World Seal, Ch 22: Defenses (Patreon)

He led the nagas along the astral paths and arrived in a distant system where a handful of Fourth Evolution Void beasts were present.

It was a short stop on their way to higher-level enemies, but it was a good place to get more experience for the World Core, and the nagas were eager to fight.

He focused a bare minimum of his attention on the battle, but his aura was present everywhere, boosting their attributes and abilities even higher than before.

He only asked them to bring back one in four Void beasts this time, since he wanted them to gain most of the experience. The Conclave had no set number of people to release, and while a lot of people should be arriving, he had decided to auction the first spots off to the top bidders.

It would make the Cabal and other Level 399s compete with one another, which would direct their attention inward and hopefully save him some trouble.

What he didn’t want was them uniting together and trying to argue with him, or trying to attack him to get their freedom. While he could deal with that, it would be a waste of time.

The auction should be a familiar scene for them, and with the right demonstration of strength from the beginning, it should work. He was looking forward to the resources they had.

The ones who didn’t win could wait until he had time to gather more beasts, and if they were dissatisfied with that, he had no sympathy.

For those who had the right attitude, he might offer a deal to release them first if they promised to help protect Aster Fall or Silverguard, but he would decide that on a case-by-case basis when he met them.

As the nagas tested their new strength, he turned his attention to the World Seal. Of his two avatars there, one was dedicated to chasing Khaes and Yeria, while the other was managing the tracking pendant and constantly sensing for traces of Asenya.

With the time compression, he had plenty of time to study where they were going from this perspective, and it became clear that they were heading swiftly down into the lower layers.

Normally, that would have been difficult for them, since they would have had to break through layer by layer, but that red comet had left a wide-open trail, which they were following back.

They’d already descended through a dozen dimensional layers, and the area was beginning to turn chaotic. They weren’t heading for the prison levels, but rather an outer edge of the seal, one where the dimensional energy was like a wild current.

It was a region of disturbed space and tumbling energy.

Everything in front of his avatars was slowly turning to a rainbow haze. His sense for the Seal and dimensional energy in general was keeping him oriented, but it was still distracting.

He wasn’t sure how Khaes and Yeria managed it, but they seemed to be familiar with this place. Perhaps it was where they’d been hiding out.

He’d met followers of the Three Demons before, but these two were the strongest so far. Their race was still bothering him. It was like looking into a dark mirror of what he could have been.

Apparently, Khaes also had a hand in assigning his family the Battlefield Reclaimer class. Given that Sam was now the one blocking them from entering Aster Fall, that was ironic.

The demon’s greed had created his own enemy.

If he hadn’t been here, Khaes and Yeria might have reached the world and then the guardian moons around the world would have reacted. Silvas would have targeted Khaes as a representative of Blood and Amaris would have targeted Yeria as a follower of Passion.

If they attacked, the skies of Aster Fall would turn to fire...a herald of the Breaking that would follow.

He shook his head, but he didn’t dwell on what could have been. He’d seen them inside the Seal in time. Now, he just had to make sure they didn’t get away to try again.

As for his class’s connection to Khaes, that was accidental. He’d been lucky to unlock it and become what he was now. While there was a trace connection, Khaes had also caused his father and grandfather to suffer for fifty years.

The fact that some good had eventually come from the demon’s meddling was fate balancing itself.

As he continued to follow the demons, he worked to compare what he was seeing to the maps of the World Seal and its construction plan that he’d found in Asenya’s workshop.

It was like trying to compare a ruined building to the architect’s blueprint. From what was in front of him, it was hard to even determine the original intent. Without Asenya’s diagram, it would have been a complete mess.

There was a lot of damage.

That red comet clearly wasn’t the only thing that had broken through the layers. Dimensional debris was scattered everywhere. All of those fragments of dimensional walls had come from the layers slowly shattering.

It was fortunate that the Seal was so large. Otherwise, it would have collapsed by now.

