Chapter 363. Interception (Patreon)

​​Ian and Eury were like statues, their heads bowed as they both viewed the unrolling weave of the future. Three times already Achemiss had almost asked a question that would lead to mentions of Maria, requiring intervention–Clara changing the subject or saying something of her own volition.

The most nerve-wracking part had been the transfer of rift information–but that, too, had succeeded. Maria’s deft oath manipulation had worked. She’d destroyed the oath when Clara brought Achemiss to transfer the rift information, doing so from afar using the anchor she’d formed when Clara had escorted her. Then Maria had reinstated the oath almost immediately after Clara’s mind wipe. Later, when Clara returned to Maria’s room after Achemiss’s departure, she’d even removed the End anchor, removing all signs of her tampering. Ian had believed the plan would work, but it was still a relief.

He didn’t like Clara much, but he still didn’t want her to die, especially when her presence was so strategic. The problem was that he just didn’t trust her not to make a mistake. She was brilliant and accustomed to cutthroat academia, but she wasn’t used to conspiracies and larger plots with high stakes, and it showed. He felt like he was micromanaging her, influencing her subtly all through Achemiss’s visit to the point that he doubted she even noticed.

And now, finally, it was all coming to an end. Achemiss had retrieved the rift locations and stood before the classified subject–Ascendant Ari. They watched as Achemiss demanded that they have a Dark practitioner slice through the base, creating a clean cut. He wanted to take the entire preservation pod with him. Not because he wanted to use it, but because he didn’t want to remove her and expose her body to the air, even for a moment.

In a somewhat drawn out process that included pained deliberating–“The preservation chamber is priceless!”–someone with Dark affinity was sent over. With the base of the preservation pillar separated, Achemiss’s construct touched it and it disappeared into a storage artifact. The ascendant’s construct was wearing jewelry, but Ian suspected that the actual artifact holding Ari was better hidden–perhaps even within the construct’s body.

“How are we getting her out?” Euryphel muttered.

Ian just snorted softly and shook his head. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

And then, with a distinct lack of fanfare–Achemiss left the way he’d come, swimming up through the lake that connected to the arrival hangar.

Clara had convinced everyone that Maria was meant to stay in wait until Achemiss was truly gone, serving as a safeguard. They had to time her departure well–not so soon that Achemiss would suspect anything, but soon enough that she could track him down and engage to fight for Ari’s body.

Ian didn’t know what Achemiss intended for the body, but it couldn’t be good. He doubted Achemiss just wanted the corpse as a trophy.

Ian knew just how severely he’d injured Achemiss when he’d attempted the assassination upon using the return beacon. How Achemiss had escaped death was still a mystery, but Ian knew without a shred of doubt that Achemiss shouldn’t have been able to make a full recovery, especially without his cache of artifacts. And even if Achemiss kidnapped skilled individuals to help him, all the peak practitioners of this world wouldn’t have the skills necessary to undo the total destruction of his body.

“She’s going back…” Euryphel said, sighing and steepling his fingers, his brow furrowed. After Achemiss had departed, Clara had been sent back down to grab Maria. That’s when the second phase of Maria’s oath-breaking plan had gone into effect. The two had engaged in painful small talk while waiting for Achemiss to get further away.

And now, enough time had passed. Maria asked to be escorted out.

The seconds dragged on so slowly as they used the transmission artifact within Regret scenarios to spectate. It was excruciating.

But finally, finally… Maria entered the hangar. The doors sealed behind her, dividing the space between Maria and Clara. The lich walked calmly to the center of the room, revealing not an ounce of hastiness.

Then, she jumped, disappearing into the ceiling.

“Fucking finally!” Euryphel grumbled, tearing at his hair. “My mind is a scenario away from cracking.”

While Maria was in pursuit, using the transmission artifact was near useless–they’d appear in the sky, but she’d already be racing ahead.

Besides–there’s nothing I can do from here. Ian had needed to closely monitor the situation in the compound because he could control Clara. Now, however, he had no way to contact Maria and no way to affect the outcome of her chase.

“Eury,” he said, rubbing at his forehead, “can you please ask for more coffee?”

The former prince scoffed. “Don’t pretend like you don’t permanently keep your body operating in peak condition.”

“It’s not my body that’s broken, but my mind. We’re in similarly dire straits, you and I.”

Eury leaned back, shooting Ian a skeptical look. “More coffee can always be arranged. And whiskey.”

“Too soon for that.”

“Again, permanently peak condition.”

“Too soon for you.”

Euryphel chuckled. “We need to get out of this dungeon. I need a walk. You need a walk. Come.”

The gardens of Ichormai beckoned.

—

Now that Maria wasn’t trying to stealth her way into Sere, she scorched her way across the sky like a comet, chasing the fading scar of the End arrow extending between her and Achemiss’s construct. She didn’t really care if Achemiss knew she’d been waiting around the area–she just needed to make sure he never learned that she’d actually been inside the compound.

