Chapter 172: Consume

Chapter 172: Consume

Reality came screaming back to Leland in the form of golden anger. He blinked a few times, his vision disoriented with splotches of white. Someone was grabbing his arm, Sybil he recognized easily enough, but not the fear in her eyes. She was pulling him away, trying to force him to the ground. He allowed himself to fall.

“What—”

A hymn echoed overhead, the clouds parting way for golden law. Trumpets, horns, a mangled choir, each in song and each a Harbinger. They flew like wicked winds, men of all ages yet wearing identical clothing. Gold and white armor, capes that stretched to their heels, and various sized halos radiating golden worry.

Isobel snapped her head toward Leland, her eyes conveying relief for but a moment. She turned hard, her jaw straightening like a wire fence.

Sybil likewise was surprised, crashing into the rocky floor from Leland suddenly moving. He had gone stiff as a statue when he called out to the Void Lord, which also prompted the Clergy of Golden Lambs to swoop in.

“We’re under attack!” Isobel yelled, oddly calm.

“How long was I gone?” Leland asked in turn, scanning the sky for—

A clap of thunder razed the clouds, followed quickly by a hurdling scream. A bolt of lightning had come and gone, all but a flash of highlighted cloud proving the Sky Dwarves were still around. In seconds a body fell, scorched and charred black. It landed beside the invisible barrier the group stood within, and luckily enough golden trim shined through to prove which side the body belonged to.

“Everyone reacted to you calling out to the Void!” Isobel yelled over the vile song. “The Sky Dwarves, the golden idiots, and the Graverenders idiots!”

Leland could see that, a monsterfied form shifting through the clouds like a seal paddling through white currents. It came out of nowhere, its mighty maw open for a moment before slamming down on another of the Clergy of Golden Lambs. The seal then thrashed its head, launching the now dead priest far to the ground, before dipping back into the cover of the clouds.

“How long was I out!?” Leland asked again, turning his attention to more important things.

“Like forty seconds!” Isobel yelled, her arm out and firing bolts of green into the sky. “Did you get what we needed!?”

At the question, Leland spun to face Sybil. “I’m going to cast a spell and send you home. To the throne room, right? Does that sound fine?”

Sybil’s eyes widened. “T-that’s fine! Are you coming too?”

Leland didn’t answer, instead summoning his grimoire. The pages flipped to his newest contract—

“Are you coming as well!?” Sybil demanded.

Leland lost a bit of confidence at that moment. Seeing Sybil look at him with worry was a sight he wouldn’t wish on anyone. The golden song above was getting louder, which only amplified the moment. They were in real danger here, despite the protection of the Archon’s shield.

“No,” Leland finally said. “One person only.”

“Then—”

“It’s you, Sybil. It has to be you. We can get back ourselves, you have to take the shortcut.”

She stared at him as he stared back. For a moment that stretched like eternity, they stared at each other. Leland punctuated the moment by saying, “Please.”

And just like that, Sybil’s guise of an emotionless princess crumbled. Tears poured down her cheeks, mixing along her scars and rushing down and off her chin. She pressed her face into him, hugging him with shaking arms.

He hugged back, tears forming in his eyes as well. They never fell however, not with a diabolical song ramping in speed overhead. “I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

Sybil pulled back, “You better.”

She gave Isobel one last glance, receiving a head nod from the former Inquisitor. Then she looked at the Archon. “Good luck getting home,” she said before spinning back to Leland. “You are going to help it, right?”

Leland smirked. “Her name is Sapphire, apparently. Named after the first gem she found in this world. And I will get her home, don’t worry.”

Sapphire had reacted to her name quite oddly. Her veil had rescinded fully, showing off her broken crystalline circular body. She was rotating with enough speed to generate a gentle breeze, but she also held off on speaking without more information.

“You better,” Sybil said, turning back to the Archon. “He’ll take you home. He’s pretty good at it, as it seems.”

