4.50 The nightmares that trouble stone's deep sleep (Patreon)

Difference: Minimal

After that, it was determined that their “acclimatization” was over. Fig reported as much and they were quickly given a stationary assignment in between the rapid response ones. There were plenty of places in the Federation that could benefit from defenders being already present, yet were not actually important enough for a long term assignment. Or sometimes, those defenders rotated to avoid being too predictable.

The place they ended up in was a supposedly mid-sized factory in the Duchy of Purple. It looked as big as the entirety of Ebon Respite to Irwyn, but the description was supposedly accurate. This particular installation was relatively less important, crafting bulk quantities of very ordinary expendable magical items. The kind Irwyn might have gotten his hands on even as a common thief in a town particularly devoid of magic.

He was honestly confused why they had been deployed to such a place. Either the factory was worth safeguarding, in which case it would have a permanent magelord stationed, or the Federation was willing to eat the loss already, but then why sent a team like their to wait in the area?

“Just to make sure we could be anywhere,” Blow succinctly explained. “Routine ambushes mean that the undead find it too risky to actually attack mid value targets like this.”

“You are a pair. One has to always be awake and alert,” Fig explained. “And you will be getting at least full four hours every week. Usually, we pretend to get more so that the Rot cannot be sure which is their opportunity to attack. Can Mockingbird maintain his barrier while asleep?”

“Yes, but I won’t be able to let anyone enter or leave.” Besides Elizabeth, anyway, but he decided not to elaborate on that since it would sound bad to say he had an intentional loophole in his defenses, even if it was insurmountably complicated for even the Rot to bypass. 

“Excellent. The rule is to always be within one second range of each other. Do not let your attention lapse. We are trying to stay hidden, but always assume we are known. Additionally, we will remain inside Mockingbird’s barrier.”

Which was, Irwyn admitted, reasonable. He had seen plenty of undead ambushes and unpredictability. Though he would likely have his magical senses as well as smell or eyes to detect anything coming close, those could be fooled. Illius had undeniable done all three, and there was no way to know how easy that actually would be to reproduce.

That didn’t mean it had to be all tedium. Irwyn could remain “focused” on detection with only a fraction of his full attention. That left him able to assess some other things. Firstly, that he had experienced a jump in power after that one battle. Hard to tell how large with only partial attention, but a noticeable one. Not in raw mana, but in how he could utilise his Domain. He had been noticing that improvement even during the course of the battle, but 

The next thing he did afterward was a repetition of something he fully expected to fail. He took out his the pendant Old Crow had once gifted him, then ran his mana through it. Inside, there was still the incomplete shape of WEEPING STARS, as Irwyn did well know. And it remained not particularly useful.

For something that portrayed a Truth, and had even been elevated far beyond what Han Daunt could imbue into the physical creation, the effect was lukewarm. It would technically still empower any magic passing through it, but the quantity of mana the item could manage wasn’t even sufficient to qualify as a real spell anymore, not to mention 

Still, Irwyn had hoped for at least insight, as some had been gleaned during Conception, but there was simply… misalignment. Irwyn was perhaps a Star in most senses of the word, yet not really in experience. Not to mention his terrestrial existences, even in the visions of the previous life he had never undergone eons of hanging overhead, managing the cycles of day and night. Then there was the “weeping” portion, which Irwyn also did not mesh with. All things considered, his life had been remarkable fortuitous and griefless. 

So it only made sense that he could not obtain much anymore from that symbol. Even trying to incorporate it into his spells proved to no longer produce any notable results. Not to mention that it shift his progress in a different direction than he was headed. Perhaps that was, in part, the point of the rebirth. To tread a new path, one not so burdened by the past. 

The issue with that was that Irwyn lacked the knowledge of other Truths. Which was a problem for constructing the “throughline” needed to progress through Domains. Elizabeth had assured him that whatever direction he opted for, there would definitely be a Truth for him to grasp, but the uncertainty was unpleasant with something so important and irreversible. Wouldn’t it be quite ironic, for the reincarnation of Light and Flame to accidentally stumble into a dead end?

Irwyn eventually put away the pendant and spent his time between practice, reading, versing, and conversation. He was grasping at straws when it came to immediate inspiration for new major spells or anything of the sort, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t consider generic rhymes in advance or work on some fundamentals. Discoveries or advancement were becoming increasingly rare as his prowess grew, but he would still stumble upon new minutia every so often.

