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59. Basil - Closing Doors
🕑 Added 2024-12-04 04:20:36 +0000 UTC
Chapter 59
Closing Doors
It didn’t take long for me to discover that the lich’s deck was designed to slowly grind me into submission, but somehow, I was five turns in and still standing. This was despite the fact that she had used a Mythic Relic to get a Legendary Soul onto the field on her third turn with a targeted Water Source Explosion.
Ever since his arrival, my Master Shieldbearer had been forced to fend off an increasing number of Zombies, who, when they were destroyed and cycled with Death Source Power, gradually chipped away at my deck, losing me critical cards like Fluid Grace.
I desperately wanted to summon the Master Assassin I had in hand to Hunt and destroy the Legendary Lich Emerus, but one of his abilities specifically forbade that, making me wish that my Executions were in my Mind Home and not tucked within the card holder strapped to my wrist.
The summoner I faced had removal of her own though, casting a giant spear of ice that gutted my Shieldbearer, shattering him.
The loss of my Bodyguard was especially bittersweet because if not for her Legendary’s deck destruction effect, I would have used Fluid Grace on my Shieldmaster, and that would have allowed him to Dodge the Spell!
Without him, fortunately, I still had answers; I was able to defend against oncoming Zombies, and even Emerus himself, the ancient lich prying himself off of his seat and lumbering toward me, by using Defensive Kata.
My Air Source also helped me refresh my Werespider who had been frozen by one of the enemy Specter’s, letting me generate Webs, which further forestalled the enemy’s advances.
Slowly but steadily, I was building my wall, even if a keystone of it in the form of the Master Shieldbearer had been temporarily removed. I quietly prayed to the Twins during my next two draws, but when my other Shieldbearer wasn’t forthcoming, I decided to go ahead and summon my Master Assassin. At first there was little of value he could do for me, considering that he couldn’t be used to attack the Legendary or any Specters, and he remained mostly useless for a few turns, particularly when my opponent cast a unique Spell that stopped even my Werespider from generating more Webs.
I knew a large attack would be coming on its heels, and sure enough, on her next turn, the lich devoted all her Source and used her Rune-Carver Relic again to summon two massive undead creatures at once.
The giant dragon-kin beat the air of the Dueling Dome with their desiccated wings, blowing up dirt and debris, and revealing a broken stone wall off to the right, with sharp rods of iron protruding dangerously from the rubble. Then, the pair dove at me, maws opening wide enough to swallow a full grown cow.
Atrea hovered above me, summoned the turn prior, but she would be shredded by either Wyrm, and I didn’t want to waste her.
Instead, I had my Werespider use a Web shot to down one of them, the sticky fibers trapping the bony wings together and dropping the leftmost beast from the air, the ground quaking when it fell. The other I stood and took the blow from, nothing between us but my trusty Helm, which I had summoned near the beginning of the match.
The Helm exploded in spectacular fashion, the force of the attack making me stumble back a few steps, but just like when I faced the even more powerful Colossal in the Rising Stars Tournament, when the Relic vanished, I was left unharmed.
I’m doing it! I’m standing toe-to-toe with a Mythic!
Feeling a touch more invincible than perhaps I should have, I chanced a look in the direction of my family. My mother had been quite noisy throughout the match, demanding repeatedly that I drop the Dome to the point that I had mostly tuned her out. I hadn’t heard anything from them recently though, and that worried me.
Sure enough, through the haze of the Air and Order made arena, I could see zombies and skeletons shuffling their way through the streets, approaching the Dome just like they had the last time I had erected one. My brother was tugging at my mother’s arm, but she was snapping something back at him, refusing to budge.
“Get out of here!” I shouted at them. “It’s not safe!”
“He’s right!” I heard my brother cry, as if from a much greater distance than where he stood. “We must flee!”
My mother jerked her arm out of Randel’s grasp, her expression pained, furious, and… viewing things through the Dome was often no better than looking through fogged glass, but still, I swore the way she was staring at me now was different than at any other time in my life. Perhaps it was because I had just faced down two Epic Wyrms and suffered not a scratch, but I thought she might truly be seeing me for the first time.
I had no time to enjoy the moment because the lich sent a zombie to harass me, which I had to command my Master Assassin not to kill, lest it provide another opportunity to trigger the Legendary’s effect. The Helm wasn’t the only Relic I had summoned early in the match, and my Scalemail absorbed the 1 point of damage the Soul was trying to do to me.
By the time I was able to look to the side again, my family was gone, and I breathed out shakily. It suddenly seemed much more frightening to be facing a Mythic alone, but I was also deeply grateful that they were seeking safety – Twins willing, they would find it.