The only saving grace was that its original intent to contain energy and keep it away from Aster Fall was still going strong, and so fighting in here wasn’t a problem.

The strongest prison levels were also still sealed away in the depths.

The Seal had been constructed to end the First War, so most of this damage had to have come from either a final attack or later assaults like the comet. His bet was on later ones, since Asenya had been around for a while after the war ended.

She wouldn’t have allowed this.

That raised the question of how organized the attacks were and how long the World Seal had left. There was clearly someone on the other side who wanted through.

What they wanted to do once they got here was a different question.

They might be after the essence in the Void or they could want to free the prisoners here. Either way, any race that had waged a war for 40,000 years wasn’t going to stop easily.

He continued to maintain a solid distance from the two demons, sometimes increasing his speed as if he were about to catch them and sometimes hanging back, to make them keep running.

If he wanted to, it wouldn’t take him long to reach them, but his avatar wasn’t their match in a fight, so there was no reason yet. It could wait until he came back from the Void.

The tracking pendant had been silent so far, but there were thousands of aura signatures mixed into the dimensional fragments that were scattered everywhere. He kept part of his attention on them and the artifact.

He was hopeful that one of them would have a trace of Asenya’s presence.

The dimensional layers here were interesting, but with the time differential nothing was changing quickly, so he left those two avatars to the chase and turned his attention to the damage on Aster Fall.

***

At the Peak of Sun’s Rest

He looked across the Western Reaches and the Ice Sylph valley below, studying the flow of dimensional energy and the cracks left behind by the comet.

The dimensional layer around the valley had minor fractures, but they were barely noticeable after his stabilization enchantment and the relic buffered it. The sylphs’ wards had also helped.

Farther out was a different story.

Flaws didn’t develop instantly, but the damage from the impact was becoming apparent, which meant it was time to address it.

Rifts were appearing all across the mountain slopes and the plains on either side. There were thousands of them, large and small, stretching in every direction out across the world.

They were particularly bad near Portal and across the Storm Plains.

Since he’d entered the World Seal from Portal, he’d been close to that area when he intercepted the comet. The dimensional force had struck it hard.

There were nearly a thousand Flaws forming across the plains, and some of them promised to be large. Those would probably release Third Evolution enemies.

The good news was that the wild mana on the Storm Plains was actually helping for once. The density of energy was keeping pressure on the Flaws, making them slow, so there was time to prepare.

Elemental storms were also tearing across the peaks of the Western Reaches and some of them had Flaws inside. Their energy was frenetic, turning the storms into howling tempests filled with wild mana.

This time, the storms weren’t just heading for the Storm Plains to the west, but toward all the other directions as well.

Passage through the mountains was already closed to all but the strongest of travelers, and soon everything for thousands of miles from north to south would be an impenetrable wall of lightning and ice.

When those storms crashed down into the peaceful central region of Veritan, it would be devastating.

Runes floated around him as he analyzed the gradients of mana and then two of his avatars disappeared from the relic, heading for the biggest nodes in the storms.

With his Elemental Mastery, he should be able to unsnarl the elements there and keep the worst of the damage from affecting the people below, but it would still be a mess.

Those Flaws that were mixing with the storm clouds were a particular concern. He’d never seen Flaws appear in the sky before and it wasn’t a good sign. It reminded him of the great rifts that came with a Breaking, like the one Krana had seen in her vision of him.

The Sky Guard or other flying forces would have to deal with the enemies that came out of them, or he would if it came down to it.

Mitigation plans flew through his mind as his other two avatars at the relic disappeared as well, heading out to address the worst Flaws.

Then he calculated the damage that would hit the Kingdom of Aethra over the coming days.

Aethra had never been the strongest defender against Flaws, but it was closest to the impact. If he wanted to keep it from collapsing and turning into a kingdom of bandits and Outsider armies, he needed to do a few things.

