Chapter 39 #2
Harald meant to see just how much he could drain from the demon queen when he applied the endless hunger of the abyss to her soul.
For a second, he poured the power of his own four Thrones into the Well.
Forced it to grow wider so that it strained like a beached fish, seeking to consume something, anything at all.
The air around him throbbed. He heard Kársek grunt.
He poured more power into the aperture, willing his soul to become nothing but a tear that led directly into the infinite nothingness that lurked inside and around all matter.
Then, when he was at his breaking point, when he felt like he would split in twain under the artificial pressure he’d created and not satiated, he allowed the Well to latch on to the Crown of the Eternal Court even as he tapped the Endowment at last for power.
Some of Eclavistra’s power flooded forth and into Harald as before, cycling through his Cosmos and then ironically back into the Well itself.
But most was immediately siphoned by the Well, except this time it didn’t pour directly into the abyss, but rather flowed away and into that beam of sunlight, falling out of Harald’s orbit and swirling into Sam.
Harald could dimly sense what happened there—a great roiling crucible of sunlight against darkness—but when the power flowed back into him, it was cleansed, stripped of almost all its purple radiance, and turned into clear, numinous might.
The Well drank it greedily, and began to grow with each passing second, the Well consumed more rapidly, the power it stole increasing its own rate of consumption, a virtuous cycle that could only ever end when the world in its entirety was consumed.
Harald lowered his chin and fought for balance, for focus. Even as he drained the Crown, he could sense—dimly— the sheer scale of power on the other side.
Eclavistra’s reservoir.
Its immensity dwarfed his understanding. It felt akin to staring at the sun. No wonder she’d allowed him to tap her own strength of his Throne. It cost her nothing. Almost literally nothing.
But the Well continued to inhale from that ocean of might, a slender stream that it siphoned without end through Sam’s Covenant. And with each passing second, the aperture grew wider, more voracious, and the rate of consumption higher.
A faint ripple of anger diffused through the aether, or the Crown, perhaps. Amusement that rapidly became annoyance and then escalated to fury as he continued at his game.
And then a wash of power flooded over Harald from outside, and he opened his eyes to see a purple portal burning high in the air, a roaring oval of lavender flame through which Eclavistra emerged.
And the angels wept, she was perilously beautiful and awesome in her power.
Huge ridged horns of black rose from her temples to spear up a good foot into the air, her white hair shaded with faint purple falling about her huge spiked pauldrons and her heart-shaped face.
Her eyes were of the purest white, her lips painted black, her elven ears emerging from her mane of hair.
Voluptuous her figure, impossibly so, her wings tattered and symbolic, her tail lashing the air behind her.
A corset did little more than accentuate her overly generous bust and fulsome hips, and her black skirt waterfalled from her waist past her feet, open in the front but for a narrow, ornamental tabard which hung between her luscious legs.
She was desire made incarnate, with only the cruel spikes and the mocking, haunting nature of her stare providing scant warning as to the consequences of indulgence.
And all the while his Well of Starless Dominion drank of her power, shivering and thrumming as it drained her without remorse, concern, or care.
“Well, isn’t this is a pretty party,” said Eclavistra, her gaze taking in the crew. Brianna, finally knowing which side Eclavistra would take, moved slowly to stand before her. Kársek and Sam positioned themselves between the demon and Harald.
Their hope had been that she’d engage in conversation first; each second she was willing to talk was another Harald could drain her without opposition.
“Eclavistra, darling!” Vic’s voice was bright in the bronzed air. “You came! We have a request of you. I know, I know, I’m hardly in your good graces following that debacle in Flutic, but—”
Eclavistra didn’t even glance at him, yet abruptly Vic doubled over in a spasm of pain and dropped to one knee.
“I’ve heard of you,” said the demon, gazing down at where Brianna stood, blade over her shoulder. “A notable warrior who grew in size so as to hide the smallness of her soul. How does it feel to be feared by everyone you protect? Is that loneliness the reason you’ve decided to sacrifice your life?”
Brianna laughed, but it wasn’t convincing, and she hunched her shoulders as if she’d just taken a blow.
The demon’s gaze slid past everybody to where Harald yet knelt.
