I hear a groaning, the sound of metal shifting in its housing mirroring the slow build in the back of my mind. My very soul pushes out into the chamber, washing the crystal light red. There is resistance, not from the world, but from myself. I have to force myself to open up my presence, force myself to push it away from me, but every foot is like a mile. It wants to retreat, to huddle in close, and I want to let it. As the aura passes over the two others in the chamber, touching them, they touch me as well. It is like holding a bowstring taut just to cover this chamber, every fiber of my being wanting the aura to shrink back, to just cover myself if anything at all, to be where it is safe.

But I don't let it. The creature looks up at me from where it has skittered away near the wall, half of its body changed, the human facade having fallen away. She, it, looks so much like that creature I found at the top of the tower so many months ago. But this thing is not nearly as strong; I can tell as much at a glance. It strikes no terror into me, not even when the faceless side of its head turns in my direction.

The urge to identify the monster, to check and make certain that it is the same one that I saw before, comes over me, but I hold myself back. Pain lancing through my head might be too much of a distraction to afford. This thing might not be as strong as that other one had been, but that doesn't make it weak. Best to be quick about it.

My staff falls into my hand, and magic begins to race through it in a rush as I bring the head up to point. The monster's one remaining eye widens in the moment just before a line of orange light crosses the room. I see it this time; the energy roiling through me, elevating my perception, allows me to watch as the head of the beam crosses the distance.

The creature moves too quickly even for the extending line of fire, barely making it away from the explosion that follows as the rail of magic collides with the wall. It continues to move, sliding over the floor like a shadow, fleeing from the bolts of dragonfire racing across the expanse between us, its tattered clothing suffering singes from the heat. In barely a moment, the temperature in the chamber begins to rise, the air itself beginning to shimmer.

"Stop!" The word is like the buzz of a mosquito in my ear, coming again and again, an annoying distraction.

Stop? How could I do that when it is right there, when the thing that consigned me to the dark is right here in front of me? It flits away, sprinting through the room like a bug running from my righteous hate. This thing is a monster. It will be better for it to be dead, better for everyone. Blowing it away now will be a good thing. It will be right. It will be…

My thoughts turn fuzzy as a piece of metal hits me in the side of the head. I tumble back, expecting to see a splash of blood trailing through the air after me as the iron boot thrown at me falls the other way. That woman standing in the middle of the room, the one screaming at me to stop, threw it.

Faster than any movement I have seen it perform before, the monster turns, cutting through the air toward me in a mad fury. Faster than even the bolts of dragonfire, it closes in, the claws of its monstrous arm extending more than a foot from the ends of its stabbing fingers, aiming right at my throat.

The world freezes as I slip into the battle fever. Not since I fought those mushroom monsters in the forest have I felt myself slipping into the slowed world so easily. My soul presence shrinks away from the walls of the room faster than lightning, condensing into a sphere around me. The air itself begins to warp as the power of my soul concentrates, shrunken down to the size of the coffin I was kept in for so long. In these few bare feet, the pressure builds, the air itself caught in the downward pull as weight mounts on everything that isn't me.

Both me and the monster continue our fall through the air. Its eye widens as the full weight of my soul settles upon it. It realizes just a bit too late the unbendable will its gifted torture has granted me, that inside this small space I rule unquestionably. The boot and the creature both are smashed into the ground, the metal of the boot rending and screaming as it is twisted beneath its unsupportable weight, the monster fairing little better. My back foot lands behind me, everything having passed in the span of that single backstep.

I can barely see more than five feet away, the world gone to red soup. What is left of the boot continues to squeal as it is crushed into the ground, constantly being smashed flat by its weight. The monster fares little better. It squirms on the ground in front of me like an insect, one clawed hand scratching at the metallic floor of the chamber, trying to find purchase where there isn't any. Its chest shudders, trying to expand to draw breath, failing utterly.

