[ Fourteen Years Earlier – Ratiora ]
The portal closed with a snap.
One moment it was there – the jagged tear in the air that the final gate had become, the thing that had come through it already dealt with, the cost of dealing with it already paid – and then it wasn't. The System's infrastructure withdrew from the point of contact the way water withdrew from cupped hands. Clean. Efficient. Indifferent to the field it left behind.
The blue interface arrived simultaneously, as it always did. Prompt. Punctual.
Congratulations.
World #S469 – Ratiora has completed the Great Filter.
System scaffold withdrawing.
Post-Filter protocols initiating.
Welcome to the Cosmic Assembly.
Caelus lowered his arms.
He had been holding the configuration for – he checked the internal clock he had maintained for two centuries – twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds. It had felt longer. The black magic always felt longer than it was. The texture of it, the resistance of drawing from a source that shouldn't be drawn from – it left a residue. Not physical. Something in the architecture of the working itself. The sense of a door that had been opened and closed correctly but would never sit quite flush in its frame again.
He was the only one standing.
He noted this the way he noted most things – with the flat, unfeeling attention of someone who had learned, over two centuries, that emotion was a lens that distorted more than it illuminated. The field extended in every direction. Nine-hundred and forty-three Royal Mages of Ratiora, the finest magical practitioners on the planet, each of them carrying decades of training and, in many cases, something approaching friendship with the man now standing among their limp, dead bodies.
He had made a decision. In that moment.
That was the important thing to hold onto. Not a premeditated act – a calculation performed under conditions that did not allow for the luxury of alternatives. The thing that had come through the final gate had been beyond what they had comprehended. Beyond what Ratiora's combined magical output could address through conventional means. He had known this within the first ninety seconds of the engagement, the way he always knew things – not through feeling but through the clean arithmetic of power and resistance and what the numbers said about probable outcomes.
The numbers had said: not enough.
He had been researching black magic for thirty-one odd years. Not with any particular intention – research was research, and the most dangerous knowledge was the knowledge you had decided not to acquire. He had acquired it carefully, in private. With thoroughness and fastidiousness. He believed that understanding a thing and using a thing were different acts with different implications. He had understood it for years without ever intending to use it.
And then the gate had opened and that thing had come through and the numbers had said not enough and he had made a decision.
In an instant. Twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Nine-hundred and forty-three souls drawn upward and outward through channels they had never been designed to flow through, the working consuming them the way a fire consumed paper – completely, finally, leaving behind nothing, souls obliterated – and the thing from the gate had been addressed and the portal had closed. The System had sent its congratulations and Archmage Caelus, First Mage of Ratiora, was now standing in a field.
King Arca Brutus Thessandor would be unhappy.
This was the thought that arrived first, which Caelus noted with grim, mild interest. Not grief. Not guilt. The King's reaction. The only person he ever felt beholden to. He turned this over briefly – the thousand conversations that would be required, maybe receiving a thrown goblet or two, the careful management of the narrative, the challenge of explaining why the Royal Mages were gone and why this had been the correct outcome – and found it tractable. Difficult. But tractable.
A thousand mages was better than a planet.
The arithmetic was simple. He had run it twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds ago and he ran it again now and arrived at the same conclusion. He would continue to arrive at the same conclusion regardless of how many times he ran it, which was the nature of arithmetic.
He turned and began walking toward the castle.
The field was quiet the way fields were quiet after very loud things had happened in them.
His boots found the ground. One step. Two.
Something coughed.
He stopped.
The sound was weak. The weakness indicating that something was operating at the outer edge of its capacity – not performing weakness, actually weak, the sound a body made when it had very little left and was spending what remained on the bare minimum of continuing to exist. Or trying to.
He turned.
The field did not move. Nine-hundred and forty-three bodies in the still and dead - vitality completely spent. He scanned, looking for the variable that didn't fit the model. Golden eyes narrowed.
There.
He crossed the field. Crouched. Moved aside two bodies that had fallen in overlapping configurations. And beneath them was a young woman.
White, matted hair. Eyes closed. Skin painted completely red. The spell Caelus conducted had required souls – and the suffering of them. Blood had poured out from every pore, every orifice, every hole of every mage he had sacrificed for the greater good. She was no exception, her body was a bloody mess. The amulet at her throat caught the failing light: the silver crescent of the Imperial Mages' apprentice designation. The second tier. Not a full mage. Not required to be here. The battle summons had called for full mages, certified practitioners, the ranks that carried the weight of their training in their official capacity.
