Endburn: Chapters 19-20 (Patreon)

Chapter 19

Because he hadn't been on the battlefield, Theo hadn't had the opportunity to notice the shift in the Tymetronese strategy. Everyone was claiming they had noticed in retrospect, but considering that it had still taken them off guard, he guessed that it had gone without notice.

Essentially, Tymetron had backed off very slightly, using their reserve Dominions less frequently, sometimes pretending to lose positions without a real fight. Compared to the Norronese armies they had numerous reserves, but the attrition of the war had taken a toll on them as well. Once they had all of their strongest soulcrafters fully recovered, they hit back, all at once.

Now that he had ascended, Theo was confident in taking on any of Tymetron's Dominions except Jazin... so of course the empire sent him out again and again. Once Theo had faced an army with two of the others at once and had been holding his own, but Jazin was sent after him again. When they weren't fighting, Jazin was easily capable of neutralizing other Dominions via his implosions.

With the two of them effectively canceling each other out, that meant nine Tymetronese Dominions to five on the Norronese side. And Theo expected it to get worse.

Theo had been fighting for three solid days with barely a break, the time slipping away between weirkey jumps as he and Jazin bounced across the lines of the war. Even when he wasn't confronting Jazin, it wasn't easy to take out armies because they refused to cave as easily. Their Strongholds knew they'd have reinforcements soon and their lines were steadily marching forward, pushing him to his limits. Being stronger than Strongholds was a very different thing than being able to ignore them.

A horn sounded over the Asplundat side and Theo glanced back, momentarily disoriented. Was that the sound of a retreat? Why wouldn't he have heard it before? He'd been jumping between so many locations it was a miracle he could remember that this was Asplundat territory.

There was a new group marching forward to guard the retreat, which seemed suicidal. They were just another squadron of soulcrafters in stone armor, perhaps a bit blockier than average. Theo didn't have the spare attention to save them, so he kept an eye on their advance and hoped they knew what they were doing.

The first attacks struck the advancing troops and their stone armor exploded... outward, sending shards cascading back toward Tymetron. It seemed like a suicide attack until Theo saw that the troops were still marching forward, except the stone armor underneath was stained red.

Bloodcrete. He'd known that the Asplundat Movement hadn't completely stopped producing it, but everything had seemed peaceful between the factions. It was a suicide attack after all, just a much slower sort of suicide.

When the marching Asplundats unleashed their next attack, he saw the ferocity of their new bloodcrete, powered by their own life. Their first attack impacted the enemy lines like a technique from a much stronger soulcrafter and they charged into the gap. Tymetron tried to crush them and regretted it, because the bloodcrete-users plowed forward with little thought for their own injuries. Even when enslaving gold techniques were used against them, the blood seemed to stain the gold.

That alone was enough to shake Tymetron, but then the Authorities burst from their hidden position within the crimson ranks. Each wore the familiar Asplundat stone suit, except these streamed with blood as they charged forward, tearing into the ranks.

Part of Theo didn't want to get involved, but he was already casting gravitational fields to support the new advance. There had been a time when he had fought to stop the production of bloodcrete and considered it one of the greatest threats to Norron. Even now, he didn't like its use or the cost in human lives. The Asplundat Movement was burning the futures of its own soulcrafters in order to ruin the enemy.

Given the state of the war, he wouldn't be able to argue it was unnecessary. And judging from the bloodstained stone beneath him, it was much too late for that.

~

No one could see Fiyu, so she fretted within her bubble of stealth. Of course she was deeply concerned over the war, from Lifemate Nauda fighting on her own to all of the civilians suffering. But this crisis had a very personal risk to her.

Given the sudden assault, there had been no choice but to send Relative Guchiro onto the battlefield even though he wasn't ready. Currently he floated above the Ruling Cities army, his back straight, his arms crossed, occasionally throwing out a spike of darkness. He had already repaired his primary entrance and there wasn't a hint of weakness in his techniques, but she could tell how much he was feigning strength.

So far they had been lucky. The first Dominion that had gone up against them was one of the weaker ones, with simple Tymetronese armor, and had not been a problem. The second had been a large man in demonplate armor and Fiyu had attacked him from stealth before her relative was tested.

But if they encountered someone fast, like the scythe-wielder, or someone who blanketed the battlefield like the storm creator, her relative's limitations would become obvious. Worse, those would be the very situations where Fiyu's ability to intercede in the battle would be reduced. So long as Tymetron respected her relative for all the skill he had displayed in the past, this strategy would hold. Inevitably, however, the battles would not align and Tymetron would realize there was a weakness in the Norronese lines.