The duel had gone on long enough that I had all my source out now, and I used some of it to summon a big body of my own.
Dashing between the Acanthi’s green legs as they formed, my Assassin got in range of one of the downed Ice Wyrms. Normally his 2 Attack would have been insufficient to break through the Wyrm’s Armor of 2, but with Atrea’s Precision Aura in effect, the knife sunk in deeply, the Venom able to do its work. With a great shudder, the targeted Wyrm broke into shards.
The lich did little back since she had used all of her source the turn prior, and as soon as my Souls were able to move again, I had the Master Assassin finish off the other Wyrm. In addition, I finally attacked my foe directly, sending Atrea dive bombing the lich. If the undead had stolen abilities, she presumably had some sort of Armor, but just like Ice Wyrms, Atrea would cut right through it. The Winged-Knight came screaming down from the sky, her bright sword in the lead, looking to me as if she would skewer the lich neatly. And yet, right as the blade would connect with bone, my opponent slipped sideways, faster than the undead had ever moved before. Atrea had to snap her wings out to stop herself from colliding with the ground. She veered, wobbling at first but then managed to correct, having done no damage to my opponent at all.
I let out a nervous laugh. The lich had Dodge, there could be no mistaking it. That would make it nearly impossible for my low damage deck to win. And yet… if I lasted long enough to get my Pantherkin back and could attack with both it and the Acanthi each turn, a victory might still be possible. And even if it wasn’t, every moment the lich was here with me, she wasn’t out there destroying Treledyne.
“You… are an extremely annoying human,” the rasping voice came from the lich – it seemed the Dodge wasn’t the only first of our match. “Trapping me thus. Wasting my time.” The voice was female and even less used than Griff’s, like a wheezing cough scrapping over rotted leather. “But it will end now,” she promised.
I tensed, unsure what cards she might hold. Was it perhaps a Whirlpool Spell? If so, the 5 damage would clear her side more than mine, and I had the Order Source ready to recall my Master Assassin if necessary.
“I’m just getting started,” I fired back, deciding there was no harm in some false bravado. After all, so far I hadn’t seen anything from her I couldn’t handle – or at least survive for quite some time longer thanks to my ability to Heal.
The lich answered back by devoting all her source. The first thing to spring from her hand was an Epic Spell that swirled snow through the Dome so thickly I could no longer see the cards I held.
When it cleared, my Souls were all kneeling, their bodies crusted in ice. Worse, across the way the lich had in her hands a wicked, two-handed Relic.
“Oh no…” I whispered just as she swung the deadly weapon. An arc of green-tinged power curved out of it, and I reacted with haste, using my Air source power to bring my Werespider back to focused and some Order to activate my Master Assassin’s ability – the Rare turned sideways, vanishing as he did and whispering back into my deck.
He escaped not a moment too soon, the arc of power sweeping through my devoted Souls, four of them into total, and one and all they shattered into glittering motes.
“What?” I sputtered, “it’s only 3 damage!” It was nowhere near enough to destroy my Master Shieldbearer or Acanthi, and yet, they were gone. Had the green tinge been Venom? As I was thinking that, smaller arcs shout out from where my Souls with less health had been: Atrea and a wounded Bearkin. The lich must have Overkill, too!
Blessedly, under the Dome, when the attack neared me, I could feel that it was only 2 damage, so a single Protection from hand was enough to block it. Still, the attack had absolutely decimated my side of the field, leaving me only a single focused Spiderkin, while her side contained a continually cycling set of Common undead Souls, thanks to her Legendary.
The ones who were able to attack came after me, two Zombies, and a Specter. The Epic ghost was the first to reach me, and its chill touch Devoted me, making me crumple into a ball, my frigid hand releasing a Bearkin I held to block the Zombie that wasn’t stopped by my Armor.
Logically, I knew it was over, but I drew anyway, getting another Protection and Defensive Kata – Spells I could use to keep stalling. With little else to do, I went ahead and cast my Order Source Power to draw an extra card, and got the first card I had mulliganed away.
Seeing it sparked a brief bit of hope in me, and I summoned it, Transforming it immediately. The lich’s deck was near empty, too, at this point – I had noticed as much a turn ago from the lack of cards circling her – and with Sneak Attack… No, no, that won’t work. Her Dodge would stop that right away.
Out of options, I looked over at her and blinked in disbelief. What before had only been a single card floating around her body, representing what still remained in her Mind Home, was now a cloud of at least a dozen.
“You have Lifesap, as well!” I couldn’t help myself from shouting. The number of abilities she had was decidedly unfair.
