by Atlas Kane
Satemi pulled the door open, and Cade stepped through into a long room. Immediately, he knew they’d made it to the right place.
At one side was an Interface, exactly like the one they’d accessed outside of Camp Casmeer. Its golden construction was lit up and functioning, almost as if it were waiting for him to step up and take over.
Yet what caught his attention next unsettled him to the core. An abomination of technology, magic, and some creepy god’s aesthetic stood like a testament to how wrong the city had become. This was where Vormer had twisted things. He’d been busy too, by the look of it, and Cade was worried they might indeed be too late. Cade knew at once this was the Shrine of Aten.
A pillar of golden metal ran up the far wall, the same as those that went everywhere in the bowels of Tanrial. It was how the power was transferred from place to place. This one, however, was bisected, and where the metal had been shorn away, the glowing entrails of arcane wiring were exposed. They were clear, like polymer or crystal, and within flowed a constant stream of mana.
The wires and the mana they carried fed into what looked like a monstrosity made of bones and fragments of salvaged metal. The bones all had different shapes, the skeletons of a hundred kinds of creature, all boiled white. They were entwined into a recognizable pattern. Starting at the ground, the bones twisted up and around in a perfect half circle, fingers curling off all along its ridge.
It formed an image of writhing flame.
In its center, and suspended from the arc’s apex, hung a massive skull. Long fangs filled its mouth, and atop its crown sprouted horns. An ancient and primitive language was carved into the skull and mandible. Though he’d never seen the remains of one of the great beasts before, Cade knew it was the skull of a Kotani ape.
“Their relic! This must have been what the apes were searching for!” Cade whispered in wonder.
Satemi came forward alongside him, her eyes searching the recesses of the room. “Yes, Cade. I suspect you are right. We should take it with us.”
The two took a step forward, but as they did, a flash of heat made them pause in their steps. A golden light burned before them, surrounding the shrine and scorching their skin. The two stumbled back, shielding their eyes.
Poor Ketzal’s reaction was more profound. The demoness cried out wordlessly, and when Cade looked, he saw a deep and knowing fear in her eyes.
The skull’s jaw opened and a flickering light ignited within its gaping eyes. It looked around and found them cowering. And then it spoke. “If you come, you will bow. Stand in awe of Aten’s glory and swear allegiance to the light!” a voice rumbled through the walls themselves.
Oh, boy. Now a god is talking to us, Cade thought in his head. And for some reason, he is acting like a huge freaking cliché!
The others came here and bowed before him. He burned away their minds. I remember it all now, everything. We mustn’t do the same, Cade! Ketzal cried out in his mind.
Still looking at her, he tried to send her what comfort he could. We will do no such thing. Calm down, Ketzal. Vormer is not here. I am.
She broke her eyes away from the bright visage of Aten and found his. Immediately, the rigidity of her body relaxed somewhat, and she took a series of deep breaths. We have to kill this thing, Cade, she said, a certainty filling her mental voice that he could not deny.
Turning back, Cade answered. “We do not come to bow before you, Aten, but to tear you down.”
The god burned brighter, and Cade felt an inexorable will settle over his own. It was urging him forward, to come and to kneel. “What makes you think you have a choice? I am ancient. I will have your subservience or your death. You may choose.”
Cade fought against the pull on his mind, focusing on not stepping forward. It was a struggle that had him covered in sweat and trembling. Satemi groaned beside him. She was struggling too. If they couldn’t refuse the god’s simple request, how could they expect to end him?
Then from behind them, a new force manifested. It was less pronounced, a subtle thing at first, but growing stronger by the second. He knew what, who it was. Though he’d lost his ability to turn his head, all of his strength focused instead on refusing to bend to Aten’s will, he felt Ketzal’s mind blooming behind him.
It was as if a shadow were spreading across the room, pushing against the blinding light of The Burning God. Odd, to think of shadow or darkness as a force of good, but it was Ketzal. He could even see it in his mind’s eye. A veil of deep purple, like a moonless sky at midnight, pressed into the terrible gold light that burned him.