Once that happened, her relative could be in grave danger. Beyond that, it would result in even worse casualties, including likely loss of civilians. Through her worry Fiyu felt sorrow for the people she was meant to protect, as the best they could do was manage a retreat, which inevitably left some behind.

The truth was that Norron had grown complacent, thinking that they were strong enough to face a much larger empire. Now that the enemy's strategy changed and they deployed more of their strength, that confidence was crumbling away. As that process fed back into itself, their losses would become far worse until eventually they formed a tide of human misery sweeping the continent.

Suddenly a Stronghold emerged from the Tymetronese army, preparing a direct attack. That was another emergency scenario, because the right Stronghold could show that Relative Guchiro was not as strong as he pretended to be.

Fiyu flashed to intercept, her blade cutting through golden armor and drawing a little blood. The enemy didn't retreat, not the way they would have before, and instead lashed out in retaliation. She had practiced a great deal with Lifemate Nauda, so she was not overwhelmed by the hand-to-hand combat and left another bloody cut across her opponent's side.

They still didn't retreat, instead flooding cantae through the air to counter her stealth technique. Fiyu secretly breathed a sigh of relief as she prepared for a personal fight, since that was less risky than her relative becoming involved. Most likely Tymetron would not question why the two Ichili were fighting together, at least not yet.

She had bought her relative a week, but he would need more time to fully repair his soulhome. Fiyu knew that wouldn't be enough, and hoped the rest wasn't purchased with lives.

~

Nauda plunged into the hail of gold, driving herself forward even as the foul material slid off her. Thanks to the deadgold in her gauntlet, she could melt away most of the storm, but if the Dominion generating the storm focused attention on her, concentrated blows could still hurt.

After a failed attempt in the air, she was sprinting on the ground, planning to use raw muscle to accelerate faster than her opponent would anticipate. Currently the Dominion wasn't paying much attention, instead continuing to oppress the Asplundat position behind her. Hopefully that would finally be a fatal mistake. When she got close enough, with Tymetronese soulcrafters closing in around her, Nauda bent her knees and leapt.

Her cantae might be a Stronghold's, but she had reinforced her body every floor of the way, most recently in a statue that perfectly mirrored herself. When Nauda pushed off, she shot into the sky in an instant.

She only had a split second to observe the Dominion unleashing the golden storm before Nauda planted her gauntlet in the other woman's face. It was a good blow, and she felt something break, but it wasn't enough to disable a Dominion. Cantae slammed into her, different from the storm, and she plummeted back down with equal speed.

When she struck, her own body acted like a bombshell against the Tymetronese army, blowing a hole in their lines. Nauda pulled back to her feet, wiping some blood from her lip. Her belt of notemeralds was screaming, trying to offload a Dominion's cantae, but more damage had been done to the army than to her.

"You are absurdly tough for a Stronghold," the enemy told her, "but you are no Dominion. Your masters are fools to send you out against opponents you cannot possibly defeat."

"We'll see," Nauda said, rolling her shoulders.

"Are you so deluded? Only your deadgold allows you to compete with us, otherwise you would be outmatched. You have no idea the gap between us."

In response Nauda only flexed her gauntlet and got ready. So long as the Dominion was talking, she wasn't attacking the army. Nauda had no delusions about her ability to win this battle, she was just buying time for everyone else.

Remarkably, it seemed like she had held off defeat a little longer, because the Dominion retreated over the Tymetronese army. Other soulcrafters swarmed in, including plenty of Authorities and Strongholds who could cause trouble for Nauda, so she shifted to evasion as she tried to retreat back to her own side. So long as she was distracting all of them, she was still doing her job.

Somehow she had kept this up for weeks, despite testing even her reserves of stamina. Nauda forced herself to keep going with thoughts that she could most easily sacrifice this time. Guchiro needed soulcrafting most desperately, Fiyu could ascend next, and Theo should have been soulcrafting his new floor. Not to mention all of the beleaguered Norronese soulcrafters who risked death every time they went into battle again.

For her part, Nauda would have liked to soulcraft more, but could sacrifice progress for their sake. Her most important project was continuing to tend the reverse tree, and she could only do so much watering, fertilizing, and trimming on a daily basis. Even as she fought it grew steadily, supporting her a little more each day.

Retreating to the Asplundat lines felt wrong, since so many were dying across the continent, but Nauda knew her limits. Impeding an enemy Dominion could make a difference, but throwing herself against the mass of troops would just be another drop of blood in a sea of it. There was only one thing she could meaningfully do during this break in the violence.