“As I said,” she hissed at me, “it is over.”
She destroyed four of her active Death Source with the Rune-Carver, wiping out my last two Kin, spiderlines of black creeping up the Transformed elves, rotting their fur and carapace away until they shattered. Then she sent her Zombies at me, along with Emerus and the Specter again, as well as three Skeletons she had just summoned.
The damage from the pack of them was more than enough to blow through my remaining cards in hand and the few I had managed to Heal throughout our match. What’s more, as they struck me from the front, a sword of ice punched through my back, keeping me upright. The Dome was still in effect, so all I felt was some pressure from both sides, but looking over my shoulder I discovered that a brand new Mythic had joined the fray.
“Thank Fortune you weren’t out sooner,” I told it. “I wouldn’t have lasted half as long if you had been.”
The Dueling Dome had already started falling the moment I had taken damage past my Mind Home, the cascade of lights sweeping downard like a falling curtain, and as it dropped, the lich’s summons shattered along with its passing, wiping the slate clean.
“What Spell is this?” she hissed as her Legendary and all the rest faded away in front of her.
“The same one I used to capture you,” I replied, as I dusted myself off and stood. After getting trounced at the end of our match, it felt rather good to hear her out of sorts. “I was hoping the Dueling Dome had been smithed after you left your humanity behind, and it’s nice to have been proven correct. Having been through the process a few times myself, I can tell you that it’s best to save some of your best cards for after it’s over, and not just the Commons your Emerus created for you.”
The light in her eyes flickered in a way I hoped was annoyance.
“You’ve done me a favor as well,” I said, showing how, unlike her, I had no cards left in my hands. I could also feel a distinct lack in the space my Mind Home would normally occupy. “So for that, I thank you.” While I’d been talking, I had positioned myself next to one of the more wicked looking rods of iron that protruded from the rubble. I had planned to quick summon an Assassin from my wrist holder, but this would work just as well.
Ever since watching the King die, I’d known I’d likely be forced to follow in his footsteps, especially if I wished to effect any change. And with a Mythic general in front of me and a veritable sea of undead closing in from all sides now that the Dome had fallen, I was definitely in that position. All I could hope for was that I managed to delay the lich and all these undead long enough for people to escape, like Devin and Christine, and my dear friends. I also hoped that my card would have a less useful ability than my living Soul did. “All the best with cultivating Order,” I added with a wink, surprised at how lighthearted I felt with the end in sight.
I threw myself onto the rod – or at least I tried to. I pushed off with my feet but at the last moment, my hands shot out to the sides to save me.
“Fate’s tits!” I swore. After facing death at Ticosi’s hand and choosing to stride out into this battleground, I had thought myself no longer constrained by such fears. I tried again, but still, my hands interfered. By this point, the lich had deduced my plan and was speeding toward me across the ground. Frantically, I dug through my pockets, extracting the Charbonder earrings.
“I’m sorry to leave you, my love, but please, help me in this.”
Holding the wedding gift in both hands, once more I leapt. I felt my body wanting to resist, but I just gripped the earrings tighter, not letting my hands move. I did it, I realized as I titled, feeling weightless while actually falling. The broken rod pierced my stomach and turned my brief moment of triumph into utter agony. It was like hot poker had been stabbed into the space just below my ribcage, the fierce punch of pain causing me to gasp. My breath gurgled in my ears as I slid, slowly, excruciatingly down the length of metal.
The lich reached me, her hands like claws when they gripped my shoulders, and then the unthinkable happened: the all consuming pain I was experiencing actually sharpened in intensity as she pulled me up, the corrugated iron rubbing against my soft organs and flesh, shredding me apart from within. There was a sickening sucking noise when she finally freed me from the skewer, her bony yet strong arms lifting me upright, putting me as close as I had ever been to her – she smelled of dust and mold, and there was a burning sensation in the back of my nose.
“I’ll find a way to resist your bidding as a card,” I spat at her. “You might as well leave me here.”
And then, somehow, all the pain in me vanished.
“You couldn’t have,” I whispered. I had already given away all my Potion cards on my way here, and Healing didn’t exist within Death or Water. Even without knowing all the possible dual source cards, I knew that had to be true – didn’t it?
The lich was looking over my shoulder, and I turned as best I could in her grasp to see none other than my mother on a small rise above the milling undead. Her hand was outstretched toward us, and the Water Source above her head was dim.
“Mother!” I shouted, realization hitting me harder than the iron rod had. “What have you done?”
My mother’s only reply was to spit blood from her mouth as she collapsed. Randel was there to catch her before she hit the ground, a large golem made of stone picking them both up and carrying them away like babes in swaddling, barreling through a pack of zombies before their slow limbs had a chance to retaliate.
