Jafeila had been the fourth trigem Champion to join Nathan’s service, although he had known her from earlier in his career. By the time he met her, she was a hardened veteran from years of fighting demonic hordes. She had survived the fall of the Empire, the roving bands of demons in the aftermath, the invading armies of greedy neighbors, and much, much more.
He remembered his first meeting with her vividly. She had been a monogem Champion serving a Bastion from Trafaumh. Nathan had been a relatively new Bastion. He was popular in Falmir due to a heroic victory against a demonic horde, despite the odds being stacked against him. They had met in a field of demonic corpses, and Jafeila had dismissed him with a glance.
The nervous looks she gave him right now were a far cry from dismissive. She pressed her fingers together and licked her lips as her tail beat up a storm behind her.
“Champion Jafeila,” Nathan corrected. “You’re no longer in training as of now. Walk with me.”
Jafeila half-squeaked, half-screamed in delight at the news that she had finally been promoted to a full Champion and bounced behind Nathan. He ignored her for a moment, letting her burn off her nervous energy.
Hopefully, she’d be a little calmer once she settled down and got to know him. But a niggling thought ate at the back of his mind.
Would any of his women be the same as they were in his timeline? Could they be the same given he planned to change the course of history?
He suppressed the thought and looked at the ruins around him. Striding toward the remains of the keep, he recalled what this place was.
Gharrick Pass. One of only two major land routes connecting the Anfang Empire with its eastern neighbors through the Gharrick Mountains. It was through this fortress that the Empire had been attacked from behind.
This ruined fortress indirectly caused the end of world.
No wonder Kadria had said she knew exactly the place to send him. She had held up her end of the bargain so far. If Nathan could protect this pass, he could stop the collapse of the Empire.
Nathan felt the slight pull of a binding stone from beneath the keep. With a wave of his hand, he told Jafeila to follow him and entered the ruins.
Gharrick Pass had been abandoned centuries old. But with the binding stone’s power, Nathan could rebuild the fortress practically overnight. That made finding it his highest priority.
There might be a slight complication, however.
“Lady von Clair wanted you to visit her once you arrived,” Jafeila said. “She said she would organize everything you needed. Do you know her?”
Consulting his implanted memories, Nathan decided he didn’t. He’d never even heard the name in his life.
“I don’t, but it’s normal for Bastions to work with the ruling nobles,” he replied, taking a stab in the dark regarding Lady von Clair’s status. “Although we serve as soldiers of the Emperor, and are part of the Imperial Army, Bastions spend most of their time keeping the peace. It’s a lot easier for us to do our jobs if we work with the nobles.”
“Ohhhh.”
Jafeila fell silent for a little while. The pair stepped over rubble and stagnant pools of water. One of the staircases down was flooded, presumably blocked, so Nathan looked for another way down.
“So what sort of things will she do for us?” she asked suddenly.
Nathan smiled wryly. “It’s more accurate to say what she’ll ask us to do for her.”
“Eh?”
The next staircase was too dark to see down, as there were no cracks in the roof for sunlight to stream through. Nathan summoned a ball of light with a snap of his fingers. The beastkin stared at the hazy glowing ball in wonder.
“Like I said, we keep the peace. The ruling noble of the region does the same, so she’ll try to offload her duties onto us. She’ll grease some wheels and help us run the fortress and feed ourselves. But we don’t need most of what she can provide. Once the binding stone is operational, I can use its magic to build the fortress myself, and summons make better soldiers than humans for the most part.”
Nathan gave Jafeila a nod. “And I have you, my Champion. With a boost from the binding stone, you can probably defeat Lady von Clair’s army single-handedly.”
Wide green eyes stared back at him. He looked away before her adorableness mesmerized him.
“So why is that message so important?” Jafeila said. “She seemed to think it would be the first thing you’d do.”
Ignoring her for a moment, Nathan stared down the dark, damp tunnels. Centuries of rain had caused water to seep through from above, but there had been no signs of recent rain. The flooded tunnel from earlier must be above them, and the water slowly seeped through the earth and stone. Once he activated the binding stone, his next steps would be to clear out the underground and make this place safe.
He worried that it might fall in on him at any moment.
A dim light emanated from a room at the end of the current corridor. He made his way toward it, and Jafeila followed.
“We’re about to find out,” Nathan said.
“Find out what?”
Nathan stood at the doorway and stared at the glowing monochrome orb in the next room. Although it looked like it sat on a pedestal, he knew better. The orb was fixed in place. If he smashed the moss-covered limestone pedestal beneath it, the orb would hover there, perfectly still.
This was a binding stone. Nobody knew what they were made of, where they came from, or what powered them.
But the Bastions knew how to control them.
The binding stone was roughly half of Nathan’s height, and perfectly round. It glowed a very dull white, almost gray, color. Two bands of black ran across its surface.
Those bands were a good sign. Binding stones could be sealed away, made inert. Legend had it that the Watcher Omria sealed away binding stones that were not in use, preventing miscreants from abusing them. Once sealed, only another binding stone’s power could break the seal.
Nathan didn’t a binding stone so he couldn’t awaken a binding stone. If this one had been sealed, he would have needed assistance.
