Chapter 326 - The Battle of Mayat Shadr - Voidfall

The sky flickered with insane light. It was like a leyline had erupted: that same all-encompassing brightness that illuminated the full dome of the sky. But Liuan’s diviners had been measuring the leylines just prior to the attack, and more obviously, she could simply observe there had been no such breach.

His daughter!? Liuan thought again, and then her gaze went up. She looked to Divir first, but while the moon had been flickering with light ever since it reached the top of the atmosphere, it wasn’t the source.

Three streaks of fire, traveling impossibly fast, came down, each within a fraction of a second of the other. It happened with incredible speed, and yet, the event left an impression seared into her mind: columns of light splitting the sky, each piercing a dreadnought directly through the center, passing through them as if they’d been made of paper. For a moment, there was no sound, just that image of arcane fire striking through the ships into the earth as if they sought to pierce it down to the very Labyrinth itself.

Then the sound hit, and again, the only thing comparable was a leyline eruption. Thunder that drowned out even the voice of the myrvite titan, thunder that sounded like the very sky tearing open. The dreadnoughts were at least a few kilometers back from the city, giving her just enough time to see the expanding bubble of the shockwave just before it hit her.

She was so stunned that she found herself hurled back in the air before she could even establish a shield, and went unceremoniously pinwheeling through the sky before she managed to right her levitation spell and summon a barrier.

Huge plumes of fire and sand splashed up from the impacts. One after another, the dreadnoughts fell from the sky—and the earth trembled again. Each erupted in plumes of crackling energy as tens of thousands of glyphs shattered, sending lighting up into the sky, sending more shockwaves of dust outward.

The silence that followed was as stunning as the noise. Her guards next to her gaped too, discipline forgotten.

All Liuan could think was how?

Then the silence was broken by more thunder, distant, but getting louder. A deep fear wormed its way into her heart as the sky flickered again, the rumble intensifying. This time, the object descending from the void above was slower. She could see a fireball wrapped around a black sphere, a descending flame. A primal part of herself cringed away, and at first, she thought, An Elder God has returned.

But it wasn’t—as the fire faded and the black shell became translucent, she saw the burning silver eyes of Mirian. A hundred things clicked into place at once, but there was no time to sort through them. There was no fury in that gaze, only the contemptuous chill of the Endelice.

Liuan knew that there was only one path forward now. Divir was descending; the leyline regulator was still intact. There would be no apocalypse. No wave of death to trigger their souls being sent back. She needed the regulator destroyed, and now, the only way to do that was to cut through Mirian.

***

Mirian’s gaze settled on Liuan Var as she descended, but her preparatory divination spells had been active ever since she entered the atmosphere. She knew there were over a dozen of the Akanan archmages left and as many of Sorcerer Elite.

She cast voice of the Prophet, giving her voice a weight and echo. “Akanans, see through the lies of this false prophet and surrender, and you will live. The Ominian is returning to Enteria.”

If even one Akanan battlemage declined to fight because of her words, it was well worth the mana. As she continued to descend, she could see the fear in their movements. The way the mages levitated slightly back. The way they hesitated, waiting for her to act first. They knew she was connected to the destruction of the dreadnoughts, but they didn’t know how she’d done it. The three chunks of Luamin that she’d brought with her had ended up being the perfect weapons; she’d merely had to decelerate them only enough to aim. The fourth chunk of Lumain would be waiting for her in the desert somewhere, and she could later learn how the Elder Gods had made such hardy material.

But first, there had to be a later. All the plans she’d made for Enteria’s future came down to this moment. She could see the Akanans’ fears pushing them to attack. A few words from her and the things they’d seen weren’t enough to cut through the layers of dissonance. With time, each could be swayed, she was sure of it, but right now, the reality before them was still distorted by the story they’d been told. It was more than just Liuan’s lies—they had been raised to be mistrustful of foreigners, raised with mindsets of superiority. In their hearts, they felt they were smarter and better than the rest of the world, and to accept that they had been tricked so easily by Liuan would shatter the foundations of their self conception. And that was intolerable to them.

Liuan, of course, needed to believe that these deaths were all worth it. That she would be emperor of all of Enteria in some distant future. To admit to the err of her ways and change her heart would be an act of strength worthy of Zomalator.

“This is your last chance at redemption, Liuan Var. Was there any truth to the woman I thought I knew? The woman who could see humanity’s flaws, yes, but also their strengths? You ate at my table with Zayd and Irabi. We danced at Sio and Celen’s wedding. You cannot be forgiven for what you’ve done to Enteria, but the path of redemption still lies open to you.” Louder, she said, “To all of you!”

Liuan’s amplify voice let her words echo across the battlefield. “Your lies poison the air. Kill the heretic prophet!”

