Exalted War: Ch 2 (rough draft) (Patreon)

Chapter 2: Order From Above

Warm sand. “What?” I said as I walked along the shores of a beach that stretched as far as the eye could see. Purple sand glowed in radiant hues as sea foam green waves caressed the beach. Above, in the golden orange-pink brilliance of the sky, the clouds floated against a backdrop of swirling galaxies and sparkling nebula clouds that made my brain question existence itself just from looking.

I walked; I was dreaming again. The soft crunch of violet sand giving way, the gentle crunch of my own footfalls, a steady beat against the whisper of the sea.I knew this place.

A woman appeared on the beach in front of me, walking toward me, each step a certainty of destination as clear as a law of the world. Grace and beauty were too crude of words to use for her, as the skirt sarong she wore danced behind her in the warm sea breeze.

Her black hair spilled over her shoulders, the breeze lifting strands across skin warmed by the golden light. A white bikini hugged her breasts, its slender ties following the curves of a figure that drew my eyes despite the impossible sky. The sarong rode low on her hips, gathered at one side, its parted folds revealing a smooth thigh with each step. Purple sand pressed between her toes as she approached.

I lifted my gaze to her face and found her watching me. Sapphire eyes held a depth that made the galaxies above us seem like cheap dollar store decorations. There was warmth in them, recognition, and the hint of amusement as I remembered.

Amara.

Her smile widened.

The distance between us closed, and I forgot whatever greeting I had been forming. She reached for me, her fingers settling against my cheek. I felt their warmth, the brush of her thumb, and something in my chest loosened beneath that simple touch.

“We meet again, Eric. You’ve done well. Very well, far beyond what I had hoped.”

“Goddess Amara,” I spoke her name and inclined my head. “I do try to overachieve when I can, though things seem to be spiraling for the worse.”

“Come and sit,” she said, and once more two beach chairs with a table sat between us, a tray of drinks resting. Amara sipped the sweet, spiraling color mixture through a straw and spoke, “Events on Forduna have accelerated. In no small part because of you, dungeon champion, my hero.“ Amara let out a little giggle at the end, obviously pleased by my performance.

“You saved Sarah and her handmaidens,” she continued. “You gave my followers a home where they could speak my name without expecting punishment. Do you understand what it means to hear a prayer offered in comfort?”

I looked at her. The amusement had left her face.

“I hoped it meant I was doing something right.”

“It does.” Her hand settled over mine. “And beneath the college, soldiers who have spent their lives retreating have seen ground reclaimed. You have given them something to fight toward.”

“Then tell me what the house gives you. Can you help us more through it?”

“A consecrated hearth, a priestess, a household that welcomes me. Those things anchor my presence on Forduna. Through them, I can offer protection and guidance that once cost me more than I could sustain.”

“But?”

“My strength across the multiverse is not the strength I can bring into this universe. That connection must grow.”

I turned my hand beneath hers and held it.

“We have some growing to do, then.”

“How did Adelia get into the house, and how was I able to get blessed by the gods? I thought your blessing would shield us.” I asked.

Amara pouted a bit, blowing out her lips. “Divine rules, or more so the lack of them. When Legion took you as champion, the abyssal dungeon seed was allowed to take one as well, though calling it a champion is more than a stretch of the imagination. She was able to hide it, the corruption, until she was ready to complete her mission.”

“Ah, so a sneak attack?”

“When you boil it down, yeah, that’s what it comes down to. The abyss got one chance, and luck for us, it did not work.” Amara shook her head, annoyed frustration leaking out of the movement.

“Hold on. She was carrying that corruption around my house, sleeping under my roof. How does that fit with your protection?”

“The connection existed before the consecration, Eric. She brought it into your home inside a bond she had accepted. When the seed chose her as its champion, that bond became something it could conceal beneath my blessing.”

I rubbed a hand across my face. “So the thing was hiding inside someone I had invited in.”

Amara nodded, her fingers tightening around her glass. “My blessing guards your household against intrusion. It does not strip its inhabitants of their will. Adelia had given something permission to enter her.”

“And that permission let it attack the rest of us?”

“It gave her the chance to strike. Using that power exposed what she had become. The concealment is broken, and my hearth knows her.”

