EG Book 7 Chapter 29 (Patreon)

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

Once I get the cover back, I'm planning on putting Homecoming up for pre-order with a release date of 28 March! As always, I'll be putting the epub up here beforehand, and it will not go into KU until 1 May most likely. Once there, I'll have to pull it off here, but I'll make sure to give y'all extensive warning. Anyway, on to the chapter!

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

“That’s not good!” I shouted, looking around for Knight Kaminski. The area around the staff vanished into pure blackness, a deeper void than Darkness created.

Knight Kaminski flew over and landed next to me, streamers of Death still stuck on her right wrist and ankle. “No, it is not,” she said, gazing at the aftermath. “Go, check on your friends. I will monitor this situation.”

I nodded, then shot over to Jon. “I am fine,” he said, “as is Princess Aleksandra and Milenna. Go, check on Vaya and Jamila.” I gave him a grateful grin, then blasted up into the sky and then back down in a quick triangle. The last male Naga fell to Ming’s blade as I set down.

“Aiden,” Vaya said happily, staggering over to me and nearly falling into my arms.

“Are you okay?” I asked hurriedly, giving her a quick glance over.

“We are just tired,” Jamila said. “The fight was exhausting, but we were not in any danger.”

“There were just too many undead,” Xiao said, sitting and leaning against a wall. “It only took a small effort to kill each one, but it added up.”

I glanced down the road to see the pieces of at least a thousand zombified Beasts and nearly the same number of Gallu. They’d all come from the west, away from where we’d entered the city. “Wow,” I said, then frowned. “Rest quickly. The other Naga did something with the staff, and it will probably turn out poorly.”

“We are coming with you,” Ming said, striding over. His black hair, normally kept in a neat ponytail, was frayed and plastered to him with sweat. “Show us what they did.”

“Okay,” I said, my face tight. “Take a refill powder or pill, then a gathering pill. If you don’t have one, come to me. Otherwise, Knight Kaminski is on the next road over. Come on.” I turned and started walking.

Vaya poked me, then threw her arm around my shoulders. “May I have a Wood refill pill please?” She asked while batting her eyelids at me. She was only able to hold a straight face for a second before cracking a grin.

I laughed, then pulled one out of my belt. I had a series of compartments that each held five refill pills, one for each Element. I passed out a couple more to Lilianna, Xiao, and Lea before we reached the others. The black sphere had grown to nearly three meters in diameter by the time we arrived

“That feels like … emptiness,” Sam said. She was the most pristine out of anyone, having been left in the back. She’d managed to do some supporting with the Inscriptions she’d created, mostly by creating small walls to blunt the Gallu’s charges.

“The Naga priestesses sacrificed themselves to the staff we found,” I said, “and that is the result.”

“We should destroy it,” Xiao said, then he launched an Air Aether Slash at the black zone. It broke apart at the edges without any visible result.

A massive welling of Aether made my head turn, and I saw Knight Kaminski holding her hand out. She stated simply, “Spear,” and a Wooden Spear two meters in diameter formed just in front of her and stabbed into the void. Again, the technique seemed to shatter, only this time I felt the pieces go somewhere deeper, in a dimension that wasn’t x, y, or z. She frowned, her face severe, then she gestured at the ground around it.

Immediately, stone rose up behind the sphere, creating a wall that nearly encircled it. Only a one meter wide gap was left directly between us and it. Knight Kaminski paled a bit, and I tapped her on the shoulder. “Here,” I said, handing her an Earth and a Wood refill pill.

“Thank you,” she said, throwing them back without hesitation. In that, I knew she was more worried than she let on. “Miss Samantha, do you have any Shock Touch Inscriptions left?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Sam said, dropping her backpack and digging into it. She pulled out four sheets of parchment.

“Apply them to the wall I just created, then make some more. I will imbue them if we have time,” Knight Kaminski said. “I believe that the staff is making a portal to somewhere, and we must be ready for it.”

“I have some trap Inscriptions that I did not get to use earlier,” Lilianna said. “We should probably put them inside of the circle, though.” She held out one of three metal plates, each covered in runes. I recognized Fire, Explosion, and Force among them.