A phalanx of shields surrounded Liuan. She also had her own adamantium breastplate. When they had rehearsed combat maneuvers, no doubt she’d planned with Mirian in mind, and that meant layers of defenses protecting her. Of course she’d worked to make herself the hardest target to kill.

Behind Liuan, though, she could see Marshal Cearsia levitating backward. Their eyes met for a moment. A few other mages were looking around at the others. Mirian only needed to give them an opening to retreat and they’d take it.

Mirian started with her favored dervish stance, The Dance of the Dusk Waves Across the Ocean. Here in this ocean of sand with sunset approaching, it seemed apt. After her trip to Luamin and back, she wouldn’t fight with raw power. Instead, she’d show them the other measure of a mage.

Her primary combat spells were integrated into Equinox, but this battle called for her to use all her resources. She summoned her soulbound spellbook to one hand and Eclipse to the other.

She opened with afterimage blink, a spell that created an illusion that remained where she’d been. Then, as she appeared behind a group of Sorcerer Elite, she used Ibrahim’s favored stance against mages—The Sheathed Blade Splits the Light, which increased her spell resistance by weaving the outer layer of the soul like armor. This soul energy could then be moved through the adamantium edge of Eclipse. When she lunged with the rapier, the blade pierced through the shields and through the skull of the first sorcerer. She blinked again, casting illusionary army as, in quick succession, she cut through four sorcerers.

Then, suppress light spells went off, dispersing her illusions, and Mirian switched her dervish stance back to speed. If they wanted a battlefield without light, she’d give it to them: she cast darkness of the void.

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A huge area of the air around them was plunged into darkness, with only the faint light of shields and offensive spells visible in the consuming shadows. The flame and lightning spells they were casting looked more like the petals of a glowbell in the fog than combat magic. Only Mirian and Liuan, with their soul sight, could easily make out positions. Once again, Mirian plunged into the fray, using Eclipse to cut through shields. Three, four, then five more Akanan mages fell. The Sorcerer Elite kept their discipline, but the archmages panicked, sending out flurries of spells to wherever they thought she was. With spell resistance and shields, friendly fire wasn’t killing her opponents, but it was keeping them disoriented and draining their already low reserves of mana. Where she saw shields weaken, she went on the offensive, sending out such powerful blasts of lightning that even in the light suppression spells, they looked like bolts from a storm. An archmage fell, and another sorcerer. Liuan sent a succession of force blades wherever she appeared. Mirian used Masikatt’s web to bind and disrupt the spells. She continued to move in rapid blinks and swift sprints of levitation. All the while, she was building back up her reserves of soul energy.

The Akanans pulled back their light suppression spells, and as they did, so did Mirian, filling the air with simple light spells cast with such intensity they were blinding. Her black shield already dealt with transmuting excesses of energy, the masterful spell just as elegant as Luspire’s prismatic shield she had used so often. As high powered spells flew through the air, some couldn’t help but hit her shield, but the unfocused attacks weren’t nearly enough to stop her. She kept herself close to the Akanan forces, dancing among them like lightning in the clouds. A blind archmage didn’t see her until her blade was through his throat. A sorcerer that did see her panicked, putting up layers of shield spells, but by now, Mirian had gathered enough soul energy to start worming curses into her opponents. As her opponents snuffed out her light spells, she landed soul disruption on the sorcerer. With his aura destabilized and the surface of his soul in tatters, his shields dropped and a simple force blade spell cut his throat. The energy cost of the curse was enormous, but the fool Akanans had been butchering people for hours. Even with her father’s use of the souls of the battlefield, there were too many to count to pick from.

She cast mental fog at two clusters of targets, then went invisible with total camouflage as she cast three soul-infused illusionary casters spells in different places. Using Jei’s tricks of moving arcane energy through different four-dimensional paths, she cast her spells so that they appeared to originate from those copies. Even Liuan was fooled by the trace soul energy in each illusion. That gave her time to place several Masikatt’s web spells in key locations to siphon arcane energy to her.

Too late, a group of archmages felt her spell buildup. She switched to Burning Tempest Sunders the Sky, her own soulform, and brought down greater lightning spearing down through them, killing two instantly. Once they knew to ignore the illusions, she blinked right on top of one as she dismissed it, giving her several seconds to freely cast more curses across the battlefield.

Liuan’s preparations had involved assembling armies of elite casters to deal with her. She’d trained in secret, which meant she’d trained against inferior archmages. Mirian had trained against her father the archnecromancer, against Zhuan Li, and against the very armies that Liuan had assembled to test her. Even Gaius had less experience fighting archmages.

She was everywhere at once; she was nowhere. Liuan’s spells were powerful, but Mirian was as hard to catch as the wind in the sky, and when she struck, it was with the explosiveness of a leyline. Two more Sorcerer Elite fell, then another archmage.

Then they broke.