Since she had stopped the golden storm, some of the Asplundat soulcrafters were emerging from their fortified positions. Most notably, she spotted a great sphere of stone, stained crimson. The traditional Movement's blueprint for Strongholds wasn't seen as often here, because they were too large a target for enemy Dominions. But she had come to respect how it could dominate a battlefield with strikes of stone, made all the more lethal by the bloodcrete mixed in.

Nauda flew directly to the side and knocked on the sphere as if it was a door. Others feared the red stone, but it couldn't harm her skin on contact. After a moment, the soulcrafter within opened a passage through the thick stone to the seat of control at the center.

Inside the sphere, he was just an old man. Thinner than many soulcrafters, and if he had been in good health before, now he looked ragged and bloodshot. Nauda shook her head sadly as she approached him and extended the best honeycake she could manage.

"This might keep you going a little longer," she told him. "It's the best I can do."

"Thank you, child." The old Stronghold took an aggressive bite and then closed his eyes in relief. After chewing for a time, he spoke more quietly. "You haven't condemned us. Most in the Ruling Cities fear bloodcrete."

"If you didn't sacrifice innocent lives to make it, I won't object."

"Long ago, some bloodcrete was made from criminals or volunteers, but we have been using Tymetronese blood."

"Then I can live with it," Nauda said. She reached out to touch his arm and he flinched as if he hadn't been touched in a long time. "But why choose this? You've accomplished so much, and even if your soulhome can survive the bloodcrete..."

"Someone will be sacrificed into the jaws of war, and I would prefer it be me." The old man gave her a sad smile. "I know I could never be Citizen Dominion. At least, this way, I can buy us a little more time."

She didn't ask what he was buying time for: sometimes that meant time for relatives to evacuate, sometimes it just meant survival. Facing an endburn, they didn't have a choice. Anyone who refused to flee to another world had their lives on the line.

For a time they remained together, launching techniques into the battlefield from afar. Nauda wished that she had her old staff, because she could have bound enemies from a great distance now. Still, her deadgold gauntlet could serve as a good defense even if it was short range, so she moved to intercept projectiles.

It was only a matter of time before the enemy Dominion attacked again, however, and Nauda doubted the same trick would work twice. She was still trying to come up with a new plan when she heard that Asplundat horn again. The last time they had used it was when they brought bloodcrete onto the field... surely they weren't subjecting even more of their own to the caustic material.

Silence fell over the battlefield and Nauda realized that this would be different.

A woman emerged from the heart of the Asplundat army, wearing their traditional tunic with a blood-red sash across the chest. Her eyes flashed with startling anger, but Nauda forgot all about that when the woman began to fly: she was using Dominion-tier cantae.

"I am the Sword of Asplundat!" she declared, projecting her voice across the entire battlefield. "Citizen Dominion no longer stands alone, and the Movement's armies are now led by both of us! Leave our lands and never return, or your empire will crumble as all empires crumble!"

The Tymetronese Dominion didn't bother responding in words, she simply floated forward and began generating another storm. Before it could be unleashed, the woman calling herself the Sword of Asplundat raised her hand and a bolt of amber lightning crackled across the battlefield. It leapt from soulcrafter to soulcrafter, melting gold as it went, and ended with the Dominion, obliterating the growing storm.

Not just another Dominion - one who had soulcrafted specifically to fight Tymetron. As the Asplundat army cheered and the Tymetronese side quailed, even Nauda felt a surge of hope.

That wasn't even the end: Nauda sensed a strong life force behind enemy lines that had previously been hidden. Not an enemy: it was Melitta. This had all been coordinated with the Wavefront. The tactic had worked so effectively that Nauda didn't even mind serving as the unknowing distraction.

Melitta hurled several obelisks into the Tymetronese army - they seemed to accomplish nothing until Nauda realized that they were anti-weirkey devices. They'd planned to introduce their new Dominion by eliminating one of the enemy's.

Though the storm generator tried to flee out of the restricted zone, she was immediately intercepted by the Sword of Asplundat. They clashed in the air and the explosive cantae that had knocked Nauda to the ground was not nearly so effective on another Dominion. Melitta was moving in from behind, her bladed gauntlets sliding into place to end things.

A golden omen fell out of the sky, slicing through the aerial battle. The Sword of Asplundat intercepted it with amber lightning, but it still tore past them, leaving the Dominions scattering.

Many on the ground couldn't follow the battle, but Nauda focused on the new arrival and already knew what she would see. The man's limbs were made of gold and narrowed into bladed spikes... as he prepared his assault, the Goldreaper smiled, revealing jaws of sharpened gold teeth.

Tymetron had prepared an aeon. Across the battlefield, hope turned to despair.

