Chapter 373: Second Crossing

A/N

The last two Chapters was a mistake and I wanted to delete it but could not, so my bad.

....

The breach team gathered on the outer observation platform where the next full metronome cycle of the sector could not be completed.

There was no speech. Roles had been bound and tools prepared, Lucian standing on the edge of the platform with the rest of Origin’s forces behind him, shadowed tightly against his boots as they claimed final positions against the team.

"I will hold the realms for as long as they must," Lucian said, voice steady despite the tenseness in his voice. "If the pressure becomes a breach, you will get your recall mark, and it does not matter if you have reached the enclave yet. Do not make me use it before its due time.

Lucifer gave a brief nod. "Keep them standing. We will cut the siphon as quickly as the walls can allow it."

Aeloria checked the restricted output seals one last time, a flicker of silver lighting the space briefly before settling. Nyx stood silent, living darkness already spread across the length of a thin ready veil, while heron, Zane, Anita, Rhazor, Remu, Francisca, and Dera stood ready along the line without further instruction.

The group pushed from the platform into the dark, the hidden sector feeling different as they made their second crossing.

The blank silence felt the same, but it carried a weight beneath a certain familiarity, a presence that had been warned of by the erasure of the residual trails that marked their passage. The previous measuring constructs that had tested them on their initial arrival had been replaced with an even heavier pressure running as the first stretch of distance they traveled passed beneath their feet.

Nyx was the first to speak after it had dragged enough time across a long enough silence to be considered a warning. "...they did not rebuild the same line. They replaced it. Whoever is waiting ahead was prepared for the strength of the push we gave last time rather than the one they have seen before."

Aeloria kept her senses drawn toward the outer edges of the path as they walked. "Stay within plan. Controlled advance. Do not widen flares until we see the true shape of the defenses. If they are prepared to announce us early, then do not give it as a gift."

Lucifer held his authority well pressed to his skin and led from the front, the True Divine density he had as a foundation pressing tight against the sealed silence of the sector before he gave any orders at all, having seen first-hand the ways in which the enemy learned their lessons from the clean samples that had already been given. This time the sample bore a higher cost.

The new defenses did not come in increments but a solid presence of their own. A massive barrier of layered white and gold plates fell before them in a single hard motion, the locks binding sound like a pressure of distant metal. They were thicker than the previous measuring constructs, the surface marked by moving script too fast to read with pressuring weight against the thinner trails running along their flanks.

Rhazor’s plates lit hotter. "...not a test wall. Not a holding wall."

"...then we do not make it so," said Lucifer.

He struck first. True Divine authority rolled over in him in a controlled surge and met the barrier directly at its center, the plates lasting long compared to the ones the group had seen in testing. The wall blazed with a brief glow at the point of impact, pressing the strength it had received from this new strike back equally as it was pushed, redistributed by the layers of its binding script. It was Nyx’s darkness that slid into the joints between those plates that began to cut the connections before individual sections, while Aeloria provided restricted starfire backing along the same lines, keeping tight control that never rose past the limits she had set for herself.

Cracks began to break through the barrier.

They did not come clean but secondary bars peeling from the main wall attempted to pull around the group from either side and the rear, Heron meeting the first by his spear with the adapting edges of his strikes as the sheets attempted to duplicate his own pressure. Zane and Anita took the left flank together, blood and shadow working in short, brutal combinations that kept the looping shapes from fully locking in around their movement, Rhazor’s fire turning this side into a killing passageway, Remu’s witch-script flashing in tight containment bursts that held the plates back long enough for Francisca and Dera to finish them.

It was not as easy as it had been the first time the group had crossed this far. The new constructs they faced not only measured and adjusted they pressed and folded to keep from being cut open for easier access by the group. The first attempt to trap Anita in one of these new barriers had been stopped by Zane forcing through from the outside, while another scored a hard line along Rhazor’s shoulder before Francisca’s tails lashed at the connecting joint and broke its pattern.

It was Lucifer that forced the center.

No longer using clean, readable strikes against the wall to push, he layered pieces of his True Divines nature in irregular pulses of blood, shadow, and raw density before Nyx cut in with him, while Aeloria braced the line they opened in the wall. It finally broke down the middle like the long line of ice running through it had suffered its own fracture.

It had been enough to get to one side before the wall could seal fully and present them with the next set of difficulties. Behind their group, the space continued its changes, its blankness ebbing out with the last few pieces of the barrier ahead breaking through. Beyond the opening in the wall the sector changed yet again, the true outer wall of the enclave becoming visible, for the first time with the interference less able to hide it as it rose up all around them in the form of a vast curved shape of compressed law and pale gold light, being seamless and immense that carried the same weight of the being that had spoken from within it as well.

Zane wiped at a cut along his jawline as he stared through the opening between the broken plates at the new wall. "There it is."

Aeloria’s breath was controlled but the strain of holding within her own limit showed already from the tightness in her eyes as she met his gaze. "That is the real barrier. Everything that came before was all just the approach."

Nyx’s living darkness spread more out as they stood upon the broken path behind them, sealing off any easy attempt at pursuit from the remaining plates. "Then we do not slow here to admire it. The longer we stay exposed the more time they have to raise the next one."

Lucifer looked at the real outer wall of the enclave and noted the presence of the orb beyond, as well as the thin and stubborn presence markers of the chained figures that still fed it. The second crossing would bear its price, but one that got them closer to the enclave than they had yet received. "Form up. We take the wall next."