It took Pit some time to consume the body of the eel monster, but his Companion had an appetite to match his own. Soon enough, everything but the haunches, tail, skeleton, and gnarly bits around the middle were devoured. Those they left to the bewildered frogfolk. The Kua-Noa had huddled far away from the banks of the river, clearly terrified of the mighty tenku, but they never left completely. The opportunistic people were ready the moment Pit flew away, joining with Felix at the far side of the cavern, where the road kept moving on. Left with the remains of the beast, they cheered. Their croaks chased them through the cavern as they left the underground river behind.

"I could have eaten the rest of that," Pit complained.

"And then you'd be rolling on the ground, too full to fly.”

“Not true! I've got a big appetite. I'm a growing boy."

"You grow any bigger, you won't fit in this cave."

"You're just jealous that I'm so strong and handsome."

"Yes, buddy. Of course I am.” Felix patted the crown of his feathery head. “But still, I guess those frog guys weren't so bad, after they stopped trying to kill us.”

“They seemed intelligent. I'm glad we didn't have to fight them."

"Me, too."

The cavernous trail led on for some time, winding upwards. Always upwards. It split in a few places, but the path forward was always clear, due to the cut stones that barely peaked above the dirt. The Nymean temple had been constructed there, deep in the caverns—why was beyond Felix’s understanding. The Nym did many things Felix considered strange, but he supposed they had a reason, at one point. Regardless, the path was clear, and even where some of the cut blocks had been pried out of the earth, and a half hour later, they emerged onto the surface once again.

Light was blinding, the day just begun, and the heat was likewise intense. It clung to Felix like stepping into a sauna, wet and heavy, but the wind was fierce, cutting through the heat with a pleasant chill. Blinking out the sunlight, Felix was all but assaulted by skies of bright blue and islands of yellow-green. Yet, instead of lapping waves, the space between the islands was swirling with thick clouds, and the islands themselves were hovering above a depthless chasm that claimed the horizon.

Felix edged over to the cliff. It was no more than thirty steps outside of the cave's mouth, and it offered him a look into depths far deeper than the canyon they'd crossed in the Deadlands. Clouds scuttled across the world, and below them, in that darkness, Felix sensed power. Bits of it flitted back and forth, strong as the eel monster they'd just taken on. Unseen Beholder tagged various beasts, all unfamiliar to him, but all of them in the Master and Grandmaster region of strength.

Incredible.

Among a few of the islands floating out in the clouds, he spotted winged beasts on the hunt, while creatures on all fours scurried away from the talons and antlers of the monstrosities. Strong. They were strong, too.

They'd be great training and better food. Felix clenched his fists. He didn't have the time.

"Pit, we need to figure out—" Felix winced over as notifications rang out around him, screens manifesting in rapid succession.

Warning!

You Have Entered The Empire Of Another.

As A Foreign Agent, The System Has Recognized Your Authority!

The Empire Of The Skyward King Rejects You.

Felix gave a strangled shout, clutching at his chest.

You Are A Major Threat To The Empire!

Strength, Agility, Endurance, And Vitality Have Been Reduced By 30%!

Your Authority Is Restricted!

The pain was fleeting, more startling than anything else, and he soon found his footing again. Felix flexed his hand, feeling a familiar weakness accost his tendons. Making a fist felt fuzzy, as if he were made of cotton strings. It was like clutching at a thick pillow. Worse, his Authority was packed tight against his skin, as if he’d been wrapped in a thin gauze—Felix knew without checking that his ability to work his Will in this empire would be nerfed. Still, the debuff had left his other stats untouched. Felix supposed he should be grateful for that.

Pit shuddered as well, though he didn't fall over, perhaps because he wasn't the emperor of another land. However, he did carry the Seat and Seal of Sunara on his Spirit.

You Are A Minor Threat To The Empire!

Strength, Endurance, And Vitality Have Been Reduced By 30%!

Your Authority Is Restricted!

Pit blew a sharp whistle. “That stings.” He shook his head, and feathers puffed out before he smoothed them down. "But not as bad as I would’ve expected."

Felix flexed his arms once more before straightening his spine. "Feels like the Deadlands all over again.” It wasn't ideal, but he’d had done more with less.

"My Lord, our connection has strengthened—” Static cut the line. “But your location is still unknown to me. Do you have any clues?"

"Apparently I'm in the Empire of the Skyward King."