I glanced at her. “Meaning she cannot walk through the front door and try it a second time?”

“She cannot cross my protection under the guise of belonging to your household.”

“And Octavian? The blessing he gave us at the gala came through you. I felt it.”

“Yes. His invocation reached the gods through the connection your hearth provided. What answered came from Ack, Sippsie, and Alestra.”

I frowned. “Their priest carries abyssal corruption, but they answered him?”

“They answered the invocation. You received their blessing. Octavian’s corruption did not become part of it.”

“So Ack knows what is happening in his church?”

“His church is one of the means by which he reaches this world. Corrupting its foundation interferes with that connection. The words spoken in his name serve something that has learned to wear his authority.”

I thought of Octavian’s face, the conviction in his voice. “He believes every word he says.”

“He believes he serves Ack,” Amara said. “That conviction gives the corruption room to work. He accepts its influence as guidance from his god.”

I thought of the chest in Adelia’s room and the pages tucked among her belongings. Octavian had urged me to study the book those pages came from.

Adelia had read them.

I frowned at Amara.

“She had pages from the holy book for the church of Ack?” I said more as a question than a statement.

“Ack’s testament Obedintea. It is a cornerstone of his divine foot hold on Forduna, and it has been corrupted, not just the copies but the foundational text, the one all others are copied from.” Amara shook her head and sighed.

“That seems like a problem. A big problem.” I said.

“It is and it isn’t. The abyss, for all its horrors does fulfill a role across the mass of the multiverse as a hole, no matter how troubling that role is.” Amara reclined and gazed up at the swirling lights and things above us on the beach.

“I mean, I’ve seen that shit, its pretty fucked up. So, what possible role could it play? Couldn’t the Divines just wipe it out?” I asked, as I laid back and focused my gaze up just like Amra was doing.

“Oh, we might be able to, but the consequences would be absolute.” She raised her hand, and the galaxies drew apart. Light spread between them, gathering into branches whose ends vanished beyond the limits of my sight. At every division, more lights clustered, each containing depths I could not focus on without my eyes aching.

“The universal tree,” I said.

“One way to perceive the relationships between realities. What looks like a point of light can contain a universe.”

“And the stuff between them?”

“The Sea of Chaos. You crossed it to reach Forduna. Within a universe, existence follows the laws that sustain it. Beyond those boundaries, you cannot count on distance, time, or matter behaving as you expect.”

I remembered the fall, the things I had seen, and how little meaning the word fall had held.

“The needles pass through that.”

“They pierce the boundary and return through it. You know what it takes to keep an object intact during that passage. Consider what it took for you to survive without one.”

I glanced at her.

She gave my hand a squeeze and turned us toward the ends of the branches.

The view rushed past lights and drifting shapes, past creatures whose bodies changed as I tried to follow them. It stopped above a plane that seemed to have no end, until my gaze found the blackness pressing against it.

I remembered that nothingness.

My heart thudded. Sweat gathered beneath Amara’s fingers.

She continued, “This is the edge of the multiverse, the edge of all that was, is or will ever be.” A sections of the infinite became bands I could see. “What you are seeing is the Abyssal Border Wall, where the Border warriors from across the multiverse fight with the help of the system against the incursions from the abyss. Beyond the wall lies the membrane of the abyss.”

“Membrane?” I a sweating, and my soul was squirming just looking at what she showed me and I knew in the core of who I was I was seeing something my existence could barely hold on to.

“The abyss is a membrane, for lack of a better word, around the whole of the multiverse, it is the layer of our many realities that directly touches the void. Not the voids that exist in the sea of chaos or between stars, no the true void of nothing where the edge of what is meets the edge of nothing. The abyss by means even the divines find hard to comprehend keeps the nothingness at bay. Don’t ask me how, as only the highest order divines can even fathom it. In order to do that though, the abyss must feed on energy from the multiverse. That is why the abyss attacks, why it consumes worlds and universes within the sea of chaos.”

“Rakthanos told me a dungeon made its home in the Abyss. That it sends seeds into other dungeons and eats them. Is that thing feeding this membrane?”

“It feeds itself,” Amara said. “The power it steals becomes part of the Abyss through its presence there, but its purpose is its own growth. You must distinguish the realm from the things living within it.”