“Find out if the binding stone was still inert,” he explained, answering her question from earlier.
He walked up to the stone. It didn’t react to his approach. Jafeila remained standing at the doorway, staring wide-eyed at the glowing orb. Her ears flattened against her head.
“Is that safe?” she asked.
“For me? Yes. For your average person? Also, yes. I suspect it’s still not active,” Nathan mused. He placed his hand against the binding stone. It still didn’t react to him, even when he probed it with magic. “As I thought.”
“Oh. So is that why Lady von Clair wants to see you?”
“Probably. This binding stone has been warded against intrusion. An untrained Bastion or casual intruder cannot easily activate it. Most likely the Bastion who unsealed the binding stone placed the wards on it to prevent anybody from using the stone, unless they were from the Empire.”
Fortunately, Nathan knew how to unravel most of the protections the Empire used. Falmir and the other nations had uncovered them over the course of the war, as they claimed the Bastions and binding stones that had once belonged to the Empire. Later, Falmir did the same to other nations, as the demons destroyed country after country.
A few minutes passed as he used a few spells and tricks to connect himself to the binding stone. Jafeila watched from the doorway at first, before creeping up next to him. Her tail batted against his legs with every swish, but he couldn’t slip out of his focus to tell her to stop.
Luckily, he had years of experience with beastkin physically distracting him with their fluffy tails and ears. A single tail brushing against his legs was nothing.
Then, success. He dove into the new binding stone and tethered it to himself. Time slowed down around him. A rush of sensations blasted into his body. Cold, freezing cold. Everything was so damp. He felt like he was frostbitten and decaying away. Like he had been left
to rot in a tundra.
Nathan pushed away the sensations from the binding stone before they overwhelmed him. Old binding stones were dangerous, as the world around them was often in such disrepair compared to a normal binding stone that they physically hurt the Bastion. Normally there would be an older Bastion coaching Nathan through this, but he didn’t need one.
Chances are that was what Lady von Clair’s role was. Wait for Nathan to arrive, then let another Bastion know that he’s ready to have his binding stone activated. She could spend a few days helping the new Bastion familiarize himself with his surroundings, and the more experienced Bastion wastes less of his time with a newbie. Win-win.
But Nathan wasn’t a newbie and didn’t need help. Plus, he didn’t want to waste a day without access to a binding stone.
Nathan scanned his surroundings. Then he scanned the power now available to him. Nobody had used this binding stone for centuries, so its reserves were overflowing. He immediately put them to work.
The underground area needed to be cleaned up and reinforced. Then the keep repaired, given he and Jafeila would live here. Afterward, he’d clean up the rubble and vegetation outside. Only after all of that was done could he rebuild the fortress proper and fortify the pass against external assault.
The tasks assigned, Nathan withdrew from the binding stone. Moments later, the keep groaned. Water vanished from the ground, stone shifted, and lamps sprung out from the walls.
Jafeila jumped. She grabbed Nathan’s arm.
“We need to run! It’s collapsing,” she screamed.
He held her in place and tried not to laugh. “It’s fine. Calm down,” he said.
“Eh?”
He briefly explained what he had done while the binding stone did its thing. The stonework appeared to repair itself as magic poured into the keep. His brief explanation turned into a long one about how binding stones used their internal magic stores to control and manipulate reality in their vicinity. He didn’t know how much of it sunk into Jafeila.
“Now, I believe we have somewhere important to be,” Nathan said. He stood up and brushed off the dust from his uniform.
“Oh, so we’re still visiting Lady von Clair?” Jafeila asked.
“Not yet.” He frowned. “We need to check on the fortress’s demonic portal.”
Chapter 4
A double door gate stood in the center of the keep. It was nowhere near the size of the gate from Nathan’s fortress in the Far Reaches, standing only three to four meters tall. No runes or jewels decorated it. Only a single steel bar held it shut.
Nathan placed his hand against the gate and felt magic sealing it shut. The seal felt old. Faded. That meant somebody had sealed the portal away long ago, perhaps even before the fortress fell and the binding stone was abandoned. Whatever the case, no demons from the portal had broken into the real world.
“Um, do we need to go through there? We only just activated the binding stone. Don’t we have ages before any demons invade?” Jafeila asked.
“The portal may already be active. The first step any Bastion should take upon claiming a binding stone is to confirm the state of the attached portal, and whether they need to suppress it,” Nathan explained.
“Already active? But how?”
Nathan stepped away from the gate, realizing he had to explain a few things first.
Around him, the keep was being rebuilt by magic. Cracks in the limestone filled themselves in. Staircases folded out from the walls. Sand appeared from thin air and melted into glass. Statues and suits of armor poured themselves into existence from molten metal and liquefied rock.
“You’ve been taught that demonic portals activate whenever a binding stone is used by a Bastion?” Nathan asked.
Jafeila nodded. Her ears pricked up in anticipation of his next words. Her tail curled behind her back.
“That’s wrong. Well, not entirely wrong.” Nathan chewed on his lip as he thought on his next words. “If we could keep the demons out by sealing away all the binding stones, don’t you think that somebody would have sealed them all away decades or centuries ago? Or that the Watcher Omria would have done so, given the goddess’s prime directive is to protect Doumahr from the invaders?”