Three days passed in peace before they were deployed again. On their third deployment, there was not even any Ravener present, just a small horde of Draugr ready to overwhelm a small military outpost guarding nothing more than a few empty fields and a dirt road. It was an utter overkill.

Fig had an explanation for that, though: “Sometimes, these attacks are a bait. Not often, but there could be a Ravener or two nearby. Search in formation.”

They discovered nothing, which seemed to be in accordance with expectations. Afterwards they actually returned to the same factory they had been stationed near previously. A doubleback in case an assault had just been waiting for them to leave. Again, nothing of note was found.

Neither did much happen during their fourth and fifth assignments. Not so much as a single Ravener. After the latter one, they actually moved quite a distance away, spending almost half a day on underground flight. That led to them actually emerging in the Duchy of Yellow, or at right where it bordered with brown to the South. The Light Duchy was still utterly devastated and over the past few days there had been a rise in undead crossing from it, then disappearing to somewhere.

They were tasked with patrolling as large of a chunk of the border as they felt like, decision on which Fig swiftly randomised. They would draw lots and follow the winner’s directions for half a day, sometimes straying to further in into either of the two duchies. There was also an added difficulty in that they did not want the information of their presence to actually spread, as that would invite ambushes.

This was accomplished by Blow doing what Desir had in the past, except with much more practice. Whenever an undead was killed by anyone with even a fragment of its soul intact, Blow would gather and erase it. Moreover, whenever they were about to engage, he would actively disrupt any connection the local undead group had to the rest of the Rot. It would be obvious to the whole that someone powerful was in the area, but not their exact numbers or elemental dispositions. As half the things they did, it shielded against deadly ambushes.

The next two time they were sent out, there were once again no Raveners present. On the fourth deployment, they once again broke a siege of just a few Draugr and mostly weaker undead. A trivial task only made moderately worth paying attention to due to the risk of ambush.

For the fifth, by the time they arrived, their destination was completely devoid of life. It was one of the farming operations, similar to what Irwyn remembered visiting before they had joined up with the Crusade. He vaguely recalled only one or two Conception mages being present to guard those.

It was just one of many such operation. Hence why it was not actually a notable loss strategically. It was still a grim sight, to see the rock raised buildings show signs of struggle, mostly blood stains and a few chips. No corpses had been left behind.

“Burn everything,” Fig instructed. “The wheat is likely fouled. Best to not leave anything behind.”

With that said, their squad leader leveled the stone buildings, evening the ground. Irwyn then incinerated the crushed bits. All of that took them less than a minute put together. Finity did not restrain what was directly being controlled, and Irwyn could manage more than just a large field’s worth of weak fires.

“Next we try to pursue,” Fig decided. “Be ready to retreat at the first sign of an ambush.”

For that, they used a mix of Irwyn’s nose, Blow’s ability to detect remnant energy of fading Souls, as well as Fig tracking where a large collection of bodies and undead might have left traces in the Soil. After twenty minutes of searching they found one crudely constructed cart of corpses, accompanied by a bunch of weaker undead.

“They probably split the loot into countless groups like this,” Boat guessed. “Arguably not worth our time to even pursue.”

“Can either of you tell which way the Draugr had gone?” Fig asked.

“No.” Irwyn shook his head. He could somewhat tell the strength of the stench when it came down to it, but not accurately enough to determine which way a few relatively weak undead might have fled hours ago. It may have been different with Raveners, but their needles of choice were simply too small. 

“Negative,” Blow confirmed he also lacked such ability.

“Then we retreat. A few hundred pre-Conception corpses are not worth risking an ambush being set up for us.”

In the next five missions, they only encountered Raveners twice more, both times a duo trying to assassinate the Federation’s Domain mage. Surprisingly enough, they were never late for those, despite their relatively slow way of travel. After some thought, Irwyn realised they were mostly being sent into situations where the Rot was spotted at least a few minutes ahead of the attack, as those with direct teleportation were probably being deployed if the opposite was the case. 

The eleventh came close to killing to them all.

They were not even headed towards a heated situation, just another simple hoard with a possible ambush. It was just that they were not expecting the ambush to happen barely halfway through their journey.