Leland puffed up a bit at that, resolving his emotions to that of steel. He focused on his grimoire.

Cursed contract of the Lord of the Void:

Use: For the duration of the contract, access to the spell, Void Slip, is available. Contract is usable once per year.

Return: Provide the Archon known as “Sapphire” safe passage into the Void.

Void Slip:

Type: Spell (Void)

Rank: MAX

Call upon the Lord of the Void to assist you or whoever you cast this spell upon to travel through the Void.

“When I cast,” Leland yelled, grabbing Isobel’s attention, “they are going to swarm like ants! Most likely!”

Isobel took a deep breath, nodded, and looked to the sky.

Leland turned back to Sybil. “Goodbye. I’ll see you soon.”

But before he could cast, Sybil darted in, planting a kiss upon Leland’s lips. The surprise of the moment almost made him miss the event. Luckily for him, that didn’t happen and he kissed her back.

“You’re glowing again,” Leland whispered, causing Sybil to pull back, her face draped in red. The Princess quickly smothered her own embarrassment, ending the gray lightshow.

Isobel grunting as she fired a bolt of poison pulled them back to reality. When a body hit the ground a few paces to the side, they both jolted back to the situation.

“No detours!” Sybil demanded.

Leland smiled to himself, and pressed his palm onto the contract’s page.

It started with a white spark, quickly growing into a violet burn. Energy, mana, and lifeforce conjoined into a confluence, each source aiding in the growth of the spell. Soon the barriers of magic and will churned, and purple halo flooded to life above Leland’s head. It grew a bit wider than last time, along with spilling more dark mist, but that hardly pulled anyone’s attention.

No, they were focused on the violet fold in reality. It looked like a crease in a piece of parchment, one that had been watered down by runaway ink and dried with a simple blow. But unlike paper, this crease fell away into an endless white void. The Void, rather.

Leland and the others peered into the hole in reality, finding an impossibly long tunnel of white. But, like an oasis on the horizon, hope remained. Far, at the end of the tunnel, was a throne. Made of bone and velvet, the Palemarrow throne sat strong and overbearing. Leland knew, from just seeing the throne, that whoever was on the other side of the tunnel would be able to help Sybil. Boneforged Monarch or not.

Then, like a burst dam, a sweeping power rushed out, pulling Sybil into the Void like an undertow. She allowed it to happen, yelling to Leland about “no detours,” one last time before being swallowed by the endless white.

Leland watched the fold in reality close and iron out, solidifying back into open air. He stared at the place in space for just a second, but that second proved to be too long for Isobel.

“Kid, stop pining over your girlfriend and help me solve this!”

And what a problem it was to solve.

The Clergy of Golden Lambs kept appearing from the clouds, filling-in a ringed position over the barrier whenever one of their brothers died. They were obviously performing a ritual of some sort. Divine hymn, cooperative magic casting, most likely a summoning spell of some sort. Regardless of what it was, the golden music was getting louder and progressing without fault.

In fact, since Leland summoned his halo, the music had redoubled if anything.

In the span of just a few seconds, Leland worked through the problem and came up with a few solutions. First and foremost, kill the Lambs. Obviously. But how?

“Sapphire,” Leland said to the Archon, causing her to slow her rotations to a bear crawl. “ Can you do that rock thing again? Kill all of those attackers up there?”

She reacted well to the words, doing exactly as asked. Within moments, six spiked rocks glided out and above the invisible barrier before rocketing out like a Frost Bolt cast by an Arch Mage. Each hit their target, sending the six Lambs to the ground, dead.

But before the bodies had a chance to crash into the ground, six more Lambs stepped from the clouds and continued the song. Not a single beat was missed, not a single vocal was off tempo.

From the side, Leland heard Isobel curse and fire away, killing three more Lambs in the span of just a few seconds. He didn’t mind her, however, instead focusing on the seemingly endless supply of personnel the clergy had... Which was strange, because when the Sky Dwarves first arrived, there had been only a troop of Lambs, not a platoon.

