The Ruler of Ruin

“So, you’re after the lion,” Remy laughed a little after we laid out our plans for the Plains of Valor. “Sure, he’ll be a great asset if you can break the curse, but what about after that? You’ll be the one responsible for him walking the Gossamyr again.” Remy’s words had the self-recrimination of someone haunted by a decision they had made. I picked up on that right away, when the topic turned to Xian the Chained.

“Do you have bad blood with Xian?” I asked.

“Never met him, saw his Colosseum in the Plains of Valor, we stayed far away from it, even though Blaise wanted to try his hand at besting the cat. We, well, Marius, Hector, and I, unchained a different creature, once.” Hector had been the Dustwalkers leader and Mistwalker prior to Blaise and Claire, respectively. My memories of him were dim, he’d died sometime in my early teens.

“And it went badly?” Claire asked, her speculation clearly going in the same direction mine had.

We talked while we walked. Our party had crossed two Veils peacefully already. Remy had offered Claire a very detailed description of what he recalled from his last visit to the Plains of Valor, and Claire used that to form her target and guide us through the intervening realms of the Gossamyr. I kept my eyes out for interesting new vectors and threats, as much as I did the conversation.

“Yeah, it went badly. We let a real monster loose. She played damsel in distress, offered us rewards, feasted us, even led us to a hidden treasure vault. Hector didn’t make it out of there, and if your dad and I hadn’t had our rings on, we probably would’ve died too.” Remy heaved a sigh of regret but flashed one of the rings on his right hand. It looked simple enough it could have been a regular iron band; I didn’t see any ornamentation on it.

“That’s a Ring of the Blood Covenant, yes?” Chrys inquired.

“A what?” I asked.

“A binding ring that amplifies the effects of a blood oath between two people. They are used for a wide array of purposes, most commonly in formalizing blood-brothers or some powerful pact. Coincidentally, blood itself is not required to activate the connection they establish, even Gneisslings are able to use them.” Chrys didn’t say what powered the rings, though, and I was curious if she even knew.

“Yeah. It used to be common for adventurers to take oaths of brotherhood with Rings of the Blood Covenant. The rings would overpower the mental control of Fey and fiend alike by enforcing the oath and limiting the risk of turning on one another. And since they’re iron, they’re dangerous to some specific creatures. When the games she wanted to play with us didn’t work, I faked falling for her charms, and the other two snuck up and ambushed her. She killed Hector, but Marius and I limped out of that dungeon.” Remy’s eyes put the haunted nature of his character on display for all to see, and I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Did she escape?” Claire asked.

“No. We put iron through her heart, she died,” Remy said sadly.

“Why did the three of you fall for such an obvious ploy?” Chrys asked in confusion.

“Young, dumb, and eager to believe in the rumors we’d started about our own legendary stature. Plus, beautiful woman. It’s a tale as old as time,” Remy chuckled ruefully, before he looked directly at me. “You’ve got to watch out for the pretty ones, Emery.”

“Sure, I’ll keep that in mind,” I laughed, and Remy looked at me and shook his head as if I already were a lost cause.

“Next Veil,” Claire chimed in, as the mists rose up around us once again. When they descended we stood atop a small hill, overlooking grass mounds that stretched in every direction.

“Go back or forward, but get us out of here,” Remy warned Claire.

My danger sense started as a small buzzing, like a fly, and quickly escalated to a blaring horn in my mind. Dark wisps of energy wormed their way out of the ground, slipping into the air to coalesce into the forms of the long dead.

Claire pulled the mists back up, and in seconds we stood in fog higher than my head.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Burial Mounds,” Claire answered. “Any realm filled with the dead are best to be avoided.”

“That’s right,” Remy backed Claire’s answer up. “Specters, wraiths, shadows, nothing they love more than to make intruders join them for daring to desecrate their resting places. If they get to take your body for a little vacation before you die, all the better in their book. Worst part is you never know how powerful those sorts are until it is too late.”

“None of us possess any powers best suited to the elimination of the undead, unless your spear cuts the soul, too?” Chrys asked me.

“Entities of negative energy, incorporeality, or other nuisances are no threat to my Herald,” Arx Maxima chimed into my mind.

“Arx Maxima says it does,” I answered, keeping it as simple as I could.

Claire dropped the mist, and we stood on a tiny island surrounded by an ocean of water. The total size of the island was maybe a city block. Strange trees with thin trunks that curved slightly filled the island. Atop them were long green fronds, under which hung brown, hairy fruits.

“Not a lot of space to actually walk or work my visualization on,” Claire grumbled.

“Create Wall,” I murmured. It took me a few tries to erect a series of EternaStone walls that rose from the sandy ocean floor to above the waves, but once I figured that out, it was easy to create a stone dock that extended out into the ocean. I had to move around to create my pier, but when I was done we had a stone walkway that went three hundred yards out into the ocean.

“That should be enough room if I start from over there. Water is always a pain in the ass, for some reason.” Claire muttered.

“It is all of the order locked in the water that defies your manipulation, Mistwalker. We Gneisslings have studied the effects of ordered lattices upon Mistwalking for years. Deterring Mistwalkers is the best that can be achieved with those tactics and ordered crystal lattices. Water has a much denser structure.” Chrys explained her theory on why water got in Claire’s way.

My mind wondered if it wasn’t just because water was boring. It was so same-y, and you couldn’t just shovel it to the side like dirt or sand, it’d flow back into your way. What a nuisance. Even rock or metal could be dealt with, but water? Water was the ultimate pest, and it was where fish peed.