Between moments, Irwyn suddenly felt the edges of his barrier be impacted by a crushing pressure. Like a mountain had suddenly fallen on top of it at terminal velocity, except this also happened at every point of his barrier. 

His magic was a boundary between the Realm and the sky. This made the prospect of rock crushing it rather awkward metaphysically. For as unusual the prospect of firmament defending against rocks was unusual, the same went for stone attempting to crush the very heavens.

This mismatch just barely allowed Irwyn to recover and place additional layers. The attack though did not relent, the pressure ramping up further as Irwyn’s spell began to crack no matter how he tried to reinforce it. He did not have the leeway to alert anyone of the situation, but that proved to be unnecessary.

“Realm, offensive, multiple Domains!” Fig shouted, the tried to counteract the attacker. The pressure only redoubled.

Irwyn was feeling it now. One of the Domains was in some way related to inevitably, or maybe patience. The longer the struggle went on, the greater power they exhibited. 

“Where,” Elizabeth turned towards Blow.

“Unsure,” the inquisitor replied. That elicited a frown, but was better than the ceiling collapsing.

“The smell is putrid, but it appeared all of a sudden,” Irwyn added.

The danger kept mounting. He had summoned several more layers underneath the outermost barrier, but those would be useless in a few seconds when the rock became dangerous enough to crush them with just the sheer pressure.

He needed to do break through and fast. But they had no idea where the attacks were even coming from. Falling stars were too precise a tool for that. They were ideal for targets, not landscapes. He either needed to find the source, or find an alternative to resolving the problem.

“Everywhere,” Blow suddenly exclaimed. “The Ravener is everywhere around us. A Soul dispersed into landscape.

“Huddle,” Irwyn declared, then got to work implementing his last second idea.

If the enemy was the stone, why not just burn it away? Evaporating rock already came easily enough. Assuming that the attacker’s Domains at least conceptually related to rock, which Irwyn felt many likely did, the answer was to remove it. If they were floating inside a vast empty cavern rather then directly surrounded by crushing stone, the pressure would presumably lower.

So that is what Irwyn tried to do. Domain infused Starfire met seemingly normal stone, and found it to be impregnable. Has to be empowered by the Domain, Irwyn decided, and struck again, this time reducing the area of his attack to just one direction—above—and infusing far more desolation. It was not a starfall, but Irwyn put everything he could into eroding whatever magic made the stone so indestructible.

To also maintain defenses throughout all that, it genuinely stretched Irwyn to his limit. There was success, as the ceiling above them started losing large chunks of itself, but that was insufficient. Whatever Irwyn broke, the hidden Ravener quickly tried to fill back in by pulling more rock from somewhere, treating it as more of a liquid.

Irwyn almost didn’t notice when Elizabeth struck. From between the gap left in the barrier’s rules, she reached out and sheared into the rock. Her hand turned into a clawed appendage of Void magic, which outright erase a large chunk of the surrounding stone. Except, it was no simple cut. Judging by the strained look in her face, even that relatively small attack had been difficult for her. Much more importantly, Irwyn felt the mountainous pressure placed against his barriers briefly stutter.

“Soul wounded,” Blow confirmed. “Struggling to reassemble. Keep at it, Shrike, I will disrupt recovery.”

For ten more gruelling minutes the fighting continued. Especially in the first few. Then Elizabeth kept inflicting more and more wounds and the situation swung in their direction. When Irwyn’s last few barriers still refused to completely break down, the Ravener suddenly up and left. Unwilling to sustain more injuries, the stone’s presence around them completely faded. The spell’s pressure disappeared just moments later. They were, unfortunately, powerless to stop that retreat. Even Irwyn’s smell detected no nearby threat anymore.

“They knew we would be coming through here,” Irwyn determined as soon as they appeared safe. “Spell active in advance. It must have had a massive area around us reinforced with its magic before we ever even arrived. How?” 

“Repetition,” Blow said. “This was likely not the first time this exact attempt had been made. It was just the first time they had guessed our exact route correctly.”

“I think that one might have been prepared specifically to kill me,” Fig stated, not even sounding particularly bothered by that. “Possibly from a different Realm.”

“But it failed,” Elizabeth stated with a smile.

“Don’t be too happy,” Blow warned. “Next time, they will also be ready for that barrier.”

“Our deployment location still waits for us, and we have a delay now. Move.”