Chapter 41
Harald swayed, his gaze locked on the now ebon arch demon, and it felt as if the world around him pulsed, not with his power, which still felt absolute, but as if reality itself were succumbing to some terrifying pressure.
Eclavistra watched him, one brow raised, her arms akimbo, her amusement clear.
“Begone,” he rasped, and banished her back to his Cosmos.
The demon queen laughed, the sound fading even as she vanished into nothingness.
So much power. The stolen essence made him feel bloated, near to bursting.
Turning slowly, he took in the midnight landscape, the bronze flames mostly extinguished, and those that yet remained on the far edges of the valley now translucent white.
The air was still and clotted with darkness but for where his void blades drifted, some as long and wicked as scimitars, their density in the air unlike anything he’d seen before.
Above his brow burned and spat the Crown of the Abyssal Tyrant. It augmented and projected his authority across the vale so that all that lay within his sight was his, by right of his power alone.
He relinquished the Demoniac Body, and sank into his human form, but even then, he felt otherworldly, his musculature dense and grown compact, his skin smooth and flawless, with a feeling of weightlessness to himself that made him feel as if he could run across water.
His wounds were gone.
He had never felt so enriched, so powerful, so capable, so confident in his physical form.
Even as he stared, unseeing, past the bodies of his fallen companions, words appeared in his sight.
You have fulfilled the ultimate promise of the abyss.
You are become hunger incarnate.
The Fallen Angel rewards your
The words abruptly scrambled and disappeared.
Harald frowned, tilted his head from one side to the other.
Nothing.
Then:
Your ambition knows no bounds. Within yourself lies the might and architecture of a Celestial, their
Again, the words grew hazy, their edges jagged, and then vanished.
“What the hell?” muttered Harald, and so sullen and heavy had grown his sense of might that he felt more annoyance than fear.
Deep within his soul, down where his Cosmos lay, he felt a sudden spasm of energy, not so much painful as viciously uncomfortable. Harald gasped and put his hand reflexively to his ribs, though that of course made no sense.
The abyss cannot be circumscribed.
Its depths cannot be plumbed.
This time the words remained, but the spasm in his Cosmos caused him to drop to one knee, beads of sweat breaking out across his brow. It felt like his Cosmos was expanding and contracting violently, warping and distending.
Your victory alone rewards your temerity.
An arch demon has fallen.
An arch demon shall rise.
Harald gasped again, and this time he fell onto all fours, his eyes squeezing shut as his spirit roiled and was rewoven. Gasping, he fell over onto one hip, and lay thus propped up on an elbow, blinking and trying to focus on the words that began to scroll rapidly before his vision.
He was only able to capture snippets.
Ever shall the wars be waged betwixt agents of desire, those who claim Celestial might so as to make place their imprimatur upon time itself—
—and thus by their very actions they unhallow that which should be sacred, failing to comprehend the—
—buckle the firmament and rend the Pleroma, failing by one means or another to gain the most base of epiphanies through which—
—destruction of the world, the tearing of reality, the quenching of all light and undoing—
—fragility of mortals whose very fallibility is what makes them precious, and in their hearts and souls is the true battle waged, which if lost—
Harald stared, riding the waves of profound nausea and spiritual dislocation, as the dark text scrolled on and on, an outpouring he couldn’t keep up with, until again it all abruptly vanished and was gone.
Groaning, he forced himself up to his knees. All that power was his, his Crown yet burned and raged, the terrain around the hill was dominated by his Imperium, yet he felt himself weak in some way, made vulnerable by the transformation that was taking place in his Cosmos.
Finally, words appeared once more, slow and sedate.
You are granted access to Archon Numina.
You are given the mastery appropriate to your station.
You are reforged in the fires of my hopes and fears.
Granted: Archon Numina
Draw rate: 14/49
Granted: Dark Divinity
Granted: Dungeon Teleportation
Granted: Demon Seed Bestowal
Granted: Demoniac Legion Formation
The text hovered before him, each word clear but its meaning opaque, beyond Harald’s comprehension, and then it faded away and was gone.
Harald exhaled.
The warping of his Cosmos had ended.
He felt… the same? Whatever that meant. He studied his palm. It was pale, perhaps shaded in a strange new way in gray. His hand, surely, but yet, simultaneously, looked like artifice, as if he were examining a cunningly made puppet’s fingers.