When his arrangements were complete, he began to speak with a Voice of Law, letting his voice echo across the entire kingdom, as well as the two neighboring kingdoms that would be hit by a slightly weaker series of Flaws.

The power in his voice was unmistakable, resonating like the World Core itself.

As High Artificer of Aster Fall, I warn you to prepare.

Outsiders have attacked us and Flaws are appearing in vast numbers across the world. Together, we will survive, but you must seek refuge in places of safety and rally to your defenders.

To those who are coming to the Conclave of the Moons, if you fight to eliminate Flaws, I will weigh it in your favor when it comes time to choose who can transcend the World Limit.

If you choose that path, announce it to the world as an Oath. It will be witnessed, and your deeds recorded. You also have an opportunity to gain Marks from the World Law.

To those who plan to use others for their own gain or to ally with the Outsiders and damage our world, be warned that I will know and I will find you to settle the debt.

For all who hear this, fight well and hold to what keeps your heart strong.

A wave of power from the World Core flowed across the world, accompanying his message and verifying the truth of it.

Even before his words ended, he felt notifications from the World Core telling him of oaths being sworn as people acknowledged the message.

The World Core could easily keep track of everything. All he needed to do was ask it to know who had contributed. Their Marks were also easy to see.

He nodded and then disappeared in a flash of silver flame. When he reappeared, it was in a meeting hall on the Second Layer of the relic.

His family and the leaders of the Ice Sylphs were waiting for him.

Other parts of the kingdom could make their own arrangements, but when it came to the defense of the relic, these were the people who mattered.

The meeting hall was large, but this was a private meeting for just the top commanders, which kept it easy to speak to everyone; otherwise, it would have been filled to the brim with assistants and everyone who had a hand in managing local affairs.

When they’d first started to rebuild it, the relic had been a ruin with just a few people, but it had over 10,000 inhabitants now, and the Ice Sylph valley was also filled with the Legions and their allies, the ice drakes, griffins, and ice giants.

The quiet village the sylphs had kept to for centuries was still there, but it was a quaint memory at the foot of the towering ice walls that swept across the mountains and marked out grand defenses.

Ever since Siwaha had opened the Gate of Winter, the valley had changed. Highfold no longer seemed like a grand city, but rather a small trading quarter protected by the greater defenses, which sprawled across the valley for dozens of miles.

As he arrived, silver flames and starlight announced his presence and it instantly drew the attention of everyone present, making them turn to look. A murmur of approval passed across the room as they saw him.

His presence was becoming rarer as time went on, but with his avatars at the relic, he tried to keep a hand in the daily affairs. Now that there were Flaws appearing all over, even more than before, he wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly.

Sometimes, that meant being the High Artificer and other times it meant being friendly.

“You’re back!” his father’s voice rang out with welcome as soon as he appeared. Jeric grinned at him from across the room as he waved him over.

“Come and help us with this map!”

His mother was standing next to his father and smiled at him as well. Her eyes glowed with moonlight and sapphire blue energy as she looked back at the long table in front of them.

The table was a dozen feet long and several feet wide, and the map laid out on top of it was highly detailed with individual carvings for different mountains, valleys, passes, settlements, and more.

It covered more than a thousand miles of the Western Reaches and surrounding territory, giving everyone a bird’s eye view of the area closest to the relic. It looked realistic, but all of it was an illusion summoned by his mother’s scrying magic.

Red flames marked out where Flaws and other problems were visible, hovering in the air like candle lights. Just on this section of the mountains, there were hundreds of them..

“Welcome back, Sam Hastern,” Siwaha said with a calm smile from where she was standing near Aemilia.

She had grown younger day by day as her level increased and especially after opening the Gate of Winter. Now, she looked even younger than his mother. If he had to guess, he would put her age somewhere in her twenties, but she had an ageless quality that made it impossible to give an accurate estimate. Her movements were as smooth as blowing snow and snowflakes danced in the air around her, just at the edge of her gestures. Her affinity for Ice was so high that her movements felt like Winter itself.

