Deathseed: Chapters 39-40 (Patreon)

Lots of new patrons lately even though I haven't been doing anything... any of you want to speak up? Are you new to my work, or jumping in because the book is nearing its conclusion? There are lots of strange movements on Patreon that I never know how to interpret.

Anyway, more climactic chapters this week! Time for some developments I expected everyone to predict, so I played things a little differently.

-

Chapter 39

Nauda had imagined losing the battle in her nightmares, but she had never imagined that her hope could turn to despair so quickly. Nanjuma and Senka were gone, Fiyu was suffering within the suppression, and Theo lashed out futilely.

She had to assume that Esaire had specifically developed this technique in order to stop them, including every single ability they possessed. It certainly seemed like it canceled all Theo's techniques and Fiyu had confirmed that the dome was actually a sphere, so they couldn't tunnel their way out. If one of them had soulcrafted a radically different technique, they might have another option, but it had an enormous amount of cantae to block surprises.

Esaire hadn't bothered to include anything for Nauda, because she didn't matter.

Theo seemed to believe his best hope was to generate a singularity. Every time he began it, Esaire showed up to interrupt him. He was too occupied by the battle outside to land any fatal blows, but Theo and Fiyu were effectively pinned. The longer they stayed suppressed, the worse the overall battle became and the closer defeat came to inevitable.

Ignored by everyone, Nauda dropped to the ground. Not in despair, but to enter her soulhome. Navim's armament would protect her a little longer, hopefully long enough.

She picked up the heavenspear and weighed it with trembling hands. If it came down to Fiyu's life or her own advancement, she would choose Fiyu. But Nanjuma and Senka and Navim had bought them a little time... surely she could do better.

Nauda wildly pushed through all her gathered materials, hoping that she would find something she'd overlooked. She was so close to finished. Everything in her soulhome was polished except for the empty plinth at the top of her death tower. Anything strong enough would do... how could there be nothing suitable? They'd spent everything they had in preparation for the battle.

Within her soul, Nauda sank to the floor just as her body had. Even if she used the heavenspear, it was hopeless. As a weak Authority she would barely be able to turn the tide. Maybe at most she could save Fiyu and Theo. But then the deathseed would bloom and drain the life from all Nlukoko and her failure would be complete...

The deathseed.

Tearing through her supplies, Nauda grabbed the partially developed deathseeds they'd taken from Myufuru and grown further on Slest. Maybe not strong enough for Authorities to advance, but almost too strong for a Ruler. She gripped the strongest of the seeds and sprinted toward her death tower.

When they'd first acquired the deathseeds she'd dismissed them because they were actually alive, not quite fitting. But there was another material that didn't quite match: the root that Nanjuma had given her. As soon as she got to her second floor, she skidded to a halt beside it.

"I'm not letting you take everything away from me." Nauda gripped the deathseed in her fist and pushed it against the living root.

Immediately the deathseed began draining life away from it, but she pushed harder, forcing the opposite elements together. Life and anti-life... she gripped the deathseed tighter, willing it to destroy itself. It began to sprout dark tendrils, as if realizing what she was doing and trying to resist, but it was too late.

Nauda killed the deathseed and its draining stopped. She was left with a dried out root and a sprouted seed that radiated death instead of anti-life. Both a close enough match. At first she stared, not quite believing that she had done it, then she scrambled to put the deathseed in place. With her final chamber filled, the upward flow of her death tower finally felt right.

Was she ready? Nauda had finished building her pyramid atop her life tower at Fiyu's insistence, so she rushed to grab her other ascension materials.

She scooped up both the lightegg and darkegg, juggling them as she headed to the roof. The ascension would be brutal no matter what, and everything was already at stake, so she might as well risk it all. Her only question was which one she wanted to use.

At a glance the lightegg seemed more appropriate for her. Or was it too obvious, light for a conventional Tatian? She liked the idea of using the darkegg from Fiyu and hoped that it could bring them closer together in some way. Yet she hadn't been drawn to darkness as an element... Nauda stood on her pyramid and weighed them between her hands.

