Chapter 363: Threshold crossing

The team made their departure from the outer observation platform before the next full cycle of the metronome had completed.

Lucifer took point. Nyx fell in on his right, the living darkness already unfurling from him in a tight defensive veil. Aeloria remained where the small support element Lucian agreed to release hovered in her wake, the tight discipline of her authority held at the brink of release and the readiness of her starfire repressants still waiting on her command. The small addition to their ranks of Heron, silent and uncomplaining, and the two high powered Origin operatives, names lost to Lucifer’s impatience, were more than adequate to protect the team if the hidden sector opened up with the force it had obviously been built to withstand for so many cycles. It would be enough to see the first true engagement through, and it would be enough to escape if the engagement threatened to turn against them.

The thin directional trace guided them.

At first the transition across the region beyond the outer monitoring stations was near empty, and the metronome’s distant and steady thump was the only sound to be heard. The greater the distance they travelled along the trace, the more the otherwise ordinary residual noise of sealed space fell away with it until it was no longer the sound of an absent place but of some force cleaning the path of loose signatures, of removing the ambient noise to leave the path clear of anything that might mark what was ahead.

Nyx was the first to comment when the unnatural hush had stretched too far. "They have been maintaining this sector for some time. The erasure is habitual, rather than reactive. Whatever is at the end of this trace has been teaching the space around it how to stay blank."

Aeloria kept her gaze fixed on the widening path ahead. "Blank space is still a trail. It becomes apparent once you know what to look for." She tilted her head. "Keep your outputs controlled, and if you flare too soon you allow them a clean warning."

Lucifer adjusted the weight and pressure of his own authority, drawing it closer against the skin of his arms. The True Divine density contained within it fought against his restraint, seeking purchase against the space around them. He did not yield.

The first defense awaited them with no fanfare.

It unfolded from the blank space in front of them in the form of loose geometric shapes, the dull white lines of their design formed from interlocking plates of pale gold light. It was not an assembly of living things and their voices, but the way they pooled together in a rough sphere of loosely linked plates around the team and began to close in measured increments was no less menacing. Every plate emitted the same high order pressure which had pressed at the realms earlier in their journey.

Heron’s spear was already in his grip. "Not living entities. Not randomly formed constructs. These are specifically designed to test and delay."

One of the Origin operatives let loose an incisive burst of compressed blood authority. The nearest plate absorbed the hit, brightened briefly then sent the operative reeling with a matching jolt of power. Lucifer caught the force of the return strike against his own shadow and pushed it back with a short pulse of authority. "Do not show them clean elements. They are learning as they fight. Finish them off or move past."

Nyx responded with a deliberate expansion of her own darkness, pressing at the space between the attacking plates rather than seeking to overpower them. With the same touch she had used to strip loose fragments from the stone corridors of the palace at Tenebrous, the darkness found the connections, the points of articulation, between them and began to unravel the links. Several plates lost cohesiveness and fell out of the sphere’s formation.

Aelorisa followed up with thin slicing strokes of her starfire, each tracing an exposed join in the weakening lattice that bound the plates together. The sphere split open on one side.

The defenses adjusted. The remaining plates pulled in on themselves, forming a tighter pocket in front of the team and pressing against them with increased density. From the edges of the sphere strips of additional plates peeled away, aiming to encircle the team from behind and cut off Aeloria and the supporting element.

Lucifer exhaled and allowed his controlled output to expand, pressing against the new grouping in front of them. The new grouping stood against the force of it for less than a second before the increased pressure of his output overrode their capacity to absorb and reflect it. Thin lines of black and gold light scored across their plating and Lucifer took up the chance, driving a combined strike of blood authority and shadow through the center of the new cluster and shattering it into floating fragments.

The pursuers from behind met up with Heron and the remaining operative. Heron’s spear moved in short thrusting motions, each finding a plate and pinning it before it could gain leverage against him. The operatives worked in less graceful but powerfully direct movements, using their own strength rather than elegance to drive off the opposing forms. It was an unequal clash, with the last of the forming constructs from behind being driven back even as the broken plates ahead of them scattered to the ground in broken light.

The battle was over quickly, when the final plate broke up in a dissipating burst of force. The area around them, the blank sector they had passed through, was marred with the afterimages of fighting force and the lingering heat of the battle. One of the operatives had a deep wound along one side rib from a mirrored burst of authority and Heron’s coat was torn at the shoulder but none of them were seriously hurt. Nyx’s unmaking field flickered with the effort of the last engagement and even Aeloria’s breath came more heavily.

Lucifer remained where he was, at the front of the team, and forced his authority down to control the increasing pressure he was feeling. The path they had uncovered waited ahead of them. "They were not meant to prevent us passing," Aeloria said, dabbing at a long thin cut on the corner of her mouth with a swab of her own blood. "They were meant to measure how we fought. How hard we fought and through what means. Whatever is further in will have received a clear impression of our abilities."

Nyx’s black eyes darkened. "Then we do not give them the opportunity to use it," she said. "The trace is still in place. We continue before they are prepared to receive us."

Lucifer turned his attention forward, along the trace. Beyond the battlefield of scattered plates and broken constructs the blankness of the hidden region grew deeper, the deliberate erasure pressing against him more tightly. Under that pressure there was something more. A density of something that was not the steady presence of the metronome or the additional layers of defenses it had revealed to them so far.

It was the impression of something else entirely.

There was for a moment, a thinning of the interference, as though the passage of Heron’s spear had removed a section of it. Through it Lucifer could see the general impression of an enclave of defenses, a mass of barriers, interwoven with swirling spheres of black and gold which fed power through a dozen thin strands of authority to the waiting figures which hung, chains of their own will binding them, from the mass at the center.

It lasted only for an instant. Then the interference returned and whatever impression it had given him was gone.

Lucifer’s fingers curled into the air around him. "I saw it. The sphere, the chains. They are there."

Aeloria’s face was paling, but her expression was firm. "Then the trace was accurate. And they know we are in close enough to see."

Nyx allowed her own darkness to expand against the exposed path behind them. "Good. Then let them know. It is not likely the defenses will get any easier ahead of us. We keep moving."

Behind them the metronome sounded once more, distant but perfectly controlled. Ahead of them the hidden space waited, no longer perfectly blank or wholly unaware of the small team which passed through it.