"Of course! Knowledge has given me a map.” Sharp rustling came from the other end of the sword. “Yes, here it is. It appears that is far to the south, well beyond Ahkestria, where the Bitter Sea joins with the Southron Tides. It shares borders only with the Khadan Imperium."

"The Dwarves that are attacking us?"

"The same."

"Huh." Felix stretched his shoulders. The debuffs felt like they had put a kink in his back, and he couldn't stretch it out. "If I had time, maybe I'd make my way back up, move through their empire, too. If I were petty, I could pay them back for invading."

"Not that we're petty," Pit said.

"Of course not."

"Maybe a little bit," Pit admitted.

Felix smiled.

Karys huffed. “I am glad to hear of your good humor, my lord, but you must hurry."

"I know, we're on a timeline.”

“Not just the Ruin. Just as we found those entering Jaast, the Lords of this land will come for you soon."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Felix grimaced. "Of course they will." He reached into his pouch at his waist, securing the Eye of Tumult, and lifted it up. Once again, it was flashing with steady light. Not as crazy as it had been at the gate in Etrionn, but it was indicating something was near. The golden thread, in fact, was stronger now. Thicker. It cut across the clouds and past the islands in the near distance.

"Looks like we're close." Felix hopped aboard Pit's back, settling himself into the stirrups there. "All right, bud, let's make this quick."

They took off.

Another scream joined the night that never ended. The air was full of them, so many that Ossira couldn't keep track of their directions. It seemed the entire jungle was howling. Soon, however, they all went silent, snuffed out by terrible crashes in the distance.

Ossira trembled. Fear and pain stretched across the little girl’s Aspects like a drumhead. Her mother held her close, barely clinging to the edge of consciousness. She swept sticky bangs from her mother’s forehead, unwilling to look at what stained her fingers. It’ll be alright, mama.

Her mother had twisted her leg during their flight from the village. Her father…she couldn't find him. He was out there, fighting the monsters that attacked them. Their walls had been broken so easily, as if they were made of tenna vines. They burned bright in the dark, blinding the whole village. Then the demons had come. Her mom had called them Dwarves, but Ossira had never seen such creatures. Hunched and red-eyed, they spat black bile and their arms were twisted tendrils of shadow.

They’d torn down Spinner Jakis' door. Ossira had heard the screams and watched as her neighbors fled. Her dad had rushed in to save the old woman who had no one else to care for her and—hot tears welled down Ossira's face, but no sob came. Not there, where she and the fourteen villagers were huddled in the shadow of the tenna roots. They couldn't make a noise.

The ground shook.

They were there.

Not the flames. Those remained somewhere far off, lighting up the horizon. Instead, there was a thing of ice and blocky stone, as well as something that looked like someone had dredged up the bottom of the river and stacked it into the shape of a man. Both of them were taller than a lodge and just as wide, their forms impossible, creatures that should not exist, except in the worst nightmares. They exuded a power Ossira felt in her bones. It scraped at her, pulled, as if it were trying to lure her out of the roots, to scream for help. It wanted her to be afraid.

Ossira refused. When the others started to whimper, she kicked them. The earth quaked, and the air chilled to the point where their breath steamed. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. The roots vanished in whipping clods of dirt as the dark, featureless sky stretched above. The tree crashed to the ground. A claw the size of a riding Skelk flexed above them, and a face like a nightmare looked down at them through burning eyes.

“Scream for me.”

The sun punched the nightmare in the head.

Ossira gaped, not understanding as the icy thing was smote to the ground. It didn’t get up, and neither did she, not until she saw the woman standing over them, clad in enormous armor made of golden radiance.

"Get back, all of you. The Legionnaires will protect you."

Figures in purple and blue cloaks swarmed around the villagers. They helped them up, gently, leading them back from the excavated pit of the tenna tree into a cordoned area. Ossira was lifted along with her mother, carried beyond a line of armed soldiers as that golden woman squared off against the enormous monsters.

"It's going to be all right, sweetheart," said a woman with crimson skin and golden eyes. She looked like Spinner Jakis: old but not. "Take this vial. It will be enough to heal your wounds."

"I'm fine," Ossira said, refusing the thing. "Give that to mama."

"We already have." The kindly woman smiled at her. "Take it. It will help."

Ossira’s mother was muttering in her sleep, but her leg wasn't twisted wrong anymore, and the gash on her head was closed. Healed. She took the vial and downed it. Warmth spread through the girl, so hot that it made her shake.

