Heretic Spellblade

by K D Robertson

  The room calmed down at Vala’s projection of confidence, but both Jafeila and Narime remained reserved. Unlike Vala, who had fought under Nathan all her life, the two of them came from nations that had fallen to Messengers. They knew the true power of the demonic threat, even if Nathan had eventually been the one to slay those Messengers.

  “We can’t let our guard down,” Nathan said. “Messengers vary in strength too much, and I don’t want to lose anyone.” He looked at each of his Champions, and they smiled in return. “If the scouting report confirms my suspicions, we’ll ready everything we have.”

  Another hour passed. Captain Murdas reported in person, carrying handwritten notes from the scouts. He saluted upon entering and focused on Nathan. Two of the trigems, Vala and Narime, hovered on top of him, while Jafeila lingered behind him.

  “Bastion, I have the second report here,” Murdas said. “Do you want the summary, or the details?”

  “Does it differ at all from the first report?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t need the report.” Nathan sighed. “Send your scouts back out to place the live monitoring crystals. We’ll need them in place as soon as possible.”

  Murdas nodded, a grimace crossing his face. He saluted again. “I’ll get everybody to work now.”

  His footsteps echoed in the room after he left. Then, silence.

  Nathan drummed his fingers on the desk. All eyes turned to him. The analysts, Jafeila, Ciana, Narime, and Vala.

  “We have to assume this is a Messenger,” Nathan said. “If the portal is showing signs of physical activation, but all the readings are telling us the opposite even after calibration and double-checking, that means somebody is tampering with our readings. In the past, that’s always been a Messenger.”

  He looked at his trigem Champions, who were almost sitting on top of him.

  “The three of you know our defensive plans. Vala, you have the outer layer of walls. Narime, you take the inner wall and provide support fire and command the summons. Jafeila, the inner fortress is yours, as well as the siege weapons and reserve force. Should Vala need to retreat—”

  “I won’t, so don’t waste your breath reexplaining things,” Vala said, rolling her eyes. She plopped herself into Nathan’s lap. Her dark brown hair blocked his vision for a moment as she cuddled against him. “You’re always such a worrier. Just let us lovely Champions take care of you.”

  One of her hands wandered below his chest and down to his crotch. He held back a gasp. This needed to stop before it went too far, he thought.

  “Enough, Vala,” Narime said with huff at her rival.

  She leaned in and pulled Vala away from Nathan. The brunette collapsed unceremoniously on the floor with a laugh. Not that Narime let her own opportunity pass. Her lips closed over Nathan’s and her tails closed around him like a fluffy prison.

  “Although she’s not wrong. You should find some time during the battle to prepare for our celebration,” Narime breathed out after the kiss. She winked at Nathan and pressed her breasts up as she pulled away.

  “You shouldn’t tease him so much,” Jafeila whined.

  “You don’t tease him enough,” Vala said. “Anyway, let’s get down to brass tacks and sort out our battle plan. Make sure to prep the summons for us, Nathan.”

  The three of them left the monitoring station. Nathan pulled himself together and sighed. Vala’s last request was important. He needed to summon as many defenders as possible using his binding stones. Ciana ruffled Nathan’s hair while he was distracted, and he glared up at her.

  There was an army on his doorstep, and only hours to prepare for its arrival.

  Once he won this battle, he could go back to his normal day-to-day life as the ruler of this fortress, with countless dedicated Champions and soldiers. A life spent fighting off the unending waves of demons.

  Chapter 2

  A clear image of the demonic portal shimmered on the wall of the command center. Three demonic portals, actually. Nathan had never seen a portal split apart like this.

  A visual feed of the portals was projected onto the stone wall at the far end of the room. A couple dozen administrative staff monitored terminals powered by the binding stone’s magic. Uniformed soldiers stood guard nearby.

  In the center of the room glowed a three-dimensional projection of the fortress. Innumerable blips of light dotted the hologram and marked life signs. Many gold chevrons moved about within the projection, and these indicated Champions.

