Chapter 238: The Torn Sky (Patreon)

If I had to describe what was happening down there in one word, it would be chaos. Utter chaos. It seemed the Nightmare Nuke the two dolls had planned had worked a bit too spectacularly. I must have missed the first stage of it all, when everyone had a collective nightmare, and I wasn't aware of the contents, but I could say for certain that whatever it was, it worked.

It was all too clear when I saw rows and rows of people with panic on their faces, fleeing the city with as much haste as their legs could muster. The crowd was raging so fiercely they looked like ants from my vantage point, grabbing whatever they could from their homes. And it was growing by the second. People were escaping on flying carpets, brooms, swords— a massive number of them had broken into the Iron Pact headquarters by overwhelming the guards through sheer numbers, seizing their own stock of flying enchantments to flee.

It was like a dam had broken, and a wave of people was trying to surge out like a hungry beast.

The volume was far higher in the lower district. The middle district seemed to have an alternate source of exit; I knew there were indirect tunnels and channels that led out of the city, which I hadn't gotten to explore myself, but it seemed the middle district was well off compared to the stampede in the lower district. The upper district, where most of the nobles resided… I almost saw no movement at all. Which was eerie, and honestly lined up with what I thought about those motherfuckers. If that wasn't proof that most of them were already out and aware of this fucked-up shit happening, then I didn't know what was.

I think the time was approaching early dawn.

Despite the crowd's havoc in the lower district, my eyes kept returning to the upper district, where something even more fascinating was unfolding. Not directly in the upper district, but beyond it, beyond where the city ended, where an endless expanse of ice covered the entire mountain beneath. Trees were uprooted, the ground shattered, burning like hell on earth in one place and icy in others. It twisted and changed the more I looked at it, like the whole thing was a trick— dynamic in some manner.

"What the fuck? Was that a fucking dragon?"

There was a gigantic crimson-scaled dragon wreaking havoc at the center of it all. Confused, I kept following the destruction, and soon I realized what I was looking at. The big dragon was fighting against Snezana and… who I assumed to be Gweneth— though I only caught glimpses of her before she vanished, she seemed to have taken the role of support to aid Snezana.

There was a lot happening, but all I could follow were explosions after explosions after more explosions.

"To grace that wretched carcass with the title of dragon is an insult to your lineage, Master," Ceil remarked from my side. "It is nothing more than an abomination born of stolen blasphemy."

Ah… "Why do I have the feeling that this blasphemy involves me?"

"Most certainly. Do you see any other dragon here?"

Yeah, I was the root of anything and everything now. I had made peace with that fact. Right now, I just couldn't take my eyes off the fight happening up there. Ceil explained it to me. The one Snezana and Gweneth were fighting was Svetlana, leader of their gold-core elders, the one who had actually been controlling the entirety of Flameclaw from the shadows. The fight had been going on for a while now. It actually started last night, past midnight. There had been an elf fighting alongside them, but he vanished a few minutes ago, once dawn broke.

Right now, I had a bird's-eye view of the entire Varkaigrad, watching it all unfold from above. And how that was happening was rather simple, it was Ceil. While I hadn't yet fully understood how her powers worked, she had said something along the lines of "cues." She was a deductor, so she spread these cues where she wanted to have control, cues could be anything: a sort of event, people directly under her influence, or any kind of presence. Their strength was determined by how effective a cue was in the grand scheme of things. Right now, her cues were Alice and Sybil, who were more or less responsible for what was happening. So her influence had increased enough that she could view the outside efficiently.

She could influence some events even while sitting there, maybe cause the fake dragon Svetlana to miss a trap, or miss her step, or have some random phenomenon interfere while she was fighting but she was keeping her hands clean of that. While she had her own cues, she wasn't alone in being that powerful. The Elven Queen was someone like her as well, and only one knew of the other's existence. So if she were to cause anything to happen outside, she'd essentially be giving away her presence, and a rather big trump card. The Queen didn't know she existed yet.