“I’ll push the water out a ways, give me a second here,” Remy said before we started from the opposite side of the little island. He started by drawing a quick basic spell sigil with his right index finger, leaving glowing marks in the air. Then Remy added water drops, waves, added arcane symbology I didn’t know, and finished the spell off with a single word.

“Split!” Remy commanded, and the water did. For over a hundred yards, the water split away from the impromptu pier I had made and pulled back. I’d never seen Remy use water magic before.

“I thought you were a fire mage?” I muttered while I fell into pace behind Remy and Chrys, with Claire leading.

“My strength concept is Master of Fire, sure. My first enkindled concept, though, was Merlin. Lets me use all elements, advanced spellcasting techniques, and gives me perfect spell calculation,” Remy laughed.

“Merlin? Never heard of it.” Chrys commented, but I’d never heard of it either. Claire ignored us all, focused on getting us to the Plains of Valor as she was.

“It’s a sapient concept. It chooses you, and I’ve never met another person with it,” Remy confided, without actually explaining anything about his concept. I suppose I could simply look at him with my Enkindler’s senses, but now wasn’t the time. The splitting of the sea had drawn attention, and while the sharks and other voracious looking fish that swam and stopped at the edge of the water were intimidating, none of them set off my danger sense. Something out there, however, did. A wake the size of the small island split the surface of the ocean, hurtling towards us.

“We need to go, Claire!” I urged her.

The huge wake crashed to a halt, and above the water emerged a huge cylindrical body of gooey looking purple flesh that tapered to an end. The two enormous eyes that rose with the body locked right onto us, and the sense of danger spiked into overdrive. Immense tentacles rose up out of the water, and under it, to shoot towards us.

“Bad fish!” I shouted and threw Delirium of Ruin at the creature’s large fleshy body, and unleashed a powerful blast of Bedlam Bolt in quick succession. The black lightning hit one of the smaller tentacles working towards us, and while the appendage spasmed slightly, it didn’t appear to take any damage at all. Delirium of Ruin, on the other hand, hit the creature’s midsection. Perhaps the monster didn’t fear tiny beings as threats, but its arrogance cost it when my spear went through its body. Blue blood fountained from the wound. I had no doubt at all that Delirium of Ruin had gone all the way through the squid, unless it ran out of momentum first.

Then the spear reappeared in my hands when I resummoned it.

“Copper? Hmm,” Chrys muttered to herself thoughtfully.

“Claire, are we close? You got this thing, Emery?” Remy asked, lifting his left hand in case he needed to split his focus between splitting the water and going offensive.

““Doing my best,”” Claire and I both answered at the same time. I unleashed another series of Bedlam Bolts and threw Delirium of Ruin again. This time the giant aquatic horror shifted all its tentacles to heave it out of the way of my spear. What I failed to do in damage, I made up for in buying us time.

“I’ve got this,” Chrys said confidently. “Emery, give me a window to slide my cloud through.”

I obliged Chrys, while Remy kept shifting his eyes between Claire, the monster, and us. He seemed to be warring with himself about trusting us to handle it without intervening, but if he lost concentration on holding the water back the monster would be on us in seconds.

I focused on making a window with a view of the purple beast, and Chrys immediately conjured her copper cloud and sent it after the creature. Once the cloud made contact I shifted my focus.

“Lock,” I picked the creatures movement vectors, and froze it. The tentacles, the eyes, nothing on the creature could move, no matter how much it struggled. In the back of my mind, I dimly realized I could, possibly, asphyxiate someone by locking their breathing, if I could maintain the steep energy consumption of the power. I hoped to never find out if I had the where-with-all to watch a living being slowly strangle, knowing I could stop it at any moment. It seemed like a much crueler, and vastly more intimate death than simply killing with Delirium of Ruin or Bedlam Bolts. Immediately my energy began to drain, but it wasn’t the horrific loss of power I faced with Corvusol. Fifteen energy per second seemed reasonable to me, considering the size of the monster.

I didn’t pay attention to what Chrys did, and kept my vision locked on the creature. Chrys, Remy, and I were all side-stepping while Claire walked straight. Mist seeped up from the ocean floor towards us, now. Claire had to be close.

“Got it,” Chrys laughed and her copper cloud flowed through the window back to her, and vanished. “It’ll die soon.”

Remy flicked his eyes between Chrys and I. While Chrys now watched the monster with interest, I still stared at it in concentration. Mental visualization remained key to all powers, so the more clearly and strongly maintained my mental image of the monster unable to move, the more effective my vice like grip on its movement remained. The energy drain on lock did start to rise at the thirty second mark, and by the time I hit half my energy gone, the mists had risen to our navels.

Claire clapped when the mists enveloped us fully, and I knew we were between realms.

“What’d you do to it?” Remy asked, even as he heaved a small sigh of relief at no longer bearing the burden of holding the water back.

“Oh, I pulled all the copper out of its body. It used the copper to transfer oxygen within its body, so it will asphyxiate before long.” Chrys declared happily, very proud of her plan.

“Good job, Science Advisor Chrys,” Arx Maxima complimented her, and I realized not only did I hear Arx’s voice in my mind, but a physical version emerged from one of the ornamental gems on Chrys’s shoulder. When had that happened? “That is the clear thinking prized so highly by the Stellarae Enclave’s science division.”

Remy and Claire stared at Chrys and the voice of Arx Maxima, while I stared at Arx Maxima.

“What?” Chrys asked.

The three of us who relied on blood to keep us alive smiled uncomfortably and said nothing.