Raising my staff, pouring as much magic into the weapon as I can, pushing the enchantments running through the length of moonsilver to their limits, magic gathers. Somewhere, that buzzing word keeps echoing, but I am too caught up in staring down at my prey. It really does look like a bug, scratching at the ground, trying to drag itself forward but unable to get any traction. The tip of my staff touches gently against its forehead, and the monster stills, one eye staring up at me, big and round.

How could I not smile at a moment like this? My mouth, so long filled with the coppery taste of my blood, finds something sweet in the terror on its face. I can lick the emotion out of its magic somehow, can feel the spectrum of emotion inside its simple mind turning and settling on fear as its governing force. Too bad that it can only last a moment.

Well…does it need to? The head of staff, topped with a bead of churning fire, presses against the flesh of the monster. The skin begins to blister and pop, a screech of inhuman pain gurgling from its throat as I press down harder. My torment lasted so long, why should this thing get off so easily? Shouldn't it suffer? Wouldn't that be fair?

The ground shakes as another figure enters the range of my aura. The woman from before screams, the chains surrounding her body bulging as all of her muscles strain to swing the enormous hammer grasped in her hands, the veins on the side of her neck standing out against the skin. There is a sound like thunder as the head of the hammer collides with the monster's body, crumpling the strange enamel of its skin and pulping half of its body before finally lifting it. The monster's body drifts like a ball through molasses as it leaves the head of the hammer, becoming a bolt of lightning once it makes it past the edge of my aura. The monster smashes into the wall high up on the side of the chamber, its one eye rolled into the back of its head, most of its chest collapsed inward. Lifeless, it falls away from the wall, knocking over a metal crate as it hits the ground.

The woman gasps, her knee colliding with the ground, the hammer falling out of her hand. I stare down at her as she tries to breathe, rage beginning to bubble up inside of me. In my hand, the moonsilver staff thrums, begging for the power I have pushed into it to be released, promising destruction.

This person stole from me, stole what I have been wishing for most in the world from me. She strains, turning her head to look up at me, and I see my anger mirrored on her face.

"Are you trying to kill everyone?" she asks me through gritted teeth.

I finally recognize her, that woman I met before. It feels like a lifetime ago now, and in some ways it is. No, she isn't one of them. This is a person, a person I know. It is like pushing aside a loadstone to select her out of the pressure of my aura, to turn my anger away from her. The relief that washes over her is instant, the mounting weight vanishing in an instant. With a grunt, Athemia pulls herself to her feet, staring me in the eye.

"I only wanted to kill it," I tell her, my voice sounding dull and dead even to my ears.

She squints at me, waving her hand to encompass the room. "You were about to destroy the barrier surrounding the city."

I follow her gesture, seeing the lines of infused metal running across the walls. Against the far wall, several of the lines lay broken, the metal itself warped and charred by explosions of dragonfire. Redundancies built into the array take over the magical load, shaking in their bindings, compensating for the destruction on the wall.

"I had thought you were supposed to be some kind of enchanter!" The anger seeps back into her voice as she advances on me, stabbing a finger against my chest. "If this chamber is destroyed, the barrier around the city fails. There are more than three thousand monsters massed around the city right now. How many people are you willing to risk dying?"

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I blink at her. She is right. There was a moment when that was the reason I came here, to save the people from the monsters beyond the walls. Seeing that creature though…

"You owe me money," I say.

Athemia blinks at me for a moment, taking a step away with clear confusion on her face. "Everyone said you were dead. Said there was a body and everything."

"I think I did die." It isn't as if I don't understand the strangeness of my words even as I speak them. Something in my head is off, misaligned, maybe. Maybe whatever damaged Galea cut a swath through my brain as it passed by. I can't help but smile at that thought, which does nothing to put the woman in front of me at ease from the looks of it. "What body?"

She squints at me. No doubt, the fey spirit in her eye at work identifying what it can about me. Maybe she can help me fix Galea.

