” Elan said. “I need to get back, to start rallying the people at Atlantis. In the meantime, you and Merlin start planning. If you come up with better before we have to move, that’s great. Otherwise, if the choice is certain death or almost certain death, I knew which option I’m taking.”

Once she made it to the transport platform, Elan turned and pinned the projection with a glare.

“Now,” She said. “Are you going to send me back… or am I going to start breaking equipment?”

*****

Chapter Twelve

Avalon

“What news do you have, Merlin?”

Simone was tired, or worn perhaps, as she walked through the isolated facility to where she knew the projection would be focusing his attentions.

“Precious little, I am afraid,” Merlin responded from where he was working on something. “I believe I know what happened to Elan. However, that does us very little good as I have not received any acknowledgement from the facility I believe she was transported to.”

“That is not good,” Simone said grimly. “I’ve been keeping quiet on her disappearance, and it should hold for a while longer, but she means more to the city here than she realizes.”

Merlin’s projection nodded, “I am aware. She’s touched a great many people in a very short time.”

Simone had to agree with that. She’d never have guessed at just what the little slip of a girl would wind up meaning to people when she was first introduced to her by Kaern. The girl had a way about her, a way of never allowing hope to die… not even when everyone else believed it had died long before she was even born.

“When word gets out, we’ll have trouble keeping up Morale,” she said. “Caleb is popular, maybe even more trusted, but Elan is a symbol.”

“I understand,” Merlin replied. “Though, at this point I must confess… it may not matter.”

Simone didn’t like to hear anything like that from the projection.

“What do you mean?”

“The readings that caused me to send Elan off in the first place?” He asked, getting a tip of the head from her. “They’re increased exponentially. At this point I’m quite certain that they will result in significant damage to the fabric of time and space, though I am uncertain if that is intentional or not. Either way, once the damage reaches a certain point… we’re looking at a cascade failure.”

Simone shook her head, “I don’t know what that means?”

“It means the end,” Merlin said simply. “There’s no reason to explain it any further. It just means the end. For all of us.”

Simone hissed, rubbing her face as she took that in and tried to process it.

“It’s that bad?”

“Yes, I…”

Merlin trailed off, eyes sharp as he looked to one side.

“What is it?” Simone leaned in.

“The transit mechanism… it just activated. We have an inbound traveller.” He said.

“The boy…?”

“No. They would have had to request a transit,” Merlin said as they both got moving.

Simone burst into the transit room a few seconds later, but Merlin had already beaten her there by simply vanishing from one room and appearing in the next. She ignored that, and him, however, for the person in the middle of the transit area.

“Elan! Thank the gods!” Simone blurted as she rushed over, hugging the girl despite her armor. “Are you well?”

“I’m fine,” Elan tried a smile as she awkwardly hugged the woman back. “But we have a problem.”

“Indeed, we do,” Merlin said, “Did Nimue have access to her scanners?”

“How did… no, never mind,” Elan shook her head.

“The answer,” A new voice reverberated around the room, causing Simone to pull back from Elan and nearly go for a weapon, “Is yes. Nimue most certainly did.”

Merlin turned to the projection, tipping his head slightly, “Welcome to Avalon, Mistress Nimue.”

“Thank you for the welcome, Master Merlin,” Nimue bowed her head only slightly less than Merlin had. “It seems that we have a problem, and your young… fool here… seems determined to involve herself in it.”

Merlin shrugged, “It is her world, and she is among the last who even are capable of fighting for it.”

Nimue did not look particularly happy, but she reluctantly nodded, “I see. The immediate problem, then.”

“Yes. The cascade failure…”

Nimue waved a hand, cutting Merlin off, “It is not a cascade failure. They’re intentionally creating a harmonic wave; it will penetrate dimensional barriers within three more days.”

Merlin nearly slapped himself, despite being only a projection.

“I am an old fool,” He muttered. “I never considered that, but that does explain everything. You are certain, though?”

Nimue nodded, “Quite.”

“This… changes things,” Merlin frowned. “We don’t have the equipment or resource-.”

This time it was Elan who cut him off.

“Already played this game,” she said as she walked across the transit floor. “We don’t have anything we need to deal with it the way the ancients would have. Well, that’s too bad, but it just means we deal with it our way.”

Merlin and Nimue exchanged glances, one resigned exasperation while the other more of a dread filled curiosity.

“Dare I ask?” Nimue looked at Merlin, who just shook his head.

“I’m going to,” Simone snorted. “What’s the plan, girl?”

“Are the others already gone?” Elan asked.

“Yes, I currently have contact with Caleb and Jol, as well as a pair of local allies that Jol apparently located,” Merlin said. “The Brothers are yet still out of contact, however.”

“Bring Caleb back,” Elan said. “I need him here. Jol and the others can come or stay, it doesn’t matter.”

She turned to Simone, “We’re going to need to speak with everyone.”

Simone nodded, “I’ll go spread the word.”

Merlin acceded as well, bowing his head slightly, “I will contact the boys.”

With Merlin distracted and Simone already leaving the compartment, that left Elan alone for the moment with the projection of Nimue.

“Well,” She said cheerfully, “Step one complete.”

“Yes, only a million more, much larger ones,” Nimue intoned dryly. “To go.”

“Shut up.”

*****

Citadel

Ser’Lis could feel that something was wrong.

It was a talent she’d cultivated from a much lesser ability over the centuries of enduring the change, and it was one that was very reliable, but it also tended to be extremely imprecise. That was what was leading her to some issues at the moment.

Her instincts were telling her that something wasn’t right, but everything she could see was saying the exact opposite.

The harmonic was tuning quite neatly and, while the ritual was an ongoing drain on resources at the moment, everything looked quite rightly positive. The Arch-Mage class demons she had powering the ritual were unlikely to survive it, but that wasn’t a problem to her mind… several of them were a little too… upwardly minded, so to speak, which was one of the qualities that got them on the detail they were currently assigned to.

Dead fools were far less of a hassle than living ones, after all, especially if you got to them before anyone knew who they were.

If the problem isn’t in the ritual, then it has to be from the outside.

She looked out over the balcony that ran along the outside of the Citadel, eyes falling on the ramshackle buildings and pseudo-buildings that surrounded the demon enclave. Most would consider it… odd… odd was a good word. Most would consider it to be quite odd that humans tended to cluster around demonic enclaves, even though it would mean that they were the bottom of the barrel, a subjected class.

With a huge world out there, she would have thought that a good number would have left for the wastes, to live as they could.

Possibly many had. Honestly, Ser’Lis didn’t know and didn’t care. A lot of humans were willing to deal with subjugation if it meant easier access to food, water, those sorts of things. The wastes across this planet were barely recovering now, decades after the strikes that put so much ash and dust into the air that the haze was still visible with every sunrise and sunset.

Ultimately, she supposed that it didn’t matter as much as many would think.

Whether they were around the Citadel, or living alone out in the wastes, once the harmonic sang… it was all over. Maybe the end came a little later for some than others, but the difference wouldn’t be much of a difference in the end.

Humans would die or be changed. Whichever happened was perfectly fine with her.

What concerned her was the same thing that brought her down to see her currently out of favor ‘sister’, Ser’Goth.

She’d needed to know what happened, not during the loss of the city… those events were well enough known at this point. Not many demons survived the sinking, but enough did to get the word out. No, what she needed was the information about the events that led to the sinking.

And, more importantly, whether they’re repeating themselves here…

The people out there, surrounding the citadel, were a threat now… a threat in potential, at least, however little she wanted to believe it possible.

Her mind tracked back to the recent reports, about the assassination of a mid-tier demon right in the faces of an entire squad.

She didn’t know what caused that one to be targeted, but it was a statement. There was no other way to read it. Someone had deliberately provoked reaction by assassinating one of her minions in front of a rather higher level one, who had influence.

That meant that there had to be a response. It wasn’t something that could be brushed aside as with some barely changed piece of filth who was stupid enough to get him, or her, self killed by a human. They’d all laugh at that, but no one was laughing at what actually happened.

So, she’d authorized a sweep to find the perpetrators and teach the local humans just what their place truly was.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t gone to plan either. Instead of two troublemakers, her teams seemed to have run into a group organized enough to slip the troublemakers out of the noose and then hide them. Unless they had, for some reason, opted to just run and leave the shanties entirely… that was a concerning outcome.

If the humans are moving on us, there’s only one option.

She pushed back from the rail and turned, making her way back into her offices and chambers.

“Viceroy.”

“Yes, My Lady.”

The Viceroy was a tall figure, his inhuman mutations having mostly been softened and vanished over the eons he’d spent since being brought into the hordes. Mostly they showed in his eyes now, leaving him almost handsome until you got close enough to really pick out details.

“Inform the guards that they’re all to gather at the base of the citadel,” She ordered.

“All, My Lady?”

“All. The humans have been a little… uppity lately,” she said with a slightly feral grin. “Normally, I’d call that good sport and leave them to it. If the guards can’t handle them, well then they deserve what they get.”

“Very true, My Lady. But now?”

“I’m not going to risk the distraction with the harmonic in place, we don’t want another delay like the last one,” she said. “Get all the guards together, and make sure they have torches. We’re going to burn the pests out.”

The Viceroy smiled, “An excellent decision, my Lady. It will be done.”

In the deepest reaches of the Citadel’s floors, well below the surface, a female voice began laughing.

*****

Skipray Fighter, Approaching the Citadel

The brothers exchanged glances as they took in the black line in the sky up ahead, and both could feel the foreboding energy that it practically exuded.

“Like as not,” Sindri said. “That will be the place all this trouble is centered around.”

“Aye,” Brokkr acknowledged. “I’ll not take that bet. I may be a sucker but even I have limits.”

“Not that I’ve seen,” Sindri chuckled. “But I suppose it’s possible.”

Brokke just grinned a little as he considered their approach.

“I’m thinking it would be a bad idea to fly this thing too close to their sight,” he said, looking around. It didn’t take too long before he found what he was looking for. “That river is going in the direction we want, what do you think?”

“It’ll be tricky flying, think you’re up to it?” Sindri asked, half joking but only by half.

“Watch me.”

Brokkr hadn’t flown in many years, that much was true, well aside from the couple jaunts he’d managed in the very machine they currently flew after liberating it from her Lady’s little trophy room.

Pity it was the only thing we could save there, her Ladyship had some excellent taste in her toys, he thought with some amusement while he reminded himself to take a jab at Jol sometime, simply by making the implication that he’d been one of her toys.

The red face the boy would likely manage, especially if he did it in front of Elan or some other comely wench, amused him to no end. With his thoughts thus distracted, Brokkr brought the skipray fighter about and dropped it from the sky, putting them down barely over the water itself as he aimed up the river delta.

It was no small river, with a raging swell where it was pushing against the waters of the gulf below, but once that smoothed out it had the benefit of being wide and fairly deep, with banks that looked to be continuing to rise up as it moved more inland.

“Do ye have the location of the Facility Merlin wanted to use?” Brokkr asked without looking away from his flying.

“Aye, it’s a decent ways inland, so stay low and I’ll tell you when to bring us out of this.”

“You’ve got it.”

*****

Chapter Thirteen

Atlantis

Caleb led the small group as they emerged from the sheltered entrance to the facility next to the city, climbing up the stone steps until they were again above the surface of the water and the city could come into sight.

Atlantis was built on an ancient geological curiosity, according to Merlin, that had created three concentric rings of land with small shallow channels linking them. The center of the circles held a decent sized bit of land, already filling up with gleaming white buildings as small boats of the local fishermen plied their way through the canals and out into the open shallow sea upon which the island rested.

Caleb could hear the somewhat stunned sounds of the pair they’d found near the demons’ citadel as they found themselves yet again stunned by what they’d seen, but he figured that if they had survived the experience of transporting to Avalon and then to here, they’d probably be alright.

He’d forgotten that the other two transits had been from one interior location to another that looked quite a bit like the first and hadn’t really felt like moving at all. This was the first time the pair had seen tangible evidence of what they were being told, and it was clearly shaking them.

Honestly, though, if he had thought of it… he probably wouldn’t have done anything different. He didn’t dislike the pair, but he did barely know them, and at the moment he was more concerned with someone else entirely.

“I’m going to find Elan,” he told Jol. “You keep an eye on them?”

Jol nodded, “Go on, lover boy. I’ll babysit.”

Caleb didn’t even seem to notice the ‘lover boy’ crack, though that might have been because he was already leaving before Jol started to speak. Jol just rolled his eyes at the retreating back of the other young man and turned to the pair he’d brought out of the shanties.

“Are you both ok?” He asked, just a little concerned given the pair seemed honestly shaken up.

“Only demons do magic like this,” Sie said, her tone trembling slightly though she tried to hide it as she glared at Jol.

He just shrugged, “They tell me that it’s not magic, but that it really doesn’t matter if it were for some reason? I don’t know, and I really don’t care much. They’re good people here, and that’s all that I care about. You hurt them; I’ll end you both. Fair?”

Tur fixed him with a long stare that Jol just matched and threw back. He’d been intimidated by better in his life, and by much, much worse. It would take more than a stare to shut him down.

After the brief stare down, though, Tur broke a smile and snorted with amusement. That got a chuckle out of Jol in turn, and within a few scant more seconds the pair were laughing uproariously while Sie looked on in honest bemusement and, mostly, fake irritation.

“Men.” She spat, rolling her eyes, before stalking past the pair and following in Caleb’s shoes.

At least that one seemed to have his priorities straight.

*****

In the city center of Atlantis, a group had already started to gather according to Elan’s request and Simone’s active pushing. It was a few dozen souls, but it was the few dozen that got most of the work done on the island city.

“So, what’s this about?” A gruff man, older but still in decent condition considering the years of fighting he’d done while living in the Demon City, asked.

“There is a problem,” Simone announced, looking around the gathered people.

More were trickling in, but she knew that the movers were there, and these were the ones they would have to convince. Others would fall into line, one way or the other, based on this group.

“There is always a problem,” Another voice called out, laughing. “Get to the details.”

Murmured agreement spread across the crowd.

“The demons are moving again,” Simone said sternly, glaring at the people who’d made light of it, knowing that would shut them up.

And it did.

The crowd was silent, and it was only the first speaker who reacted to start. He nodded slowly, seemingly unsurprised.

“Can’t say it’s not expected. How long before they come?”

Simone frowned, “We’re not sure. The island isn’t directly threatened this time.”

“Then it’s not our problem!”

“Here, here!”

Shouts of agreement rolled out, quickly drowning out any attempt by Simone to keep control.

“The Island wasn’t directly threatened a year ago, when I went to the City,” Elan stepped in, shutting the people up. “But if I hadn’t gone, everyone here would certainly be dead by now anyway. The demons are not threats that can be ignored just because they aren’t coming here.”

Many looked ashamed of her words, and silence fell hard over the group.

“So speak,” The first man said, nodding respectfully. “You’ve earned your say, and then some. Everyone here has.”

He looked around, hard, at the group as he said the last part, making more of them duck their heads in some shame at being called out.

“The demons…” Elan hesitated, considering what to say for a moment as the crowd listened expectantly. She took a deep breath, and the words just began to pour forth.

“The demons have won,” she said simply, causing the listeners to murmur softly, uncertainly, completely shocked at hearing those words from this girl, who’d fought all odds multiple times in the past, and beat them. “They won. They destroyed our culture, survived our weapons, and buried everything that makes humanity great in the sands of the wasteland… but they haven’t killed us yet. That is their mistake.”

She walked into the center of the crowd, getting their attention from all sides.

“They came here and treated our world like a home to move into, and humanity like the pests they had to clean out first. Now, they think they’ve finished cleaning us out, so it’s time to move into their nice new home.”

Elan looked around, making sure that everyone was listening to her.

“But they made a mistake. In their victory, and yes… it was a victory,” She conceded. “They have assumed that killing most of us is the same thing as killing all of us. That is a lethal error on their part.”

She lowered her voice as she spoke the last part, forcing the crowd to lean in to hear her statement.

“Now, they’re opening up the doors to bring in all the demons from home so they can fill this world up with their rotting carcasses!” She shouted, shocking them all back. “Because they think we’re too weak, too stupid, and too concerned with today and tomorrow to worry about next year, or five years from now. I say they’re wrong.”

The crowd hissed, worried and angry mutterings now replacing the laughing and irritated ones from earlier.

“What can we do, though?” Someone shouted. “They’re too powerful! There’s too many!”

Elan nodded, “Yes they are, and yes there are. We can’t win a war, humanity already proved that… not as long as we fight it on the demon’s rules, at least.”

“Do you have a plan?” The first man asked, his tone pensive.

Elan snorted, “Calling it a plan is… optimistic, but we have a plan of action, yes.”

She took a breath, “Right now, the demons are preparing to open the door to their home. That would not be in our best interests, but we don’t have the weapons or the people to fight them on even ground and win. What we do have, is a chance.”

She turned slowly, catching as many eyes as she could.

“One. Slim. Chance.”

Silence reigned as the crowd listened intently, unwilling to so much as blink or look anywhere but at the young girl they all knew had done incredible things in the past… all of them wondering if she could do it again.

Elan didn’t bother letting them find the words to ask, she moved on with the answer they all wanted from her without prodding.

“We can turn their action against them, if we can get the right people into the right place at just the right time,” she said. “But it will not be easy.”

“Life has never been easy, not for any of us Child. You saved us from the City,” The first speaker said. “I’ll follow you.”

“As will I!”

“And we!”

Elan swallowed, eyes shimmering as the people around her waded in and she felt them patting her shoulders and side.

“We’re all with you, Elan,” Simone said softly.

“You’re damn right we are,” Caleb’s voice sounded from the crowd, causing Elan to turn and grin as she recognized him.

“Caleb, did you have fun halfway around the world?” She asked.

“I should ask you the same question, but I don’t know yet where you ended up,” He countered.

“I’ll tell you later,” She promised. “For now, we all need to prepare.”

Caleb nodded, turning to the crowd as he tossed his support fully in. “Get your weapons, call up any who fight and tell them the same thing. Mankind does not die in the darkness without a fight! If you’re afraid of the dark… light a demon on fire and kill the rest by the flickering of the flames!”

*****

“Well,” Sie said dryly. “They’re certainly… enthusiastic.”

Tur grunted, though he had a grin on his face that spoke to his true thoughts on the situation.

“I have seen many try what she just did over the years,” He said slowly. “Almost all failed. People are scared, unwilling to risk what they have just to bring the fight to the demons. They believe it is a fight that has already been lost.”

“It has.” Jol said with a shrug, “she said it herself. They won. But they made one mistake in their victory.”

Sie snorted, “And what mistake was that?”

Jol just smiled at her, “They didn’t finish the job.”

He looked to the crowd who were still gathering, talking excitedly about what was to come.

“They left people like that alive,” Jol said. “And people like her… and me… and both of you.”

Tur nodded slowly, “Yes… that is what I couldn’t put into words before. They did not finish the job. Arrogant, to leave your back open to an enemy who still has even a single breath in him.”

“If he only has one breath, he probably dies even if he tries something,” Sie said sourly.

“True,” Jol said. “And maybe that’s what happens… but if you’re on the ground and only have one breath left when your enemy turns his back, what do you do?”

Sie didn’t answer, she didn’t have to.

The firm thumb of the butt of her spear digging into the turf around them was more than enough and conveyed far more than words ever could.

“Exactly,” Jol said. “Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

*****

Elan looked up as Jol led a pair of people she didn’t know over to where she was talking quickly with a couple of the city dwellers and Simone. She smiled a greeting, “Jol, glad you made it back. I need to know what you saw out there.”

Jol nodded but gestured to his companions. “I think this pair can tell you more than I could. This is Sie, and the big guy here is Tur. Found them in the middle of an ambush. Someone in the demon’s citadel there wanted them dead bad enough to send at least three squads for their heads.”

Elan looked the pair over, nodding slowly.

“Good enough,” She said. “Are you willing to help?”

The pair barely hesitated, only a sliver of a moment of silent communication between them was needed before they nodded together.

“We are in,” Tur said firmly. “If you want to kill demons, my axe is in your service.”

“Killing demons isn’t the goal,” Elan shook her head. “It’s just a bonus.”

Sie frowned, “What else could be so important?”

“Stopping them from opening the doorway to hell and inviting everyone over,” Elan said, gesturing to a sketch she’d made on the ground with her staff. “This circle, it’s our world. We’re located roughly here…”

She poked a divot in the ground, roughly at the center of the circle before following it up with another over near the edge of it.

“The world is a ball, in case you didn’t know, or didn’t care,” She said. “The… what did you call it? Demon’s Citadel? It lies roughly a third of the way around the world at the lower end of this land here. The demons in the Citadel and the City tried to setup the gateway to hell a year ago, at three points… the Citadel, the City, and not far from where we stand right this moment.”

As she spoke, she continued to point out positions on the circle drawn in the dirt, looking around after to make sure everyone was still following.

“We stopped them,” Elan said, looking around slowly. “Caleb right here, with the Atlantean people, took the fight to them and destroyed the demon horde before they could finish. Jol and I, along with the fighters in the City, brought the entire city down until it fell below the waves. With two of the three points stopped before they could even get started, we thought we’d beaten them… but all we did was slow them down.”

“Ach,” Tur spat. “The Lady in the Citadel, she is a stubborn one. She will not give up her task easily, as we can easily see.”

Elan nodded, “Yeah. Unfortunately, from what we’ve been able to learn, if we can’t force her to give it up, there’s no future for any of us.”

That sank in for a moment, the gathered people somber and silent as they pondered it.

Finally, though, it was Sie who broke the silence.

“Do you have a plan?”

Elan smiled crookedly, “Calling it a plan is a bit much. As I said before, we have a plan of action that we’re refining. The problem is that we don’t have time to wait for it to be a perfect plan, or even a good one. We have information now, and we need to act on it now… with the best information we have for the moment. If we get better information later, well let’s hope it’s in time to make a difference. Any other questions?”

“Too many, but I suspect that you don’t have the answers,” Sie said with a resigned weariness. “This too, I am used to.”

“Too much so,” Tur confirmed.

“Isn’t that the truth?” Sie asked rhetorically, before shaking herself, “Alright. You have my spear. What the hell, we’re all dead anyway… sooner or later.”

“Thank you,” Elan said sincerely. “We’re gathering forces as quickly as we can and will be sending as many people as possible to the facility near the Citadel. Jol, did you hear from the brothers before you came back?”

Jol shook his head, “Not a peep. They’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

Elan snorted, “I’m not worried about them, more worried about what kind of a mess they’ll make unsupervised.”

Jol grinned, “There’s truth there. Well, as long as they’re making it for the demons, right?”

“Right.”

*****

North of the Citadel

“Well, this is a fine mess you’ve gotten us into,” Sindri complained as he ducked behind cover and tried very hard not to be noticed.

“Don’t you blame this on me, your hairy ass is the one who decided it would be a good idea to land and get our bearings!”

The two brothers were crouched down behind an old adobe hut that had seen better days, most of which were probably from before it had been built, trying their darndest not to attract any attention as smoke rolled over them amidst the sounds of burning, screaming, and the general clash of arms.

“Well, how was I supposed to know that the whole bedamned place was going to lose it’s collective mind?” Sindri asked, back planted cleanly against a mound of dirt as he twisted enough to look over it and into the hellish scene beyond them.

The brothers had no idea what had set it off, but they were looking at what simply had to be a cleansing action by the demons in the tower just down aways. They’d not seen the likes of it in centuries, not since the early days after the humans lost the war, in fact, back when there were still uppity humans who liked to try and fight back.

In the City, there’d not been anything like it for a long time before Elan came and upended the entire place, both figuratively and literally, and from the looks of the locals here, Sindri expected that the same was largely true in these parts as well.

“Something set off the local lord,” He spat.

“Well, no shit,” Brokkr countered. “What do we do about it?”

“Do? What the hell can we do?” Sindri asked, exasperated. “They’ve got an army of demons across every circle from what I’m seeing. It’s already over.”

Brokkr growled.

He and his brother were not human, or not exactly at least.

There really wasn’t a name for their race in the human language, and in their own well… they were just humans... or people, that might be a better translation to be honest. Compared to humans, the local variety at least, their people were essentially immortal. They’d walked the lands for so long that even they no longer truly had any memory, personal or cultural, of their origins.

That said, one thing that he, his brother, and every other of their type they had ever encountered all agreed upon was that the demons were a blight on the universe.

It gnawed at him to give them a pass, even if there seemed to be no other options.

“We’ll have to get the facility,” Sindri called. “Warn Merlin and the others of what’s going on here. Maybe they can make something of it.”

“Brother, there are people here who cannot protect themselves, children! They’ll die if we leave.”

“They’ll die if we stay,” Sindri snapped back. “We’re only two, and against that horde… it is not suicide, brother, it is insanity.”

Brokkr nodded, knowing it was likely true, but something was making him hesitate all the same.

He didn’t know what it was, or how to explain it, until his mouth began to work almost of its own accord and the words spilled forth.

“She would have found a way.”

Sindri snapped his head over to look at his brother, more confused than anything.

“What?”

“Elan,” Brokkr said. “Elan would have found a way, a way to save… some at least.”

Sindri stared at his brother for a long stretch, uncertain quite how to react to that statement. The girl would certainly have tried, Sindri agreed with him on that. Her actions at the City were proof that she literally did not know when to give up, even when the odds were so stacked against her that the situation was ludicrous… but he was far less certain that she would have found anything in this mess that might be considered a way.

He slumped back, though, tired and weary and just sick to the soul of the massacre he was looking at.

“There are weapons on the skipfighter,” Brokkr offered suggestively.

“If we fly that thing into this fight, we’ll be swatted out of the sky by their magic after the first pass,” Sindri shook his head. “And we’d only get that first pass if they’re too damn stunned that any of those relics are still flying to remember how to kill them right off.”

“Point,” Brokkr grimaced.

The technology of the ancient humans here was impressive, of that there was no question at all, but the demons had long ago figured out how to destroy it in battle. The best the human forces had ever truly managed was to turn a fight into a conflagration of mutual annihilation… a tactic that favored the demons, since those beasts literally had no care whether their number lived or died.

“What about the Facility?” Sindri asked abruptly.

Brokkr frowned, “What about it? We can’t lead the demons there, not now of all times. We’d doom everyone if the demons captured it.”

“I know, I was just…” Sindri shook his head. “You’re right. We can’t retreat there with anyone, and we can’t fight…”

Brokkr swore, hammering the ground with his fists.

“There must be something!”

“All I can think is to either leave or try to distract some of the horde to allow the locals to flee,” Sindri admitted tiredly. “Anything else is just insanity at best.”

Brokkr nodded slowly, considering it. “I have an idea.”

“A good idea?”

The short man snorted, “Is there such a thing in this mess?”

Sindri shrugged, acknowledging the point.

“I need you to get to the facility as quickly as you can,” Brokkr said, turning over and getting up to one knee as he surveyed the field. “Get in touch the with the others, tell them what’s happening.”

Sindri glared, “I haven’t even heard your side of this plan yet, and I already hate it.”

“I’ll be fine,” Brokke rose up to his feet, drawing his blade. “Just go.”

“Brother, what are yo-!?”

Brokkr didn’t look back as he broke into a run, his voice along echoing over his shoulder.

“Just GO!”

*****

Chapter Fourteen

Northern Facility

Nimue was not happy with the situation at all, but as she’d been reminded already by the old fool, what was there to be happy about?

There was truth in that, she supposed. The situation just didn’t have any real things to make anyone involved happy. The demons had the upper hand, the planet was effectively lost, and the only resistance was a bunch of fallen primates whose ancestors used to be impressive.

In that view of things, she supposed that taking action… any action… was preferable to the certain death that awaited complacency.

Unfortunately, however, since she had signed on to this madness…

What was I thinking?

Since she had, unfortunately, signed on to this madness, Nimue was not one to just go through the motions. Since she’d agreed to help, then help she would, by all that was good in the infinite universe.

But how?

With her sensors now fully back online, if somewhat blocked by the literal mountain of ice sitting on top of the facility, she had more intelligence to work with at least. That brought her to analyzing precisely what the demons were doing, and the more she learned the less she liked.

Breaching a dimensional barrier was not an unknown thing to the ancients, though it was generally more of a conceptual thing than anything that had been engaged in hard experimentation.

She could be reasonably certain that the demons were not doing things in the way that the human culture would have, but the effect seemed similar, if not identical. That gave her a starting point to work from in her analysis.

Generating a reverse wave harmonic, one capable of nullifying the primary wave, wouldn’t be terribly difficult in principle. However, she wasn’t certain yet how they would induce it. A dimensional vibration wasn’t something you could just change by yelling at it. The harmonics would be well outside the range of human senses… well outside the range of practically any living senses, just by the nature of things.

So how are the demons doing it?

Magic was the likely answer, but that was honestly just a place holder term to her thinking, something to describe a method that was currently unknown or misunderstood. She did have files on the subject, however, as it was not entirely unknown to humans even before the invasion.

Ultimately, however, most of those files tended to boil down to a sentient’s ability to alter the universe by altering their perception of the universe.

Which, of course, made no damned sense at all.

It was like putting effect before cause, and yet somehow it seemed to actually work… and, Nimue had to admit that she was aware of some esoteric mathematical proofs that under certain circumstances effect could, in fact, precede cause.

Then perhaps we can use magic as well… but without trained people, it might be impossible…

Frustrated, Nimue delved into the few treatises on magic from before the invasion, as well as the intelligence summaries compiled during the early days of fighting.

There had to be something in there she could use.

*****

Avalon

“Back so soon?”

Elan nodded as she headed for the library. “The others can finish the preparations, I need to… read.”

Merlin raised a single projected eyebrow but didn’t object as he followed her into the archives.

Once there, he watched for a time as she searched the catalog, pulling out books and data files and even a few very old scrolls written on organic material he honestly didn’t want to think too much about. Only after nearly an hour did he speak up.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” He asked.

“Magic,” She said. “I’m looking for magic.”

“Magic is, I’m told, in the eye of the beholder,” Merlin responded with a softly chuckle.

Elan didn’t seem to get the humor as she continued to read, causing him to sigh.

“Magic is a large field of study, child,” He said. “You might need to narrow it down… considerably.”

“I want to understand,” Elan said, looking up, “I want to know what they’re doing, how they’re doing it.”

“Ah…”

Merlin nodded pensively. He wasn’t surprised, of course. Elan was an incredibly curious girl, and one whose intelligence matched, or even exceeded, her curiosity. It was a potent combination, but he was familiar with the ways in which it could lead one astray as well. Left to themselves, people like Elan could easily fall into a never-ending loop of trying to satisfy their curiosity only to discover more questions than answers.

“Difficult,” he said aloud. “We have limited understanding of the limits of the Demons’ magical capabilities, and of their processes. I do not believe you’ll find what you seek here.”

That was the sad truth too, as much as he might wish otherwise. If what she was looking for were in his archives, her ancestors would have found and used it. It was sheer folly to think that a single untrained and uneducated girl, no matter how curious or how intelligent, would be able to find something that generations of far more educated people had failed to.

“I know,” Elan said, surprising him.

That actually set him back slightly, confusing the entity, which was something that happened rather rarely… at least in this way. He was often confused by humans, of course, but normally it was more by being bewildered by their lack of understanding or capacity to intentionally misunderstand a situation.

This, however? This was different, or he thought it was.

“I’m sorry,” He said, cocking his head to one side. “I don’t understand, if you don’t expect to find what you’re looking for… why are you looking?”

Elan was silent for a moment, before she closed the book she had been reading through and looked evenly back at him. Merlin actually felt a little self conscious suddenly, like he was a small animal caught in the gaze of a much larger predator. It was… a very odd sensation.

Instead of answering him, however, Elan pushed a different book from the one she was reading in his direction. Merlin barely needed to glance at it to recognize the one she was pushing, the one he could not read.

“Tell me about this.”

That wasn’t a request, He thought with a hint of pride. She had become so very much more than the little girl he’d deigned to help despite being clearly on a suicide bent.

“There is little to tell,” He responded, noting a darkening in her features as he did. “I cannot read it, nor could anyone in my records…”

“Until me.”

“Until you, yes.” Merlin nodded.

“And the others?”

Ah, that’s what set this off. Of course, Nimue would have one of the others.

“The book is part of a collection of similar pieces,” He admitted. “They were found by your ancestors, a long time ago. For a great deal of their history, the books were believed to be written by their own ancestors but encoded somehow. The text within is clearly a language, I can tell that even without understanding…”

“How?” She cut him off. “If you can’t understand it, how did you know it wasn’t just… gibberish?”

“Patterns, syntax, those sorts of things. If it were just fraudulent gibberish, the patterns within would appear in different ways. No, it’s clearly a language. The images were another problem, depiction of plants that… as best anyone could tell, simply didn’t exist anywhere on the planet, rituals for varying purposes, all things with meaning yet none of them decipherable.”

Elan nodded slowly, “I think they’re more important than anyone every figured out.”

Merlin shrugged slightly, “I decided that the moment you were able to read this one. If the language is one that can be secured from the eyes of all but certain readers, then the books are far more than mere historical curiosities.”

“Ein Taki Amin Kine,” she said softly, tapping the cover of the book gently. “The Protectors Path… or… The Way of the Protector? I’m not sure how it translates exactly, but when I read the words…”

She paused, staring at the book, then thumped her chest twice.

“I know them, here…” She said before shaking her head. “In my heart, not in my head.”

“I see…”

Instinctual understanding, it’s definitely magic. I wish we’d been able to learn more about it before the invasion… this is remarkable.

“What does the book say, fully?”

“It’s an instruction book,” Elan said. “For fighting. I… I didn’t know it before, but just reading it, it’s like I trained in the style within for… years?”

Her almost helpless uncertainty in that last question caused nearly physical pain to the meta-physical being as he considered the statement itself. The fact that a book could delve into the readers psyche and… rewrite parts of their mind, even in the form of teaching and training, well that was a disturbing thing to hear.

If it could do that, then it could certainly do more.

Has it already?

He didn’t think it had changed her; Merlin had been watching Elan since he met her. Certainly, she had changed, but she had also lived a hard life and pushed beyond the limits that any man or woman could survive without change.

There had been no changes that did not fit what he knew of her personality and the experiences he knew her to have endured.

Still… I will have to watch closer.

“That is more impressive than I expected,” he said aloud. “What did you find in the one held by Nimue?”

“I wasn’t sure at first,” Elan admitted. “It wasn’t like this one. I could read The Path, understand it almost instinctively. Her book is different… it took time. Several tries that I only even attempted because I’m stubborn…”

Merlin chortled softly. Calling her stubborn was perhaps the understatement of his experience, and he had a lot of experience.

“What changed?” He asked.

“The words just started to make sense,” Elan answered. “I can’t really say beyond that. It wasn’t anything obvious. I’d just… suddenly realize what a word meant, even if it made little sense without knowing the rest. It was enough to keep me trying.”

That set off alarm bells for the entity, but he nodded casually as he could.

The book kept her interested, feeding her little pieces so she wouldn’t give up. Programmed? Or Intelligent?

Intelligence in objects was not something unknown to him… Merlin himself knew that he could be argued to be such a thing, after all. However, most of the examples he knew of came from trapped items seeded by the demons in the days prior to the invasion, before they knew what they were dealing with.

The horrors those damned things unleashed on the world were the stuff of night terrors, and even he did not like anything that reminded him of those times.

“I… think perhaps you should stop reading these books,” he said softly. “The demons used things like this against us, before the war…”

“No.”

“Elan, this is serious…”

“This wasn’t from the demons,” Elan said. “Do you remember when I told you about my dream? Before the City?”

Merlin reluctantly nodded. He did, of course, remember. Her description had worried him, but what she had described was not demonic. Circles spinning within circles, impossible angles, other things that told him of a more… thoughtful and progressive mind behind the design.

Demons were organic in horrifying ways, chaotic and destructive. The sort of esoteric, almost metaphysical machine design she had described was, in many ways, antithetical to everything he knew about the demons.

“I think they were sent to me,” she went on. “By… what is the opposite of demons?”

Merlin shrugged, “Gods, perhaps?”

“No…” She said softly, uncertainly, clearly thinking about it very deeply. “Not Gods… but maybe their servants? They were running from the demons, like they had fought and lost here and…”

She sighed, shaking her head, “I don’t know. Something. It’s important, but I can’t remember it properly.”

“Dreams are like that.”

“We don’t have time for me not to remember.”

*****

Shanties below the Citadel

I have done stupider things, I know I have, Brokkr thought as he drove his blade through a demon before kicking it back so he could pull the iron from its gut, I just, for my ever-lasting soul, can’t remember what they might be.

“If ye value yer lives, run!” He snapped to the shell-shocked survivors he was helping. “Go North!”

They stared at him for a long moment longer than he considered acceptable.

“That way!” He yelled, pointing and stomping his feet in their direction, sending them skittering away to the North on command, finally.

I hope there are a few with a spine in this bunch, or this whole heroic rescue thing will be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done after all.

The demons were in a straight slaughter everything mode, roaring and laughing and sometimes both at once as they massacred their way through the mess of the battlefield. Targets didn’t seem to matter to them either. They were just killing everything they came across, driving people out of their homes ahead of the horde like debris in the tidal force of the sea after a ground quake.

Saving everyone wasn’t possible and, sadly, Brokkr doubted that he could even save the good ones. Those were probably dying first, trying to buy time for everyone else to escape. It didn’t matter, though, he’d do what he could.

He could feel the surge of adrenal response fueling his own rage to counter that of the demons, but it was tempered by a deep sense of satisfaction that he’d not felt in… a long time.

We’ve been beaten down, like the humans, for too damn long. Surviving instead of living. I forget how different it felt.

His blade was black with blood and ichor as he swung it in wild strokes, not bothering with style or skill but rather just cutting down the demons like grains to the scythe. They were in full blood rage, as best he could tell, and he doubted any of the ones he’d seen thus far were even capable of thinking, let alone employing any sort of skill-based combat.

That suited him just fine.

His sword was iron, hardened by his own talents into something beyond which the elemental material should be capable, and it had been a long time since it had drawn blood.

It wasn’t the special metals that he’d used for the weapon he gave Elan or Caleb, nor even those of Jol’s hammer, but it was more than good enough for this fight.

He just hoped that Sindri made it out in time to alert the others, because he didn’t think that this slaughter would be of any good to the plans currently being made back on the island.

*****

Sindri panted, unused to running as hard as he had been, as he bounced off the wall of the facility and headed deep inside.

“Merlin!” He gasped out. “Merlin, are you listening?”

The projection took a moment to appear, but when it did Sindri nearly collapsed in relief.

“What is it?” The intelligence asked, concern growing as he took in Sindri’s shape. “Are you well?”

“Just… beat,” Sindri said, waving off the concern. “The demons from the tower, they’ve begun a cleansing campaign. They’re killing everyone.”

Merlin stared for a moment, then grimaced, “Damn it. That will prevent infiltration through the area to get to the tower…”

The projection paused, then looked around slowly, “Where is your brother?”

“Don’t know. He went to try and save as many as he could,” Sindri said. “Stupid fool. They’ll be fleeing the demons, and North is really the only direction they can go.”

“Right past the facility…” Merlin nodded. “I think… I think we can work with this. I will alert the others.”

“Good. I’m… just going to… collapse a bit,” Sindri said as he promptly did just that. “Then I’ll go find Brokkr.”

“Wait on that, as long as you dare,” Merlin asked. “I’ll send people to help.”

“Thank you.”

*****

Northern Facility

Nimue looked up sharply as an alert fed through her newly active communications circuits, and she opened the channel with a thought.

“What is it?” She asked.

“Trouble at the target,” Merlin’s voice came back. “We’re going to be sending forces now.”

“What? No! I am not ready!”

“Ready or not, the demons have chosen the time and place. Become ready.”

Nimue wanted to curse the old fool as the connection closed, but she knew that he was right. The enemy did not attack on your schedule, it was a fundamental rule of warfare. You could expect them when they were prepared, and when you were not.

Angrily she closed out most of her research, consigning it to the useless pile, while she turned her focus to the most promising things she had found.

A researcher had theorized that, with the correct quantum vibration, it would be possible to open wormholes through space and time. That was close to what she believed was happening at the demon’s citadel, but not a perfect match, unfortunately.

A wormhole in the manner described would be able to, in theory, connect to any point in either space or time… with some caveats that she didn’t need to concern herself with at the moment. What the demons were attempting, however, appeared to connect to a point outside of space and time.

Another universe.

That was a whole level of calculations beyond anything she had in her archives, and that fact terrified her deeply.

She was not a warrior, she knew this. She was a scholar, and proud of that fact. Finding things like this both excited and terrified her, because while she did not know enough to truly understand the mechanism… Nimue knew more than enough to recognize the extreme threat it offered.

We must stop them.

*****

Chapter Fifteen

Citadel

Lis stood at the top of the great tower and watched the flames and smoke as they moved through the human dwellings below.

She had often been surprised by just what humans were willing to endure in exchange for the few scraps thrown their way, and the ‘permission’ to use the local lands to suit their needs. Never mind that most of what they grew and maintained would be stolen, or that a certain number of the population would die or become the playthings of the demons that lived about the tower themselves.

Survival in the wastes was not an easy thing, even by comparison, and humanity loved its comfort and convenience over anything and everything else.

It was amazing on some levels, but she supposed that they were not so different from demons in that regard. It was easy for her, at the top of the tower, to look down on them all for what they allowed others to do to them, but she still remembered the things she had endured as she climbed the ranks and graduated through the Circles.

That was the difference, though.

She had a goal, an endgame that would make the violence and abuse and the less savory ‘favors’ she had been forced to give out all worth while.

She wanted to be on top. The one who made the decisions, who extracted favors from others, and that was exactly where she wound up.

The humans? They had no goal other than to live for another paltry night, or year, or decade, or whatever. What did it matter if they died now, or in ten years, or even in a century? She had lived longer than she could remember, hundreds or thousands of years had passed, and more than that would pass again if she were not killed in the meantime.

For her to die now, she would lose a potential eternity.

What was a few scant years by comparison?

Humans were insects in the universal sense of the word, barely even existing at all.