Your Health Is Restored To Full.

Ossira looked up in wonder, and found that the grandmotherly woman had moved on. Instead, the battle caught the girl’s attention. The monsters, someone called them Elementals, had already fallen. A pile of muck and ice and stone collapsed against the far trees. Smoking wounds tore through their flesh. Now they faced demons that rushed out of the jungle in a vast wave.

Kill Them! a voice cried in the dark, one too terrible for it to come from anything other than a monster. Ossira covered her head.

"Strike!" a Half-Orc called. Lightning wreathed his slashing arm. It tore through a demon, fouling its step before it was buried underneath the magic of others. Ice, flame, earth, and crushing clubs shattered their charge, breaking through the shadow that unspooled from their bodies. It was chaos, and the demons raked through the soldiers, but it wasn't enough. For every Legionnaire that fell, five of the demons collapsed, and they did not get back up.

Ossira watched with a chest full of fear. Her heartbeat all but thundered in her ears, so loud that, at first, she did not recognize the shaking all around her. It was not until the trees began to break along the edge of the clearing that she spotted more of the giant Elementals joining in, more than anyone could defeat, no matter how bright that woman's golden armor shone.

“Face me!” the woman cried, and a wave of power swept outward. The Elementals flashed, their attention captured by her radiance. A massive mace appeared in a spectral hand beside her, sized for her enormous armor, and a shield flashed across her other arm, both forged of solid gold. The Elementals charged, not just from ahead of her, but from every direction at once.

"They surrounded us!" Ossira cried out. Her voice was lost amid the roar. She clutched her mother.

Tremors swept over her, then another. Ossira cracked open an eye to find enormous smoking corpses littering the field, as if someone had spilled junk tiles all over the floor, scattering them carelessly. Ossira didn't understand. They bore no wounds.

A figure leapt from the still-frozen body of one, moving through the air as if it were the river. He was small, about her size, but a scary dagger was clutched in his hand as he shot toward the largest rocky Elemental. He hit them and sank right through it.

Where—where did he go?

The Elemental spasmed, its head hurled back as its legs gave out. The bestial creature collapsed, the dusty brown light among its crevices going out like a snuffed candle. The rest of the Elementals dropped, too, and this man emerged unharmed.

"That's how it's done, folks!"

Shadows swelled, the bodies of the Elementals sprouting with dark power like vile blossoms.

"Get back!" someone cried.

Thudding shook the earth. Ossira sobbed, fearing another quake, but instead it was worse. Dozens of the nightmarish Elementals appeared, and these were different. Formed of stone and ice alone, they blazed with a blackened green fire, a bonfire against the night. An aura of death.

All of them leapt forward, landing on the swelling corpses just as the power exploded.

The giant woman swept her weapon forward and slammed down her shield. "Heliacal blaze!" Light burst all around her—around all of them—cutting through the swelling shadow like a hot knife. The power was dispersed, but the Elementals were reduced to pieces.

The villagers cheered, finally shaken from their stupor. Ossira watched, speechless, untrusting the sudden victory. They’re faking it. They’re gonna kill us all…

She was wrong. The blackened green Elementals stood up, but the rest remained on the ground. Their bodies were damaged, but even that started to heal over with slabs of shiny armor. They looked like beetles. The same shell covered many of them now, repairing arms and torsos where the explosion had damaged them until they caught the golden light and reflected it back.

"Goddamn it, Beef! You need to be faster!" the woman said, her armor repairing itself in a swirl of cinders.

"I'm trying, but this is hard!" The second voice came from one of the green glowing Elementals. It shrugged. "Besides, I couldn't have stopped the shadow stuff. It's getting in despite the sigaldry, not because of it."

The golden woman pushed aside the chunks of their foes, staring with an expression Ossira didn't understand. She wasn't angry. She was sad.

Why?

“Two out of fifteen remain. Can you use them?"

The burning green Elemental nodded. "Give me five minutes."

"You've got two. We got places to be."

The night was quiet, save for the groans of the injured, but even that faded after a short bit. For the first time since she'd been wrapped to sleep that night, the girl allowed herself to hope.

"Ossira!”

“Dada!" She ran off, colliding with the man who brought a limping Spinner Jakis into the clearing.

He picked her up, holding her close. "It's all right now, my heart. The Emperor saved us."

She blinked back tears but didn't say anything. She just hugged him back and smiled at the golden woman who still stood with her armor and shield, guarding them against the night.