There was no time for a slow ascension like Theo had done, even if she had the willpower for it. Still holding both eggs, Nauda began to throw her will against the heavens, beginning the ascension process. That bought her a little more time to think as she struggled upward.

She wasn't Theo. Aside from the obvious, her soulhome wasn't designed with her field surrounding it. Actually, the most calcified region of her soul was the center between her towers, where her old soulhome had melted down.

She wasn't Fiyu, either. It was their differences that drew them together.

The lightegg and darkegg were beginning to soften in Nauda's hands and the wind was picking up around her. Soon she would need to dedicate her full mind to ascending. As she thought about who she really was, she realized that the solution had been in front of her all along.

Nauda smashed both eggs together with all her strength.

Shards of light and darkness exploded between her hands and scattered across her soulhome. They cascaded off the inner sides of her three towers, mixing together before tumbling to the foundation of her soul. She saw them start to melt, but there was no time to watch. She would trust Theo's theories on foundations, just like like she trusted Fiyu to protect her while she soulcrafted.

Gritting her teeth, Nauda began climbing up the side of her pyramid. She managed to stagger to the top, but it wasn't enough. Her blueprint was spread between three different towers, not unified. How could she break through?

As the rain began to pound against her, Nauda focused on one cantae flow at a time. First she extended her hand, imagining herself grasping the spiraling currents of her staff tower. Her will exploded from it, one column pounding against the heavens.

Her mind switched to her death tower as the cantae began to invade her soulhome. Everything she had soulcrafted trembled violently, but she managed to retain her focus. Her willpower rushed directly up her death tower, strengthening instead of breaking. A second column erupted.

When Nauda tried to grasp the life tower beneath her, she faltered. She was already exhausted from the last-second soulcrafting, breaking the eggs, and the other towers. Her spirit was eroded by wind and pummeled by rain. There was nothing left.

Had her soulcrafting been flawed? Was trying to take on both the lightegg and darkegg too ambitious? Or was the design of her soul simply not enough, in the end?

Fire began to shoot up Nauda's legs and she cried out in pain as she faced her failure.

~ ~ ~

Fiyu's fingers trembled as she gripped the weirkey within her cloak. She knew the terrible logic of travel between worlds and understood that if they fled, Nlukoko would die. Friend Nauda would hate her... but they might all die if they remained within the trap.

When it became clear that Friend Theo would not find a solution, Fiyu gripped her weirkey and pulled them away.

Only to fail.

All around her, invisible to her density senses until she pressed, there were stones that radiated strange cantae. When she tried to use the weirkey and envisioned the world folding up around her, it snagged on those stones and returned to normal. She could sense more all around the palace and deathseed... the city had been prepared so that no one could escape.

Fiyu knew she should cling to hope, but it slipped through her fingers. The facts were too overwhelming. She would never finish exploring the Nine Worlds. She would never see Relative Guchiro again. She would never find out what her relationship with Friend Nauda might have become.

Her eyes dropped to her dear friend at the moment that she exploded.

Cantae erupted from Friend Nauda and filled the dome, lighting up every hexagon binding them in place. Then it condensed down, absorbed into her body. Friend Nauda didn't hesitate, she leapt directly toward the dome. Her fingers pushed against the cantae resistance, then they grabbed one of the hexagons. She began tearing apart the trap with her bare hands.

As the facts against them changed, the hope in Fiyu's heart rekindled. The suppressive technique had been designed to shut down herself and Friend Theo, not Friend Nauda. It resisted other techniques, but it couldn't stand up to someone with a soulhome filled with enhancement chambers. Raw force broke through and then Friend Nauda grabbed her staff and thrust out.

She bound one of the enemy Farmguards and swept him to the side, crashing through all his allies. As they tumbled together, the suppressive dome finally collapsed.

Only Enemy Arceon remained, and he started to raise a hand toward Friend Nauda. Before he could, Friend Theo was acting, driving him off with torsion bolts even as he flattened all the Farmguards around them. The Deuxan stared at them briefly, then retreated in terror.

