Crossroads

“Flare Plate - Bulwark Form!” Crossfire yelled, his armor once more growing around him as he leapt back from Strength. “Stay away! Back-up will be getting here any second now. Leave while you can!”

“Then it’s better I finish this quickly. A 10 of Swords like you is no trouble,” Strength replied, cracking his knuckles. Crossfire brought up his sword, but in an instant Strength had crossed the gap between them and punched him in the gut, breaking through his armor and knocking him out.

“Hm. No soul. No matter, he’ll be corrupted either way,” Strength said, slinging the **** body over his shoulder and walking out of the catacombs.

“I’ve heard much about The Tower, but I’ve never seen it,” the High Priestess commented, gazing beyond the magical shield Alvaro had erected around them. It extended back to the entrance, and she surmised that he was creating a permanent path. Magma poured around them, and his hands glowed as they advanced. “Why can’t you teleport us there?”

In his right hand, fiery mana burned as he split the ocean of magma in half for them to traverse, while from his left cool blue arcane energy fed into their shield. “This whole Kingdom is steeped in reinforced reality. My fateweaving wasn’t good enough last I was here to dispel the ancient enchantment. Not alone. We’re lucky it has expanded in the absence of a King. The outskirts are unprotected. Before it took the combined effort of The World, The Star, and I to infiltrate this place.”

With a deep breath, he extended their tunnel outward once more, creating stairs from cooled magma to the surface. “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

“You’re not alone anymore, Alvaro. The whole guild supports you,” The High Priestess replied, gripping his shoulder and smiling up at him.

“I wish that were true, Nahemia. Still near half our peers believe in the ideals Strength betrayed us for.” They ascended to the surface together, an apocalyptic wasteland before them. Behind them a sea of molten rock, and in front of them an endless expanse of stone, buildings half buried. One building stood in the distance, reaching toward the dusky, overcast sky. The last survivor.

As if sensing their intrusion, the wind picked up around them. Slivers of stone rose in the air, eroded to a fine point over thousands of years by the same ****. Dust kicked up, threatening to clog their lungs.

“Ozongon bransg!” The Magician shouted, fighting the hostile winds with his own. An invisible sphere of wind circled the duo, protecting them from the harsh environment. Miniscule balls of plasma hung low in the orbit, occasionally exploding down at them. As the heat neared them, Alvaro shouted again, “Ne ca ror!”

A radiant glow surrounded them. The heat scorched and blackened the ground around them, but felt like a gentle sunbeam. Nahemia marvelled at his magic, looking at the golden glow on her skin. “Was that… enochian? I thought it a dead language.”

“It’s particularly cost-efficient for weaving elemental spells. Though what few books I’ve found leaves my vocabulary wanting,” Alvaro explained, sighing in resignation as he wordlessly commanded the earth beneath them to rise. “We should be quick. The sooner we leave, the better.”

Wake up for me, won’t you? The voice seeped into Crossfire’s mind, and he awoke with a start, chained to a stone wall. He pulled at the bright blue metal chains, but the manasteel didn’t give.

“Who are you? Where am I? What happened to Strength?” Looking around the room, he noted the stone brick walls and black metal bars of his cell. Sparse of furniture and people, he slumped back against the wall when he realized nobody else was there.

I can still feel the Flare Plate inside of me. They weren’t able to separate it from me. If I summon it, I can probably break these chains and melt those bars. If I escape the barrier I can use the Evacuation Ring to escape. I’ll have to front the cash for another, but… I’m not exactly brimming with options. Crossfire readied to summon his armor, but the voice called to him again.

Mind abuzz, hm? Can’t say I blame you, you’ve found yourself in quite the situation. Again he looked around the cave he was being held in, but found no company.

“What do you want?” Crossfire asked, putting his equipment out of his mind as he invited this unknown sorceress in.

Only to help you. You want to escape, yes? I can grant you that power, if you wish, she explained, rooting around in his mind for any unknown power. After a quick once-over, she was satisfied that he was no threat.

“And I’m to think that you’re just doing this out of the kindness of your heart?” Crossfire rolled his eyes, already feeling more of his power returning. He dug his nails into his palms until they bled, bringing the pain to the front of his mind to keep his guest busy.

We can worry about that once you’re all safe and sound, wouldn’t you agree? Strength stepped into the room, accompanying her words. An icicle of fear staked his heart when he saw the behemoth return, but he refused nonetheless.

