Skyvenom: Chapters 8-9 (Patreon)

Here are your chapters for this week.

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Chapter 8

There had never been any question in Theo's mind that it wasn't over.

Even without Esaire's poison and ultimatum, it was obvious that the two of them would face off again, so he'd planned accordingly. The only thing he'd wondered about was whether Esaire would make another attempt or whether Theo would have to take initiative. After some peaceful time in Anguedan, he was beginning to suspect it would be the same issue as Aathal, where he needed to decide how quickly to pursue Esaire.

The Armeau family returning with a Stronghold in tow hadn't been among the plans he'd been expecting.

Of course Theo immediately leapt out of the sleigh to hover under his own power, ready to take action. But since the Stronghold didn't seem to be bombarding the city or anything else extreme, he had time. If this man - a tall robed Deuxan with golden hair - had been related to the Armeau family or an easy ally, they would already have been engaged.

So either Esaire had found a brand new ally or he'd called on someone else from this Demon Court. It was notable that they had three other Authorities with them, but neither of the Deuxan women was Amaeli. Either left behind, hidden, or separated. All four of the arrivals with Esaire had the same golden hair and formal robes, suggesting they represented a new force entirely.

"Sucker punch?" Senka asked from the sleigh. "I can manage one."

"No, not unless things are desperate." Theo gestured at both her and the sleigh. "I don't know what this is, but it's unlikely to be the full extent of the forces they can bring to bear. We need to hold back assets until we understand the shape of the battle."

"Alright, good luck. That guy isn't a joke."

Theo was thinking the same thing as he floated out to confront the new arrivals. While it was technically possible that someone might soulcraft a perfect shielding wall to hide a weak soulhome, he doubted that was the case for any Strongholds. How was he going to approach this?

His initial worry didn't last long, because he immediately saw that he had backup. Nauda and Fiyu flew up to join him, he saw Nanjuma and Bimanu in the city center, and Janne lurked at the exterior. Krikree had been scouting outside, which was the safest place for her if massive cantae techniques started flying.

But all of that was making assumptions that he shouldn't. Theo nodded to the others, then flew to confront Esaire and his new allies.

"My name is Sartozi aima Occoire!" The Stronghold didn't wait for him to arrive, instead making his voice boom over the entire city. "Remain where you are and your court will not be destroyed. I have journeyed from Occoire Court solely to resolve a violent conflict with outsiders."

"I assume that's us?" Theo said as he approached.

As if on the same clock, Esaire took that moment to jab a finger in his direction. "That's them!"

"Then let's handle this quickly." Sartozi turned to regard Theo with an imperious gaze. "No doubt you have your own motives, but in our world you must obey our laws. This vendetta with the Armeau family has ended. Come with us and the matter will be adjudicated by a convocation of souls."

That could just as easily be a fatal decision as a wise one. Though Theo didn't let any of it leak onto his face, truthfully he was hesitant about the entire encounter. He had no idea where Occoire Court was or any of its laws, from dueling to this request for surrender. Given more time he could have prepared for all this, but he'd been thrown directly in to the mess.

Nauda and Fiyu looked ready to fight and he had no doubt they'd support him, but they weren't any more certain than he was. The Tatians were anxious and Janne was completely out of her element. If he didn't handle this, no one would.

Except, surprisingly, for Krikree. She crouched at the edge of the city, staring at the Stronghold and simply emitting [Prince]. Then, a few seconds later [Strong prince].

Perhaps she had the right idea: Theo didn't know the details, but he could still analyze what he knew through the lens of soul translation. If "ai" meant a family name and "aina" meant a home region, "aima" must be a similar designation. The obvious part was that this Sartozi was from Occoire, and based on his strength, it seemed likely that he was here in an official capacity. In Theo's mind the resonance of the name's announcement was very similar to "Lord of Occoire".

Those thoughts passed in the time it took Theo to give the new arrivals a thin smile. "I don't know what Esaire has told you, but his family invaded another world through a gate and enslaved its inhabitants. I'm afraid we're less than comforted by the idea of your laws."

