Chapter 20
“So, how do we get this open?” Rys asked aloud.
He approached the door that blocked the way to the power conduit. It remained steadfastly closed, looming over him.
Fara followed closely behind him, her tails quivering as she scanned the door with magic. Both of them gasped at the same time.
The magic lurking within the door was unlike anything Rys had ever sensed. Even inside this monolithic Labyrinth, which exuded magic from every crevice in its walls, the door screamed its uniqueness into the magical and astral planes.
Rys looked closer at the runes on and around the door. The golden rune in the center of the door was in an unfamiliar language, and one different to those used elsewhere in the Labyrinth. Something about it bothered him.
The other languages were more familiar. Angelic, several infernal languages—there were five written languages for infernals, and each was present here—and even pictographs and strange scratchings from races lost to the Cataclysm. Each line said the same thing, but with some minor differences due to the peculiarities of each language.
“Somebody expected divine races to find this,” Rys said. “But not any of the mortal races. Not even dragons, apparently.”
“I can translate if you wish,” Orthrus said. “But I imagine you recognize the infernal writings.”
“‘Activate this sigil, they would seek power, and take but two others with you. No more,’” Rys read aloud. “These runes forge a contract on whoever walks through the door. Multiple contracts, given each set of runes is powered separately. I can’t imagine even trying to break these. Although a few appear defective.”
Orthrus made a noise. “I suspected you knew much, but you are more knowledgeable than I expected.”
Fara interrupted them, although Rys supposed she didn’t know that Orthrus was speaking, “That’s nice, but how do we activate the sigil? I’m guessing that’s the central rune. This thing is like a bulwark in the astral plane. Even if I had six tails and could teleport, I’d never be able to get through this.”
Foxes could teleport with six tails? Rys made a careful note of that knowledge.
He pressed his hand on the door. The golden rune shimmered with light, then split apart. Each half slid into a hidden recess within the wall, shaking dust free from the ceiling.
Beyond the door was another door, exactly like this one.
“It’s an airlock,” he said. “The inner door won’t open unless we meet the requirements.”
“Do you regularly press your hand on runes that you know nothing about?” Fara asked, her eyes wide. “That could have killed you.”
“The magic feels familiar,” Rys said. “And the rune was as well. There’s a ruin in central Gauron that predates the Emergence. I went spelunking there once. Whatever race built that ruin added this door.”
A long silence.
“Added?” Fara asked.
“Yes. The door’s magic and runes are different to everything else in the Labyrinth,” Rys said. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“‘A bad feeling?’” Fara repeated, incredulous. “A bad feeling is what I get before we get ambushed. This looks like a door that seals away an ancient evil. What are we even doing here?”
Unsealing that ancient evil, Rys thought.
But he didn’t know what Orthrus was.
“Grigor,” Rys called out. “Set up a defensive formation outside, then join us.”
Orthrus had vanished somewhere. That made Rys nervous.
“Be ready for anything when that door opens,” he said.
“Rys, I really don’t think—” Fara said.
“I won’t tell you to come with me, but there is nothing that will make me turn back,” Rys said, staring at the far door. “I’ve told you before to make decisions for yourself. That’s because I make decisions for myself.”
“Don’t throw that in my face now, you ass,” Fara muttered. “I’ll come with you. I just think this is way too dangerous. But you know what’s in there, don’t you?”
“I know what the reward is,” Rys said. “But not what’s protecting it.”
Grigor stepped inside. A moment later, the outer door slid shut. The entire corridor shook and dust poured onto them. Fara cursed, shaking dust from her ears and tails.
Finally, the inner door opened.
Inside, a gargantuan chamber revealed itself. The room was shaped like a dome, split into two levels. The upper level ran in a ring around the lower level. A significant gap separated the two levels, taller than Grigor. No stairs led down to the lower level, but there were railings.
Regularly spaced gaps in the railing indicated that there were planned entrances and exits to the lower level.
“Are we expected to fly up and down?” Fara asked, leaning over the edge. “Or is this room unfinished?”
“Maybe the race who built this room could fly,” Rys said. He pointed at an object in the center of the lower level. “That’s what I want.”
