The Forsaken Hero

”Well, at least one of us will survive,” Elaine muttered as R’lissea disappeared over the edge of Avant’s shield.

”You can’t give up!” I said, tail flicking anxiously. ”Please, there’s still hope.”

My words sounded hollow even to my own ears. No matter how brave a face I put on for R’lissea, inside, I was just as scared.

To my surprise, Elaine took a deep breath. The fear faded from her eyes, replaced with stone-cold composure.

”You’re right,” she said, adjusting her grip on her obsidian sword. ”This is why you had me promise, isn’t it? This is the time to give my life for my empire.”

”That...remains to be seen,” I muttered, looking at the ground. In the dozen or so glimpses I caught of the Future, she only died in eleven of them. But even I knew that wouldn’t exactly be encouraging to hear.

”Xiviyah,” she said, prompting me to look up.

”Y-yes?”

She smiled as she caught my eye, but it was a distant smile. A sad one.

”You’re a bad liar.”

She kicked off the ground, sending herself back into the smoke and fire surrounding the dragons.

I took a second to breathe and truly appreciate the immensity of the destruction around me. Only the upper quarter of the spire had been caught above Avant’s barrier, but the spire was so massive that even the tip’s diameter was close to a half mile. Hundreds of homes, businesses, and gardens lay scorched and buried in ashes, and despite the best efforts of the Imperial Guard, thousands of corpses were likely buried with them. If the city hadn’t been built on a spire and this had happened in the midst of it, the death toll would have reached tens, if not hundreds of thousands.

I squeezed my staff tightly, tail curling. That wasn’t a fate we had avoided. Not yet, at least. The dragons were still weak and lethargic from hundreds of years of forced slumber. Once they fully awakened and fought through what little strength the empire could muster amid this unexpected calamity, the city would fall.

The spire shook with greater intensity as a draconic foot burst out of the ash cloud, coming down on a ridge. The formation buckled under its weight, opening into a jagged chasm a hundred feet wide. Before it could recover, a dot of red light shot into the air, disappearing into the cinders where its head should be. A concussive shockwave followed a breath later, and the dragon tore out of the chasm, staggering back into the smoke.

”They really don’t want to show their faces,” I muttered, bracing myself as the shockwave reached us.

”Oracle! What are you doing here?”

I jumped as Avant’s shout drifted over the noise of breaking rock and dragon roars. I nudged Fable, and he ran over to the mage, ducking low as he unleashed a flurry of seventh-level ice spells.

”Get the hell out of here!” the mage shouted, waving at me furiously. ”You have no place in a battle of this scale.”

I slid off Fable’s back, tottering as I caught my balance. His frown deepened, and he raised his hand, conjuring a shield that blocked another fire breath.

”Fighting? You’re just launching spells into a cloud!” I cried. ”The dragons aren’t free of the seal yet, and when they are, you won’t stand a chance like this.”

His brow furrowed with a scowl. ”I’m aware, filthblood. That’s why we’re buying as much time as we can. For the weak like you to get away safely. Don’t mock our sacrifice.”

Filthblood. The slur stung, but I shook it off and took a deep breath, marshaling the reins of the Nexus again.

”You won’t last until they break out, not with all your men going into protecting the city. I can help you if you let me.”

He gritted his teeth, wand creaking in the death grip he held it with. A dragon tail smashed into a towering rock formation, sending thousands of tons of obsidian off the edge of the spire and into his ward. The spell flickered until a pulse of mana from his soul reinforced it.

”Fine! But don’t you dare–”

I didn’t wait for him to finish and looped his soul into the Nexus. The resulting backlash was ferocious, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as when Elaine took Celestial Grace without proper safeguards. Even so, I still staggered back, coughing violently. The copper tang of blood poisoned my tongue, and I whimpered, the memory of the knife in my throat too fresh to suppress.

Avant’s eyes widened, glowing with power. ”What did you–”

That was as far as he got, as at that moment, Celestial Grace took root in his soul. He gasped as his aura exploded, dropping to his knees. His magic dimmed, flickering dangerously, only to surge as he succeeded in redirecting his newfound strength into the spell.

Stars coursed along the flow of Celestial Grace, coating his city-wide barrier with the shine of starlight. The dragons’ auras melted off it, and the meteors and waves of fire mana dissipated like smoke in the wind.

”This will take some of the burden off,” I whispered, struggling to breathe past the weight of sustaining the Nexus.

”This power...is it all yours?” he asked breathlessly.

I nodded, wincing as Fable nudged me from behind. My knees buckled at his touch, and I fell onto his waiting back.

”Will you at least run now?” he asked.

I shook my head. ”I can’t go far, or the Nexus will fade. Besides, there’s more I have to do. I’ve got to–” I coughed, ”–lay the foundation and free fate.”

He studied my pale face carefully, and I looked away.

”You’re barely a child,” he muttered, scrunching his face. ”But I suppose we must depend on you. Are you certain we actually have a chance?”

”No.” I couldn’t lie to him, or maybe I didn’t want to. His insult still stung. ”But if we can kill one of them...maybe. It depends on whether you can survive until I find the artifact the church used to block fate.”

He nodded and raised his staff. ”We’ll buy you as much time as you need.”

Fable started to trot off, when I froze, turning to stare at the mage. ”Wait, don’t attack Fyren! He’s a demon, but he can help!”

My voice was lost in the roar of the inferno, and I could only pray he’d heard. There was no worrying about it now, as we were rapidly nearing the scene of the battle. Fable bounded across the shattered landscape of the spire with great strides, weaving between mountains of molten slag, pillars of fire, and errant blasts of mana. It was a scene on par with the hellish landscape of the first demon gate I’d ever entered, nothing but fire, ash, and volcanic activity as far as the eye could see.

”Courage,” I whispered, gripping Fable’s fur tightly.

The thought lasted just long enough for me to scream as a sudden lava plume erupted out of the melted cobblestone street in front of us.

A crack opened in its wake, fires flickering from deep within the spire. As Fable’s muscles tensed, ready to leap it, spurts of lava erupted from the fissure, splattering across my wards.

They hissed and sizzled, sloughing off the invisible sphere mere inches from my face. Fable lunged through the veil of spurting lava and landed on the other side, charging forward as if nothing had happened.

This was insane. R’lissea was right. I had no place in a battle of this scale. I hadn’t even seen one of the dragons yet, but I had almost died several times. If Adaptive Resistance hadn’t leveled up with my breakthrough....

Was this what Haven had spoken about when he was still the anomaly? I hadn’t truly believed him when he’d said ninth-level elemental beings shaped the environment merely by existing, yet here it was. All this death and destruction was simply a byproduct of the dragons’ awakening. Their aura alone covered miles with fire strong enough to burn through fifth-level wards. That meant the threshold for even being able to lay eyes on the monsters themselves was sixth level!

It was a hopeless situation from my perspective, and both Avant and Elaine seemed to agree with me. There was no path to victory, nothing I could think of that would help.

Which left me with only one option. I had to find another path. Somewhere, somehow, there was a future we survived this. And to do that, I needed to disable whatever artifact the church was using to block fate.

With that course of action decided, I urged Fable forward, heading for the broken ruins where the once proud palace had stood. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, but wasn’t that what fate was all about?