When it reached Cade, he gasped, the force suddenly diminishing. He turned then to see what the demoness was doing. Her arms were flung out to either side, and her eyes glowed a bright lavender. Behind and above her spread the same dark wings she’d grown when she attacked Camp Casmeer under Vormer’s influence. She was in her full power, by herself suppressing the will of a god. She was divine.
But then Satemi interrupted his musings. “Cade. We must finish this. I don’t think Ketzal can hold out indefinitely.”
“Good. What do we do though? Smash the skull? I doubt we can get much closer.”
Satemi grinned, a bead of sweat rolling down her cheek. “Remember the last god we faced? Not Yotri, who was only a demon anyway, but the shadow beast. This creature, this Aten, has real power, but where does it come from? Where does he draw his power?”
Cade thought on the warrior’s words, then examined the situation from a new light. A skull with golden light in its eyes was talking to them, asking them to bow down to its power. Yet it was relying on the mana coursing through the circuitry of Tanrial!
“How dare you seek to suppress the light of Aten’s glory! I will burn away your shadows soon enough. Already, I can feel your will faltering, young demon!” Aten bellowed, the force of his light increasing in strength once more.
Ketzal answered, her voice deep and resounding. “Your light is stolen. You are nothing but the twisted image of a god. This is your last day in Tanrial.”
“Blasphemy! My servant shall make you kneel! He will—”
Satemi cut the godling short as she snapped back, “He isn’t here! So he won’t do anything of the sort.” She looked to Cade then gestured to the wires running down the wall, lending support to his initial thought. Cade nodded back.
“I am the light of this world, and soon, I’ll be strong enough to take a new body. I will be tall and glorious, an unending force. I will remember your refusal when that time comes,” Aten said, the teeth clacking in the ape’s jaw he spoke through.
Cade took a step, and then another. Soon, he was walking around the fiery sphere of influence and toward the source of the power. Satemi followed, and though their movements were slow and halting, Aten’s grip on them was fallible.
Cade looked at the place where the wires spilled from the golden beam. He thought to pull back his axe and cut through it all. That would surely kill the god. But how is it going to feel when I get zapped with mana? Cade wondered, his thoughts returning to the mana poisoning Sholl had suffered. Instead, he held out his new ring, and aiming his intention at the base of the wires, used the ability Mana Sponge.
Immediately, the power drained into his ring instead of into the wires that fed Aten. The wires faded somewhat, going clear as the mana coursed along its path but no longer replenished.
Then Aten wigged out.
“You seek to destroy me! I am the light, the truth, the way to an everlasting power.”
Cade ignored the god’s ranting and held out his axe to Satemi. “Cut the wires! Do it now! I don’t think the skill will absorb for much longer.”
Without hesitating a second, Satemi snatched the axe and swung. The first stroke clipped two of the wires neatly, but three more remained. She swung again, cutting two more and scoring a gash in the last. Aten’s stolen jaw worked in frustration, screaming all the while. “I am he who burns! The messenger in the night, the flame and the forge!”
Satemi swung one last time, and the final wire was cut free. Cade released the skill, feeling his body and new soul weapon hum with power. He felt sick, as if his body had been overfilled with energy.
The mana, released from Cade’s skill, poured from the cut wires, but was not taken up again by the severed ends. They watched as the god spouted out his own religion, irrelevant and unreal. And when the last of the glowing magic reached the skull and ran out, the huge skull fell slack, the jaw clacking open lifelessly.
Cade collapsed to the ground beside Satemi. Both were covered in sweat, yet strangely, the room felt cool now. The light and the heat were gone, leaving nothing behind but the memory of the strange battle. Ketzal was on one knee, holding herself upright with fists pressed to the ground. Her wings were gone, and she stared blankly, panting from exhaustion.