I wonder what they expected would happen? She thought as she looked over the fires and smoke billowing up from them. She was too high over the scene to hear the fighting or the screaming, but it warmed her inside just to know that it was there. Did they believe they would be the exception? Or did they know this day would come, and just figured that they would live as easy as they could until it did?

She could actually respect someone who thought the second, at least. Still an insect, but not a stupid one at least. Understanding the risks and taking a calculated gamble was something Lis believed to be worthy of respect.

Those fools who somehow seemed to believe that despite everything happening to others, that somehow they would be fine… well, she had no respect at all for them.

“My Lady.”

Lis turned, eyes on her Viceroy as he approached. “Yes? What is it, Serg?”

Serg’in, the Viceroy and observer to the action on this earth, bowed slightly before he spoke.

“Reports from the city below,” He said. “It seems that a small pocket of humans have rallied and begun to offer a… not unreasonable defense.”

Lis shrugged, “It was a possible outcome. Watch those who fight this group, promoting the survivors will be worthy of some effort, I suppose.”

“Indeed,” Serg said slowly, his expression pensive.

“Out with it, Serg,” She commanded. “I can tell that something is bothering you.”

“Merely that the unexpected defense has led to many of the humans escaping that sector,” He said, “and the influence of it has begun to spread.”

That was a little bit more concerning, she was willing to admit.

“I see, well,” Lis said after a few seconds thought. “Spread the word that there will be promotions for the victors, but there will be… demotions as well, for those who allow the humans to slip away.”

“Yes, My Lady.” Serg smiled. “I believe that should properly motivate our forces.

Lis nodded absently, turning back to look over the fires.

It should, she thought.

There was really only one ‘demotion’ in her forces, ultimately. If you were such a fool that you were deemed unfit for your current duties, she certainly wasn’t going to entrust you with any others… not even less value ones. There were always more up and coming demons looking to fill the ranks of power, she had no need of leaving unhappy angry ones alive to plan revenge.

*****

Shanties outside the Citadel

Brokkr hit the ground in a slide as a demon lunged at him, allowing the demon’s diving attack to take it right over top of him as he hacked with his blade right down its center.

A spatter of black blood and ichor sprayed him despite Brokkr’s attempt to evade it, leaving the ground contaminated as the demon roiled and writhed in pain as it slowly died.

With a little more time, even just seconds more, Brokkr would have finished it. Not out of mercy, though there was some of that as well, but more out of a worry that the demon might survive and heal faster than expected, and he didn’t want such a thing at his back.

Here and now, however, he didn’t have even those few seconds, so Brokkr got a knee under himself before he even stopped skidding along the ground and pushed himself back upright to his feet. He went from skidding along the ground to running again in a single move, even as the wailing death cry of the demon at his back filled the air.

There were more defenders in the area, and he quickly steered in their direction as he watched a few holding off a small squad of low to mid-tier demons.

It was easy to tell, because demonic evolution followed a distinct progression, a progression that those like himself and his brother were long lived enough to see and recognize.

Initially, someone being brought over to the hellish side of things changed little but gained little from the process. Instead, they were wracked with physical pain, weakened by that and the mental stresses of the process, until they were mostly driven insane.

As time went on, the changes became more visible and random, like a forced evolutionary process that, more often than not, tended to go badly. However, those that survived gained strength and physical prowess that varied wildly, as well as an aptitude for the infernal magics.

The more powerful they gained, however, the more their original forms began to reappear. The most powerful of demons were those who looked nearly human, in fact, and the legends said that the most powerful of them all was rather beautiful by any account.

That predictable process gave clear physical markers, though, which was what Brokkr considered important at the moment, markers that told him the powers and strength he could expect from the opposition on the field right then.

He joined the line with other defenders, protecting a retreat of a huddled mass of men, women, and children who clearly weren’t in much shape to fight, and called over his shoulder.

“Go North!” He said over the clash of iron and bodily weapons, “There will be help coming!”

That was all the focus he had for the refugees, however, as he put his blade into the fight and found himself facing off against a misshapen mess of a figure with teeth larger than its own head it seemed, and claws that were wickedly curved, sharp, and strong enough to pulverise through the stone that littered the battlefield now that the homes nearby had been destroyed.

Brokkr ducked under a swing, stepping in close as he hacked his blade into the beast’s mid section, and then stepped past the dying creature as blackened blood bubbled from its gut and the hissing burns of the iron induced reaction sent it tumbling to the ground behind him.

“We cannot hold them,” he said to the closest defenders. “Watch for when the refugees escape, then be ready to break contact!”

That only got him a couple grim nods, no one replied. He wasn’t surprised, of course. None of the defenders had even a moment to spare for anything other than killing, not anymore than he did.

So, they took on the demon horde, shoulder to shoulder, pressed hard as they held the street they fought in like a dyke holding back the floodwaters. It would certainly fail, as would they, if pressed too long… but, with luck, they might just hold long enough.

Brokkr gritted his teeth as he blocked another attack.

We will hold.

*****

Avalon

Elan checked her gear, hating the fact that she didn’t have more time to research what was happening, but knowing that was a luxury she simply did not have. Her armor and sidearm were both still in perfect condition, of course, with full charges to both. The collapsible staff gifted to her by the brothers was pinned to the opposite hip from the sidearm, and she slung water and medicine in a pack over her shoulder as she took a breath and headed for the transit platform.

“What’s the situation?” She asked Merlin as she walked in.

“Caleb and the others are gathering,” The projection said. “They will leave from the Atlantis facility as soon as practicable. Nimue is researching still, while Sindri is waiting for help. We have had no further contact with his brother, however, and the status of the attacks around the citadel are unknown.”

She nodded. It was no more than she’d come to expect in all honesty.

“Send me.”

“Transiting now.”

The world briefly shivered, and then Elan was gone.

*****

Facility North of the Citadel

Elan appeared in a room almost entirely identical to the one she had left, with the exception of the short man standing at the far end, looking in her direction.

“Lass, are ye alone?” Sindri asked, concerned.

“Yes, I was in Avalon when Merlin reported,” She said as she walked forward. “Caleb and the others are gathered at the Atlantis facility, but it takes longer to get that many people together and organized.”

“Aye, I understand.” Sindri grimaced. “I canna wait any longer.”

“I know,” Elan said, recognizing the stress that was causing his speech to revert to some accent she almost recognized, but couldn’t quite place at the moment. “Let’s go.”

Sindri looked surprised, “Really?”

“Caleb can lead the others,” Elan said confidently. “Right now, let’s get information that we can use properly when they arrive.”

He nodded slowly, “Right. Right you are, lass. This way.”

Elan followed him up and out of the facility.

*****

Wastelands

The area was hot and dusty, almost like home, Elan decided as she emerged from the shade of the facility. A lot of sand, dust, rock, and very little in the way of water or plants were visible. She took a few seconds to look around, but aside from some mountains off to the West, few features of note existed at all except for the citadel to the South.

Another demon tower.

At least this was just one tower, she supposed, unlike the Demon City had been. That didn’t mean it would be easy, however, Elan was certain. If the demons were focused there, then they would have a reason. Even just with the number advantage, and the impressive bodily weapons that demons all seemed to gain, the fight that was ahead of them would not be a nice one.

“Let’s move,” She said aloud, nodding to the South. “I assume we’re going to the tower?”

“You’ve the right of things there,” Sindri nodded as he clenched his fist around the handle of his personal weapon, a small Warhammer not too unlike the one favored by Jol. “Brokkr elected to take up the defense, to give people time, but I don’t know how long he can hold.”

Elan nodded, “Let’s go get them.”

“Should we retrieve the Skipray?” Sindri asked.

“No,” Elan shook her head. “The demons know how to destroy those, from what Merlin tells me. We might get a bit of a surprise from it, but it would turn ugly on us very quickly.”

Sindri sighed, “Agreed.”

The pair set out, heading south across the wastes, keeping the tower and the plumes of smoke in their sight as they walked. Neither hurried, though both wanted to, but they pushed their walking speed as fast as they could without wearing themselves out.

Given that Elan was in power augmenting armor and Sindri wasn’t exactly human, though Elan was still a little foggy on what his people were, that was actually a very fast walk indeed.

It didn’t take long before they ran into the ragged first wave of people fleeing the tower, heaving in their direction.

“Friends!” Elan called, taking the lead. “We mean no violence.”

There was relief in the eyes of the refugees, but it was mostly clouded by fear and exhaustion.

“Why are you coming this direction?” She asked, looking back. “The wastelands are not safe.”

“Safe!” An older man snorted. “Where in all of the world is safe now? The demons, they have hunted us all my life, but now they just slaughter everyone. There is no safety!”

“Then arm yourselves!” Sindri snarled. “Fight back!”

The crowd shifted, some looking guilty, most just scared.

“We tried. I’m too old, they’re too young,” The man sighed, waving in the direction of children, half Elan’s age at most. “And we’re all too weak.”

Elan shook her head but didn’t have time to try and do anything with this bunch. She waved behind her, “Follow our trails. You’ll come to a cave. Wait there, help will be coming. Is anyone here injured?”

“Our injured couldn’t run fast enough.”

Elan set her face and said nothing more as she started walking through the group, continuing South.

“Wait! You can’t go there! You’ll be killed,” The old man shouted.

“Better to die on my feet, than live on my belly. Tell the people who are coming behind me that Elanthielle is taking the fight to the demons. They will know what to do.”

With those words she just started walking, ignoring the cries of concern that followed her, few though they were. Most were too scared to do anything else, too caught up in their own pain to worry about anyone else’s.

Not… all of them were like that, however.

She and Sindri had only gone a short distance before running feet were rushing up behind them, causing both to unconsciously reach for their weapons as they turned to see a small scraggly group of young and old people catching up to them.

“You should go with the main group,” Elan said honestly. “You’re not ready for what is coming.”

The leader of the group shook his head, “No. You were right. If they want to kill us, it’s better to die here, fighting, then starve or whither to dust in the wastes.”

“That won’t happen,” Elan said. “People are coming, and they’re bringing food and water, and a way to get people out. There is hope, I promise.”

“Then it’s all the more important we fight, save as many as we can.”

Elan and Sindri exchanged glances, smiling.

“Welcome then,” Sindri said firmly. “And well met. We rush to battle, if you cannot keep up, wait for the others and join their group. They will be moving slower, but in force. We are a fast scout team; they bring the army.”

The group exchanged uncertain glances, and several sighed as they nodded.

“We’ll have to wait then,” an older man said. “I doubt I could keep up with a rush, let alone fight at the end of it. Others are really coming? Truly?”

“You have my bond on it,” Elan said firmly.

“Then we’ll meet them, and march to join you.”

“We look forward to sharing the battlefield with you,” Sindri said. “But for now, we move.”

A few of the younger men broke with the group to follow Sindri and Elan, who did slow their own march just a bit to accommodate those who weren’t as equipped or blessed as they were, and as they moved Elan eyed up the weapons, and lack of weapons, she saw in their hands.

Mostly they had wooden clubs, stone tipped spears, and the like. She did see a couple gleaming short blades in evidence, the sorts of daggers and spikes that could be crudely fashioned and carried in secret even amidst demonic scrutiny, but nothing she would want to trust her life to if she had a choice.

“Sindri,” She asked softly. “Can you do anything quickly about their weapons?”

The short man snorted, “Quick? I suppose I could, it would be nothing worthy of my skill, however.”

“Would it be better than near broken twigs with rocks tied to them?” She asked dryly.

Sindri nodded unhappily, “Aye. That it would.”

“Then we’ll stop for a break,” She said. “And I’ll scout some more while you see what can be done.”

The brother grimaced but didn’t object. He knew that getting into the fight sooner was ideal, but at the same time it would do none of them any good to arrive with backup unsuited to the task.

More unsuited, that is, He thought grimly. Because there’s nothing I can do that would meet my standards of suitability here… but what can be done, I suppose.

“Very well,” he said aloud.

*****

Facility North of the Citadel

Caleb emerged from the cave, Simone, Jol, Tur, and Sie immediately behind him while the rest of the Atlantean forces continued to transit in from the Atlantean facility.

“We’ll group here,” Caleb said firmly. “No one goes anywhere until we’re ready. Sie, Tur? A word?”

The three split apart from the group as Simone and Jol started getting the others ready as they appeared.

“What is it?” Sie asked as she looked over the young man who was giving orders like he actually had any authority over them.

“What’s the city like?” Caleb asked, eyes drifting to the South, where the dark line of the tower was still visible against the darkening sky.

“It’s a wreck, but it’s where we grew up,” Sie shrugged. “It’s… normal, I guess?”

Tur grunted but didn’t disagree.

“I mean, what sort of resistance are we going to be dealing with?” He elaborated. “The demons are strong here, I have to assume?”

“We have nothing to… compare with,” Tur said slowly. “But they ruled over our lives, almost all of our lives. I… did not even know they could be killed until a few years ago.”

Caleb noticed Sie reach out silently to squeeze the big guys hand but didn’t comment.

“They’re strong,” Sie said into the quiet. “The Lady of the tower rules them, but we almost never saw her and even then, it was never up close.”

“Two towers, both ruled by female demons,” Caleb forced a chuckle. “Where I grew up, it was a Lord. He died first. I guess that makes the Lady’s the deadlier of the group?”

Sie jus smirked at him, but Tur chuckled along.

“Perhaps,” She said after they’d quieted down. “But none of them are safe.”

“That, I know,” Caleb confirmed. “We have to assume that they’ll have warded the area, the tower at least, possibly the city as well if they’re smart. Did you encounter any of their runic specialists?”

“Rune… I’m sorry, what?”

“Sorry, you wouldn’t know the words,” Caleb sighed. “Demons that look weaker, but all the dangerous demons around them are very careful to be polite to them. Like they know something no one else does.”

Tur hummed, thinking on that, before he nodded slowly and glanced at Sie. “Remember the fire after the rebirth day?”

Sie settled back, thinking about it for a moment. “Right. That one was sickly looking, I never figured out why the others didn’t just kill him and be done with it.”

“Because they’d be slaughtered,” Caleb said grimly. “I’ll take that as confirmation. The tower will be difficult to take.”

“Whoa,” Sie held up her hands, “who said anything about taking the tower!? That’s lunacy!”

“She is not wrong.”

“If what Elan and Merlin found is right, we’ll have to do it anyway,” Caleb said. “Look, we need to find the brothers, see if we can get you…”

“Caleb!”

He turned at the sound of Simone’s voice, “What?”

“We’ve got company!”

Caleb swore and pushed past the pair, making his way over to where Simone was standing. He looked out to the South and blinked as he saw the movement against the wastes.

“Demons?” He asked, tension filling his voice.

“No, I don’t think so.”

He and Simone glanced over to Sie, who had quickly joined them.

“What then?” Caleb asked.

“The people…. All of the people.” She said, eyes wide with shock.

“Refugees. They’re running from the purge we were told about,” Simone said.

“But why are they running here? They couldn’t know… of course, the brothers,” Caleb felt like smacking himself. “Ok, Simone, get the people with medical training and supplies out here first, then everyone else. We will need to move out people out before we can send anyone else back in.”

“Send them back… Caleb, are you suggesting…?” Simone trailed off.

“Send the sick, injured, and infirm back to Atlantis. If they’re in fighting shape, they can join us, or wait until we’re done,” he said. “No one goes back to the island armed, not even those on their death’s bed, but we aren’t here to watch people die either.”

Simone nodded, “Very well, I’ll see to it.”

Caleb turned to the other two, “Come on, let’s greet your people.”

*****

Chapter Sixteen

Northern Facility

Nimue would be pacing, were she human. Instead, her focus allowed her to stay on task despite the tension that seemed to be ratcheting ever higher with each passing moment. It was a fools’ errand that the humans had gone on, but they rallied to it like iron particles to lodestone, which was something that had always baffled her.

It had been like that before, and during, the invasion as well.

Humans were such strange creatures, with seemingly so little survival instincts at times.

Any sane being would avoid this conflict. If the humans in charge had been smarter then more of them would have fled the planet when they had the chance, so many years ago. Part of her wished that she had the option of going with them, but she was infected by her own brand of lunacy, Nimue supposed.

Someone had to monitor the systems at her control, on the off chance that the war was won. If her facility were left unmonitored, well it would not be a great situation to win the war only to be wiped out by…

Not going to dwell on that now, besides… the demons may just be the only beings in the universe who deserve what is coming their way.

The humans had, for the most part, rallied to fight, however. As hopeless as the cause was, they followed their leaders into charge after charge, killing by the billions… but dying by them as well.

The demons eat the dead, so there weren’t even any graves left to honor them for their sacrifices. So many lives, so many stories, lost forever. None will ever know.

The stories mattered to her almost as much as the lives, because of who and what she was, but in the end it didn’t matter. Both were lost, even to her in many cases, and there were almost none left to share it with who might understand, even if she did have all the stories available to her.

Barbarians.

The deaths she could forgive, heinous though they were, but the destruction of history and knowledge was the act of only the lowest of the low.

War was something that all life played at, ugly though it might be. She didn’t like it, but Nimue understood that much. The erasure of knowledge, however?

Barbarians.

She would do nearly anything to prevent any more loss, both of life and of that precious knowledge, but there seemed to be nothing she could do.

So, instead, she was looking for a way to better help the fight go forward.

Thanks to her connection with Merlin once more being active, which she suspected that he would agree with her was a mixed blessing at best, Nimue now had access to the remote sensors in the armor and equipment he had fitted for Elan and Caleb, as well as provided to many of the others.

There was not, unfortunately, enough to go around and give all involved the best possible chances, but that was the reality of war.

So, she was splitting her focus. Part of her was riding with Elan at the moment as the girl approached the city with her companions, while the rest of her attention remained deep in the esoteric research she had devoted herself to in the hopes of discovering more about how the demons were accomplishing their ugly feats.

What the girl was seeing, though, was both terrifying and… enlightening.

*****

Shanties North of the Citadel

The smoke was thick in the air as they approached, lending a smell and taste of burning wood, waste, and flesh to every breath they took. Elan had seemed similar in the past, of course, but the level of it this time exceeded even what she’d encountered in the City at Lemuria.

“I can hear fighting up ahead, and we haven’t seen more refugees for some time,” Sindri said as they slowed to a purposeful walk, getting their breath and strength back.

“I know,” Elan said, “I hope it’s because most people have already gotten away.”

Sindri snorted softly, but said nothing to disillusion her, not that she really believed that her hopes were the likely outcome.

Even under the best of circumstances, Elan doubted that more than a pittance of the total population would have been able to escape the city when faced with the descent of a demonic horde on their lives and homes. That didn’t mean she couldn’t hope, and encourage hope to some degree, however.

They were just inside the outskirts of the ramshackle city, such as it was. Little was on fire around them, most of the smoke was clearly coming from deeper in, and Elan could feel eyes on them as they moved.

Her hand dropped slowly to her sidearm, but Sindri laid his fingers across her wrist and shook his head when she glanced his way.

“Not demons,” He said. “Poor bastards too stupid, or simply too weak, to leave.”

She winced, but nodded, leaving her hand on the grip of the weapon all the same.

“We need to get in closer,” She said. “The fighting is where we’re find Brokkr.”

“Aye,” Sindri chuckled dryly, a sound with oddly little humor in it. “And like as not, he’ll be where it’s at its worst I expect. We spent centuries hiding right in plain sight, avoiding fights because there wasn’t any point… I suppose I can’t blame him, hope is a deadly poison, lass.”

“What?” She asked reflexively. She’d never heard hope described like that before.

“It makes you stupid and brave in the face of even impossible odds,” Sindri said. “Hope has killed more good people than all the demons and all the evils that ever existed, or likely ever will.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Elan admitted. “Sometimes, it feels like hope is the only thing keeping us alive and moving.”

“Oh, it likely is by times,” Sindri admitted. “Just because it’s a deadly poison doesn’t mean it can do no good. You’d be surprised how many deadly poisons we all bring into our lives every day… and how many of them we’d be dead as hell without. The air you breath? Contains several poisons that would kill you dead in just slightly different doses. Drink too much water, too fast, and you’ll drown from the inside out. Hope is like those, it wants to kill you, but if you temper with wisdom and bring the dosage down, it’ll keep you moving even in the face of certain doom. That’s what makes it so insidious.”

Elan didn’t have a comment on that, she didn’t have time to ponder philosophy at the moment and, even if she did, she wasn’t sure she wanted to question hope just then.

Another time, perhaps.

Sindri held up a hand as they stepped into a fairly wide street, ruts dug into it from the passage of wagons of some sort. Up ahead, the sound of fighting had intensified, and he sent her a quick look.

“Are ye ready, lass? This will not be as it was in the City,” He said. “We go in, and we kill them. There’s no time here for sneaking around, trying to figure things out.”

“I know,” Elan drew her sidearm. “I’m ready.”

“Aye, you are at that. Ok,” he said a little louder, glancing behind them to take in the others with them.

While they’d rested, he had taken the time to lay some minor runic schemes on their weapons. Nothing that would really hold up long, but he doubted any of them would need it to. By the time his schemes failed, the fight would be over… one way, or the other.

“Prepare yourselves,” He ordered the half a handful of men who’d opted to return with them, most of whom were now rather weary looking. “This won’t be pretty.”

“You’ve never lived here, have you?” The lead man asked dryly. “This hellhole has never been pretty.”

Sindri smiled thinly, “Let’s go then.”

*****

Elan rounded the corner ahead of the group, sidearm in hand as she took in the scene.

It was a horde of demons, but they were fighting unlike those she’d encountered before, swarming as a group rather than the individualistic actions she as used to from the ones she had encountered. That worried her, but she didn’t have the time to really think on it.

Human defenders, none of which she recognized, were formed up in a line that blocked the roadway, trying vainly to keep the demons from gaining ground despite such a furious assault that she honestly wondered why they hadn’t fallen back already.

Motion from the burning wrecks, showing people dragging others out of the buildings and into the streets behind the line told the tale of that motivation, at least.

Elan took her hand off the weapon on her hip, without a clear line through the human’s she didn’t dare fired the lethal device. Instead, she broke into a run, ignoring the yells from behind her, mostly from people other than Sindri as her actions startled them.

Sindri was actually yelling too, but more to hold the others back from following her, which was good. They wouldn’t be able to do what she was about to.

Hitting her full speed sprint, Elan darted to one side and jumped up to plant a boot on a windowsill, kicking off to go higher still, before running along side the wall of the smouldering building briefly and then jumping to clear the line of human defenders.

Her sidearm filled her fist in the air as she tracked ahead, gauging where she would be landing, and Elan began firing.

Demons were immune to many common forms of damage. Dropping them from great heights would rarely do more than annoy them, cutting them with anything aside from relatively pure Iron would only be an irritation until you managed to do truly insane levels of damage with your strike… but the special services issue weapon Merlin had provided for her was something that effectively nothing could withstand.

She didn’t know the mechanics behind it, just that whatever was struck as she fired down into that demon crowd, vanished in a flash of blazing white light and a brief alarm relayed to her through her armor.

Her entrance was spectacular enough to gather the attention of a distinct number of the demons, and as she’d expected they couldn’t resist attempting to add her head to their kill count.

Taking off the pressure from the defenders, a large chunk of the demonic forces turned to swarm her rather than the beleaguered humans.

Elan hit the ground feet first, letting her knees buckle as she pitched forward through what little remained of her initial targets, ignoring the alarm from her armor screaming something about radiation as she did so. She stopped her roll with one crooked leg as she skidded to a stop on one knee, leveling her weapon ahead of her at the largest of the swarm she could see.

“Come on! I’m right here!” She snapped as she opened fire again.

The special issue sidearm she carried was, quite possibly the most lethal and destructive weapon she’d ever carried. Not quite the most destructive thing Elan had ever had in her control, but very nearly in the top spot.

As she opened fire with it, the demon swarm… simply vaporized under the controlled barrage, cutting large swaths through their line as they turned and swarmed at her position.

She kept firing as they closed, but it only took seconds before it became inevitable that her position would be overrun. The total lack of any sense of survival instincts made it near suicide to tangle with demonic forces from close range. They would just keep coming over their own dead if that was what it took, and nothing at all would deter them.

Almost nothing, Elan thought grimly as she noted her weapon overheating.

With scant seconds left before they were on her, Elan flipped the weapon over in her hand and dropped it back into the harness on her hip even as she drew the compact cylinder gifted to her by the Brothers.

A single thought was all it took to cause the red-gold weapon to snap open, changing from a foot long to a length of metal that was in fact longer than Elan was tall. The seemingly solid mass of metal filled her fist as she took one step back, planting herself against the charge, and prepared herself to meet the enemy.

*****

“She’ll die!”

“Aye, that may be,” Sindri acknowledged as he watched the girl land on the other side of the human line. “And if she does, it is our duty to ensure that her death was not in vain. Start helping the people out of those buildings and shore up the defensive line! She’s buying time for us, you ingrates! Use it well!”

Those were the only words he said as he charged into the fight himself, his hammer raised in his grip as he raced up to the defenders’ line.

Not all the demons had been so impressed by Elan’s theatrics that they shifted their focus, Sindri expected that they might not even have seen her despite the flashy entrance, but more than enough had to weaken the line of battle they’d been using to hammer against the defenders.

“Push them back! Buy the others time to escape!” He called at the top of his lungs as he reared back with the hammer just as he reached the line of battle and brought it down from an overhead swing to crush the skull of a demon trying to eat some poos bastard’s face. “If they want our lives, make them pay for them!”

More screaming from others charging into the fight filled the air, and the clash of weapons on claws, and flesh being eviscerated and pealed back from bone filled the air as the stink of the fight filled his nostrils.

It has been a long time, He thought as he felt the adrenaline surge through him.

Many others of his kind had fled, a long time ago. Sindri, like his brother, and the Wanderer as well, had been both stubborn and blatantly stupid enough not to want to run from the world and peoples they called their own for so long. They’d thought that somehow they would be able to fight off the invasion. The peoples here were so advanced, it seemed insane that they would lose.

In the end, though, it seems that the bitch caught up with us no matter what.

Sindri pushed those thoughts aside as he waded into the battle, hammer swinging to create a lethal field of harm around himself as he fought his way to the beleaguered defenders.

“Get ready to fall back,” He ordered. “We’ll cover you!”

“We can’t! Too many will die if we let them past!”

“They’re going to die anyway if you fall here,” Sindri snapped, planting his hammer into the skull of another demon, driving it down to the ground at his feet, whereupon he stepped on it as he walked forward. “We have help coming, but you’ll do no one any good if you die here. When I give the word, you break contact and head North!”

He didn’t wait to see if they were going to listen or not, he’d tried the best he could under the circumstances, and there was too much more to be done.

If they were to do this properly, Sindri realized that they were going to need to attract some attention.

He channeled force into his hammer, sending crackling lightning down its length as the demons paused in their rampage and turned to look in his direction, almost against their will. So strong was the urge to focus on him, in fact, that several human defenders managed to take advantage of the lapse and scored kills while the monsters were distracted.

“Jolgar!” He screamed, hammer rising up as the lightning struck down around his position from a clear sky, lighting up the monsters around him and everything else for miles around.

It was a sight that a blind man could not have missed.

Sindri was quite certain that the demons of the Citadel, nor any of the defenders, would have managed to miss it either.

*****

A crack of thunder shook the surroundings as Brokkr snapped his head over to look to the flash of lightning from the clear sky.

“What was that?” someone asked fearfully from nearby.

“My brother has returned,” He grinned, his own blade taking his energies as he let them loose for the first time in a period he could not longer remember. Flames erupted in a blaze along the weapon as he charged into the fray again. “Come you misbegotten animals, face my fires!”

Brokkr unleashed the inferno from his sword, and the energies that accompanied the flames, into the line of demons and burned them down in a stroke, turning the ground to blackened ash in their passing, and clearing breathing room around him in all directions as the demons fell back even as their gazes fell directly upon him.

“What are you?” One of the defenders managed to gasp out, curiosity overcoming sense in the silence that followed.

“A warrior who has been on the sidelines for too long,” Brokkr grinned, pushing more power into his blade.

“Why didn’t you do that before?”

“Because of that,” He pointed with his blade, and everyone followed the direction of his gesture as silence fell among the defenders.

The demons were silent as well, but they were practically vibrating with energy as they stared at the man and the flaming sword like they were looking at food for the first time in a week of starvation.

The humans fell back a step instinctively, they could tell that the situation hadn’t gotten any better somehow despite the sudden destruction of so many demons… but it had changed.

They just couldn’t tell how, or if the change was for good or for ill.

That was alright, honestly, Brokkr had no clue himself.

*****

Citadel

Lis froze, shock filling her as she stared out in the direction of the inferno and the lightning strike.

The sensation was absolutely unmistakable.

We had some of them living this close? Impossible.

The energies were like a buffet to the demons, however, though she knew that was a dangerous thing to think. It was like a moth being attracted to flame, the light and heat were succulent and irresistible… but it would not end well for the moth.

Weaker demons would have died in droves at those attacks, she knew that for certain, but ultimately it would change very little. Enough moths would smother a flame, and she had more than enough to throw at a problem like a couple stray traitors.

She turned to the Viceroy, who was also looking out with a disturbing intensity.

“Viceroy,” She snapped.

He shook free of the sensation, “Apologies, my Lady. It has been a while since I tasted that power.”

“I know, but that will have to wait,” she said firmly. “Dispatch every low to middle circle demon we have. All of them. I want those two dead or in my dungeon.”

“It will be a pleasure, My Lady.”

She nodded absently as the Viceroy left, only then turning back to the tantalizing sensation that was filling the air even from this distance.

Two of them. Unbelievable, she thought as she soaked it in. She hadn’t thought that there were any of them left on this misbegotten world, likely not in the entire dimension for that matter.

Most had fled when the portals first opened, cowards that they were. The remaining few had died in combat, or at the hands of her… more dedicated servants, or herself for that matter, in the years that followed.

She smiled lasciviously, tongue snaking out to lick delicately at her tips.

This will be delicious.

*****

Chapter Seventeen

Shanties outside the Citadel

Elan snapped her staff around, the heavy metal crushing the jaw of a demon who got too close, sending a spatter of blood through the air as she spun the weapon around to keep the momentum before bringing it back down in a slashing arc that dropped the demon for good less than a second later.

She stepped over the body, eyes scanning the situation as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

Sindri’s attack had been on a level she’d not expected, frankly wouldn’t have believed, but now it was the aftermath that was truly fascinating to her.

The demons had become almost obsessively focused on reaching the short man, and that was despite the sheer devastation he was wreaking with his hammer. She and the others who had joined in since the lightning attack, were practically left alone in the demons’ scrambling attempts to get to Sindri.

She and the others were taking full advantage of that to trim down the numbers and give the short man a good fighting shot, but the demons just wouldn’t stop coming. There were more of them, in fact, than she’d ever even imagined, and she had dropped an entire city of the monsters into the sea!

Handing her staff off to one hand, Elan braced it into the crook of her left arm and turned her entire body to put force behind the weapon as she snapped it across the faces of three more that tried to get past her even as she again drew her sidearm.

The advanced weapon had both cooled and gathered more of a charge from its core power system, leaving it fully ready for combat again as she leveled it into the crowd of demons with the power set as high as it would go and the projection from the weapon focused as wide as possible as she pulled the trigger.

Dozens died in an instant, her suit screaming alerts like mad, though she barely paid any attention to that.

Sindri, however, was paying attention.

“Blast it, lass, be careful with that thing!” He swore as he blocked a claw strike with his right hand before using the power of his hammer filled left hand to swing in and break the arm off.

“I made sure no friendlies were in the way,” She snapped back.

“I don’t care about that,” He snarled, now bringing his hammer back in a sharp swing the other way, just in time to shatter the teeth and jaw of another demon that was snapping at his throat. “Every time you vape these misbegotten bastards you unleash a radiation burst that’ll kill a normal human… slowly!”

Oh. Elan thought, slightly stunned. That must be the warning alerts. Definitely need to talk to Merlin about what he needs to tell me before I use these things.

“You’re in armor,” Sindri went on as he waded through the roiling mess of half dead and all killingly minded demons. “But not everyone here is.”

“Got it,” she said, holstering the weapon as she flipped the staff back into both hands.

Sindri made it to her side, hammer swinging in sharp and vicious arcs as Elan’s staff made wider swaths of the space around them momentarily clear of the enemy.

“Just don’t fire too close to the rest of us if ye can help it,” he told her. “It’s a short-range, high-energy burst. Half-life of only milliseconds, so it burns out almost instantly.”

Elan nodded; she could do that. Most of the close in fighting was far more effective with the staff than with the sidearm anyway, even with the blade the weapon provided her with factored in.

“I think I like the staff better anyway,” She grinned as she spoke.

Sindri chortled as the pair fought almost shoulder to shoulder, “No surprise there, lass. That one is a masterpiece, if I do say so myself. Used a precious material to build it too, but it works better than iron and actually takes a magical rune without burning up.”

“Whatever it is, I like it.”

The red-gold tint to the metal made it stand out from anything Elan had ever seen in her life, in fact, and the weight was hefty despite the fact that it somehow collapsed into a form small enough to easily fit a harness on her hip.

“Orichalcum, girl,” Sindri said. The most precious of metals you will ever find. Treat it well.”

Elan pulled back sharply as a demon charged her, whipping the staff around in a sharp arc that terminated with it splitting the skull of the attacker before she lashed out with a kick to send it skittering away.

“Define... ‘well’?” She asked, slightly chagrined at the thought that she was smashing through demon blood and bone with something so valuable.

Sindri, however, just laughed.

“Feed it plenty of demon blood, don’t forget to clean it off after, and ye’ll be fine,” He assured her. “It can take almost anything you put out.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” She smirked in Sindri’s direction as he jabbed his hammer through the teeth and down the throat of a rather large beast that was struggling to eat him.

“Ach, no, lass!” Sindri laughed, channeling some lightning to fry the demon from the inside out. “I’ve heard from Merlin what you do to your gear, don’t you dare take that as a challenge!”

Elan couldn’t help but laugh in return as the pair continued to fight through the onrushing swarm, something she couldn’t know was being watched by several onlookers in something akin to awe inspired shock.

*****

“They’re… laughing. In all that…”

“Shut up and fight before we all die out here, fool!”

“But look at them! That’s not right. Where did those weapons come from? That lightning?”

“Who cares? They’re killing demons, that’s enough for now. You want to bitch, do it later!”

The human defenders of the shantytown that had cropped up surrounding the Citadel had never seen such weapons in use by anyone other than the demons, or at least they’d never seen destruction on that level except by demons. Most demons didn’t use weapons, preferring their natural bodily ways of inflicting harm as it provided a more up close and personal feeling for them.

For humans to be unleashing this kind of destruction against the demons was against the natural law of the world as they understood it… but, for all that, in that moment, with death on the line, there was nothing they could do but throw everything they had into the fight despite the sudden concerns about the nature of their allies.

It was a feeling that the humans were unfamiliar with, and didn’t really like, but the world they lived in didn’t care for their feelings.

*****

The Viceroy stepped out of the Citadel, onto the packed earth that had come to surround it over the time since they’d moved in.

Vaguely, he could recall that the entire area was properly laid out at some point, with fused stone or some type of cement slabs underlying everything. Back then there had been more than just the citadel too, but over time the lesser towers had crumbled, their debris being used to build the shacks that the humans lived in.

Demons didn’t bother with upkeep, that was a task for lesser if it were to be done at all.

Only the very most powerful of demons really cared much for comfort in the human sense of the word, and those like himself who did care… well, they had their ways of achieving it no matter what.

Living in the Citadel had been a symbolic thing at first, and eventually turned into something more of a tradition mixed with complacency over the decades and centuries that came to pass. Few demons even remembered the city that had been in this location when they moved in, in fact, and obviously none of the humans had any recollections of it.

He snorted softly; the humans didn’t even have legends of it any more.

But that was neither here nor there at the moment, for he had far larger game in his focus.

“Viceroy!”

“Master of Assaults,” he said politely, though he vastly outranked the demon who’d reacted to his approach. “I bear orders from her Lady.”

“We live to serve.”

“Of course, you do,” The Viceroy smiled thinly, turning his gaze out over the city. “Did you see and feel the lightning and flames earlier?”

It was a rhetorical question. If they hadn’t, he’d have them killed for being worthless to the cause. That level of power should be plainly visible to the blind.

“Of course,” The Master of Assaults looked out longingly, his teeth gleaming as tendrils of drool dripped from them. “My forces nearly broke and left in pursuit of it, but I kept to discipline.

Impressive, The Viceroy thought as he looked over the forces that had been held back in reserve. He honestly would have expected more of them to break and run, even against the threat of death from the Master.

“Very good, Master of Assaults,” He said with a nod. “Now issue the orders to go and find them.”

“Viceroy?” The demon asked, uncertain.

“You heard me correctly. Her Lady wants those two, alive if you possibly can, but their bodies will suffice if you cannot. Go get them.”

“Yes Viceroy!” The demon’s eyes gleamed as he turned about, “Orders from above! A reward from my hand to the demon who brings me either the wielder of the lightning or the flames! Double it if they live! Go!”

Howling like mad beasts, which was effectively what most of the demons were, the horde leapt into action, rushing out across the dust of the wastes and toward the burning shacks. The Viceroy watched them as some leapt over the buildings, such as they were, and others went around. A couple of the less intelligent, but clearly more powerful lower circle demons simply went through the burning wreckage.

He wasn’t certain if that was due to creative thinking or a lack of it, but either way it did the job.

Two of the Bane are out there, so the losses will be higher than we could ever have expected, but they have no chance against a horde this size. Even in death, they could not wipe out this many demons.

He turned back to the Citadel, walking in far more calmly than he felt inside.

Everything was coming to a head, and it felt almost like a classic epic.

One last challenge before we seal the fate of this world for all eternity. Fitting.

*****

Atop the citadel, Lis watched the horde as it flowed into the city below, charging in the last known direction of the fires and lightning. Soon, if she were right, there would be more blasts of that power. That would be the time to act, most likely.

But first, Lis thought as she turned away.

There were certain other things that needed to be tended to.

After the success of the initial invasion, most of this Earth had been deemed largely useless. In the middle of an ice age, the planet was surprisingly dry at the moment. That was changing as the world came out of the brief resurgence of cold weather that had resulted from the last-ditch human attempts at defending the world, and the ice was now receding while the rains were coming more regularly and with greater supply in general.

In time, this earth would be another breadbasket for the horde, she supposed. Not that bread would be what they would be producing here. It was always handy when your forces were cannibalistic omnivores, honestly. You could simply breed more soldiers, and the weaker ones? Well, it was one way to keep the soldiers fed.

She walked through her chambers, heading up to the one floor that was above where she resided. She used the stairs; the lifts had stopped working in the tower a long time earlier. Those with any real power didn’t need them much, flying was easy enough after all, and the rest? Well, they didn’t matter.

From the very top of the tower the sun was visible as it set spectacularly in the distance, lighting the sky ablaze with light. She ignored the beauty, however, and focused instead on the demons that were already there as she arrived.

“Report.”

One sickly looking demon twisted, startled by her demand, and took shaky steps back from Lis as she stood there before him.

“Mistress,” he said, bowing deeply. “All goes according to the plans.”

“Excellent,” she said as she began to walk around the Mandela engraved into the very top of the Citadel itself.

There was a reason that this place. This tower in particular, was her domain, just as there was a reason that her sister had chosen the floating city as hers.

Far below them lay a nexus, where the ley of power that crossed the planet with immense channels of geomantic power. Here, eight great lines crossed one another, making it both immensely powerful in general, but also of inestimable value if one wanted to employ powers that could affect the entire world.

With eight lines to feed, anything she opted to pour into the planet from here would be transported to all locations at far greater speeds than might otherwise be possible.

The runic masters she had been bringing along in preparation for this very day had done good work, Lis noted as she looked over the engravings thus far.

The primary channels were a central Mandela, a great circle linked by an internal design… in this case a complex knotted array to feed power back in on itself continuously before letting it loose out to the outer ring and, from there, to the four corners of the tower.

The power was then guided down through the foundation of the great tower and into the Earth below, to feed and change the Ley.

With such a position, and the proper tools and support, one could alter the face of the planet.

And that was exactly what she intended to do.

****

Chapter Eighteen

Shanties outside the Citadel

Elan looked up, puzzled at first, and then concerned, as she heard a howling building in the distance.

“That would be trouble, lass,” Sindri told her, completely pointlessly.

Anything that sounded like that could be nothing other than trouble to her mind.

The demons in their immediate vicinity seemed to sense that something was about to change, not that it took much to sense that to her mind. They fell back a little, giving her and Sindri, as well as the other humans still alive and standing, some room to breath.

Elan shifted her staff to the compact version and dropped the cylinder to her hip as she again drew her sidearm, this time taking a moment to check it since she had the time to spend.

Fully charged again, and cool enough not to worry about, she noted with pleasure.

“They’re sending their wad against us,” Sindri said casually as he stepped up beside her.

“I didn’t think we’d be worth that,” Elan admitted.

Sindri chuckled dryly. “You aren’t, lass. At least, they don’t know about you I suppose. No, this is for my brother and I.”

Elan looked at him askance, “All this? For just you two?”

“They would send more if they had it,” he told her, a certain smugness filtering through the forced casualness he was trying to exude.

“What are you two?” She asked softly, shaking her head. “I know you’re Kaern, but what was he? Are you demons?”

Sindri shrugged, “That is a… long and complicated answer, and one that you are not ready to understand… but, no, we’re not demons.”

“You’re something, something… more than human?”

“Not that either,” he said with a shake of his head. “Just think of us as Elders. It will do.”

“And it tells me nothing,” she said dryly, glaring at him in the corner of her eye as she kept her main focus on the shifting demon line.

“Aye, that, and it tells you everything. Everything and Nothing, all at once,” He chuckled. “I like it.”

“Cryptic asshole,” she said, her lip twitching to a slight smirk.

“And long proud of it. Now get ready, lass, it seems that our latest guests have arrived,” Sindri said with a nod of his head.

Elan turned to the direction he had motioned and paled slightly as she saw the black forms of the demons emerging from the smoke. Some came through the streets; others were crawling over the rooftops. A building shuddered and began to collapse as another came right through the walls, taking out the load bearing structure.