"I'm aware." Sartozi focused on him to the exclusion of the others, eyes burning with cantae. "There's nothing wrong with your vendetta, but now that I'm here the vendetta is over. Since I am taking the field, there's no point in wasting time."

"If we're fighting, then I ask that we move away from the city," Theo said. "I don't want to cause collateral damage."

Sartozi stared at him, for the first time puzzled, as if he had never imagined Theo could say such a thing. The shift left Theo completely what taboo he'd violated. Fortunately, one of the female Authorities reacted in a much less obscure way, her face contorting in rage as she flew forward.

"Are you a fool?" she demanded. "Or are you mocking our Lord Stronghold? This is an ins-"

"These are foreigners." Sartozi raised a hand and she cut off instantly. "Let me be clearer. You cannot be fool enough not to see my tier. When I said that I would take the field, I did not expect you to actually fight. That struggle would have a foregone conclusion, and as you compassionately observed, might kill unrelated parties. It is assumed that you would surrender to our justice."

"I think I see now." Theo folded his arms behind his back with faked nonchalance. "I don't agree a fight would be a foregone conclusion."

Several of the new Authorities let out gasps or snarls, while Sartozi only appeared amused. Not that his confidence was entirely misplaced, given that he was the only Stronghold on the battlefield, but he hadn't brought an army with him. Theo definitely wasn't going to surrender to a court that clearly favored Esaire, not when there were so many variables that could be manipulated in their favor.

"Please excuse me, Sartozi aima Occoire." Nanjuma spoke in a commanding voice as he flew up to the meeting in the sky. "I do not know your titles, your laws, or indeed your ways. But I represent those who were wronged in this conflict. We did not come here to bring violence, but we do not accept your authority."

"And I am here on behalf of the Landguard," Bimanu said, arriving a moment later. "Surely you know of us?"

"A Tatian organization, I believe." Sartozi regarded them all with mild amusement. "You seem to be laboring under two misapprehensions. First, that I would simply support all Deuxan causes, which is not the case. But second... this is not a negotiation. This is war by more civilized means. If you wish to behave barbarically regardless of your certain defeat, I can treat you like barbarians."

Nanjuma and Bimanu remained silent in the face of that obvious threat. Despite the increasing tension, Theo felt increasingly oriented to these new factors. This would still end in a battle, almost inevitably, but it would be a battle with rules that could potentially be turned in their favor.

"If you do insist on fighting," Sartozi continued, "the blood of any who fall needlessly will be on your hands. Combat between soulcrafters of the same tier is well and good, but persisting in the face of a significant gap is simply waste. If we all killed one another as recklessly as in the past, Deuxan would bleed out its strength as in other worlds. Is it not the same for you?"

"It isn't that we disagree with your logic," Theo said before any of the others could speak, "just your analysis. You seem like a powerful Stronghold, but were the battle to begin, I'm not so certain that you would win."

He spoke succinctly and directly, trying to imitate Sartozi. Judging from how the Stronghold blinked, Theo thought that he'd struck the right tone. What he'd overlooked was how zealous the other members of the contingent might be.

"You churlish..." The woman who had yelled before spat out an untranslatable curse and then tried to attack without warning.

Theo had his hands behind his back and must have looked off guard, but he didn't truly need his hands to use his abilities. He had wanted to hold back his portals, but her attack was fast enough that he activated one instinctively. It took her from charging into him to charging straight down into the hills outside town. As she hit the ground with a muffled cry, the other Authorities attacked and chaos broke out.

The other two Authorities targeted him as well, darting around the portal as they drew their weapons. Esaire was just a step behind, drawing his fastest rapier again. The only positive was that the Stronghold had yet to act, his amusement shifting to annoyance - and that silver lining wouldn't save Theo from the three Authorities converging on him.

Fortunately, Nanjuma and Bimanu leapt into action, redirecting the new attacks. That left Theo and his close allies to blunt Esaire's charge, a task they were uniquely suited to perform.