  Nathan looked back at the portals. They looked like tears in the fabric of the world itself. Black and white scars that stood dozens of meters high and flickered strangely. Staring at them brought stars to Nathan’s eyes and a sharp pain in the back of his head.

  The pain was muted because Nathan was staring at an image of the portals, rather than the real thing. Nathan imagined how painful it must be to be outside. Normally, a projected image only caused mild discomfort. Nathan’s growing migraine proved this portal was different. This might even be the worst portal he had encountered in over a decade of fighting demons.

  Not that he needed any reminding of that fact.

  Beneath the portal was a heaving, seething mass of demons. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Nathan didn’t know how many demons there were. The monitoring devices still didn’t work, so he couldn’t get an accurate estimate. His scouts estimate had been so enormous that Nathan had refused to share it with anybody else.

  The wasteland surrounding the portal was vast and ringed by steep cliffs. Demons covered every inch of the bare volcanic rock. And every single one of them pushed their way forward, toward the valley that led to the fortress.

  Explosions rippled through the mass of monsters occasionally. They were the work of long-range siege weapons that took out entire formations in conventional battles. Here they appeared completely ineffectual. By the time the dust cleared, the demons had already filled the gap created by the dead. An endless tide of animalistic demons poured forth from the portals. Fortunately, the monitoring crystals didn’t capture sound.

  Nathan knew from experience how awful the sounds were. How terrifying it would be to be a Champion on the front line.

  Vala…

  The visual feed cut out. The fortress shook and dust fell from the ceiling. Screams rung out. Hands grabbed at Nathan’s arms.

  “Nathan!” Ciana shouted.

  “We’re fine,” Nathan said, shaking her off. The other hand didn’t let go.

  “Ifrit… Ifrit says we should retreat,” a young woman said. She didn’t have any gems inset into her collarbone, but she emanated magical power. One hand clasped Nathan’s arm, and the other wrapped itself tight around her stomach.

  Nathan frowned, feeling troubled by the words. “We’ll be fine, Sen. I have you here.”

  He ruffled her white hair. Despite looking just shy of twenty, she was the same age, if not older, than Nathan. In exchange for her immense magical power, she had stopped aging.

  “But… Okay, Nathan,” Sen said. She tried to look brave, but the inner voice of Ifrit was clearly troubling her.

  “She’s right,” another woman said. A single onyx was buried in her upper chest. “This reminds me of when I saw the demons invade Aleich and bring down the Anfang Empire. The demons appeared to be endless. Just like now.”

  Ciana looked away, her face pained. The Empire was her homeland, and she had during the fall of Aleich, when the Empire had been destroyed over a decade ago.

  The fortress shook again, but nobody screamed.

  “Vala, status report,” Nathan asked aloud. He spoke into a device embedded in the command terminal. “And Choe, this isn’t the fall of the Anfang Empire. None of you need to worry about that.”

  “Don’t call me Choe in front of everybody. I’m Sunstorm,” Sunstorm muttered, twisting in place.

  “Vala?” Nathan repeated, speaking into the communication device again.

  “Little busy! We’re holding the outer wall and—�
�

  Every light flickered at once. A bolt of lightning ran through Nathan’s veins, and he slumped to his knees. His breath came up short. For a long moment, he couldn’t feel his body. His limbs felt like they were made of lead.

  The fortress rumbled. Echoes of some massive noise blasted through the halls and into the command center. The floor vibrated.

  Nathan looked up. Ciana, Sunstorm, and Sen surrounded him, saying things he couldn’t hear. His hearing was shot. Their arms reached for him, but he couldn’t feel their touch.

  A gargantuan magical attack had hit the fortress hard. Harder than he had imagined possible. He had gone toe-to-toe with Messengers before. He knew the depths of their strength, and how hard they could strike his defenses.

  Nothing had ever hit him like this. It felt as if his opponent had somehow struck his mind and body directly, ignoring the countless layers of stone and magical barriers between him and any attacker.