Knight Kaminski laughed, “Good, Fiery Step Traps.” She reached out and took them, then a wave of vines directed each of them into the hemisphere of stone.

“Uh, ma’am,” Jon asked. “Can you put these in a place where they would fall into the circle if we want them too?” He had two of his Volatile Explosion Potions in his hand. “Aiden, I have another five in my room still.”

I looked into the ring, found the potions, and then carefully extracted them. It took us another ten minutes to finish setting up. Whatever came out of the blackness would find itself met with explosions, stabbings, restrictions, and whatever else we could think of.

Of course, none of us believed it would be enough. Everyone gathered quickly, keeping one eye open, getting back to full capability. Pills were consumed to heal, refill, and speed up gathering. “I really want to get the recipe to the Metal Muscle Empowerment Pill,” Jon muttered while stretching, a cut on his leg having just healed that left him a little stiff.

“The what?” I asked, sitting nearby and cleaning off my trisula.

“A pill that temporarily enhances your strength,” he answered, bending back far enough to touch the ground. Along with superhuman strength, we’d gained superhuman flexibility.

“How does that work with enhancement techniques?”

“I do not know,” he said. “But the information I read on it said that it would continue to work if you used one.”

“That would be pretty neat,” I said, then a crack like thunder echoed through the roadway. I leapt to my feet, turning to face the exit from the dome Knight Kaminski had made.

The blackness receded from the spherical shape it’d taken, condensing down to a flat oval, hovering a few centimeters over the ground. It was three meters tall and two wide at its thickest point. The surface started to shimmer, then it solidified. Over the next ten seconds, the black of the surface faded to reveal a starry sky over a rocky surface. What looked like a canyon extended beyond the portal’s landing, leading into the distance beyond what I could see.

The background was of secondary importance, though, to the absolute horrors that stood on the floor of the canyon. Dozens of Beasts that looked like a mutated gorilla, lacking all fur and standing two and a half meters tall, with large hands tipped with wicked claws. Their face was extended slightly, a muzzle more like a squashed wolf’s than an ape’s dominating it, with four pointy canines extending out of both the top and bottom of it.

That wasn’t the extent of their wrongness. Their skin was broken in places, showing muscle underneath, but no blood came out of the wounds. Several of them were standing unnaturally still, only to suddenly dart to the side. The worst part, though, was that they did not seem to be breathing at all.

“They are undead,” Knight Kaminski said. “Be wary, they will probably spread the same curse the Gallu did.”

The surface of the portal, which is what the oval had to be, cracked apart with no visible damage. The first of the undead, Ghouls I decided to call them, leapt out of it into the enclosed area. It was immediately destroyed as an explosive Inscription combined with an Air Blade one to rip it apart.

One after another, Ghouls ran out of the portal into our world, only to be destroyed by Inscriptions, potions, or techniques. Ming stood near the opening, having won a quick game of straws to be first. Every few seconds, he would slash his sword across his body, the Ethereal Slash Technique leaping from it to bisect whatever was in front of him. The technique was amazing in that it used Air, Sharpness, and Avoidance Aether to bypass armor and shields in front of it, though it lost in power somewhat. I was able to nearly ignore the attacks, my innate defense enough to result in only scratches, but using the Granite Skin, Iron Bones Technique did absolutely nothing to prevent the damage. Against those who had not tempered to an extent that their bodies were the equivalent of forged armor, the attack would be devastating.

Against the undead, it was perfect. It sliced them apart as if they had no defense at all. The creatures collapsed to the ground in two or more pieces, then more explosions from the Inscriptions would blow them apart further. For a few minutes, it looked like we were winning.

“One of the undead has broken the wall to the rear of the fortification!” Sia said. The Ghouls had been coming out of both sides of the portal, but we could only see the one. Our preparations were sufficient for a little while, but eventually the Inscriptions ran out of Aether or were used up. After that, the stone of the wall was carved through in a frantic need to get out.