Normally, constructs didn’t have End arrows. Liches were an exception, and so, apparently, was the construct that Achemiss had sent. It didn’t appear to be a lich–Achemiss himself seemed to be in control. From what Maria had heard from Ian, Achemiss had specialized in keeping his true body hidden away while sheathing himself in construct bodies using necromancy. To do so between reality and a rift was a genuinely impressive accomplishment. She supposed she shouldn’t be too surprised that a thousand-year-old ascendant could accomplish feats that Ian currently couldn’t.

Achemiss’s construct was fast, but Maria was a missile. Within a few minutes, she had eyes on Achemiss’s false body, and it still hadn’t noticed her. Maria might have missed the speck-sized construct if not for the End arrow disappearing into it.

They were over the Illyrian Ocean, avoiding the land mass entirely. She couldn’t assume anything about the route it was flying, however–if she were Achemiss, she’d fly a circuitous route, and she’d certainly not lead the way back to the rift Achemiss was in.

She expected this construct to destroy itself after delivering what it had picked up. Either the construct would rendezvous with a group of other constructs that would then scatter, or it would judiciously use decoys, like all those fake rings. She was too far away to see anything, but she wouldn’t be surprised if he simply dropped a piece of jewelry into the water every few minutes.

If he was doing that, it was possible he’d already dropped the void storage that held Ari–but Maria doubted it. They were still so close to the Sere landmass.

Maria formed a potent ball of flame between her hands as she careened forward, propelling herself only with her feet. She fed ascendant energy into the compressed blaze. Then, with a cry, she let the projectile loose.

She wasn’t confident in her aim, so she’d formed a ball of fire that expanded the further it went. Her ascendant energy protected the ball while guiding the air around it, feeding the inferno. It was just one trick she’d learned under Ancient Ash that she hadn’t had the chance to use until now.

It only took a moment for Achemiss’s proxy to be fully consumed by the blast, and Maria was on it a moment later.

The construct fell apart, separating into pieces the size of Maria’s palm. They fell toward the water like the shards of stars.

All of them were Achemiss… and none of them were. The End arrow flickered like lightning between them in an uncanny, unprecedented way–like Achemiss’s very being was jumping between the falling pieces of the construct.

And they weren’t just falling toward the water: They shot out in different directions. Maria felt a sick sensation in her stomach. One of the pieces had to hold the artifact that possessed Ari. But she couldn’t stop all of them, and she worried that just chasing whatever construct fragment that held an End arrow was too easy–Achemiss would plan for that.

Was she going to fail? The idea made her livid. She rejected the possibility. You’re more than your fire, she thought. In Eternity, she’d practiced creating arrays countless times, though typically over a large area, like on an open field to create large, hard-to-escape effects.

All the construct pieces were still alight with her flames… and she could still control them. Gaze filled with an intense air of concentration, she clapped her hands together. The fire surged, then morphed. The pieces were shaped differently, so forming the fire into a coherent array on each fragment took all her willpower and experience.

But she succeeded.

The fragments suddenly started to come together, pulled by an invisible force. Maria didn’t stop, increasing the array’s complexity by adding another function that would cause backlash to Achemiss if he cut his connection to the constructs.

Maria considered what she should do at this point. Was she supposed to somehow pry Ari’s cold corpse from this smoking, flaming wreckage of Achemiss’s fake body? Support constructs were undoubtedly on the way to fight her, so she needed to act soon. She needed to move.

I need to move somewhere else where Achemiss won’t dare to go, Maria thought, but where? Unfortunately, she was in the middle of nowhere on the southern coast of Sere, far from the Ho’ostar peninsula. She had Darkseers allies in the East, but they were about equidistant from Selejo’s most western state, Valia.

If she pushed herself to her limits, she thought she could get there in a handful of hours. She’d need to sustain the End array flames the entire time while dealing with Achemiss’s machinations, all while also flying herself.

Much more exciting than life in the palace, Maria thought, recalling her tenure as the Eldemari. She’d occasionally done incredible things, like conquering the former SPU in the days before her defeat, but the vast majority of her time had been spent on politicking.

That’s Zilverna’s life, now. And after this mess is also done, it’ll be Eury’s.

She wondered if she’d see Zilverna before the day’s business was done and Achemiss hopefully delivered into Ian and Eury’s hands. She strongly hoped not.

Dragging Zilverna into this was the last thing she wanted.

It was hard to feel for him the way she wanted to, as a mother, but still. If her boy really died because of her actions–because they wanted to play hero and save the world–she knew it would haunt her to the end of Eternity. It would be her greatest failure.

Why else was she trying to save the world, after all, than for him?

She didn’t need to breathe, but still took a deep, calming breath as she grasped Achemiss’s burning, twitching body, the pieces all connected in odd, incoherent ways. Then she ignited one hand and both feet to fly.

She was on her way.