Leland knew virtually nothing about the Vile Lord the Aurelian Giant, but from an initial inspection, he concluded they specialized in summoning magic of some sort. He had seen mighty golden arms fly through the sky, punching the monster-shifted Graverenders just minutes earlier, after all. But besides that, there was little to go off of.

Cloning magic? Simulacrums? Puppets? Leland had no idea. Those types of magic were rare, but Vile Lords were something of a closed book when it came to how they fought.

“They’re clones or something,” Leland said to Isobel. “Don’t waste your time on the visible ones. We need to kill the ones creating them.”

Isobel growled out a curse. “I hate clones.” But then she realized there really shouldn’t be an issue of clones since they were all out in the open sky. It was the clouds which were the true problem. She said as much, “Can we do anything about the clouds?”

Leland’s mind spun with the question. Yeah, he understood what she was getting at. He then looked at Sapphire. “Are the clouds yours? Can you dispel them at least until Isobel can kill the clones?”

Sapphire’s blue ring of gems spun with fervor. She tilted herself back a bit like a person looking at the sky. “Okay.”

Leland jolted at the word for some reason. He had heard the Archon talk a few times now. Why had he reacted that way? Maybe it was knowing a bit of Archon history. Maybe it was knowing that Archons were responsible for all life forming happily throughout the Void, in a sense.

In the end, Leland realized it didn’t matter. There was danger afoot and getting lost in his mind was not an option right now. At least Sybil got home safely... but then again, maybe she didn’t and all of this was—

The clouds parted enough to spot a golden boot hanging idly nearby. Isobel fired, her bolt of poison flying where a chest would be connected to a leg within the boot. It connected, ending the man’s life without fanfare. The Lamb tumbled from the cloud cover, dead long before hitting the ground. Then, like a shadow cast away by a candle’s flame, one of the six Lamb clones casting overhead faded away.

The other Lambs did not like this.

As the clouds continued to vanish, golden light edged out the endless white of the Void. With a dazzle and flash, a hail of fists streaked down like a tailed comet. They spun straight down with the force of a miner’s pick, each barreling into the invisible barrier. Dozens of fists were summoned and thrown, yet it wasn’t until the hundreds, or maybe two-hundredth, that the barrier started to show signs of degradation.

There were no cracks, no dents, or even flickering. No, the barrier held in all regards except those directly dealing with its caster – Sapphire. The gem ring Archon fell to the assault, landing on the stone with a horrid clank. One gem in the circle had already cracked and dulled, but now two more did as well. But when the assault ended, she slowly floated back up.

Leland couldn’t exactly tell why, especially since her veil was now up and flowing, but for some reason he felt Sapphire was pissed.

Isobel noticed the same thing and adopted a hellish grin. She fired into the faded clouds without reserve, her centipede parasitic weapon making quick work of all who came into her line of sight.

“What—”

“Isobel,” Leland interrupted. “It’s an ambient gathering device. She was never able to power it herself.”

The Huntress then frowned, her centipede parasitic weapon shifting all of its legs with deliverance. She looked up, finding the same three Lamb clones and their casters, each protected by impenetrable golden light. They still sang, but now their summoning was starting to take shape.

Draped in hairs as thick as dock rope, a mutated torso the width of a drawbridge trembled with authority. Two massive arms connected to the hulking muscled body, along with a thick neck and concerning head. An underbite left the monster’s head eye-catching, its fangs like sharpened battering rams. And while concerning, it was the single eye set in the middle of its forehead that ushered in true fear.

Donned with a golden halo, the summoning roared as it came to “life.”

“Here’s the plan,” Isobel announced, her dragonfly wings fluttering. “I’m going to fly up there and—”

“No,” Leland interrupted, the sudden word causing him to devolve into a coughing fit. He tapped himself again with Touch of Regeneration. “Y-you need to dump all of your mana into the device. Then we run.”

“Don’t be asinine!” Isobel screeched. “There is no way we can escape a cyclops!”