Where he yet consumed her power. His rate of consumption had doubled, yet it still felt like trying to drain a lake dry with a straw.
“Harald. What are you doing? You were doing so well, walking your little path to damnation with such an admirable strut. I could feel how much you enjoyed mastering and draining that lizard to its death, how impatient you were growing with your friends, how thrilled you were by your own lethality. What is this lie you’re telling yourself, that you—”
But then her eyes latched on Sam, and narrowed.
Sam had done nothing. She stood still, hands linked behind her back, a light frown marring her brow. Only her Covenant was at play, so of course it made sense that Eclavistra would discern her intervention.
“Oh, but this is interesting.” Eclavistra licked her lower lip with a purple tongue.
“Now I see. A mortal dressed in the stolen power of a Seraph. Fascinating. I didn’t take you for a cannibal ghoul, Samantha Tuppins.
Did your terror over what Harald was becoming push you to this extreme?
How can you love and be terrified at the same time?
Oh, that’s right. You’re just returning to form, an oathbound little girl who—”
It was a ruse. Even as she spoke, Eclavistra manifested her massive spiked club of wrought silver steel and pointed it at Sam. So fast, so terribly fast.
Harald went to cry out, but Sam had been waiting.
This time, she didn’t thrust her hand toward the sky.
She simply willed her powers to activate.
Several things happened all at once.
A dome of resplendent burning silver fire flashed into existence, not spreading and cascading down from its apex as before, but springing into radiant being all around them, fully formed and exuding such holy energy that Harald felt his Cosmos shudder.
Even with Sam protecting him from her own powers, his Demon Seed quaked.
Eclavistra’s bolt of purple light flew toward Sam, attenuated by the Starfire Bastion and quick as thought.
Harald had seen a bolt such as that obliterate a hollowed out statue on the 47th Level with consummate ease.
But then Brianna was there, simply blurring into its path, her crimson cloak flaring out akin to wings.
She parried the bolt with Wyrmfall, the sword blazing like a living slab of lightning, but the purple fire parted around it to slam into the Dragonslayer Knight and drive her back through the air.
And Harald felt Eclavistra’s will, deep within his Cosmos, contest his own abyss. Felt her demonic might contest his vampiric drain so that the rate of consumption slowed, slowed, a vast and malevolent power fighting his Well of Starless Dominion—and then reverse the flow.
Her power ceased to flood into Sam’s Covenant, and instead began to drain directly from him.
Harald grimaced and fought against the current, urged his voracious Well to battle Eclavistra, but her will was total in its domination.
His own Thrones began to pour their energy into the Crown, and feed her with his power.
No.
No, no, no.
Panic gripped him by the heart, and he manifested the Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant and Abyssal Dominion simultaneously, but they were panicked reflexes.
Even as Imperium began to turn the environment against Eclavistra, and Crown bolstered his will, he realized that he was horribly, impossibly outmatched.
Eclavistra’s will was empowered beyond his ability to contest.
The rate of drain became only more rapid.
Gasping, Harald opened his eyes again in time to see Sam point at Eclavistra so that a halo of white light appeared above the demon’s horns, and a blazing warmth and bolstering infusion of courage banished his own fears.
The Twilight General flew overhead and unleashed a battery of sonic punches, but the demon sneered and some invisible force tore the giant moth monsters apart.
But it was Brianna who was suffering the most.
She flung herself at Eclavistra, who laughed in cruel amusement and swung her spiked mace lazily at the knight, battering her away with such terrible power that the impact on the knight’s Drakenhart Cuirass sounded akin to a peal of thunder, causing the ground itself to tremble as Brianna fell back, only to surge forth again.
One of those blows alone would have pulped Harald.
Yet somehow Brianna returned again and again to the fray.
And each thunderous attack that hurled the knight back seemed to cause the demon to shudder and startle, as if she were attacked in turn.
The Thunder Lizard below trumpeted its defiance and raised its burning tail, but couldn’t intervene.
Thurak.
Kársek’s voice was quiet amidst the cataclysmic din, but somehow perfectly intelligible. A great ghostly Rune flew forth, passing through Brianna, who reacted not at all, and directly at Eclavistra.