Chapter 197: Lodestar

Chapter 197: Lodestar

“So what did we learn?” Diana asked Jude and Glenny upon their return.

Jude glanced at his three clones. “It’s not about the end result, but the friends we made along the way.”

Diana held off facepalming. “Uh huh. What else?”

“Void is powerful,” Glenny whispered, his mirage nodding in agreement.

“Good, anything else?”

“No, don’t think so,” Jude said. His mom stared blankly. “Uh, well. I learned that magic can still be cast from a disarmed enemy if the spell was nearly complete in their, uh, staves...”

Diana smiled. “Good! We all learned something then!”

Jude quickly stepped away from his mom, striding just as quickly past Isobel, and stopping before Leland. “Sorry you didn’t get to fight with us.”

“It’s okay. You two looked like you had it,” Leland said.

“But it was a whole nest! And we took it all.”

Spencer cleared his throat. “Actually, I found a second nest not too far away.”

A big grin appeared on Jude’s face. “That’s great! We’ll make sure Leals gets his fair share this time.”

“Ah. Not this time, I’m afraid.”

“What do you mean?” Leland asked his father.

“I mean, this whole nest is yours and yours alone.”

“No, it’s okay. Jude and Glenny can—”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Spencer reaffirmed. “I want to see you fight. For real this time. No help, no experimenting, no overthinking. Just fight, and win.”

It was Jude who replied first. “Yeah! I want to see that as well. Leals has always been a shy fighter and I think now it’s the time to show off!”

“I don’t—” Leland cut himself off when a blue ring in reality opened. On the other side were more sand dunes and darkness.

Everyone else was looking over by this point, even Glenny and Carmon who were talking quietly off to the side.

Leland’s mirage stood tall next to the real Leland. “If he says he doesn’t want to do it, then I stand with him!”

Leland shuddered from the thing touching him. He stepped away, creating as much distance as possible... which just so happened to be through the portal hundreds of miles away. As he moved, a few things came together in his mind. If the mirage felt the need to console him, then he was being a baby. He could take out a whole nest himself. He had just watched his two best friends do it, after all, and his magic was well suited for this sort of thing.

Not to mention, preparation was a mage’s best tool.

Leland stopped, grimoire in hand. He craned his head back and shouted through the open portal, “Are you coming or not?”

His mom was the first one through, bouncing like a child entering a fair. Jude was next, his eyes flared like he was expecting battle. Spencer was next, his face tilted in surprise at the ease of getting his son to do something he obviously didn’t want to do. Diana and Roy came through together, both wrapped in each other’s arms like swans paddling across a pond. Isobel passed through the portal seemingly disinterested. Carmon and Glenny came as well, mainly following the flow of traffic, not so much paying attention as to why they walked through a portal.

Leland noticed all of this and more, yet disregarded it instantly. He slowly breathed, taking the moment to clear his mind of unwanted thoughts. Images of dead bodies, each smashed to pieces from falling from the sky briefly came and went. Sightless Cult, Golden Lambs, Graverenders. He thought of the battle for the beam, he connected instinct and the need to survive.

Yet this was different, right? This time he was the assaulter, he was the conqueror making moves to rid the world of monsters.

“Dad?”

Spencer stepped over.

“Is it the same type of nest?”

Clawing from the depths, the first soul of the Damned to take a soul appeared. It bowed to Leland, offering the soul in its hands as payment for its freedom.

Leland took it with a snort nod of appreciation. Before the soul of the Damned could even fade away, Leland had consumed the given soul. Lodestar sprung to life, cold black metal touching upon the heartstrings of his soul. The weapon felt good in his hands, like it was meant to be carried and used. It begged to partake in the festival, to partake in the obliteration of the nest.

Leland didn’t like that.

Instinct told him to accept that the parasitic weapon was a bloodthirsty tool for a Harbinger, a proper one, not a “protector” Harbinger that he equated himself.. Power would come to him if he conjoined with the weapon and submitted to its rule and call. All enemies would face ruination when Lodestar was calling the shots. Ashford? The Pathways Witch? Both would fall, their bodies nothing but stepping stones for Leland.

