Advent of Eternity - Chapter 99 (Patreon)

Golden River’s soldiers advanced, lining up along the edge of the forest with their weapons drawn. Knell’s attention was transfixed on the Scion. Ideally, he wanted to learn what abilities her Path gave her access to, but he didn’t know how long this particular fight would last.

I might have rigged things a little too heavily in Golden River’s favor.

Knell leaned in close to Stix. “When the Vorgen Scion reappears, start shooting Golden River warriors. Try to keep the sides about even – and make sure you aren’t seen for as long as possible.”

Stix nodded her understanding and Knell leaned on his staff, the seconds counting down in his head. He didn’t have to wait long.

A minute passed, and Ferna popped out directly in the spot where Knell had anchored her. To her credit, her reaction was incredibly fast – just not fast enough. Vines erupted from the ground beneath the Scion, surging up to form a cocoon around her.

At the same time, half a dozen arrows collapsed on her position and Golden River’s Scion swung her massive sword at the other woman. One of the arrows got through the vines and caught the woman in the shoulder, while the rest were blocked by the foliage.

The huge sword bit through the vines and slammed into Ferna’s shoulder. She cried out and sank. A thorny vine whipped out from the bundle and scraped across the other woman’s armor, shearing through the metal like it was paper.

“Damn you, Telin,” Ferna hissed. “I’ll kill you and your damn mercenaries. We’re still in the forest, bitch.”

The trees came alive. Battle cries arose from the forest as Vorgen’s men charged out from it. Holen’s Scion – Telin – laughed. She raised her sword into the air and her body was enveloped with golden energy.

Bows twanged and men screamed as the two sides crashed into each other. Knell leaned on his staff, his eyes glowing yellow as the clock continued to tick in his mind. A Vorgen man crumpled to the ground, bleeding from a fatal sword wound across his midriff.

One of Golden River’s fighters was yanked into the trees, a vine tightening around his neck. His terrified cries were cut short with a loud snap, and the forest tossed his body out a second later.

Birds bombarded the battlefield, clawing at Holen’s fighters. Beams of golden light emanated out from Telin, frying them on contact. The smell of viscera and burnt hair soon filled the once-peaceful day.

Between the two Scions, Knell was now certain that Telin was the better fighter. Ferna’s movements were jerky and panicked as she looked for a way to retreat back to the forest, but the armored woman gave her no ground.

Telin’s glowing aura burned birds whenever they grew close, and Ferna’s desperate vine attacks landed on her less frequently with every passing second. All around the women, men fell like fresh wheat – but Holen had more to spare.

Stix’s hand crossbow fired and a bolt thunked into one of the Golden River men as he gathered fire in his palms. The man crumpled forward into a sword strike, dead before the blade hit his flesh. His opponent didn’t even notice – a beam of glowing light burned him alive before he could realize he’d won his fight.

“This is disgusting,” Maya said. “I mean, I’ve killed people, but that Holen Scion is literally cooking them alive. What a horrible way to go.”

“Watch it,” Knell replied, his features cold. “I will do much, much worse. This is the price we pay for freedom. If it helps you, none of these men are innocent.”

“How do you know?” Maya asked.

“They follow the gods,” Knell said, his lips twisting in a grim smile. “And no man that follows these gods is without sin.”

Holen’s advantage was growing, though not as quickly as it should have been. Stix continued to pick off Telin’s army, thinning their numbers advantage even as they cut down most of the Vorgen followers.

The ground at the edge of the forest turned to mud as blood mixed with the dirt. Less than a quarter of both side’s original fighting forces remained.

Ferna screamed in pain. The battle froze for an instant as everyone looked in the direction of the two Scions. Telin pulled her sword free of the other woman’s chest, raising the bloody weapon into the air with a blood splattered, victorious grin.

For an instant, the light radiating off her body reflected off the soaked weapon. The foliage surrounding Ferna wilted as she sank to her knees, her life pouring out of her chest. Her eyes locked with Knell’s as blood bubbled up to her lips. She saw the grin stretching across his face as he pulled the flintlock from its spot in his belt – and she knew.

Ferna spat on the ground. Her last words were lost as Telin’s sword descended one final time. The vines slipped from Ferna’s body and she pitched backward, her head rolling off and thumping down beside it.

If it had landed face down, Telin might have seen the contemptuous smirk of her rival – graced with the knowledge that she would not be greeting Death alone.

Knell clock ticked to a stop. His flintlock fired and the bullet struck Telin in the back of the neck, in a tiny, unarmored spot between her helmet and chest piece. She crumpled, collapsing on top of Ferna.

“Finish anyone still standing,” Knell said.

Cyll was already moving. Even as the remaining warriors turned to face him, his massive sword crashed down on a man, crumpling his armor ripping through flesh and bone alike. Stix’s hand crossbow picked off another one.

