Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

Topher's mind bifurcated.

The distant part of his mind, always discerning and calculating, got what was easily the best part of the deal; it observed appreciatively as a massive dragon made of shadows erupted from the Soulstone, took careful note of several interesting runic interactions currently violating Topher's more philosophical aspects, and calculated with satisfaction that each individual mote of shadow comprising both the dragon and an innumerable number of tiny, near-invisible umbral minions striking at foes all over the battlefield were all benefiting from Takano's Zealous Unity Skill, sending the aggregate damage count of every attack into the stratosphere. It quietly filed most of this information away into Topher's subconscious, then went on observing.

The more experiential aspects of Topher's consciousness were not so lucky.

Topher felt like he'd swallowed a live electric eel; his guts and nerves were on fire as a twisting, bucking surge of continuous counter-structure tried to bend and reshape him to match a mold which would break all his bones and leave him a shattered, twisted husk of a being. Dimly, he was aware that he was hosting Vashyarl's mystical totality in his own anima, giving Sahlerra a living force to map the Immortal Beast's raw power onto while her own consciousness was free to direct it; but his mind was creaking and cracking under the torrential onslaught of sensation. He howled, wordlessly, but it came out as a roar that erupted from the dragon's mouth; he tried to pull himself free from the Archmage, but instead the dragon lashed its shadowy claws about, rending and ripping apart demons by the dozens. In his ear, Sahlerra's wild laughter nearly deafened him.

"Yes! Yes! Flee and cower before the might of Vashyarl the Black!" she screamed with glee. Topher was sickened to discover that he could feel her soul pressed up against his through the magic, oily and throbbing; hot black ambition shot through with red veins of desire and shimmering white lines of intellect. Horrifyingly, he could even feel the sweet, golden motes of her love, her unquenchable passion for the protection of the free and innocent peoples of this world, as she wielded it pitilessly like a scourge against him. Hold the connection! she pleaded with him, mind-to-mind. We have to keep them occupied long enough, or all the Otherworlders will die!

Inarticulate, Topher spat pain and venom across their mental connection; wailing, she absorbed it and pressed on, her will diamond-hard even as it yielded and entwined around his. You must, her plea resounded through him, even as he heard her breathlessly panting with obscene pleasure at the power coursing through them both. I'm betting everything on you, Topher. You have to find a way through. He felt her attention turn away from him even as her body strained against his, taut with the surging torrent of magical power pouring through them; her shrieks of violent elation as she wielded the dragon's power swirled through his mind, admixed piteously with sorrow for the demons and resolute defiance to do what must be done. Topher shuddered, disgusted on more levels than he could count, as he fought to maintain control over his own mind and spirit.

Desperately, he wielded his Metaphrasty as expertly as he dared; sacrificing his MP ruinously to buffer his own mind against the cyclone of foreign ipseity, he delved deep within himself, searching frantically for something, anything that would grant him protection and resilience. Burrowing deep into his own consciousness, he thrashed about, tossing memories of suffering and grit into the maw of Vashyarl's ravening corruption like a man throwing meat behind him to distract a pursuing tiger; when he crashed into the unyielding essence of the lex animus, it nearly broke his metaphorical teeth.

At once, he grasped at it and tried to bend it to his purpose; but as before, it was untouchable and indomitable, impossible to affect or subvert. But the memory of how he'd extracted it from his living mind rose up within and around him, and with the brilliance of extremity he took the only course of action open to him.

Reflecting and bending his mind and thoughts, he curved them into an arc that matched precisely the spiritual geometry of the Edict; upon a substrate of inviolacy, he laid down the resilient and vulnerable portions of himself like nerves and tendons being stretched across bones. And as he did so, the shape of what he was doing became clear; reflected in the harsh strictures of its transcendent construction, he glimpsed the relationships between himself and it. And, in doing so, he caught the barest and most tenuous glimpse of the relationships between himself and Vashyarl's essence.

To Topher, it was very much like a strange sound clip he'd listened to once, where some people heard a voice saying "Laurel" and others heard it saying "Yanny"; a chaotic, impossibly complex mess suddenly resolved itself a structure he knew, that he could comprehend. Superimposed in his mind's eye upon the image from his grimoire -- a flat, truncated abstraction of the vast and recursive map of relationships between the runes -- he saw a subset, a pattern made up of patterns, which stood out from the whole like a Magic Eye picture. That's Vashyarl's magic, he realized in awe. All the runes of all his spells, connected by the way his own mind worked. It's all one pattern. The phrase True Rune flooded through his mind before being blotted out by the exigencies of his current predicament, and he had to turn his attention to binding runes in a desperate web to hold back Vashyarl's all-consuming spiritual echoes from drowning him out before he could complete his work. But, by degrees, it took shape; a resolute mind, fleshy but resilient, that could grapple with even a spirit as ruinous as the Immortal Beast's. Topher felt a brief flicker of satisfaction, then bent what feeble scraps of his will remained to the task.

With the barest wisp of the last of his fading strength, he grappled with Vashyarl's essence and subdued it; metaphorically panting, he bore it up upon his own and let himself rise back up through the layers of abstraction to his conscious awareness. As his eyes ceased to stare blindly in agonized horror, he dimly became aware of a number of things.