“That,” She said with trepidation. “Is a lot of demons.”

“And more behind them, lass. A lot more.”

Elan really and truly wanted to swear, but she couldn’t think of any good enough for the moment.

*****

Elgor was a Fourth Circle demon, powerful and smart in comparison to his peers, something that had proven to put him at the top of the pecking order for much of his time through the Change and, eventually, into a position of commanding his fellows. He had seen great battles in his time, been there for the fall of many cities that this world had to offer, and he was certain that he’d seen the fall of many others before that time, but he could not remember much from his time before the change.

One thing he had faced before was the sort of prey he was now tasked with hunting down, the ones the more powerful would call only traitor.

He knew very little about them aside from the clear disdain the powerful had for them, but among the few things that he did remember was the one time he had been present at a kill.

The utter slaughter had been unforgettable, beyond anything he could recall, hundreds of demons were dead before the traitor died… and thousands died shortly thereafter.

Elgor was among those who had survived, however, and he remembered the power he had taken that day.

Power that had changed him faster than ever before and left him in the position he was in now. Smarter, stronger, faster than all the rest.

Now, he was going to do it again.

“Rush them,” He ordered, knowing that there was no point in trying any sort of stratagem with this group. Most of those under him were barely more than feral beasts, which was fine for this situation.

Slaved to their senses, his command had no real way of not falling prey to the succulent sensation of power that could be felt now as they got closer, even though the traitor was not wielding it at the moment.

Still, that single command, simple as it was, did the job perfectly.

His command swarmed out, filling the dirt packed streets with a roiling mass of demonic flesh as the howling mob descended on the target. In her periphery, Elgor saw the other commanders mostly issuing the same order and hanging back as he had. A few didn’t, proud imbeciles who let their own blood lust cover their senses. They charged ahead, likely dreaming of the reward the Lady would present them with upon victory.

Fools.

Elgor had no illusions that this would be an easy victory, nor what state his command would be in when it was over. That was fine, though. There were always more demons where this batch came from, so long as he lived to secure victory all would be well.

Eagerly, he leaned in as he watched the charge, eyes on the source of the tasty energy that was filling the area.

He almost missed the motion that came from another direction entirely.

*****

That is a lot of demons, Elan thought numbly as she watched the first wave charge, howling as they rushed in.

Her hands moved with only the barest of thoughts from her mind, drawing her sidearm in a lightning-fast move that came only with the practice and real-world experience she’d been gathering over the past couple years. She didn’t even really have to aim, not with a mass that wide coming right at her with no hit of evasion or seeking cover in any of them.

The sidearm was set to its highest output and widest projection, where it had been earlier, and that was just perfect for the job.

She fired, right down the middle of the group, and watched as the spray from the weapon annihilated the front of the pack, once more sending warning alarms about radiation ringing through her armor. Elan ignored it though, figuring that if ever there was a time, this was it.

She kept firing, adjusting slightly to target a more densely packed part of the horde, and firing again. She didn’t stop until her weapon was screaming about the heat buildup and the still onrushing horde was nearly upon them.

“Is there no end to them?”

Elan didn’t look around, had no idea who had cried that out.

“The end comes only when we are dead or victorious!” She yelled, drawing and expanding the staff from her hip as she felt more than saw Sindri step up to the side, a smell filling the air she recognized from early as he once more called down the lightning.

*****

Elgor was… flummoxed?

That was good word, he decided. Yes, flummoxed would do nicely.

He was flummoxed by the sheer devastation that had come from an entirely unexpected direction. For a brief moment he’d thought that, just perhaps, they had locked onto the wrong target and the girl was the traitor rather than the man beside her… but that was soon put to rest when he refocused and let some of the residual energy in through his mental shields.

The blood pumping through him caused him to bare his teeth and Elgor fought to remain in control of himself and not rush off to the fight like the rest of the foolish weaklings he commanded, but it was enough for him to confirm hat the source was, indeed, the man.

What is she, then, I wonder?

Vaguely Elgor could recall the weapons of destruction the local humans had used, and what she had done was similar to them he decided.

Just a human, then, with some of their old magick.

That meant that she was of no import for the moment. The only one that mattered was the lighting bearer. Everyone else would die or run. He cared not for which.

“Bring him down!” Elgor ordered over the howling and screaming. “The Lady’s reward to the one who brings him down!”

He was well aware that was not a promise he would ever need to keep, else he might not have given it. Anyone fortunate enough to eliminate the target would shortly be unfortunate enough to learn just why it was a dangerous thing to make wishes.

Someone might just grant them.

*****

Elan swore as she saw that she was being pressed too harshly to hold her position with the sidearm, the swarm was just taking everything she could throw at it without slowing, no matter how many she killed.

It was madness, yet that was the life she’d led, it seemed, since the traitor had killed her parents and left her to die, staked out in the desert sun.

Sindri was calling down lightning such that she could almost see him as one of the legends out of the stories her mother and, later, her father had told her, but she didn’t believe those stories in the same way she had when she was young. Great powers certainly existed, but Elan had learned the hard way that they had a price attached.

She wondered what this price would be.

As if being swarmed by hundreds of demons wasn’t bad enough….

Pressed harshly, she took a step back… not to retreat, but to clear space as she again drew the cylinder on her hip and snapped it open to the full length of the battle staff. The red-gold metal whistled as it tore through the air, clipping and destroying demonic flesh and bone with every swing.

For all that, though, it was clear that there was no chance of holding this time.

There were just too many.

We have to fall back, or they’ll overwhelm us all, no one here will live out the next few minutes.

Elan opened her mouth to call Sindri and organize the withdrawal but was stopped when a mass of people swept in on her periphery and a war cry went up that shook the air and drowned out the demonic howls.

*****

Caleb looked ahead as they entered the shanty town. The burning wrecks of most of the buildings were only barely standing, if that, and the few that weren’t burning looked like someone had already destroyed them anyway. He grimaced as he noted the filth on the ground, hoping that it was only blood and demon guts, but knowing better.

He put that out of his thoughts, however, and focused on the task at hand.

“Stand ready,” He called out.

Most of the people with him now were Atlanteans, adopted or otherwise, but a lot of the locals had joined up with his forces as they marched, directed his way by Elan before she passed on ahead. He didn’t know how she did it, really, seemingly able to recruit others with an ease in passing that he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

He’d lead people in a fight, and he knew that Simone and the others from Atlantis would follow him without question… that was something he’d had to deal with, mentally, after that last fight with the runic master… but he never seemed to know quite what to say when it came to strangers.

Elan, however, seemed able to convince people to follow her lead with a simple sort of purely practical push toward some goal they shared with her, whether she or they fully understood it.

“Fighting up ahead,” Simone said softly.

Caleb nodded; he could hear the howling. It was unlike anything he’d ever encountered, if he were being entirely honest about it, despite the multiple battles he’d been involved in.

“Demons?” He asked, honestly uncertain.

“Must be,” Sie said from his other side. “But I’ve never heard them like that.”

Tur just grunted as Simone nodded in agreement and Jol remained stoically quiet.

“Well, there’s nothing to it now,” Caleb decided, waving to the force that had followed him. “Push on but be ready!”

They forced a line across what had once been a street, though was now little more than a vaguely cleared area between two ruined buildings that had probably barely deserved the title when they were intact. It didn’t matter what the surroundings were, though, because the shanty town wasn’t their goal.

The dark tower in the distance was the target, Caleb knew with certainty. He could feel the power emanating through the air as they got closer, unlike anything he’d encountered before.

There’s a lot of that going around this time, He noted sourly, unhappy with all the unknowns, but there wasn’t much he could do about it other than push through.

The force moved onward, coming to wreckage that seemed to mark some type of crossroads in the layout of the town. Caleb checked both directions, just for security’s sake, but he knew which way they were going.

The howling was coming from the left, so that was the direction he turned the force after he’d confirmed that there was nothing to the right that could flank them and tear up those in the force that weren’t quite as ready for a fight as some others.

He tried not to think too hard on that, because he knew that they would lose people here. It was impossible for any other outcome, but the need was too great to just ignore what was happening, assuming the information Elan had gathered was accurate… and he’d come to trust her implicitly in such a regard.

A crackle of lightning again filled the air, upping his nerves as they pushed forward. Caleb could see the fighting up ahead, through the smoke that was filling his nostrils and obscuring vision.

“Spearmen, forward!” He called.

The ranks shifted, mostly the Atlanteans who responded first. They’d drilled this maneuver, of course, after the last battle to protect the island city, and dozens of men and women marched to the front with long spears out in front of them.

Caleb slipped between the ranks to avoid being perforated by one of the weapons, noting that the locals with spears had stumbled into the rank as best they could, albeit a little later than would be considered a good time. He wasn’t going to be snappish with them over that, they had heart it seemed, and if that was all they brought to the table right now, he would take it.

There was a line of battle up ahead, ragged and without much formation, but it was apparently holding. That might have more to do with the focus of the demonic attack being elsewhere, however, Caleb decided.

Elan! He recognized the girl just before she was all but swallowed up by the horde that had swarmed her position, a lump in his throat making it hard to breathe momentarily.

“Atlanteans!” He called over the howls. “Forward!”

The men and women roared as they charged, startling the human defenders into falling away to the side as their front line fell upon the swarm with the spears leading the way.

*****

Chapter Nineteen

Avalon

Merlin paused from his examination of the latest readings as an automated alert caught his attention, showing him the events going on near the demon tower called the Citadel through the eyes of those he’d been able to equip from his stores.

Unfortunately, Avalon did not have unlimited supplies, nor even enough to make a significant dent in the needed supplies for even just the normal Atlantean reaction forces. Combined with the advanced training needed just to safely make use of many of them, and he’d been extraordinarily reluctant to hand off such weapons and armor.

Elan and Caleb, however, among a handful of others, had proven both to have a need for the equipment, and the capability to master it.

So now, as Caleb led his forces into the fight, Merlin observed from a distance.

There are far more demons there than expected, He noted absently, his mind already rerunning calculations.

That would be a major problem, at least in potential, since that many demons would be able to simply swarm the human fighters and run them into the ground with nothing but numbers and physical weight.

Merlin was too familiar with the varying strategies that demons were likely to employ, and this was the first of them. It was often underestimated too or had been in the past at least. The ancient peoples had considered a swarm attack to be tantamount to mass suicide when pitted against the lethal nature of their defenses.

They weren’t wrong, but somehow, they had not been right either.

The demons simply didn’t have the mental capacity to know when to stop. They just kept coming, over the bodies of their fallen, until you ran out of energy for your weapons, or you couldn’t even fire them for fear of killing more of your own side than the demons because they were already that close by the time they were through the shield of corpses you’d littered the battlespace with.

When your enemy had what was, essentially, an infinite force… it was all but impossible to counter a simple swarm attack.

Well, unless you were willing to call down fires that would destroy your own position as well.

By the time the human defenders had been willing to do that, however, the demons had shown that they were capable of more advanced strategy and tactics as well.

Merlin had since learned that the tactics employed would depend vastly on the type of demon in the field and, more generally, what circle they had… evolved to.

He was seeing shock troops in the field at the battle, but few if any of the commanders.

That’s unusual…

Normally the commanders were committed to such moves just as easily as the shock troops, at least in his experience.

Merlin began to scour over the intelligence from the scene with a deeper intent, trying to determine the reason for that change in the enemy’s tactics. He didn’t like seeing changes, especially not when they were on the cusp of a vital operation that simply could not go wrong.

Why are the commanders holding back? There’s one in the background, unless I’m greatly in error, Merlin noted, confused. They never flinched against charging even our most powerful bases. What is different here?

It was possible that they were learning, which was more than bad enough… he didn’t want the demons to be learning anything, as impossible a wish as that might be… but it was even worse, potentially, if there was simply another factor at play here that he could not see.

“Nimue,” He said, opening a connection to the Northern Redoubt. “I need your analysis of this. Feeds to your console.”

“Received,” The other Intelligence responded. “A moment, please.”

*****

Norther Redoubt

Nimue was unhappy at being distracted from her research, but she understood that the tactics of the enemy to precedent, especially in the very middle of a battle like this.

Merlin had sent annotations along with the feed address, so she knew what to look for, and in a moment, she had seen what Merlin had.

Curious. This isn’t their pattern, Nimue noted curiously. But there is an obvious outlier here. What was that lightning?

She pulled the feed from Elan’s armor and went back to before the alert had been sent out, eyes drawn to the actions of the one called Sindri.

Definitely not human.

She knew the type, as did Merlin. The Intelligences had been briefed on the non-humans at varying points in the days before and during the invasion. Most of them had simply vanished without traces shortly after the invasion.

She suspected that she had a good idea now of what happened to at least some of them.

That energy release is like a flare to the demons, they’re all focused so intently…

That was interesting, and potentially useful, but it was what happened shortly after that really caught her eye.

The horde that appeared, so quickly… and it had to be in response to the lightning Sindri had called down… was terrifying, both in size and in intensity. They had eyes only for one target, it seemed, and nothing at all was going to get between them and their goal.

Except for the child, I suppose, she thought with amusement as Elan wiped out hundreds in the few seconds of engagement she had before her position was overrun and she had been forced to switch weapons and give up ground in order to keep from being pulled down by the sheer weight of the enemy forces.

Still, the demons were still coming.

There’s something about this…

Nimue shot a reply back to Merlin, annotating what she’d seen in the earlier video with proper addressing for him to examine, then immediately returned to her original research with that thought at the front of her mind.

I know I’ve seen that energy pattern before… Perhaps in the studies I’ve been researching?

Nimue set herself to finding the source of the nagging familiarity she was experiencing but kept part of her focus split and observing the feeds Merlin had provided as well.

*****

“Form a line!”

Simone’s order rang out over the chaos of the fighting, the command being what the well drilled Atlanteans needed to know which way to throw themselves. The spear front formed a bristled wall of death for anything that tried to cross, which many of the demons did despite the danger. They impaled themselves on the spear tips, almost incidentally, as they were shoved around by their fellows, the swarm trying to get at Sindri, much to Simone’s bafflement.

“Caleb!” She called. “They’re after Sindri!”

“I see it!” Caleb responded, vaulting a demonic corpse as he drew his blade, the red-gold sword gleaming in reflected light from the fires and the sun setting on the horizon.

Simone watched him fight his way to the side of the short man and Elan, who were holding off the bulk of the swarm almost entirely on their own, much to her consternation.

Elan had always been precocious, and from the moment she’d met the girl, Simone knew that this was someone special… but that did not account for the sheer skill she was seeing in that moment. She hadn’t been at the City, her battle had been alongside Caleb at the time on islands near their sanctuary, but if this was what the city dwellers had seen, she understood why they put their trust in the girl despite everything.

How, though?

That was the question that was now burning at her, and it was one that Simone simply could not answer. The skill growth she saw in the girl now, compared to when Kaern dropped her off and she’d trained with the child, was phenomenal… and very much not a natural progression.

Something had happened to the child, and Simone could only assume that it had something to do with the great unknown variable.

Merlin. It has to be that creature, Simone thought with trepidation.

On the one hand, he appeared to be on their side. He’d led them to Atlantis, providing them with the support that she and her people had desperately needed, support that she’d never even imagined being possible… but she didn’t know why. In her time people didn’t just give anyone anything without a price being attached.

Even looking after Elan had been a favor to Kaern, though as she considered it, Simone was more certain that she stilled owed the infuriating man. Perhaps owed him even more than she had before.

She knew that Elan believed him to be dead, but for herself Simone had doubts.

Someday, she strongly suspected that he would show up again.

That day was not today, however, and she had a battle to wage.

“Push forward!” She called the order, “Swords to the front!”

The lines shifted as the Atlanteans took the war to the enemy, blade to bone, with no quarter asked, nor any given.

This was a battle in which only one side would be walking away, Simone knew that deep in her heart.

There hadn’t ever been a battle like this, to her knowledge, that resulted in the humans being the one’s who’d walked away.

“No mercy!”

She heard Elan’s call, above everything, and her eyes opened wide with shock as she felt the tone of the battle change. The men and women at her side roared in response, and Simone was shocked to find that her own voice was among the first to respond to the call as she, and everyone else, fell upon the demons with a fury they’d been bottling for far too long.

*****

Elan lowered her weapon as she finished the call, relishing the response from the Atlanteans as they threw themselves into the fight along her side, forcing the demonic swarm back from the sheer ferocity of the assault.

“We canna hold them long like this, child,” Sindri said from alongside her. “They’re here for me, let them follow as they can. You have a more important job to do.”

Elan looked over, taking advantage of the brief moment of respite, incredulous at the suggestion.

“You’ll die if we do that,” She objected.

“Lass, if they kill me, I promise ye, it will be more than they can chew,” Sindri said with a grin. “Besides, one life… it’s a small price.”

He looked up to the tower, nodding at it, “That’s where ye need to be, and you know it.”

Elan grimaced, hating that he was right.

“Caleb,” She got the boy’s attention. “Get Jol and his two friends, we’ll need guides.”

“You can’t be serious,” He objected himself. “We can’t leave now!”

“This battle isn’t about killing demons, Caleb!” She snapped. “We can slaughter every last one of them, and it won’t matter one whit if we don’t stop what they’re planning! Get the others! We’re going to the Citadel.”

Caleb stared, mouth gulping briefly before he nodded abruptly and ran back to the group.

Sindri grinned, “That’s a good voice ye have there, lass. Remember it, making a decision… any decision… is normally better than making none, even if you choose the wrong path.”

“This had best not be the wrong path,” she said, whipping her staff around swiftly, collapsing it smooth as she slid the small form into the harness on her hip. “Don’t die, Sindri.”

“Don’t worry about me, lass. Now go. I’ll be having some fun with these abominations,” Sindri said, his tone darkening as he turned to the demons and idly flipped his hammer over in his hand. “Now go but take the rest of them with you. This place won’t be anywhere for humans shortly.”

Elan stared grimly for a moment before she nodded, backing out of the position as she felt the crackle of lightning once more charge up the air around her, a tangy smell filling the air as it did. Turning fast, Elan broke into a run as the air was split and another bolt of lightning rained down on the battlefield behind her.

“Caleb, Jol,” She said, nodding to both, as well as Sie and Tur, “We’re going to the tower.”

“Just us five?” Sie asked, unbelieving.

“No,” Elan said, grimacing as she did, looking back at Sindri for the moment before she shook it off and waved to Simone and the others. “We move on the Citadel!”

The roar she got back startled her, but in short order the Atlanteans were moving forward, and the locals were following along with more confusion on their faces than excitement, but she’d take it.

A crackle of lightning and slap of thunder rocked the world, or so it felt, as Elan led the forces around the demons that were attempting to swarm Sindri while he was leading them away from them, heading toward the smoking fires in the distance.

“Good luck,” She whispered, shaking her head briefly before Elan refocused on the situation at hand.

“Sie, Tur,” She called as they moved, waving the pair up, “What can you tell us about the Citadel?”

“Not much, we’ve never been inside,” Sie admitted as they marched. “The ground floor is usually heavily guarded, and the few we know who did make it in and back out again said that it was a fortress.”

Elan bit at her lip slightly, “Hopefully the brothers have drawn away the bulk of their forces, but we have to assume that there’s still some powerful protections there.”

“We will deal with that,” Simone promised.

“I know.”

*****

Citadel

The lightning and flames that lit up the skies and the ground beyond the boundaries of the Citadel grounds were a succulent example of power that was enough to almost break even the most powerful and controlled of demon’s will, but the Viceroy held his ground as he looked out from the shattered doors that had once been glass, and into the city beyond.

Her Lady’s decision to send out enough forces to drown the traitors was, of course, the right one but he had some deep desires that left him wishing that she’d opted to send elite forces under his command instead.

Each flash of lightning against the clear sky as it darkened, the red sun almost below the horizon, fed into that wish. He ignored it all, however, even going so far as to turn away from the door and walk back inside.

The Viceroy paused only briefly, glancing at one of the elite demons held back along with him, “When the fight it over, inform me. I will be seeing to her Lady’s plans.”

“Of course.”

He left the open foyer of the ground floor reception, eschewing the stairs as he walked to the non-functional lifts instead.

The doors had long since been torn off the lifts, on every floor in fact. Human notions of safety features were quaint, but demons believed in a more direct take when it came to safety.

If you were too stupid to be safe, letting you get yourself killed would be beneficial for everyone else.

For one such as he, of course, a fall even from the very top was not remotely going to be sufficient to kill him, but it was still a good rule.

The Viceroy stepped into the shaft, turning as he did, and began to fall briefly before he flickered with motion and vanished, only to reappear many stories above, just in the right place to step back out and onto the top floor.

*****

Elan held up a hand, stopping the advance as the force reached the edge of the shacks that made up the poor city around the citadel. Behind her she could hear the murmurs of the others as they took in the sight ahead of them.

From a distance, the tower was an ominous black line that cut the sky in two, but as they were closer now it was clear that it was nearly as decrepit as the shacks that surrounded it.

Demons don’t know how to build, or even fix, anything, Elan thought as she took it in.

What that was going to mean for her, in particular, but also for the others was that it was likely that their most powerful weapons would be very dangerous to put to use. She was nearly certain that she could cut the tower down from where she stood, using her sidearm.

Unfortunately, Elan also knew that would not work.

The process the demons had begun couldn’t be stopped that way; they needed to locate the source if they wanted to save everyone.

“Merlin,” She said softly. “I’m at the Citadel.”

“Nimue and I are watching,” The Intelligence responded immediately. “The scans that I have indicate that you’re nearly at the center of the disruption.”

That was good news, she supposed, but it wasn’t nearly detailed enough.

“Where do I look?” She asked. “It’s a big tower.”

“Try the basement,” Nimue responded. “The Ley will have focused below the tower, and everything I see indicates that the ritual they’re likely using will need to directly tap into that power to have any chance of success.”

“Alright,” Elan said. “Wish us luck.”

“Luck is not a…”

“Good luck,” Nimue cut off Merlin’s statement as Elan chopped the air with the flat of her hand.

“Forward!”

*****

Citadel

“Something happening.”

Kordra looked up at that statement, more curious than anything else. He was bored out of his mind, and rather displeased that he and his fellows had been prevented from joining the fun outside, so anything happening was a plus to his mind. Burra, the speaker, was not the smartest of his companions, not even close, but he rarely spoke without cause, which made him by far preferably to deal with in most occasions.

“What do you mean?” Kordra asked as he left the table and walked over.

“Humans,” Burra nodded out toward the open wall that had once been doors, opening out tonto the plaza beyond.

Kordra turned, looking out, and blinked in surprise.

There were humans approaching.

A lot of humans.

He hadn’t seen anything like that in a long damn time.

He grinned suddenly, well it seems like we’re not going to be left out of the action after all.

He smacked Burra on the shoulder and called to his fellows.

“Hey, looks like a meal is serving itself. Wake up or you’ll miss out!”

That was the only thing he said as he began stomping forward, unworried about the numbers of humans he was seeing coming toward him. Unlike the fodder that had been sent out, Kordray was of the third circle. He’d survived the hells of the change and come out stronger for it, advancing far beyond the pitiful wretches that inhabited the area around the citadel, and knew for a fact that there was nothing they could scrounge up… not even their pitiful iron daggers and spear tips, that could put him down.

He was still grinning a moment later, just milliseconds before his component’s atoms went screaming off in random directions at the speed of light.

*****

Chapter Twenty

Citadel Foyer

Elan re-holstered her sidearm as the big demon died without uttering a peep, waving the others forward as they charged the open wall of the citadel.

There was a security force within, and she could tell that they were far from the weaker fodder that permeated demonic ranks, but she was unconcerned as she drew her staff and snapped it out to full extension without breaking pace.

Caleb at one side, Jol on the other, with Sie and Tur leading along with them, the Five broke through the demon’s first line of defense in seconds, leaving the ground steaming with their fluids and entrails as the human line flooded into the tower.

“We need to find the way down,” Elan said, looking around intently as she remembered the city.

She quickly found the lifts but stopped dead as she realized that the doors had all been jammed open and the shafts were empty. Risking a look down, she saw little but a murky darkness that she had no intention of jumping into just to find out what was down there.

“There will be stairs you can use,” Merlin’s voice assured her. “Look for them.”

Elan nodded, waving to anyone who wasn’t too busy fighting the demons that were trickling into the area.

“Stairs,” She called. “Find the stairs!”

Then she threw herself into the fight, staff flashing in the last light of the day as she whipped it across a demon’s legs, then followed up with a skull crushing blow before her victim could pick himself up off the ground.

Caleb, a short distance away, slashed his sword across the guts of his opponent, then stepped past to deal with the next while that one was dying on the floor. Behind them all, the mass of people pressed into the area were clashing with anything that moved and wasn’t human, making quick work of the surprised defenders despite the occasionally vast power differential that would require a massive effort from multiple attackers or just the personal attention of one of the five or the few others in the group with skills and weapons beyond the normal reaches of mortal men.

“Have stairs over here!” Simone called suddenly, gathering their attention.

“Caleb, Jol,” Elan said. “You two with me. Let’s go.”

“We’re coming too,” Sie said, speaking for herself and Tur as they followed the trio.

“Suit yourselves,” Elan said, not interested in arguing at the moment. She got to the stairwell and checked both up and down for any movement, but found none as she turned back to Simone, “Can you hold the way out?”

Simone nodded firmly, “We will hold, I swear it.”

“Alright, Good luck,” Elan said, clasping the older woman’s hand.

Simone grinned back, her smile nearly feral, “And you. Go finish this.”

Elan nodded and let go, turning back to the stairwell and vaulting the barrier that seemed likely there to keep people from falling over it, landing almost a floor below in a single motion, taking the force in her knees and armor.

Behind her she could hear the others thumping down after her as she checked around the turn of the stairs for any targets before continuing down herself.

*****

Shantytown outside the Citadel

Sindri ran.

He could have probably stayed put and kept letting them come to him, but for the moment it served his purposes better to run and stay a little ahead of the mass of demons baying for his blood. It kept them occupied, but it also allowed him to do what he’d been wanting to do ever since he’d arrived back in this little slice of hell.

Find his brother.

Brokkr wasn’t far, he knew that. The flames his other wielded were unmistakable to anyone who knew him, which of course was only Sindri in all honesty at the moment. That made it easy enough to vector in the right direction, but of course there were some little variables at play that made it harder.

Buildings, or wreckage of buildings, in his way were one great example of that, but a more important and annoying example was the fact that Brokkr was moving and didn’t seem to be coming toward him.

Blasted brother, always looking to make things harder aren’t ye?

Sindri paused, spinning around just in time to slam his hammer through the skull of a charging demon, shattering the bone like it was an eggshell rather than something harder than steel, before completing the spin and taking off again at a full sprint as he left the motionless body in his wake.

He’d been going that for some time, leaving a corpse here and a corpse there as he ran, but really not taking too much of a toll of the enemy horde chasing him around because that wasn’t exactly his goal for the moment.

It would be much easier to achieve my damn goal if Brokkr weren’t playing hide and seek at the worst possible time, though!

*****

Brokkr panted as he cupped a hand over the wound in his side, one of the demons having gotten lucky on him while he was laying waste to a few more. Getting his breath back had taken some time, and if he could evade them for a bit longer, he had no doubt that he’d heal up in short order, but the swarm of mindless demons weren’t looking to give him that luxury it seemed.

He could feel the tingle in the air, so he knew that Sindri was still kicking at least and, if he knew his brother, probably looking to give him a swift kick in the keister while he was at it.

Blood seeping from between his fingers was enough of a warning that he needed to keep moving, though, or things might get a little ugly on him.

The snarling and howling were growing stronger as the sun set, and that was going to be a fun challenge in short order, he figured. The demons weren’t exactly weaker per say in daylight or anything like that, but they were a little less comfortable when exposed to the sun, especially full bright sunlight.

With night coming, the ruins of the city he was in would become a hunting ground, but the joke was on the demons there… the night was an old friend of his too.

If I can only get this damn wound healed…

*****

Citadel

Ser’Lis looked out over the shadowed ruins of the city below, frowning curiously as she did.

Something had changed, but she wasn’t certain what. The tantalizing sensation of power was still there, so the important thing had remained in place, but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something else was very different.

The sounds of destruction from below were lessened greatly from earlier, which might have something to do with her thoughts on the matter, but she wasn’t certain.

Most likely the humans have been driven out or killed, she decided, as that would explain the lowered sounds from the ruins below.

The fires were dying out too, as the sun set. She could tell that they were still smouldering, though, with the smoke being easily smelled even as high up as the very top of the tower.

She turned away from the city, eyes on the runic masters as they went about their jobs.

Implanting a worldwide pattern into the planet’s Ley was not the easiest of jobs, especially when you were force to work from a single injection point, but it was a process that the Circles had long perfected all the same. She was certain that it was now just a matter of time, and that was a relief because Lis had little doubt that she was already facing censure for the delay as the entire world should have been brought properly into the Circles’ domain over a year earlier.

Her sister had cost them all a great deal of time when she lost the City to the waves.

That was still something that utterly boggled Lis’ mind, actually. How could an entire city fortified with some of the most powerful of demons, and entire hosts of fodder on top of it, fall to a human revolution?

At least those fool humans died when the city slipped beneath the waves. Good riddance to the lot of them.

The work of generations was nearly done, and she just had to stand and watch it happen.

*****

The bottom of the stairwell was dark. None of the lighting systems that Merlin assured her were there appeared to be working, but that was fine. Elan had vision enhancements in her armor, as did Caleb.

Jol had, as usual, eschewed armor of his own, but he was enhanced by years of working with the brothers and their mastery of varying effects, so she doubted he was much behind either of them.

The other pair, however, were forced to follow close as they moved through the shadowed halls and looked for the ritual that had brought them here in the first place.

“I don’t see anything,” Caleb muttered, sounding frustrated.

“Join the club,” Sie told him sarcastically.

“The ritual has to be here somewhere,” Elan said wearily. “This is the place it sourced from. It’s here. I know it’s here.”

They still had places to check, but the eerie quiet seemed to pervade the entire floor as they moved through it.

And then… it didn’t.

“Do you hear that?” Tur asked, his voice concerned and puzzled at once.

“Yeah,” Jol said, “I… it sounds… familiar?”

“Someone… laughing?” Caleb shook his head, turning around to try and see if he could find a source.

“It’s coming from this way,” Elan responded, having a slightly better mastery of her equipment than the young man, “Stick close.”

The group turned and headed down a dark corridor, one that was dotted with doors along either side, but none of them seemed to lead to anything but dark and empty rooms. None of them but one.

“It’s locked,” Caleb said as he tested the door, scowling at the delay.

“Break it down,” Tur advised.

Caleb looked between everyone for a moment, making sure there were no objections, then took a step back and did as he was bade. His foot slammed into the door with enough force to bend and tear the metal material until it shrieked and popped right out of place, topping inward to hit the ground with a resounding slamming sound.

He looked in, spotting a figure tied up in the darkness.

“A prisoner?” Caleb blinked, surprised. “Hold on, we’ll get you out.”

He stepped in over the door, heading for the shackled prisoner, who had gone quiet in the time between the door being kicked down and then, only to find himself being yanked back harshly by a hand on his shoulder.

“Elan! What the hell?”

“I recognize her. Jol, can you see?”

“I see her fine.”

Elan would normally have given Jol a sharp look if she heard that tone coming from his mouth, but in this case, she understood the cold that had suddenly permeated his voice.

The Lady of the City was there before them, bound in iron chains no less.

It was not the fate Elan had imagined for the demonic mistress of the City, that much was certain. When she’d flown off after their last fight, Elan had imagined… she really wasn’t sure what she’d imagined, but this wasn’t it.

“Jolinr,” The demoness smiled from where she was chained in place. “Oh my, you strapping lad you, how in the Circles did you make your way this far from the City? I thought you’d perished with the rest of the human cattle that day.”

“More of us survived tha-.” Jol started, only for Elan to interrupt him.

“Jol! Don’t give her anything.”

The young man grimaced but nodded as he took a step back.

“History here, I see,” Tur said in his grumbling voice. “But this is not the time for it.”

“He’s right,” Elan said grudgingly, her hand twitching to her weapon.

The smart move was to kill the demoness here and now, but part of her couldn’t quite bring herself to execute her in cold blood. Every bit of logic in her brain was saying one thing, but she just couldn’t override her heart. Elan let her hand drop and stepped back, shaking her head.

“Leave her,” She said, “She’s no threat in those chains and we have more important things to see to.”

“More important than little old me?” Ser’Goth asked teasingly, “I’m hurt, truly so. Ah well, if you’re not here for me… I suppose it must be the ritual you came for, girl child.”

Elan’s head swiveled back, eyes fixed to the demoness.

“Oh yess,” Goth hissed, “I recognize you too. Another surprise, I expected you to have died when the tower collapsed. However, did you manage to survive that, hmmm?”

Elan didn’t answer, there was no reason to give the demon any more information than she already had.

“No answer?” Goth pouted, though her eyes glittered in the dark, amusement filling them.

“What do you know about the ritual?” Elan demanded, ignoring the rest.

“Everything, of course. I was in charge of my side of things, before you came along and ruined it,” Goth sighed theatrically. “Really, was buying an extra year worth all that effort? It would be so much easier if you just accepted it and joined the winning side. An eon or two and you’d be quite a formidable demoness yourself, I expect.”

Elan shuddered at that though but refused to be sidetracked.

“What about the ritual, where is it?” She demanded. “Where. Is. It?”

Ser’Goth smiled slowly, “Why ever should I tell you?”

“They put you in chains,” Jol said quietly. “Left you down here to rot. Why protect any of them?”

Goth turned her head slightly, eyes gleaming as she looked at Jol, “Whoever said that I was protecting them?”

Then she sighed deeply again as she rattled her iron chains, “Besides, this is a kindness you see.”

The group looked at her, noting the burns from the iron on her skin, and she could see their doubtful expressions despite the darkness.

“No, really, normally I would have been executed for such a failure as you delivered to me,” Goth said, seemingly sincere as she shrugged and hissed slightly as her skin again came into contact with the iron and sizzled as a result. “Sister dear just couldn’t bear to see me die, though, we have been through so much.”

“The lady of this tower is your sister?” Elan leaned in intently.

“Oh, perhaps not by blood… though that could be as well,” Goth admitted. “But we were both taken in by the Ser line while we were very young and weak.”

She looked at Elan with a teasing smile, “I could sponsor you into the line, if you’d like.”

“No.”

Goth laughed easily at Elan’s cold response, having expected as much.

“I know, I know,” She said, still chortling. “It’s so obvious to say no from that side of the Change. If you survive, you’ll see reason. Eventually.”

“I will die first.”

“No one is dying here now,” Caleb cut in, glowering around at the group. “The demon is trying to get into your heads, stop playing her game.”

“We need to know about the ritual, Caleb,” Elan responded shortly. “And she is the only one who knows anything more right now.”

“It’s called the Gateway Ritual,” Goth interjected then, her tone casual as she spoke, sounding like she was comfortably resting in some sitting room rather than chained up in a literal dungeon. “You might call it the Coup of the entire invasion. The Victory Dance. Once it is complete, this dimension becomes part of the circles. Forever.”

Caleb shook his head, “That doesn’t make sense. Why wait this long? If you can do that, you could have just sucked the whole world in ages ago and we’d already be dead.”

“Most would be dead,” she conceded, tilting her head slightly as she considered the group. “But I would lay good odds that you lot would be among the survivors undergoing the change.”

“That doesn’t change my point. Why wait?”

Goth rolled her eyes, “Because the ritual requires victory to work. To cast it, you must own the space within which it is set. Until the peons of the Upper Powers finally gave up on this dimension, the ritual would fail. Last year, they made their loss official… and abandoned you. All of you.”

Last year.

Elan had a flash of memory, remembering the dream she’d had. Strange beings, almost more… mechanical than flesh, yet like nothing she’d ever seen humans build or design, not even in the books of the ancient ones.

Wheels within wheels, like they didn’t follow the same rules the rest of use live with.

She’d been at a loss after those dreams had come to her, knowing somehow that they were more than just dreams but unable to prove any of it.

Now, though, with the demon talking about the events of a year ago, she suddenly remembered the dreams again… even more clearly than she had when first awaking from them. The dreaming of them had been powerful, almost enough to convince her that she’d slipped too far and had managed to bumble into the Overmind, a conjoined consciousness of every being there was.

It had told her that it was leaving, that they were leaving.

“These… peons, you call them,” Elan asked suddenly. “What do they look like?”

Ser’Goth looked to her, a fire of interest gleaming in her eyes, “Why would you want to know?”

“Just answer the question, demon.”

Unintimidated, Goth merely smiled as if patiently dealing with a persistent nuisance.

“If I must,” she said with a deep sigh, theatrically showing her opinion of the matter, “And the answer is… they look like whatever they want to look like. They do have a natural form, of course, but it isn’t one that humans can perceive. Not without going mad, at least.”

“Stop ducking the question. Their natural form,” Elan pressed intently. “What is it?”

Now she clearly had Ser’Goth’s interest, as the Demon against shifted to get a better look at her and, again, burned herself on the iron chains.

“They are part of the Celestial Machine,” Goth said finally. “So, their appearance takes on that form, most of the time. Wheels and gears, moving of their own accord, intertwining and interpenetrating each other in ways that mortal minds cannot perceive… and…”

She stopped abruptly, leaning in sharply to look at Elan, this time ignoring the sizzle of the iron burning her skin.

“You’ve seen them,” she said abruptly, surprise filling her voice. “Oh you are a fascinating one, aren’t you?”

“That’s not your concern,” Elan mumbled, taking a step back from the demon as her mind was awhirl with that bit of information.

Why would the opposite of the demons, this… Celestial Machine… come to me? Why tell me that they’re leaving?

The timing made sense, it matched with the readings Merlin had detected and the story she was getting out of the demoness here and now, but none of the rest of it seemed right to her. Why was the world abandoned by them? Were the demons really that hard to defeat?

Ser’Goth, meanwhile, hadn’t stopped talking merely because Elan was dealing with a bit of an existential crisis.

“If they came to you,” She said, shifting back away from the chains again, “They had a reason. Their type never does anything without a reason, not from the smallest kindness to the most horrific atrocity. They have no compunctions about either, but they won’t even move without a benefit of the motion to their desires and plans. Be careful, child, falling into the plans and machinations of those things is worse than the change itself.”

“What are they?” Caleb asked, eyes narrowing, “They don’t sound like demons.”

The demoness laughed, “They’re not, though they’re crueler by far than anything we do. A demon will kill you, slaughter your family, and enjoy feasting on the remains. Those? They’ll tie you up in obligations, enslave your family line to their plans, and still be twitching the strings that control you a thousand years after you’ve died, and your body is nothing but dust. Stay clear of them, if you value your freedom.”

“You’re a demon, we can’t trust anything you say,” Sie spoke up harshly, looking at the others. “We need to go. Kill her, or leave her here, I don’t care which.”

“No.” Elan snapped. “Not yet. She knows things, things we need to know.”

“She’s screwing with your head,” Sie growled. “Let her in there and you’ll never get her out.”

“Now, now, I’m not that insidious,” Ser’Goth said, chuckling softly. “But it is nice of you to compliment me so well.”

“These… machines, what are they, really?” Elan asked again, voice softer.

Ser’Goth looked to her again and shook her head, her voice not unkind as she spoke.

“You are not ready to know that, child.”

“I need to know.”

The demon seemed ready to answer with a quick, likely flippant, response, but she held back, taking a breath.

“They are the minions of the creator,” she said finally.

“The creator of what?” Caleb asked sharply.

“Everything. This world, this universe, you, all of humanity,” she said, pausing to draw out the silence before going on, “Me. Demons. Everything.”

Elan shivered, “Who does that? Who would create…?”

“Me?” Ser’Goth asked, smiling lasciviously, “That is the question, is it not? They claim that the creator is all knowing and all loving. Personally, I think he’s a piece of filth worse than any demon that ever walked, but I am biased of course.”

Elan shook her head, none of it made any sense to her, but for now she didn’t have time to worry about it.

“We’ve wasted too much time already,” Sie spoke up, echoing what Elan was thinking. “It’s time to go.”

“One more thing,” Elan said forcefully, stepping closer to the chained demon. “Where is the ritual?”

Ser’Goth licked her lips slowly as she made a show of taking a deep breath.

“You smell like arson, child,” She said throatily. “Almost as good as young Jolinr there.”

“Answer the question.”

“Why?” She demanded. “Why should I tell you anything?”

“They chained you up, left you here to rot,” Caleb interjected. “Isn’t that good enough reason to get one back at them?”

She laughed easily, shaking her chains, “This is a minor slap on the wrist, you young pup. I have no love for them, but I certainly have none for you either, child. So be silent whilst your betters are discussing matters of importance.”

“What do you want?”

Her grin grew wider as she turned to the speaker.

“Why Jolinr,” She said softly. “What are you offering?”

He reddened, twitching slightly, but didn’t answer.

“A little fun and a meal, perhaps, like old times?”

“You screwed this thing?” Sie spat, flinching away from Jol.

“Oh, he was a fantastic little boy toy,” Goth confirmed, still grinning. “He was so good that I even looked the other way whenever he was caught killing demons. A small price to pay for a good time, you know?”

“Enough,” Elan snapped. “He asked a question. What do you want?”

Goth looked over at her before sniffing, “Spoilsport. Oh fine. Honestly, I don’t know why you care so much. It’s already begun, stopping it now will only slow things, and not by much either. You’d be better served running; you might find a place on this soon to be hell hole where they don’t find you before you begin changing.”

“Then there’s no reason not to answer the question, is there?”

“Possibly,” She shrugged. “But what reason do I have to answer it?”

“That’s why we asked what you wanted,” Elan sneered at her this time. “A little slow in the head today?”

There was a flash, then, in Goth’s eyes as she visibly had to bite back the urge to snap back, but she managed it.

“True,” she said through a tense jaw. “You know what, fine. The ritual is on the top of the tower. You came the wrong direction.”