Jafeila nodded slowly, but said nothing.
Nathan continued, “Each binding stone has a portal attached to it, but the portals can activate of their own will. This gate is sealed to keep the demons out in case the portal does activate. Think of it like insurance, and it keeps demons from invading through unprotected portals. If the portal is active then a demonic horde may be ready to invade any day now.”
“Shouldn’t we wait until we have an army before we enter, then? What if we’re ambushed upon entering?” Jafeila’s tail shot bolt upright.
“Relax. If there really was a demonic army large enough to be a threat, they’d have already broken down this gate and invaded,” Nathan said, giving Jafeila a cheery grin.
She glared at him. He ruffled her hair, squashing her cat ears. She darted away, cursing him.
“You’re so blase about all of this,” she muttered. “I don’t remember learning half this stuff.”
“A lot of what you get taught in the academy is watered down so you don’t get scared,” Nathan admitted.
Or the trainers didn’t know it, he thought darkly.
“You’re so much more experienced than I expected. I was told you were a new Bastion, so I expected somebody closer to my age and experience,” Jafeila said. She froze, including her tail, then looked at Nathan with wide eyes. “N-Not that I’m not extremely happy that you’re my Bastion, Nathan. Lord Straub. Bastion. Uhhhh…”
“Call me Nathan,” he said, a broad grin crossing his face.
“Really? Thank you.” Jafeila paused. “So, how do you know so much more than me? We both came from the academy. Everything is so complicated and obscure, but you seem like a master.”
Nathan’s memory agreed with Jafeila that he was a brand-new Bastion, so he needed a convincing lie. The Jafeila from his timeline was a great liar and could keep a secret. He wasn’t convinced that the Jafeila in front of him was the same. At least, not yet.
Fortunately, his memories provided a grain of truth he could rely upon.
“I am a new Bastion, but my father was also a Bastion,” he said. This was true in this timeline and the last. Although neither ever told Nathan anything about the truth of being a Bastion.
One swore an oath to the Watcher Omria to not needlessly spill many of the secrets of Bastions, in order to limit the damage if the wrong people abused the binding stones. A twinge of regret ran down Nathan as he remembered that oath and the method he had used to travel back in time.
“Ohhhh, so you became one to follow in his footsteps?” Jafeila asked. She frowned. “At over thirty?”
Chuckling, Nathan shook his head. “Not quite. I’ll tell you the full story later.” His memories were still jumbled, and he got the sense that he hadn’t become a Bastion for the happiest of reasons.
People rarely did.
For now, they had a portal to investigate. He placed his hand on the steel bar blocking the gate. The magical seal pushed back against him, preventing him from removing it. Nathan applied a gentle push from the binding stone. The seal snapped, and the bar slid free, grinding along a century of rust and crashing onto the stone below.
Nathan pushed the gate open.
Beyond lay a volcanic wasteland.
Fantastically huge cliffs ran along the valley the gate opened into, but they cast no shadow. The ground was rocky, uneven, and lined with finger-wide cracks. An eerie purple light emanated from deep within those cracks, with no obvious source. The rock itself was volcanic in nature, with the telltale glassy appearance and texture, and was a deep, dull gray.
There was no sun or moon in the sky, nor any other source of light. But the entire world was perfectly lit. Soft, diffuse shadows were cast directly beneath everything. The sky itself was a hazy red, as if in perpet
ual sunrise.
“Only a few demons,” Nathan muttered, taking in his surroundings.
He wandered into the hellscape and scanned the valley further. Jafeila followed behind him, her scimitar out and ready for action.
“How can you be so calm walking into Hell?” she asked, voice low.
“This isn’t Hell. Or wherever the demons come from,” he said. “If it were, they wouldn’t need portals to get here, they’d live here. This is a place between worlds. A transitory world of some form. I wish we knew why it connected to our world, or how it sprung up next to the binding stones.”
In the distance was a much larger clearing with a small mound of dirt and rocks in its center. A trio of goat-headed demons sat next to it, doing nothing in particular. Nathan had never known what demons do when milling about in this world, and he didn’t care to learn now.
There were two more demons closer to him, standing in the narrow part of the valley. The demons hadn’t noticed the new arrivals yet.
“So, where’s the portal? This place is so small,” Jafeila said.
“The portal isn’t active, so you can’t see it.”
“I know that much at least.” She pouted at him. “But I can’t even see where it’s supposed to appear. Isn’t there supposed to be some massive pile of rocks, or a spire, or something where reality tears itself open?”
Nathan wordlessly pointed at the tiny mound in the middle of the clearing. Jafeila stared at it for several moments, tilting her head.
“Oh. That’s it?”
“That’s it. Which is very strange.”
“Isn’t a small portal good?”
He shook his head. “That’s not how this works. The demons are always going to invade. It’s in their nature. Given this fortress has been abandoned for centuries, there should be some buildup here. Or the protective seal on the gate should have been restored much more recently, after an invasion. Instead, nothing’s happened and the portal is practically nonexistent.”
Heretic Spellblade Page 4