World Seal, Ch 18: On a Red Comet (Patreon)

As Sam closed in on the comet, it became clear how large it really was. It stretched for over a mile from tip to tail, and it was two hundred feet wide.

Plans for how to deal with it spun through his mind and ideas came to him from his other avatars as well. At this moment, all ten divisions of his mind were working on the problem, some of them much faster than this avatar.

He couldn’t use Astral Rift or Void Barrier to stop it, which would be his normal method of dealing with something like this. A rift would tear apart dimensional space and a barrier would tear open a hole to the real Void.

They would do too much damage to the World Seal.

At the tail of the comet, he could sense the power of the two Voidborn roaring around them. There was an ocean of blood-tinged essence from the Fifth Evolution male demon and a wild emotional force from the Fourth Evolution demoness that had a threatening madness about it.

Both of them were stronger than this avatar.

In fact, they were both stronger than his main body, at least in terms of pure essence. The male demon was stronger by a good margin, while the demoness was just a little stronger.

But that wasn’t going to stop him.

He analyzed them as he headed toward them. Some of the information came from the World Core and the Path, which recorded all of the Outsiders they were familiar with, and some from his own senses.

Khaes. Voidborn. Level 542. Grand Sorcerer of Blood. Commander of Blood. Outsider. Enemy of Aster Fall. Prisoner of the World Seal.

Sorcerer was his class, while Commander of Blood was a rank. It showed that he was a high-level follower of the Demon of Sundered Blood.

Sam’s attention turned immediately to the other one.

Yeria. Voidborn. Level 488. Witch of Broken Hearts. Commander of Passion. Outsider. Enemy of Aster Fall. Prisoner of the World Seal.

Their levels were only an approximation, a combination of their essence attributes and their classes, but it was close enough.

Those levels were similar to his as a Titan, which meant that Yeria had nearly a full Evolution on him, while Khaes had about one and a half.

The only upside was that Outsiders didn’t have the same type of class system as Astrals, and they didn’t use experience. It was a foreign energy to them. Their class system was cruder and they devoted most of their attention to bloodline abilities.

The classes that Analyze was showing him were an estimate based on their Path abilities, which were inherited in a simple but powerful system, one that gave them only a few options.

In the case of these two, that was the Path of Blood and the Path of Passion. Their abilities would revolve around those two concepts.

Most importantly, these two were Voidborn. Their strength was close to that of an Astral Titan at the same level. Facing them would be extremely dangerous, especially if their bloodline was pure.

There was one advantage that could help him close the difference in levels, but he wasn’t sure if it applied yet. The Voidborn were dependent on the purity of their bloodline for innate strength.

There were more Voidborn than Astral Titans and they were able to procreate with other races, but unless they had a completely pure bloodline, they were weaker one-to-one.

Only the three Demons had been similar in strength.

It was a minor flaw, since they usually made up for that difference in numbers. There had only been around three thousand Titans in existence at the time of the First War.

As soon as he analyzed them, he sent a query to the World Core for any information it had. A moment later, the Core’s voice filled his mind.

It sounded grim.

I have several records related to the Voidborn known as Khaes, but I was not aware he was so close to escaping from the World Seal. I have a limited ability to detect what happens inside.

In the First War, he was a follower of the Demon of Sundered Blood. I recorded his presence in the final years of the conflict as part of the 117th Invasion. He was defeated in battle by the Astral Titan Hessegar and coalition forces, but he managed to retreat through the Nexus before it was sealed.

On three later occasions, he invaded the World Seal in attempts to reach Aster Fall.

In the first attempt 88,000 years ago, he was successful and his presence resulted in the 6th Breaking, but he escaped capture by Astral forces and fled into the World Seal, where he survived to pass back through the Nexus.

He appears to have some knowledge of the World Seal’s construction and an ability to evade its enchantments. He might also be in possession of artifacts that are designed to assist him.

His second invasion 60,000 years ago was part of the 17th Breaking. He tried to use the chaos to avoid attention, but he was captured by astral forces. He traded critical information for his release, following which he was thrown into the World Seal as a prisoner, but he managed to escape to the other side.

The time differential inside the World Seal and while passing through the Nexus means that less time has passed for him than for Aster Fall, and much less than for the wider galaxy.

