The Restored: Chapter Forty-Three

While having a general plan was great, the actual crafting of the magic was going to be far more complex, and far more uncertain. Though the ritual for banishment was pretty simple, as the modifications needed were ultimately nothing more than expanding the range and number of targets, and powering those with a commensurately large amount of aura. 

The spell to sever Alyphize’s connection to the fallen void was a bit harder, and if they’d been forced to build it completely from scratch, even with a pile of useful components, it would have been… Well, maybe not impossible to build and power in a timely manner, but it certainly would have been much harder, and there was a good chance that whatever powers that the Contractor was calling on in order to match Alyphize would wear thin. 

Using the miracle drop, however, was the real challenge. Hadiya’s previous use of the drop had shown her a good bit of how effective the material was at making things grow, but while she’d been able to partially direct it, she had still ultimately failed. 

“What about this?” Rhys suggested, shoving a sheet towards her. Hadiya considered, frowning. 

“You keep using more and more angelic magic. We’re not going to have enough angelic components to power it.” 

“Absurd growth of life is fairly in the wheelhouse of angelic magic,” Rhys said defensively. “But fine. What about, instead of components, we used the components to change a portion of the magic we’re putting in into angelic power? If we used a set of stained glass gate spells…” 

The pair continued to work back and forth, even as they walked along the hallway, using buckets of paint to draw lines all around the complex as the sounds of battle warred outside, as well as from deeper in the Depository.

As they worked, they began setting up the components for the ritual. The simplest was naturally the spell anchors that had been originally designed to sever the link to the Fallen Void and that they’d used to help protect them as they rushed around the city. Scattering them throughout the building was already starting to weaken Alyphize’s connection to the Fallen Void, but it was also weakening the Contractor’s connection. They could only hope that the effect would be worse for Alyphize, who was a full Throne, than it was for the man who had multiple interplanar contracts. 

But those anchors were hardly the only component that the spell was going to use. Many of them were ordinary: lumps of silver, antithetical to demonic power. Salt, a good sympathetic component for purity. Rue flower, said to be poisonous to demons. It wasn’t, but there were enough who still thought of rue in that way that it made it a good banishment component.

Other components weren’t ordinary, but extraplanar components, things that had been soaked into the aura of another realm. While these were powerful, rare, and expensive, they weren’t unique, the sort of thing any corporate rage of Hadiya’s rank would get their hands on for important rituals: leaves from a tree in the Lustrous Abundance that glowed with the power of an entire human lifeline. Metal that had once been a part of a silver elemental’s body. The blood of a winter faerie of death and endings. 

But far and away the most valuable and strange components, as well as the ones that were the most common in this ritual, were the ones that weren’t meant to be used as components at all, but rather were projects of other workers at Elucidate Labs whose prototypes had been commandeered. 

Some of these were mostly operational, like a modified and upgraded wand containing some banishment spells for dealing with demons that broke through naturally, a component for aura generators that was supposed to help better align them to the natural ley lines of the area, or a highly modular defensive cuboidal artifact that could generate hundreds of potential shield spells. 

Others were somewhat operational, and were there for a mix of what their practical effect could generate and for what their associations would be able to pull off as a sympathetic component: a lens covered in fifteen different divination spells that each worked individually, but struggled to combine into a single cohesive output. An auric meter that would allow for more effective reading of extraplanar aura, but fell short when used on anything that wasn’t at least mostly human. A proposed ritual mark that could stop people from ever committing crimes, but was so absurdly invasive, expensive, and unethical that the project had been scrapped. 

The final group of artifacts were the blue sky research that had completely failed. In Hadiya’s own words, they were projects that wouldn’t be complete for another hundred years, and would mainly serve as sympathetic components to further empower the parts of the spell they were conceptually linked to in the ritual: an aura changing device that was supposed to let a person master magic from any realm while still retaining pure human magic, a pair of linked miniature doors carved from the same piece of wood that were intended to be used to allow a person to teleport between them, or a portal ripper artifact that the designer had hoped to be able to use to tear open portals to any location in another realm with no regard to metaphysical geography. 

Even the cheapest prototypes, the ones that had been stripped down to eventually be turned into mass produced enchantments, like the wand, had costs that could be measured in the thousands of thin-panes. The most expensive of them, those that had consistently shown just enough progress and would have just enough of a benefit, like the portal ripper, to allow venture capitalists to keep pouring money into the project to get better and better materials, had costs in the millions. 