Even as Esaire activated his flying technique, beginning to be pulled forward, Nauda used her staff to slow his advance. Fiyu flew in low and her cantae blade swept through his rapier. Remarkably, the silver wasn't severed, but Theo could see how hot it glowed from the cantae. He cast a torsion bolt into the weak portion the next second and the powerful armament exploded into separate pieces.

Esaire let out a cry and began launching flying swords from every direction, leading to utter chaos. Theo's gravitational senses weren't remotely up to the task of keeping up with everything, leaving him relying on his combat instincts. It felt like all the other Authorities had begun to brawl, but it was the most he could do to fight those nearest him while also tracking the Stronghold.

He caught a glimpse of Bimanu dropping out of the air, bleeding from an injury to the arm, and it looked like things might go poorly. But at that moment a vast hand of mist emerged as Janne entered the fight, literally sweeping away the Deuxan Authorities.

Just when Theo began to think they were really going to have the entire battle out right then, immense power descended on the battlefield. Sartozi raised a fist and sent waves of cantae cascading down over everyone. Esaire had been off guard and slammed to the ground, while the foreign Authorities all went to one knee.

The power was intense, and Theo could feel it pushing down his body as well as see Nanjuma sinking to the ground. But he countered it with a reversed gravitational field and remained floating. Thankfully Fiyu and Nauda retreated to hover beside him automatically, meaning that they remained defiant even in the face of the demonstration.

When Sartozi finally stopped, the battlefield was quiet enough that he didn't need to shout. "That was shameful, Lalye," he said to the woman who had attacked. "Assaulting opponents while the terms of a war are being negotiated is uncivilized. I'll deal with you later."

She lowered her head to the ground, angry but chastised. Unfortunately, there was no time to be glad about that, because the enemy Stronghold was now focusing fully on Theo.

"This sort of brawl is exactly what we hope to avoid, via convocations of souls. I will admit, you have a large and potent group of Authorities. But the results of this battle do not depend on them." Sartozi floated closer, face slowly splitting in a grin. "You think you can equal me, Authority? Do you have some basement you have been hiding? An Ethereal Floor? Because the way it looks to me, you don't have a chance."

The man casually mentioning two of the Transcendent Monuments wasn't encouraging, but Theo couldn't let any doubt show. He wished that he had better information and decided that there was nothing he could do but trust in everything he'd built up to this point.

"Of course I don't intend to fight you alone," Theo said. "But my close allies here are accustomed to fighting more powerful opponents. You seem confident you know how the battle would end... so are we."

"Absurd." For the first time, Sartozi's amusement seemed to shade into real anger. "If you really expect this belief to be respected, it must be proven."

The man clenched a fist and drove more cantae into them, this time at an angle. When Theo figured out that it was pushing them away from town, he stopped fighting. The others followed his lead, so they let themselves be carried away from Anguedan into the plains outside. Despite the obvious tension, they actually looked composed in the midst of it all.

All the Authorities came with them, gathering like a crowd but prepared as if for a battle. And if Theo understood the custom correctly, this truly was a battle, with potentially lethal stakes despite the civility. He would have been a lot more comfortable with this if they'd had more time to soulcraft at Authority, and perhaps more experience against Strongholds.

"Come and face me." Sartozi descended opposite them but remained floating a pace off the ground. "If you want your strength to be acknowledged in the convocation of souls, it must be proved. If I find it lacking, you'll receive proof in the form of your own blood."

Chapter 9

The three of them against a Stronghold. Theo spent the silent moments before the fighting started considering the landscape, the spectators, and the poison in his own soulhome. There weren't many obstacles that would be relevant to a Stronghold, the enemies seemed sincere in standing back, and the poison felt likely to be inhibiting but not crippling.

One thing he didn't consider long were his companions: Fiyu and Nauda made eye contact in those last moments and that was enough.

As soon as Sartozi started to generate cantae in one hand, they all acted as one. Fiyu struck first with a storm of light that their opponent made no attempt to dodge, so Theo joined in with torsion bolts. His cantae seemed slightly more sluggish than it should have been - not compared to average Authorities, but in a battle like this where he needed every ounce of speed, he felt hampered.