Elan grimaced, “No… that doesn’t make sense. It has to be close to the Ley…”

“Oh ho,” Goth’s face lit up. “Someone has been doing their homework. Where, I wonder, did you learn about that?”

With no response forthcoming, she finally just shrugged.

“No? Oh well,” Goth said. “Normally you’d be right, of course… but if you have a nice solid tower with foundations that go deep, you don’t have to be buried in the earth. You can just channel the power down through the building.”

Elan took a breath, eyes rising to look up as though she could look through the many levels above them, in reality she was listening to Merlin and Nimue as they whispered in her ears.

“It checks,” she said a moment later. “We came down when we should have gone up.”

She had only rarely in her life wanted to swear as much as she did just then. The ritual was under way and not only had they just wasted several minutes talking to a demon, but as it turned out they were in the wrong place entirely.

“Without the lifts, we’ll have to take the stairs,” Jol said, familiar with lifts and how much it sucked not to have them due to his life in The City. “We need to move.”

They started to filter out, but Goth’s voice stopped them.

“Wait.”

Jol paused, looking back at her, “For what?”

“Let me go.”

“You must be out of your mind,” Jol said. “You’re lucky we don’t execute you, you have to know that! Leaving you behind us, even in chains, is… stupid.”

He shot an apologetic look at Elan, who merely shrugged in response.

She didn’t even disagree with him; all truth be told. She just didn’t have it in her to kill even this thing in cold blood, or even to give the order. There were lines she felt that you didn’t cross, not if you wanted to keep what little humanity you had left in your soul.

“For old times, then?” Goth asked, winking at Jol, who shuddered. “No? Then how about for a secret.”

“What kind of secret?”

“A faster way to the top, and information about what you’re going to find when you get there.”

Elan stepped forward, eyes glinting like ice, “If you lie to me, I’ll spread your body all over this room.”

*****

Chapter Twenty-One

Northern Research Facility

Nimue wanted to scream as she watched the events unfolding on the other side of the world from her location, wanting to second guess the decisions of the humans but knowing that it rarely worked well when the people on the scene were second guessed by those who were sitting safely back from the danger.

Deals with the Demons were never a good idea to her mind, however, and it clawed at her sensibilities to watch one being made like that, even if it was for a relatively simple thing and in exchange for vital intelligence.

So, she kept quiet and listened as the demon lay out the situation on the roof, offering her own insights into how rituals worked as Elan attempted to trip the demon up and catch her in a lie. She was seemingly telling the truth, however, as shocking as that was to Nimue.

Or she’s lying in a way too clever for me to spot, Nimue thought grimly.

Her own ego aside, she knew too well that there were far too many unknown variables here that might lead her to believe a statement that was, in fact, utter trash.

There was nothing she could do about it for the moment, however, so the Entity instead dove into her research with a fervor, using the new information to refine what she’d already built on.

If she’s telling the truth, we have only hours at most, Nimue thought as she cut out the parts of her research that didn’t fit the new data, building up new ideas to account for it. Once the process reaches a tipping point, there will be nothing we can do to stop it.

It was honestly fascinating, the more she looked at it and delved into the theory and actuality of what she was seeing. The very ability to redefine the universe as you saw fit was absolutely amazing, even if this particular ritual was about as horrific as she could imagine.

The fact that this ability was being wielded by enemies of humanity, however, was utterly terrifying.

The theory of enforcing one’s desires over the fundamental laws of nature itself through nothing more than a disciplined application of will utterly turned many confidently held beliefs about the nature of the universe on end. Nimue had personally known many highly intelligent people who would have called an instant foul on the very concept, it was so far fetched.

However, that was exactly what appeared to be happening.

If they can do it, so too can we, she thought, determined. It was just a matter if intelligent and reasoned application of the right forces.

Somehow.

First, however, the few remaining humans needed to survive this event… and that was looking less and less likely by the moment.

So, despite wanting to call foul and object to Elan cutting a deal with the imprisoned demon, she recognized it for what it was… a last-ditch effort that loosed any and all stops, because there was absolutely nothing to be gained by holding anything back.

Frustrating though it was, and as bad a feeling as she had from it all, Nimue recognized the impossible position the humans were in, and just what everyone involved was truly risking…

Because she was right there with them, risking the same thing.

Every being on the planet had everything riding on this.

*****

Citadel

Ser’Lis felt the power pulse through her as the ritual began to gain steam, the returning waves being cycled back into the power of the rune masters and then being reflected back into the planet’s very core.

In a very little amount of time, this world would belong to the Circles, and it would be the beachhead that allowed them to swallow the entire universe to follow.

Lightning crackled in the background, but this time she ignored it.

Before, it had been a novelty, now each crash of thunder and flash of lightning was more of an irritation.

Can they not just die already? She thought, exasperated.

She had sent practically every loose fodder demon she had, more than enough to bury even a pair of traitors, for all their admittedly potent innate magicks. Yet they were still hanging in there, as best she could tell, much to her irritation.

Still, they were down in the city, and they were clearly being held busy by the demonic horde she’d sent after them. That would be enough to keep them from interfering in anyway with her ritual, though she wasn’t sure if they even could stop it at this point.

Almost no one could, she was certain of that, but if anyone might be able to work out a method, that person would almost certainly be counted amongst the ranks of the traitors.

A hint of movement on her periphery caused her to turn in time to see the Viceroy appear at the edge of the rooftop, coming up the final set of stairs that was the only way onto this particular section of the tower.

“My Lady,” He bowed his head. “I see all is coming along nicely.”

“It is indeed. We will shortly have achieved the goal,” she said. “What of the situation on the ground?”

“The horde has engaged, but the traitors have opted to run from what I can tell,” The Viceroy told her simply.

That… felt off to her.

“Why?” She wondered aloud. “That isn’t the normal path they take, once exposed, as I recall?”

“Indeed not, normally, the traitors mask themselves as humans,” The Viceroy said. “If they opt to expose themselves, it is usually only so that they can extricate themselves from the fight.”

“That’s not what’s happening?” She asked, just to be certain.

“It seems not, they would have had the opportunity many times over, if that were the goal.”

She hummed, puzzling through that little conundrum, “And if they aren’t looking to run… well, then a battle, right?”

“Normally, yes My Lady,” The Viceroy nodded.

“So… why run, but not escape, fight but not truly engage?”

“I do not have that answer, I am afraid.”

She shook her head, walking over to the side so that she could look down over the grounds surrounding the Citadel.

It was darker now, and the details on the ground level were lesser even to her eyes. She could see the glowing embers of the fires that had been burning. Some, she expected, were certainly from the flames of the traitors as well. Either from the direct fires, or those started by lightning strikes…

But beyond that the most she could see was motion in the darkness, most certainly the movement of her horde as it hunted down the traitors.

What are you up to?

*****

Sindri exploded out from a narrow alley, barely ahead of a small group of hunter-killer demons, likely not more than second circle… if that. They were persistent, however, and the fact that they had stayed on him as long as they did despite his attempts to fry them off was almost impressing him.

Almost.

Mostly it was annoying the ever-living crap out of him, but that was the way of things most of his lives.

Where the hell is Brokkr anyway?

He hadn’t seen the flash of fire in some time, and he was starting to get worried. He knew his brother wasn’t dead, not yet anyway, but silence was not a good sign just the same.

Skidding to a stop in a cleared section of the shanty town, he spun with his hammer just as one of the hunter-killer types lunged at him. The demon had almost devolved back to a beast like form, more comfortable on all fours than it was on two legs, and it led with wicked sharp claws that sprouted from its forelegs or arms like four small swords per limb.

He ducked the attack and brought his hammer up to catch the beast in the mid-section, shattering its sternum with the blow and sending it tumbling away as it whined in pain. If it had been a dog or other wild animal, Sindri would have felt sorry for it, but he knew what exactly it was he was fighting and had no sympathies to spare.

Behind it was another group charging at him, too close to evade so he stood his ground this time, hammer in hand with electrical power crackling all over it.

“Come on ye walking piles of shit, let’s see how stand up to a real fight.”

*****

Brokkr stumbled into a wall, leaning there briefly as he again checked the wound on his side.

Almost healed.

He’d forgotten just how hot under the collar the demons got when exposed to Celestial power. It was like dangling a nice steak in front of a starving dog.

He’d managed to get some breathing room, though, ducking out of sight during a brief moment when he’d lost his pursuers for a few seconds. It wouldn’t hold for long, but he didn’t really need much.

Brokkr hoped his brother and the others were doing well.

That thought might nearly have been prescient, a crackle of lightning startling him for a moment as the light flashed all around him and Brokkr grinned.

His brother, at least, was still kicking.

Craning his head around, looking for the source, Brokkr spotted a bolt of lightning drop from the dark of the sky and slice into the surface not that far from where he was holed up.

Sindri’s just over there, He thought, pushing himself off the wall as he started to move again.

Not long now.

*****

Citadel

It won’t be long now.

Simone was both tired and wired, nearly jumpy even, as she finished securing the defensive position they’d opted to control.

Elan and the others had gone down, and she hoped that they found what they were after as quickly as possible because there was no way that they’d be able to hold this position for long once the demons realized what was going on.

Upon taking the ground floor as they had, they’d taken out most of the guards, but she was certain at least a couple had escaped to bring word to the rest. Once that filtered out, then it would quickly become a question of how badly the demons wanted control of the tower back from her force. If they wanted it badly enough, she knew with no questions, they’d get it.

This would be much easier if we could block those openings easier.

She didn’t know what had once been there, since the openings were far too large for any sort of normal door or the like, but whatever it had been was long gone and the front of the tower just opened up on the courtyard outside with this massive wide-open sections that they had no chance of holding in their current form.

“Move more things into those spaces,” She called. “Block it up as much as you can!”

Men and women were throwing everything they could find into the holes, of course, but the interior of the tower had been stripped almost bare since the demons had taken it over and there just wasn’t much at all that she could properly find to throw into plugging the damn space.

Going to need a fallback plan if this goes badly.

*****

Avalon

Merlin was frustrated by the relative lack of information coming out of the fight. He only had feeds through a handful of the combatants. There had never been enough equipment to properly spread around, even with his own manufacturing systems working overtime.

There were always too many priority projects that needed attention, things that would mean immediate life or death in many cases, or even just seemed more important at the time. He was cursing some of those decisions now, since a few proper scout drones would have changed his view of things incredibly, but ultimately, he wasn’t sure if anything he could have built would have been a big enough change for what was actually happening.

There is an irony to this, one that I cannot allow to go unnoticed, He thought grimly as he watched the feed through Elan’s eyes.

Centuries of fighting, such that the face of the planet had been reshaped by it, with the humans fielding the most advanced and destructive weapons ever conceived… and the end of the war was going to come down to a final stand of a once great people, now reduced very nearly to ignorant savages… mostly fighting with sharp sticks.

He honestly didn’t know what to feel about that.

There was tragedy there, of course; the loss of so much knowledge and potential over the centuries was very nearly unbearable even to him, an intelligence that was the next thing to eternal… but, at the same time, the moment could even be seen as inspirational.

Whether or not anyone was ever around to be inspired by it, however, was yet to be seen.

Hurry, he mentally urged as he watched Elan and the others following the demon’s directions as they began heading up the tower. There is not much time left.

Another feed was showing the harmonic structure of the wave that had been inserted into the planet’s Ley, and he could tell that they were nearing the end.

Whether it was the end of the war, or the end of humanity… that remained to be written.

*****

Chapter Twenty-Two

Citadel

“This way,” Goth smiled easily as she gestured.

“You first,” Elan told her with no uncertainty in her voice, hand on the butt of her sidearm.

Ser’Goth merely gestured placatingly and nodded, “As you wish.”

Elan and Caleb exchanged glances as the demoness turned her back to them and walked on ahead. Neither of them liked this in the slightest, but there wasn’t much they could do about it either. They needed the information she had, there was just too much at risk to hold anything back now.

“Are you sure about this?” Sie asked tensely from behind her.

“If I were, just kill me,” Elan responded. “Because I’d clearly be too stupid to be doing any of this.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Ser’Goth looked back at them, eyebrow raised.

“We know.”

The demon sighed, shaking her head, “There’s no trust anymore.”

The fact that she was grinning as she said it, however, did nothing to improve Elan’s mood or confidence in her decision.

“Here,” Goth said, as they came to a set of doors inset into the wall.

“What is it?” Jol asked, suspicious as he edged around to get a better look without getting too close to the demon.

“What was once called a freight lift,” Goth said with a shrug. “I can’t tell you all the details, but from what I was told in the City, they’re often used to move larger items when you don’t want to interfere with the daily activities of people. That’s why they’re hidden, out of sight. Lis banned the demons from using this after the main lifts were finally destroyed and keeps it against personal need.”

“Lis?” Jol couldn’t help but ask.

“My sister,” Goth said with an almost fond smile. “And the one that you will have to face if you want to actually do whatever it is you believe you can do. She will be at the top.”

She reached forward and passed her hand over a flat square, causing it to light up along with a series of other lights that were counting down, rather quickly. In a few seconds the doors vanished in the way that some of the ancients’ constructions did, leaving the demon to gesture.

“This is where we part ways,” Goth said. “Take the lift to the top. From there, you’ll need to find the stairs that bring you up to the roof. I would be careful, however. The top floor is Lis’, and she gets rather protective of her things.”

She stepped out of the way, no longer turning her back on them.

“How do we trust you?” Tur grumbled darkly.

“You don’t. Take the lift, or climb the stairs,” she grinned specifically at him. “But I’ll warn you, it’s a very tall tower.”

Elan grimaced.

She wasn’t kidding on that part; the girl knew too well. She hadn’t been able to count the floors, but her armor and its feed back to Merlin made it clear that this tower was far higher than she’d have thought possible, given what she’d seen on construction methods on Atlantis.

It would be impossible with what they had available, in fact. Only the miracles of the ancients made this sort of thing a feasible construction. If they tried to climb it, even in armor she wasn’t sure she’d be in fighting shape by the top… and, more importantly, it would take hours.

“We’re going in the lift,” she said, stepping in.

She turned around and looked out, eyebrow raised as the others hesitated briefly. Caleb broke first, stepping in and taking up a place at her side, and then the others followed suit. Elan looked back out at the smirking demon who was waving merrily to them.

“See you again sometime, lovelies,” Goth said cheerfully.

“If we do, don’t expect the same end,” Elan warned as she reached out and pressed the command to close the door and send them up.

“Oh, my pets, I’m counting on that.”

The doors closed, leaving the five of them alone as they were suddenly pressed into the floor by the motion of the lift as it rocketed upwards.

“I don’t like leaving that one alive.”

“None of us do,” Elan said shortly to the annoyed Sie. “But we’re pressed for time and there are high priorities.”

“Didn’t say there weren’t,” Sie mumbled. “I just don’t like it.”

The numbers representing different floors swept past, almost in a blur. Elan could barely count them off before they vanished, only to be replaced by the next. The first ten were almost countable, but speeding up with each passing one, until they just flashed past.

Ten turned into Twenty. Twenty into fifty. A hundred floors passed, and they weren’t slowing down. Elan was beginning to get nervous as the two hundredth floor swept on past and it didn’t feel like they were slowing.

Finally, just past two hundred and fifty, she felt herself lift slightly off the floor as the lift began to slow as the cavalcade of floors passing by slowed to a crawl as they reached two hundred and ninety-nine.

The ‘ding’ sound as the doors opened was accompanied by a pop of their ear drums and a shift in the flow of the air that left them all briefly startled as they looked nervously out at a utilitarian hallway.

“Doesn’t look like the sort of place the Lady of the tower would call her own,” Jol commented warily.

“She said this was for moving things around you don’t want to get in the way of others,” Elan said as she cautiously stepped out, one hand on her sidearm as she looked up and down the hall. “That’s probably why.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joll still nervously hefted his hammer as he edged out and they looked both ways. “Which way do you suppose?”

“I don’t know,” Elan admitted. “Pick one and hope to get lucky?”

“Stop talking and move,” Tur said, stepping out ahead of them and just walking down the hallway to the right.

Sie followed him while the others glanced at one another, shrugged, and went along a short few seconds later.

*****

“Viceroy!”

Lis and the Viceroy turned, surprised by the interruption as the demon burst up onto the roof, looking like he was being chased, which was a rather absurd notion. The top of the tower was as secure as anything could be.

“What is it?” The Viceroy snapped, irritated by the interruption.

“Humans took the Citadel!”

The Viceroy and Lis just stared for a long moment, then looked at each other before they both looked back to the messenger.

“Say that again,” The Viceroy ordered. “Because I was just on the ground floor and there weren’t any humans left in the entire area surrounding the Citadel.”

“We don’t know where they came from, Viceroy, My Lady, but a force of humans took over the entire ground floor and drove out the demons defending it.”

Lis turned to stare at the Viceroy, her voice dripping with dry sarcasm when she spoke.

“Exactly which demons did you keep in reserve, Viceroy?” She demanded. “I wanted the fodder dispatched after the traitors, not left to hold the Citadel.”

“I did send the fodder out. Not one demon above the fifth circle was left to guard the Citadel,” He defended himself. “And there were several third circle demons, and even a second.”

“He died instantly, Viceroy.”

“What in the circles is going on down there?” Lis exploded.

“I will deal with them myself,” The Viceroy snarled.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Lis snapped. “If the messenger is right, they destroyed one of the second circle in an instant.”

“He’s an imbecile, and likely a coward,” The Viceroy snapped, jabbing a talon at the demon who was suddenly trying not to be noticed as the argument heated up.

“Likely, yes, but there is no reason to chance it,” Lis snapped. “Go but gather forces to repel them. Secure my Citadel, Viceroy.”

“Yes… My Lady,” He snarled out before turning on his heel and striding over to the edge of the building, opting to take the fast way down as he simply stepped right off.

Lis watched him drop for a moment from the edge, then turned to the messenger demon and glared, “Well? What are you waiting for? Get down there and kill those humans!”

He nodded so fast his head bobbled before he turned and ran for the stairs, leaving her to roll her eyes.

Idiots. I am literally surrounded by idiots.

*****

The hallway opened out onto an expansive area, wide open space that was filled with luxury items, which caused Jol to nod.

“This looks like a place the Lady of the Citadel would reside in,” he said.

“Well, it certainly sounds like you’d know,” Sie said snidely from behind him. “Should we ask what her bed chambers look like?”

“Better than anywhere you’ve lain, I’d warrant,” Jol responded testily, earning himself a snarl from the spear maiden.

“I don’t need to take that from some demon’s little bed toy,” she told him.

“You dish it out, you take it.” He turned to her, “If you want me to shut up, try yourself first.”

“Enough, both of you.” Elan snapped. “We have a job that needs doing and angering each other isn’t part of it. Caleb, check that side for the stairwell. Jol, you go the other way.”

“Right,” Caleb said, heading across without question as Jol did the same, though more sullenly.

Elan looked Sie and Tur over for a moment before she spoke.

“I don’t know either of you, but Jol says you can fight… He’s the only person here who’s vouched for you,” she said firmly. “You might want to keep that in mind. Because myself? I don’t know you from any of the people down below, and they mean a hell of a lot more to me than the pair of you combined. You want to start a fight, you wait until the war we’re already fighting is over. Clear?”

“Clear.” Tur rumbled, dropping a hand on Sie’s shoulder.

Sie tensed briefly, but slowly forced herself to relax as she nodded and agreed as well.

“Clear,” she said after a moment. “I’ll keep it to myself.”

Elan nodded, knowing that was the best she was likely to get.

“Good,” She said. “Now look around, see if you can find the stairs or anything of interest.”

“What are you going to do?”

Elan turned, her eyes falling on a wall covered entirely with books, many of which looked… familiar to her.

“I have to check on something else,” she said. “I’ll be right here if you find anything.”

*****

Simone looked up as she heard a loud crash, one that seemed to come from outside but not off in the distance like the lightning and such from the shanties.

“Bor,” She called. “See what that was.”

“You’ve got it,” Bor said as he pushed off the wall he’d been leaning on and grabbed up a mace from beside him.

He was one of the bigger guys they’d brought along for the party, and a fighter of some skill who’d been with her for a long time. Simone waved a couple others along to follow him, though, because in the current situation she didn’t know of anyone she trusted to be safe from the threats that were likely surrounding them on nearly all sides.

She touched the surface of the communication device Merlin had given her as she watched them walk over to the barricaded entrance.

“Yes?” Merlin asked almost instantly.

“Do we have any news on the others?” She queried, a hand nervously wrapping around the pommel of her sword.

“The five have relocated to the top floor of the citadel,” Merlin responded. “They have intelligence that the enemy setup their ritual there.”

“I thought the basement would be better for that?”

“Normally, yes, but you currently reside in a monolithic tower,” Merlin told her. “It was built from the stone of the local earth using special techniques to harden and strength it. The ritual can be channeled through the tower and into the foundations from practically anywhere in the entire construction.”

“Oh great,” She spat, “How did they find that out?”

Merlin hesitated. She could practically hear him doing so over the device, and that did not leave her feeling good about it.

“Merlin…” She growled warningly.

“They got the information from a demon,” he said, sounding unhappy about it. “Elanthielle is aware that the information is suspect, but everything she was told has, thus far, proven correct.”

“Thus far, famous last words,” Simone shook her head, frustrated but unwilling to blow up over that bit of information. “Alright, we’ll hold this position long enough to give her time to prove it.”

“Thank you,” Merlin told her.

“Don’t thank me, it’s in all our best interests to end this here and now,” Simone said. “I just don’t like relying on the word of a demon to make it happen.”

“I do not believe any of us would disagree.”

She was about to respond to that when a yell and a sudden explosion of motion and sound from the entrance caught her attention.

“Have to go.” She said, immediately running to investigate.

*****

Bor frowned as he approached the barrier that had been thrown up as hastily as possible over the front entryway, wondering what the sound had been. There weren’t a lot of things in this area that could cause it, of course, and demons were certainly in the top of the very short list… but so was stuff just plain falling off the tower, because that was how bad the shape appeared to be.

It had once been impressive; he could see that.

He was well experienced in construction himself, though on smaller scales of course, and that allowed him to see what the tower must have been like in it’s prime. The impossibly smooth floors and walls, huge open spaces to move around in, all of it was incredible from the eyes of the sort of experience he had.

The crime here was in what the demons had done to the history of the place, just destroying everything, forever, because they were too lazy or simply too uncaring to bother doing even the very basic upkeep needed to preserve the past.

They were like that everywhere he’d had experience with, and it angered him like few other things could.

Just a little work was all it would have taken, but they couldn’t have been bothered to even order their minions to that.

Disgusting.

He waved a couple of his friends over as he reached the barricade, peering out through the cracks.

“Don’t get out beyond where we can cover you but see if you can spot the source of the sound,” He ordered as he began to check the integrity of the barricade for himself.

“You got, Bor.”

Nothing looked like it had been damaged or slipped, but he didn’t stop checking because Bor was well aware that the barricade might be the only thing between them and the demons out there coming back before the job here was done.

He was almost done with his check when one of his friends let out a call.

“Hey, I think I see something out here!”

Bor stopped his check and started back, “What is it?”

“Lot of dirt kicked up, looks like something hit the ground right here…”

Bor was about to respond to that but was stopped when another voice spoke up from somewhere he could see, the sound of it chilling his blood in his veins.

“Most observant,” The voice said, hissing slightly. “That was where I dropped.”

“Wha-?”

The man’s abortive question turned into a scream as a dark shadow emerged from the night, wrapping around him, and abruptly vanished again.

Bor stopped walking and started sprinting, bringing his mace up as he did.

“Get back from the barricade!” He yelled. “There’s one outside!”

“I think I see him! He’s right-!”

A second scream cut off the statement as the shadows again moved, this time with more form… a leathery winged form dropping atop the speaker hard enough to crush them into the dirt just as Bor arrived.

He didn’t pause or hesitate in anyway, Bor just swung as hard as he could without even slowing his stride, trying to add all the force possible to the blow. The mace slammed into the creature’s face, the iron head managing to mash and mangle the demonic flesh, resulting in a satisfying wet crunchy sound as Bor stopped and recovered from the swing, preparing another.

“That… hurt,” The demon hissed at him, reaching a hand up to catch the second blow as it descended. “But not as much as this will…”

Bor barely had time to spot the attack, talons outspread as the blow struck from down low, driving five small dagger like claws into his guts and twisting them around. He groaned as he was lifted off the ground, not by the power of the attack but by the simple inexorable strength of the arm behind it.

Bor clung to his mace as he swung his free hand repeatedly into the demon’s face, getting little more than bruised and scuffed knuckles as well as broken fingers for his efforts.

“Is this the best you have?” The demon rolled his eyes. “I see it’s time for another culling of the security forces here.”

Bor tried to curse the demon, but he couldn’t seem to get anything coherent out of his mouth, so he opted to spit one in instead. The demon just looked at him with a dry disbelief, and then twisted its claws a little more.

“Die demon!”

Simone’s spear lanced past Bor, burying itself in the demon’s chest and driving it back a couple steps from the force she put behind it, her feet sliding in the dirty ground as she tried to keep pushing.

The demon choked a little, blood or ichor bubbling up through its throat, but really didn’t seem too put out despite all that. It did drop Bor, however, and grabbed instead for the spear as the big man tumbled to the ground with blood seeping from his belly.

More were rushing in, the spearmen first as they slammed their weapons into the demon, more than half just snapping right off against his tough hide, the rest barely sinking in at all but still managing to force him back a few steps with each successive hit.

“Force him back!” Simone called, putting her body weight into her spear as she leaned into it.

The demon snarled, snapping her spear with the single hand gripping it where it had penetrated his body, causing her to stumble and fall forward, nearly into his grip.

“Pests!” He snapped, nevertheless falling back and away from the other attacks, his free hand batting away bolts and arrows with contemptuous ease.

In a flash of movement, so sudden and quick that they’d have missed it if they blinked, he vanished back into the shadows and was gone.

Simone gasped from where she lay on the ground, slowly picking herself up off the dirt as she looked around. She winced as she saw Bor on the ground, moving slowly as he rolled over to sit back against one wall, and crawled over to him.

“I think they know we’re here,” He grinned at her weakly.

Simone nodded, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Bor closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them to look at her. “You finish this, Simone. You hear me? I’m sick of living in fear of those things. Make it all worth something.”

“Or die trying,” Simone promised.

He laughed weakly, “Or that.”

“Healer!” She called.

“Don’t bother,” He shook his head. “Nothing we got for field work is going to help much, and we’re too damn far from home for anything more.”

Simone sighed as she pushed herself up to one knee, “We can try.”

“Save it for someone with a chance. It’s been an honor,” He said. “Tell the kids, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”

“I will.”

Bor nodded, closing his eyes. His breathing steadied, but it was fluttery and weak as Simone stood up, the healer running over.

“Check him over,” she said, ignoring what he’d told her. “If you think you can help, do it. If not, make sure he’s not in pain.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Simone limped a little as she left the injured man and healer, eyes focusing out over the barricade and into the shadows.

The demon would be back, she knew that for certain… and when he returned, he’d be brining hell with him.

“Dig in,” She snarled, making everyone jump too quickly. “We don’t have much time left to finish getting ready, so get moving!”

Elan, Caleb, whatever you’re going to do… you need to get it done. Now.

*****

Elan stared, almost blankly, as she examined the books the demoness had in her collection. Most of them were clearly in languages she couldn’t read, and had no familiarity to them, but not all. There were two, in fact, that drew her to them like a moth to flame.

She pulled them off the shelves and dropped them onto a nearby table where she could get a better look. As she did, one of them flipped open of its own accord and the pages whipped past in a blur before it came to a stop and lay still again.

Elan leaned in, eyes narrowing. She had learned a healthy distrust for things that acted on their own without any signs of what was motivating them, but she also recognized the feel of the books and knew that they were from the same source as the one she had found on Avalon.

A treatise on the art most absurd… what?

The title made no sense to her, even though she somehow understood all the words.

Absurd art? I don’t care about anything so nonsensi… Elan paused, reading more.

It was talking about rituals, she realized.

How is that an absurd art? And… this feels a little convenient.

Of course, she’d come to recognize that the books that had been showing up in her life since she’d emerged from ignorance had a habit of doing so at apparently convenient times. They weren’t normal books, so she’d come to accept such things.

In fact, the more she considered it, the less she was surprised that there would be such a book here. After all, the demons were conducting a ritual, it made sense that they would have gathered knowledge on the subject in preparation for it.

“Hey, girl! We found the stairs.”

Elan half turned, nodding to Sie who was standing at the far end of the room, glaring at her.

“Are you seriously wasting time reading? I’m sure the bitch here had some great stories socked away, but now isn’t the time.”

“This is a book on rituals,” Elan replied, irritated. “Probably one of the ones she used to plan the one they’re doing. You can’t solve every problem by hitting it with a stick, Sie.”

The other woman snorted, “You’re the one with a stick, girl. Mine has a point, makes it a spear.”

Elan rolled her eyes and slammed the books shut. She needed to keep them close, but realized that she couldn’t carry them around in a fight they were several times too large for any of her pouches and…

Her jaw dropped open as the books shrunk down, as if on command.

Elan didn’t even bother trying to make sense of any of it. She just scooped them into her pouch and secured the flap, turning around to see that Sie was staring with her own jaw wide. Elan just smiled as she walked over, and them past the other woman.

“I’ll save them for later, I suppose,” she said simply. “Let’s go.”

“Right…”

Sie shook her head and spun to follow Elan out of the demon Lady’s room, and toward the stairs that would take them to the roof.

*****

Chapter Twenty-Three

Northern Research Facility

Nimue had stopped the feed from Elan’s suit or, rather, had paused it at the point where the girl was reading the book.

Unlike Elan, she couldn’t actually read the text in question. She’d tried with similar tomes, many times… too many to count, if she were being honest. It never worked.

She did, however, recognize exactly what she was looking at all the same.

She had a very similar book in her own collection, an unreadable book, as did Merlin on Avalon.

These books had been known to exist, and to defy all attempts of rendering them legible despite many of the greatest minds of their time delving into the mysteries surrounding them. When Elanthielle had been able to decipher some of the contents of the book she had, and then she learned that the girl had actually read most of the one in Merlin’s possession, Nimue had become convinced of what they’d been sitting on.

Books written, not in any human language, but in something more fundamental.

If Elan was right, and Nimue had little reason to doubt the girl, the one that the demons had acquired was a source of information on rituals. That was something that checked out, it made sense, because she knew now that the one in Merlin’s possession was a treatise on the Martial, and her own was on magic in a general sense. The idea that each book was focused on a specific subject and could adapt itself to the reader was a game changer.

She actually found herself incredibly jealous of Elan, given that the child could read them, something she had never been able to do despite spending her own time delving into them like so many others before her.

If the demons based their ritual on the books, however… did they bring them here? Are they demonic texts?

No… that didn’t make sense, not unless the planning and infiltration portion of the invasion were practically eons longer than she believed them to be… and considerably more subtle, at less effective, than previously imagined as well.

The books had been discovered long before the last great age of humanity, appearing in the possession of collectors who didn’t know what they had, being discovered in the tombs of great inventors, in one case even just resting in a library collection despite not being anywhere on the index.

That sort of origin was suspicious, however, but not as much as she might have considered it to be.

Magic had a way of twisting the universe, making things happen while making the observers question whether they’d actually seen what they thought they had. If the books were, as she now suspected, constructs of magic… it would explain a great deal about their origins.

It still begged the question, of course… who had created them? Seeded them to Earth?

And why?

For the moment, however, Nimue didn’t have time to ponder questions of philosophy, and while the question of who was certainly more relevant than was the current situation, she didn’t think any answer would be forthcoming in any meaningful time.

What she could do, however, was begin using the information to help the current situation as best she could.

Magic was not unknown to humanity though its application, especially in last great age, had dwindled to near nothing due to the inherent instability and unreliability of magical disciplines.

Great things could be accomplished, most certainly, with magic… but it was incredibly difficult to accomplish them twice. Something about magic seemed to lend itself to single application solutions that worked with incredible effectiveness, but simply could not be replicated.

The more potent the application, the more it agitated against being replicated in anyway.

Small simple applications could be used many times, effectively for so long as the wielder opted, but the more power and complexity put into the work, the harder it was to in anyway duplicate.

Technology was a far more understanding and lenient discipline by comparison.

That, however, didn’t mean that the phenomenon went unstudied.

Nimue, an inkling of an idea beginning to form in her mind, delved deep into the research she guarded.

There was a way.

*****

Citadel

The Viceroy snarled as he yanked the last splinter of a spear from his flesh, casting the human weapon aside angrily, stalking into the night and through the ruins that surrounded the great tower. He had not expected the humans to have managed to dig themselves into the base of the tower quite so effectively, it actually boggled the mind that they’d done so in so little time.

I just left that area! How is this even possible?

How, though, was immaterial. Removing them from their nest was the issue and, while he might well be able to do so on his own, he wasn’t fool enough to risk it. Humans had long been tricky little devils when it came to the art of combat. Even the least of them could sometimes pull literal magic out of their arse in the defense of themselves or others.

He shuddered, remembering a specific time when one of his peers had elected to torture a young mother through her children. It was something they’d all done at one point or another, and nothing untoward had been in the air that time either, not until the first drop of the child’s blood fell on the screaming woman’s forehead.

He’d never seen a higher-level demon torn limb from limb before, not even in combat with other demons, but he saw it that day.

The woman and her children had died, of course, but it had taken far too many lives to ensure that ending.

He doubted such would happen in this case. Human magic was buried deeply in the emotional range they normally suppressed… for, frankly obvious reasons if that were the sort of thing a single weak woman were capable of when stressed. Put enough humans under serious stress and they’d tear the planet apart if they didn’t suppress it most of the time.

At any rate, that event had long ago taught him caution, so the Viceroy would secure more forces before taking back the Citadel.

As long as the humans are content with camping out on the first floor it matters little anyway.

*****

Sindri grinned as he waited, back pressed against a wall next to a corner, for the pursuers to catch up to him.

In a lot of ways, he had to admit he’d missed killing the little pests.

They’d stopped a long time ago, mostly because it was pointless. After killing so many, it was downright depressing to realize that the demons still had more fodder than when they’d started it all. A couple, or even a few, of their kind just couldn’t make any kind of dent in the population of a group that propagated not only by various forms of sexual reproduction, but also by infesting and turning the local population over time.

Now, he supposed, with almost all humans dead or changed, they might be able to start making some headway into the problem… but until they’d met Elan and she’d dragged them out of their little hole in the wall in the city, they hadn’t seen much point if he were being brutally honest.

It was one thing to fight and kill to save people, but once it was done and everyone was dead, it rapidly became a soul killing thing to just keep slaughtering the poor beasts affected by the change.

However, now that they had a reason to do it again, he could feel the burn in his blood once more, the call to battle.

It felt… good.

The demons rushed out of the alley at that moment, just as he slammed his hammer into the lead monster’s gut and unleashed the lightning once more.

The demon didn’t even have time to scream before it was turned to plasma very briefly, the lightning bolt continuing on to strike at its fellows in a chain reaction jumping from one to another, leaving dozens dead with ironically worse wounds the later in the process they were killed as the lightning lost the power to just vaporize them and merely managed horrific burns.

With the demons scattered from the attack, Sindri turned and ran again, laughing softly as he started looking for another choke point to ambush from.

Three things one should never do, He thought with far too much amusement. First, never trust a demon at its word. Second, never assume a human is helpless… and third, never chase an Exile when he’s clearly leaving a trail.

Only one thing was bothering him at the moment.

He hadn’t seen any sign of Brokkr’s flames in some time.

*****

Brokkr’s eyes flitted to the sky as it was split again by a bolt of lightning from the darkness.

It was good to know his brother was still fighting, but for the moment he was focused on something else.

His wound was nearly healed up. Only momentary sparks of electrical plasma danced along the gash now, a sure sign that he was essentially fit once more. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one out in the shanties.

A bunch of kids had been sheltering in one of the ruins, their parents probably dead by this point he was figuring, because there weren’t any other humans alive for some distance as best he could tell. This presented him with a problem, though, because he couldn’t be quite so gleeful with his powers with them around.

If he were, not only was killing the children himself a significant possibility, but he’d certainly draw every demon for some distance down on their heads, and he wasn’t about to do that.

“Easy you lot,” He said gruffly but without rancor. “It’s ugly out there, so you’d best wait here for a bit, but you’ll probably need to get moving before long I’m afraid.”

The children looked at him, no trust in their eyes but with less fear than a short while earlier.

“Where are we supposed to go, mister?” One of the older boys asked, sounding practically defeated. “I tried to find someone earlier… there’s no one left.”

Easy enough to understand why he feels defeated in that case, Brokkr thought. “I’d say it depends. If we can get this cleared up fast, you’ll leave with us if you want. There’s a safe place, a long way from here, that would be proud to have ye.”

“What about our parents?”

He winced at that one, eyes flitting over to the girl who’d spoken, it wasn’t a question he was fit to answer in his mind. “That I dinna know, lass. A lot of people fled North, maybe they were there?”

He doubted it. Parents defending their kids wouldn’t have run off without them, but it was possible some of them did, maybe due to injuries or because they believed the kids were already dead. Hiding in ruins like this certainly would make it easy to make that mistake, all of the destroyed buildings looked like one another to his eye.

At any rate, it was an easy answer, and might not be a complete lie, so it was good enough for the moment.

“Keep yer heads down,” he ordered them firmly, remembering Jol’s childhood and wondering briefly if any of them would even bother to pretend to listen. “I’ll be back for ye. Ok?”

They nodded slowly as he started to go but hesitated and turned back briefly.

“If I’m not back by dawn, high here for the day and stay out of the sun,” He told them. “Then go North, there’ll be a trail you can follow. It will take you to a cave. You go into that cave, and you ask for Merlin. Understand?”

Most of them shook their head, but the older ones nodded hesitantly, so he made them repeat what he’d said until they got it right.

“Good, remember what I told you and I’ll see you later,” he said as he crawled up and out of the rubble.

“Wait!”

“What is it, lass?” He asked, looking back.

“Where are you going?” the girl asked him, tone almost pleading.

“I’m going to kill me a few more demons,” He smiled toothily at her. “See you later, lass.”

Then he was gone.

*****

The Viceroy found the closest members of the swarm sent out into the ruins, milling around like lost little puppies as they kicked at the dirt and petulantly complained about something he had no interest in discerning.

“What do you sorry fools think you are doing?” He snarled as he revealed himself, stepping out of the darkness right into the middle of the pack.

Several tensed as though to attack him, he noted with amusement, but most cowered away as they should.

“Master Viceroy,” one of the more intelligent among the horde simpered. “We lost the trail of the one we were seeking.”

“That is no longer the primary concern,” He growled. “While you lot were running about the ruins here, enjoying yourselves, a group of humans took over the base of the citadel. Gather yourselves and return to the outer courtyard. Any others you find on the way, bring them with you.”

They stared at him, wide eyed and hesitant after that proclamation, and he understood why. The sheer attraction of the power the traitors had running through their blood was something that even he could feel from where he was standing. This was not, however, the time for such concerns and the horde needed to know that orders were orders.

“Go!” He roared suddenly, his voice shaking the air and disturbing the layer of dust and ash on everything surrounding them, the sound terrifying the group into turning and bolting toward the Citadel at a dead run.

That much is taken care of, at least, He sighed as he turned back to the ruins and surveyed what he could see.

The assault had done quite the job on the buildings, he noted dispassionately. Very little was still standing undamaged, or as undamaged as the place had ever been, he supposed. He was not one to frequent the human population. If he wanted toys to play with, he could simply have them brought to him by underlings, but he knew a few of the, now former, landmarks of the area and they were all gone.

In the distance he could feel the gentle tug of the traitor’s power…s? Yes, two of them, he realized with some concentration. He’d thought that likely, given the display visible from the Citadel, but it was always nice to have confirmation.

Sadly, he didn’t have time to indulge himself at the moment. The humans occupying the citadel were, by far, the most important priority to deal with. So, with that in mind, he refocused his intentions on the next largest and closest group of the little fodder beasts they’d unleased here and flickered away in a blur of motion, intent on gathering enough forces to utterly stomp the humans into submission once and for all.

*****

“Movement in the courtyard, Simone!”

Simone nodded gruffly, walking over to the barricade where she could risk a look out into the night beyond.

The scout was right, of course. She could see the movement as demons emerged from the ruins and began to congregate out at the very edge of their line of sight. Simone sighed, knowing what was coming.

“They’re just… waiting out there.”

She didn’t look around to see who’d spoken, it didn’t really matter.

“They’re waiting for reinforcements,” Simone said aloud. “Gathering forces.”

“Demons don’t do that, they’re mindless beasts…”

“Don’t.” Simone cut off that objection with a slash of her hand through the air. “The weaker ones are near as makes no difference to being mindless, I agree, but not all of them. The one we fought earlier, he wasn’t mindless, he was testing us. Now he’s gathering his forces. When he’s ready, he’ll send them in against us.”

That was the real kicker, of course. Simone knew that the demon wouldn’t lead them in, but rather would send them in. Mostly to die, but in such a way that would cost her people ground and lives by inches and drops of blood. When the time was right, he’d attack himself and try to end the fight in a single blow.

“How long before they come in?”

That was a good question, but it was one that she had no answer to.

“Impossible to say,” She said after a moment’s thought. “It depends on how many demons he can find, and how fast he finds them.”

She straightened up from where she’d taken position and slapped the nearest man on the shoulder.

“I need to get some things done,” She said. “Keep watch, tell me the second anything changes.”

“You’ve got it, Simone,” He promised.

*****

Chapter Twenty-Four

Citadel

Elan eyed the stairs that led up to the roof with a jaundiced eye. The path was narrow and not conducive to survival if there was any sort of trap in place for them, but they’d located no other way directly to the roof either.

“I’m going first,” she said, drawing the sidearm from her holster and giving the weapon a quick check.

“I go.”

She glanced over to Tur briefly, mildly amused by his stilted speech, but shook her head.

“Sorry, big guy,” She said. “But I need to be up front. You don’t want to be between me and the targets.”

Caleb laid a hand on Tur’s shoulder, shaking his head when the bigger man turned to look at him.