A thirty-foot tall black obelisk stood where he pointed. Runes covered its surface. They appeared to be the same language as the golden rune on the door, and similar runes covered the walls of the lower level. The obelisk was formed from the same dark stone as the power slates.
But getting to the obelisk wouldn’t be easy. A shimmering golden barrier cut it off from the outside world. Three obsidian pillars projected the barrier, while also holding the obelisk in place.
“I doubt I have seen many more obvious traps,” Grigor said. He grunted and hefted his axe. “Is there a way to capture our prize from here? The trap has not sprung yet.”
Fara shook her head. “That barrier is as strong as the one on the doors. If I couldn’t see anything inside of it, I’d say that it’s empty. I can’t imagine what ungodly power you’d need to break that barrier.”
“Enough power to break the seal itself,” Orthrus said, showing himself by floating up from the ground. “That is why we are destroying each power conduit one by one.”
That sounded ridiculous to Rys. If the barrier was unbreakable right now, how could he possibly destroy the conduit within it?
Orthrus continued, “Once you step into the lower level, the final defenses will activate. A powerful foe with magic intended to counter the three of you will be summoned. Defeating them should lower the barrier.”
“Why?” Rys asked, bewildered.
Fara and Grigor looked at him, but he waved them off.
“No barrier can be truly impenetrable,” Orthrus said, his voice as smooth as it could be, given how artificial and hollow it sounded. “The greatest mountain can be eroded away to nothing. Cliffs sink into the sea. No security system can be impervious, so the ones for the seals choose the most efficient methods to repel invaders.”
Somehow, the explanation sounded off. It made sense to Rys on one level, but not on another.
The strongest safe would eventually be cracked. No matter how talented the creators of the safe, they couldn’t anticipate what happened in the future or who would try to break it open. At some point, someone would find a way to break into it. Passive defenses, such as barriers, could never be perfect unless time itself stood still.
But the Labyrinth held power beyond comprehension. This barrier wasn’t a wall of energy. It felt like a wall between time and space. Even the protective barriers of the angels had weaknesses that Rys knew how to exploit. Whoever constructed this barrier didn’t want it broken by force.
That meant that the defense mechanism for the seal formed its weakest point. That was deeply illogical.
For now, Rys didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. But he knew that he would need to eventually.
“Let’s head down,” he said. “Whatever appears, its magic will try to counter us. That likely means astral power, assuming the Labyrinth can manage it. Otherwise, I’d expect something capable of powerful anti-magic that can interfere with Gifts.”
They dropped down to the lower level. Moments later, every rune on the walls lit up. Rys couldn’t see a barrier, but he felt one lock into place within the exterior walls of the dome. They were trapped within this chamber.
Three shadows formed beneath the pillars, despite the omnipresent soft lighting of the chamber. Those shadows wiggled, before creeping across the floor and slipping through the barrier around the obelisk. Rys felt them appear in his senses. It was as if the shadows had teleported into Harrium the moment they crossed the threshold of the barrier.
After a few moments, the shadows pooled together. Fara tentatively threw a ball of her blue fire at it, but it fizzled out on the floor.
The joint shadow rose from the ground and formed a male figure. Blue, hawk-like wings emerged from its back, formed from pure energy. The figure remained clothed in shadow but wielded a long staff.
“Is that… an angel?” Fara asked, her ears drooping.
“A mockery of one,” Rys said. “I can feel its power, but real angels look like humans, not beings formed of shadow.”
It looked different to the shadowbeasts that Darus had shown him, so he assumed they weren’t connected. But the potential connection was concerning.
The angel shot into the air, proving that its wings worked. Lances formed from golden light around it.
“Don’t block them,” Rys snapped.
Rys, Fara, and Grigor scattered. A moment later, the lances shot forth. They exploded against the ground, gouging out craters large enough to fit a coffin into.
A grim thought, Rys realized. If he got hit by one of those astral lances, nobody would need to dig a grave for him.
Grigor shouted and hurled his axe at the angel. Its wings flared with light and it deflected the axe using its staff. The axe flew end over end into the distance.
Fara’s tails had been busy, and Rys felt her unleash a powerful force blast.
The angel’s entire body snapped to face Fara, moving so fast that Rys nearly missed its motion. To Fara, the angel would look like a badly controlled puppet that moved between poses instantly.