The first was that Hana was giving him an extremely disapproving look, which confused him for a moment until he realized that his hips were still held tight with reins of shadow against Sahlerra Siukh's round, firm buttocks; the second was that Zanasha was fighting, wielding both Nethersbane and the Kiku-no-Tsurugi against the few demons which had gotten past the Archmage's shadow dragon. Sahlerra herself was moaning deep in her throat, fighting to regain control over her shadows, in response to something Topher hadn't seen or perceived, but he could feel her spirit struggling to marshal the vast array of magical threads which bound her to her art through their shared link. He sent her the equivalent of a terse nod, letting the feeling of control over Vashyarl's soulshape slip through the connection, and he felt as well as heard her relieved sigh as tension rippled outwards up through their connected bodies. Her will steadied, her shadows swirled across the battlefield, and the demons pressing Zanasha fell away as a scything river of shades tore them apart. Topher, taking a moment to glimpse through the dragon's eyes, saw the engagement from a rather different angle.

It was as though he was a hundred feet tall, sharing his body with another mind; within and around him, his claws and fangs and tail lashed out and tore demons apart as though they were made of paper. The boiling shadows that covered and comprised him crashed like a tide against anything he struck, pulling it apart in real-time like the sea pulling grains of sand from a beach; the demons were hardy, impossibly tough and strong, but against the triune force of the Immortal Beast's magic, Sahlerra's deft expertise, and Takano's inspiratory power multiplied a millionfold, they disintegrated like cobwebs. He watched as they fell by the dozens, even the tough black shells of their true bodies crumpling and splitting beneath his attacks, and caught split-second glimpses of the savaged forms within before they collapsed into black slime. Security measure, he thought grimly as the charnel around him seethed. If they can't escape, they don't leave behind evidence.

At that moment, the Sheonn army crashed with a thunderous impact into their northern flank; the dozen C-Rankers and D-Rankers laid about them with various attacks and spells, driving the massive demons before them like cattle as the most elite troops the mortal lands could spare backed up their ranks. The demons fought back with gales of hellfire and vicious spells, but the damage was less than Topher expected; sorceries that should have ravaged cities barely scratched trees and boulders. Their HP, he realized with awe. Quint Leveled them all up before he sent them out here. Just by being in the environment, they're reducing the damage.

On both sides, the demons were sorely pressed; but although the damage his allies were inflicting was nightmarish, he could already see it wouldn't be enough. The demons were simply too strong and too numerous; for every one that fell to the claws of the shadow beast or the legendary artifacts wielded by the Otherworlders, two or three kept emerging from the pit or shifting in from spaces unseen. Towering, dark-robed spellcasters with ruby-encrusted horns and green-glowing eyes began to appear, wielding deviant hexcraft he could barely perceive; out of the shadows, fleet many-legged shapes began to emerge, flashing past soldiers and leaving behind mangled limbs and rivers of blood. And behind it all, the tense figure of Tyal Ex Zedeus still stood, watching and barking curt orders as the battle progressed.

From this height, Topher could see her clearly; ash-gray skin stretched taut over solid bones, puckered and twisted with scars and old wounds in a way that suggested, rather than portrayed, an intense and hard-edged beauty that had been savaged so thoroughly for so long that only its foundations remained. Her dark maroon hair was long, falling nearly to her waist from an impossibly severe topknot caught within a beaten hoop of silver, and her armor was fathomless black steel inlaid with gold. As Topher watched, she restlessly twirled her six swords, as though impatient to slay, but held herself back. She's waiting for something, Topher realized. Barely acknowledging the dragon. What's she paying attention to?

Then, at the worst possible moment, he got his answer.

Shuji Takano, gripped by a towering battle fury, emerged from a brutal mêlée with a triumphant shout about a hundred yards to the shadow dragon's left; Topher felt as much as saw Tyal Ex Zedeus's eyes narrow as demons flew like rag dolls from the impact, and before he could blink, she was in motion. Cutting through space like silk, she stepped with impossible speed across the battlefield in an instant; before Topher could even think to shout or intervene, her upper left blade was slashing down through the air towards Takano's comparatively tiny form, leaving a trail of ruby light behind it.

The impact tore stones from the earth for a hundred yards in every direction and chased the clouds from the sky; a half-mile away, Topher's physical body would have fallen over if not for the Archmage's death-grip on his ass. But when the dust cleared, Takano's upraised shield quivered like a struck bell beneath the massive weight of the demon general's twelve-foot sword; and even at such a distance Topher could see the bruised vengeance in the young man's eyes, promising death. Tyal Ex Zedeus stepped back, eyeing the boy.

The contrast between them was objectively laughable; the Unforgiving Queen of Swords was twenty feet tall, weighed at least two tons, and had half a basketball court of reach on her opponent, while Takano was barely five feet and would have been a hundred pounds soaking wet if not for his armor. But worse, Topher could see from her poise and motions that the demon general was ancient and impossibly skilled in comparison to a sixteen-year-old boy who'd been a baseball captain a few months ago; this won't be a fight, he realized dejectedly. It'll be an extermination.

Give me a little credit for foresight, Sahlerra's smoky intent trilled playfully through his consciousness. The dragon rose its left foreclaw, then its mouth opened. "Lhei Sha Vum Korpu," it hissed sibilantly, pointing a claw at Takano. "Danx Ish Ozi Duthan."

Slowly, but then with increasing speed, Takano began to grow.