“She’s really not kidding, I’ve seen her use that thing,” Caleb smirked suddenly. “Her aim could use some work.”

“Oh, screw you, Caleb,” Elan snorted. “At least I can hit the walls, ceiling, or floor if I fire this thing inside.”

“One time!” Caleb objected.

“We still haven’t figured out how you managed to miss everything,” Elan laughed, shaking her head. “That practically had to be some magical power you have that none of us can figure out…. Not that I’d want to have the power to miss everything, mind you, but I’m sure it has some uses.”

Caleb was sputtering as she left him in her wake, taking the steps two at a time and accelerating as she progressed. He glared after her briefly before getting it together and pursuing her up the stairs.

“Is that normal?” Sie asked Jol as the remaining three followed.

Jol merely shrugged, “I’ve given up on trying to figure out what normal is ever since I met Elan.”

*****

Lis watched in silence as the ritual continued, the assembled rune masters under her direction had performed flawlessly thus far, and she could feel the thrum of power building as it pulsed in time to the heartbeat of the planet.

With just a little more patience, she knew that the job would be complete, and she’d be free to move on to other things. Hopefully the delay of a year wouldn’t play too harshly against her when dealing with the Overseers, but with her sister as a scapegoat she was fairly confident that she would be able to pull through with very limited blowback.

What is a year in the scheme of things? I’ve been here over five hundred of them now, just preparing for this moment. One more or less won’t even be noticed by most of the First Circle.

Of course, it wasn’t the First that she would be defending herself too. Not the True First at least. They were more focused on other, far more significant, fronts in the war everlasting. She would be answering to their lackeys, of which she knew all too well she was one.

That was why her sister had neither been forgiven, nor killed, for her failure at the City.

Doing either before the petty bureaucrats got to decide her fate would have left them with only her to turn their focus to.

Now that the moment was upon her, though, she had to admit to feeling a delicious sort of tension.

All we need now is a little cathartic violence to sort this out right and proper.

There were times when Lis was fairly certain that she had some minor gift for precognition, since she’d often had thoughts like that at just the perfect moment, and this one was no different.

A bit of motion caught her eye, and she pivoted her head just in time to see a figure bolt up the stairs and spin around to confront them, a human weapon she recognized in hand.

Oho, Lis chortled softly as she turned to the figure and stretched out sore and kicked muscles. These must be with the group downstairs we were told about.

She watched, amused, as the figure…a girl, unless she was quite mistaken, instantly turned the lethal weapon on the rune master nearest her and opened fire.

The lethal device spat its payload, only for the blast to splatter harmlessly off the shield that had been erected around the masters.

“Did you truly think we’d not have prepared for that?” She asked, genuinely amused by the attempt, as she vaguely noted several others appearing behind the girl. “Protecting the ritual was of prime importance, particularly after last year.”

*****

Elan swallowed as she saw the fire from the weapon ineffectively dissipate against the magical shield. She considered her options briefly, lowering the weapon to take out the ground under them instead, but stopped.

I can’t, she realized.

Taking out the ground might allow her to eliminate the masters controlling the ritual, but Nimue had already been clear about the results of that. The ritual was in motion now, merely stopping it wouldn’t be enough, they needed to reverse it.

And she could not do that if she destroyed the Rite Circle.

Slowly, she turned to look at the demon who’d spoken, her mind awhirl as she looked for alternative actions she could take.

Aloud, Elan opted to respond, however, if only to buy time.

“It was worth a shot,” she said with a casual, or feigned casual, shrug.

“I suppose,” the demon smiled at her. “Though I must ask… who does your tailoring? I’m terribly sorry, but I mistook you for a young boy at first.”

Elan reflexively looked down at her chest before flushing and putting eyes back on the demon who was, of course, all but laughing uproariously at her reaction.

“Not all of us have the benefits of armored skin to show off,” She responded, before forcing a sneer into her own tone. “But at least your skin has one good thing worth showing off.”

That apparently struck home, the winged demon looking like she’d just been slapped before she got a hold of herself.

“Not bad,” She admitted grudgingly. “Not bad at all. From what I’ve heard, I believe you met my sister once?”

“A year ago, yes,” Elan said as she hopped down a couple steps and landed on the roof of the building proper. “Not much of a host, but I guess that runs in the family.”

“We do get so little practice,” the demon admitted. “Not many visitors these days. All those weak little humans died out so long ago. Just their vermin descendants now, and you lot have absolutely no sense of decorum anyway. Out of curiosity, whom am I addressing?”

“Elanthielle of Atlantis,” Elan said firmly.

“Elanthielle of Atlantis,” the demon said back the words, as though tasting them. “Very nice. I can feel the power in the name, it’s young… but growing. I am Ser’Lis, you may call me Lis, I feel rather informal at the moment.”

Elan nodded as she felt the others moving to spread out behind her, hoping they were looking for openings while she tried the distraction angle.

“Lis then,” She said. “Call me Elan, in that case. No reason to stand on ceremony.”

“Indeed not, the ritual will be doing that well enough for us as it is,” Lis laughed pointedly.

Elan nodded, more grudging than anything else, as her eyes swept the rooftop, looking for something… for anything… that might serve to turn this into a fighting chance. She hated the fact that she’d come all this way, done everything she’d done, only to face defeat here… and not even defeat in a fight, but to lose while being forced to watch?

That would not stand.

There has to be a way…

*****

Norther Research Facility

Nimue had shifted her full attention to the feed coming back from Elan’s armor, not merely the visual information but the datalinks from the armor’s scanners as well.

It’s over.

There wasn’t anything to be done, she was looking at a perfect defense.

Oh, with more time and planning, not to mention access to some resources that may or may not exist any longer, they could certainly break it down. At the current moment in time, however, it was all over. Nothing Elan had, nothing the others had, and nothing that they could get to them would break that shield.

“Nimue.”

She looked up, frowning as she saw Merlin projecting into her domain. That wasn’t done. It was akin to just barging into someone else’s home without bothering to even knock. By the old standards, she’d be justified in inflicting some significant pain on him for this transgression.

Today, however, she wasn’t in the mood.

“Why are you here?” Nimue asked dully, focus returning to the datalinks.

“We need a way through that shield.”

“If I had one, I’d have already told her about it,” Nimue snapped. “There’s nothing they have or can lay their hands on that will break the shield.”

“What about the roof, can they go under and blast their way up?” Merlin asked, frowning with concentration.

“No. The shield isn’t bound that way, but even if it were and they tried it, they would destroy the ritual etchings,” Nimue replied. “If they do that, then there’s no chance of reversing any of this.”

“Does it cover the top?” Merlin pressed, refusing to give up.

“Of course, it does,” Nimue rolled her eyes as she brought up a stored image from when Elan had attempted to blast one of the Rune Masters. “See? You can spot curve of the shield, extrapolated out it curves up and around at about twenty feet, same below the rooftop level.”

Merlin scowled but fell silent now.

Apparently, he’d run out of bad ideas that I’d already considered and rejected, Nimue supposed. Who knew that was the secret to getting the old fool to shut up for once?

“With time we don’t have, I could analyze the frequency of the shield and find a counter to cancel it out,” She said. “Or just devise some overpowered focused explosive to overload the runes that deploy the shield without damaging anything else. I can give you a thousand ways through that shield, but not a single one that we can do with the assets available on site.”

Merlin inclined his head silently, vanishing a moment later, presumably to return to his own domain.

Good riddance, she thought glumly as she continued to watch. As much as she wished she could shut it down and just turn her back, the part of her that remembered the height of humanity wouldn’t let her just turn away from their last stand.

If they were to fall here, once and for all, then she would witness it and carry the stories forward for as long as she remained.

*****

Citadel

“I’ll break this shield,” Tur swore as he hefted his axe, crackling power surrounding it for a moment before he slammed it down into the energy field with all the force his body could provide, only to see it bounce off and almost rip itself from his hands as he struggled to control the rebound.

“Don’t bother,” Jol said as he eyed the field, twisting his own hammer in his hands as he considered the best way to attack. “The brothers gave you two the best they could in the time we had, but the enhancements on your weapons won’t do anything to that field.”

“What about your hammer?” Elan asked, softly, glancing back at him as the demon looked on, more amused than anything.

Jol hefted it up, focusing his mind and emotions to awaken the runes the brothers had inscribed on it. Electrical power began to crackle across the rooftop, dancing from structure to structure and rebounding back to the hammer.

He thrust it up suddenly, a cry tearing itself from his throat as a bolt shattered the sky briefly, slamming down from the black of the night above them and emptying itself into the hammer. Jol spun with the power, using everything he had as he lashed out at the field with the powered blow that sent lightning crackling across the field as it licked at the magical energy and danced over the surface, seemingly looking for any way in.

Anyway at all.

It found none.

Jol panted slight as he let it go, only have the energy to shake his head slightly as he locked eyes with Elan.

She swallowed, but nodded in return before she turned back to the demon.

“Impressive, is it not?” Lis asked, smiling lightly at her, smugly.

“Very,” Elan admitted, not seeing any reason not to. “Don’t suppose you’d like to come out so we can have a nice little fight here?”

“Oh, let’s wait a short while,” Lis chuckled from within the barrier. “Once we’re done, trust me my lovely child, we’ll have plenty of time for fighting… and other things.”

Elan grimaced, not liking the insinuation but well expecting it from the likes of the demon she was speaking with.

“A year ago, I was visited,” She said abruptly, something in her mind abruptly clearing. “A disturbing experience, I have to admit.”

Lis looked confused, “Alright…?”

Elan didn’t blame her; the statement did seem a little out of context.

“I didn’t know anything about them then, you know,” Elan said. “But your sister downstairs? She put a few things into context for me. What is your opposite number, I mean the official name?”

Lis stared blankly for a moment, then of a sudden her expression twisted to something closer to hate than anything Elan had ever seen, and she’d seen her own face when she finally caught up with… him.

“Those… dregs. They should never have been created, faulty beasts that they are,” Lis swore, taking a breath. “Which ones did you see?”

“They didn’t introduce themselves,” Elan said conversationally as she stepped closer to the field, hand reaching out to almost brush it. “When they first appeared to me, however, they appeared like… wheels within wheels, angles and corners that… I don’t know, I don’t have the words to explain it.”

“Seraphim,” Lis spat. “Mindless drones, but deadly foes. So, it was the work of the Chosen, the delays we suffered last year. Thank you for revealing that, honestly we had thought that they were all gone.”

“They are, far as I know anyway,” Elan shrugged. “Those two were the last, to hear them tell it. They offered to bring me with them when they left.”

Silence fell, and Elan could feel the eyes on her. Not merely Lis, either, but Caleb, Jol, and the other pair.

“And you stayed? Foolish girl, it is said that the place the Seraphim call home is a transcendent paradise,” Liz snorted. “Any sane person would have taken the offer.”

“If I were sane, I somehow doubt they’d have made it in the first place.”

The demoness inclined her head slightly, acceding the possibility.

“Why’d you stay?” Caleb asked, aghast.

The demon laughed uproariously, “You can’t tell? I can see it in her and I don’t even know the girl. She’s here to kill, boy. Kill me, kill my minions. All that at least, maybe she’ll even keep going if she ever finishes off the last of us. She’ll make an excellent demon, assuming she survives the change.”

Elan didn’t deny it, her mind was mostly on something else if she were honest about it.

“They gave me advice, nothing I really understood though…”

“That sounds about right. Cryptic fools.” Lis muttered, eyes dropping. “When they abandoned my plane, they did so without warning. Our defenses were based on our faith… and their power. Our faith survived their departure, but the loss of their power broke the defenses first… and our faith followed in short order.”

She shook herself slightly, an expression in her eyes almost akin to wonder shining through, “I hadn’t remembered that until just now. Most of my memories from… before… are gone. I was… much like you, once.”

Elan nodded, “I was starting to put that together. All of you were like us, weren’t you?”

“Human? More or less,” Lis shrugged. “There are variations that are beyond your comprehension, but yes. All of us were once like you, for a given definition of like.”

That was perhaps the one thing that Elan had both wanted and never wanted to have confirmed, however many hints at it she had found. She’s seen the horrors that demons brought and didn’t want to think of them as being human once.

Part of her wondered if they might become such again, but she firmly pushed that away. Even if it were possible, she couldn’t do it, and that meant that she only had one recourse when dealing with them. She didn’t want to think of them as anything more than what she saw. It would make doing what had to be done all the harder.

“What did they tell you?” Lis asked, leaning forward slightly.

“They told me about things of power, once of which I already had,” Elan said softly, holding up an empty hand. “They told me that my fate was in my own hands…”

Lis laughed openly at that one.

“They told you that?” She snorted, shaking her head. “That likely makes you the only person to hear that from those misbegotten bastards of an uncaring father. They see themselves as fate and have chained up many who dared defy their will.”

Elan shrugged, she didn’t know if that were true or not, but it didn’t matter.

“They were leaving, I suppose all our fates are in our own hands now,” she said simply.

“Indeed,” Lis said, smirking of a sudden, “For another short while, at least. Then your fate is very much in the hands of something else.”

“Exactly,” Elan flipped open one of her pouches and drew out the small book within, allowing it to settle in her grip as she felt it return to full size. “But it was the objects of power that I was thinking about just now. I found one already, then just yesterday I discovered another… and a few moments ago, in your study, I found this.”

Lis had gone still, eyes locked onto the book in the girl’s hand.

“You have no idea what you’re holding, child,” She spat the last word.

“A treatise on rites and runic magicks,” Elan said, casually reading off the cover. “The book I suspect helped you set all of this up, no?”

“It is mine!” Lis took a halting step forward, only the humm of the shield causing her to halt as she glared impotently through it at the girl who wasn’t even looking up at her.

“I don’t think you can read it, though,” Elan continued, sounding confused. “How did you manage to decode what you did? You got close…”

She flipped the book open to the section that it had opened up to on its own earlier, a finger tracing a line down the page as she skimmed the ritual penned so carefully there.

“Very close, in fact, but not… perfect.”

“You lie,” Lis snarled. “I did everything it said, I was scrupulous to ensure that every detail in the imagery were followed.”

“I know,” Elan smiled slowly, eyes drifting along the rooftop. “That’s what tipped me off.”

*****

Chapter Twenty-Five

Avalon

“Brilliant.”

Merlin frowned, splitting off part of his focus to monitor the feed he was getting from the Northern Research Facility and Nimue. The other intelligence hadn’t had much good to say thus far and he hadn’t expected anything different, so her suddenly praising anything caught his attention.

“Nimue?” He interjected, projecting himself into the other facility.

His core was still on Avalon, of course. It was just a remote projection, but it availed him more fully of the integrated systems built into the facility than he could manage with a conventional communications contact.

“Absolutely brilliant!”

Merlin blinked, confused but more in a bemused sort of way than the frustrating ‘the world is going to end’ way that he had been confused up to this point.

“Nimue, what-?”

“She’s absolutely brilliant, I’d have never spotted it,” Nimue turned around, eyes alighting on Merlin as he prepared himself for the inevitable chastising she would give him for, again, intruding without invitation. “Where did you find that girl?”

“Elan?” Merlin asked, rather certain that one of them was confused at the moment, and wishing he was more certain of which one it was. “I believe it would be more accurate to say that she found me.”

“Of course, she did,” Nimue rolled her eyes. “You’d have completely overlooked her if you were looking.”

“Here now,” He objected. “That’s uncalled for.”

Nimue completely ignored him, turning back to the feeds she was monitoring.

“She spotted something I’d have never noticed,” Nimue repeated. “The rites the demon used to level their protection field were copied directly from a book.”

Merlin raised an eyebrow, “All rather scandalous, I’m sure, but the fact that they’re stealing someone else’s work is hardly-…”

“Please try to stay caught up,” Nimue scoffed. “Magic is not science, Merlin. I know that you’re completely worthless at the subject, but that doesn’t mean all of us are.”

Did I really project myself here just to be insulted?

Merlin sighed.

Apparently, yes. The answer to that question was… yes.

“Very well,” He said aloud. “What is the importance of it being copied then?”

“It’s not that it was copied,” Nimue corrected him without turning. “It’s where they copied it from. It was in one of the books.”

Merlin felt himself drift back slightly, his awareness and understanding of the situation clarifying in an instant.

The Books.

Those things were not books, despite the appearance they seemed to favor. They were something beyond the conventional in every degree, possibly as aware as the Intelligences were, even. Merlin knew damnably little about the irritating things aside from the fact that they could only be contained if they wanted to be, and generally that only happened when they were exactly where they intended to be in the first place.

Elan discovering the one on Avalon had been a minor concern at first, few humans could read even the slightest piece of the things, so he’d not even thought twice about her interest in it. Hundreds, if not thousands, of others had done the same over the centuries only to wind up leaving dejected with nothing to show for the wasted time.

I should have realized it was different given that Elan had no way of knowing what she was handling at all, yet still became obsessed with the damn thing.

Merlin, personally, had a strong distaste for the books, all of them, because of the way they hid their power and utility. He knew they were more than they seemed, anyone with access to their history knew that much… it was just impossible to trust the damn things because of how much they kept hidden.

“I was unaware that the demons could read those,” he said, through the projected version of clenched teeth.

“They can’t,” Nimue grinned. “And Elan just proved it.”

“What.”

“The demon copied the rite verbatim,” Nimue explained. “Without any alterations from the layout in the book.”

Merlin nodded slowly, “Yes…?”

“The shield rite is one that we were able to partially reconstruct, ages ago,” Nimue said. “But like the demon, we couldn’t read the book. Unlike her, we realized why it was only a partially successful rite when we tried it.”

Merlin hated being put in a situation where he had to drag answers out of people, let alone out of another intelligence like this. He shifted irritably and waved his hands to encourage her to continue.

Nimue again rolled her eyes at him, but her excitement was too much for her to fall into old behaviors.

“The rite is intended to be altered, based on conditions, materials, an endless variety of variables,” She said. “The demon enacted a faulty shield.”

“A shield that still stood up to everything they have in place,” Merlin reminded her testily.

“It isn’t about power,” Nimue said, returning her full focus to the feeds. “It is about the specific application of that power. Our girl is about to give you a lesson, so be a good boy. Watch and learn.”

“Our girl?” Merlin snorted. “You tried to kidnap her and only let her go when she threatened to…”

“Shhhhh!”

*****

Citadel

“You’re bluffing.” Lis spat, eyes narrow as she watched the girl darkly.

“I don’t even know what that is,” Elan shrugged. “But if it means lying… well, let’s find out, shall we? Caleb.”

“What do you need?”

Elan pointed, “You, right there. Jol.”

“About time we get something to do.”

She just pointed, leaving Jol to lightly jog over to the spot she’d pointed out as she tapped Tur on his shoulder, which was actually over her head.

“What?” He grumbled.

“You two come with me,” Elan instructed, walking as she did and leading them around the dome of the force field that was keeping them out. “This is going to need power and timing, I think we’ve got the first part covered… as for the second, well, let’s have some fun.”

Tur and Sie exchanged confused glances but, lacking anything better to offer, did as they were bade, and followed Elan around, only stopping where she told them to.

Elan looked over the field carefully, privately amazed at how it was suddenly snapping into place in her head. She could see the mistakes and, more importantly, the reason for the mistakes.

“What are you doing?”

She ignored the demon for a moment, making sure that she was right in the calculations she was running in her head, and only after that looked up to smile at the demoness.

“Just breaking something,” Elan told her.

“I told you, you can’t,” Lis snapped at her. “I did everything perfectly.”

“Yes, you did,” Elan nodded, looking up and around as she got an eye on each of the others. “Is everyone ready?”

“Ready for what?” Jol complained. “You haven’t told us what we’re doing yet!”

“Ah, right,” Elan flushed a little, realizing that she’d actually forgotten that little fact. “Sorry about that. The shield is created by spelling out a word in the universal language.”

“What word?” Caleb called back from where he was standing.

“There’s nothing exactly that fits perfectly,” Elan said. “But just say it’s the word ‘protect’ for now, alright?”

“Alright…?”

He didn’t sound certain about that, but Elan wasn’t going to worry about it.

“The universe automatically does whatever it is told to do, if it’s… expressed in that language,” Elan explained, the words spilling forth as she was still excitedly running all the possibilities through her mind.

The universal language was the reason the books were indecipherable to most people, she suddenly knew without any doubt. It was at the core of magic, and science, and intelligence… and everything else.

She was almost certain that, with the right word, she could breathe life itself into something… or wipe it out in a flash.

Elan wasn’t certain if she should be happy or not that she didn’t know any of those words. The universal language was somehow innately protected, either by something inherent in itself, or by an outside force. She didn’t know which, but it was the only thing that explained why the universe even still existed.

With the invasion and conquest, after all, there would have been plenty of people willing to burn it all just to spite the demons. Hell, she couldn’t even blame them for thinking that exactly, she’d come close more than once herself. If she’d know the right words at some of the lower times in her life, Elan couldn’t swear that she wouldn’t have wiped it all out just to end the demons, Venadrin, and everything else before going on to see her parents again.

Of course, there was more to it. For small things, a spoken word might do, for larger more solid ones, you’d have to write it the way that the demon here had.

To wipe out all demons, everywhere, well… Elan wasn’t actually certain how you’d have to express that, but she was quite certain that merely writing it down or saying it aloud wouldn’t cut it.

Thankfully, for the moment, she wasn’t trying to do anything of the sort. She just needed to crack the shield, and that was something entirely easier to accomplish.

Pity she didn’t make the even more beginner’s mistake of putting the word outside the shield, Elan thought with grim humor. That would have made this even easier.

Lis hadn’t been that foolish, however, so there would have to be a little play with the shield to make it work.

“Everyone, I need you to all strike with everything you have on three,” she said, snapping her staff out to its full extension with a flick behind her back before she started to pour her own focus into it, causing the weapon to begin vibrating slightly in her grip even as it began to shed glowing particulates that were slowly drifting down, only to vanish before touching the roof.

She could see the others get ready, “Three… two… One!”

They all struck true as one, their weapons hammering and slashing into the shield with all the power the desperate group of five could manage.

All of which achieved precisely… nothing.

Lis grinned, “I told you. You can do nothing.”

“And I told you,” Elan grinned. “We’re just having fun.”

Her eyes didn’t move from where she was staring, however, even as she spoke.

The word had shifted slightly in response to the strike, wavering and almost fading briefly before it had returned to full power.

She didn’t anchor it properly, Elan thought with satisfaction as she confirmed her guess. The diagram in the book doesn’t include the anchor, because it varies with every location, or method of expressing the word. She could follow the diagram, but she could not read the theory that lay behind it.

She nodded confidently, looking up to the others, “Ok, we can do this. Caleb, you strike first, then Tur. Jol, you hit it the third time, followed by Sie. I will strike last. After I hit, Caleb goes again, and we loop. Understood?”

Everyone looked uncertain, but they all nodded.

“Do not stop until I say so,” She glared at them all. “We only get one chance. Is everyone clear?”

Again, none of them looked particularly clear on anything, but Jol summed up the response with a snort.

“Elan, I’ve seen you assault an entire city of demons and win. Not one piece of any of this is clear to me, but I’ll play the game because you’re calling the shots.”

“I’m with the idiot,” Caleb grinned from the other side of the roof, getting a dirty look from Jol that he cheerfully ignored.

Tur and Sie weren’t nearly so trusting in her, but they both nodded firmly anyway.

“There’s nowhere else we have to be, girl,” Tur said simply as he flipped his axe over in his hands. “Might as well live and die here as anywhere else. Sie?”

The spear maiden sighed theatrically, “If all of you are in, who am I to call you fools for trying this? I mean, you are, quite clearly, but sometimes it takes a fool to tread where wiser men fear to go. I’m in.”

“Alright then… Caleb, count it off.”

*****

Lis stared, uncertain but making an effort to hide it as she watched the actions of the humans outside her shield. She was confident in what she’d accomplished, but she wasn’t sure what exactly she was seeing at the moment either, and that left her some pause.

The boyish looking one went first, the red-gold blade in his hand sparking with power as he brought it up and prepared to strike.

Where did they acquire these weapons? Even the weakest of them is beyond anything the humans should still have access too… and it was rare, even at their peak, for humans to carry magical blades and other weapons like this…

It was a puzzle, one that she didn’t have the answer to, and Ser’Lis was distinctly unhappy with that fact.

The first strike did little to nothing, as she’d expected, and she began to relax just a little as she watched the next, the big man with the axe, slam into the shield to middling effect with no lasting repercussions.

The third and fourth followed the same pattern, bringing her attention back to the girl who seemed to be in charge, young though she might be.

Lis watched the staff snap around, a blinding motion that she was almost unable to follow, and the field rippled from the force of the blow… but quickly solidified again.

She’s bluffing. My rite was perfect.

Nevertheless, the failure did not slow the humans. They struck again, following the pattern, and with increasing speed as they got into a rhythm, leaving the field little time to settle after each strike. Still, there was no sign of it failing, and Lis began to relax even more.

Then she spotted it.

It wasn’t the field that was failing, but smoke was slowly rising from the runic inscriptions she’d painstakingly engraved into the structure of the rooftop. She stared, wide eyed, then snapped her head back up to see the staff slam home yet again.

Part of her wanted to rage, to tell them to stop, but of course that would only encourage them. She forced herself to remain silent, hoping that they would not see the progress and potential success ahead of them before they gave up from exhaustion.

Either way, though, Lis began to prepare herself for a real fight.

*****

“Almost through!” Elan said, her eyes flicking down to the writing as it began to glow, and not with magical power. No, the heat was clearly visible as it poured off the inscriptions. “Keep going!”

The sounds of the weapons striking true had started as a regular staccato, but now it was almost a single long rumble that had no defined end nor beginning.

Elan automatically hammered her staff in on cue, letting Caleb take his turn as she continued to monitor the runic inscriptions, part of her mind drifting as she looked around the scene and understood what she was reading.

The Books were not written by mortal hands; knew that in her core in a way that she’d known few things in her life. They were power incarnate, guided by something she didn’t understand, and they had a way of affecting those who could read them.

All of that was something she understood now, though she didn’t know how yet, Elan had a feeling of certainty that she was on the road to proper understanding.,

Boom.

Her staff struck true again. She ticked off the sound of the others blows, then again sent her staff into the field.

Boom.

The rolling thunder went on and on as a sizzling sound could just barely be detected if she were to listen very carefully.

When the shield shattered, however, there was little warning.

The runes stood up to the heat with no signs of critical failure until they suddenly turned to slag, the material they were written in melting from the stress as the shield shattered and vanished in an instant.

Elan’s cheer of victory died in her throat, however, as Ser’Lis went from standing and watching to flying straight at her in the blink of an eye.

*****

Chapter Twenty-Six

Citadel

“This looks bad, Simone.”

The woman nodded as she planted her spear on the ground and looked out over the barricade.

Bad was a bit of an understatement, she knew. The horde that was forming outside had to be almost every demon that had gone out to hunt the brothers, all of them now looking back at the citadel with hungry and angry eyes.

She hoped the brothers had escaped their wrath, but figured that the odds were good that they’d bought all the time they could, and paid for it with their lives. It was her job now, and that of the people of Atlantis and those from the city here, to ensure that time had not been purchased in vain.

“Stand ready,” She ordered, taking a place at the front line. “We need to buy time for Elan and the others to do their work.”

The men and women with her nodded. The Atlanteans had seen battle in various forms already and she knew they would hold. Those of the local city, though, Simone was far less confident in.

Still, there weren’t as many of them, so she had shifted them around, keeping as many of her own people in the ranks between the new as best she could so that if they broke, the line could still hold.

“That looks like our old friend,” she said as she recognized the demon who’d assaulted them earlier. “And he seems to be in charge. Well, isn’t that just our luck? Should have killed him when we had the chance.”

“You say that like we had a real shot at it the last time.”

Simone turned, glaring at whoever said that, but no one seemed to be ready to own up to the statement.

“Smart ass.”

*****

The Viceroy huffed in annoyance as he surveyed the situation, rather unhappy that he had to be bothering with any of this at all. The humans in the area had been broken, that he knew beyond any question.

So where did all of this mutinous behavior come from?

He was well aware that humans were unpredictable, of course. Every dimension through all of creation gave proof to that little fact. Unpredictability, however, was not some miracle patch that solved everything. Most of the time it just meant that they were lazier, stupider, and entirely more worthless than even his most pessimistic beliefs generally held.

Every now and again, however, along came a human who could flip that on its side.

What made humans so dangerous was the fact that they were lazy and stupid.

The right voice, at the right time, would just flip all those lazy, stupid, follower instincts into overdrive and that harmless mob could easily turn into a horde worthy of any demon Lord’s command.

He should know.

And at the moment, he was relatively certain that was exactly what had happened here.

They’d found a leader, and that voice was guiding the sheep around in his beck and call.

If I can identify him, perhaps he’ll be worthy of some special attention.

For now, however, there were more important things to deal with.

“Stand your forces ready,” He ordered loud enough to be heard by the demons surrounding him.

“We live to serve, Viceroy.”

He smiled nastily.

I know that you do. I made certain of it.

“Attack!”

*****

Brokkr grimaced as he looked around the ruins, wondering where in the hell all the demons had gotten off to.

They had been chasing him and doing a good job of running him ragged with his injuries, but then they were suddenly gone. That had given him the time to heal up, thankfully, but he didn’t much like it when the enemy started doing things he hadn’t predicted.

It meant that either they were getting smarter, or he’d fucked up. Neither was a good situation for his sort to be in.

“Where in the bloody hell did they vanish to?” He mumbled as he walked through the streets of the rickety shantytown, or what was left of it.

“Brokkr!”

He turned, a grin already forming on his face, “Brother! I saw yer lightning earlier. How are you faring?”

Sindri shrugged, “It was going along swimmingly until the demons all decided to turn tail.”

Brokkr raised an eyebrow, “Ye think they ran?”

Sindri just snorted at that. The demons were too stupid to run, he knew it and so did his brother.

“Course not,” He responded. “But something called them out of here fast enough.”

“Aye,” Brokkr let out a heavy breath, “The others, you think?”

“What else?”

The two brothers turned to the tower that rose up not far from where they stood, staring for a moment before they exchanged glances and a single determined nod.

“Let’s go,” Brokkr said as the pair set out for the tower.

This fight wasn’t over, no matter what the demons might think. The venue had just changed, that was all.

*****

Simone grimaced as she heard someone scream, and another voice call out that the demons was charging.

She could see that.

Everyone could see that.

“Enforce the barricade! Put your backs into it!” She ordered. “Spears to the front!”

She and the other spear wielders pushed the business ends of their weapons out in front to form a spiky defense that only a fool would charge into. That meant, of course, that several demons did exactly that, causing her to grunt with exertion as she leaned into the spear even as she planted her foot on the base to dig it into the ground harder as a second demons flung itself on top of the first.

Her weapon held for a few seconds of that before it cracked and split in half from the pressure, leaving her to immediately toss aside the useless shaft still in her hand and grab for her blade.

Simone carried an iron blade. She’d had it for a long time, but since the brothers had arrived on Atlantis, she’d managed to get it enhanced with some of their runic tricks. In the past she would have sneered at that, calling it a demon’s trick and not to be trusted, but considering how many lives Elan, the brothers, and Merlin had saved… she had grown a little and was willing to entrust them to some degree.

It didn’t hurt that; without the enhancements they’d almost certainly have no chance at all anyway.

So, her iron sword shed glimmering particles as she leaned over the barricade and hacked it into the flesh of the closest demon trying to pushed through.

“Hack them down!” She called. “Don’t let them through!”

With the fight going on above, she knew that they couldn’t let the demons retake the tower. If that happened, it was all over… for everyone.

That is not going to happen.

“This is not the night the human race dies!” She called over the clatter of the battle. “Swing your swords! Plant your spears! This ground is our ground!”

*****

The Viceroy stayed back from the fight, observing the defenses in detail as the clash began.

He had hoped that the barricade would fall quickly, but it seemed that the defenders were good enough to keep that from happening.

Most troublesome, He thought in irritation.

Still, that was the reason he’d only led with the weakest of the horde, to allow them to hammer the barricade but also expose the defenses and any weaknesses he might be able to spot. Immediately, it became fully apparent that the barricade was surprisingly solid considering how slap-dash it appeared.

The Viceroy growled under his breath, but immediately dispatched the second wave to hammer into the bodies of the first, many of which were even then hanging limply from the hedgehog of spears that had sprouted from the debris thrown up to block the entrance.

What did they hope to accomplish? he wondered as he watched the second wave of demons slam into the bodies of the first, whether living or otherwise, in many cases pushing the living up and onto the spears that they had thus far managed to avoid.

The extra losses didn’t concern him, however. Demons were in effectively unlimited supply, even here on a front-line world in the eternal war against the creator and His minions.

They would bring down the barricade with sheer weight of numbers if that was what it took.

And when it happens, we will tear those humans limb from limb and feast on the bloodied remains.

*****

“Well, this isn’t good,” Sindri said casually as he planted a foot on a piece of rumble and leaned in to look over the situation carefully.

Brokkr merely grunted, having nothing exceptionally clever to add… Not that he ever did have anything clever to add, Sindri noted with some amusement, dark thought it might be.

The demons were laying siege to the first floor of the old tower, one that Sindri had a niggling feeling that he recognized, but it had been so long that he honestly couldn’t remember with any clarity. It didn’t matter anyway, so he pushed it from his mind.

“They’re going to need help,” he said instead.

Brokkr snorted, “They need more than help, brother. They need a miracle.”

There was truth in that, Sindri knew. As many demons as they were now looking at, there wasn’t much that could be done as best he could tell. Even he and his brother in tandem would be hard pressed to take out a significant chunk of the horde below, which he was fairly certain their leader was well aware of.

“You see the boss?” He asked casually as he looked around.

Brokkr hummed slightly, “Not certain. One of that bunch there, I expect.”

Sindri looked to where Brokkr was pointing and had to nod in agreement. There was a group of higher level, more powerful, demons there. They were standing well back from the fighting, and he could see them occasionally giving orders and commands through signals to the rest.

Demons weren’t cowards, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.

Arguably they weren’t brave either, though, since most… especially the weaker circle demons… had their ability to feel fear stripped from them, either by design or happenstance. Sindri didn’t know which and didn’t really think it mattered.

As they grew more powerful, and the change wrought by the infection that followed with them, they regained their abilities to feel things like fear, respect, and such. More powerful demons could even be honorable, in their own peculiar ways, though it weas rarely something that fully translated to what humans would easily recognize.

That return of fear, though, was one way to recognize more powerful demons. They might have the capability to crack a planet like an egg, but for all that they could be afraid, and you could see it if you knew what, and where, to look for it.

In this case, Sindri and Brokkr were looking at a group of clearly more stable demons, which was always a sign of a more powerful breed of the bastards, hanging back from the fight.

That made them for something other than the weak swarm that made up the bulk of the demon forces.

“Well, let’s test the theory, shall we?” Sindri said, grinning crookedly as he did.

“Aye, let’s.”

*****

The Viceroy nodded, satisfied with the action now as he watched part of the barricade shatter and some of the surviving demons in the front manage to pull a couple humans out from their protections.

The humans didn’t last long, of course, not with the swarm in full heat as they were. Limbs and torn flesh soon adorned the ground and the bodies of the demons themselves… whatever hadn’t managed to make it into the mouths and bellies of the swarm at least.

“Focus the attack there for now,” He ordered. “I want to see more blood.”

“Yes, Viceroy.”

The next wave was dispatched quickly, rushing in with howling screams as they loped across the dusty and bloodied courtyard.

He snarled in exaltation as he watched, reveling in the bloodshed that was taking over the bottom floor of the tower.

It will not take long now.

Then, a flash of light nearly blinding him as the world shook and heat poured through the air like water from a dish.

*****

Simone wanted to retch as she watched what happened to the men under her command, torn from the protection of the defenses they never stood a chance once they had slipped beyond it. Their ends had been fast, at least, but she would never consider them to have been easy endings no matter how quickly they went by.

“Tighten up the spears! Bring more forward,” she called. “We need to secure the barricade, or everything is lost!”

The defenders were responding beautifully, as well as she could ever have asked, but she knew in her heart and soul that it wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough.

That was the story of the demons, front to back, through her entire life. It didn’t matter how well prepared you were, how well armed or dug in. They just did. Not. Stop. COMING.

This night would be no different unless Elan and Caleb managed a miracle, Simone had no doubts.

The third wave was lumbering in toward them as she watched with a detached sense of horror, knowing that they likely would lose a big chunk of the barricade with this attack. Her heart stopped in her chest, though, when lightning slit the sky and a raging hellstorm of fire turned the ground out beyond the tower to a true hellscape on earth.

“The brothers survived!”

*****

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Citadel

Elan stepped back instinctively, barely getting her staff up as the demoness was suddenly right there in her face, eyes gleaming as she bared teeth gleaming with a liquid shine.

“You think you’re so smart, little human,” Ser’Lis growled in her face, hands closing on the staff, which instantly began to sizzle against her flesh.

She ignored the burning, however, and continued pressing in.

“I’ve killed smarter humans than you, girl, and you forgot just what would happen when that shield came down.”

Elan grunted, not able to muster the strength to respond as she struggled against the superior strength of the demon, even when measured against her armor’s enhancements. Lis had moved faster than Elan had ever even considered possible, and the calm demeanor the demon had while they bantered earlier had also lulled her into a false sense of security.

She could hear the others yelling and running in her direction as she fought Lis, but that wasn’t the way. Her life was nothing compared to what was at risk.

Elan nudged the armor and her helmet formed over her face and head as she got her breath back and snapped a hard headbutt into Lis’ face, driving her head back at least, before turning to look over the demon’s shoulder.

“No! Leave her to me,” Elan snapped. “Take out the Rune masters!”

Then she delivered a sharp right cross that rocked the demon’s head to one side and yanked hard to break her weapon loose. It took skin and flesh with it as she jerked it away, Elan stepping back two fast paces in order to clear some room to fight.

“Ha!” Lis snapped as she recovered, clenching her fists tight until a few drops of blood so dark it was black dripped down to the rooftop. After a few seconds she slowly opened her hands, revealing smooth, undamaged flesh, “Like your weapon, I think you’ll find everything else your friends brought completely useless to the task. I wasn’t going to leave my final act as Lady of this worthless rock to just one line of defense.”

Elan casually flipped the staff over, leaving it to rest in the crook of her arm as she nodded to the others again.

“Ignore her and see what can be done,” She ordered. “I’ll deal with the bitch.”

Ser’Lis laughed easily, “That sounds just fine to me.”

The red-gold staff spun suddenly as Elan flipped it back around, even as the demon charged again with her taloned hands outsplayed.

*****

Caleb hesitated as he watched the fight begin, feeling uncertain about how to proceed. Should he do what Elan called for? Or ignore her and help with the demon, hopefully defeating her quickly so that they could all deal with the rite.

His hesitation was only seconds long, but it was long enough for Jol to notice and slap him on the shoulder.

“Come on, let’s get these things. Elan can take care of herself.”

Caleb swallowed but nodded as he broke his gaze away from the fight and turned to the closest demon.

“Careful,” Jol said, one hand holding Caleb back as he gestured similarly to Sie and Tur. “We don’t know what defenses they still have.”

The other three nodded firmly. The shield had been shattered, and they were now within the area it had protected, but the runic masters in the service of the demon army were not to be trifled with, even considering how sickly they tended to look.

“I’ve seen what one of these things can do,” Caleb replied, making no move to charge forward as he recalled the incident on the island.

One runic master had nearly ended them all, and they were now facing five who had plenty of time to turn the battlefield into a killing floor.

This time, there are no sea beasts to save us either, Caleb thought grimly.

“Easy then,” Tur rumbled. “I’ll strike first. Watch and see if you spot anything we can use.”

They all grimaced at the suggestion, but no one appeared to have anything any better to offer so Caleb nodded and stepped back as Tur hefted his great-axe and slowly approached the chanting demon standing closest to him.

The runic masters they were facing didn’t even seem to notice any of them, continuing their chants undisturbed by the events around them. It was like they were too deep in the magic to even see the real world.

Caleb wished he knew if that were a good sign… or a bad one.

Bad one, I’m betting, He thought, but opted not to say anything aloud as Tur lifted his blade for a strike.

The axe came down from the powerful overhead strike, slamming into the demon with as much force and power and Tur and his altered axe could manage, only for a flash of light to momentarily blind them all and Tur to be lifted clean off his feet and thrown back like a straw stuffed doll tossed aside by a bored child.

“Tur!” Sie screamed as she ran in his direction.

He hit the roof hard, skidding toward the edge, but managed to slow himself enough to come to a stop before sliding over it. He groaned, pain clearly wracking through his body as Sie skidded to a stop at his side.

“Are you alright?” She asked intently.

“I’ll live,” He gritted out, his body shuddering out of his control.

“He will at that,” Caleb said as he read the information from his suit’s scan of the other warrior. “But this will be a problem.”

Caleb turned back to the still oblivious masters, chanting away as they prepared the doom for every non-demonic thing on the planet. He’d seen a brief flash of the writing engraved around the feet of the demon before Tur had been thrown back and knew that they were dealing with another shield of sorts, but he didn’t know what type.

We have to crack them, though, or all of this was for nothing.

*****

Elan dodged the sweep of the razor - sharp talons, deflecting the demoness away with a short arc of her staff, playing for distance as the demon seemed intent on closing the gap and making the fight as tightly pressed as possible.

“Running, little girl?” Lis taunted as she jumped easily across the range between them, bringing both hands down hard with talons outstretched, only to hit nothing but air followed by the thick material of the rooftop when Elan rolled to the side and came up swinging with the staff, catching her across the back. “Ah!”

Lis snarled batting the staff away with her forearm but wincing and moving tenderly for a moment as she felt the damage she’d taken.

“That is no ordinary weapon,” she said, scowling as her eyes locked on the red-gold material. “Where did you get that? It isn’t one of the human weapons either…”

“It was a gift,” Elan said easily as she rolled the staff into a two-handed grip and kept the tip between her and the demon.

“Orichalcum,” Lis hissed. “Who gave you that? What traitor…”

She paused, face clearing as she breathed out slowly, losing her rage of a sudden, “Ah… yes, traitor indeed. Of course, you have contact with one of them.”

