Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex braced himself as he slotted the final Mirror Aspect Gem into its spot in his pillars. The gemstone slid into place with a quiet click, moving until its edges were perfectly flush with the smooth marble around it.

And that was that. It was strikingly… plain. Just another part of his soul that now sat in the proper place. He stood there for another moment in wait for something to happen, but nothing did. His soul was quiet and still.

Not even Berith was making any complaints or wise remarks. The demon just sat in his corner, observing Alex silently. That somehow only put him even more on edge. After nearly getting his entire soul flattened by his own Visualization, anything just happening felt very wrong.

Like the calm before the storm.

Alex slowly let his hand lower. He squinted at the gem for a moment, then prodded it again to make sure it was actually properly in place. The gem didn’t so much as budge. It certainly seemed locked in.

”Huh,” Alex said. He didn’t feel particularly different, but it was a little hard to tell at the moment. The latest advancements he’d made to his Mind Palace were so extensive that it would probably be quite some time before he was fully used to them. It couldn’t be a simple matter for his body to go through such immense changes at the drop of a hat.

I mean, there’s no way I could have shrugged a twenty-foot fall off even recently. That’s practically superhuman levels of resilience. But I really thought slotting my final Aspect Gem would end up being some huge change that was impossible to miss.

Alex glanced over to the gate waiting between two of the pillars. There was really only one logical guess he could come up with. Slotting the Aspect Gems into place wasn’t enough. He had to open the gate.

”Well, I was planning on doing that anyway,” Alex said. He cracked his knuckles as he walked over to stand before the gate. It now stood slightly taller than it had before due to the small staircase that had arisen from beneath the lake to lead up to the closed door.

But there was one more change. The three lines that rose up from near the center of the marble door were illuminated with faint energy. Each line shimmered with the color of one of his three Aspect Gems. There was a pitch black, a sickly green, and a gentle silverish-white.

At least that confirms that the gate is definitely for my domain, and the Aspect Gems are connected to it. It’s good to know that for a fact. It would have been really ironic if I pushed this damn thing open and somehow transformed myself into a monster or some ridiculous crap.

Alex examined the surface of the door. As badly as he wanted to just shove it open, that wasn’t happening. Not yet. He’d spent a fair amount of Credits buying Memory Crystals with information on Domains and how to use them.

If there’s even the slightest chance of them being useful, I should test them out before I go opening anything. Really, if I’d been smarter, I would have used them before I slotted the third Aspect Gem in. I really have to make sure my actions don’t rush too far ahead of my head.

It would be simple enough to use the Memory Crystals inside his Mind Palace. He’d already confirmed that worked when he’d beaned Berith with one. Alex ran a finger along the Spatial Ring on his hand.

There were four large crystals and three small ones. He didn’t know exactly how long it would take to go through them all, but it probably couldn’t be too long. Berith had been hit by the longest one Finley had and it had only bound the demon down for a short while.

No time like the present to get started.

Alex summoned the first of the large Memory Crystals to his hand with a thought. He reigned his focus in. He had absolutely no idea what to expect, but there would only be one shot at this. The crystals broke after they were used. Any information he saw had to be memorized perfectly.

”Right,” Alex whispered. ”Let’s do this.”

He shattered the crystal. And, in an instant, the world changed.

***

Alex was no longer Alex.

He was Vizzel, Arbiter of the Black Spear’s 4th Legion and, should all go according to his plans, sole survivor of what would soon be known as the Slaughter of Stillfoot Pass.

Corpses littered the ground around Vizzel. Their blood painted his clothes and the rock at his feet, soaking into the dirt and turning it to a thick slurry. At either side of him rose the walls of towering mountains.

They trapped the thick stench of blood from the recent battle in with him and the few unfortunate souls who still drew breath. This fight had not been a clean one. Few of them ever were.

In the past ten minutes, Vizzel had watched five thousand men die — and that had been before they’d reached Stillfoot Pass. The Imperator’s Army was far craftier than Vizzel had expected, and his men had paid for it in lives.

Vizzel’s ears still rang from the magical explosions that had been rigged for their arrival. He could still taste the blood of his men in his mouth. Still feel their breath on the back of his neck.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

More of them still had died upon reaching the pass. Savage magic had rained down on their number and torn their dwindling numbers to pieces — and only then, while they reeled from their losses and struggled to save their wounded, had the Imperator’s Army struck.

The cowards had come down on them from above. Poured into the pass from both angles and torn every last one of Vizzel’s men to shreds.

And now only he remained. The lives of Vizzel’s men hung around his neck like a Starmetal collar. The weight was so immense that it threatened to drive his legs straight through the ground and plunge him into the center of the earth.

He had not been a sufficiently talented general. He had not seen through the enemy’s tricks. Vizzel had thought the Imperator’s Army to be routed, thought that his ten year-long duty had finally ended, but it had merely been a trap.