Apprentices had not been included in the summons.
He looked at her for a moment.
She breathed again – shallow, labored, the sound of someone breathing through considerable resistance. Pressed a hand to her chest. Her soul flickered – barely present – attached loosely to her body. The working had been complete. He had felt the completion of it the way he felt the completion of all his workings – cleanly, finally, the architecture settling into its resolved state. Nine-hundred and forty-three souls were drawn and spent and the spell was closed.
He counted. Had always counted. Would count again and arrive at the same number.
Well – nine-hundred and forty-two.
He looked at the girl.
The amulet. The white hair. The shallow breath that should not be there.
How interesting, he thought. Something survived.
He did not know why. The casting should have taken her. She had been in range – had placed herself in range by volunteering, like some naive and passionate apprentices did. The working had not distinguished between mandated and volunteer. It had taken everyone in range.
Except her.
Caelus reached down. Gathered her – careful, gently, as if handling something fragile that he had not yet finished evaluating – and lifted her from the ground. She was lighter than he expected. The white hair fell across his arm.
Her eyes didn't open.
He stood. Turned. Oriented toward the castle.
Began walking.
The congratulations interface was still visible at the edge of his vision – World #S469 – Ratiora has completed the Great Filter – patient and blue and waiting for acknowledgment.
He dismissed it without looking at it directly.
There were other, newer things that required his attention.
✦ ♡ ✦
[ Present day – 4-Star Gate, High Priest's Temple ]
Hibiscus's hand found Sera's cheek with a loud, cracking slap.
Open palm and hard. The impact sent Sera's head careening violently to the side and her senses returned to herself in scattered fragments as the sharp sting settled painfully across her cheek. She had been crouched, in the way of the fight, useless and crying, lost in her own world.
Hibiscus had found this alarming for reasons she didn't understand, her body already pushing past espers, robed ones, and the chaotic fray of battle, towards Sera before she had time to think about it. She grasped Sera's shoulders and shook her violently, but to no avail. Sera, tear-stained, eyes glazed, nose and mouth uncharacteristically bloody, was somewhere far far away.
So Hibiscus had slapped her. Returned the favor and a little extra. A life for a life.
Sera was already being yanked upright, body stumbling from the force, before the slap finished registering.
Hibiscus hauled her to her feet, she had decided this was happening whether Sera cooperated or not. A heavy axe drove into the marble exactly where Sera had been – the stone cracking under the impact, white dust rising.
Sera stared at it for half a second before she was dragged violently through the chaos and the crowd.
"What is wrong with you," Hibiscus screamed, furrowed brows and angry eyes briefly glancing at Sera before they looked forward, pushing through the battle. Her pink ponytail thrashed about. She was dragging Sera toward the back of the formation, away from the thickest press of the congregation, into the rear position. Her grip didn't loosen. Her eyes were moving – reading the room, reading the Priest, reading the formation.
"Something is changing," she muttered, eyes flicking nervously towards the dais.
"Whatever is wrong with you," Hibiscus hissed, sending another glare towards Sera, golden eyes flashing, "handle it later."
Right. Sera swallowed the lump in her throat. Hibiscus was right.
Not now. Now was not the time. Later. The red room, the red curtains, his soft eyes – she pressed it down. All of it. Hard. Closed her eyes tight for a brief moment, grit her teeth, and breathed out a rushed, strangled breath through her nose. She could cry later – think about him, properly, after the fight was over.
But she had to be alive now – to mourn him after.
She looked at the Priest over Hibiscus's shoulder as they moved.
The bottom-most arms – both of them – were dissolving. Quietly. The desiccated arms fragmenting and shifting into ash. Fine dust catching the wrong-light as it dispersed slowly, almost mournfully, into the air, the gilded linen settling slightly where the arms had been. Power fading because the power had done what it came to do.
Sera looked at the Priest's eyes and met its illuminated gaze. Its vision was still set upon her.
The middle pair of arms – hands pressed in prayer – started parting. Slowly separating, the arms rotated outward in welcome. The fingers spreading, the palms turning to face outward and slightly upward. Thumbs and middle fingers touching.
The Priest opened its mouth.