A barrier of white light appeared in front of the angel and the force blast exploded futilely on it. The angel dismissed the barrier, then pointed its staff at Fara. Right before it did anything, the angel stopped and looked down.
A glowing red circle appeared beneath it. Rys prepared his next spell even as he summoned hellfire into his ritual circle. The angel’s wings snapped shut around it, forming a protective cocoon.
Hellfire consumed the angel, but Rys knew it remained unharmed. Angelic wings were formed of pure astral energy, which the angels used for their astral power as necessary. In many ways, an angel’s wings were very similar to a fox’s tails. They could even become fluffy, if the angel wished it.
“Fara, I want you to prepare your spiritual flames,” Rys snapped. They only had a few more seconds before his ritual ran out.
She stared at him. “They won’t hurt an astral being.”
“Just do it,” Rys said. “It’s not a real angel.”
Nodding, Fara leaped backward. Her tails weaved patterns behind her and began to conjure her blue flames in huge quantities around her.
“Grigor, I need you to distract it,” Rys said.
Any second now.
“Understood, General,” Grigor said.
Never a word of doubt from ol’ Grigor.
The hellfire vanished, revealing a floating ball of blue light where the angel had been. Nothing happened for several long seconds.
It was playing dead. Or guarding against any surprise attacks for when the hellfire vanished. Rys had never worked out why angels remained balled up for longer than necessary, but either explanation worked.
He used the time to prepare his next spells, pumping infernal sorcery into his axe.
Finally, the angel uncoiled its wings. A dozen astral lances formed around it, but Grigor was ready for them.
The demon prince let out a war cry. He leaped upward at the angel.
The lances blew Grigor’s chest apart, sending chunks of armor and flesh flying everywhere. Grigor’s eyes blazed and he kept his arms tense, one fist cocked back for a punch. The angel’s wings punctured Grigor’s arm before it hit him.
Fara let out a strangled scream. Grigor dangled from the angel’s wings.
Rys remained where he was and continued to summon as much of his magic as necessary.
Power surged within Grigor. His entire body shimmered, and afterimages appeared in his wounds. The angel summoned more lances, blowing additional holes in Grigor.
But every wound, no matter how severe or where it was, simply produced an afterimage of Grigor’s original self. Rys started to make his own move at this point.
Grigor’s revival Gift finally peaked, and the afterimages became flesh and blood.
Angry flesh and blood.
Grigor roared. His free arm grappled the angel, crushing its arm. When it tried to pull its wings free from his other arm, the prince grabbed them with the hand that the angel had punctured.
More astral lances appeared around the angel, but they were slow to appear. The angel struggled in Grigor’s grip, unsure if it could harm the demon prince yet. Until the revival Gift ran its course, Grigor was effectively invulnerable.
The angel clearly felt it had enough time to wait out Grigor’s Gift. It held the lances in the air, waiting for some sign of permanent injury from Grigor.
Rys didn’t let it wait Grigor out. He leaped up at the angel, his axe raised.
The angel tried to turn, but its wings were held tight. Maybe it could have teleported, but Grigor also prevented that from happening. The lances hovered in the air, unable to do anything. They had already been brought into the world, and the angel couldn’t alter a spell he had already cast.
Rys’s axe slammed into the angel’s back. Rys dug deep, cutting through the shadowy exterior of the angel. He had strengthened his physical muscles, which combined with his strength Gift to make the blow strong.
Then Rys released his hellfire spell into the wound. As blood red flames gushed out of the angel, Rys kicked off its back.
“Grigor!” he yelled.
The demon prince grunted and let go of the angel. Instantly, he dropped to the ground like a lead weight as the angel retracted its wings. An unearthly screech rose from the fake angel. Rys’s axe remained lodged in its back.
“Fara, hit it in the back with your flames,” Rys called out.
Despite the direction, it turned out not to matter. The spiritual flames swallowed the angel whole, as they ate up the burning embers of Rys’s hellfire. Every inch of the angel’s body was covered by the blue flames.
Normally, Fara’s spiritual flames only consumed beings based on sorcery. Demons, ordinary monsters, and anything summoned or cast using sorcery. They harmed people, because most life sustained itself on magical energy.