His third attempt was approximately 15,000 years ago. That time, he avoided Aster Fall and tried to pierce through the World Seal in a more distant location of the Void. That prevented a Breaking, but he was captured by the Astral Guardian.

He again bargained with critical information for his release and was thrown into the World Seal as a prisoner. The location of his imprisonment was in one of the lowest layers that is slowly devoured by the Nexus before being restored. It should have meant he was transferred back to the other side, but it seems that he escaped.

His presence has been noted several times tampering with the World Seal’s dimensional energy, but the difficulty of controlling the Seal has prevented me from stopping him.

He also tried to access my command functions using old authorizations that were granted to the Outsiders when they were assisting with Asenya’s creation, but those authorizations were canceled long ago.

Now that you’ve located him, I have identified him as the source of additional tampering, including an attempt to access my core functions. It was your actions that brought it to my attention before you left for the Path of Stars.

That tampering resulted in the misassignment of several Unique classes sixty years ago.

Your Battlefield Reclaimer class was one of those affected when it was originally granted to your grandfather.

Even with the blood link to Shattered Skies that you discovered, you wouldn’t normally have been given that class.

The World Core’s explanation was detailed, but the history it was describing had so much information that it still felt too brief.

Its final words hung in Sam’s mind with a momentous weight.

This Voidborn’s invasion of the World Core was what caused his grandfather to be given Battlefield Reclaimer as a class? And then his father and him?

He’d just had one earth-shattering revelation about his family history, and now there was another one in front of him on this red comet. Even if it was a combination of factors that led to the class, including his grandmother’s absorption of Shattered Skies’ blood, it was a lot to take in.

He didn’t have time to fully analyze the impact of it, so he shoved it away for later. Instead, he focused on how he was going to deal with them.

The class might have worked out in the end, but if this Voidborn was involved in it, then he needed to pay the price for ruining Sam’s grandfather’s and father’s lives with that class.

With that said, the Voidborn were a force to be reckoned with.

They were going to be a problem.

Khaes was a follower of the Demon of Sundered Blood and at the Fifth Evolution, which meant he was one of that demon’s top followers.

As for the other one, Yeria, she wasn’t any better news. The only advantage was that she was at the Fourth Evolution and a bit weaker than Khaes, but the damage she could do to the World Seal was still enough to break it.

The World Core filled him in on her information as well, including that she had come with Khaes on the most recent breakthrough attempt, but it had fewer records for her. She didn’t seem to be as old as Khaes and there was no evidence that she had been in the First War.

The main record of her existence was on one visit to Aster Fall approximately 22,000 years before as part of the 23rd Breaking, where she had caused chaos and the death of tens of thousands of people before she could be captured.

She must have joined up with Khaes sometime after that.

If they did break out of the World Seal, they would probably be detected by the moons and Silvas and Amaris would target them for destruction, but it was likely that they would cause a Breaking before they could be destroyed.

Perhaps that was why they had tried to sneak away into the Void on their last attempt to break through.

Based on the records of Breakings he’d read, Voidborn usually only appeared during the worst ones. When a true Breaking happened and giant rifts in the World Seal opened, it was possible for powerful beings to travel through the Nexus.

Just like they had in the beginning.

He could sense the massive amount of essence in these two. It was part of their aura, a combination of destructive blood and wild madness that radiated from them.

Khaes’ level was even higher than the Vos’Rekan’s, but the good news was that his essence was lower, which should mean that he was not as powerful. His class was making it harder to read him.

Plans spun through his mind, and the value of having his other avatar in the distant Void showed itself. He had time to consider the best approach.

Runes flared in the silver flames around him, rising up in a complex and intricate web of enchantment.

He didn’t have Stellar Conversion on his avatars, since he didn’t want it to absorb energy in the World Seal, but he could create precise spells for the situation.

Dimensional Stabilization flowed along the lines of the enchantment as it spread outward and continued to grow. It was a beautiful starscape spiraling away from him in arcs like a galaxy of silver flames.

Within those flames, runes burned brightly like stars.

Essence flooded out of his avatar and he pulled auras from his storage to restore it, combusting them instantly. He didn’t hold anything back, since if he didn’t stop that comet, the outcome would be disastrous.

Over a hundred auras disintegrated into pure essence, flooding his spell with more than a million essence. The galaxy of swirling power continued to spread around him, growing ever greater.