“Only one?” Elan asked, head cocking to one side.

“It is a minor miracle that even one of them survived on this world after we eliminated the defenders,” Lis said. “But I suppose there might be more.”

She considered that briefly before snorting, “No matter. We’ll deal with them all, in time. The one who gave weapons of Orichalcum to humans, though, I will make a special example of.”

Elan’s eyes narrowed, “That presumes you live through the night.”

Lis cackled, shaking her head. “Oh you might be good, girl, but you’re not that good. You’re a hundred thousand years too early to match me.”

*****

Elan hesitated as she heard that, not really certain she believed what she was hearing… or that she had actually heard it in the first place.

A hundred thousand years? That’s not possible… is it?

She didn’t know enough about the demons to know. She’d always had the impression that they lived longer than humans, certainly, and her encounters with the likes of Ser’Goth, Lis herself, and others bore that out.

A hundred thousand years, though, was very much another story altogether.

That wasn’t merely longer lived, that was a completely different plane of existence.

“You’re lying,” she said, but even Elan could hear the uncertainty in her own voice.

“Am I now?” Lis taunted as she stalked forward. “Child, you have no comprehension of the powers with which you’re playing. I have seen things that would have melted your mind merely at the sight of, learned words that would bend and twist your sanity if you ever attempted to speak them. The universe was not made for you poor, pitiful… and flawed… copies.”

Elan blinked, uncertain what exactly to make of that.

“What do you mean, copies?” She asked as she circled, still playing for time and distance as she tried to find a clear path to strike at the demon.

Lis didn’t seem inclined to answer, or at least not directly, as she continued on her own track of thought without pause.

“You should be on the ground praising us for coming here and offering you the opportunity to undergo the Change,” Lis growled. “Breaking you from your weakness, reforging the flawed fleshy shell into something eternal, as we were all meant to be!”

“Eternal?” Elan spat, “How many did you kill, bringing ‘eternal life’ to this world?”

“Who cares!? You die,” Lis spat back. “Whether it be after a hundred years, or just one, you die. What does it matter, in the scheme of the universe, whether you live a few years more or less? Killing billions to offer true eternal life to even one single individual still adds up to more years of life for humanity than is lost. You would see this too, if you hadn’t been intentionally crippled because HE fears what he created.”

Elan had no idea what the demon was talking about, the rambling felt like she was dealing with a manwoman… or demon, which she supposed she likely was.

“Who?” Elan couldn’t help but ask.

“Who?” Lis laughed, “You have no idea the game that you are part of. A weak, insignificant, player on a table that is so far beyond you that you can’t even see it despite it being right there, under your very feet.”

“I don’t need to understand the game you’re talking about, demon,” Elan countered. “All I need to know is whether you’re doing something good, or evil, and that is a question beyond any doubt.”

“Good, evil?” The demon laughed. “There’s no such thing. The universe doesn’t care what you do. In fact, it ensures that you do everything.”

“W… what?” Elan blanked briefly, completely confused by that last comment.

Lis smiled deeply as she saw the confusion, “Oh yes, child. In this world you are a paragon of truth, duty, and whatever other rotting filth you believe to be good, I’m sure… but in another? You stand by my side as we end this world… and in a third, you cheerfully have slaughtered everyone you call friend, merely because it pleased you to do so.”

“Dimensions, planes, realities,” Lis shrugged. “Whatever you choose to call them, they branch off almost infinitely, every action you’ve ever even considered taking? In one reality, or another, you have done every possible variation of the decision you had.”

She snorted, drawing herself up taller and looking down along her nose at Elan. “Child, you think you chose to be here? You did not. This just happens to be the reality in which the universe wanted you here, in my way.”

Lis stopped then, turning a basilisk’s gaze at Elan.

“I don’t like it when the universe puts things in my way.”

*****

Caleb swore, his sword glancing off the shield that protected the… completely oblivious as far as he could tell… demons as they continued their chanting.

“We can try the same thing we did already, right?” Jol offered. “We take turns, striking in order…”

“No good,” Caleb grumbled. “That only worked because Elan spotted a flaw in the magic. I’ve been looking, but I don’t see the same problems here. I can’t see any of it, actually, I think it’s a different type of magic entirely.”

“You are correct.”

Caleb nearly jumped through his own skin when the voice chimed up in his ear, causing him to look around wildly for a moment while Jol and the other two looked at him in confusion. Slowly he reached up to touch the side of his head.

“Uh… who said that?” He asked, voice nearly plaintive.

“The name is Nimue, if you’ll recall?”

Clabe let out a deep breath, “Ok, I remember you…”

He looked at the others and mouthed the word ‘nimue’ as he pointed to his head, leaving Jol to explain the intricacies of having a way to talk to someone who wasn’t even close to their location to him.

“I should hope so,” Nimue’s voice was tart. “I am quite memorable, after all.”

Caleb rolled his eyes.

“I can see you doing that.”

“How?!?” He demanded, looking around.

Nimue chuckled softly in his ear, “That would be telling. Now, however, we have more important things to be doing and I have something to add to the current situation.”

Caleb shook himself, but nodded, “Fine. What do you have?”

“The spell is demonic magic,” Nimue responded. “Powerful, but with noted weaknesses that can be exploited. Iron can ground it out…”

“Our weapons are bouncing off, including the Iron spear Sie is carrying,” he objected.

“Yes, grounding via Iron is slow and not ideal in this case, I was merely making an example. Your weapon is not iron, however, if I am reading it correctly.”

Caleb looked down at his blade, the gift from the brothers.

“No, it’s something else,” He said. “I’m not sure what, but the brothers said it would affect demons.”

“Indeed, it is a rare alloy, the demons call it Orichalcum,” Nimue responded. “With it you can disrupt the shield quickly.”

“I told you, my sword just bounced off,” Caleb objected.

“Then don’t swing it like some stick you picked up, use the weapon as the tool it is,” Nimue chastised him. “To ground out the enemy magic you will need to create a circuit with your blade and their shield.”

Caleb blinked, he had no clue what the intelligence was talking about and said so matter of factly.

Nimue sighed, “I forget how very far you lot have fallen. Plant the tip of the blade into the ground, dig it in deep, and then force the pommel into contact with the shield.”

Caleb stared at his weapon for a moment before shrugging and deciding that doing what the disembodied voice was telling him actually seemed like the least insane of two crazy options.

“Be ready,” Nimue warned. “The shield will not fall easily. You will need to hold on.”

“Great,” He hissed, but grabbed his weapon by the cross guard anyway and, with both arms, planted it deep into the surface of the rooftop on which they were standing.

He hoped that was enough as he leaned the blade in and, putting his strength into it, jammed the pommel into the field that was protecting the demon within. A crackling explosion of light and power blinded him, sending energy surging through his muscles, and he felt like it was trying to fry him alive… but Caleb held on as the lightshow expanded around him.

*****

Elan twisted aside as Lis struck again, her outreached talons trying to tear up her side, and responded in kind with her staff, snapping a solid blow into the demon’s side in turn. The blow cracked as something broke within Lis’ torso, but the demon barely flinched if she reacted at all, and simply turned and continued to aim blow after blow at Elan as the girl dodged away.

Elan was quickly realizing that this wasn’t working, not even in the slightest. She was landing more blows, certainly, but only because the demoness was largely ignoring anything she tried to do and simply taking the hits like they were nothing at all.

Frankly, it was more than a little insulting and Elan was growing far angrier than she was afraid.

She put all her strength into a dive as she dodged another blow, landing it in a roll that brought her halfway across the rooftop before she came back to her feet and spun around to face the demon.

Ser’Lis launched herself across the rooftop, wings outstretched as Elan drew her sidearm and opened fire as quickly as she could.

Blasts that could tear mountains apart rained down on the demon as Lis came at her, but to Elan’s shock and horror, they did nothing she could spot. She knew the basics of how her weapon worked, had learned it from Merlin before he’d even allowed her to use it in the first place, and knew that there should not be any physical thing in existence that could simply shrug off the blasts from her sidearm.

Here, however, she was dealing with an enemy that not only could but seemed actively intent on proving so in the middle of a fight.

Elan had to throw herself to one side again, just before Ser’Lis landed with a blow that would have crushed her, assuming it didn’t turn her to bloody ribbons of flesh instead.

This is not good.

Lis turned slowly now, looking at her with a grin, and somehow Elan knew that the demon was reading her like a book.

“Realizing how badly you miscalculated yet? I’m not my sister,” Lis smirked. “You have no chance here, girl.”

Elan scrambled up to her feet, flipping the sidearm back into its holster before bringing out the collapsed staff again and extending it to its full length with a thought.

“She said things that sounded a lot like that as well, you know,” Elan countered, her voice surprisingly even and steady.

“Ser’Goth was always in my shadow, and for good reason,” Lis said as she straightened to her full height and began slowly stalking toward Elan.

Elan backpedaled, not willing to let the demon close the range of her own accord, as her mind raced for any way out of this situation. She’d literally take anything at all by this point.

“Elan,” Nimue’s voice reached out to her through her armor. “We have a plan.”

Who’s we? Elan blinked but opted not to ask that aloud since she didn’t think it mattered at this point. “I’m listening.”

*****

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Outside The Citadel

Brokkr watched the siege as it broke under the combined assault from him and Sindri, the demons at the forefront scattering as the force of their dual blasts tore the ground up and sent the weaker demons to the hell that awaited them while putting even the stronger ones down for some time.

Unfortunately, this was only a fraction of the forces the local Lord had at his disposal, and that was going to be a problem.

A big problem, Brokkr noted as he watched the attention of the demons shift from the tower and out to the section of the former city that he and Sindri were hiding within.

He had little known that the demons would break and come after them if left to themselves, but that was the point of the whole exercise… they weren’t left to themselves.

“There,” Sindri pointed.

Brokkr turned to look and nodded as he recognized the actions of one of the powerful demons that had been holding back. He was beating his horde back into submission and keeping them pointed at the Citadel.

He was the leader.

“Flip you for it?” Brokkr offered with half a grin.

Sindri gave him a flat look. “I would if I thought you’d be able to keep up the fight after I dropped you on your head.”

Brokkr snorted, “Delusions of adequacy in you sometimes, brother, I swear.”

Sindri chortled softly, nodding to the demon they’d pegged as the one in charge of the forces on the ground.

“I’ll take the first shot.”

Brokkr just nodded, turning his focus back to the horde itself.

“Go fry that bastard, brother.”

*****

The Viceroy swore under his breath as he got the horde turned back around and aimed in the right direction.

Those damned traitors, He snarled mentally as the last of the horde returned to his control. I should have expected that they’d try something like that.

He had no love for the traitors, no demon did. Their history with the Circles was so long that, frankly, the Viceroy wasn’t certain if anyone on either side of that line really had any idea just what kicked off the fighting in the first place.

Demons called them traitors, but no one could remember why… well, no one who was talking at least. The Viceroy assumed some of the original First-Generation demons, the Lords of the First Circle… or Ninth, depending on how you counted, he supposed… they were as close to omniscient and omnipotent as any being had a right to be, after all, and they were there when it started… but no one else had any clue.

Whatever caused the bad blood, however, it had endured generations of demons who lived eons apiece. The traitors hated the demons, and the demons hated the traitors. It was a fundamental law of existence, somehow.

The Viceroy had fought them many times, even killed a couple… possibly. They were hard to be certain if you’d killed them, honestly, more resilient than insects and virii in the grand scheme of things. He’d defeated several to be sure, sending them packing before his forces, however… and the one thing he’d learned from those experiences was to respect his enemy at least as much as he hated them.

“Watch our flanks,” He ordered the smarter of the guards he’d kept with him. “They will try again.”

“Yes, Viceroy.”

With the forces redeployed, and new security elements being unleashed into the field of battle, the Viceroy turned his focus back to the battle at hand.

The traitors were a mere distraction at this point… a potentially fatal one, but the main goal had to remain retaking the citadel.

*****

“Here they come again!”

Simone snarled, wishing for her broken spear, but got ready to put the iron of her blade to the service of the fight despite that loss.

The wave of demons flooding in at them across the courtyard wasn’t as packed shoulder to shoulder as it had been earlier. The strike from the brothers had thinned out the weaker of the horde, and some of the rest had resisted being pulled back into line by the commanders on the other side.

That slip in power should be enough to give them a chance, at least.

“Hold the line!” She ordered. “We have to hold them here!”

The blockade they had set up shuddered as the mass of demons hit it again. A few screams from the other side indicated that the bristle of spears had struck home even through the mass of corpses already hanging from the wall, but with the bodies of every man and woman there they managed to keep the makeshift wall standing and in place.

Simone clambered up over the wall as best she could and began hacking down at the demons, her iron biting deep with every blow even if she couldn’t always be certain whether she was hitting a living beast or one of the dead that adorned their spears. She could see others doing the same across the wall, the dull glint of iron blades flashing in the night as the flames out beyond the tower reflected off of them.

A flash so bright it blinded her, followed almost instantly by a shaking that sent terror flowing through every vein, caused Simone to stumble back and nearly fall to the ground as everything seemed to go quiet.

*****

“The battle is proceeding… well, I think?” Sindri offered uncertainly as he looked to the fighting at the entry to the Citadel.

It was honestly hard to tell whether the demons or the humans were winning, but the fact that the demon line was still being held back at least didn’t speak too poorly of the human defenses.

He had his hammer in the air, pouring his own energy into the weapon he had built to focus his talents.

Calling upon the lightning was not something lightly done, and it was not without limit either. He could not create that energy, not even with all his own prodigious power, the level of sheer force in a lightning bolt was not to be underestimated, not even by such as he. He could coax the energy out of the sky, however, if it were there in the first place… or, alternatively, he could set the actions in motion that would create it for him.

There were limits to how many such strikes could be generated in the skies at any given time, but this was an area that was well suited to such things at the least.

The heat, combined with the gulf of water to the southeast of their position, created something of a constant rolling vortex. He expected that storms in this region would be spectacular by times, though there would not be much in the way of lightning in them for a while after this night.

Sindri could feel the power of the bolt as it built up, riding right on the edge of being loosed from the skies. He had to trigger it then, or it would lance down naturally to the easiest point it could find, following the path of least resistance as all things in nature tended to.

So Sindri mentally unleashed his own power in a much smaller and finer way, drawing a line in the sky with high energy particles that knocked a few charged particles out of place from the air itself, giving the lightning a more attractive path to follow than any other in range.

Only then did he mentally trigger the bolt itself.

The sky above them split apart, the rumble shaking the very ground as Sindri felt the lightning ride the path down from the skies and crash right into the demon commander’s location with all the fury of the world’s greatest storms.

In the moment that followed, all movement in the area stopped.

*****

He could feel his flesh burning from the inside.

Fornicating traitors, The Viceroy thought angrily as he endured the pain to slap out the fires that had erupted along his arm and shoulders.

The bolt from the skies had nearly been enough to take him out, he realized darkly, and certainly would have if he’d not been prepared for it. Even with the preparations, his shield had been destroyed by the powerful strike, something he’d not expected given that channeling that level of power should killed any living being who attempted it.

Which means I’m missing a variable, The Viceroy thought sourly as he picked himself out of the scorched hole in the ground he’d been relegated too.

There were groaning demons around him, and a couple unmoving ones as well. He didn’t bother checking to see if they were alive or dead. If they were dead, good riddance, and if they had survived, well he expected that they would either recover and be tougher than they had been or die in the attempt.

Either case as of no particular concern to the Viceroy at this moment in time.

The traitor, however, … He thought darkly as he turned to survey the ruins of the city beyond where he’d setup his command post.

Oh yes, the traitor was a very different story.

Unfortunately, he was now clearly caught between two hostile elements, and there was no question which of them required his full attentions…

That did not mean that he could simply ignore the traitor, however.

“Goloth!” He snarled, calling back a reliable sub-altern from where he was riding herd on the horde assaulting the Citadel.

“Viceroy,” The lumbering demon rumbled as he arrived.

“Take your squad,” The Viceroy ordered, gesturing back to the ruins. “Find the traitors, and eliminate them.”

The big demon just grinned.

*****

Brokkr saw the big bastard coming first and called a warning to his brother as he got his sword up and ready for the fight.

“Here they come, brother!”

Sindri grunted, feeling the drain from his attack as the burn ran through his system. “Hold them back a bit, will ye? I’m not exactly fully up to snuff, you know?”

“Like you ever were?” Brokkr grinned. “I got this.”

Unlike his brother, Brokkr had no particular affinity for the skies and the lightning. It took a certain level of control down to minute levels in order to pull that off. Oh, he could call down the lightning in a pinch, he supposed, it’s just that it was as likely to hit him as anything else on the field.

No, he preferred a much different manipulation of the natural order, one that took a great deal less precision, albeit a fair bit more power all things considered.

Lighting things ablaze was good fun, though, especially when it was one’s enemies.

He stepped out into the open, letting the demons get a good look at him as they charged, mentally pouring his own power into the air surrounding his sword. The elements of the air exited so quickly that they actually skipped fire and moved straight on to the next phase as he grinned, flickering blue plasma dancing mere molecules above the edge of his blade.

Normally, of course, he’d shortly be holding a dripping liquid sword with that sort of heat dancing around, but that was all well and truly handled with a little more mental nudging at the energy. Keeping the energy high by feeding lost heat back into the process lowered the demands on him by quite a bit.

The demons were roaring and screaming their normal taunts and nonsense, all of which was fine by him. One thing he and his brother had learned a long time ago was not to interrupt their enemies when they were getting psyched up.

It made for a much more satisfying look on their faces when the truth of the situation finally dawned on them.

*****

Goloth was a demon of the fourth, having graduated through four circles by virtue of not having died in the attempt. He’d seen wars, slaughters, and more blood and shit than he had ever imagined before the Circles had come to his world and claimed him. Like most, he didn’t remember a lot from before the Circles, but he still had slivers of that past.

Demons could not bear children, which was why the circles continued to expand the way they did. Taking worlds, turning a tiny sliver of their population to the Circles themselves, and killing everyone else.

Vaguely he knew that once he would not have approved of such a thing, but honestly in his current mind Goloth had no idea why.

The slaughter, the utter destruction of worlds, it was all glorious beyond measure.

Best of all, it was for the greatest of all causes.

True Justice.

So, when the Viceroy had given him the directions to end the traitors, Goloth had been truly blessed.

His group of demons had been with him for several campaigns by this point, most of them third circle, none of them from the first. They were powerful, deadly, and frankly beyond the ken of most of the foes they had fought, which was as it should be.

Goloth, however, knew that the traitors were of a different breed.

Even the most powerful of the Circles seemed loath to talk of them, and those who did… really knew very little other than that they were sworn enemies.

That was enough for him, the enemies of the circles were the enemies of justice everywhere. And the enemies of justice, well they simply had to die.

So Goloth swore.

*****

Brokkr widened his stance as he saw the group charging in, noting that they were spreading out as they got closer. It was a practiced maneuver and spoke of a leader with at least some marginal skill in directing a fight.

“Get on your feet, brother,” He warned. “They’ll be here shortly.”

“Aye, aye,” Sindri grumbled as he got up, staying well behind his brother. “Just give me the time you can.”

“Of course.”

With his sword ablaze, Brokkr stayed on the rumble he’d opted to defend, electing to maintain a high ground advantage for at least the beginning of the fight. Granted, that was not exactly the most pressing advantage he could hope for, but it would offer some help for a short period at least.

The first demon up the rubble mound was charging at him with abandon, he noted wryly, wondering if the little beastie had the slightest idea what he was about to run dead into.

Probably not, Brokkr decided in the last moments before the demon leapt from the rubble in an arching path aimed directly at him. Too bad for him.

Brokkr simply spun as he sidestepped the dive, his blade sweeping out in a vicious arc that bisected the demon from chest to pelvis, or what roughly seemed to correlate with those positions at least. Demon physiology was so widely varied that Brokkr wasn’t aware if even the demons had attempted to actually set names to their body parts and functions.

It hardly mattered anyway.

The demon, bisected as it was, hit the ground with two distinct thumps behind his position as Brokkr prepared to meet the rest of the assault.

The demons screamed their battle cries as they continued to charge without hesitation, while he merely stood there in silence and let them come.

*****

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Northern Research Facility

Nimue felt a thrill run through her consciousness and wondered if that was what humans felt when they had their eureka moments. She wasn’t sure, and supposed that it didn’t really matter, but she had to admit that the feeling itself could be quite… intoxicating.

“Caleb is looking to break a shield, but its of demon intent,” she said, speaking to Elan through the communications system in the armor Merlin had provided the girl. “The easiest way to bring a shield of that nature down is to get the caster himself or, in this case, herself to do it.”

Elan’s heartrate jolted briefly as the girl continued to play for distance from the rather dangerous demon she was engaging.

“How?”

Nimue was impressed, really. No exclamations, no outbursts about the impossibility of the act, just a simple question that cut right to the point of it all.

“Stand ready,” She instructed. “Caleb and the others are preparing their side of things. Can you keep her busy just a little bit more?”

“Yes.”

Of course, one-word answers are also incredibly unsatisfying and more than a little irritating as well.

Nimue shoved those emotions aside, however, and focused on the situation at hand.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll guide you when the time comes.”

Elan didn’t respond at all this time, which was somehow even more irritating, but she didn’t have time to concern herself with that. There was a real job at hand, one that had the potential of success.

Nimue hadn’t felt this excited in a very long time.

“Caleb, prepare yourself.”

*****

Citadel

Elan twisted, evading the strike that the demoness directed her way, rolling along the rooftop as she did so.

Nimue’s plan wasn’t exactly sane, to her mind at least, but it was a plan and that was better than what she had at the moment.

Next time, I need to make sure there are far more alternate plans on the board before starting a fight like this…

That, of course, presumed that there would be a next time, which she was a long way from guaranteeing.

“You cannot continue to dodge forever, child!”

Elan ignored the demoness for the moment, focusing on getting to where Nimue wanted her in the most circuitous route she could manage, hoping that would keep Ser’Lis distracted from the endgame as best as possible.

“You know, we could always talk this out,” She offered as she rolled back to her feet and spun, just in time to intercept another strike on her staff.

Lis rolled her eyes as she stared over the short distance between them, “Child, I am not so easy to distract as that. If you wish to talk, join with us. We will have all eternity to discuss whatever you so desire.”

Elan laughed, “Liar.”

“Well, we’ll have all eternity,” Lis shrugged. “You’ll spend most of the first part of it screaming too hard to talk, but it’s not so bad. Eventually you’ll break properly, I promise. I can even make some of it… fun.”

Elan shuddered.

“Thank you, no,” Elan said in disgust, breaking contact with a sweep of her staff that redirected Lis’ strength and caused the demon to slide off the metal away from her.

Before she could recover, Elan snapped the weapon around and scored a hard blow to the shoulder, just barely missing the demoness’ head as she shifted to block. Flesh sizzled from the strike, and Lis snapped her head around to glare at Elan.

“Fine,” Lis said through gritted teeth, “No fun then… but the screaming is not optional.”

Elan braced as Lis gathered herself up gauging the moment just right, and then threw herself to one side as Lis flew through the air at her face.

As she hit the ground in a shoulder roll, Elan twisted and watched as Lis flew right into Caleb where the boy had planted his blade, contacting the red-gold metal of her own accord and driving it into the shield that protected the masters.

There was a smell in the air, like after a lightning strike, and a flash of light blinded everyone on the rooftop.

Caleb was sent sprawling as Lis barreled on through the shielded area and hammered into one of the demons with enough force to send them both tumbling, the magic of the shield crackling around them in protest for a moment before it all collapsed.

Elan propped herself up from the rooftop, eyes wide, “Now! Attack now!”

*****

Jol, Sie, and Tur were galvanized into action by the command, Jol leading the trio as he hefted his hammer and poured every last bit of his own energy into it, just as Sindri had taught him. The weapon crackled with electrical power as he leapt in and brought it down on the closest of the rune masters, mid chant.

Bone crunched under the blow, blood spurting from mashed flesh and other horrific injuries, but Jol ignored that as he followed through with a kick that was intended to send the demon well off his position so that there was no chance he could continue his chants.

In the back of his mind, he could hear the demoness screaming, the sort of fury that boded ill for the survival of anyone she was mad at, which at the moment was pretty much everyone he had any care for the in the world.

For all that, though, he ignored the rage and the blood driven fury, focusing on ending the rite as quickly as he possibly could.

In her periphery he could see Tur leading his attack with a wide sweep of his axe, the blade that had claimed the lives of many demons before it had been enhanced by the brothers was now a lethal tool beyond the imagining of its owner. It barely paused as it swept the head from another of the rune masters from its body, leaving it to collapse in place as the rolling head splattered across the rooftop like a demented child’s plaything.

Sie was simple and more merciful by comparison, merely opting to drive her spear through the demon’s throat with a straightforward thrust.

Clean, efficient, and effective.

No showmanship to speak of, however. Jol smiled tersely as that thought crossed his mind, but he didn’t have time to make jokes. He was already turning from the falling body of the rune master, eyes widening as he saw that the Lady of the Citadel had recovered and had already launched herself back into the fray.

Her outstretched talons were gleaming in reflected light as she lunged so fast, he could barely see her move at all, coming right for him.

He was bringing his hammer back around, trying to defend himself, but deep down he knew it was too late. He didn’t stand a chance, but that was alright. The rite had been ended, and while that might not be victory yet, it was an important step that he had a part of.

It is a good ending.

Jol felt a rush of wind and reflexively flinched, eyes closing as a blur struck down the demoness so fast, he missed it between blinks, the shockwave of the assault passing over him as he stared in shock at a familiar form that had just slammed Ser’Lis into the rooftop.

“Goth?” He whispered, shocked to his core as he saw the familiar demon rising from her crouch, one foot still grinding Ser’Lis’ head into the surface beneath it.

“Hello, Jol,” The demoness from The City from the city grinned at him as she flexed her wings, “Don’t mind me, just paying my respects to sister dear, here.”

Lis, beneath her feet, was spitting fire and words that Jol didn’t recognize but from the sounds of them he was rather glad he didn’t.

Ser’Goth just smirked and ground her foot down harder.

*****

Elan was struggling to her feet as she spotted the arrival of the very familiar demon, a shock rolling through her as she saw Ser’Goth hammer Ser’Lis into the rooftop with enough force to send trembling shakes through the building itself.

She honestly had no idea what the demon was doing but didn’t have time to worry about it at the moment because the plan had apparently worked, and they were able to get to the ritual positions.

Elan scrambled over, crawling almost as much as running, but it was a combination of both that got her there before she collapsed again, skidding to a halt over the runic inscriptions. She hurriedly brushed aside the dust and dirt that had caked some of them exposing the slightly glowing writing to her sight.

She could see the intent in them, her earlier epiphany still riding high in her mind.

These words… they make sense.

It dawned on her in that moment that she’d been reading runic writing all along. The Book, the Books even, were written in this very language, Elan recognized. It wasn’t a demonic language, nor anything human, of that she was certain.

It was the language of the universe, or…

No… not the language of the universe, are you? Elan thought as she continued to clean off the inscriptions of the rite. You’re a representation of the universal language…

She didn’t understand how she knew that, but somehow Elan was certain that she was right about it. The demons, the brothers, what little human research she’d been able to find, even Nimue with her vastly larger knowledge of the writings had somehow missed that, despite how incredibly obvious it seemed to her at that point.

The words spoke to the universe around them…

And… it speaks back.

*****

Northern Research Facility

Nimue stared at the growing number of frozen images of the writing that Elan was uncovering, eyes wide as she absorbed as much of the information as she could, already formulating a plan.

Launching a counter wave from the very position the original wave had been established was a relatively simple calculation, as such things went. Nimue had already calculated the original wave, following it through the building cycles as it went through constructive and deconstructive overlaps, so she merely had to invert the calculations according to the correct time, and that should be enough to reverse the consequences of the demons’ actions.

Should.

The theory was solid, but now they were about to learn whether or not it could even be put into practice.

“Elan,” she spoke. “I’m sending new calculations to you. Can you project a counter wave?”

*****

Citadel

Elan ignored the question for a moment as she finished cleaning off the dust, eyes and mind completely absorbed into what she was seeing at the moment.

The writing was… beautiful. Terrible. Both at once.

The language itself was elegant in a way she had never experienced, and it made her feel completely insufficient… not merely to the task at hand, but to just being alive.

She was reading the works of a master, and trying to ape them like she had aped her mother’s actions while growing up. It left her feeling… lesser, somehow…

And yet…

There was more to it than that. She could see the language, but also the dialect… if that was the proper word. The demons had brought their own twist to things, which should not have surprised her in the least and yet somehow had. The dialect, the grammar… it was rough, and brutish, and had almost none of the elegance of the language itself.

It was, again, a child aping an adult… only, this time, it was an angry, petulant child, screaming at the adult that they had no right to control them.

“Elan!”

Elan shuddered pulling back as she shook her head.

“What?” She demanded, frustrated at losing the tableau that had been before her eyes, resting there in her mind.

“Can you project a counter wave?” Nimue asked urgently.

“I… yes,” Elan said after a moment, eyes again on the runes. “I can see what they were doing, I can change it. I need the numbers.”

“Sending to your armor.”

Elan stared as the numbers Nimue was sending flooded across her vision, filling in the blanks in ways that didn’t feel natural, yet somehow worked.

She was unsure if she liked this sensation, but it was powerfully addictive, Elan realized that almost instantly. There was something about seeing the true nature of the universe in written form, even if it were just a tiny slice of the universe as this was, that spoke to something deep inside her.

She had to fight the urge to engulf herself in that truth and grabbed a dagger off her hip as she began to make changes to the writing.

One child aping an adult, and another trying to change their words to mean the opposite, Elan thought dryly as she got to work. No way this doesn’t end well, right?

*****

Caleb gritted his teeth as he brought his sword up, eyes on the newly arrived demon that sent trepidation through his soul the moment he saw her.

Letting her live was risky, and it’s probably going to bite us now, he thought grimly as he saw Sie and Tur get ready to charge in.

“Wait!” Jol yelled, stopping them, hands up to wave them off.

Caleb shook his head, thinking that this had bad idea writing all over it, but frankly not seeing any better options as he took a step back and relaxed marginally, though with more than a little unease.

“You’ve got to be crazy,” Sie snapped. “She’s a demon!”

“And she has a bone to pick with our enemy,” Jol snarled back. “Would you rather fight them both?”

That was not something Sie had much of an answer for, the woman falling silent as the demoness laughed.

“Oh Jol, you always did find the most amusing ways to excuse your lustful impulses,” Goth said, winking at him. “I do approve.”

Jol glared at her, “And you were always a mix of delusional and insane that made you too damn dangerous to deny, no matter what anyone else felt about it.”

“But of course, I am what I am,” Goth said, looking down to where she had Lis pinned underfoot. “We’ll continue flirting, and maybe more, later. Sister dear is getting her senses back… Can’t have that.”

Ser’Goth stepped off of her sister, bending over to grasp the other demoness by the hair as she pulled her up to her knees and bent her head back.

“Confine me like some human livestock, will you?” Goth sneered.

“It was that or kill you after your failure,” Lis choked out her response, still clearly dazed by the hit. “I didn’t want to see my dearest sister die, you know.”

Goth laughed in her face, “Don’t try that with me. I know you were holding me as a sacrifice in case the lower circles decided that the delay required punishment.”

Lis shrugged, shifting her shoulders to stretch out the muscles where she’d been hit from above.

“You know how it is, sister,” She replied simply.

“I do, I do indeed,” Lis nodded. “Just as you know that I can’t let that go unpunished now that I’m free.”

Lis glared hatefully at her, “An intelligent person would delay their revenge until after the rite, you foolish bitch. If the Circle’s find out…”

“Ah, but they won’t now, will they?” Goth leaned in. “The only witnesses are you, me, a handful of humans, and any of your pet rune scribes, assuming they weren’t killed when you bumbled into their protections like that. Sloppy, sloppy, sister dear.”

Goth cast her sister down with a sharp motion, sending the other winged demoness sprawling across the rooftop as she straightened up, her wings snapping out to full extension.

“No, I don’t think I need to fear witnesses,” Goth said, her talons snapping out as she flexed her hands and began stalking forward.

Caleb didn’t know if he should act, or if he should then he didn’t know what he should be doing. Ser’Goth was closing on her sister, which was fine by him since the demon seemed intent on killing the other, and Jol had a point. They were very nearly losing as it stood, all of them on one demon.

He didn’t want to try his luck against two.

However, that didn’t make it a good idea to leave the second alive for one instant longer than she was useful.

He wrapped his hand around the pommel of his sword, shifting his grip as he watched the scene unfold.

*****

Chapter Thirty

Outside the Citadel

Brokkr laughed as he slashed down another demon, sending it tumbling to the dirt and bloody muck underfoot. The most eager of his enemies were, as it often happened, the ones least capable of fighting him.

Brokkr didn’t waste any time fighting them, as he knew that the more capable ones were holding back, watching and waiting for a clean shot to enter the fight and end it quickly. That was something he was fully aware that a powerful demon was capable of, assuming it had the intelligence and guile to come up with the plan.

True, most demons lacked those capabilities, but he wasn’t going to gamble on that being the case in any real fight.

As this last demon hit the ground, not moving aside from the uncontrolled twitching of its nervous system trying to fire up the muscles despite the body being effectively dead, Brokkr turned his focus quickly back to the main body of the squad sent after him and his brother.

That’s a big boy now, isn’t it? He thought as he looked on at what appeared to be the leader of the group.

The demon was easily nine feet tall, probably a bit more, which put him at twice Brokkr’s height, or near enough. Size, however, wasn’t everything in a fight, as he and his brother had enjoyed proving many times in the past.

Most of the time, big just meant clumsy.

It’s the rare exceptions that worry me, Brokkr thought as he eyed the big demon cautiously.

The Demonic change was not something that was easy to predict. It was similar to the natural order, but twisted and corrupted to produce more results in shorter times. Most often, like mutations in the natural order of things, this merely killed the host outright. Of those that survived, most were killed by their fellow demons when the changes wrought on them proved too narrow of focus to be properly advantageous.

As the demons grew older, however, and progressed through the Circles, the percentage of weak and faulty change grew ever lower.

Brokkr was fairly certain that he wasn’t looking at a weak or faulty alteration this time.

*****

Goloth wasn’t exactly happy, but as he watched the last of the scouts fall, he experienced a fair portion of satisfaction.

The demons he’d sent on ahead had been the stupider ones in his command, those who had ideas well above their station… as most of the weaker circles tended to have, if he were being honest. They were still flush with the power of the change and had no real clues as to their limitations.

Their deaths, however, served to provide vital information for he and the rest of his demons.

The traitor was not alone, which was not exactly news… everyone had seen and felt the twin bursts of magic from the pair, but it was news that they had found one another. Not good news either, but good news was in short supply most times in Goloth’s experience.

More importantly, one of them was winded at least, possibly injured at best. That was very good news.

A little on the less good side, however, was the fact that they both appeared well versed in close combat. That would make things… interesting.

He slapped the back of one of his subordinates, “Take three of ours, your choice, and circle from the left.”

The demon grunted in agreement and quickly cut three from the group, heading off even as Goloth gave the same instructions concerning the right flank to another.

Splitting the group was rarely the right move for demons, no matter the advantages of striking from different angles, simply because there was so little in the way of coordination possibly due to the limited intelligence of many of the weaker circles.

His weaklings were already dead, though, sent ahead and sacrificed in exchange for information, so Goloth was opting to get slightly more complicated with his tactics.

Marshalling the bulk of his force to move forward with, Goloth timed his advance so that they would offer as much opportunity for the others to get into place before the fighting began. The traitor seemed to have spotted them coming, though, so whether that would truly work in favor of any sort of surprise was something he really didn’t know.

As they approached, the traitor with the hammer turned to face him front on, lifting the weapon up in a sloppy sort of salute as he sneered at them.

“Well? Cautious aren’t you, little demon?” The short man chided Goloth’s much taller and bulkier form, “or are we waiting for your little friends to join in?”

Well, that answers that question.

“Forward,” Goloth rumbled, moving his group a little quicker.

If they’d been found out, then there was no sense in giving the traitor time to prepare.

*****

Brokkr watched as the demon lashed his group forward, increasing their speed as they made the move to close ranks and bring him to combat. He had no intention of evading, so it wasn’t the best of moves given that their flankers weren’t yet in position, but he had no intentions of alerting the enemy to any mistakes they might be making.

The big guy was almost certainly a demon of the middle circles. Powerful, certainly, but still too inhuman to be close to completing what the circles’ called the Change.

Brokkr didn’t know too much about it, but it was impossible to have lived in the vicinity of the beasts for as long as he and Sindri had without learning a few key details.

The change was some sort of forced evolution, of course, one that did things that no sane universe would ever do… and given just what insanities nature was capable of, Brokkr couldn’t think of the Change without getting at least a little queasy down there deep in his gut.

Unlike evolution, though, it was clearly a guided force. Those that entered it slowly became more and more inhuman as time passed, trading their bodies and minds for power… but, when it was complete, the change seemed to bring people back.

They all had ideas about why that was, but even with his knowledge, Brokkr couldn’t say with any certainty. Deep in his mind, though, he’d always felt like he was… missing something. What? That he couldn’t say, but the demons all left him with this sick feeling when he looked on him.

Like there’s a hole in me brain, one I can’t even see. Brokkr thought grimly as he got ready for the fight.

“Brother,” He called, “Be ready. They’re almost on us.”

“Aye,” Sindri said, already sounding better. “I have your back.”

Never any doubt on that score, Brokkr thought as the demons broke into a full-on sprint right at his position.

His blade charged with power, little discharges of electricity dancing along the surface as his own energies filled it.

Never any doubt at all.

*****

Goloth hung back as the front line reached the traitor’s position. The crackling energy ahead of him was enough to almost make him forget his caution and charge up there himself. Just the taste of it in the air was baiting him in like nothing he’d ever experienced in the past, but he had enough control to hold himself back.

The traitor swept his blade before him in a wide arc as the front line of demons arrived, bone crunching, blood spattering, and at least three of them went sprawling from the strike in a way that told Goloth that there was more power behind that blow than he’d expected from the looks of it.

The short traitor was strong. Stronger than he looked, which admittedly didn’t amount to much, but also strong enough to throw three larger demons than his own short stature into the air with a single sweeping blow.

Impressive.

The rest were on him before he could recover, however, and that was when things started to get… truly interesting.

*****

Brokkr swore under his breath as he rolled with the first demon to slam into him, kicking the disgusting thing off him before he rolled to the left, evading the next pair that were trying to pile up on him. He slammed one with the flat of his blade when he couldn’t get the edge aligned just right, evaded the other, and scrambled to his feet just barely ahead of the next three that were already right atop his position before he’d been able to begin recovering.

“Any time now, brother.” He mumbled under his breath, keeping the sword up and playing for time as he kept them back from his position.

The demons were circling him, looking for an opening, which wasn’t exactly difficult to spot since he only had one sword to wave at them. That was leading to him being forced to spin in place as much as do any sort of proper move, keeping them at bay with the flickering flames that caught the air itself afire as he swept the blade past.

The demons were growing, most of them incoherent and little more than feral as best he could tell, but there were sparks of cunning intelligence in the darkly glittering eyes that looked on him so hungrily.

“Watch yerself brother!”

Brokkr ducked automatically as the thunderous rumble rolled overhead and a lance of lightning slammed out of the sky in the unnaturally straight formation that came when Sindri channeled his power through the hammer as he had.

The impact shook the world around them as much, or more, than the thunder had and all brokkr could see for a long moment was the afterimage flashes from the lightning strike even though he’d slammed his eyes shut upon his brother’s warning.

As the residual blindness faded, he looked around himself slowly and breathed a sigh of relief as he found that the demons closest to him had taken the hit particularly badly, and none of them were currently moving.

*****

“Now! Charge!” Goloth ordered, driving his remaining forces forward even as he himself finally took action and rush into the fight as well.

He’d been waiting for the enemy to commit their powers again, knowing that there was a recharge time before they could be used again. That meant that this was their chance, and Goloth intended to seize it.

His remaining core of demons were the strongest he had and had enough numbers that they should still be able to overwhelm most defenses with sheer pressure if nothing else.

So, he goaded and cajoled, ordered and threatened, doing whatever he had to do to get them moving in the right direction in the immediate aftermath of the lightning strike.

They charged up the hill of rubble and right at the flaming sword that was wielded by their first target.

*****

Brokkr heard the onrushing force before he could see them, desperately blinking away the last of the flash blindness and praying that his night vision returned before it was too late, but as noisy as they were he at least knew where they were coming from.

“Here they come, brother. Stand ready.”

Sindri grunted from behind him, strain deeply impressed in his voice as he moved.

“I’ll be ready for the bastards.”

Brokkr grinned tightly but stepped forward despite the declaration. He’d give Sindri all the time to recover he could, since he knew it was a strain to tax his powers the way he had.

Calling down lightning was a feat that could range from relatively easy to difficult enough to kill a man who was unprepared. If the air was primed for it, and the storm was above you, then all you needed your power for was the trigger. If it wasn’t, then you needed to prime the air, create a storm… That made it more difficult to continually call on the lightning since, as you initiated one strike after another, you used up the conditions that made it easy in the first place.

It was why Brokkr preferred to focus his skills and talents on the flames.

Those merely required fuel, oxygen, and a little bit of his will to set them alight.

He grinned in the reflected light of his own weapon, looking out at the charging demons as they scrambled up the pile of rubble he was set on.

Let us see how they burn.

*****

The Viceroy kept one eye on the Citadel as his forces continued to lay siege to the lower floor, but his focus was strained by the use of the traitor’s power in the rubble of the former city that surrounded the citadel. It was almost impossible to resist, and part of him wanted to be there rather than where he was, but he had enough control to prevent any lapse in judgement due to that.

The lightning strike had been powerful and close, surprising him slightly, but now he could still feel a flickering draw of the power in its aftermath.

Fires were visible against the dark sky, lighting up a single figure standing atop rubble as he looked.