I watched a thread of red reach toward one of the distant lights.

“The seed in Legion is a feeding tube?”

“A root. It takes hold in his structure, steals what sustains him, and turns his creations against him. What it consumes helps the seed grow and feeds the dungeon that sent it.”

“So every gate Legion loses gives the thing more to work with.”

“Yes.”

I sat with that for a moment. Those soldiers in the war-well were defending the ground that made their existence possible. Each retreat left another piece of their home in the enemy’s hands.

“And purging that seed cuts the connection?”

“It severs that root. The dungeon beyond it will remain, but Legion would have the chance to recover.”

“So, why fight it?” I asked though the question seemed weak.

“Many think we should capitulate, lay down, yet this is as it has always been. The fighting I think feeds the abyss as well, but I cannot say for sure. The abyssal war may just be a wet stone for the abyss.”

“Is Forduna going to become apart of this border wall?”

“Oh no, at least not the iterations you are fighting in, the drafting protocol is clear on at least that much. All worlds get drafted in some form or at some time, though the core race worlds far more frequently as they have infantine iterations o choose from,” As Amara spoke the void surged out past the abyss, a blackness that pressed into the abyssal layer of reality as a simple blackness that was total, the red band that represented the abyssal layer flared, and the Border wall buckled and cracked. A fissure opened and then a new section of wall appeared, but in the moment the wall had been breached red lights blazed into the sea of chaos and out of view.

“Those were seeds?” I asked.

“Yes, though not all are abyssal dungeon seeds, some are just abyssal monsters or the abyssal royal court.” Amara pointed to the Abyssal border wall, and the band of light focused into a view, the blank section formed into a world, with mountains, plains, and oceans, a world that stretched nearly without end.  There was a flash then we were outside the view again. “Ahh, well I guess that is it. The abyssal border wall system kicked us out, it’s very protective about spying on its border warriors, or doing anything to them at all.”

“So, some world will get teleported into to populate the section of wall that just formed?”

“That is how it works, looks like it was reality iteration: Earth Prime Alpha 437-T-369, best and worst job in the multiverse. Though the benefits are top notch and the system is one of the core five multiverse governor systems. But we’ve wondered off topic for long enough.” Amara said and waved her hand, and we once more were laying on the beach chairs along the purple sand beach, staring up once more at the swirling sea of chaos.

“Wait. Earth?”

Amara turned toward me.

The glass creaked in my grip. I loosened my fingers and placed it on the table.

“Was that my Earth?”

“An iteration of Earth. I would need to trace your origin to know whether it was yours.”

I looked at the sky, searching for the place she had shown me. Galaxies wheeled through the golden haze. There was no wall, no breach, nothing I could point to and demand she take me to.

People were having breakfast. Driving to work. Arguing over whose turn it was to wash the dishes.

“Do they get a choice?”

“The draft is compulsory.”

“And the people who cannot fight?”

“The towers provide shelter and roles that support the border. The System prepares its warriors through the training boundaries.”

“Prepares them.” I worked my jaw. “How many die during that?”

Amara lowered her eyes to her drink.

I knew enough about Systems to understand what that silence meant.

“Can you help them?”

“The Border System governs its own charges. You saw how it ended our view. Those that die do get to be reincarnated and can choose to keep their memories. A consolation prize if you will.”

I leaned against the chair, the warmth of the beach pressing against skin that felt cold.

Somewhere beyond that sky, an Earth had become a battlefield. I had no way to know whether anyone I loved was standing on it.

“So, it boils down to the same no matter what the abyss’s function I still need to fight it?”

“Yeap, and that means purging the holy book, and the seed that has taken root in Legion.”

I picked up my drink. The glass was cold, the contents sweet enough to make my jaw ache.

“The book in my ring is a copy. Where is the original?”

“In the church’s keeping. Finding where they guard it is part of what I need from you.”

“Octavian thinks I belong to his order.”

“And expects you to embrace what he offers.”

I set the glass between us.

“Which means asking the right questions without letting him see what I’m looking for.”

“He believes you inherited Leonard’s place. Let him show you what that inheritance contains.”