  Nathan dove into the mental world of his binding stone. He saw cracks spreading from within it, and many of the tethers he had to other binding stones had been severed. Hurriedly, he repaired what connections he could and slapped together some hasty mental fortifications.

  For several long moments, he stared at a part of his mental world he had built but never thought he would use. Years ago, he had devised a secret weapon. It had only one purpose and was to be used in only scenario. The worst possible scenario.

  He activated the weapon but kept it separate from the rest of his mental world. That weakened it, but he was concerned about another possibility. This Messenger might be able to attack him through the binding stones.

  He came back to reality to find his Champions pulling him to his feet.

  “Nathan!” Ciana shouted in his ear. “We need to get you to a healer.”

  “Stop,” Nathan growled. “I’m fine. Just a little shaken.”

  They gave him an odd look. Before one of them could say anything, somebody shouted.

  “I just got my connection back. We’ve lost the outer wall! And… and the inner wall? This can’t be right,” the man said.

  Nathan stared at the chaos surrounding him. Most of the terminals in the command center had gone down. They were slowly lighting back up, but the results were bad. Communications were still down. The command terminal wasn’t working, and Nathan couldn’t rely on the holographic projection to monitor the battle.

  There was another way. Nathan reached out for his Champions through the binding stone. A wave of relief washed over him as he sensed those who were alive. Then guilt.

  Vala and Narime were alive. But most of his Champions weren’t. He should value all of them equally, he felt. How many had already fallen?

  “Vala and Narime are still up,” he said. “Jafeila will lead her reinforcements to pull them back. The fortress itself is the most heavily warded defensive line. I always intended the walls as an extra layer of defense.”

  As if to punctuate his point in the worst possible way, the fortress shook again, and the terminals winked out.

  Silence fell. Nathan closed his eyes.

  He should go out there and fight. Years ago, he would have done exactly that. But things were different now.

  A Bastion held all the power of the binding stones and granted power to his Champions. At his best, Nathan’s skills as a spellblade allowed him to match a duogem Champion, albeit with significant help from his binding stone. But he had three trigem Champions, and each of them was worth ten Nathans. The power differential between the grades of Champion was massive.

  And this Messenger was so obscenely powerful that he struggled to imagine her raw strength. If Nathan died, all of his Champion’s lost their power and the fortress’s defenses failed instantly.

  So Nathan could only watch, give orders, and strengthen the defenses of the fortress using the binding stone.

  “Sen, Sunstorm, I need you to go help Jafeila,” Nathan ordered.

  “But—” Sunstorm tried to object.

  “No buts. She is going to need every Champion I can spare to help her. I don’t need three of my most capable Champions protecting me,” he said.

  The two looked at Nathan, then at Ciana. The unicorn beastkin stared at Nathan, as if daring him to order her away too. He didn’t.

  He knew well enough that she’d refuse to leave him.

  With several glances backward, Sen and Sunstorm left the command center. Soldiers, sorcerers, and administrative staff shouted over each other and ran around in their wake. The two Champions gave Nathan a last wave from the doorway. He smiled at them and gave them a salute. They smiled back and vanished from his sight. His heart felt empty.

  How many Champions had he failed to say goodbye to today?

  The fortress rumbled. The terminals hadn’t come back to life since the last tremor. Nathan felt his defenses fail one after another. His Champions were fighting as hard as they could. Vala, Narime, and Jafeila were all still alive.

  What did he have left to throw at the demons? What was his next step?

  He was about to dive back into his binding stone to buy time to think when the room rumbled violently. The stonework visibly shook. An explosion rumbled in the distance. Fire and lightning ran through his veins as that attack from earlier struck once more. He realized that the Messenger was attacking the fortress this time.

  “Get down!” Ciana shouted.

  She pulled Nathan beneath her. Dust billowed from the ceiling. Stone plummeted down in whole blocks. Screams and shouts. Nathan grabbed every ounce of magical energy he had and tried to project a defensive barrier.

  All vanished into blackness.