Her son Siwasir, who was one of Sam’s oldest friends among the sylphs, was next to her, followed by half a dozen commanders. Sam had met all of them briefly, but it hadn’t been that long since they came out of the Gate of Winter.

Each of them was a legendary warrior of their age at Level 399, someone who had been a general or ruler of the Ice Sylphs before deciding to go into the embrace of Winter to sleep until they were needed.

Their numbers were mixed between men and women, but they all had a similarly powerful presence. Ice danced around them as well, and for some of them, it flowed across their skin like a liquid tattoo or dusting of frost.

Their hair was tangled with frozen crystals, but it was a minor version of their full battle appearance, where they would turn into incarnations of Winter herself.

He’d heard their legends from Siwaha, and even before they’d appeared, he’d known all of them by name. Most of them had deeds that put the approaching battle against the Flaws to shame.

Most people like that would have been forbidding or severe, but the ever-present element of spring in the Ice Sylphs’ magic was present in them, giving them a sense of youthful warmth that balanced the cold.

Their presence alone was enough to give a sense of solemn confidence to the room. There wasn’t a trace of doubt on their features.

Similar to Siwaha, their mood was calm but alert, and they gave him nods of welcome.

“Come and share your plans with us, High Guardian,” one of them said briefly, her smile flashing. “It is always good to have recent information, and yours is the best available. How do you think we should approach this war?”

“We need a defensive line to control this territory,” one of the other generals added as he pointed at the area within a few hundred miles of the valley. “We should reactivate the outer circle of fortresses and man them half with our core forces, as well as a mix of golems and volunteers.”

“We could, but it would lock down too many of our people right now,” one of the other generals disagreed with a shake of his head. “We need the flexibility to target all of these Flaws. Look at all of them. We need a hundred or more teams. It’s better to go on the offensive and prevent them from fully opening, or we’ll be swarmed by Outsiders once they start to come through.”

“That’s why we need the defensive wall as a backup,” the first general argued, tracing his finger over the same line again. “We can lock down the inner area and then send teams out from there.”

Sam walked up to the side of the table beside his parents and smiled at them. Then he turned his attention to the map. It didn’t take long to understand the layout of the map and to compare it to what he could sense from the dimensional energy across the kingdom.

A wave of his hand sent dozens more red flames across the map, adding Flaws in various stages of formation as he improved on the details.

“What is your view, High Artificer?” the female general spoke up again. “To defend more strongly or to attack with all that we have?”

“We can do both,” Sam said as he considered the problem. Then he pointed at the valley on the map. “There are few enough Flaws near us that the local defense isn’t that complicated. We can send out teams from here to close the Flaws.”

He moved his hand, pointing at the hundreds of Flaws that were farther away.

“The biggest issue will be the ones that are far away and closing them before they can gather a large army of Outsiders. That is my main concern. We can’t allow massive Flaws to open across the Storm Plains or anywhere else.

“Unfortunately, this kingdom is one of the weaker ones on Aster Fall, and so we will need to bear a heavy burden to get them all.”

“Then dividing our forces will be the only way.” The general who had advocated for defense spoke again, his frown deepening. “We will suffer high casualties if those Flaws are at the Third Evolution, but if we must, then we must. The Mother wills and we obey her command. We will defend this world.”

His conviction was as solid as the mountains and as he spoke, the other Ice Sylphs nodded in agreement. Their attention was fixed on the layout of the Flaws as they considered the best way to approach them.

“We will fight this battle together,” Sam promised. “I’ll do my best to have an avatar at all of the worst spots and to protect our people. I’ll also give you the artifacts and scrolls I have available and create some powerful golems to help.”

He should be able to create a few golems a day, especially if he used his time in the Void. Stellar Conversion and his law would help him to construct them more swiftly than he’d been able to in the past.

A few Level 399 astral golems could crush most opposition, and they would be a good backbone for the relic too, if they survived the fights. All the old ones he’d created had been destroyed by the Vos’Rekan.