Enemy Esaire returned for another strike and Fiyu felt his entire body stiffen in surprise as he saw that his trap had been destroyed. He raised both of his hovering swords and flew them down toward Friend Nauda, trying to impale her while she was still occupied.

Fiyu would not allow this to happen. She unleashed a new lightstorm, and finally free of the suppressive dome, it lit up the sky. Enemy Esaire had no choice but to rapidly retreat, spinning both his blades to deflect some of her storm and still battered backwards.

From the edge of her senses, Fiyu sensed his sister appear and manifest her giant sword. It swung down to cleave Friend Nauda and Fiyu desperately tried to reorient herself. Too slow, too weak. Friend Theo was only just turning, his gravitational field coming too late. The giant blade thundered down into the palace.

And Friend Nauda caught it over her shoulder.

She grinned and then wrapped her arm around the side. Raising her staff arm, Friend Nauda tightened her grip around the weapon. Somehow she wrenched it from Enemy Amaeli's control and leapt into the air, swinging it around and clubbing the enemy Authority with her own weapon. The woman shot back over the battlefield as her weapon dissolved.

"Nauda?" Fiyu stared at her with a smile. "How?"

"I almost didn't make it," Nauda said, mirroring her smile, "but when I thought about you sacrificing so much for my dream..."

Unfortunately, their conversation could not continue. Now that she was free, Fiyu's senses spread over the city to take account. Ally Nanjuma had not been defeated and Associate Krikree had yet to appear, so all hope was not lost. She sensed one threat immediately: the Blazekindler was burning across the sky toward Friend Nauda, surrounded by powerful flames.

Fiyu intercepted him with a storm of light. This time, her bolts penetrated deep into his flames and pushed him away.

It seemed that Friend Theo had taken to the air to fight Enemy Esaire. Friend Nauda noticed that Fiyu had defended her and flashed a beautiful smile, but she was pursuing Enemy Amaeli.

They may be separating, but they were still fighting together. Fiyu smiled and rose into the air to face her own opponent.

-

Chapter 40

After his critical error that had nearly finished them, Theo scrutinized the battle with new urgency. Even as he traded cantae bolts with Esaire, he used every sense to take stock.

On his side, they were shaken but not heavily injured. Fiyu had spent a fair amount of cantae, hopefully offset by her new heart chamber. As a fresh Authority, Nauda was flush with energy, a physical monster even if her soulcrafting was a floor behind her new peers. He caught a glimpse of Nanjuma, bloodied but still fighting.

Senka had never emerged from the water and he'd have to hope she couldn't drown.

Against them stood the majority of the enemy army. Esaire, Amaeli, and the Blazekindler were all actively fighting. Ariano had been severely injured but not killed, so Theo could only hope he would retreat. Arceon and at least three Tatian Rulers remained, though they were stuck on the ground. After his near-fatal oversight, Theo didn't ignore the Farmguard either: there were around fifty Tatian Farmguards and perhaps twenty Deuxan soldiers.

A silver bolt nearly struck Theo and he amended his calculations. Two of the armament towers were still standing and they were much stronger than he'd first estimated.

"You thought you'd ruined me, didn't you?" Esaire stopped attacking to shout at him from the other side of the palace. "You thought my spirit was broken, that I'd never face you again. But you only lit a new fire under me!"

"And you used it to enslave a bunch of farmers!" Theo launched another set of torsion bolts, just like he had before.

Before the bolts could be intercepted by Esaire's swords, Theo cast a portal in front of several. They reemerged behind Esaire, slamming into his back. He staggered and barely managed to deflect the bolts still coming from the other side, but his body was durable. It looked like he'd rebuilt his Corporeal Floor and its connections to the rest of his soulhome had been strengthened when he ascended.

"This isn't about justice." Esaire scowled at him and began gesturing to someone below. "This is about family. If you had just worked with us, the vendetta would have been over, but now that you're standing in our way, we have to trample you."