The Akanan archmages weren’t battle-hardened—they were largely academics. Only one tried to run towards the leyline regulator’s shield, and Mirian cut her down with a soul-coated disintegration beam.

A few of the Sorcerer Elite stayed to guard their Prophet. Now, Mirian could dispense with tactics and efficiency. Claws of force cracked their shields, forcing their attention and mana on the defense as she cast tri-energy spells. Fire, lightning, and magnetic explosions tore through them—and then there was Liuan.

Mirian could see the fear behind that mask of hers.

“Tap your anchor, Liuan. I know you want to.”

The other Prophet kept her voice steady. “If you can manipulate the anchors, then go retrieve yours. This plan of yours is doomed. Enteria may have avoided a quick death, but you’ve damned it to bleed out slowly.”

“My anchor lies with the Ominian, where yours would be if you cared about this world.” Mirian lashed out with a dozen spells. Liuan’s layers of shields began to crack. She tried several offensive spells, but now that Mirian only had the single person to fight, there was no challenge in defending against them. Liuan’s myr rating might have exceeded that of even Zhuan’s, but her raw power was without finesse, and her strength paled in comparison to Mirian’s.

Liuan’s voice grew desperate. She knew she couldn’t win the battle through magic, so now she tried words. “The time loop is meaningless compared to the cycles humanity is trapped in. How many worlds did we devastate before Xylatarvia took mercy on us? And then it didn’t matter anyways. Humanity needs a strong, eternal hand to guide it. The loops exist to select for the savior of humanity! How much energy is still left to fuel the loops? We need to use it! Ceiba Yan existed as an eventual countermeasure that would stabilize Enteria regardless—but in your arrogance you thought it was a technical problem. It never has been; it’s an ethical problem.”

“Material circumstances affect ethics,” Mirian said, thinking of Grandpa Irabi. “Deny a man food, and he becomes a criminal out of necessity. Give everyone what they need, and the ethics become considerably easier to manage. Conversely, give a woman too much power, and it can distort the way she sees the world. What happened to Liuan Var, devout of the Ominian, who sought only to serve and heal?”

“She learned the true nature of this world! The true nature of people! You and Zhuan just hide your lust for domination better than most. The path you follow won’t be a river of blood, but an ocean!”

Mirian’s spells continued to crack open Liuan’s shields, even as she desperately threw up new ones. Tendrils of soul energy smashed into each other as each sought to strip the arcane power behind the others’ spells, but Mirian was the master there, too. Liuan’s defenses were crumbling.

Mirian’s voice rang out clear across the battlefield. “You think because you figured out ways to manipulate people you understand humanity’s soul? While I learned their hopes and dreams, you only learned how to synthesize hatred from their fears. While you plotted in the shadows, I walked among the world like the Ominian before me.”

Another piece of Liuan’s shield failed. For a moment, Mirian’s spells reached behind her defenses, and a magnetic force blast sent the other Prophet reeling. A crack formed across her mask, and a jagged line through the center of her breastplate.

Liuan snapped a layer of prismatic shields back in place, coating them in soul energy, but she was delaying the inevitable.

Mirian continued, even as her spells continued to scour the other woman. “You have failed; your parasitic empire will never come to pass. Your defeat is absolute. These people behind me believe in something greater than themselves. You only believe in your own power.”

“The world will remember that I fought for a new Enteria. It will vindicate me when they’ve finally seen through your lies!”

Mirian’s voice was as cold as the Endelice. “No one will remember you for anything but your sins.”

Liuan’s shields split open one last time, and this time, Mirian’s spells overwhelmed her. Her cuirass cracked apart, the Mask of the Fifth Prophet shattered entirely, and Liuan’s corpse fell lifeless to the ground. Her soul, gathered up by the temporal anchor, would be heading to Luamin. Mirian could pursue it at her leisure. Until then, she would remain trapped.

The Prophet looked down on the Akanan army below her, ready to address them. To her surprise, it was another voice that boomed out.

“This is Grand Marshal Emera Cearsia. I am ordering all Akanans to lay down their arms immediately.”

Mirian let herself take a breath of relief.

Then, the ground behind her shook.

She turned, watching in horror as two explosions went off—on the other side of the leyline regulator’s shield. There was no mana plume, and immediately, Mirian knew what had happened. Everyone used magichemicals and fossilized myrvite for spellbombs because they were safer, cheaper, and easier to make. But chemical means existed. Her mind cast back to Gabriel—so sure that he could have eliminated Mirian from the cycles if he’d killed Liuan. His spies had infiltrated after all. Two mundane chemical bombs. Her divination checks had simply missed them.

The third and fourth conduit crystals of the leyline regulator cracked open. The protective shield flickered and died. Gouts of light and arcane energy spewed up, crackling with lightning and bursts of violet flames.

Above, the Divir moon began to accelerate as the arcane forces suspending it destabilized.

Mirian rushed toward the device.