  Nathan awoke seconds later. Or maybe it was hours. Everything was dark, but there was something warm on his body. Pain consumed his left arm. He felt like he hadn’t slept in a week, after doing ten rounds with Vala.

  The castle hadn’t crushed him to death. He created a wisp of light and saw that the rubble was being held above him by a glowing barrier, but only by a fraction of a meter.

  Something glittered and caught his eyes. He turned. Then he looked away, his breath caught in his throat.

  Ciana hadn’t made it.

  Channeling his binding stone, Nathan vaporized the rubble above him. It took several blasts to create a tunnel large enough, and he used yet more magic to keep it stable as he crawled out. The entire fortress must have fallen on him. Had the Messenger brought the whole thing down? How was his binding stone still active?

  He dove into the binding stone and his mind turned to horror.

  His mental world was a ruin. Almost every tether was destroyed. He remained connected to this binding stone, but the tethers to the others had been severed. Nathan was now reliant entirely on this individual binding stone and the leylines directly connected to it.

  But he still had his secret weapon. It had fully activated itself now and was burning with magical energy.

  Pulling away from the ruins of his mental world, Nathan instead faced the ruins of the real world. The fortress had been flattened. Dark stone rubble was strewn as far as the eye could see. A few stray walls remained standing. Dusk had arrived, and the purple rays of twilight peeked over the horizon.

  Nathan wanted to believe this wasn’t real. He reached out magically to check on his Champions.

  He found only emptiness.

  They were all gone. Ciana, Sen, Choe, Jafeila, Vala, Narime, and countless others.

  A gargantuan double door gate stood in the middle of the ruins, seemingly untouched. It was barred shut and covered in runes. The locking bars shimmered with crystals, and the entire structure exuded an awe-inspiring power. This gate separated the demonic portal from the actual world, and so long as it remained closed, the demons couldn’t get in.

  In front of the gate was a young woman.

  No, not a woman. A Messenger. The four curly horns protruding from her skull gave her away, as did the demonic power roiling off her. She was petite, barely five feet, and scantily clad. Nathan co
uld generously describe her as showing a lot of skin, but it was more like she was wearing underwear with some translucent silk cloth attached to it. Platinum hoops and bangles hung on her thighs, hips, and arms, and each gleamed with an otherworldly magic. Her trim black hair was cut to her jawline and her skin was bronzed.

  Despite the situation, Nathan found his eyes drawn to her curves. He blamed her lack of clothing. She lacked much in the upper body department, but her flared hips and plump thighs more than made up for it.

  The Messenger turned to face Nathan, and he saw that she had violet eyes with red pupils. She raised an eyebrow at him.

  “So you are still alive,” she said. “That explains why this gate won’t open. You’re a tougher nut than I expected. When your outer wall went down to my first attack, I thought this was another wasted world, but you somehow survived. And now you’ve survived an entire fortress falling on your head. Well done. Clap, clap, clap.” She clapped her hands at the end for an extra-patronizing effect.

  “I still control the binding stone, despite your best efforts,” Nathan growled out. “And I know a trick or two.”

  “Like regeneration, I suppose.” She stared at his left arm. “I always find watching flesh regrow itself fascinating. Sadly, I don’t really have the time. You’ve been more entertaining than expected, but I need you to open this gate so that my demonic armies can spill forth from the portal. You’ve made me think there may be something worthwhile in this world, and I’m rather impatient.”

  He stared at the Messenger. Was she serious? Did she think he was going to open the gate for her? He had devised this last ditch security measure explicitly to cut off the portal if the fortress ever fell. It would buy time for Falmir to raise an army and defend itself.

  Then he met her eyes and realized the truth. She was patronizing him.

  He smirked. “You think killing me will open the gate and undo my defenses? You’re wrong. The spell operates independently. The battle was over the moment you triggered it. It’ll buy enough time for the other Bastions to raise their armies and gather Champions to suppress you and your portal. Assuming you can even keep a portal this large open for that long.”