Two voices braided together – one high, one low, both reverberating deeply through every available chest cavity. The raid force felt it in their sternums. Two melodies running simultaneously in the same voice – as if something were holding two truths in the same breath.
Sera heard the words, simultaneously, from both ears. Both dissonant and harmonic.
Temper, temper your passion, child – the Priest crooned, low and measured, the calm of deep water. For the fire of your fury will burn all to ashes.
Abandon, abandon your restraint, child – the Priest caroled, high and surging, the sound of something cresting. For the chill of your measure will not catch what you seek.
Both at once. One voice. Two songs.
And then the middle arms moved.
Fast and wrong for something so large and ancient and desiccated. The arms stretched and careened like whips, flesh expanding uncharacteristically as the arms and hands reached toward the raid. The Priest's eyes were wild now – open and yawning – searching through the raid group for something specific. Its right eye flicked back and forth, landing on esper to guide to esper, the illuminated flash swinging wildly like a flashlight across the crowd.
Then its right eye stopped, and its right arm dove in precision towards a black-haired, blue eyed commander.
Joel dodged, rolling to the side, as the hand, sharp nails in a point, plunged straight into the marble floor where he had just resided. He barely regained his footing before the hand came for him again, exacting and precise, plunging into the marble of his second location. He rolled away again, flinging his body to the side once more, before coming up and running.
The other eye did the same. The left arm was wild, surging, overhead, fingers wriggling about as if it was deciding who to pick from the crowd. The left eye swiveled and landed on red hair. Then, the left hand pulled back like a snake, and arched forward, fingers splayed as it tried to grasp Kael. Kael met the outstretched hand with his elongated staff, Beatrice colliding with the palm in a thunderous crack, before the force of it sent him sliding across the smooth floor.
The formation responded the only way it knew how.
Arlen's ice lances went first – the trajectory calculated, the angle correct, the force sufficient for anything else in this dungeon. The lances shot straight toward the hand chasing Joel but the ice deflected off the wrist. Not blocked. Deflected – the ice simply ceasing to be, bouncing off with a light ping, and disintegrating instantaneously the moment it came in contact with the arm.
"Something's wrong," Arlen shouted.
Then came dark matter from Rian's scythe. From up overhead, he landed a striking downwards blow onto the arm chasing Kael. But the same thing, the impact ricocheted with a ping, as if he had attacked with the strength of a feather. Dark mana dispersed at the forearm. Gone.
Caan's ivy whip wrapped around the left arm and withered immediately. Nullified before it reached the elbow.
The Priest wasn't like the human-sized robed ones – the figures the raid force was still fighting and steadily culling as the battle continued. The dread arrived slowly and methodically through everyone in formation – not loud, not sudden, just the cold settling that the Priest could not be fought. The inkling had formed from the first pair of hands disintegrating to ash and now with the second pair's invincibility.
The usual tools, the usual approaches, the formations and the cycling and the physical attacks – none of it applied. This boss and its completion, could not be beaten through brute force alone. Something in it required completion – or reckoning.
Rena launched a mana bullet towards the Priest's forehead. It disappeared and obliterated into nothingness before impact.
Joel was running out of floor.
The calm, methodical right arm had placed itself continuously on his next step. It knew where he was going, somehow. Joel kept moving, kept optimizing, and dodging, but the arm had found the optimization and kept arriving first. A finger, sharp yellow nail, caught Joel in the side and he winced as he felt his leather tear and a slice arc across his side.
Kael was running out of improvisation too.
The wriggling left hand had matched his chaos with its own – wildly careening about, catching him whenever he pivoted, the same surrender to momentum. Kael's body was caught violently when the hand changed direction, found an opening in his wheeling about. His body was thrown sideways. He crashed into a column, the structure fracturing, and rubble flying.
"Kael!" Joel screamed. But he couldn't check to see if Kael was okay, the pointed hand still lunging after his own positions, his stamina steadily weakening.
Sera saw it then, the pattern. Recalled the Priest's singing, which was still happening now.
Temper, temper. Abandon, abandon.
Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth but Rian was faster.
"SWITCH HANDS!" Rian roared, voice thundering across the temple. She closed her mouth.
He had found the same conclusion.
Joel stopped suddenly mid-step, and pivoted direction, barely dodging another strike of the logical hand, before running towards Kael. His red-headed brother was scrambling to his feet, fragments of column rubble falling off of him. The cool, precise hand chased after Joel like a shadow.