“And give some unknown fae or worse free reign of my body? I don’t think so,” Crossfire whispered under his breath, and the voice was deafeningly silent as Strength opened the cell with a shark-like grin.

Your loss.

Alvaro and Nahemia soared through the wastelands, The Tower growing closer and closer as the minutes went on. For his part, Alvaro was calm. He sat cross-legged on the slab of stone carrying them, sipping green tea out of a red tea cup.

Nahemia had more trouble relaxing. She could hardly perceive the terror of the wastes as they passed her by. More brutal natural phenomena such as the ‘sun spots’ as The Magician had called them, but also all manner of terrifying beasts. A giant black spider with a bulbous white head and a million eyes was seared into her mind. The longer she looked at it, the more the seer’s head swam.

At once the slab of stone was brought to a halt mid-air, and she pointed to the terrifying insect. “Can you… slay that thing? It’s somehow clouding my vision.”

When he looked at the creature, he immediately set the stone moving again. “Trust me when I say that it is better the Byrgenwerth Spider is left alive. Safer for us.”

In mere moments it was out of sight, and she felt her abilities return. Deciding to follow his lead, she sat down across from him. A saucer and cup of tea floated toward her, and she accepted it without hesitation.

“How do you have these things without access to a pocket dimension?” Nahemia asked, sipping her tea carefully. Delighted by the taste, she began to enjoy it in earnest.

“Size magic. I still have my old, outdated component pouch. All inanimate matter inside is shrunk by a scale of fifty, and resized upon exiting,” Alvaro answered, withdrawing the leather pouch from inside his robes. Nahemia looked at it with no small amount of envy.

“Only someone like you would consider such a powerful artifact outdated, Alvaro. Do you think… you could make me one? When we get back?”

“Of course! If I could, I’d tell the fragment I left behind to start on it now.” He smiled at her broadly before he went back to drinking his tea. A sunspot flared up as they passed, but the duo and their rock vehicle were unaffected by this mini-supernova.

“I can see why The Emperor was hesitant to dedicate the resources necessary to secure The Tower.”

“I may not be able to remove your soul,” Strength said, punching Crossfire in the face from the left and right over and over again, the Page’s face swelling up and blood spilling from his mouth, “but I don’t need to.”

I can give you the power to end this anytime you wish. Just say the word. Give in to your desires.

“I’d rather die,” Crossfire whispered, and Strength crushed the warrior’s left hand in response, the bones inside shattering from the colossus’ grip. “So Strength, this is what became of you? Going from ruling one of the strongest guilds on Earth to being collared by a weak bitch too meek to even show her face? You’ve lost the title of Strength, so I guess now it’s just Wallace. You freak.”

Strength reared back, ready to punish Crossfire for his insolence, and the bloodied man took the opportunity to spit a tooth into his torturer’s face. “You’re just jealous of my perfect jawline, right? Too big and ugly to find anyone. Poor Strength all alone. Makes sense that you gave in so easily.”

Strength axe-handled his head in response, nearly destroying the chains with the **** of it as Crossfire’s head became intimately acquainted with the stone ground. “Why won’t you SHUT UP.”

“There’s nothing you can do to me, not really. You can hurt me, you can kill me, but you can’t make me sick. Can’t curse me. No soul to steal either. You’re a top-class fighter, Strength, but a shit torturer.”

“SIL-

“Enough, Strength,” Nairis voice - her actual voice, not the projection to his thoughts - graced Crossfire’s ears for the first time. Despite the relief it promised, it made his skin crawl. “Leave him be… for now. He will be broken eventually.”

As Alvaro and Nahemia neared the tower, the rock beneath them began to churn. The two noticed immediately, and Alvaro drew a small mirror from his pocket. “I came prepared for this. That’s a sand wyrm. Normally one wouldn’t be able to detect us, since we’re floating in the air and they detect vibrations in the ground. Those native to this kingdom, however, evolved due to a food scarcity, and developed the ability to sense vibrations in the air even underground.”

“Infinitum speculo!” The mirror disappeared from his hands, and all around them duplicates appeared, giant stone slabs and hollow replicas of the duo appearing falling to the ground.

The great insect launched itself from the earth, swallowing one of the duplicates whole. When it appeared, Alvaro reached out toward it, his aura enshrouding the creature. “Aura of Philomon!”

At once the aura he had wrapped the creature in turned to stone. The giant cylinder of stone fell to the ground, and with a start Nahemia noticed a few other similar boulders scattered among the wastes. “How many times have you done that?”