Before she can answer, we both turn toward a gasp coming from the side of the room. A crate is tossed aside as the monster drags itself from the ground, its body creaking as it begins to inflate, its body healing even as its skin begins to recede toward the bone. When it stares up, its pupil has shrunken to a dot, and any intelligence that might have lurked in its eye has vanished.

"We will talk about that later," Athemia says, turning toward the monster and readying her weapon. "We kill this thing first."

"Fine by me." I heft my staff, pointing it at the monster that continues to twist and spasm as its body reknits itself. Athemia's hand grabs hold of my staff, pointing the end back down.

"No more damage to the chamber," she says. "This place must stand."

The flash of anger that spears through me at her command is white hot, but I suppress it, turning it on the monster in front of me. My staff disappears, balls of black sand spinning into the air around me.

"Right," I say. "We have to protect the city." As the orbs of sand begin to lengthen into spears, I realize the words are more for me than for her. I should be killing this thing in order to help others, should be.

The pain that comes is like a statue coming alive, each shift cracking some of the discarded rubble piled atop him, each shift followed by a small cascade of ground stone and dust. Jor'Mari coughs on powdered rock, turning, the broken brown and gold tiles atop him clinking as they slide away. Only a few inches is all he manages before he feels the slab of stone in the dark, a flat and restraining boulder made from the throne room's wall, fallen over top of him. He wriggles on his back, trying to find an angle, trying to force himself free, but his right arm is bent and stuck beneath him, and only the left afforded any kind of movement.

The world is a void, and in that blank darkness he struggles against the unmoving stone. He pours all his energy into his strength, the preternatural toughness he used to protect himself from the explosion vanishing as he pushes everything toward agency. The stone cracks as he strains against it, fissures of white light shining down into the dark as he strains. Dust pours into his eyes as the wall begins to shift. The sound of breaking stone elsewhere in the darkness echoes around him, the air turning dry and unbreathable, but still he pushes.

A shaft of light pierces through, the wall shifting enough to give vision of the night sky beyond his pit. Jor'Mari chokes on his cry for help, his throat parched by the dust. He stretches out, the broken arm of a chair snapping off beneath his grip, crumbling to splinters. Yelling through his pain, he finds a sturdy grip, hauling his body out from beneath the collapse. The stone doesn't want to let him go, splinters of rock trying to pin him in place. He doesn't relent, ripping through the stone with his enhanced strength, forcing the collapsed pillars of the palace itself to bend to his will.

Finally, the fresh air greets him, a clean breath pulled down to inflate parched lungs. When next he blinks, he realizes that he is far from the hole he dragged himself out of, lying on a bed of grass and staring up at the white sky overhead. It is all strange, surreal, even for how the world has seemed to him for the past days; it doesn't take him long to see why. The moon remains in its pale white glow, but he only catches glimpses of it through the confusion of branches blocking his view. Above him, remnants of the palace loom, caught and tangled in the chaos of the dead tree that overlooks Danfalla.

Time passes as he waits, something in his head telling him that someone will be along soon. Someone should be coming to find him, to check on him, to make sure that he is okay. Only, even after minutes of lingering, all he hears is the whisper of the wind. He feels in his pocket, smirking as he finds the small pouch still there, something that will dull the pain at least. Then the scene comes back to him, Fas being ripped apart by that thing, the full might of the Mari's personal guard unable to stop it.

He sees his brother, part of him, discarded on the ground beside him as the monster ignores him. The moments between then and now are hazy, a mixed jumble of images, but he remembers being thrown from the room before the collapse, before that tree could be born. Standing feels like the hardest thing he has ever done, leaving him spitting his breath into the swaying grass when he manages to make his feet. Then, the sounds come: fighting, dying, combat and magic out in the night.

Jor'Mari chooses a direction, making for someone, anyone.