“Well done, Ketzal. And to think, I once considered killing you,” Satemi said, smiling at the demoness.
Ketzal laughed, her white teeth shining. “As if you had a chance.”
After a few minutes, the three found the strength to stand once more. Time was pressing, and though their limbs still shook with effort, they had to finish.
“Second non-god we’ve killed recently. I am thinking there’s a song in that, or at the very least a joke. We’ll need to brainstorm when we get done with this,” Cade said, reaching up and jerking the skull down from its attachments. When he had done so, he stored the bone in his Inventory, feeling the added weight affect him. They’d already taken all of the soul weapons and a few of the nicer pieces of equipment from the armory. It was enough to make them all feel as if they had lead in their legs. But leaving it all behind felt even more of a crime.
When they’d finished, they stood back and noticed something troubling. A faint golden haze was shimmering about the base of the shrine, the bones themselves seeming almost alive with the residual energy. The mana was dripping onto the floor and had touched the foot of the shrine. Though the skull had been removed, Cade worried that Aten might find some other way to come back and exert his will.
“Back up, guys. I know what to do,” Cade said, and pulled out several of the acid bombs he’d created. He gave the girls two each to throw, and they took turns pelting the shrine.
The bones were destroyed in clouds of smoke, and as the room began to fill with the acrid stench, Ketzal pointed out the only other tasks they had to accomplish. “The Mana Shards are over here!” she shouted. Then gestured to Cade. “You, try to access the Interface. I’ll store the shards. There are dozens, but they are small and do not weigh much.”
The demoness ran to the opposite corner of the room and retrieved a small chest, the item disappearing into her Inventory instantly.
Cade strode to the Interface and placed his hand upon it. Closing his eyes, he called out in his mind to Micah, the Interface demon. He was not successful.
Over and over, the same message rung out in his mind. Tanrial Interface Access Denied. Override System Corroded.
“It won’t work. Let’s just get out of here!” Cade cried, and Ketzal led them to a door in the opposite wall.
By then, the mana had begun pooling around the altar, the cut wiring still draining the excess mana at an alarming rate. The acid from the bombs had begun to slow in their decimation of the shrine, yet sticking around to see what the acid would do when it reached the mana was an experiment Cade preferred not to see.
The group ducked out through the door and ran ahead a few hundred feet until they came to an incredible flight of stairs.
They climbed, hundreds of stairs all leading up to the surface of Tanrial. Halfway before they reached the sunlit archway above, a muffled boom resounded below. It sent a shockwave through the ground.
“That’s what we get for playing at chemistry!” Cade called out as they continued their retreat.
The sun outside had an odd quality to it. It seemed brighter than ever and strangely colored. Blinking in an attempt to adjust to the harsh sunlight, Cade finally looked up and his jaw dropped. High above them, a clear and empty sky shone. The ether storm had either ended or moved on, but that wasn’t what surprised him. It was the complete and utter lack of a dome.
Their shenanigans had blown Tanrial’s system. There was no telling what else might have gone wrong or stopped working, and worse, there was no way to know if it would ever work again.
Satemi and Ketzal shared a glance with him. They too had noticed. Shrugging, the three resolved to end the final threat that remained. Vormer was the one who’d gotten this ball of shit rolling. It was their job to be the shovel.
Ketzal pointed down an alley. “The portal is this way. That is the only other place he might be.”
Cade and Satemi nodded, and the three jogged off, hungry for the fight ahead.
27
A Lion’s Feast
It was hard to understand what he was looking at. Vormer had to be within the writhing mess of black liquid. It wound about his body, connecting to him like strands of hellish webbing. What was confusing was figuring out which parts of his body were which.
Then he saw the lion’s gauntlets clutching the portal’s silver frame, and the two limbs of black flesh writhing constantly to either side were his arms. Below, Vormer’s body was wrapped in the foul substance, his golden armor pocked and corroded everywhere it appeared. Two thick trunks sank to the ground, attaching the villain to a vast pool of the abyssal substance.
