Chapter 374: Wall of Law

The enclave?s outer wall stretched ahead of them all in a frozen horizon.

Up close it was far worse to behold, a seamless surface of pale gold built over compressed law that pressed coldly on their senses trying to flatten any loose signature around it. Broken pieces of the approach?s defenses drifted away in their wake but the wall remained unreactive, unmoving, and a steady presence over the battlefield as if had not needed to hurry in its task.

Lucifer halted at the edge of striking range and felt it press against his sensibilities. Beyond the wall the orb continued to slowly turn, its movements joined by the chained signatures of the old progenitors and the deeper attention of the being running the harvest.

"This is the true barrier," Aeloria remarked. Her voice was calm, but kept to a limit of output in order to keep her meaning from being swallowed entirely. "If we strike with scattered force it will only drink in what we throw at it and grow more dense. The break has to be centered and held open. Anything less will fall on us."

Nyx?s living darkness trailed across the ground in thin sensing tendrils. "The joints are buried deeper than the outer plates. I can reach them but not quickly enough alone. The center cracks and we hold the lane. If forced inward the wall will attempt to isolate the front line and nullify them one by one."

Rhazor rolled his injured shoulder, the heat building up around the wound as he pulled back. "Then we do not give it time to isolate. We strike, we hold, we push."

Lucifer glanced briefly along the line - Heron, Zane, Anita, Rhazor, Remu, Francisca, Dera - and turned fully to face the wall. Their plan had already been decided. He would be the spear and Aeloria would back him up within her limit. Nyx would carve while the others kept the collapse of the corridor from cutting them off completely.

"On my mark," he said.

It did not take long for him to put weight to the words. True Divine authority surged from all of his being in a single solid drive to hammer against the center of the wall. The surface flared up bright gold and held as his attack drove into it. A moment passed where his senses felt as if the force he was putting out had been swallowed by an endless field behind it and then Nyx?s darkness had found the hidden joints and begun to cut, thin black lines racing through the gold like cracking ice. Aeloria fed restricted starfire into the same fractures as reinforcement in careful pulses to deny them the chance to close as quickly as they had sprung open.

As the wall answered back its layers of law folded outwards from the impact and attempted to draw around about Lucifer as trapping walls. Heron was first in striking true with his spear embedding itself in the turning mass and forcing it back outward with sheer adaptive pressure. Zane and Anita attacked the left side in tandem, tearing open the law as it tried to close in on them before it could seal properly. Rhazor?s fire tore down the right flank while Remu?s script burned in rapid bursts against the wall to slow its rebuilding. Francisca and Dera held up at the rear of the lane in case of any folds attempting to seal them inside the barrier.

The price came swiftly in kind. A folding plate of compressed law struck Anita hard enough to knock her to one knee with a spray of blood across her side, deep from a cut along her body. Zane drug her back into the line as he did not falter in his own attack against the wall. Rhazor took a heavy strike to his chest, cracking open his scales in places but he held and pushed forward. One of the buried joints slammed shut along Heron?s spear long enough to get a rare sound of pained surprise from the Draugr before he pulled free again. Lucifer took no respite in the middle.

He layered his authority against the center of the wall more forcefully, twisting the rhythm of every pulse of it to keep the forces from spreading themselves as the wall tried to redistribute its tension. Blood constructs bolstered the impact point as shadowed the lane and True Divine density built against every fracture Nyx?s darkness had split open until the gold surface began to scream in protest.

"...This is... unfortunate," the being spoke. Its voice reached their ears cleanly from within the wall and beyond. Smooth and unhurried as if the battle they fought had been merely a distraction as its thoughts finished drawing themselves around the conclusions already made. "...You had reached farther than was thought possible. This must be noted. It shall have no other effect. The harvest continues. The orb is already near to being passed threshold. Even if you crack this wall entirely the inner chamber will not be opened in time to stop the foundation from reaching its fulfillment. You are fighting a process in which your resistance has already been accounted for."

Aeloria tensed visibly as she struggled against the weight of the being?s words. "If the process was already complete there would be no need to use the wall to delay passage through it."

"I am not delaying you," the being replied. "I am only informing you. There is a difference. It is entirely possible that the late seed may force a breach. He may even reach the chains. He will still find the threshold further than he hopes. Father?s return requires no permission from the garden. It only needs density. That has already nearly been reached."

Nyx carved his blade against the wall with more force in answer. "Then stop talking and see if you can keep us from finishing the work."

Lucifer drove in true layered strength at the broken center of the wall once more.

The wall of law broke open.

It was not the clean tear of the previous attacks but it was there, a wide vertical wound of torn gold plating and collapsed law script large enough for a focussed group to push through if they used the energy required to hold what they had opened. The pressure of the world beyond the wall spilled out freely from the space, cold with the presence of the orb and the siphoning which fed it.

"Hold the lane!" Lucifer shouted.

They threw their power in with the opening in the enclosure, Nyx bracing up the edges with his living darkness and Aeloria locking her restricted starfire into the unstable edges of the opening while the rest of the team made a living corridor through the wound in the barrier, bloodied and breathing hard.

Through the break they could finally see the enclave?s outer chamber reveal itself - the curved inner space, the distant glow of the black and gold orb, and the shadows of the chained figures still being forced to stand in their enforced stillness around it.

Zane spat blood and looked through the break. "We are through."

"Through the outer wall," Aeloria said with a strained smile. "But not in the core. The layers beyond will be far worse."

Lucifer looked through the wound in the barrier at the harvest beyond the wall. The beings words lay calm and certain across his senses and the density of the orb threatened to press down on him as he considered them.

"Then we do not cease inside the wound," he said, eyes lingering on the siphon feeding power to the orb. "We push through into the chamber before the wall finishes its closing." The team readied themselves in the broken lane of the wall as the enclave opened up ahead of them for the first time and prepared themselves to step through the price they had already paid.