“Stop it,” Leland growled through his teeth.

As parasitic items and weapons went, striking when the iron was hot was their motif. A moment of vulnerability, a stray thought they could latch onto and overpower with. Glenny had fought his cloak over the necessity to protect his friends even after a marathon of battles. Isobel’s weapon capitalized on repressed memories of her deceased daughter, opting to forgo physical battle for the mental.

Lodestar, Leland recognized, was trying to corrupt him. Power served all, after all. And there was no pain of one being powerful enough to remove it from their world.

A white beam of blowing mana ripped the nest, up toward Leland. He didn’t even react, the spell bending around him like twine on a spindle. The sudden attack did make his heart race. He remembered just where he was, his weapon falling from his thoughts. He didn’t need more power, not the power Lodestar was offering. He had already seen such corrupting power and knew better than to submit to such an offering.

With a mental command, all of his birds stopped what they were doing and took care of the alpha that had attacked him. By this point, most of the monsters trapped within the circle were dead. Some would submit to their wounds shortly, others would never recover from having their souls ripped partially.

Leland brushed off the thought of their suffering, opting to switch targets. Power came to his call again, and he spoke, “kneel before me.”

A second Circle of Souls developed over the second half of the nest, slightly overlapping with the first. Having not ever used two circles in such a way, Leland was partially surprised he could have two instances of the curse active at once. The surprise ended when another alpha blasted a spell at him.

There was a brief moment of panic when the spell didn’t bend around him like the first. Spatial Bend only worked against low-power spells and projectiles, after all.

All the air in his lungs was painfully knocked out, the force from the spell sending him sailing off the crystal. His eyes twisted in his skull, Lodestar’s offer becoming ever louder in his mind.

“Accept my rule,” it whispered.

Leland didn’t answer with words, instead a guttural roar escaped his lips as he demanded his feathered wings to right himself. Anger and embarrassment pushed him to be taken out by such a lame attack? How foolish.

Stability slowly came back, the wings fluttering at speeds not even Isobel could keep up with. He retook his rightful place on the crystal and demanded an offering. Six souls of the Damned pulled themselves up around him, each with their hands out.

With greed on his mind and a raw and gored chest, Leland consumed the six lost souls instantly with a big swoop of his free hand. Skin stitched itself back together, his ribs repaired themselves, blood rerouted and circulated. The pain was gone, his heart still beat. Anger would fade, embarrassment would as well.

Mana and lifeforce flooded through Lodestar, invoking the aspect of deadly soul magic. “Maul,” Leland muttered, raven-like crows appeared through the ether like magical artillery shells against a besieged city. The alpha that dared hurt him died in misery and pain.

Instinct tried to sway him yet again. Lodestar’s offer still stood.

“Never,” Leland said, his lips dry like the very land he stood upon.

“Never?” Lodestar asked, its voice his own but far more resigned.

“You are corruption.”

“And you are not?”

Leland took a moment to think, another enemy spell bending around him. He changed his birds’ target, opting to cast Curse of Collapse on the remaining targets as well. Souls of the Damned kept stealing souls and appearing at his feet, each groveling like good little foot soldiers.

“See what I mean?” Lodestar asked. “You see yourself as a king. My power, our power, could actually adopt the title.”

“I do not—”

“You do. Do not lie to yourself, to me. Power corrupts, but only when the seeds of corruption are already present.”

“Liar,” Leland spit. “You are nothing more than a false idol. I will never fall to you, a lowly weapon.”

Lodestar chuckled, the beats echoing in his mind. “Perhaps. We’ll try again later when the seeds are sprouting. For now, best to have a taste, huh?”

The violet flames of Circle of Souls died out, rendering all monsters in the area dead. Yet Leland didn’t feel accomplished, not with seeing the “taste” Lodestar promised.

The weapon had evolved.