“There is no time for this,” the lich hissed, though I felt no air stir with the sound. Then she scooped me up, but underarm, as I sometimes saw farmers carry pigs to market. Before I could resist, we shot up, riding the power of her Flight. Once we cleared the two and three story buildings, she skimmed the air parallel to the ground, rushing back toward Treledyne’s northern wall.
The King’s card, I thought, numbly. It was another reason I had believed in my plan: if the lich was desperate to retrieve the Legendary, she’d be less likely to stay to extract the card from my corpse. My eyes watered from the air pressure against them but that wasn’t the only reason, the frustration I felt at being so fully thwarted rising up in me. It had been a good plan, not only delaying one of our biggest threats but stripping her of all of her most powerful cards. Even with a hundred stolen abilities there was only so much she could do on her own. If I had won, I could have used the Souls left in my hand to finish her off or at least escape. And if she won, I could remove myself from the board, so to speak, in a way I never could when protected by my cards.
And my mother had ruined it all. Fortune see that she’s still alive. The image of blood dribbling down her chin was at complete odds with my current feelings for her. Don’t let her die.
Even as despondent as I was, I scoured the land we sped across for human survivors but saw none I recognized and few in good shape. Esmi, Hull, where are you? Over the wall we shot and out past the city we flew, heading toward a ten foot tall splice in the air that glowed.
“A demon rift,” I whispered, the whistling wind the only reply I received. Oddly though, there seemed to be something covering the portal, like a caterpillar’s cocoon, the construct a deep indigo blue.
Outside the doorway to the realm of Nether were two figures: one wore armor the same shade as the shielding in place and carried a curved sword in each hand. It was no human, that fact I could easily tell, with tall horns extending out of the helmet and an even longer tail, all covered in segmented armor. The other person was a horned woman of greater height, who was yelling at the armored one blocking the way.
“Yveda,” the lich hissed as she landed, still carrying me like a sack. The demon who had been shouting snapped her mouth shut, turning our direction. “You meant to betray us.”
The demon woman stared down her accuser, looking stately in a black gown, red flecks in her horns pulsing with almost as much intensity as the green-flecks in her eyes. Even after everything I had been through, it chilled my blood to be caught between two Mythics. Perhaps they would kill each other and solve one very large problem for me.
The armored demon shifted. “My father does not break alliances with the powerful.” It was a young, female voice that came from behind the faceplate, probably of an age with Esmi. The fact I hadn’t spotted my love on the way here gave me hope. Perhaps Gale had spirited them all away on his griffon. “You are powerful,” the armored demon asked the lich, “are you not?”
“She has such an inefficient way of taking power,” the demoness in the gown finally said, lifting purple, manicured nails to partially cover her mouth like a lady delivering court gossip might. “Carrying her prey around with her, and her vulgar attempts to force level it, all the while worrying the meat for months like a beast with no teeth.”
The lich dropped me unexpectedly, and I coughed as I hit the ground. From where I had been deposited, I rubbed my stomach where the undead’s bony arm had cut into me, watching her float menacingly toward the demoness.
“We can test our powers here and now if you wish,” the lich hissed. “Strike me as you did the King, and see how well it works.”
Despite myself, I was impressed that the lich was bluffing with an empty Mind Home, trying to bait her opponent into using an all-in attack she could simply Dodge. The demoness’s smile fell away as she regarded the undead, the two staring silently at each other for seconds that stretched into minutes. If I warned the demon about the Dodge a moment before casting, she might be able to adjust her attack accordingly…
“No, I don’t think I will,” the demoness in the gown eventually said. She didn’t take a step back, but she did adopt that lazy, unworried posture she had used before. “The Primarch” – she speared the armored demon with a look – “wishes us to take the city. And with the rest of the human army approaching, we’d best be on our way, even if it is a fool’s plan.”
The one wearing armor growled within her helmet, but the stately demon merely considered her nails, seeming no more worried about that threat than the lich, who, though she floated nearby, did not initiate an attack herself.
I cursed internally that neither had gone through with it, but during this exchange I had been dealt a new card I could play.
“What allegiance do you keep for Hull?” I asked the demoness, enunciating clearly and focusing on her to make it clear to whom I was speaking. With what had been said so far and what I had seen in the apotheosis match, there could be no mistake: this Mythic was Hull’s shapeshifter mother.
“None whatsoever, little Basil,” she answered me with a languid smile. “I’ll let that bag of bones turn you into a prune and not lift a finger to stop her.”