Leland startled at that, briefly removing his arm from his eyes. He flinched from the sudden light, cringing at the pain in his head. But all of that pain seemingly went away the moment he saw the still-summoning cyclops.

“Oh.”

Isobel took a deep breath and crouched low, her wings began to rapidly flap. She took off, rifling through the air like a shark in its natural habitat. She was the Huntress here, and she had her prey in her sights. Hunter’s Mark, Decisive Shot, Piercing Shot, True Aim, Eagle’s Eyes. Everything she had flowed into her crossbow, turning the poison spike dark black. It glinted like obsidian, hardening into something far greater than the sum of its parts.

She took aim at the cyclops, True Aim lining up her shot for her. The monster’s single eye was her target, and Hunter’s Mark was going to help her kill the thing and then some. One final breath in, then out, and a slight squeeze—

The sky erupted, blinding light flashing just before the cyclops’ eye. Isobel flinched, firing the bolt wide. With haste, she forced herself back down to the ground just in time to dodge a crashing lightning serpent.

The new beast soared through the air, its mighty maw enclosing around the cyclops like a person eating a grape. The serpent then broke apart, its lightning skin degrading into a simple gale. But from the wreckage, a man fell. Specifically, the Champion of Erupting Skies. Covered in blood and with a full belly, the man hurtled toward the stoney ground.

Isobel rushed to intercept, catching him with the grace of a flier who had only been practicing for a few hours total. In essence, she bear hugged him until she was able to retreat to the Archon’s invisible barrier.

She set him down beside Leland, only then noticing that the Champion’s eyes were hollow white and sparking with fulmination.

Still, that didn’t stop the man from laughing like a mad man. “Aye girly! Haven’t used that spell in a while!” The man’s cackle devolved into a raw hacking cough.

Leland forced himself to sit up and heal the man.

“Thanks laddie.” The Champion eyed him despite his eyes looking milky. “Healer, aye? I would have pegged you for a dark-mage type.”

Leland didn’t respond to that, instead saying, “What was that spell!? I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Erupting Wrath, my Lorddies’ special. Champion only, I’m afraid. Had to use my eyesight to fuel the dang beat too!”

“’Use up?’” Leland asked.

“Aye. Price of power, that. Champions are cursed in that regard.”

Leland frowned. Just like Soul Fire, he thought.

“But don’t you worry laddie,” the man coughed. Leland healed him again. “The cyclops is gone and my team and the Graverenders will finish off the foolish clergy. Battle will be over soon.”

“What happens after, then?”

“Graverenders will come in and start bossing us around. After, of course, they deal with the Archon.”

To the side, Sapphire rotated slowly.

Leland looked at Isobel. And Isobel frowned.

“Please,” he said, “you have to.”

Isobel looked as if she ate a lemon. “No. You heard him, the battle is over. It is not our problem anymore—"

“It is a contract. Both get to go home, that was what we decided on. You need to help.”

Isobel stared at Leland as he stared back. She broke off first, looking at the recovering Champion then to the partially shattered Archon.

“What is wrong, lad?” the Champion asked. “Don’t worry about anything. The Archon won’t be a problem when the Graverenders get here. They deal with stuff like this all the time. This isn’t the first time an Archon has tried to escape.”

Isobel’s frown cracked into a larger frown, as did Leland’s.

To the side, Sapphire quietly said, “Home.”

The Sky Dwarf flinched and ignited a rush of mana. He thrust out his arm, aiming toward the sound—

Isobel kicked his arm, sending the Lightning Bolt wide.

“Why! It will kill us all!”

All around, rocks began to float, coming to Sapphire’s protection.

Leland rushed to his feet but only got to his knees before a wave of vertigo assaulted him. Still, he fell into the direction of the Champion, protecting the dwarf with his own body.

“Don’t!” Leland yelled. “He doesn’t understand! He doesn’t understand! H-he won’t attack again, I promise!”