His vision was excellent, even in the dark, so the Viceroy quickly spotted the demonic forces climbing the rubble in a fast motion, something that caused him to nod in approval.

Knowing that the traitors were, at the very least, being kept busy was enough to allow him to refocus on the assault proper.

The humans were barely holding the line, the outside of the barricade a gruesome façade of dead and dying demons still impaled on the spears they’d ran themselves onto during the first couple charges. Those bodies took the spears that had killed them out of the equation, however, and that had been a fair part of the point.

Now it was time to properly finish this.

The Viceroy nodded to the bulk of his forces and the howling commenced.

Dozens moved first, then hundreds.

The Citadel is ours, he thought viciously as he joined the attack. You will die here tonight, humans. I swear it!

*****

Inside the Citadel, Simone heard the howling commence and felt the chill run through her in that moment.

She’d heard that sound before, a long time ago, at the sacking of one of the last human cities that had existed outside of demonic rule. They’d felt that their city walls were enough to protect them, many had even believed that the demons weren’t even real, or much of a threat if they were.

The demons didn’t care for their beliefs, however, and it was something that Simone had learned much later in her life that truly hammered home the foolishness of those ideas.

It was in the nature of the demons to change. If you had a defense for one of them, it would not work on them all. Eventually, if you slipped even once, they would find just the right combination to end you and everything you cared for.

She had seen it happen.

More than once… and once was one time too many.

“Hold the line!” She called, putting her shoulder into the barricade as she checked to be sure that her blade was unsnapped on her belt and ready to be drawn. “We can do this! We can hold here!”

The Atlanteans roared along side her, throwing everything they had into the fight, and their enthusiasm was enough to fire up the locals they’d picked up along the way.

Even so, with everyone bracing the barricades, they could feel the shudders as the horde beyond slammed into them again and again. Deep down, Simone knew without question that it really was just a matter of time before it all crumbled.

Elan. Caleb… hurry up. We can’t hold much longer.

*****

Chapter Thirty-One

Citadel Rooftop

Ser’Lis raged as she surged up, her muscle leveraging its strength against the relatively meager weight of her sister as Goth attempted to keep her down. She forced her way up to one knee, batting away an attack from the other demon with her forearm, ignoring the pain as the bone within her tough flesh broke and mended almost immediately.

“You… arrogant… brat!” She snarled, pushing up to her feet and stretching out her wings as she sneered at her sister. “You never were a challenge for me, and you know it. What makes you think this time will be any different?”

Goth just smiled at her, sweetly even, if any look on that face might be considered sweet.

“Oh, sister dear, it’s so cute that you think you were ever a challenge.”

Lis snarled, backhanding away a strike from her sister before she started striding forward.

“You’ve lost every fight we ever had,” She snapped. “Anything you had that I wanted, I took. You’ve never been anything more than my shadow, following me around like a lost little human, so don’t give me any of that excrement.”

Goth laughed, “There is a name for the person out front, darling Lis… bait. I’m not foolish enough to want the top spot, not when I can safely take a position a couple notches below, get all the perks, and practically none of the risks. You always took your image too seriously, sister. You really should just let your wings down for once and have some fun.”

Lis snorted, “Like you and your parade of boytoys?”

She flicked her eyes over, settling on Jol for a moment. “Is he the last one? Is that why you opted to step in?”

Goth flinched as thought struck, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh he is!” Lis exclaimed, laughing uproariously. “I never did understand what you saw in humans… maybe I’ll given him a trial spin, see if I can figure it out.”

Goth’s face twisted into anger, though she schooled it quickly and forced a smile in return.

“Still have to try to steal my toys, I see?”

“I never stole a thing from you, sister. Anything I wanted, came to me because I was clearly better than you in every way.”

“In your dreams, my bitchy little sister,” Goth sneered. “You only ever got what I was already prepared to part with. Most of the time it wasn’t even your idea to steal them, I had to very carefully coach you with the idea.”

She palmed her cheeks, putting on a shocked look, “Oh, my big sister has everything, and I only have this one, perfect, treasure… I hope she doesn’t try to take it from me. Oh, woe is me.”

Goth rolled her eyes, “Dumping my old toys on you was always the easiest way to be rid of them when they bored me.”

“You lying bitch.”

“Am I?”

*****

Caleb hesitated, uncertain if he should… well, do something, given what he was seeing. His sword was pointed at the ground, mostly, as he tried to decide what to do.

“Should we… do something?” He asked softly.

Jol snorted, “You do what you want, but I’m not getting in the middle of that. Let them wear each other down. How is Elan doing?”

Caleb turned his head, over to where Elan was furiously crawling across the rooftop, dagger in hand, carving out chunks of the surface beneath her with a fervor that he could only describe as… manic.

“I’m not going over there either,” Jol said after a moment of the pair staring in a fascinated stupor.

“Cowards.” Sie rolled her eyes, “Come on, Tur. Let us deal with this.”

The big man looked between his axe and the two fighting demons before shaking his head, “No, Sie, I think I agree with them.”

“You must be kidding me,” She complained. “They’re not that scary!”

“I wouldn’t get between you and your cousin either,” Tur said seriously. “If they opt to try attacking us, then we’re back in this fight, but for now? Leave them to it.”

“Unbelievable.”

*****

Elan could see the words in her mind as she feverishly scratched them into the surface of the rooftop, unable to stop herself from moving now that she had begun.

The words were, and were not, any language she understood. In her head she saw them as words, or phrases, that she could say and be understood… but after she had etched them into the surface and looked them over before her rush to move on took over, she could see that they were in nothing that she’d ever read before… yet, somehow, they were as familiar as anything she’d ever known.

The puzzle of that would bother her later, she knew without any doubt… but for now, she was focused on finishing what she was working on.

Countering the wave depending very much on timing as much as it did any other factor, which meant that she had to finish it as quickly as she could so that it could be activated at her leisure.

There was, however, something nagging at her in the back of her mind. She couldn’t tell if it were good or bad, but she knew that she was still missing something.

There wasn’t any time to worry about that, however, the task before her was consuming everything she had.

*****

Northern Research Facility

“She’s brilliant. When did she learn this?” Nimue asked, shocked by what she was watching through the armor-camera signal.

“I do not know,” Merlin answered, his tone sounding more than a little dumbfounded. “It was not from me.”

Nimue snorted, “Of course it wasn’t from you, you old fossil. She’s doing work that’s beyond me right now.”

Merlin ignored the jibe, “Elanthielle came to me an ignorant child. I have been educating her as best I can, but almost all of my focus has been in the proper use of the old technologies still available to us. She had no magical training to speak of, of that I am certain.”

“Then something very strange has happened,” Nimue said tersely. “Because she’s rewriting my understanding of this branch of magic, and I know everything our culture knew.”

Merlin nodded, understanding that, “It must be the Books. They’re a memetic threat.”

Nimue hissed slightly, not liking that suggestion in the slightest.

They didn’t know anything about the source of those writings. They just tended to appear in different places, often without any explanation and always without any history to show where they came from. The writing was indecipherable, no matter how many great minds had been thrown at them, and yet… this.

“Are we certain it’s a threat?” She asked hesitantly. “She appears to be working against the demons.”

“Even assuming they were not written by the demons themselves,” Merlin said. “And for the moment I’m willing to make that assumption… even in that case, however, it means a third party has involved themselves in this conflict. The demons’ have no doubt made many enemies over the eons they claim to have existed, but just because someone hates them does not mean they themselves can be trusted. I’m locking down the Book in my custody until further information can be acquired.”

Nimue sighed, but nodded slowly in agreement, “I will follow suit… barring any future end of the world situations.”

“Agreed,” Merlin said blandly.

If the world was about to end, there wasn’t any point in holding back out of safety fears he supposed.

He frowned, the feed flickering across his vision again, “What is she doing?”

Nimue leaned in, a purely theatrical affectation for the intelligence, but it had always felt right to her.

“She’s integrating my calculations with the runes,” She declared. “That will allow her to pulse out the inverse wave and cancel out the standing wave the demons have setup.”

Merlin was nodding when something else got his attention.

“Oh no.”

“What? What is it?”

*****

Citadel

Lis screamed as she launched herself at Ser’Goth, talons extended as her wings provided her with extra speed.

“You insane bitch,” She cried in mid flight. “I’ll have you burned for an eternity for helping the enemy!”

Goth rolled away from the swiping talons, her wings beating at the air as Lis flew past her, and she reached out to snag the other demon’s wing in mid flight, letting her spin pull Lis around before she wrenched down and threw her sister to the rooftop below.

Lis crashed into the rooftop, rolling to a stop in a short distance as Goth dipped her head down and let her wings work with gravity instead of against it, putting her into a power dive aimed right at her sister.

The humans scattered away as Lis rolled up to her knees, eyes casting up quickly to place her foe’s position before she leapt aside at the last second and let Goth slam into the roof with enough force to shake the entire Citadel as best those around her could feel.

“Sloppy, sloppy, sister dear,” Lis snarled as she launched in and slashed across Goth’s chest with razor sharp talons, parting the flesh with ease and leaving a seeping black liquid oozing out in their wake.

Goth snarled from the pain, but retaliated with her own talons, scoring hits that opened up flesh and muscle along Lis’ powerful legs.

The two demons parted, hissing with pain, and checked their wounds quickly even as they started to knit from their superior healing.

“We will be at this all night,” Lis growled. “Something neither you, nor I, have the time for… and you know it, sister.”

“That is something you should have considered before you opted to use me as the scapegoat for your own failures!”

“My failures?” Lis demanded, enraged. “You simple minded fool, I am not the one who lost The City to a small faction of humans! That was you! Do not put your shortfalls onto anyone else.”

Ser’Goth bared her teeth, “The same small faction of humans who’ve infiltrated your precious citadel, breaking prisoners out, and disrupting your little rite?”

“They would be dead already, if not for you!”

Ser’Goth smirked, “That makes for a great story, sister… but I have another one. My poor dear sibling was over her head and didn’t want to admit it after losing the City, so she rushed the preparations and made fatal errors that the enemy were prepared to exploit. I did everything I could, but I just couldn’t make up for her foolish incompetence.”

“You bitch.”

“One of us gets to tell our story, sister,” Goth said teasingly. “There will be no one else to correct them when it is told.”

“It won’t matter!” Lis swore, “If this rite fails, they’ll send more demons in force, and everyone here will be destroyed as failures!”

“And if it succeeds, you’ll turn me in as a traitor anyway, sister dear,” Goth said mockingly. “So I’ll take my chances. Even if you’re right, at least this way I bring you down with me.”

Lis screamed in frustration and the pair again launched themselves at each other, as those remaining on the rooftop watched, mostly uncertain as to what they should be doing at the moment.

*****

Caleb hefted his blade in his hand, eyeing the fighting demons, honestly having a hard time deciding if he should be getting involved or not. It wasn’t exactly the sort of situation he’d come to expect, or plan to deal with, all things considered.

His indecision might have continued, but a voice put an end to it.

“Caleb.”

“Merlin?” He frowned, cocking his head slightly as he heard the familiar voice through his armor. “What is it?”

“There is a problem below.”

Caleb half turned, eyes going instantly to the edge of the building, one name jumping to his mind.

“Simone?” He asked, heart in his throat.

“Alive, for the moment. However, the forces below are about to breach and once they’re inside, I do not believe that the forces under Simone’s command can deal with the threat. Certainly not without mass casualties.”

Caleb started, half a step taken before he paused and half turned back, eyes on the fighting demons and then sliding over to where Elan was furiously working. He had to go, but he couldn’t.

“Go.”

The voice nearly caused him to jump, and he turned to see Elan now looking right at him, but…

“Elan… your… your eyes?” He stammered out, staring in shock.

A silver light was… leaking from her eyes, like nothing he’d ever seen.

“Go, Caleb,” She ordered. “Simone needs you.”

“What about you? If we fail here, we’re all undone!”

“And if we lose our forces below, Atlantis may be crippled beyond saving anyway,” she said, seemingly content to ignore his concerns about her eyes. “Today, we need a sweeping victor. Here, and below. I and the others will make this work. You, go save our future.”

Caleb swallowed, but nodded, “Alright. I’m going. Don’t die.”

Elan smiled at him, the silver gleam behind her eyes growing slightly, “Do not worry. If I die here today, it will have been worth it.”

“No, it won’t!” He snapped, now halfway to the edge of the building, Caleb turned back and pointed. “DO. NOT. DIE!”

Then he hopped the edge of the building and vanished from sight.

*****

Elan watched the space where Caleb had jumped, amused by the boy’s parting order, though she knew it was made more from emotion than logic she could still appreciate the intent.

“Yes sir,” She whispered, smiling slightly before turning her focus back to her work.

The Runic inscriptions were nearly complete, and the math provided by Nimue was in place. All she needed to do was complete a few lines and then charge the new scheme. She wasn’t sure she had enough power for that herself, but there was more than just her on the rooftop.

Almost, she thought as she finished up the runic inscriptions. There. Now, to charge it and…

Elan stopped, her mind blanking suddenly.

And what?

That was the question, of course. The standing wave the demons had established to pierce the dimensional barriers had to be stopped, that was a given, but if that was all she did then… what?

More of the same. More fighting. More demons, eventually. We beat them again, and again, and they never stop…

“Elan?” Nimue’s voice was concerned. “Elan. You need to finish the work. We’re running out of time.”

Elan barely heard her, her mind awhirl with the thoughts that had been triggered by that moment of frustration.

The old ones beat them over and over, but for what? Only to lose in the end because the demons don’t care about their own losses, they just get more fodder and come back to try again.

“I can do something about that,” Elan said aloud as the thought entered her mind.

“Elan, you’re not making any sense, snap out of it.” Nimue’s voice was ardent now, trying to get through to her.

Elan ignored it.

“Nimue, I need calculations,” she said.

“Elan, you already entered the correct equations…”

“No, not to stop the wave,” She snapped. “I need calculations to create my own.”

*****

Chapter Thirty-Two

Citadel Ground Level

Simone cried out as the barrier was broken through, the impact of some great force shattering it and throwing her and many of the others back.

They’d exhausted their spears, the best defense they had either broken on demonic flesh, or irrevocably stuck in the bodies of the dead who’d tried to enter the citadel previously. She hit the ground, sliding to a stop as she fought back the pain in order to scramble back to her feet with her blade in her hand.

“Stand strong!” she called the order. “Force them back!”

The men and women of Atlantis roared, throwing themselves into the fray yet again on her command, the act making her chest swell with pride… and her guts churn with the sick feeling that no matter what happened, she’d just ordered them to their deaths.

That sickness was practically an old friend, however, and she ignored it as she charged forward on the very heels of her own order.

A hulking beast was shoving splintered chunks of the barrier aside as she rushed back in and brought her blade down on its head.

Iron blades had an effect on the demons, she knew, but it was not an effect that held up as strongly as one might hope as the demons themselves grew stronger. Their weakness to the metal was something that played better with the fodder they sent out at first, and not with the more powerful of the beasts that they were now facing.

Even with the work done by the Brothers on her weapon, and those of many others in the group, Simone felt her guts clench as the edge of her blade barely bit in, drawing only a slight welling of bleed from the blow that she’d put every bit of her strength into.

The demon had flinched back, but only barely before it continued to push in as she kept hacking at it with blow after blow that minced it’s face and head, but didn’t seem to get deep enough to put a real stop to the beast.

A human would have fallen back, or been blinded and enraged perhaps, by this point. Even superficial damage added up, after all, and a face that had been mangled and minced like that was not something the majority of people could ignore. Not so with this beast, however; it barely seemed to notice her efforts other than to get a little angrier with each blow.

Simone didn’t let the sinking feeling take control of her, however, as she knew that if she broke… most of the people with her would follow suit, and they’d all die if that happened.

To one side she heard the barrier crack and then splinter under the attack from without, wood and stone and demon filth being blown into the citadel among the debris as a proper hole in the defense was opened up and the demons now rushed in freely.

No!

*****

Caleb honestly loved the armor of the old ones; it allowed him to do so much more than he ever could when he was without it. He was reasonably certain that he could survive a straight fall from the height of the Citadel, but had no intention of testing that right before entering a fight, so instead he stayed tight into the building and used it as friction to slow his descent.

Below him he could see fires burning, at first, but little else. As he fell, though, things became clearer. Shadowy forms formed out of the darkness, then coalesced into more substantial creatures that he recognized as the enemy, and the sounds of the fight began to filter up to his ears as he continued to slide down the side of the tower.

Almost at the bottom, Caleb made a choice and picked a target. Kicking off the building and entering into a freefall, he orientated to get his feet properly under him and curled them up close to his body as he judged the distance.

At the last moment before he landed, Caleb kicked out with as much force as his muscles and the armor could provide, his feet planting hard into the head of a big demon as the force just pulped it where it stood, sending blood and ichor out in all directions as Caleb absorbed as much of the rest of the energy as he could, coming to a stop in the middle of the bloody mess as demons on all sides flinched back from the show instinctively.

His sword sung as it slid from his belt. The gleaming weapon wasn’t merely one of the enhanced ones that the brothers had worked on since joining Atlantis, but was one of their creations entirely.

Red-gold, gleaming and glowing, Caleb’s blade was a beacon in the night as he launched into action. He swept the blade around, slicing through the flesh of a demon who’d not gotten far enough back, sending it screaming in pain and toppling over as he did. Only then did Caleb take a second to properly evaluate his position and where the others were.

The entrance to the Citadel is over there, and that is a lot of demons, he noted with some trepidation.

However, the numbers didn’t matter. His friends were within, and that meant he was going there, if he had to go through the demons to get to them… well that was a price the demons were just going to have to pay.

*****

The Viceroy frowned as he heard a commotion from somewhere other than the fighting, half turning just in time to see a reddish glow in the middle of a group of his forces, seemingly cutting them down.

Blasted traitors.

He did not like being forced to fight between two forces, even if they were relatively weak forces. It prevented him from being able to simply gather his group properly and finish them entail as they deserved.

Constantly being distracted by one while the other chipped away at his forces was a certain way to lose this battle, and that was entirely unacceptable.

“Ignore the traitors for now,” He ordered. “Retake the Citadel!”

His demons roared their blood lust, more and more of them pushing harder to get to the citadel and the humans cowering within. He smiled nastily at that, his own blood lust now up as well as he too looked forward to making them all pay.

I will have to ensure that there are survivors, He decided.

It wasn’t a proper victory celebration if there weren’t any of the enemy left to… enjoy it with.

*****

Sindri huffed a little, leaning on a particularly large chunk of rubble as he looked over the fighting.

“Is that one of ours?” He asked, nodding into the fray.

“Aye, I think it is,” Brokkr said as he too looked over in time to see the reddish glow of one of their blades being used for its true purpose.

The height of their craft was not in iron or steel, but in the most valuable metal either of them had ever discovered.

Orichalcum.

The metal could hold an edge nearly as well as steel, weighed about a third less, and channeled magic like it was alive. They’d been working with it for centuries, and neither of them were confident that they’d learned everything about it by any means.

What they did know, however, was that it made for truly superlative weapons. They rarely made those for anyone. Given the current situation of the world, it honestly felt like making them for the humans would merely result in them being taken inevitably by the demons for their own.

Somehow, though, children had managed to squirm a couple of the priceless weapons from them.

Sindri wasn’t honestly sure how, but he wasn’t regretting it as he felt he would either.

*****

Caleb twisted in place as the demons around him tried to grab him, jumping clear over a few of them to avoid the swiping claws that might not have been able to get through the armor Merlin had gifted him, but he had long since decided he’d rather not test the concept.

The Citadel was just mere feet away as he charged for the ruins of the barricade, and he could manage to just hear the fighting from within over the screams of the demons charging at the breaches in the barricade. Caleb threw himself into the fight, using the superhuman strength afforded him by the armor to yank demons back, hacking at others with his sword in ways that would definitely have gotten him remedial lessons if he’d had the temerity to attempt such while Simone was teaching him, and generally just making himself a pain in the demons’ posterior as much as he could while wading through the fighting to the Citadel itself.

“Simone!” He called over the fighting, hoping to get a response though knowing it was a bit of a longshot.

He was rewarded then, after the fourth call, by a muffled sound that sort of felt like it could be his name as he got up to the barrier.

Kicking a demon in the face as it tried to go through him to get inside, Caleb yanked on one side of the rubble, pulling that part of the barrier down to fill in the gap he’d just used. It reduced the size of the section he’d yanked down, of course, but also made it that much harder to come in as the demons were forced to clamber over more pieces of debris.

“You over there?” He called, getting a bit of a breather as he checked around himself once inside the barricade.

“Caleb?” Simone’s voice was clearer now. “I thought you were on the roof!”

“Merlin said you lot needed a hand. I’m what you get.”

“We’ll take it,” Simone said, sounding relieved. “How are things up top?”

“Honestly? No idea,” Caleb said as he slashed his blade at a demon charging him, sending it toppling to the ground in a couple different places.

The fighting had been bloody; he could tell that as he looked around the interior of the Citadel. Both humans and demons were scattered about the floor, some moving… many not… on both sides. Caleb didn’t know for sure how bad the losses already were, but he knew for certain that they couldn’t afford to lose too many people here, not if they wanted to survive in the world that would be left if they won.

Losing, of course, meant no such worries… but that was the stakes of Genocide.

Simone fought her way over to him as he worked to hold the line, kicking another demon back as he called out orders to the others at the top of his lungs.

“Hold the line! Wait for them to get close, then team up!” Caleb ordered, pointing, “Someone cover that gap in the barricade before they realize it opened up!”

“What do you mean, no idea?” Simone demanded, panting a little as she got up to his side. “Everything rests on what happens up there!”

“Elan is doing some weird magical stuff I have no clue about, and the others are watching two demon ladies try to kill each other,” Caleb shrugged as he fought. “I didn’t exactly have anything more I could do up there, so Merlin told me to get my butt down here. Are you complaining? I can find the stairs…”

Simone glared at him, relenting after a moment and a few thrusts of her sword into an advancing pair of demons.

“Sorry, I just… I know how important this is. Holding down here means nothing if we lose up there.”

“And winning up there won’t mean much if there aren’t enough people to continue on,” Caleb said tiredly. “This is all our last stand, Simone.”

She nodded wearily, “That it is.”

The pair returned their full focus to the fighting as the press of demons continued to push in through the gaps in the barricades.

Neither could tell for certain, but the numbers had shifted, and the human defenders had now become outnumbered by the still rising tide of the demon-kin.

*****

The Viceroy nodded in satisfaction as he observed the fight.

The horde he commanded had suffered losses taking the barricade, but that was a normal part of tactics really. The strong would survive, and the weak would become fodder for the growth of the Circles. After this fight, there would be food for months for the survivors, which was always a great boost to morale.

It had taken more than he’d expected, though. The humans had put up a fight nearly as fierce as their ancestors had ages earlier, though with less world devastating attacks of course.

Despite that fierce opposition, however, they were going to fall just as pathetically as humans always did, eventually.

If these creatures had any sense of true community, they would be impossible to defeat, He noted with little sense of irony. They splinter so easily, turn on one another in ways that demons cannot even imagine… at least not until they grow in strength and advance through the circles. Pathetic.

The demon invasion had not been an inevitable thing, counter to what many… including himself… often espoused. Had the humans properly evaluated the threat at the beginning, they had a window to end it all.

Instead, they argued. They fought one another. Many refused to believe that the threat of invasion was real even after the beachheads had been secured.

For the demons, it had been all too easy. Barely any thought or effort needed really, just pour in and do what they do naturally. Enough humans were so invested in fighting the very efforts intended to save them that those very same methods were never able to fully be maximized in their effect.

And these humans, like their ancestors, would fall just the same.

*****

“We can’t hold them!” Caleb yelled over the racket.

“We have to!” Simone responded automatically.

Caleb knew she was right, but he didn’t see any path by which that was even a possibility at this point. They were being pressed back from the barricades, where the demons were flooding in through the breaches they’d made.

For the moment that was more of a trickle than a true flood, but he knew that would only last so long as the demons were too pressed to start tearing down the blockages. Once they had the time to do that, it was all over, and with the defenders being pushed solidly back the way they were, that time was coming sooner than later.

He lifted his sword, calling for the charge to retake one of the openings in the barricades, and the defenders still with them rallied to his call as he’d known that they would. With Caleb in the lead, they managed to push the force of demons back, slaughtering a few stragglers in the process, and retook the pass, as it were.

The problem, however, was that as they did that, they lost ground at two other breaches.

Caleb kept fighting until he’d secured the spot, only then turning to Simone.

“Hold this place,” He ordered. “I’m going to help plug up the others.”

She nodded, barely having breath for what she was doing and having none at all for speech, and Caleb immediately bounded off in search of the next fight.

He didn’t have far to search.

With the strength the armor gifted him, Caleb launched himself into the fight from nearly a dozen feet away, surprising the demons entail as he crashed into their line, feet and blade doing nearly equal damage to the shocked demons as he landed.

“ATLANTEANS!” He called as loud as he could, “To me!”

He vaguely heard the roar that went up in response to his call and felt more than saw or heard the clatter of men and women rallying around him as he pushed into the demon line with all the strength he could muster.

He was spitting into the wind, though, and Caleb was well aware of that fact.

Still, the wind slowly gave as he and the others pushed forward, fighting the demons right back to the narrow passage through the barricade that had allowed them through in the first place, and Caleb stood in that pass with his sword out to block in completely.

“Stand your ground,” He called. “If they want our blood, make them pay for it!”

*****

Sindri hummed darkly as he looked on at the fight. It wasn’t easy to get a read on it from where they were, but the press of the demons did tell the story well enough.

“I dinna believe that they can hold it for much longer,” he said finally.

Brokkr just grunted as he nodded, not bothering to add anything to the statement as there was little he could add.

The situation was still fluid, but it was hardening swiftly, and once it solidified enough, Sindri doubted that they were enough forces on the human side at all to change things. That meant that, if they were to do something… It pretty much had to be right now.

“Any ideas?” He asked, not liking the nearly helpless churning sensation in his gut at all.

“If I had em, we’d be doing em,” Brokkr said. “We could fetch the skip fighter. Its blasters might have an impact.”

“Doubt it,” Sindri sighed.

The lightweight Marine Fighter they’d stolen from the Lady in the City was not exactly a front-line weapon by any means. It had blasters, of course, but they were tuned more for aquatic threats than demons. He wasn’t sure where the Lady had acquired her little trophy, but it likely hadn’t been from a battle unless someone was especially desperate… which, Sindri supposed, was far from unlikely.

Whatever the case, the little fighter wasn’t worth much against a horde of demons, and some of them could fly… and many that couldn’t would be able to engage at range if they had a visible target.

“I know,” Brokkr grumbled. “We’d be iced before we got a second strafing run off.”

Sindri just nodded to that.

“There must be something,” Brokkr went on, though. “We’ve seen enough death for a thousand of our lifetimes, brother. I would rather we not see any more.”

“Wish for peace in the verse, brother,” Sindri replied, laughing lightly, if cynically. “Or  for all the demons to change sides. Both are more likely than us seeing no more death on this day. We’ll see at least one more apiece, whether that be lucky or not, I don’t care to guess at.”

Brokkr grimaced, and Sindri knew that his brother had understood just who the ‘at least one more’ death would be in that ‘lucky’ scenario. Neither of them were quite that enamoured with life that they truly feared death, despite being the next best thing to immortal, but there wasn’t a chance in all the Hells’ Circles that they would go willing into that dark night in a plane that was fully controlled by the Circles.

There were places to die, but in Hell? It was not a good one to pick.

“A few more minutes and we’ll not have to be bothered coming up with an idea,” Brokkr said, “I guess that’s an upside?”

“Dark bastard.”

Brokkr grinned, “Always, brother.”

“Come on,” Sindri grumbled, “Let’s get in there.”

*****

Chapter Thirty-Three

Citadel Roof

Yes, yes… I can do this… we can do this.

Elan was barely able to follow her own thoughts, the sensation of knowing things almost organically forming as she read the words etched into the surface below her and somehow seemed to comprehend them.

Nimue’s calculations had actually altered the meaning of the runic inscriptions as she entered them into the formula, expanding Elan’s mind in turn as she felt her head seem to stretch with each new meaning making itself at home inside her skull.

Nimue’s math would have worked, she realized. It would have perfectly canceled out the standing wave the demons had set, but that was all it would have done… and Elan wasn’t fighting for a draw.

The demons had taken too much from her throughout her life.

Her mother. Her father. Kaern.

Elan felt a dark chill flow through her, part of her emotions wanting her to cry but the focus it was taking just to stay in this moment of understanding was giving her what she needed to keep those parts of herself at bay for the moment. The sorrow, the rage, and all the little petty emotions that supported each, they all were there, but for the moment they waited in the background.

She would let them out, eventually, but for now she had something more important to focus on.

The wave is eroding the barriers between here and… wherever there is, she thought as she read the intent behind Ser’Lis’ original work.

She couldn’t quite get her head wrapped around what the math was telling her about where ‘there’ was… or where here was for that matter. Her brain just didn’t want to make the directions fit the real world, which seemed to be because they didn’t exist in the real world, but Elan really didn’t even know what the hell that meant despite having the knowledge of it crammed into her skull somehow.

So many new ideas

Elan blinked, feeling for a moment like she was drowning in the information that was being opened up to her with every word she read, and every word she wrote.

Knowledge changed a person; she’d known that for some time. You didn’t come out of a lesson quite the same as you went in… but lesson by lesson the change was more gradual, it had time to make everything work between the old and the new.

Elan didn’t think she was getting that time.

She could feel different aspects of her psyche forming deep in her head. Both of them were her… yet neither one felt like they quite agreed. It was a bizarre and confusing sensation, and not one she had any liking for.

“Coward.”

Elan jerked up, “What?”

One of her aspects was there, sneering at her.

“I said, coward,” The slightly older looking version of herself snorted, rolling her eyes. “All the knowledge of the universe is at your fingertips, and you’re worried about whether you’ll still be you when it’s over? Don’t whine about what you’ll lose, think of the gains!”

“D…. don’t listen to her.”

Elan blinked, turning to see the other aspect standing there in front of her, looking uncertain and afraid but seemingly unwilling to back away.

“We’re more t… than what we know. It’s what we are that counts.”

“Oh please. The secrets of the universe are more important than any teen girl’s personal identity. If it changes us, let it! We’ll be better than before. Knowledge is not power, but it can certainly mimic it with startling effectiveness,” The older version cackled. “If we’re not ourselves anymore, it’s because we weren’t worthy of the knowledge in the first place. You can see the universe… it’s there, just waiting for you to take it. Reach your hand out and do what you have to.”

Elan shook her head, trying to get her mind back into the real world without also interrupting her conversing with the words.

She knew that the aspects she’d seen were just spectres, inventions of her mind that ultimately, she had control over. Whispers of her fears, secret desires… but also of truths, Elan suspected.

Warnings and advice.

Indeed.

Elan jumped. That hadn’t been a voice, it had been spoken into her mind, and from the outside. She knew the feeling, remembered it from…

Kaern? Elan thought, shocked.

She turned her head as a boot crunched on the surface a little ways off, and seemingly out of mists, a large burly figure walked. She’d seen this man in her dreams over the past years, only rarely had they been good ones.

In the… well, not flesh you see, but it’s me, nonetheless. The figure smiled at her. You look lovely, lass. Grown up well.

You… you’re dead. Elan’s tone of thought was firm, right up until it cracked at the last moment. Right?

I’m hard to kill, my kind all are. Kaern looked around, one eyebrow raised. And if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were one of us too, if I didn’t know for a fact that you were too good to be one of ours.

Elan had no idea what was going on. Part of her was screaming that she was hallucinating it all… but another part was whispering in the other ear… not hallucinating. Dreaming.

She looked around sharply, Is this…?

“Aye, lass. The Dreaming again,” Karen said, the world shifting slightly as his voice reverberated between them and the though-touch faded. “Like the first time we met. I must say, you have a talent for pissing off demon folk. That’s quite the batfight there behind you, lovely assets they both have.”

“What.”

Elan just stared, both at Kaern but also at the whole world… no, whole universe that was flowing around and through him as well as…

Yes!

Flowing through her as well.

Everything just clicked in that moment, causing her to turn away from Kaern and go right back to her work as he watched, bemusedly.

“Well, I’ve been ignored by the ladies often enough in my life, I suppose this should be normal,” he said idly as he walked over and peeked over her shoulder. “Runic inscriptions and altering universal constants? My child, you’re growing up fast.”

“I don’t have time to talk,” she said, not looking up. “If you’re still alive, where have you been?”

“Honestly? A little lost yet,” Kaern shrugged. “That wave wasn’t exactly gentle, you understand. I didn’t regain awareness for… well, actually, I have no idea how long I was dead for.”

That caused her to pause, half turning, “Dead?”

“Of a sort,” He nodded, gesturing back to her work. “Continue, lass. I can talk while you work.”

Elan shook herself, but quickly got back to work.

“And yes, dead. Body was shut down, no heart, no brain, so pretty dead.”

“How do… how does that work?”

“We don’t move on the way you do, well… the way you’re supposed to,” He sighed. “When the universe hasn’t been abandoned by the Celestial.”

Elan stopped again, “The… what?”

“Celestial. Goes by a lot of names, really, just depends on what universe and culture,” Kaern shrugged. “The Circles didn’t come first, the Celestial did. They’re the ones the Circles have been warring with.”

“And winning,” Elan mumbled acridly.

“Here, perhaps,” He shrugged. “In other places they lose, but overall, yes… somehow, they’ve been winning.”

“Somehow?”

Kaern chuckled, “The Celestial are far more powerful, lass. Nearly infinitely so, I expect.”

“Then… Why!?” Elan burst out, looking up from her work, unable to comprehend it.

“That is the mystery of the ages,” He said somberly. “And I’m not kidding. People have been asking that question since before this universe was created. We don’t know, and the Celestial aren’t talking. Even the Circles don’t seem to know, not that most of them are remotely intelligent enough to question it.”

Elan looked down at the work she’d been trying to focus on, her mind still awash with the sheer insanity of that statement as she tried to parse it. She blinked, though, when the runes she was working on shifted and changed of their own accord.

“What… hey!” She complained, seeing her work undone, the incensed feeling suddenly evaporating as she understood. “Oh.”

“Just figured it out, Lass?”

She glared at him, noting that the older being was grinning at her.

“You could have told me.”

“Where would the fun be in that?”

Elan sighed. Of course, I’m in the dreaming again. Until I wake from this, I can’t make the changes…. But I need to remember them.

Kaern turned to look out over the sky, and Elan realized that it wasn’t the night sky she’d been working under to this point. It appeared to be aflame in places, and the world below it was burning as well.

“They’ve almost won, here,” Kaern said. “You can see it in the dreaming. It’s why I came so quickly when I head your call this time.”

“I didn’t…” She paused, thinking back. No, I did. I remember now.

Kaern just smiled at her knowingly, “You’re growing, lass, but you’ve yet a long way to go before you master the dreaming. You know, I was worried about you, but now that I’m here… I think maybe I should be more worried for your enemies.”

He nodded to the runes that surrounded them, “This is good work, lass. Powerful. There’s only one… well, a few ways I suppose that you could have learned this so fast… but only one of them leaves you human, inside and out. You found one of the Treasures.”

Elan nodded, somehow knowing that was the right word.

“What are they?” She asked. “They look like… old books, but…”

“Ancient knowledge, so old and so complete that the knowledge itself gained sentience,” Kaern told her. “Magic is a funny thing, lass, it has a way about it. It brings life where no life has ever been, some say where no life should have been. The Celestial brought Magic to Us, a long… long time ago. It was the final gift to mankind from our… parents, I suppose you could say.”

Elan started slightly, hearing Kaern refer to himself as part of mankind felt wrong given how they’d parted so long ago.

“The Celestial breathed life into the universe with a Word,” He told her. “And that word was Magick. When we grew old enough to be responsible, we were gifted with it in turn.”

Kaern sighed, looking out at the burning skies.

“Honestly, that didn’t turn out so well.”

“I don’t understand,” She admitted.

“It’s alright, nothing you can do about it anyway,” he told her, looking back at her work. “Well… maybe nothing. I think I see what you’re aiming for here, lass… mind a bit of advice?”

Elan blinked, but slowly she nodded.

Kaern leaned in, “One word, lass. Veil.”

Elan cocked her head to one side, confused, “What does… Kaern!”

He smiled at her as he faded and she startled herself fully back to the real world, the sky going dark again with the stars twinkling cheerfully in the place of the ugly flames, and behind her she could hear the fighting of the demon pair.

What did he mean? Veil?

Elan looked back down at her partially finished work, her mind unfolding the runes as she stared, and in a single instant everything fell into place like she’d just been handed a key for it all.

“Veil…” She breathed out.

It was… perfect.

Elan hurriedly got back to work, frantically trying to get it done as she now felt the pressures of time coming into play against her.

*****

Northern Research Facility

Merlin was confused as he watched through the imaging the suit provided.

Elan had shifted her direction somehow, and he couldn’t follow it completely, but he was certain that she wasn’t working to collapse the standing wave any longer.

“What is she doing?” He asked, confused beyond measure.

“I… don’t know,” Nimue admitted, seemingly just as confused as he.

She could follow the work that was being done, it wasn’t that complex, and she had a great deal of personal knowledge of the art being exercised, but she couldn’t extrapolate ahead to see what Elan was working on. Part of her desperately wanted to call out to the girl, ask her what she was doing, but the surety and speed in which she was working stayed Nimue’s hand.

If she’s this confident, I don’t want to distract her.

“I’m seeing runic inscriptions for protections, but there’s no way they’ll be effective on the scale the girl is working on,” she complained to Merlin instead. “More concerning, though, is that she’s binding it with sacrificial symbols.”

Merlin stiffened, “Sacrificing what?”

That was the question, Nimue knew without doubt. Sacrifice was necessary for any action, really. Whether you wanted to defeat a demon lord or just get up in the morning, you had to pay the price. What that price was, well that could vary wildly of course. A mundane activity like getting up and getting food required a sacrifice of energy to move, of the source of your food, and of various other things along the way.

Defeating one of the Circles, well those kinds of sacrifice were somewhat more intense, but even there you had a range of costs. In many cases you could pre-pay your sacrifice by training, expending energy to acquire skill and strength, or by seeking out a weapon that would give you an advantage.

All actions required sacrifice, but not all sacrifices were equal.

Nimue couldn’t figure out what Elan’s sacrifice was, but she was entwining it deeply into the runic inscriptions.

“I don’t know, nothing she has could possibly be powerful enough a sacrifice to have any effect on…”

Nimue trailed off, her mind making connections.

“Oh. Oh no.”

*****

Citadel

Elan smiled as she completed her work, etching the last of the runic markers into place with a flourish she didn’t know how to do, yet somehow managed anyway. When it was complete, she put her hand over the etchings and pulled the dagger from her hip, slicing into her palm with a quick, sure stroke that parted her flesh easily and allowed the blood to fall.

As it hit the runic patterns, a flush of power exploded out from her position and silence fell across the rooftop.

Even the pair of demons ceased their bickering, both of them having felt the power in the action and they turned toward it involuntarily.

“What do you do?” Ser’Lis demanded, her tone shocked and quieter than previous as she looked around, confusion, fear, and rage battling across her features.

Elan didn’t say anything as she stood up, cut hand clenched into a fist as she let the blood drop.

“I asked you a question!”

Elan turned slightly, her head twisting to look back, “So you did.”

“Answer me, you human bitch!”

“I made a change.”

Ser’Lis shook her head. “Not possible! I don’t care what you’re capable of, your blood couldn’t possibly power what I felt.”

“It didn’t. It just triggered it.” Elan told the infuriated demon, her tone sad. “I powered it with something… powerful.”

“How!? You’re a nothing little piece of filth,” Lis raged. “You are a human with delusions of adequacy! There’s nothing you have that could possibly power anything that potent!”

“Nothing I have, true,” Elan nodded slowly. “But you made a mistake, you know. When you destroyed the old civilization? I couldn’t have done this if they were still around.”

Lis looked puzzled as Ser’Goth silently watched from behind her, wings drooping as she listened but made no move to intervene.

“What do you mean?”

Elan smiled sadly, “I made a deal with the universe, Demon… on behalf of humanity. There’s so few of us left now, that I actually count as part of the leadership and have the authority to do so… in the eyes of the universe.”

*****

Chapter Thirty-Four

Citadel

Caleb roared as he threw his weight into holding the barricade up against the pressure of innumerable demons pushing from the other side. His armor granted him physical strength above that of mortal men, but even it had limits, and against the horde beyond the wall… he knew it was already decided.

The walls shivered with each passing moment, shuddering more and more as chunks broke down and demons continued to push in through the holes that already breached it in numerous places. He felt the wall give, his feet sliding against the floor as he was pushed back, less for a lack of strength than for a lack of leverage.

Caleb threw up an arm to cover his head from falling debris and jumped clear just before it all came down and he heard the roaring of the demons as they celebrated the loss of the barricade.

“Hold your ground!”

Simone’s order was barely audible amidst the chaos, but Caleb threw in his own support to that command.

“Kill them all!” He snarled, his blade in hand as he jumped back in, swinging with more power than finesse against the ravenous horde that was clambering over the debris.

Power was what was needed, though, and his blade cleaved through limbs and bone with each swing, sending demons on to whatever awaited them in the beyond.

Vaguely, Caleb could see his fellows tightening up the line as they continued to fight, their weapons keeping the demons at bay for a short time, but at cost. Men and women were flung aside violently if they made the mistake of getting into the reach of the hulking brutes of the horde, and others died… brutally… if they were unfortunate enough to be caught by some of the others.

They were being pushed back into the Citadel as the demons raged in, but it was not an entirely one-sided fight by any means.

Even as he struggled, Caleb could see the demons being cut down, pools of ichor mixing with blood as the bodies of both sides began to cover the floor. He didn’t know how many were dead, how many were injured, or whether anyone would be alive after it was over to count. He supposed that it didn’t really matter, not in the moment at least, somehow all of the vital reasons they were there in the first place seemed pointless and small.

The fight itself had subsumed all of that and became the only thing that mattered.