That failure had killed his men as surely as the magic that had torn their bodies to bits.

All around Vizzel, the Imperator’s men emerged. Warriors and mages and their healers slipped out from behind their cover and grouped up to surround him. They gathered their magic in wait, but they were cowards.

None dared make the first move.

Vizzel stood alone upon a graveyard of corpses. The 4th Legion had been reduced to nothing more than a single man. But that one man was The Arbiter of the 4th Legion. They had left him for last.

And that was their greatest mistake.

There were no men left from the 4th Legion beyond him, and that meant there was no reason for him to worry about collateral damage.

”Soul Manifestation,” Vizzel snarled, his voice echoing through the valley like rolling thunder. He lifted his hands into the air like a conductor. Blood arced through the air in slow motion, splattering from where it had been trapped between his palms. ”The Red Sage’s Requiem.”

Fear exploded across the faces of those unfortunate enough to be close to him. Perhaps they had thought that Vizzel no longer had the energy to fight. It didn’t matter. None of them would be thinking much at all in a short while.

A few of the fools closest to Vizzel tried to run.

But it was far too late for that.

Something deep within Vizzel shifted. There was a soft click, audible to his ears alone. The gate to his domain ground open. And then, within his soul, power bloomed. But it was more than just power.

It was freedom. It was control. It was the knowledge that, within the grasp of his domain, Vizzel was absolute. That complete domination could be undone only by the domain of someone more powerful than him.

Unfortunately for the soldiers of the Imperator, not a single one of them filled those qualifications.

An ocean of sheer magical power exploded from within him. His soul imprinted itself upon the world. And in that moment, every single rule — every single law that governed the way the universe operated in the area around Vizzel — was torn from its throne.

A new law imposed itself upon the world. It was the law of Vizzel’s domain. A command that superseded every other force and left no room for argument. Some of the Imperator’s forces attempted to call upon their own domains and unleash their Soul Manifestations.

Vizzel’s domain swept theirs away like they were dry leaves in a winter storm. The time to resist had long since passed. There was only one thing that he would allow anyone who still drew breath within Stillfoot Pass to do.

Die.

His Domain asserted itself over the world. It expanded to fill the entire valley, flooding through the cracks and reaching into the crevices between the rocks until the entire mountain pass was under his rule.

Vizzel’s hands clapped together with a booming crack.

And every single being that dared hold life within their hearts, from the ones standing directly before Vizzel to their wiser yet equally doomed comrades already running for the exit, exploded into a fine, bloody mist.

Such was his command.

***

Alex’s eyes snapped open as he found himself midway through a sharp breath. His heart pounded in his chest and it took him several moments to realize that he was no longer Vizzel. He had absolutely no idea how long had passed since the crystal had activated.

The vision had been so real.

Holy shit. How powerful was that guy? He must have been way up there in the Stages. There’s no way he was anywhere near my power level. What ridiculous level of strength lets you just instantly kill thousands of people in the blink of an eye? How far do I have to go before I can fight back against someone like that, much less defeat them?

Alex swallowed. It was starting to make sense why the System had heavily restricted the abilities of the Outworlders. If people as strong as Vizzel could have rolled up to 274-50, they’d have conquered the planet entirely within minutes.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and fought to catch his breath again. Vizzel’s emotions were still twisting through the back of his mind, dragging their fingers through his thoughts as they drained away.

I was thinking I’d get a memory of someone opening their gate for the first time, but this was just as useful.

He’d learned a few very important things from the vision.

First, domains were practically laws. They changed the fundamental way the world worked within them. From Vizzel’s thoughts, it seemed that a stronger domain would overwrite a weaker one.

Second, domains had limits. Their one rule might have been absolute, but Vizzel hadn’t used his domain until his entire legion had been destroyed. There was only one good reason for someone to hold back a weapon like that.

He couldn’t control it.

If Alex was right… Vizzel’s domain killed everything within it without discrimination. Enemies, allies, all the same. It was just a command of death. That was a terrifying ability… but it was also one with a severe drawback. Even a single ally near Vizzel would render him far weaker.

I’d be willing to bet that every Domain has a similar weakness. The System is nothing if not fair. It wouldn’t make sense for someone to just have absolute, unshakable power. There’s always a way to win any fight. You just have to find it.

And there was one final thing that the vision had shown Alex.

It was the feeling of activating the gate within his soul and freeing the power behind it. That sensation was seared into his mind like it had been branded by an iron. The urge to have that very same power gripped him.

But Alex still had three large crystals and three small ones remaining. There was still information to be gleaned. He extended a hand and the second of the four large crystals he’d purchased from Finley materialized within it.

Alex set his jaw and readied himself.

Then he broke the crystal.