“Ming, Xiao, Jamila, Fluffy, Lea, Milenna, Hanna, Lilianna, Aleks, Sam, stay here. Jon, Bridget, Vaya, Sia, Zim, Lampart, Kami, follw me to the other side. Knight Kaminski, please be ready to support any group being overwhelmed!” I shouted, shooting into the air and zooming around the containment sphere to see a Ghoul halfway through the wall, clawing at the stone near its waist. I twisted in midair to stab my trisula into its skull, then sent a pulse of Aether into it to blow its head apart.

The body collapsed, then continued to claw at the wall. Even without a head, it continued to fight. Light save us all, I thought, then sent a wave of Fire Aether into the sphere of stone to burn away everything within. “They are easy to destroy, but you have to destroy them utterly or they will keep fighting!” I shouted, Air enhancing my bellow to make sure everyone heard.

The flow of Ghouls seemed endless. Every few seconds, more jumped out of the portal and were disintegrated by techniques. All of the Inscriptions had faded by this point, and now it was only us fighting. The Ghouls had been joined by an undead wolf-like Beast. Again they had no fur, and cracks in their skin showed muscle without blood. I realized shortly after attacking the first one that they didn’t have blood, but instead a type of Death Aether, corrupted beyond my understanding into something abhorrent, flowed through them to power their being.

Whatever they used to live, they didn’t use it to fight. Only their body, barely at the extent of a Threshold Condensation Gatherer, was their weapon. Their true danger was their unending numbers, and the fact that we had to completely obliterate them to remove them from the fight. Cutting into pieces just left annoying fingers that curled to try and cut us, legs that kicked at nothing, and mouths that bit the air. The Corrupted Aether made me wary, and I was sure that getting injured would not be good.

“Aiden, we have to close the portal,” Vaya said, twenty minutes after we’d split apart. “We are being ground down, and will run out of Aether or Geist before our enemies run out of bodies!”

“I know!” I shouted back, Aether Slashes ripping apart a Ghoul and a Warg (note, should I capitalize Ghoul, Warg, and Gallu?) before they could reach the hole in the stone sphere. “Strengthen the rest of the sphere. We need to make sure they are only coming out one of two ways!”

“Aiden, rest for a minute, gather and recover!” Jon yelled, then he slammed his shield onto the ground and created a field of Ice Spikes that impaled a dozen undead. “You have been killing them all. Now it is my turn.” The Ice grew, freezing even the evil Aether in the Ghoul’s bodies. When they shattered, the pieces didn’t continue to fight.

I could tell the toll that took on him, but Jon was much fresher than I was, even with my gathering meridians giving me superior Aether regeneration to everyone else. “Knight Kaminski, I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“Can you see anything? Your Aether Sight has been a trump card many times, can you use it now?” She asked, appearing next to me. Stone flowed up over the sphere, reinforcing and compressing it to make it stronger. I could tell that she, Vaya, Hanna, and Kami were all working to do so. The Ghouls obliged, trying to get at the living beings at the openings more than trying to create a new opening. They were mindless beings, and I despaired at the thought that the Naga might have been able to control the utterly, ridiculously resilient creatures. The thought terrified me.

I looked, my Divine Senses Technique activated to my utmost, pushing more Aether into my eyes and brain than I was capable of holding in the middle of Condensation. The portal swirled in front of me, corrupted Death Aether, a deeper gray Aether, and an off-white, bluish Aether combined to create it. With some effort, I saw through the opening, and saw a ribbon of Aether connecting it to something that reached up to the top of the canyon visible.

“The staff, if it still exists, is through the portal,” I said. “Regardless, something inside is connected to it.”

“Go. Siarcyzty, take your Bond and find the source of the portal. Find it and bring it back here,” Knight Kaminski said. “Do not destroy it unless you are right next to the portal. I do not want to lose you to whatever realm that is.”

“Yes, Knight Kaminski,” Sia said, dropping in front of me from where he had been burninating the Ghouls. “Get on!”

I jumped onto his back, even though he was barely bigger than me, and we shot forward with an explosion of Fire and Air Aether. Sia’s wings folded against his body the instant before we ran into the portal, and together we burned through a Warg as it attempted to pass through it.