"Kael!" Joel shouted once more, running straight for his brother, feet pounding across the marble floor.
Kael looked at Joel, the steady hand that chased after him like a shadow, and his own chaotic predator descending from above. He laughed and wiped the dribble of blood from his nose.
Red eyes flashing, Kael lunged forward and passed by Joel. Arm muscles flexing, he brought Beatrice, his gold staff into batting position and with a crack, swung a violent arc across the cool hand chasing his brother. Fire erupted across his staff and consumed the hand in a fury of flame.
Joel simultaneously ran up the ruined pillar his brother had crashed into, feet pushing him up into the air, his own blue staff, Gertrude, arcing with lightning, as he brought a heavy crack, along with a cool, blue wave of mana, across the wild hand coming from above and surrounded it with a crackling thundering, burst electricity.
Upon simultaneous impact, something erupted from the Priest. A strange rumble that the raid quickly discerned was a deep, groaning laughter. The Priest raised its now ruined hands and arms, flesh steaming and crackling, and pulled them back with a snap, receding them into their former position.
Both arms moved back into open position, palms upward, fingers spread, thumbs and middle finger in touch.
Balance, in all things, the Priest rumbled, in the old language only Sera could understand.
And then ash.
Both arms dissolved quietly from the extremities inward – the fingers first, then the palms, then the wrists, then the forearms – the gilded linen of the robe settling as the architecture beneath it dispersed. The function completing.
The second pair of arms was done.
But the fight wasn't over, there were still plenty of robed ones fighting. Mechanical joints careening. Musicians playing. Swords arcing. And desiccated bodies now littering the temple floor, slowing down movement and tripping feet.
Sera watched the final set of arms, the upper pair, begin to separate.
The Priest's eyes – which had been moving independently, each eye individually swiveling about, tracking both Joel and Kael – came back together, two eyes focused and settled as their iridescent gaze narrowed into a singular point.
Its eyes were once more searching, passing through each individual in formation.
Sera heard it before she saw it. In the old language, beneath the rumble of satisfaction, another note beginning – lower, more deliberate.
Holy, it muttered, to itself, to the temple cavern. Holy…
Where…
The iridescent light swept.
Past Rena – pause, pass.
Past Arlen – pause, pass.
Past Yoru, past Simon, past the unnamed guides cycling in the rear–
And then it landed on her.
No. Not her.
Hibiscus – next to her.
The left hand moved.
Like lightning, in the chaos of the fight, the uppermost left hand was across the cavern and plucked Hibiscus from beside her before she had even blinked. Sera heard the snap of bone – two fingers, its thumb and pointer, crushing Hibiscus's shoulder in an instant, lifting her like a rat by the tail.
Hibiscus screamed in pain as she was stolen from the ground
The right hand rose from beneath the now rising Hibiscus. Coming up to close. The specific configuration of cupping – not a fist yet, not crushing, the careful geometry of something holding an insect. Gently. Almost tenderly. The way you held something small and fragile before you decided what to do with it.
Holy… the Priest muttered, laughter rumbling in its throat.
Sera's feet moved.
She didn't decide to move. She just did it. Clambered onto a nearby esper's back in an instant, heard his howl of confused indignation – didn't think anything of it. She jumped from his shoulders and caught the rising right hand with her daggers, sharp points plunging into the side palm of desiccated flesh and pulled herself up into the cupped hand as they rose from the chaos into the air.
Sera watched Hibiscus screaming and dangling from above.
The Priest looked at them, hands drawing close to its ancient face. The iridescent eyes at close range – not the distant pour of light across the cavern but the careful quality of something examining what it had caught. Blindingly white light.
Sera grimaced, shielding her eyes, standing in its cupped right hand below. Hibiscus cried, hanging from its pinched left hand above.
Ah, the Priest rumbled, iridescent light traveling between them.
There you are, it said, in the old language. Quietly.
The Holy… it said, eyes carefully watching the writhing Hibiscus. And–
Its careful gaze swiveled to Sera.
The Priest laughed.
The Whore.
Then the hands tightened. The cupped right hand brought up and the pinched left hand brought down.
Sera caught a falling Hibiscus into her arms and then they were trapped completely in between the Priest's large palms – its fingers interlacing.
The Priest's hands clenched tight into a fist.
And it crushed its palms tightly together, as if squashing a bug.