So she did recognize me as I had her. I shouldn’t have expected more from the woman who had almost killed my brother, but still, I found myself disappointed that two more potential outs had just been snatched away from me. Surely at this point Fortune would see it as time to come round my way again.
“Felstrife!” someone shouted, and I turned to see a man confidently striding toward us. He wore a suit that in no way fit his muscular frame, his pallid skin and extended canines easily marking him as a vampire. “Caught another, I see,” he said, glancing my way. “This time you weren’t the only one who came away with a prize.” The newcomer flashed a gold-bordered card casually, as one might the evening’s winnings from a gambling house.
The image upon it seized my heart in my chest, my vision narrowing until the card was all I could see. And then, before I knew what I was doing, my hands were wrapped around the vampire’s throat, squeezing for all I was worth. He was taller than me, making the angle awkward, but I didn’t care; I would have sunk my fingers into his flesh if I had the strength.
The vampire’s red-flecked eyes snapped down, nostrils flaring in surprise, a reaction that might have pleased me if I was capable of feeling anything beyond the maelstrom of despair that was pouring out of my heart.
“It seems you’ll need to put a leash on this one,” the vampire said over my head, and I could feel his neck muscles move under my fingers as he spoke. His words weren’t strained in the slightest, disabusing me of the notion that my assault was doing him any sort of harm. With an ease that made me loathe my weakness, he casually pried my hands away and shoved me back into the bony embrace of the lich – the tightness with which her cold claws encircled me made it clear that she wouldn’t allow the same to happen again.
The demons and vampire were continuing to converse as if nothing at all had happened, the rasping voice of the lich joining them as well, but I wasn’t listening. The words I cared about had already been said: force leveling, Hull’s mother had called it. I knew not the exact process, but any sort of Soul elevation took time; time I could use to refocus my Soul as the Air monk had spoken of, denying the lich her desired prize and giving me the means I required to kill Esmi’s murderer. Watching him talk, I imagined ripping the fangs from his mouth and stabbing them into his eyes. I would not just end him but make him suffer in the process, and then I would smash his card to dust.
Is this hatred how Hull feels? Tears were leaking down my face, but I barely noticed them. In fact, as the volatile rage within me consumed all other sensations, my eyes dried. I had no right to mourn my love as the elves would, not yet. My mother’s actions, as ill-conceived as I had thought them to be at the time, had provided me the opportunity to balance the scales, and by the Twins, I would see them set right.
The otherworldly rent in the air faded along with the magic encasing it, leaving behind blue skies, untouched by the war that ravaged us below. With its departure, the cadre of Epics and Mythics began marching in the direction of the Palace. As I stumbled after them through the burnt landscape, dragged by the lich and ignored by the rest, as so often I was, I vowed I would be their destruction from within, unseen, unconsidered, until the moment I brought ruin to their door.
Then, and only then, if I still drew breath, would I let myself grieve my sweet Esmi and all we would never be.
Comments
Ryan Prendergast
Basil doesn't need to do that! Just agree to an Alliance with Hull's Mother, have her murder the Vampire and take Esmi's card and BOOM instant dysfunctional family.
Clem Rossi
I just personnaly don't believe in esmi being dead as a character, at worst as a summoner. Some form of plot device to force Basil to grow by giving him a well defined goal like bringing her back to life through elevating her card.
Hailhound
Yeah, and the next book is shaping up to be real interesting. The war is over, but both of them are still fighting, Hull from without and Basil from within the enemies ranks. Not what I expected NGL.
RainbowPhaze
I was going to save this comment for next chapter, but I wanna get it out there before I forget... I'm really glad that at the end of each book, the status quo has changed. It's not just that time has passed and our protags are stronger, the state of their lives and how things will go forward in the future has markedly changed from what we expected before. A worse writer would've (besides not getting this far to begin with) had Hull and Basil end this book off as stronger versions of themselves having just narrowly defended the city and going on to continue their lives with only a few oblique references to the necessity of rebuilding. Instead we have them separated, the things they were aspiring towards permanently altered by outside forces (can't kill your dead dad, your fiance is a card you can't even cast, can't become king of a destroyed city)
RainbowPhaze
Esmi huh? Wow. I guess a war isn't exactly a favourable aggro matchup, and she was the only one of them without a way to replenish their cards
Ryan Prendergast
Oof... Off-screened too, that's brutal.
Joxter
Yea not a fan of the ending
Kyle
Wth Scribe like GOD DAMN
thisisniall
The end of this book is an absolutely wild ride
Sharrif
FUCK. FUCKKKKK.
Furious Scribe
FYI: Book 2 has one chapter remaining, an Epilogue from an alternate perspective.