Caleb gritted his teeth as he tanked a heavy blow from a demon intent on killing one of the Atlanteans, retaliating with a thrust of his sword that perforated the tough flesh and speared out the back.

As the demon died, falling forward and onto Caleb, he had a brief flash of lucidity that left him almost as breathless as the fight itself.

Everything else was meaningless in that moment, and all that mattered was winning this battle.

The war, well he would worry about that when the fighting was done.

*****

The Viceroy smiled widely as he watched the last of the barricades fall. His horde was pushing into the Citadel.

That was the end, he knew. Certainly, the fighting would continue for a time, humans could be notoriously stubborn as individuals… something that was both a flaw and a feature of the species, he supposed, but digging them out of the Citadel, while bloody and brutal, would not be a challenge from a strategic point of view.

With them occupied here, at least they wouldn’t be giving Ser’Lis problems with the rite, after all.

That thought gave him some pause, though, as he looked up at the skies.

Shouldn’t there be some sign by this point? He wondered.

He wasn’t an expert in runic rites, of course, those that opted for that route were… more than a little twisted, physically and mentally. However, he was familiar enough with the concepts, given that he’d helped plan out this very night.

The Viceroy was considering dispatching a flyer up to check on the Lady of the Citadel and see if everything was in order, only to have the thought wiped from his mind as a rolling spray of flames erupted from the rubble that surrounded them and engulfed a group of his demons.

“These blasted traitors,” He snarled, waving at one of his messengers. “We’ve shattered the defenses holding us out of the Citadel, I want pressure kept up on the defenders, but it’s time to dispatch some of our squads to eliminate them.”

“Yes, Viceroy,” The messenger nodded. “Do you have any preferences as to the squads to send?”

“No. Just send two… no, make it four,” he ordered. “And tell them that if they cannot finish this job, they’d better be dead when I find them.”

“Of course, Viceroy.”

The messenger flickered slightly before vanishing, leaving a distinct crack of displaced air and a smell in it’s wake that the Viceroy preferred not to dwell on.

*****

“We’ve got more of them coming our way,” Sindri told his brother. “It doesn’t look good.”

“How many?” Brokkr asked, directing another roiling ball of flames into the mass of demons trying to push their way into the Citadel.

They were such easy targets at the moment that, if he weren’t as familiar with demons as he was, Brokkr would have been incredibly suspicious and looking for a trap to be sprung. No sane sentients just stood there and took a beating like these poor bastards were. Demons, however, were not one of them sane by any measure he could imagine.

Whether they were driven to madness by the Change they went through, or just begun that way he really didn’t know, but he’d never met a demon that wasn’t completely off the wall insane. Some could fake it surprisingly well, but eventually they all showed the deep conflicts that tore them apart inside.

Not that he wasn’t looking for a trap anyway, that was just common sense… Brokkr just didn’t think that there was likely to be one.

“Too many, brother,” Sindri’s response broke into his mental meanderings. “I’m almost exhausted of power, and the sky is exhausted of potential for my most effective tricks, and I know you can’t be far behind.”

“True,” Brokkr admitted through clenched teeth.

His preferred use of his potential was different from his brothers in that it was less powerful, but also less power demanding over the long run. Sindri could drop a lightning bolt on someone’s head on a whim, especially if there was already a storm in the brewing above, but as he exhausted the potential electrical power in the skies it became more and more exhausting to force that potential into existence.

His own flames cost more initially, but didn’t ramp up in cost like that.

It made them a good match in a fight, able to cover each others’ weaknesses, but if the battle protracted too long… well, everyone ran out of power sometime.

Now is that time.

Sindri was looking grim, and Brokkr understood why.

The humans had just lost their last true advantage. If something didn’t change fast, they were going to lose everything else. The people of the Island didn’t deserve that, but there wasn’t anything more that they could do for them.

“I’m not running yet,” Brokkr said firmly. “We’ll give them the support we can until it’s over.”

Sindri nodded slowly, “Agreed. And then?”

“And then, I think it may be time to move on to other fields.”

“Sad, but I feel the truth of that one,” Sindri replied.

They’d fled the demon horde before, and given how long they lived, would likely do so again. Both brothers hated that they couldn’t make any real dent in the devastation those abominations wrought, but there was nothing to be gained by just hanging around and being killed for no good result either.

*****

Caleb swore as he was pushed back from the position he’d been holding, unable to keep up his own defense while simultaneously holding the ground. As he fell back, he could see more and more of the filthy monsters surging through the gaps that had opened up.

In the periphery, the same scene was playing out across the entire line.

Elan, I hope you’ve finished up there because we’re finished down here, whether we like it or not.

“Fall back!” He ordered above the roar. “Hold the corridors, bleed them dry!”

The floor was slick with the blood of friends and foes alike, and he had to be extremely careful not to trip over bodies as he started to follow his own orders. Caleb would only pause to pull up the wounded or the unfortunate as he came across them, hustling them away from the front line of the fight as it moved deeper and deeper into the Citadel itself.

Outside, he could see the sky flash with bright light and occasionally the roar of a fire that sounded far too cheerful for the situation could even be heard over the fighting, so he knew that the brothers were still there, but it hardly seemed to really matter any longer.

The fighting was becoming automatic. Thrust, slash, thrust, thrust. Dodge. Parry, slash, thrust, thrust. Each motion was almost done in a haze as he did his best to lead the fighting as they struggled to fall back amid the heavy attack from the horde of disposable forces the demons had to field against them.

Caleb was almost detached from it all, until he heard a scream.

*****

Simone was hard pressed. Three of the beasts had cornered her as she struggled to keep a few of the injured alive while they were pulled back, her blade a flash glinting in the flickering light of the fires beyond the Citadel, her face spattered with blood and ichor is indistinguishable quantities.

“Get them clear!” She ordered over her shoulder, urging those still able to move as quickly as they could while dragging the wounded back from the fighting.

The moment of distraction cost her dearly.

One of the foul beasts lunged out of the line the others had been using to organize their fight, its teeth locking onto her arm viciously.

It died a moment later, her sword in its gullet, but the damage was done as she did her best to bite back a scream of pain as the blood flowed freely.

“Simone!”

“I said get them clear!” She snarled, not looking around this time.

The demons surrounding her could, literally, smell the blood in the air as they looked at her. Simone tried to keep up her off-hand defense, but the wounded arm was barely responding to any commands she directed its way, and it left her with great gaping holes in her defense against the multiple attackers she’d been dealing with.

Desperate now, she resorted to less skillful use of her blade and more haphazard waving, more to keep the demons flinching back than anything with a hope of incurring proper damage. It was working for the moment, but she knew better than most that it wouldn’t last for long.

For Simone knew that her time was up when the demons gained several new members, and they all started to push forward.

If they got through her, they’d get the wounded next.

“Like hell.” Simone snarled as the knuckles of her good hand whitened around the grip of the sword. “Like hell you get them! Do you hear me!? Like Hell!”

The demons didn’t have a chance to stop their laughing at her before she lunged right at their throats, sword flashing and teeth gleaming in the flickering firelight.

*****

Caleb screamed as he began tearing through the demons, trying to get across the foyer as fast as he could. He flung the small ones so hard they cracked against the ceiling before hitting the ground. Larger ones merely got broken bones or a sword bisecting vital parts of their anatomy, but no matter what he tried it felt like wading through molasses to Caleb as he fought to make any distance at all.

“Simone!”

He watched his mentor, almost his mother really, as she threw herself bodily against the wall of demons pushing in against her. Her sword bit into the flesh of one, then was ripped away as it died and fell, taking the trapped blade down with it.

For most, that would probably have been the end, but Simone had been in a lot of fights, before his birth even, and Caleb kept pushing knowing that she wouldn’t give up even in the face of that much bearing down on her.

Even he winced, though, when she lunged at the next demon, locking her teeth around its throat and tearing with every bit of strength she had.

That was the last he saw of her, though, as the rest piled on and drove both her and the demon she had locked in a death grip to the ground beneath them.

Roaring as he fought through the morass of flesh between him and her, Caleb wasn’t even completely certain he could tell demon from human as he moved. He was so fixated on one thing that it didn’t even feel like he could see anything beyond the tunnel that had locked onto Simone.

He hit the line of demons like a rockslide, slamming them apart and inflicting every injury he could manage in the time he had, throwing them up, to the side, or just hammering them down into the ground if that was what it took.

It might have taken perhaps thirty seconds.

It felt like thirty years.

Driving his blade through the skull of one last demon, Caleb reached down and tore it up and off his fallen mentor, his heart catching in his throat as he revealed her body.

Simone’s last stand had killed at least five, not including the one that had left its throat in her teeth. She had a dagger in her ruined left arm, and blood oozing from wounds deep enough that Caleb knew she couldn’t possibly have survived, but he fell to his knees anyway and tried to shake her awake.

He didn’t know how long he tried that, just that before he could rationally have any thoughts in his head beyond trying to save the woman who’d practically raised him, he heard a crash and a grunt of pain that caused Caleb to shift and looked up, startled.

Bor was standing there, over him, blade in hand as he held off a pair of demons trying to get to Caleb as he had knelt there, mind blanked out by the events he’d just witnessed, and the loss he’d just suffered.

The big man looked down, expression pained as Caleb saw blood trickling down his arm.

“Grieve later, boy,” Bor ordered in no uncertain terms. “With Simone gone, you’re the only one here who can keep us together.”

Caleb felt worse than he could ever remember feeling, but the one thing he knew for certain was that if he didn’t do his duty here and now, he could never hope to face Simone again should there be an afterlife to see her in. He nodded firmly, settling her head down as he rose to his feet, eyes seeking out the sword he didn’t even remember casting down.

The red-gold blade was not far, and he retrieved it quickly, snapping it out in a thrust even as he completed the motion to pick it up, ending the closest demon Bor was struggling with, giving the big man the chance to finish off the other.

Bor clapped him on the shoulder, “Come on, lad. There is work to be finished if we’re to survive this.”

Caleb nodded, casting only a single glance to the body of his friend, mentor, and mother figure as he girded his inner strength and his face darkened in resolve.

“We’ll survive it,” He declared. “But they won’t.”

*****

The Viceroy sneered as he watched the line of human defenders break and fall back, his horde rushing in to finish the job properly. It had, of course, been a forgone conclusion ultimately. There was no chance that such a small band of humans could hold off the horde that had been building here at this Citadel for so many years, but it was a respectable attempt.

The clinical part of him hoped that a few of them survived. The strongest, of course. They would, in good time, make superlative demons.

He was processing brief reports from his runners and flyers when he heard a roar of screaming that set him back in surprise, his eyes casting back to the Citadel as suddenly something was clearly amiss.

Demons were… fleeing?

No. They’re being forced back. How?

It wasn’t many, not enough to stem the tide, not by any means, but it was highly unusual for a single small area in such a fight to suddenly flip itself on its head.

“Go,” He nodded to one of the squads he’d held back in reserve against just this sort of eventuality.

They didn’t question him; they just went as they were supposed to.

The roar of fighting wasn’t decreasing, however, and soon it became clear that there was a rally underway among the humans.

Good.

A rally would provide them with just enough hope to poison their souls when he crushed it underfoot.

A flick of his head and gesture of his hands sent more reserves in, backing up the horde with his more powerful and less expendable minions.

Whatever was causing the rally, it couldn’t stand up to the force he was bringing down on it. That was not even in question.

A whistling noise in the night, however, caused him to become momentarily distracted as he turned about, seeking the source of the sound.

What is that?

*****

Caleb didn’t feel anything but rage as he threw himself against the incoming wave of demons as they swelled around him, trying to drag him down and drown him as if they were a riptide.

They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in that moment. It was just him, his sword, and the rage he was carrying inside.

Dimly he could feel more than hear Bor as the big man struggled to keep up, and that was the sole thing that kept Caleb from completely losing his senses and throwing himself in a full berserker rage at the demons. He had people he had sworn a duty to, and that was not something he could easily let go.

“Fight!” He called. “Fight for your homes! Your family! Fight for Simone!”

Bor took up that last call, and then Caleb heard it echoed around as others repeated it at the top of their lungs.

Fight for Simone. The words drown out the screams of the killing and the dying as everyone left knew that the line had been drawn and they would not be falling back anymore.

Despite that renewed energy, however, Caleb was still getting feeds through his armor of the status of the fight overall as Merlin did his best to keep up with the chaos that was tearing the place apart… and it didn’t look good.

Caleb didn’t want to admit… couldn’t admit it, not really, but they were going to lose this fight.

He hoped that Elan had succeeded. It was the only hope he had that any of this might, perhaps, one day prove to have been worth the sacrifice. His sacrifice was yet to come, of course, but Simone and many others had already paid theirs’s.

Internally, Caleb was starting to calm down, the rage fading as a hopeless grief was welling up despite his efforts to push it down, to stay angry. The impossibility of it all just weighed on him, though, and he couldn’t see any way out.

They needed a miracle, but those had been in short supply for a very long time.

The sound, like a thousand wet slaps confused him as it briefly caused a silence to reign as the demon line faltered. Caleb didn’t know what that meant, but he did know how to take advantage of it.

“Kill them all!” He roared again, pushing into the faltering line of the demon horde with sword in hand and death screaming from his lips.

Beyond the opening out into the courtyard of the Citadel, a mass he did not recognize was moving from the ruins of the old shanty town, and the demons seemed unsure of what to do as another flight of arrows so thick as to feather their corpses a dozen times over rained down from the sky.

A roar that could only come from human throats answered Caleb’s call, as hundreds of people poured out of the ruins and charged the Citadel.

*****

Chapter Thirty-Six

Citadel Roof

“No,” Lis shook her head, unbelieving. “You don’t have the power…”

“Power,” Elan laughed softly. “You think power is what it takes?”

“I almost burned my own body out making those runes!”

“You tried to overpower the universe. It’s a miracle you didn’t burst into flames just from thinking you could,” Elan said, her voice distant as she looked through and past the demon at something only she could see. “It probably would have killed you, eventually, in its own time. You’re welcome, I’ve saved you from that fate.”

Ser’Lis couldn’t believe what she was seeing or hearing. A little runt of a human thought she could come in and just rewrite the runic rite that she herself had spent decades preparing for? It was not only impossible, but it was also insulting.

She flexed her hands, talons springing forth as she began stalking forward menacingly. “I don’t know what you really did, but I’ll have it fixed in just a few moments… just as soon as I end you.”

Elan calmly drew the short red-gold brace of metal from her hip and flicked it, extending it from barely a foot long to over seven feet of battle staff in an instant.

“If you think you can, you’re welcome to try.”

Lis snarled and threw herself through the air, talons outstretched as she aimed for the young woman’s throat. The staff was a blur, however, smashing into her head before she even saw it coming, and casting her across the rooftop to fall in a crumpled ball as she skidded to a stop.

Ser’Lis shook herself as she forced her body up off the rooftop and glared at the girl, who’d only moved enough to turn in her direction.

“It’s over,” Elan said softly. “You’ve lost.”

“We. Do. Not. Lose!”

The seething demon charged again, this time catching the staff in both her outstretched hands as it was positioned to stop her rather than strike at her. For a moment she sneered at the girl, convinced that she could simply rip the weapon away with her superior strength, only it didn’t so much as budge as she tried.

“Impossible…” She breathed out, eyes widening. “Humans tricks! That little suit of yours won’t stop me for long?”

“This?” Elan glanced down, letting go of the staff with one hand as she gestured to the armor she wore.

Lis tried to take advantage of the supposed lapse, but still couldn’t do more than barely nudge the weapon in her grip.

“I’ll remove it, if you like?”

Lis reared back, sensing the obvious ploy for what it was. There was a trap there, but she couldn’t tell what it was. Slowly she let go of the weapon, uncertainly taking a step back before answering.

“I like,” she said slowly.

Elan shrugged and began hitting the release catches on the armor, methodically, letting the sealed garment fall open with each motion.

“Elanthielle,” Merlin’s voice instantly was in her ear. “This is not a good…”

His voice was cut off as she dropped the armor, severing her contact with Avalon.

“Come, little demon, let me show you something better than power.”

*****

Jol had no idea what he was looking at, but it was rather impressive he had to admit that.

Elan had upped the stakes by a great deal, even if by her own words she believed that they’d won. He wasn’t sure what to even think of that, however, given that nothing seemed to have changed.

Lis was practically vibrating with rage, however, and he’d seen Goth in that mode before. The limbs and torsos had taken a day and a half to hit the ground from where she’d thrown them, or so the story went.

Speaking of…

Jol shot a glance to where the demoness he was… rather familiar with… was standing. She didn’t seem to have any idea what was going on, not anymore than he did, if her expression was anything to judge by. He’d rarely seen her quite this shocked, something that he would normally savor but for the moment Jol knew that he had other things to deal with.

“Spread out,” He ordered Sie and Tur, “Cover her in case she needs it.”

“The lady don’t look like she needs any help,” Tur rumbled, but he moved to do so anyway.

Jol was far from certain that he was wrong on that, but making sure didn’t seem like a bad thing either way.

“What is she?”

Those words, mumbled by a demon of all things, left a chill to run through him as Jol looked back to where Elan was facing off with demon… because he found suddenly that he didn’t have an answer to that.

And that scared him.

*****

Ser’Lis stared as the armor of human warriors was cast aside like a ragged old dress, part of her unbelieving of what she was seeing, but the more important part simply willing to take advantage of the human’s foolishness.

She didn’t care what delusions the child had; there was no way she was remotely powerful enough to match the force that a demon of Lis’ power could bring. If she wished to cast away her only defense, that would be her final act.

Lis launched herself at the human child, moving several times faster than she’d bothered to employ earlier, talons fixed to tear the bitch’s throat out for ruining the plans she had spent centuries establishing.

Only to be stopped dead by one hand catching her outstretched arm, locking it in place as the rest of her kinetic energy continued her motion through the air while the girl simply… pulled.

Lis found herself inverted momentarily, then slammed into the rooftop as the child simply started walking away.

Staring up at the sky, she wondered what had just happened, but there was no answer that possibly fit the outcome.

“Wh…” She rasped out. “What are you?”

“Human.”

*****

“Human.”

Elan didn’t turn around as she answered, the demon on the rooftop wasn’t a threat to her at this point and there were too many fascinating things to observe around her.

The air was alive, the world around her… even the Citadel itself.

Though, perhaps alive wasn’t the right word for any of it. She wasn’t sure, but everything was far more than she’d ever understood before the knowledge she’d absorbed from the treasures had clicked inside her brain.

She walked toward the other three, only glancing slightly at the other demon who remained alive on the rooftop, a questioning look in her eyes.

Ser’Goth held up her hands, splayed out her fingers with her talons carefully retracted, and simply shook her head.

Elan nodded and turned her attention back to Jol.

“It’s done.” She said simply. “We need to get down to the ground floor and see if we can help them.”

Jol exchanged confused looks with the other two, but slowly nodded, “We can’t do what Caleb did, but the stairs…”

“Will take too long,” Elan said, her hand coming up in a wave.

Jol was barely able to notice the movements of her fingers as she made a series of complicated motions as she waved her hand in front of her and the air in front of her parted with ease, revealing the ground floor and the fighting that was going on.

He hesitated, looking between the scene in front of him and Elan a couple times, but she merely smiled at him.

“It is safe,” Elan promised. “Go. I’ll be with you shortly.”

Jol nodded, hefting his hammer as much for comfort as to ready it for battle, but without hesitating he turned and stepped through.

“Tur, Sie,” she nodded. “Without you, we would not have succeeded here. Thank you.”

The pair exchanged nervous glances, but nodded as Sie responded, “You saved us… and… did whatever it was you did here. Is it really…?”

“Done, yes. But at a cost.”

“What cost?”

“A horrifying one,” Elan smiled sadly. “But that’s for later. We could use your help on the Island.”

“You have my Axe,” Tur said without hesitating as he stepped up to the portal floating there.

Sie looked less than happy about it, but she nodded, “And my spear.”

The pair stepped through the portal like walking through a door, immediately landing on the ground floor and rushing in to help with the remaining fighting.

Elan, however, turned back to the demons.

Lis was gingerly picking herself up off the ground, glaring at her, but was silent as sharp moments of fear were visible within her eyes. Elan ignored her as she looked at Goth instead.

“What did you do?” The demon asked her, the fear in her sister’s eyes was present in her voice.

“The Circles will not find a way into this universe anytime soon,” Elan said simply. “I locked the door… that was the easy part.”

Goth looked wary as she considered that.

“What was the hard part?”

Elan shrugged, “Making sure it stayed locked. Fare well, it would be best if we did not meet again.”

Then she turned and walked through the portal herself, letting it seal behind her with a pop of displaced air rushing back in as the energy was released.

*****

Ser’Goth looked at the empty space the girl had stepped into, wondering deeply at just what she’d seen.

Portal generation wasn’t a particularly difficult skill, for demons, though few ever truly mastered it due to the lack of general need. Travel wasn’t something that they needed to do, and when it was… well, there were other methods available to them.

What she’d just witnessed wasn’t a demonic portal, however, it had been much cleaner, simpler, and vastly more practical.

“What was that bitch?” Lis asked painfully as she got to her feet.

“I don’t know, but I think I’m going to take her advice,” Goth replied as she turned away. “I’m many things, sister, foolish, stubborn, insane… and many others beyond that… but stupid enough to get in that human’s way again? No. I think not.”

She started walking, heading to the back of the Citadel and away from the fighting she could hear below.

“Where are you going!?” Lis demanded, stomping after her. “The Circles will have our souls for this, you can’t run!”

“Run?” Goth looked back, “Why would I run? If she’s right, I never have to deal with the Circles again. If she’s wrong, then I’m already dead. I think I’ll gamble on her being right.”

“You can’t just leave!”

A taloned hand slapped down on Goth’s shoulder, causing her to turn around and look into the desperation she could see in her sister’s eyes.

“Sister,” she said slowly. “If you think we both, together, have any chance against that girl right now… then you are too stupid to have survived this long. I don’t know what happened to her, but I’d sooner face Eden than her right now.”

Lis jerked as if slapped, “She can’t possibly be that powerful!”

“Taste the air, Sister. Tell me what you find.”

Lis looked puzzled at first, but then her eyes widened in realization as she did as bade. Opening her mouth she sucked in a little air, letting it bubble in her mouth as she felt the flavors of the night air mixed with the impurities of her minions and the rite soak in… then she noticed it, another flavor, not really in the air but permeating everything instead.

“Celestial,” She gasped.

“Close, but no. Magic, sister. Pure, untainted by the Circles,” Goth responded. “We’ve tasted it before, remember?”

Lis stared, then shuddered in realization.

“Oh… oh no.”

“Exactly. I am leaving,” Goth extended her wings. “I advise you to do the same.”

Then she turned and flexed her wings, lifting off the rooftop, leaving her sister behind as she vanished into the night.

*****

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Citadel

Brokkr and Sindri ran forward into the fight, stunned by the turn of events that had seemingly shifted things in a moment as a host of human warriors appeared from the rubble of the old shantytown with a vengeance, launching fights of Arrows ahead of their charge.

“Who are these people?” Brokkr called as he ran. “They’re not from the Island!”

Sindri shook his head, “They must be the survivors of the city here!”

Given the ragtag state of the force, Brokkr expected that made sense, though it still left unanswered questions.

“Thought they’d been driven out,” he admitted with a shrug as the line of warriors charged.

More than just that, though he wouldn’t say it aloud at this point, but he’d believed that they wouldn’t have had the courage to mount a counter offensive against the demons. He wouldn’t have blamed them for that, of course. They’d been beaten so many times that it was hard to think about fighting back when you were in that state.

Abuse… became a habit, if you were exposed to it long enough. It became the normal state of affairs, at least on the surface. If all things remained in balance, you could keep a people in that state essentially indefinitely.

Of course, if the balance was shattered by something…

The attack. Brokkr’s eyes widened as he realized what had happened, a grin splitting his face.

“What in the bloody hell are you grinning at you fool?” Sindri demanded.

“The attack, brother. The demons shattered the balance they had here,” Brokkr explained. “They woke the beast.”

Sindri nearly faltered in his steps as he caught the meaning, “Aye. That makes sense. But enough guessing, it’s time to fight.”

Brokkr nodded firmly, his sword already at the ready as he launched into the back of the demon line as it was trying to turn to defend against the attacks from unexpected directions. He could hear battle cries from all directions, including ahead of them, and knew that the Atlanteans within the Citadel were taking full advantage of the distraction.

This is our best chance, He realized, but deep down… he didn’t think it was enough.

*****

The Viceroy was in near apoplectic fury as he quickly dispatched runners and flyers to adjust the deployment of his forces.

The sudden attack from the ruins had been costly, but nothing that would truly turn the tide of this fight. He had enough disposable shock troops to lose ten for every human warrior he was counting, and still be able to win relatively handily.

However, he was also too well aware that if he didn’t get his troops deployed properly, he would lose those weaker minions at that sort of rate.

Where did these vermin come from anyway?

*****

Caleb had no idea where the extra warriors had come from, but they couldn’t have timed it much better if it had been planned.

Well… that wasn’t true, not really.

He felt a melancholy threaten to take him as he thought of Simone, but given the situation they’d been facing… well, he’d take what he could get.

“Atlantis! To me!” He called, sword high and gleaming as he charged into the fray, whirling the weapon with a vengeance. “For Simone!”

The calls of ‘For Atlantis’ and ‘For Simone’ echoed in his wake, and he heard the roar of angry throats masking the clash of steel as even the wounded pushed themselves to their feet for the rush.

He threw his weight and strength into the mass of confused demons, fully half of them in the process of turning around to see what the threat was behind them as the Atlantean line slammed into them one final time. The weight of the line pushed the demons back, covering the floor with more blood, more ichor, and many more bodies as they continued to push.

Caleb was getting an update from Merlin through his armor, and used the information to direct himself and his closest allies to trouble points, making the best use they could of the distraction that had presented itself… but the numbers were stark and just looking at the estimates Merlin had for the demons present was sapping the energy he’d gained from both his rage and the unexpected help.

“More help is coming.”

Caleb blinked as Merlin’s words reverberated through his head, “From where?”

“Elanthielle has finished her task and the others are coming.”

Caleb almost groaned as he gutted the closest demon, withdrawing his blade to let it drop as he tried not to think about Elan running straight into this fight with no chance of winning. He knew she’d do it.

“Tell her to withdraw,” He snapped. “If she’s done, we can break contact and run for the Redoubt!”

“She removed her armor; I am no longer in contact.”

“She what!?”

“Behind you.”

Caleb fell back a step, letting Bor and others take up the slack as he risked a quick look behind and found himself staring.

As he watched, Jol rushed forward with his hammer sparking. The fresh warrior hit the line like a force of nature, literally, unleashing bolts of lightning the likes of which he’d rather never feel for himself, but it was behind him that caught Caleb’s focus.

The pair of new warriors, Tur and Sie, stepped onto the floor of the Citadel… straight from what looked like it’s roof, and Caleb had no explanation for how that was possible. He could see Elan, clad in… shockingly little, actually as he stared, follow them with her staff in hand.

What has she done now?

There were times, Caleb knew deep down, that Elan made him question his own competency. He felt he was doing pretty well, overall, and then she’d turn around and do things that he’d not even considered to be possible.

Of course, those moments were probably what he loved about her too.

*****

Elan let the portal drop behind her as she looked over the fighting.

The swarm of demons was taking a beating, apparently from two sides. She had to make a note to compliment Simone for setting that up. However, the other woman had managed it, but for now she needed to get to work and end things well and proper.

“Elan,” Caleb called out to her. “If you finished, we need to break contact and escape! There are too many of them!”

She didn’t answer immediately as she walked through the foyer of the Citadel, eyes scanning the fighting that had clearly been inside at one point but was now moving out into the open air beyond the Citadel.

The bodies on the floor, some moving but most still, told the story of the fighting and she grimaced as She realized just how much the people following her had sacrificed so she could do her job above. It had been costly, more than most alive at the moment would ever know, but it was done.

Now, it’s time to make it clear just how done it is.

“Caleb,” She smiled at the boy, now a young man, who’d been at her side for so long. “I’m glad you’re ok.”

He faltered, pain crossing his face in a way that told her a lot but not nearly enough, forcing a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Thanks,” He said. “But we need to retreat, if you finished, we’re losing too many people.”

“No retreat,” She shook her head.

“But…”

“Caleb,” Elan put a hand on his shoulder as she walked past him. “Have faith.”

Caleb watched her walk past, her steps sure and with intent as she glared out at the fighting, quickly following behind.

Elan was looking for something, something even she wasn’t quite certain what, but she knew it had to be there.

“We need to help if we’re not going to run,” Caleb said from behind her.

“Oh, I intend to,” she told him, and she did intend just that. She wasn’t going to be helping by throwing into this fight blindly, though, or even with her staff for that matter. This fight needed something… more.

She spotted what she was looking for, a large demon standing back from the fighting and giving orders to runners that he was dispatching off to fulfill the tasks he set. He was the one she needed to deal with first, which left her with only one question really.

“Caleb,” she turned. “Are you still connected to Merlin?”

He nodded, “Yeah, and he is pissed with you right now.”

She smiled, “Noted. Ask him if he has access to any of the old one’s weapons platforms.”

Caleb blinked, but didn’t have to ask apparently, since Merlin was listening in.

“He says yes, none that are active over our area?” Caleb half said, half asked, confused. “What does that mean?”

Elan looked up, eyes scanning the skies, “All I need is one. Doesn’t need to be active but it has to be loaded. Low yield, please.”

Caleb just looked more confused, but he nodded, “He says that there is one above us. It’s responding to queries but not to orders. What… I don’t…?”

Elan pointed, hand outstretched to the sky as she said something that Caleb couldn’t even begin to parse. The words, if that was what they were, both hurt his head and somehow left him feeling energized all at once. Elan just started walking, through the fighting as though she had not a single care in the world before he could recover, leaving Caleb to rush to catch up as a few demons spotted her and opted to attack.

Caleb jumped in with his blade, cutting down one that got too close to her, but Elan had already taken two others out with a nearly negligent swipe of her weapon that shattered one’s jaw while she sidestepped another attack and tripped the demon before shattering its bones with several well placed stomping attacks that left it a moaning pile of broken jelly in her wake as she continued forward through the fighting.

Caleb noted that Jol had joined up with them, along with Tur and Sie, and in short order they were cutting a path through the fighting, leaving demons dead and dying in their wake even as other Atlanteans followed suit without question.

The march of a single girl turned into a fighting wedge that pushed through the demon ranks, shunting them aside almost like they were afterthoughts to the warriors involved.

However, they pushed forward. Caleb could see the demons’ ranks close up behind them, surrounding them cadre of Atlanteans following Elan’s lead, and every instinct he had was screaming at him that she’d just led them into a trap that they did not have the forces to escape from.

None of it seemed to bother Elan, however, and her step did not slow or falter until she reached a point just down the hill from the demon.

*****

“Are you listening to… what are you looking at?” The Viceroy snapped, reaching out to smack the runner he’d just been issuing an order to, but his hand stopped as he caught a glimpse of what had distracted the attention of the weaker demon.

A human was standing there, just down the hill from him, looking at him, amidst the violence of the fighting all around her.

He stared, oddly perturbed to find her staring back at him with an odd look of… sad amusement on her face, like she felt sorry for him somehow.

Him!

“Kill her.” He snarled to one of his closest enforcers, the demons he kept nearby unless absolutely required to dispatch them.

The enforcer barely acknowledged the order before throwing itself down the incline, roaring with the pent-up blood lust that was rampant in their kind. Having watched the fighting from a distance to this point, the enforcer was eager for a fight, and it clearly hoped that it was about to get its’ desires fulfilled this time.

The Viceroy watched with an amused grin… right up until contact was made.

If he’d blinked, he would have missed the action.

The girl, barely more than a child, didn’t even move. The Enforcer was just stopped dead in its tracks, taloned hands outstretched for her throat, and the Viceroy had to stare closely before he saw what had happened.

A red-gold chunk of metal was sticking out of his enforcer’s back, having driven the demon through front to back using his own strength against him.

A faint sound of metal was all the Viceroy heard as the red-gold staff vanished and his enforcer dropped to the ground.

He felt his mouth go dry, it was not something he was used to, seeing a human do something like…

Wait… is this a human?

The deadliest of demons, those who had survived through all of the weaker circles and made it to the pinnacle of power, they all looked far more human than monstrous. It was an advantage they used commonly, particularly during the early years of Invasion, infiltrating the humans and learning their weakest points.

Is she… one of us? A traitor?

She didn’t feel like that. He’d not felt any of the traitor’s magic on her, and while traitors were long lived, the still tended to look older than what he was seeing. Demons of great power, however, could easily change the appearance.

“What are you?” He called, noting with some annoyance that his voice had caused a lull in the fighting.

I’ll beat that instinct out of them when this is over, The Viceroy promised himself.

“No one of import,” She replied. “Just a messenger.”

“Speak your message.”

“Ser’Lis and her plan… have failed.” She said simply. “Withdraw your forces now or die here.”

He stared, shocked into silence for a brief moment, then burst out laughing.

“You are insane, child,” He laughed. “That is impossible.”

“Which part?” She asked, her voice guileless in a way that sent a raw shiver down his spine.

“Both parts!” He roared back, the sound of his voice actually shaking the air and sending many of his own demons quailing in fear as even the battle-hardened humans found themselves hard pressed not to break and run or just shake and quiver in place.

The girl, however, was seemingly unaffected by this, one of his powerful… albeit subtle… abilities.

The Viceroy actually felt a subtle shiver run through him instead when she merely smiled at him, her hand coming up as he tensed for an attack until he saw that it was empty.

She twisted her fingers oddly, and then… spoke in a language he had never heard but knew instantly boded no good for him despite not knowing what the words meant. She then clenched her hand into a fist and yanked it down hard.

The Viceroy tensed, knowing full well that he’d just seen an invocation of some type despite his lack of familiarity with the delivery.

But… nothing happened.

Almost.

The girl just smiled at him again and turned around, starting to walk away.

The Viceroy stared in shock at the apparent dismissal, a rage bubbling up inside him.

“You DARE?” He roared again, this time he did send his own forces and the humans to near uncontrollable quailing fear, only a few on each side even capable of standing.

And again, having no effect on the girl child whatsoever.

She didn’t even pause as she walked away, merely reaching out to touch her allies as she passed, causing them to calm and regain their feet. They looked as confused as the Viceroy felt, but without word they too turned their backs on him and walked away.

It was… intolerable.

The Viceroy refused to accept the insult, flexing his muscles to release his limbs from their confinement, his normal near-human affectation vanishing as he roared again and rose up on eight limbs as thick around as any normal human’s torso, his size and mass increasing with each passing second as he began lumbering down the hill.

That caused the girl to turn back, and he thrilled at his success in getting her to abandon her foolish affectations in turn. His power was greater, by far, than any of those around him and he knew it well.

“You will die here, child, but for your insults I will make it slow.” He rumbled in an inhuman voice.

The Child barely even looked at him, much to his consternation however, instead looking over his shoulder.

“What are you looking at child?”

“A portent,” She answered. “Of your death.”

“What?”

The Viceroy noticed everyone looking over his shoulder instead of at his powerful form, then realized that the night wasn’t as dark as it had been. He was casting a shadow, in fact, which should not be possible. Confused, he turned and looked up, eyes widening as he saw fire in the skies.

*****

“Everyone DOWN!” Elan snapped, driving a couple of the closest to the ground, and lacing her voice with a command that forced, or at least encouraged, the others to follow suit.

Remaining standing, she reached into the knowledge and quickly erected a simple shield around the humans, and by default many of the demons. It wasn’t much, wouldn’t stand up to even a weak strike by a demon, but that was not what it was designed for.

When the kinetic weapon slammed into the Viceroy’s position, most of the force was already directed upward or down into the Earth, but more than enough exploded outward in all directions to kill every person and demon for a hundred yards.

Except for those shielded by Elan’s magic.

There, the force was shunted to the side, or above, washing over and around them as they watched the Viceroy vanished into fire and ash.

When the shockwaves were done, humans and demons alike fell apart from one another, staring at the mess in confused groups.

At the center of the human group, Elan and four others stood quietly, taking in the fact that they’d survived.

Possibly even… won?

*****

Epilogue

Avalon

Merlin watched as the last of the people came through the transport system that lay closest to the island of Atlantis. He was waiting for one particular arrival, and she would not be directed to Atlantis, but Elan had insisted on getting everyone through to safety before she removed herself from the area of threat.

Though, honestly, he wasn’t certain just how threatening things were.

The situation had changed, and changed irrevocably, but they had done so in a way that he couldn’t quantify.

His access to the old infrastructure was now limited. Much of it had broken down or been buried or otherwise rendered unusable… but not all of it. He still had access to many of the satellites that rested up there, though he’d already calculated when the last of them would re-enter the atmosphere and burn up and it wouldn’t be all that long by certain scales before he was entirely blind.

What he could see right then, however, was a worldwide… shift.

Something had changed. The demons had become… lost, for a lack of a better term. Scattering from their strongholds, some even apparently turning on their fellows or themselves and leaving carnage in their wake.

He didn’t have any idea how to explain it, and the one person who might had tossed aside their armor and communications device against his advice.

Merlin could feel Nimue in his own systems, waiting for much the same reason as he, as the transport hummed with energy and there was a brief shift in air pressure as the system cycled through and five young people emerged.

“Welcome back to Avalon,” he told them, nodding to each before turning his attention to Elan. “We have much to discuss.”

“I know, but I am tired,” she said wearily, looking like she was coming down from a chemical high or something similar.

Which she very likely is, Merlin supposed, given the situation she’d just emerged from.

“The basics, then?” He asked.

She nodded, walking out of the transport chamber and to the inner rooms where there were places she could actually sit down. Merlin and the others followed her, silently exchanging glances just to assure each other that none of them had any real idea of what had happened.

Merlin supposed he felt a little better that he wasn’t alone.

It was an odd feeling.

Elan collapsed in an ancient office chair, and it creaked a little under her but otherwise held up fine as she slumped, clearly worn out.

“The basics?” She asked, really of no one, looking up at the ceiling. “I… I don’t know. I cast a spell? I shielded this universe, or maybe just this world… probably just this world, but I don’t know.”

“How?” Nimue asked, popping in from nowhere, looking incredibly confused.

“The standing wave we needed to stop was there to breach the boundary between our world and theirs…” Elan said. “I could have… just canceled it out…”

“That was the plan, yes,” Nimue said firmly. “But you didn’t?”

“No, I did,” Elan said. “But I didn’t stop there. They’d given us a map to where they came from, and used their own energy to draw it… I couldn’t just waste that. I had to use it. So, I canceled the wave, as planned, but then I inverted it’s intent and tied it to the demons magics. As long as it lasts, it will strengthen the boundary and protect people from them.”

Nimue frowned as the others looked optimistic.

“No more demons?” Caleb grinned.

“Not quite, they’re still here, but no more can come through easily at least, and the ones here will have a harder time attacking people.”

“That sounds like a miracle,” Sie said dumbly, shocked to her core.

“Miracles have a price,” Merlin said softly.

“Yes… they do,” Elan’s lips twisted.

“What was the price?” Nimue asked. “What did you sacrifice?”

The Intelligence had studied such things for a long time, and she couldn’t even fathom what the price must have been, not with Elan sitting there alive and seemingly well. Her life even would not have been enough, Nimue doubted that even sacrificing her own soul would have accomplished what Elan claimed.

The room fell silent for a moment as Elan stared at the wall.

“Knowledge,” she said simply.

Another long quiet as the room seemed more puzzled than anything.

“Knowledge?” Caleb asked, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“How many humans are left, Merlin?” Elan asked rather than answering Caleb.

“It is difficult to say,” Merlin said after a moment’s thought. “Across the whole of the planet… not many. The largest concentration is here, on Atlantis… With the new recruits you brought back, and accounting for losses, I would say that there are not more than twelve thousand on the island, and less than twenty on the entire planet. It will be enough to survive as a species, if we are careful going forward… but there will be genetic issues that your ancestors never had to concern themselves with.”

Elan nodded absently, “Most of humanity resides here now, and the people here looked to me as a leader… That allowed me to… bargain with the universe as a leader of humanity. It is an ideal that offers more power in the making of the bargain, you see. But I still needed to pay for what I wanted, and the only thing I could sacrifice… that I could justify sacrificing… was knowledge.”

“I don’t understand,” Merlin admitted. “What knowledge?”

“That demons exist.” Elan said dully. “That magic exists.”

The occupants of the room looked around, confused.

“But… they do exist,” Caleb said. “We all know they do. Shouldn’t we… not know that if you sacrificed the knowledge?”

“That isn’t how it works,” Nimue shook her head. “Not even a leader of humanity could have vouched for that much of an invasion of people’s minds.”

“True enough,” Elan said with a sad smile. “We aren’t protected. Few are. The veil protects those who are unaware… What you don’t know, cannot hurt you… but if you look into the abyss, they’ll be there and they’ll look right back into you. We know about magic and demons, so they can still see us. See most of Atlantis.”

“So, you didn’t sacrifice anything,” Caleb shrugged, grinning. “Found a way to trick magic.”

“One does not trick magic,” Nimue snapped, face hard. “Magic is everywhere, you cannot trick what always knows your deepest thoughts. Child, what did you do?”

“If we don’t teach the young ones, they’ll never know demons exists. They’ll grow up protected, and the Veil will hold, fortified by their sacrifice,” Elan said quietly. “If we do teach them about such things, they’ll be prey for the monsters and the Veil will eventually fall.”

Jol frowned, “Wait… if we don’t teach them about demons, they’ll not be able to protect themselves if the Circles find a way around this Veil.”

“I know. But if we do, and it falls,” Elan told him. “Then all of humanity will die here and now, because we cannot possibly mount another defense against them. This last battle was a victory, but if we win another like it? Humanity dies.”

She looked down into her lap.

“To save us all, I may have just doomed our descendants…” She looked up slowly. “And the hell of it?”

Elan looked at each of them, her face carved in stone.

“Put me in that situation again and I’d do it all over in a heartbeat.” She said firmly. “Survival depends on the present. The future will have to fend for itself.”

END