As he closed in on the red comet, it was ten miles wide and still growing. The lines of it felt heavy and dense with stabilizing energy.

The chaotic fragments of dimensional space throughout this section of the Seal were caught up by the net and carried along, and then they fused into it.

Other fragments were drawn toward it like gravity, changing their course as they suddenly flew toward it.

That was the heart of the spell he’d created. He wasn’t powerful enough to oppose that spear directly even if he combusted all the auras he had, but this section of the World Seal was full of chaotic dimensional fragments that were denser than any metal.

The spear’s power was based on piercing through dimensions, and with each one it tore apart, it lost part of its energy, so if he could gather enough of them, he might be able to stop it.

Instant by instant, the spiraling galaxy continued to expand and harden. The fragmented dimensional walls burned bright with silver flames and runes that bound them together more tightly with every passing moment.

From a distance now, it looked like an ethereal red comet was tearing through the Void, but in front of it there was a brilliant silver shield. Each moment before it arrived gave that shield more time to harden.

With a gesture of his hand, Sam sent the dimensional shield flying ahead of him as he continued adding to it. The front half of the shield was a hard layer, but he left the layers behind it deliberately looser, layering thousands of dimensional fragments on top of one another in a chaotic pile like tightly-packed sand.

He didn’t have time to fuse them all, so he was hoping they would compress together and blunt the impact, like when an arrow struck a sandbag.

The comet was nearly here and he could make out the two Voidborn at the tail more clearly than ever. They were holding onto it with an eye-wrenching display of chaotic energy and crackling runes that cascaded all around them.

That energy had blocked them from seeing him so far, but now that a brilliant shield of starlight was approaching them, it was hard to miss. It must have looked like they were about to crash into a galaxy.

That was when Khaes and Yeria finally spotted him, but their reaction was too late for them to do anything about it. The comet struck the shield at the same moment.

An explosion of energy roared outward, hurling Sam away through the Void. Waves of wild blood energy tore at his body, leaving whiplashes across his skin that sliced to the bone.

Silver flames were there as well, crashing with the blood energy and exploding in a thousand different areas. Waves of his own energy and dimensional fragments crashed against him, sometimes canceling out the damage from the comet’s energy and sometimes not.

The Void spun and he felt the World Seal shaking around him.

Even as he was tossed in one direction and then the next, he did his best to shield his avatar from damage, hardening his skin and drawing the energy he’d put into the shield back around him whenever it came near.

Dimensional Stabilization helped as well, letting him grab up fragments of loose energy that flew past him. They snapped into place around his body and blocked the worst of the assault.

Without their help, he would have been torn to pieces.

His attention was locked on the World Seal as he rode the waves, trying to see if it had survived, but the scream of dimensional energy tearing against itself ripped through his mind, making it difficult to tell.

Eventually the explosion began to fade, and he caught his balance. He reached out with a golden hand and seized a passing dimensional fragment, using it to stabilize himself, and then he stood up as he looked around.

He was thousands of miles away from where he’d been.

He could feel starlight running down his body in silver rivulets, which was his avatar's version of blood, but he ignored it as he focused on more important things.

He could sense a hundred spatial cracks extending through the dimension, some of them heading toward Aster Fall and others into the deeper layers of the World Seal.

His mind spun as he scanned each of them, assessing the damage, and as he did the World Core’s voice resounded in his thoughts.

It was cold and clear.

I am attempting to stabilize the dimensional cracks.

This buffer layer is designed to absorb chaotic energy or it would have failed, but the impact has seriously damaged it. There are over a dozen cracks that need immediate suppression. I am routing energy from other locations to support it.

This buffer layer should survive, but be warned that an enormous wave of Flaws will appear on Aster Fall in nearly every possible location. Your home and others will be in danger.

If you have local forces that can deal with them, you should alert them.

A dimensional wave has also set off earthquakes and other effects on the world.

Sam didn’t hesitate to push that task off to one of his avatars that was at the relic, and a moment later, his words rang out across the Western Reaches with a Voice of Law, informing the Legions of Ice, the entire kingdom of Veritan, and the rest of the world to prepare for battle.

The World Core’s summons were ringing out at the same time, calling on the Church of the World Law and its other authorities, warning them about what was happening.

The Dimensional Convergence had been a danger, but this wave would be far worse than that.