He was confident in protecting most of the Ice Sylphs, but he didn’t promise to save all of them. Some things were beyond him. He couldn’t be everywhere at once.

Fortunately, all of the Ice Sylphs and their allies who had returned through the Gate of Winter were Level 399. They were at the World Limit and wouldn’t die easily.

Unlike the general population, they didn’t need to be bribed with leaving Aster Fall or transcending the World Limit. They had no intention of leaving their home. They’d gone into Winter in order to stay here and to stay ready for when the world needed them.

From the first of them to the last, they would be happy to reach the Fourth Evolution, but only if they could do it on Aster Fall, and that meant waiting until the World Seal was repaired.

“I’ll also focus on transporting large groups as necessary,” he said as he continued to study the map, “it will save a lot of time if we can avoid traveling delays.”

There was a round of agreement at that, and then more questions arose, shooting back and forth across the room as the commanders raised point after point, all of them based on generations of combat experience.

The Legions of Ice had once ruled this section of the world and they were very familiar with the terrain, even if they didn’t all have the same memories of it.

The planning continued as they broke the tasks down into smaller parts, assigned teams, and created a series of phases to address the major issues before the minor ones, but before long, the generals nodded in approval and departed to their troops, heading to send out their own orders.

Siwaha and Siwasir took off a few moments later, leaving Sam alone with his parents. With the battle plans out of the way, their conversation turned to more personal matters.

“You seem different,” his mother said as she studied him closely. “You reached the Fourth Evolution? There’s a trace of some other power around you that I can’t quite understand.”

Her words made him chuckle. It seemed he couldn’t hide it from her, even with an avatar that was created to be on Aster Fall.

“The force of a law is hard to hide,” he said with a brief grin as he got his parents caught up on all of the recent matters, including the two Voidborn in the World Seal and his hunt for Asenya.

“This avatar is safe enough, but I still need to be careful. More importantly, do you both plan to hunt Flaws as well, or will you stay here?”

There was a note of concern in his voice.

Jeric and Aemilia glanced at one another, and their eyes fell at the same time to Aemilia’s stomach, where her pregnancy was clearly evident.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Jeric said at last. “As the councilors of the relic, we should be out there setting an example, but at the same time, our classes are linked to this area. So, we’ll stick to the Flaws that get close to us here. It should be the best of both sides, but I worry about the regions that are farther out. It seems like hiding our heads in the sand and hoping for the best.”

His words lifted a weight from Sam’s shoulders and a sense of relief passed through him. He had been hoping they would decide to stay here.

“But I think Krana and the others will head out to help,” Jeric continued as he glanced at Aemilia. “They’ve already been making plans for it. If you could look after them, it would be reassuring.”

“I will,” Sam agreed. “I’ll give them the best I have. This area is critical. It needs to be defended and the repairs have to continue. Someone has to manage it, and there’s no one better than you. As for helping distant areas...leave that part to me too. I’ll do what I can.

“There will probably be even more people flooding to the relic after they see the Flaws, especially if their homes are destroyed,” he added. “This area will be a gathering point for everything.”

His words were not just about the current battle, but about the future, including if the World Seal fully broke. With the relic here, this area would always be the center of their defense.

“The Fourth Layer should be repaired before the Conclave starts,” he said as he considered the timeline. An illusion of the relic appeared in the air in front of him as he spoke, and his hands traced out the key areas.

“That will help the relic to gather more energy each night, and it will enhance the dimensional anchoring effect. With each lower layer, it will become stronger, but once the Fourth is active...”

His words turned thoughtful as he spun the diagram to highlight a series of engraved pylons across the face of the mountain. They were marked with tricolored runes that shimmered with a dense moonlight aura.

“I think we’ll be able to activate some of the old defenses.”

They were designed to ward off Outsiders, but they would work just as well on anyone who wanted to cause trouble at the Conclave.

He had a feeling they would be needed.