Where is his head? Cade wondered. Throwing caution to the wind, he shouted out a challenge. He only knew one thing. The bastard had to be stopped from finishing whatever it was he’d started. Might as well get the show on the road.
“Vormer! What in the seven hells are you doing?”
The figure straightened, and up rose the lion’s head, his golden scales looking sickly and tarnished, as if someone had dissolved Vormer’s flesh in acid. When he answered, it was not in a voice Cade recognized. Rather, it sounded like a dozen voices, each deeper than the last. “Cade! You’ve come to die? Oh, and look. You’ve brought some of the whores that fled my city so long ago. Welcome, Satemi. I’ve missed your lips!”
“You’ve never known them! And I’m going to kill you for thinking otherwise!” Satemi growled, striding toward the portal.
Cade reached forward and grabbed her arm. “Hold on! I want to kill him too, but I do not think you should touch that stuff.”
The woman looked back and observed the nightmare liquid with him. It was viscous and seemed slick, yet pulsed with strength. There was a quality about it that seemed at once like slime and then like the hard exterior of a shell.
Vormer turned, and Cade saw a golden light burning out from his eyes. “I felt it. You’ve killed poor Aten. But it does not matter. He chose me as his vessel, and I have taken all that was his power. Now I am so much more than I once was.”
“Yeah, you’re a real looker, Vormer. Now why don’t you stop doing whatever it is you’re doing to the portal. For all you know, you might destroy all of Antinium,” Cade said, hoping there was even a shred of sense left in the man’s mind.
The wracking laughter that followed convinced him his hope was pure folly. After the wheezing mirth of a dozen voices calmed down, the thing that was Vormer spoke again. “With Aten’s power, I became the light. And with the light, I sought the dark. Now, can’t you see that I am both?”
It was an impressive sight, Cade had to admit. Vormer had released the portal, and with great effort, began to move his legs.
The blackness constricted around his form, sinking into his golden skin. The lion clenched his teeth, fangs bared in a grimace. Cade thought he heard him growling in pain, a mad gleam in his eyes.
Then the liquid, the essence of the void itself, filled Vormer’s body, making him denser, more massive. The pool shrank as it absorbed into his once-bright frame, and when it was over, the lion stood before them like a beacon of volatile power.
His body churned with strength, the muscles rippling. He breathed deeply, tas
ting the air anew. Vormer was no longer gold and unblemished, he was a marbled mess, a monster. His body was streaked with black, and though his form had not changed, it was obvious he’d grown much stronger.
Vormer held out a hand toward them. “Are you sure you’ve made the right decision?” he said in his warbled voice. “Am I not worthy of worship and supplication?”
Cade spat on the ground, trusting the gesture would suffice.
Again, the beast laughed, the sound coming out painfully. Cade’s hackles rose. Every instinct within him screamed to flee. But this was his world now, and he would be damned if a nightmare like this would be allowed to walk about freely. No, this bucket of assholes dies here and now.
When the monster ceased its laughing fit, it smiled. Even its teeth were marbled between white and black, a terrifying sight. “Come now, Cade. Don’t you think—” Vormer began again.
An Explosive Shot leapt from the barrel of Cade’s blast axe, bursting in Vormer’s neck. A splash of black liquid fell to the ground, but otherwise, the monster was unharmed. Before it could speak again, Cade let him know they were done talking. “We didn’t come here to listen to you spout nonsense. So shut up and fight us. Satemi, Ketzal, let’s do this!”
Vormer growled, a primal sound his former self never would have indulged in. The wound in his neck had stopped hemorrhaging, and now only blackness remained.
He stepped away from the portal, moving toward them with intent. As he did so, they could see behind him. An arcane symbol had been etched across the silver surface of the portal, and a hole had been opened up. Beyond, only a vast emptiness loomed. Cade got the feeling that he was both looking up into a heavens that had no end, and teetering over the edge of a great precipice.