He finds something not even eight steps away. A ratlike creature as big as a dog and with a tail like a scorpion jumps from a rosebush at him as he passes by. It is the simplest thing to snatch the Crasa from the air before it can stab him with its stinger. He squeezes, snapping its neck, dropping it to the ground. The puzzlement that comes over him doesn't come from the demon being on the grounds, but that it would attack him. Nothing summoned by House Mari should be capable of that.

He sees the first of the fires as he rounds the front of the palace. Chaos rules the grounds, hundreds of people and monsters caught in a thick melee. Through the madness, a few islands of strength stand out, places where the teamwork is good enough or an individual is strong enough to keep the crazed demons at bay. Far across, close to the gate, more serious combat erupts in wild sparks of mana and power, but Jor's eye is drawn to a place much closer.

One of the house guards, Harif, scrambles legs kicking as he tries to scoot backward on his ass up a ramp of broken wood. A dozen or so Crasa pester the man, dashing in between swipes of his blade, trying to find a gap to jab their stingers into. In a flask, Jor'Mari is among them, a familiar and invisible weight in his hand as he swings down, crushing one of the demons beneath the spiked head of his mace. The dog-sized demons bounce as the ground beneath them rocks, and he manages to send another three sailing into a still-intact wall where the splatter in a spray of gore.

A man pulls Harif all the way up on the cracked stage where a ring of house guards form a perimeter, a dozen or so women and children sheltering behind them. The remaining Crasa on Jor'Mari's side of the stage are crushed to broken and bloodied bits before they come close to harming him.

"Lord Mari," a guard calls to him from the stage, his voice almost lost in the clarion chaos of the battlefield.

A purple aura swells off of Jor'Mari, and he pushes the full might of his soul presence out toward the demons crawling ever closer. They freeze, the wave of magic washing over them, repelling them as well as a demon lord's presence might have. For a moment, the stage is made safe: people continue to scream and cry upon it, guardsmen continue to pant, turning at each noise, but none of the demons in the dark approach.

"Lord Mari," the man calls again. He points away from the stage, his voice claimed by the boom of lightning striking on the other side of the foreground. In the echoing thunder, he drops his sword, putting his hands around his mouth to yell. "Your sister needs help!" He points again.

Jor'Mari becomes a blur of color, his body shifting to push his speed to its maximum. His bloody robes form a line of color racing through the ranks of demons, a cloud of purple essence barely keeping up with him, stray demons becoming streaks of gore upon the ground. He finds Yor almost instantly, the woman in the middle of a fight against an assorted confusion of demons. She keeps them away with sweeps of a halberd. The weapon is not her own, something she must have found among the dying already here.

Still, she is as graceful with the weapon as she is with any. Cuts across her left arm and shoulder weep openly, drenching her green dress a dark color as she snaps her wrist and bisects a diving eye demon. Yet, for all the demons attacking her, she keeps her eyes ahead, trained on a hulking creature standing still amid the battle.

At first, Jor'Mari mistakes it for a man, but he has never seen a man stand at over ten feet tall before. The face is vaguely familiar; he feels he has seen it before, pale eyes staring out from a shaggy head of brown tangles. Even with its towering height, the monster also looks overinflated with muscle, most of its skin gone except for on its face. The arms that hang down at its side change as they move along, coming together to form scything blades made of sharpened bone. It is the expression on the monster's face that puts a spike of fear in Jor'Mari's heart. It leers at his sister while she holds off lesser demons, hate, and darker emotions in its eyes.

Jor'Mari lands in a splash of bloodshed, his weapon sweeping out to claim the demons trying to push in toward Yor.

"I'm here," he says, putting his back against her.

"You might regret that."

Ahead of her, the looming monster brings its bone scythes together, sparks flying as the edges slide over one another. The sound is grating, vibrating the very bones of all who hear it. To Jor'Mari, it sounds like the gates of hell grinding open on rusted hinges. The black and white world moves around him, all screaming madness, and he welcomes it.

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