As for why that was important: I'd still need to re-emerge outside, and she alone could help me hide myself from the Elven Queen until I was strong enough to face her directly, and the damn army she was building. But she'd need to stay as non-interfering as possible to make that happen. Which meant I wouldn't be able to utilize her vast prowess even if I wanted to. But that was okay.

This was my fight, after all. While the odds were skewed against me in some aspects, if she could balance them out while I worked, that in itself was more than sufficient.

I watched for a bit longer, happy to see so many people escaping, before my vision started to blur, and I was back in my dreamscape.

"My apologies, Master," Ceil murmured. "Even passive observation carries a weight. Prolonged sight risks catching the Queen's eye."

I nodded, blowing out a long breath as I flopped onto my back. "Well... at least the knife-ears are scrambling."

"Exquisitely so," Ceil purred. "Which inevitably brings about the corollary."

"Yeah, yeah, they're going to trigger the ritual sooner than I expected."

"Precisely."

Too bad I wouldn't be able to see that happen at all as my time was coming as well. Not that I wanted to see that happen in the first place.

I had Lysska and the gang escape yesterday in waking-world time, which meant it was much longer here. Vasilisa had escaped with her as well, mourning the loss of her precious alchemy tower, however reluctantly. A few of the friends I'd made were safe now too. Viera, Sasha, and the people they'd introduced me to were safe too. The paranoid old fart from the Iron Pact and the little guy who hung around with him were already gone, to my surprise. I'd known that old fart was suspecting something, but I had to give it to him, he'd taken his unofficial protégé and run away much earlier. They'd even taken some of the safer artefacts from the Iron Pact's underground depository. The kid I'd possessed when I killed those elven cultists underground— Brana— and her sister had been taken away by Lysska as well.

More or less, everyone I had a certain connection with was safe. While I wished I could have done the same for the entire city, I knew it just wasn't possible. Still, the genius plan Alice and Sybil had worked on together was more than enough. If I couldn't save them all, every life I yanked that way from the edge of death's maw was a positive.

Part of me still felt a pang of despair, but a much greater part was resolute, looking forward to the final part of this trial. The time was nigh. Just as outside was in the moments of final chaos before everything would be engulfed and consumed, here too the end hour was nigh.

I stood up and took a deep breath.

"Am I ready?"

"Yes, you are."

I smiled and vanished on the spot, waking up.

***

"And this is the said inner sanctum."

I looked around and saw massive spires of smoky black crystal rising from the equally polished black marble floor. Lanterns hung on the walls and chandeliers high above, though they barely kept the dusky black fog at bay. But as quiet and eerie as it was, it was also tranquil.

In the middle of the chamber stood a pitch-black crystal. It radiated that darkness in waves, with indents forming on its sides that spiderwebbed across the ground, reaching for distant mechanisms in the works.

"Damn, Serath," I whistled softly, circling the monolith. "You lot hammered this together in record time."

Serath looked a bit sheepish. "It's because, Miss Jade, the Fold itself assists with such tasks. It is not fully automated or easy, per se, but if we have enough materials and crafters working on the minute details, all that's left is for someone like me— as the Fold's current sovereign— to bind the layers of its creation."

I nodded, getting the gist of it all.

The crystal in front of me was essentially the hub of all the Fold's protective layers, the Kovraths' home in the Abyssal region. It was shaped like an onion, one could say, with each layer of that onion having a different defensive hub of barriers and one core barrier, unique to each layer.

The Fold itself had a fascinating property: it could move. I was aware of this, but as soon as I connected the dots, that the Fold had hubs for protective barriers, a thought crossed my mind.

What if I used divinity instead of dark mana in the Fold's layers? What would happen if we were to travel like that?

With someone piloting the Fold, everyone would have a safe place to travel in. Before that, my idea had been rather crude— I could just cover everyone up and simultaneously cast Telekinesis on all of them, wrapping them in a layer of divinity, and sort of hurl them along. Rough, but workable. But the moment the connection about the Fold clicked in my head, the first thing I did was confirm whether any outside interference could bypass that sort of protective barrier. While I couldn't imitate the Spirit World's existential erasure, I asked Ceil for help, if she could whip up something similar. She was more than happy to assist. I could have just asked her directly about it all, but I felt like I was being too dependent on her lately, and I wanted to do this on my own. Soon enough, my theory was working.