But an angel was a purely astral-based being. It didn’t have a magical essence. In many ways, it was the opposite of an infernal. Presumably, that was why it had appeared to oppose Rys and Grigor. Its immunity to many of Fara’s anti-sorcery techniques made it well suited to fight her as well.
Despite all of that, the angel screeched and fell to the ground. The blue flames ate at it and Fara piled more on, her tails spinning fast enough that Rys wondered if she was about to take off.
When she finally stopped, the angel had vanished. Not a trace of the shadow remained.
Behind them, the barrier crackled for a second. Then it vanished.
Silence reigned.
“How did that work?” Fara asked. “And what was that about, Grigor? Do you love getting yourself nearly killed?”
“My revival Gift gives me regeneration abilities superior even to a greater replacement Gift while it is active. So long as I do not die before activating it, there is very little that can kill me,” Grigor said.
“Replacement? That’s the infernal regeneration method, isn’t it?” Fara bit her lip. “I’ve heard about it, but that’s my first time seeing it in action. It was… it was reversing time, wasn’t it?”
“Not quite,” Rys said. He sat down on the ground and stared at the obelisk. “Replacement Gifts are the infernals’ answer to the powerful anti-regeneration methods that angels and other divine races have. The sword of an angel can sever the concept of your arm ever being attached to your body, making regeneration impossible.”
Fara blinked. “You mean if that thing hit us, the wounds were unhealable?”
“The Lilim can heal them, but it’s a long process. Only Mary has the necessary talent,” Rys said. “But replacement Gifts get around this. They’re causality-based—that is, they make it as if the cause of the damage never happened. This breaks reality for a moment, which is why we see afterimages. It’s the world ‘replacing’ the damage that shouldn’t have happened.”
“So, reversing time?” Fara repeated.
“Nobody can truly alter time. You’d destroy yourself before you managed it. But this is the closest thing. Angels do it all the time. They can reform their bodies, change their genders, take on different shapes—the list goes on. Nothing short of direct damage to their soul or the connection between it and their body slows them down,” Rys explained.
“Right. That wasn’t a real angel.” Fara nodded.
“It was close enough. You could feel a soul, somehow. It used astral power.” Rys shrugged when Fara looked at him. “Look, we were in the middle of a battle. The reason you can hurt it is because I covered it in hellfire that had already started burning up its body. Hellfire tries to convert physical things into magical energy. Your flames consume magical energy. The two mixed and supercharged the process. It’s like how some fires get worse when you throw water on them.”
“But a real angel would survive it.”
“Yes. It would have rebuilt its body, just like Grigor did with his Gift.” Rys scowled. “They’re hardy bastards. But this one was created from that shadow thing, so I guess it couldn’t do that. Or something. I don’t know. I just guessed it wouldn’t have the same level of regeneration as a real angel, because that would mean the Labyrinth could create one.”
And the idea that the Labyrinth could replicate a genuine angel terrified Rys.
“They’re all this powerful?” Fara asked.
“No. This was roughly the level of a Primum, who are the elite warriors of the angels,” Rys explained. “A Primum was somewhere between a demon prince and a demon lord in strength. The Chief Primum was a threat even to me, although the one I remember was rather green. Her predecessor picked a losing fight with Ariel.”
Turning the Devil Queen’s palace into glass had been a great intimidation tactic. Unfortunately, Ariel survived, then turned every angel responsible into a living, screaming decoration in her next palace. She wheeled them out for every major event, to remind people of her power. The former Chief Primum had been kept alive in that awful state for centuries.
Rys wondered what happened to those angels when the Infernal Empire collapsed and all the infernals vanished. Probably nothing good.
After his break, Rys stood up and approached the obelisk. It didn’t react to him even when he touched it.
“Truly a mighty battle,” Orthrus uttered, reappearing next to Rys. “Destroy the conduit. That is the only way to weaken the seal.”
Feeling as though he was a lamb being led to the slaughter, but having no better options, Rys hefted his axe.
After a brief pause, he slammed it into the obelisk. Chunks of dark stone flew everywhere.
The runes along the obelisk lit up and light filled Rys’s vision.