I thought of the priest’s guards, the speed with which they had taken their positions at the bank. Getting invited through a door would be one thing. Getting my people through it and out again would be another.

“Will purging the original cleanse the copies?”

“Do not assume it will. You have seen what torn pages can do. Every piece you find needs to be treated as a danger.”

“And the people reading them?”

“Some will need help. Some will fight to preserve what is consuming them.”

“Sounds like a fucking mess.”

“It is.”

I appreciated that she let the answer stand.

“Ashley knows the people involved. Rachel can help me work through what the text is doing. If we’re going into that church, I need them to understand what we’re walking into.”

Amara nodded.

“And Legion?” I asked. “He cannot sit under the college losing soldiers while I attend dinners with Octavian.”

“The Ashul’Kai gives you a means to change his war. His soldiers can hold ground. You can cleanse the corruption that prevents him from reclaiming it.”

“So we push through the gatehouses and keep what we take.”

“With Legion’s guidance. His strength must sustain the ground and the forces defending it.”

I remembered Dular’s warning about damaging the dungeon stone. Every wall I shattered was something Legion would have to replace. A victory could cost him more than he gained if I got careless.

Rachel and the others could help plan that. Places to defend. Places where I could use the amulet without crumbling half the gates on the road down.

“The seed knows about the amulet,” I said.

“Yes, and it knows about you.”

The answer settled between us.

“Wonderful.”

Amara reached for her drink, but I caught her wrist.

“There’s something else. The tendril east of the capital. It has grown since I found it. The smaller ones reach their connections faster, but that thing…”

I released her and looked toward the sky.

“What comes through a breach that size?”

“Something that could not pass through the rifts you have faced. Or a force large enough to overwhelm those sent to contain it.”

My mouth felt dry despite the drink.

“How long?”

“Use the viewer. Watch the distance to contact. Its width tells you what the passage can sustain, but its slower growth gives you no promise of safety.”

“And if it reaches the other tendril?”

“Just like the others, the opening begins. Your preparations need to precede that moment.”

I rubbed my palms against my thighs.

“The emperor needs to know.”

“He has armies, Eric. You have knowledge they need.”

“And needles he keeps asking me to make.”

“Which gives you a reason to speak with those who can act.”

I stared at the table. Church, dungeon, a breach outside the capital. The college expected me in class, the emperor expected his needles, and Ashley was trying to work out how to explain a missing exalted lady.

“I need to get home and tell them.”

“Yes.”

“Not a list of orders. I need their help deciding how we do this. Ashley can work out our approach to the church. Rachel and I can check the viewer and get a warning to the emperor. Titus needs to know what we’re facing beneath the college.”

Amara watched me over the rim of her glass.

“And I keep attending classes. If I stop turning up whenever something goes wrong, people will start asking questions I cannot answer.”

“The things you learn there may help keep you alive.”

“I had noticed.”

Her smile returned.

I leaned against the chair and let the breeze cool my face. There would be time in the workshop with Rachel, even if it came with molten metal and another imperial deadline. Meals with the household. A few hours in which the people I loved could be people, with complaints and jokes and things they wanted to tell me.

I needed to leave room for that. Otherwise, what the hell was I saving?

Amara set her glass on the table.

“You can ask for something, Eric.”

I looked at her.

“Help Sarah keep the house safe. If she finds something she cannot understand, give her what guidance you can.”

“I will.”

I took her hand and pressed my lips against her fingers.

“Thank you.”

She rose, drawing me from the chair. Sand shifted beneath my feet as her arms came around me. I held her, breathing in the salt air and the warmth that reminded me of the hearth in my home.

For a few breaths, neither of us spoke.

“Give Sarah my love,” she said against my chest.

“I think she’ll want that message delivered in person.”

Amara laughed, and the sound faded into the hiss of the waves.

The arms around me changed. A head rested against my chest. The sea became the crackle of a log settling in the fireplace.

I opened my eyes to Rachel’s room.

Tiffany slept against me, one hand caught in the bedding. Across her shoulder, Rachel watched me from her pillow.

“Eric?”

I reached for her hand.

“Amara,” I said. “We had a conversation.”

Rachel’s fingers tightened around mine. “Good news?”

I looked at the sleeping faces gathered around us.

“We have a place to start, at least.”