Some of the Farmguards and all the Deuxans were marching to the edge of the island, firing cantae bolts up toward him. Unlike the towers, these attacks were insignificant. Theo flicked the nearest away and in the same gesture cast a gravitational field to drop them.

The soulhomes underneath him shivered but held. He saw that the small army below had cornerstones of bright Deuxan materials, no doubt designed by Esaire.

"Did you forget?" Esaire asked with a laugh. "I stopped your technique on Deuxan and I can stop it here."

"You stopped someone who hadn't even been soulcrafting for a year." Theo put more force into his gravity and added a second reversed field, crushing the soulcrafters between the two, and their soulhomes began to shake wildly. "Did you expect brute force resistance would work on me now?"

Cornerstones began to shatter underneath them, knocking the army in all directions. Many of them collapsed where they stood and the remainder desperately tried to maintain their soulhomes as Esaire's cornerstones crumbled.

The Deuxan man's smile vanished. He unleashed an assault faster than any of his previous, a mix of sapphire bolts and flashing swords. Even as he did so, he drew a saber of pure cantae and lunged out to spear Theo.

Who wasn't there. As soon as Esaire deployed all his cantae, Theo stepped back into a portal. Esaire reacted instantly now, his cantae saber flashing around him on all sides. It would have been an excellent counter-blow, if Theo had been trying to portal behind him.

Instead, Theo emerged near one of the flying sabers. He managed to grab it in both hands before Esaire could levitate it away and broke the metal over his knee.

"You're being kept alive by tricks and allies." Esaire glared at him, then pulled a Tatian flower from his soulhome and crushed it. "I have some new ones too."

At first Theo remained alert for a new attack or weapon, such as a hidden armament tower. Then he felt a power descending from the sky and realized that things were worse. To his surprise, a Landguard woman appeared over the city of Nlukoko.

Her eyes widened in horror. "How could it get this bad?" She turned toward Esaire and put her hands on her hips. "You said you would keep order no matter what!"

"Unless you help us stop them, your agreement will collapse. Help us finish them."

The Landguard turned and unleashed cantae toward Theo. Unimaginative, but with a full Authority's power. He cast an anti-mass point in front of him and it was barely enough to push most of the attacks aside. The plan wasn't to resist forever, though, just buy a little time.

"The Landguard is supposed to be neutral!" he shouted. "You're doing battle alongside the ones oppressing your own people!"

She shook her head fiercely. "The others are already turning against me over this. It's too late for second guessing. I have to prove to the community that this was the right decision."

Though the Landguard redoubled her assault, Theo kept his gravity sense on Esaire. The Deuxan man was still lightning fast, skirting around the cantae bolts and then flying in from behind. Even expecting it, Theo barely managed to step into a portal in time.

Theo stepped out not far away and stared down both his opponents. He hadn't imagined that Esaire could find a Landguard willing to throw away everything, but of course he would have spent the past months doing his own political maneuvering. There was no guarantee that Theo could beat Esaire alone, much less two Authorities together.

The tactics of this battle were about to get ugly.

~ ~ ~

Being an Authority was incredible. Nauda's first battle wasn't against any of her opponents, it was just keeping the elation rushing through her veins from throwing her headlong into danger.

She rushed around Nlukoko faster than ever before, leaping from building to building. It wasn't just that she was stronger, her cantae cloaked her like a warm bath, so instead of crashing into buildings, she effortlessly vaulted off them. Since all the other Authorities had more experience flying than her, she stayed on the ground and merely let her cantae carry her in jumps that would have been impossible not long ago.

While she came to grips with her new power, she tried to keep all the enemy forces off her friends. Amaeli was still targeting her and had gotten troublingly close at times. Nauda had even taken a few glancing blows, but her chasmheart pumped like never before and the shallow cuts were already regenerating. Occasionally she took a stray cantae bolt from an enemy Farmguard and they felt like nothing more than pebbles bouncing off her skin. Bondsfungi and notemeralds burned together like never before.