His thoughts turned to the dimensional stasis crystal he’d installed at the relic, but his avatar there instantly informed him that it was a lost cause.

It had just exploded.

A moment before, a massive wave of dimensional energy had made the entire Western Reaches shudder like an earthquake was passing through them and its aftershocks were still rolling, setting off avalanches from nearly every peak that were both normal and magical.

Mana was crashing down the slopes along with the snow, stirring up mana storms that were rushing toward the Storm Plains and the valleys.

The Ice Sylphs’ wards were shining and the Gate of Winter in the sky above Highfold was burning with pure crystal ice, as clear as day. It looked like a frozen waterfall was pouring down above their valley.

The walls of their ice fortresses were cracked in places, but quickly fusing back together.

The relic and the enchantment he’d placed there had buffered some of the impact, which meant the area was less damaged than many of the ones nearby, but the stasis crystal was a lost cause.

He swore to himself as a flurry of instructions flew out between his avatars, traveling at the speed of thought. Within an instant, that avatar was swapping it out with a replacement crystal.

There was no point in waiting for the aftershocks to stop. He needed to buffer the damage as much as possible before it affected his work on the relic.

It wasn’t as good as the one he’d used before, but hopefully it would still do something.

But then he had to leave those matters to his other avatars as he turned his attention to what was going on in front of him. The chaotic energy of the impact had created massive walls of red and silver energy that made it difficult to see, but now they were fading.

In the distance, he could see giant dark and light cracks splitting the Void. They glowed with a threatening presence, as if they were pulsing angrily. Those had to be the ones the Core mentioned.

Part of his attention was on those, but most of it was on searching for the two Voidborn. He was hoping that the impact had killed them.

Unfortunately, it only took him a moment to find them.

The two of them were surrounded by that same fragmented orange energy they’d been using to bind themselves to the comet, as well as the remains of shattered runes.

They were scorched black and they were bleeding even more than he was, but they were still alive. It looked like they’d somehow used the energy of the comet to shield themselves.

They saw him at almost the same moment.

Khaes glared at him across the distance, his white fangs bared. His words came clearly, carried on a wave of essence and tinged with violent red energy.

“An Astral Titan!” The words were a snarl. His fury was clear, but so was his fear as he stared at him. “How is that possible?! You’re supposed to all be trapped or dead on the other side!”

His words were full of disbelief, and it suggested something dire for the Astral Titans who had gone through the Nexus, but Sam didn’t put much stock in the worst possibilities.

If the Titans had died, he felt like the Path of the Stars would have sensed it, even through the Nexus. The Will of the Path had also told him exactly how powerful Caerlon and the other Sixth Evolution Titans were.

If they hadn’t died in all the traps the Outsiders laid during the First War for 40,000 years, it wouldn’t be that easy to kill them.

Khaes grabbed at Yeria’s shoulder, and then blood red light surged around him, flaring into the shape of runes with jagged forms.

Then he turned to run.

It was Yeria that stopped him.

“He’s only at the Fourth Evolution!” she hissed at him as she ripped his hand off her shoulder and yanked him to a stop. “Look at him and stop running like a coward! He might be a Titan, but he’s weak! This is an opportunity!

“He’s injured! Think what it would be like to finally kill one of them! I’ve dreamed about it for millennia! If you won’t fight him, then at least don’t ruin my plans again!”

She shoved Khaes away from her as she turned to look at Sam, but her eyes were also on the horizon.

“And I don’t sense an Astral Guardian anywhere...if they’d sensed that explosion, they should be here by now. Maybe they’re afraid to damage the World Seal and break the world again. That means we don’t need to run.”

Yeria’s words brought Khaes to a cold stop, driving away his instinctive fear of an Astral Titan. As he registered what she was saying, he turned back to look at Sam. Then his eyes turned bright and a blood red energy began to surge around him.

“So he is....” he said slowly. “I can sense his essence. I’ve never felt an Astral Titan who was that weak before. Is this all that’s left to protect this place?”

Then he began to laugh. It was a sharp and cold bark, mocking in its force, and a wild ferocity stretched his face in a grin.

“Alone or not,” Sam said grimly as he began to walk toward them. Silver flames swirled around him with every step as he gathered his energy and combusted the last few auras he had left. “I will be enough. And you will remember how to fear.”