That was when I decided how we would be leaving. We would traverse the currents of the Spirit World from the ship called the Fold.

With that in mind, I had Serath make some customizations for me, namely, providing a nexus to each protective layer of the Fold, as there wasn't one yet. They had never needed to create one, because it was too resource-intensive to operate such a nexus. There were more logistics surrounding it, like how the Fold replenished its barriers using ambient mana from the Abyss, and shifting it all to one nexus would hinder that quality or create an overall efficiency loss.

But well, that wouldn't be required now anyway, so I had them proceed with the solution Curious and I had come up with.

And there it was before my eyes, the stuff I wanted. My eyes glowed as I closed in and channeled pure divinity into it. The dark mana in the crystal fled the moment that molten, iridescent gold surged through it, glowing a bright rainbow. I felt a prompt asking which layer I wanted to reinforce. I selected the outermost layer. For a second, the nexus processed my request, and I felt my divinity drain. It took just two points of divinity and from the darkened window, I watched the final layer turn from black to saturated rainbow, glowing distinctly against the dusky black ambience.

The way it was designed now gave a tactical advantage as well. It wouldn't take more than a second for me to switch the barrier from outer to inner. I could control its reach and functions from a single chamber. Not just that— the chamber had different enchantments that would help me, or well, Curious, deal with multiple theoretical situations: if a barrier were to be compromised, if something sneaked inside, and many other things. We wouldn't know what we might encounter in the Spirit World before we finally emerged, so every sort of paranoia was warranted.

Happy with its functions, I backed off. While I wouldn't need to refresh the barrier once it was erected right now, I knew that in the Spirit World, I would. For now, I asked Serath to revert it, and he nodded, placing his hand on the crystal, only to struggle as he tried to get his dark mana to replace the divinity.

Well, that one was on me for forgetting: divinity doesn't take kindly to lesser mana trying to tell it what to do. I placed my own hand on it and pulled the divinity back in. I didn't get the two points back— it dissipated shortly after— but it did leave the crystal empty for Serath to use.

I took my leave soon after talking with him. He had some errands of his own that Curious had given him; he would meet me afterward in the central city. This area was mostly given to Curious, who liked handling the administration and logistics of getting everyone in, deciding which space would be what, and who would be where, that sort of thing. I smiled. It was quite nice being able to delegate my work to the clones.

But my eyes hardened soon after. I made my way back to the central city. It was mostly empty, as everyone was gathering inside the Fold, except a few warriors who would be able to fight with me. The rest of the time I had spent here was getting to know everyone's powers and how they worked, so I could say with certainty that we made a good team.

This was the final push before they would get to taste freedom, discarding the Spirit World itself, as taking care of most threats within would be on me. Only I would be able to fight against its pressure. For them, they just had to ride and hope it all went well.

But right now, they could do something.

I knew it wouldn't be simple, if anything I had learned about my past selves was correct. Once I knew everyone was here, from the first ones I met, Alexei, Markus, Vesna, and the others, to the Kovraths, Serath and his generals, Lily and her entire platoon of bunny mages— every capable fighter was here.

I held all the Keys in my hand as I cast a gaze at all my clones. They all nodded. The Keys were vibrating in each other's presence. I checked within myself; I was more or less ready. Full mana, full divinity.

I was constantly getting a mental prompt asking if I wanted to do it. I had been ignoring it for a while, but it was finally time. I raised my claws as I finally accepted the prompt. The Keys vibrated at a much higher frequency before circling each other so fast there were sparks in the air. The spark circle kept rising and rising, frequency increasing so much it was harder and harder to keep an eye on— before it finally vanished.

Everyone watched with bated breath toward the sky, which looked eerily tranquil… before a gigantic tear appeared within it.