When their assault ended, Nauda lunged in, stabbing with her staff. The prongs hit Sartozi in the shoulder, but he hadn't even attempted to dodge - his robes lit up with a purple light that had clearly reinforced his defenses, because he was untouched from the assault.

The Deuxan Stronghold scornfully twitched his shoulder with a surge of cantae, intending to throw Nauda aside disdainfully. She anchored herself and stabbed again, only knocking him back a slight distance, but keeping him distracted.

Fiyu struck invisibly with her cantae blade, only appearing in flickering purple at the last moment when she got close to his robes. Sartozi actually pulled his head away from the attack, eyes narrowing as he examined the sharp cantae. He flicked one hand and a shockwave of cantae radiated from him, throwing Fiyu and Nauda away.

Their struggle had bought Theo time and there was now a singularity growing between his hands.

He'd been planning to tunnel it toward their opponent, but held off briefly to examine the shockwave. Unfortunately, it didn't look like Sartozi had expelled the cantae in his robes to create it, thus there was no moment of weakness. His Stronghold-tier cantae fully saturated his clothes and seemed to build up enough to create the shockwave without faltering.

But now the Stronghold turned, regarding Theo's singularity with a flicker of uncertainty. Theo smiled and brought the singularity to its full potential... and then a spasm of pain dropped him to one knee, the power dissipating.

Poison throbbed through his body and soulhome. Some fleck of the green slime that he'd missed, or was the immense flow around the singularity disturbing the sky? Across the battlefield he saw Esaire on the sidelines, grinning and pointing at him. There was no cantae, at least nothing Theo could sense through the pain throbbing in his skull, but could he activate the poison somehow?

In any case, Sartozi's gaze flickered between them and he seemed to understand this wasn't normal. Yet he gathered more cantae into his robes as if this changed nothing.

Fine. Theo could just as easily play support.

Nauda was the first to attack again, slashing with the tips of her staff to try to cut the Stronghold's robes. This time Sartozi finally raised a hand and struck her weapon, knocking it from her hands and toward the ground - but before it could fly far, Theo caught it with a point of mass and gravitational fields, then redirected it.

Even though Nauda hadn't been expecting that, she caught on immediately and grabbed the staff as it came hurtling back. She redirected all that force into a swing that cracked across the face of the Deuxan Stronghold. It made his head jerk back, but the violet aura of his robes seemed to protect his entire body, so he wasn't injured.

Theo cast an anchoring point on Nauda to support her as she tried to go toe-to-toe with the enemy, but his gaze shifted to Fiyu. She had been preparing for another strike, but when she saw him, she nodded.

When Fiyu charged again, she immediately had Sartozi's attention. He raised a hand to intercept her, but Theo was faster: he opened a portal in front of Fiyu and tunneled her to the Stronghold's flank. Her cantae blade slashed across his extended arm, cutting through his sleeve and sending a splash of blood saturating his clothes.

"Enough!" Sartozi barked out the word and then flapped his damaged sleeve, unleashing a much wilder wave of cantae. Fiyu was sent tumbling back and Nauda was pushed away despite all her anchoring.

A Stronghold's full cantae descended over the battlefield, trying to suffocating them with power alone. Sartozi was holding back nothing now, unleashing wave after wave of violet light even as he summoned his own attacking techniques.

Nauda managed to deflect them and Fiyu dodged, but Theo was struggling: the shockwaves cut through his attempts to form portals. Normally he might have tried to pit himself against their opponent's cantae, but with the poison throbbing inside him, he struggled to focus. And in the moments that he hesitated, things became much worse.

Once she caught herself in the air, Fiyu swept in, going incorporeal to pass through the next shockwave. This got her in range of Sartozi again, her blade lunging for his face, but his injured arm wheeled desperately and the explosion of force sent her tumbling to the ground.