-

Chapter 20

The very instant Theo understood the stakes, he grasped a weirkey to join the battle. He barely moved away from Fithe, only dipping his toes into the void between worlds before he returned to the Asplundat battlefront. But even though he minimized the distortion, some time had passed.

And in a battle between the strongest soulcrafters, that was too long.

He'd chosen a conservative target and he was still surprisingly near the battle lines, as Tymetron had seized substantial new territory. Their army was building siege engines in the distance while the Norronese forces fled and licked their wounds. The new "Sword of Asplundat" he'd just heard about was nowhere to be seen and Melitta lay on a floating slab of stone, covered in blood.

Worse, this was likely the outcome of a successful retreat. If things had gone worse, the Goldreaper could have killed both of their Dominions and the army would have been overtaken. Apparently they had resisted enough pressure that Tymetron couldn't go that far. He still felt coldly fortunate that they had the Underqueen on their side or it easily could have been worse.

There was no time for those considerations, though, not with one of their leaders on the edge of death. He saw that Nauda was kneeling beside Melitta alongside an Asplundat healer, but neither of them could cope with the extent of the injuries.

Probably time to burn his last contingency, then. Theo dropped down beside the stone slab, ignoring the panic around him, and leaned in beside Nauda.

"What are her chances?" he asked.

"Not good," she answered without looking away. "The Goldreaper really tore into her. If she stabilizes, it will be because of her own fortitude."

"And what about the new Asplundat Dominion?"

"Ran away when the two of them weren't enough. Only minor injuries."

"She did not run away!" the other healer insisted. "The Sword of Asplundat only recently ascended. Trying to take on a monster beyond Dominion is simply insane."

"Tell that to the woman you're healing," Nauda snapped.

"Save your strength," Theo told them both. "I only have one of these, but I don't think we'll get a better time."

He knelt down and unstoppered the Orphic Vial, which burned with life energy. Nauda helped him by tilting Melitta's head and opening her lips. At first Theo worried that they would waste precious drops of the healing liquid, but it passed into her mouth easily enough and he immediately felt the surge within her soul.

One potential strategy would be to ration out the Orphic Vial, but Theo rejected that policy and kept pouring the liquid down Melitta's throat. The Orphic Cabal had said it was meant to be used all at once, and though it had pulled Melitta back from the edge of death, one injured Dominion wasn't enough. If the full thing actually restored her, that opened up possibilities that might keep them alive a little longer.

When the Vial was empty, Melitta sat up, staring down at her body. All the wounds had closed and she seemed to be brimming with energy again.

"I owe you my life twice over," she half-whispered.

"If you want to repay me," Theo said, "make them pay for this. They'll be pushing the Wavefront hard, right?"

"I can't do anything if the Goldreaper comes again. My loss was no fluke."

"They're not likely to send him, not if they think the Wavefront is weak. Let them send weaker soulcrafters to finish you off..."

"...and then turn it on them," Melitta finished. She burst to her feet, shifting with restless energy. "My gauntlets were destroyed, I'll need - no, that isn't your job. Handle things here and I'll do what I can." Then she was gone, without even flying to a safe distance.

Some worried in her absence, especially because she hadn't broadcast that she had been healed. That was good for their strategy and probably bad for morale. Theo glanced around the army, intending to think about their tactical options, and instead was swarmed by the politics of it all.

The Asplundat Movement would be furious, since their moment of triumph introducing a new Dominion had been ruined. It hadn't been unreasonable for the Sword of Asplundat to retreat, but that wouldn't matter once the rumor mill got hold of the story. He didn't even want to think about how internal Asplundat politics were related and would consult Homez for the details once he found the stomach for it.

Around him, however, he heard a surprising amount of anger from Ruling Cities soulcrafters. They didn't consider the Sword of Asplundat a coward; they called it a conspiracy: the Asplundat Movement had intentionally avoided combat to give the Movement an advantage. If Melitta had died, the Asplundat Movement would have two out of the three Norronese Dominions.

Debating those sorts of politics seemed mad to Theo, at a time like this, but he tempered his irritation with a reminder that he was a literal outsider here. He hadn't spent a lifetime fighting these battles, plus he knew the sides had legitimate reasons to mistrust each other. The Ruling Cities had done plenty of cruel things, and the fragments of bloodcrete in their wake were an undeniable sign that the Asplundat Movement was not as pure as their ideologues wanted people to believe.

If the alliance fell apart, that would definitely be the end. He thought that they'd done enough to bind the sides together that it wouldn't collapse just yet, and Melitta's survival would boost morale. But he wasn't sure how things would look in another month.