Sapphire was fully within her veil at this point, her blue complexion completely sealed away. The rocks dropped harmlessly.

The dwarf began cursing at Leland, but both he and Isobel ignored him. Instead, Leland said, “Please, Isobel, before the Graverenders interfere.”

Isobel looked from Leland to the Archon. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes. For Sybil.”

Isobel swallowed her instincts and said, “Fine. Show me where to touch.”

While non-mages had nowhere near the mana pool as a mage, that didn’t mean they lacked mana. In the Huntress’ case, she had more than most other Legacies of the Hunter simply due the amount of individual power she held.

Leland guided her to where to put her hands on the Void device, then she let her mana flow. As the beam took on a green tinge, Isobel whispered, “Just so you know, I’m going to be completely out of mana after this.”

They both looked at the dwarf staring at them with blind eyes then to the sky. The last of the Lambs were being slaughtered, the clergy refusing to surrender it seemed. Leland gave her a nod.

“That is enough,” Sapphire abruptly said after a few moments of channeling causing Isobel to tear her hands away.

The Archon floated silently up to the device. “Thank you, Champion of the Calamity.” She turned a bit. “Thank you Huntress.”

Then a blue sparkle phased through her veil and into the spellwork. The formerly white beam of magic instantly turned stark blue, like the rolling waves of the deep ocean. Sapphire then floated into the beam and disappeared.

The beam teetered out a second later, and the sky closed just after that.

“Oh, lad. What have you done?” the Champion of Erupting Skies muttered. He started to speak, but movement stopped him cold. On his hand, the tattoo of a serpent sailing through thunderous clouds moved.

“Oh,” the man muttered distantly. He blinked a few times, his Lord no doubt communicating through the tattoo. “The Lord of the Void, really? Huh, strange. Well okay. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens to these way-wards.”

Leland and Isobel blinked a few times, but relief consumed their confusion.

From above a voice boomed in a language Leland and Isobel didn’t recognize. Then, a moment later, words they could understand shook the air. “IN THE NAME OF THE GRAVE BASTION, CEASE ALL MAGIC AND PREPARE TO BE ARRESTED!”

Everyone looked up, even the blind dwarf. Slowly descending was a dozen soldiers, two Sky Dwarves, and six or so human-shape-shifted monsters of various species and sizes.

The Champion of Erupting Skies got to his feet. “Follow my lead, young Harbinger. Also, put away that halo before someone gets the wrong idea.”

Leland instantly canceled all active contracts.

The Champion then yelled into the sky, “It’s alright, Commander Hayze! Lord of the Void said it was fine!”

The army landed and a griffin-type monster reverted back into human form, clothes and all. A bit worse for wear, the woman – Commander Hayze, apparently – stalked forward.

“What is the meaning of this, Zeph?” Hayze demanded of the Champion. “You intrude on my battlefield and then protect the people who helped an Archon escape!? I shall have your head for this!”

Zeph shrugged. “Lorddie says they are clear. If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with the Serpent himself and the Lady of the Void.”

Hayze went through a deluge of emotions. She settled on exasperation. She turned to the Huntress, stepping past Zeph. “Explain yourself.”

Isobel, being Isobel, set her back and crossed her arms, her lips sealed and glared. Hayze glared back. Then, with a huff, the commander pivoted on one foot, striding up to Leland, who, unfortunately, flinched back a bit.

“What say you, Harbinger!? And take off that ridiculous mask!”

Leland, still exhausted and still reeling from the effects of Sapphire’s sparkle, raised the mask and simply said, “We just want to go home. Can you help with that?”

Hayze snarled at him.

“Oh!” Leland then declared, causing Hayze to lean in a bit. “I’m also supposed to tell you, the Graverenders I mean, that there is a wormhole in the basement of the fortress. You probably want to get that looked at before it consumes the world or something...” He trailed off as Hayze’s eyes dipped into something more monsterfied.

To the side, Isobel almost face palmed while Zeph cackled.