Chapter 24 #2
"Nymeria!" Drystan commanded, his voice cutting through the tempest like an iron blade. "The copper pillars! Freeze the southern junction! Force the feedback loop!"
Nymeria understood the geometry instantly.
She didn't try to fight the crushing gravity. She threw herself flat against the black slate, allowing the increased downward force to slide her across the smooth stone. She propelled herself toward the nearest copper pillar on the southern rim.
Evander saw her move. "Die in the dark, vermin!"
He raised his left hand. A massive pillar of golden light descended from the heavens, aimed directly at Nymeria’s sliding body.
Drystan moved.
He didn't care about the thousand-pound gravitational drag. He channeled the raw, glitched kinetic data surging through his circulatory system. The black veins on his chest flared with a violent green luminescence.
He launched himself across the slate, moving against the crushing gravity through sheer, impossible willpower.
He collided with Nymeria a fraction of a second before the pillar struck. He wrapped his functional right arm around her waist, using the heavy brass plating of his dead left arm to shield her back.
The golden lance struck the floor two feet from them.
The concussive shockwave of heat and light tossed them both toward the edge of the balcony. They slammed into the base of the massive copper conduit, the verdigris-stained metal groaning under the impact.
Nymeria didn't hesitate. The second her dusky hands touched the base of the copper pillar, she unleashed every drop of twilight magic left in her soul.
"Freeze!" she screamed.
A massive, crystalline glacier of absolute-zero black ice erupted from her palms. It surged up the copper pillar, encasing the ancient metal in a localized frost so dense that the air around it turned to liquid fog.
The electrical and magical resistance of the copper plummeted to absolute zero.
The Sovereign Grid experienced a catastrophic short circuit.
The Spire’s power nexus, pumping thousands of gallons of raw aether into the floor, found the path of least resistance through the frozen pillar. The golden runes on the black slate violently reversed their flow.
The crushing gravity vanished instantly.
The falling pillars of light in the sky sputtered and died. A deafening, metallic feedback loop shrieked through the platform, blowing out the glowing sunburst on Evander’s breastplate in a shower of sparks.
Evander was violently thrown backward by the recoil of his own spell. His broadsword was ripped from the floor, spinning through the air and embedding itself into the slate near the western ledge.
The golden hero scrambled to his feet, coughing violently, his Divine Aegis armor smoking and cracked down the center seam.
"My grid..." Evander breathed, his summer-sky eyes wide with madness. "You broke the circuit."
"Your circuit was built by mortals, Evander," Drystan said, stepping away from the copper pillar.
He didn't run. He walked toward the staggered god with slow, deliberate, unhurried steps. The heavy leather duster flowed around him like a shroud.
Evander roared in fury. He lunged toward his broadsword, ripping the five-foot blade of hard-light from the stone.
He didn't have the grid, but he still possessed genetically engineered speed and a weapon of pure, concentrated death. He brought the blade around in a horizontal sweep aimed to decapitate Drystan.
Nymeria acted.
She did not stay behind the pillar. She sprinted across the black slate, throwing herself directly into the path of the sweeping sword.
"Nymeria!" Drystan barked.
She didn't dodge. She raised both of her bare, dusky hands, clamping her palms directly onto the flat of the humming hard-light blade.
The heat was agonizing. The holy light instantly seared the flesh of her palms, the smell of burning skin filling the freezing wind. But she did not let go. She forced the chaotic, volatile twilight lingering in her blood into the weapon.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
A thick shell of black frost raced down the hard-light blade, violently contesting the holy energy. The broadsword’s humming frequency dropped into a dull, dying rattle.
"Get off me!" Evander shrieked.
He ripped the sword sideways. The edge sheared across Nymeria’s left shoulder, slicing through the delicate black lace of her detached sleeve and tearing a shallow, bloody line across her twilight skin.
Nymeria was thrown to the slate, gasping in pain, but her sacrifice had done its work.
The hard-light blade was completely encased in brittle black ice. Evander was off-balance, his arms extended, his cracked breastplate wide open.
The window was open.
Drystan Harrow closed the distance in a single, explosive stride.
He did not use a weapon. He raised his right fist, the knuckles wrapped in torn leather and crusted with the dried blood of beasts and zealots. He drew upon the entirety of the glitched, corrupted aether circulating through his predatory heart.
The black veins on his arm bulged, turning his skin pitch black.
He drove his fist straight into the cracked center of Evander’s breastplate.
BOOM.
The kinetic impact was absolute. The Divine Aegis armor shattered like a porcelain plate. Razor-sharp shards of silver and gold exploded outward, embedding themselves in the stone floor.
The concussive force drove Evander Cross backward across the balcony.
The golden hero tumbled violently, his boots leaving long streaks of blood across the black slate. He smashed through the low balustrade on the eastern edge of the arena, his body coming to a halt half-suspended over the ten-thousand-foot drop into the clouds.
The five-foot broadsword slipped from his numb fingers, tumbling into the abyss below.
Silence fell over the peak of the world, broken only by the howling gale and the ragged, bloody gasps of the fallen hero.
Evander lay on his back, his head dangling over the precipice. His pristine armor was entirely destroyed, reduced to warped scraps of metal clinging to his torn silks. His chest was caved in, his breathing a wet, broken gurgle.
Drystan walked to the edge of the broken balustrade.
He stood over Evander. He did not boast. He did not smile. He looked down at the architect of his torment with the cold, absolute detachment of a judge closing a ledger.
Drystan knelt. He extended his right hand and wrapped his fingers around Evander’s throat, hauling the golden hero up just enough to look into his terrified blue eyes.
"You..." Evander choked out, blood bubbling over his lips. "You are an anomaly. The Script... the Script will not allow this. The Valedictorian must be pure."
"The Script is dead, Evander," Drystan whispered.
His voice was so low it barely registered over the wind, yet it carried the terrifying finality of an executioner’s axe.
"You built an empire on blood, and you called it divine math. You treated living souls like numbers on a balance sheet. But you forgot the most basic rule of the ledger."
Drystan tightened his grip on Evander’s windpipe, lifting the hero another inch over the yawning abyss.
"When a debt comes due, the collector always gets paid."
Evander’s eyes widened in genuine, mortal terror. The god finally understood that he was going to die in the dirt like everyone else.
Drystan raised his left arm—the heavy, dead club of fused brass—preparing to bring it down and crush Evander’s skull once and for all.
He never threw the strike.
Deep within the core of the Apex Spire, a massive, catastrophic vibration rippled through the architecture.
THUMP.
The entire mountain shuddered. The black slate floor beneath their boots tilted violently as a deep, resonant groan echoed from the bowels of the earth.
Nymeria scrambled to her feet, clutching her bleeding shoulder. "Drystan! The conduits!"
Drystan paused, his hand still locked on Evander’s throat.
The short-circuited energy from the Sovereign Grid hadn't simply dissipated into the sky. The massive surge of raw, corrupted aether had traveled straight down the twelve copper conduits, plunging into the hollow foundation pillars of the academy.
Down into the feeding tubes.
Down to where the Morning Tithe had been pacifying the ancient horrors for centuries.
A deafening, primal roar tore through the bedrock of the continent. It wasn't the sound of magic. It was the biological, furious screech of thousands of starving, corrupted beasts waking up from a thousand-year sleep.
The Ironwood Chimeras had broken their chains.
The foundation of Fate Academy was collapsing.
Drystan looked from the vibrating floor down to Evander’s terrified face. A slow, terrifying realization settled into the Valedictorian’s icy gray eyes.
The battle for the roof was over.
The war for the soul of the Arch-Realm had just begun.