She had been precise up to that point, but when she struck, Fiyu looked disoriented. Sartozi showed no signs of stopping and aimed both hands toward her, a stronger attack rolling down his sleeves. Theo had been gathering cantae despite the poison, but he couldn't possibly intercept in time.

Somehow Nauda acted first, hurling herself in the way. She met the Stronghold-tier attack head on, first with her staff and then with her body.

When the light faded, Theo's vision had been burned purple. Nauda had blood across her arms and stomach, and her defensive necklace glowed incandescent, but she had withstood the assault. Sartozi stared at her in surprise, his arms still raised with the sleeves dull. He seemed to have struck to kill and was honestly taken aback.

"Do we keep fighting?" Theo asked. He'd formed his cantae into the most intense-looking singularity he could, even though he wasn't sure he could actually tunnel it. "If we do, I'll send this directly into your body. I don't know if it will be enough, but if you demand we surrender, I'm willing to take that bet."

Sartozi turned to him and for just a moment Theo saw fury in the man's eyes. In that moment, seeing that raw hatred, Theo was certain that they were going to fight to the death.

Fiyu relit her blade, Nauda set her feet in the air, and Theo got ready to see if he could make good on his threat.

Then Sartozi laughed, as if this was all a game. "You're audacious, but it seems you can back up your claims. Very amusing." He let the cantae drain from his robes and looked over the three of them. "Very well, I no longer demand your surrender. We can settle this like civilized soulcrafters."

Yet the way he moved, the tension in his face... Theo realized that the hatred wasn't gone, merely buried. He was a Stronghold facing Authorities, after all, and couldn't admit to any weakness. Now that Theo analyzed the enemy's posture, he realized that Sartozi was holding his injured arm at his side in a position that looked casual but actually served to hide the injury.

Slowly the three of them retreated to stand together. Both sides of the field held their breath, and though the Deuxans looked angry, even Esaire seemed resigned.

"What happens now?" Theo asked. "This is still war by other means, isn't it?"

"This has changed from a quick resolution to a full convocation of souls." Sartozi inclined his head toward his own forces. "Esaire ai Armeau will need to state his complaint more formally, and you will be free to place a counter-complaint. This battle will ultimately be decided by Strongholds, but if you Authorities want to fight amongst yourselves, this is permissible."

"Then for now, we just walk away?"

"You were permitted to stand against a Stronghold, so thank your fate." Sartozi suddenly frowned and looked toward Bimanu. "But one of your side was injured in a convocation-breaking surprise attack, which reflects poorly on us. The scales will be balanced. Lalye?"

"My lord, surely not!" The woman who had attacked them before stepped forward to protest, then suddenly shot in the opposite direction.

Before she got far, a burst of violet cantae tore through her side. Her defenses weren't as strong as Nauda's, so she collapsed to the ground, grimacing in pain and clutching the wound. If Theo understood the rules properly, that was supposed to even the score.

"You've shown no signs of attacking the peasants," Sartozi continued calmly, "which is one of the reasons that you aren't being treated as barbarians. But if you intend to continue pressing your claims against the Armeau family, I suggest that you learn our rules of war. You won't enjoy your time on Deuxan if you face us without them."

His pronouncement made, Sartozi dramatically revealed a weirkey in his good arm. The other Deuxans moved closer to him, even Lalye and a resentful Esaire, and he drew them all away. In a flash the attacking army was gone, leaving injuries and a great deal of uncertainty.

"I do not like this convocation of souls." Fiyu broke the silence first, barely loud enough for Theo to hear. "It seems they can change the rules to their advantage."

"I don't know what to think." Nauda grimaced as she probed her injuries, but seemed intact. "Things might have been worse if they all attacked for real, but I think these rules are the only reason Esaire was able to get such powerful help."

"Someone else is manipulating things." Theo rubbed his eyes heavily as he tried to think through the likely repercussions. "I don't know who, but someone escalated what used to be a personal feud. I think the convocation rules are a good thing - the Deuxans won't play fair, but if we can play better, they'll respect it."

"And you think you can, when we don't even know the rules?"

Theo gave them both a grim smile. "We'd better learn fast, then."