"I'm worried about Fiyu." Nauda got up and hugged Theo, though he could tell that she really wanted her wife. "She's terrified something will happen to Guchiro."

"I'm still not sure if I made a mistake there," Theo answered while patting her back. "Things would be easier with him at full strength, but not easy enough. There may never be a less dangerous time for him to rebuild."

"Could go either way. We'll have to leave that to the historians."

Assuming that there would be historians left alive to record any of this. Both of them left that unsaid and just held one another until they had to go back into battle again.

~

Fiyu thought she had been terrified for Relative Guchiro before, but that had been a dream compared to this nightmare. She would have supported her relative against an aeon, when he was at his full strength, but like this it was simply impossible. If there was a swift enough attack or an ambush, it might even be possible for her relative to die.

She had argued fiercely, both with Relative Guchiro and all the leaders who would listen to her. Surely they could evacuate some positions and leave her relative retreat to soulcraft in peace. All the leaders insisted that they were spread too thin, and Relative Guchiro simply asked her if she wished to abandon Norron.

Would he have left, if she had agreed? When faced with the decision so starkly, she had to admit that she was willing to take risks to protect this continent she had come to love. But if Relative Guchiro died because of her decision, she would never forgive herself.

That day, it seemed that they had been fortunate: they were sent to support an evacuation ahead of the Tymetronese lines. No enemy Dominion, no need to take risks, even time for soulcrafting.

Then the Goldreaper appeared in the air.

Even as Fiyu froze, her senses stretched to analyze him. His limbs appeared to be made from sublime gold, of a stronger and denser alloy than the slavegold most Tymetronese used. It grew from the ragged ends of his fleshly limbs and undulated unpleasantly under her senses.

This was the worst case scenario she had imagined, and there was so little she could do. Relative Guchiro had gone still, surely considering the same logic that made her blood run cold. She had a single desperate option she had been preparing, but that had been a plan for a Dominion and might accomplish nothing. Even grabbing her relative and taking them both to another world might be more effective.

Before either of them could take action, a second aeon-class soulcrafter appeared on the battlefield: the Underqueen emerged in her giant shell of armor.

Both aeons immediately struck at one another, ignoring the army below. Fiyu could not help a battle like that, but she had soulcrafted far enough that she could follow it. The Goldreaper was lethally effective against flesh, but his blades only chopped pieces from the fortress-thick armor. On the other hand, the Underqueen's attempts to launch spikes and other techniques failed to land any hits on the aeon-class soulcrafter.

Without a word, Fiyu and Relative Guchiro slipped away, watching the battle as they went. For now, it seemed the worst had been averted and the enemy's assault had been neutralized. For now.

~

When Nauda's fist connected with the Dominion's face, she almost couldn't believe it. The man went down, bouncing off the ground as his golden armor cracked.

Nauda had started the fight half-certain she was going to die, since she was almost entirely without support with her back to a city. But she had been mostly fresh from a soulcrafting break and her opponent had been overconfident. She'd figured out the painful way that her body could endure the ghostly bursts he released and he hadn't been able to adapt.

He went down, but he wasn't unconscious, and she wasn't fast enough to prevent a Dominion from using a weirkey. So the Tymetronese Dominion was gone the next second.

Even that should have been a great victory: she'd managed to defeat an opponent above her tier and saved a city filled with people. Yet compared to this war, it just wasn't enough. If she'd been a little faster or stronger, perhaps she could have actually finished him off. Instead she was exhausted and burned, deep in enemy territory.

And her victory wouldn't save her, she understood as she felt soulcrafters begin to move all around her. Tymetron had regained its confidence, viewing themselves as predators again. Neither fear nor honor would stop them from taking her down with sheer numbers.

Hopeless as it seemed, Nauda leapt away, trying to get enough distance. She wouldn't let them take her away from Fiyu, not if there was a single breath of life left in her body. But another Authority intercepted her path, and when she tried to redirect, a Stronghold tackled her to the ground.

Normally that hit wouldn't have stunned her, but Nauda had pushed herself too hard. She stared up at the figures overhead preparing their weapons, desperately trying to refocus.

A searing beam swept them away and Nauda flinched as the impact sent earth scattering in all directions. It was the most she could do to kick away one of the remaining soulcrafters and try to struggle to her feet.

"Are you alright?" Isorales descended beside her and it was the first time in months she'd been glad to see gold armor.

"I'll make it." Nauda smiled and almost fell forward before he caught her.

"Easy there, you had a hard fight. Let's get you back to Fiyu."

"Right, back to Fiyu..." Nauda forced herself to keep going, just a little longer.