The towers were much bigger threats. Nauda leapt around Nlukoko in their range, inciting them to fire on her. A few bolts had damaged buildings, but she thought the strategy was mostly working. Whenever she tried to attack one of the towers, however, Amaeli or the other tower would target her and drive her back.

Alright, defense instead of offense. Nauda plunged into the lake.

It was strangely peaceful floating under the sapphire lake. The battle overhead was nothing but ripples and diffuse glowing colors. Her body still surged with strength and she swam underneath the city, targeting a familiar point of vitality.

Nauda leapt into one of the water tubes and rode it long enough to launch herself into the air, closing on Nanjuma. He held an injured arm against his side and floated near the edge, struggling to use his water sphere to help the others. When he saw her he blinked, then she awkwardly grabbed his shoulder to keep herself in the air.

"I am glad to see you have ascended, Nauda, but this battle is-"

"Eat this." Nauda pulled a honey cake out of her soulhome and shoved it into his mouth. "I made it as a Ruler, but it might help."

"It was reinforced by your ascension," Nanjuma said through sticky bites. The healing cantae pulsed down through his body and his chest swelled with a strong breath. "That will do."

"Can you run interference? I need to take out our main objective."

Nanjuma nodded and flew out with renewed energy. While he fought Amaeli, Nauda sprinted back through the city, this time toward a new target. Overhead she could feel the two other Authorities doing battle and it was surreal to realize that their life force wasn't stronger than hers now.

Eventually Amaeli got the upper hand and knocked Nanjuma through an arc of water. But he emerged from the spray a moment later, grinning with blood and honey running through his beard. He would be fine.

His distraction allowed Nauda to close in on the deathseed tree. She'd seen a few of the others try to target it while flying overhead, especially Fiyu, but the enemy had built a durable line of wards. That was good enough for a stray technique, not a sustained assault.

Nauda hit the wall of energy with her shoulder first and stumbled in shock when she smashed straight through. This barrier was nowhere near as powerful as the suppressive dome. She shouldn't have been surprised, given how much of their army Esaire had poured into that trap.

On the other side, she saw that the deathseed wasn't entirely undefended. An assortment of Ariano's Farmguard, plus Arceon. The old Deuxan had been tending a wound but now pushed to his feet, glowering at her.

"Stay where you are or-"

Instead of talking, Nauda just leapt at him. She let the others' cantae bolts slide harmlessly off her and used her staff to knock away Arceon's startled attack. Then she was in his range, grabbing his throat with her nullification glove. It was shockingly easy to use his body as a weapon, smashing him into the other soulcrafters. 

Nauda spun among them in a whirl of blows and arcing wards, completely breaking their formation. For the first time, she actually felt the power of an Authority and understood how they could dominate others. But she intended to use it to defend the innocent, at long last.

No time for distractions. Nauda threw the unconscious Arceon aside and leapt for the black tree. She had expected someone to intercept her, and combatants across the battlefield noticed how close she'd come, but she was so much faster as an Authority that they were all too late.

For a moment she hesitated with her fist raised. The deathseed inside her had cooperated, filling her last chamber with dead cantae. This one could be even stronger, and it wasn't like she could give the people of Nlukoko their life force back.

But she felt the pain and suffering emanating from it. A hunger that threatened to burst forth and consume everything around them. She wouldn't risk the lives of the people she meant to save.

Her fist smashed the deathseed to splinters and shattered the trunk of the dark tree. As the tree's boughs sagged toward the ground, the flow of anti-life finally dissipated. Nauda stood over it, catching her breath more from the exhilaration than the effort. At least the worst couldn't come to pass now.

"Listen." She turned to stare at the remaining Farmguards, who quailed before her. "If you want to surrender, throw yourselves in the lake. If you really think Ariano is worth fighting for... I'm right here."

They all fled. Nauda was just beginning to allow herself to smile when she felt an inferno of vital energy in the air above.

"It was so close!" The Blazekindler had been fighting Fiyu, but as he roared in rage, his sphere expanded until it burned like an emerald sun.

The enemy wasn't going to retreat just because they'd failed. Nauda gripped her staff and got ready to fight to the bitter end.