Some tried to fight back, charging at Knell with battle cries. They never made it. Maya stepped in front of him, narrowly deflecting a blow with her sword. She staggered from the blow, still unused to fighting with her left hand, but a crossbow bolt sprouted from his neck and he was dead before he hit the ground.

The remaining warriors ran. That did them no better. No more than a few minutes later, the remains of both armies were dead. Cyll wiped his sword off on a tree, shaking the blood off it irritably. “This shit won’t come off. It’s like paint.”

“That’s why most people typically try to keep it inside their bodies,” Stix said, tugging a bolt from a man’s neck. She wiped it off on his clothes and tucked it away into a pouch. “Knell, are we going to have trouble from Golden River after that?”

“After killing both Scions?” Knell snorted. He knelt beside the women, extending his senses to try and determine where they had their boons hidden. “I’d be surprised if any of the guards have the guts to step outside the gate. Stix, just keep an eye on it and shoot anyone that walks toward us.”

He located Telin’s Boon in her lower back and cut it free, plucking the fingernail sized Boon from her spine and moving over to Ferna. He found her Boon in her left shoulder and was unsurprised to see that it was roughly the same size as Telin’s.

He pocketed both of them and rose. Maya stared at their bodies. Emotion washed over the young woman’s face, ending in cold determination. She wiped her blade off, even though it hadn’t seen much blood, and slid it back into its sheath.

“It doesn’t get better,” Knell said. “I still remember the names of the first people I killed.”

“You found their names out before you killed them?” Maya asked.

“Of course I did. They were my parents,” Knell replied. Maya paled and she glanced away. Energy rose from Telin’s body and entered Knell.

The gods have granted you experience for besting your foe. You have leveled up.

You have defeated an entity more powerful than you. Experience Gained. Your Level has been adjusted accordingly.

Name: Knell Coda [Age: 0]

Path: Scion [Rank Zero]

Level: 19

Attunement A: Foresight of the Vulture

Attunement B: Empty

Attunement C: Empty

Attunement D: Empty

Attunement E: Empty

Foresight of the Vulture [Legendary] – Peer a short distance into the future, seeing the most likely outcome of actions taken in your immediate surroundings.

Bloodline: Eternal Body [Epic]– Time magic bends around you, modifying your lifespan and granting you resistance to spatial magics.

Abilities:

Tax the Living – Death magic erupts from a wound you have inflicted on a target, inflicting the same damage once more.

Path: Epoch

Level: 15

Abilities:

Mental Clock – Use time magic to keep time or set an alarm audible only to you.

Slow – Impede the movement of a single creature by warping the time around them for a brief instant.

Haste – Increase the movement of a single creature by warping time around them for a brief instant.

Anchor – Lock a target’s current state in the timeline, returning it to that state after 1 minute passes, reverting any changes to the target that have happened under the duration of Anchor.

Warp – Distort the passage of time in a small area in front of you, causing inanimate objects that pass through it to slow down. The duration of this spell and the amount objects are slowed depend on the amount of energy spent casting Warp.

Advent of Eternity (Passive)- You do not fall under the jurisdiction of time. With sufficient strength, it will bend to your will, and your existence is absolute. Perennial Soul; Eternity awaits.

From what he could tell, Knell had only gotten credit for killing Telin. He supposed that was fair, as he really hadn’t taken part in the rest of the work. Still, they had died directly because of him.

Knell had his suspicions on how the System functioned – particularly the one under the gods’ control. At the rate his Epoch was growing… the numbers didn’t add up, especially since he hadn’t gained double experience from killing the woman.

That meant that he’d gained two levels of experience for killing the Scion, but she was weaker than him. From what he knew, gaining levels didn’t get more difficult, so his Scion Path should have gone up by far more than it had.

Considering that it hadn’t… Knell’s jaw tightened. It didn’t surprise him much, but it still made every nerve in his body burn with hatred. The gods were skimming energy off every kill. He was nearly certain. There was no way to tell for sure, though – not yet. He’d pry a confession from a Fragment before he killed it.

Knell sighed. At least he’d gotten a new ability from Epoch, and he was already thinking of dozens of ways he could utilize Warp. He’d have to some extensive testing to see if the size of the object passing through the zone mattered, among other things.

“Shit. Killing people really gives a lot of experience,” Stix said. “I jumped all the way to level twenty and got a new Artillerist ability. It increases the speed that I can shoot projectiles from my large weapons.”

“I didn’t even level,” Maya said despondently.

“That’s because you didn’t really do all that much,” Stix said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s fine. You’ll get the opportunity to do more soon, once Knell figures out a way to replace that arm of yours.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Knell said. Golden River was starting to come alive again now that the fight had settled down, and he didn’t want to be caught fighting off any idiots that thought they might be easy pickings. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and I suspect we’ll be getting a visit from Joseph’s group fairly soon. I’d like to be away from any prying eyes when that happens.”