The air to one side of the hill began to warp. Invisible pressure built rapidly in a vertical slit, as if a seam of heat were incandescing, and Harald intuited through some new skill that it was a portal opening, or tunneling, rather, from… far deeper in the dungeon. Somewhere in the 70s?
Simultaneously, eight other seams began to form all around him.
Alarmed, he sprang to his feet, but whichever way he turned, there were portals behind him, so he forced himself to be still.
Portals. One from as high as the 43rd, the deepest from the 93rd.
Then, in rapid succession, they blazed to life, and this was when the old Harald would have noticed them, each a corona of dark or burning bright light.
Demons, he thought. Demons and angels, come to slay me.
But instead of Silenthros and Vorakhar and Alabenthos and whoever else, the figures that emerged were varied but less impressive.
Not in terms of visuals. Each was striking: some shadowed and gaunt, others tall and fair, some massive and beautifully armored, others enigmatic and hidden in the folds of metallic robes.
But less impressive in terms of their presence.
None, Harald realized, carried within their core more than a trace of Archon Numina.
These weren’t demons or angels.
These were their high-ranking servants.
They gazed warily at each other, weapons held down and to the side, and then, assured that their newly arrived fellows were as intent on the same mission as themselves, they turned their attention upon Harald.
Who didn’t know where to look. The urge to coalesce his will about any one of them was strong. To clench his spiritual fist and have Abyssal Imperium destroy one of their number as a warning.
But no.
The first to speak was a powerful paladin in armor of the purest gold, his wings of platinum, the space behind his visor dark so that no visage was visible.
His broad-bladed sword was a work of beauty, unlike anything Harald had seen before, and caused the air around it to sear and shimmer as if superheated.
“Who are you?” The angelic being’s tone rang out under Harald’s night sky. “What has happened here? Where is the demon bitch Eclavistra?”
The other figures shifted, at once perhaps annoyed that the first had spoken before them, but simultaneously interested in his answer.
Harald ran his tongue across the back of his teeth.
What happened here might determine everything.
Together, the combined might of these servants could surely crush him.
He didn’t even know what his powers were yet.
Nor could he flee: that would mean leaving his fallen companions behind to the mercy of these monsters.
Anything he said could be twisted or used against him. He didn’t know the terms of this battle, or how this moment was played, so instead he remained silent.
A second figure called out, bulkier and broader across the shoulders than the first, his armor a sublime pale slate blue edged in wintry bronze, his wings cerulean, his head featureless but for an intimation of ears.
Over his brow floated a great circlet of fluctuating iron, and his tabard was the dark hue of evening come.
“Speak, Mortal. What has transpired? Why do you reek of demonic essence? How is it that you contain within your soul the flame of Archon Numina?”
“Are you truly so slow-witted, Baughrest?” drawled a lady in the purest white.
She was petite in comparison to the gigantic paladins, her wings chalky leather, her legs and arms and shoulders encased in whorled alabaster metal, her face porcelain and inhuman in its beauty, her hair worn curled and short about twin backswept horns of ice.
“We face no mortal. He reeks of Eclavistra because he has consumed the petty whore. An arch demon is fallen, and a new one arises to take her place. Tell me, Sire.” She took a graceful step forward, and a thick, white-scaled lizard tail of surprising muscularity lashed the air behind her.
“Would you deign to accept my Lord Valthazar’s gracious invitation?
He bids you come to his demesne, where you shall be afforded—”
“Silence,” rasped a third angel. He was clad all in jet black armor, his wings charcoal black and heavily feathered, but wore no helm.
His hair was an upswept candleflame of white, his features grave and lined with care, his gaze dolorous and weighted by untold depths of time.
A great golden gem with liquid curves was embedded over his breast, and this pulsed gently, sending out waves of gold into the air.
“Harald Darrowdelve. My master, the arch angel Pelagias, bids you attend him. Failure to do so will cast you into the ranks of the demons. Do not spurn this chance to embrace the light.”
The others now clamored, each grown more wroth at having to raise their voices in a manner indecorous and beneath their station.
The air grew tense, and some raised their blades or other weapons to point them at each other, shimmers of light or electricity or green mist or other fell powers manifesting.