And then there was the Miracle Drop. That single component, the single droplet of golden ichor fetched from somewhere that no mortal hand should ever have reached, was worth nearly as much as the entire rest of the ritual put together. 

In minutes, Rhys and Hadiya had thrown away the kind of fortune that could be the start of a corporate dynasty. 

All for a single spell. 

As they painted the last of the spell onto the ground, Hadiya looked up. 

“You start the chant. We might have to skip a lot of it. We normally couldn’t, but if we can’t even skip a chant for a ritual of this magnitude, then what’s the point?” 

She said it like a joke, but the smile didn’t touch her eyes. Rhys understood, nodding somberly. 

After all, to power this ritual, they’d be using more than just the Miracle Drop. They’d need to connect it to the Depository’s crystal, which meant Hadiya was going to need to enter the room where the Contractor and Alyphize were fighting. She’d need to bring the drop in, to use it on the object their spell was going to direct the growth of, and to be the one who finally activated it. 

“Good luck,” Rhys said, the words sticking in his throat. In that instant, it was the only thing he could think to say. Not wanting to watch, in case she got splattered by a stray spell, Rhys turned and began chanting. 

In one hand, Hadiya held the enchanted lead box that contained the Miracle Drop. In the other, she picked up the bucket of paint and began to pour it out on the floor, drawing the line that would connect to the enormous crystal and siphon its power away to activate the spell. 

As soon as she entered the room, she could tell things were going poorly for the Contractor. It was shocking that he’d held out this long at all, but all of the damage was starting to pile up. His suit was gone, leaving him completely nude, and Hadiya was vaguely disturbed to notice that the demon was smooth, like a children’s doll. His body was covered in cuts and slashes that were leaking both blood and a bright red light, but it was probably in the best shape of his entire body. 

His horns, small though they were, had been snapped off. One of his eyes had been gouged out, and the claw marks trailing from the wound bled a savage green color. His left hand was entirely missing, sliced off at an unusual angle that left several more inches of his ulna than his radial bone. The fact he even had such humanoid bone structure was disturbing in its own right, though, as for all that they were humanoid, human bones didn’t glow with arcane symbols on the inside of the very marrow that made them up. Symbols in a spell language that Hadiya didn’t even recognize. What had he done to himself? 

Unlike the Contractor, Alyphize was in better shape than she’d been in before. Given that she had been little more than a skeleton with a fleshy head, that wasn’t hard to manage. Now, at least, she’d managed to thread sinew through most of her body, and had started to regrow musculature, but that was still in its half-complete stages. She looked like someone had taken pages from an anatomical textbook and animated them to life in a horrifying level of detail. 

Despite injuries that would have killed any human in seconds, the pair still battled. Spell anchors from the Contractor slammed Alyphize’s body to the ground, the walls, the crystal, and to itself. His body raced with red light, letting him move at blinding speeds as he threw them out, slashed with claws of the same light, and bounced around. 

Alyphize, interestingly, wasn’t using any curse magic. Maybe the Contractor could render himself immune to them? Her own ability to enhance and improve her form with her soulstuff and aura, however, clearly outpaced the Contractor’s on sheer output by an order of magnitude. 

Hadiya kept an eye on them as they blinked around, steadily pouring paint from the bucket as she walked towards the enormous aura crystal. Both were so involved in their fight that they didn’t even notice a little human who didn’t even have a real aura walking toward the crystal.

The paint splashed over the crystal, and the room’s power flickered as it was redirected away from the Throne of Sacrifice and to their spell. 

That caught their attention, and Alyphize exploded toward Hadiya, even as she dropped the bucket and opened the lead box, removing the Miracle Drop. The Contracter cut her off, binding her sinew to the ceiling while binding her muscle to the ground. Her body ripped and tore for a second before she pulled herself back together. 

A second was all that Hadiya needed. The golden light exploded from the box. Alyphize was rushing her again, even as the Contractor tried to slow her, and she was burning power like water, even more than she had in the fight before. 

If Hadiya tried to uncork the drop and pour it out, she’d be cut into ribbons. So she just dropped the vial. 

The glass shattered, and the golden ichor streamed into the black paint. The inky darkness of the paint turned a rich, vibrant gold as magic raced through the entire ritual. The lights all across the city, which had been crackling with the bright red color of soulstuff, suddenly turned the same shade of gold as the miracle drop as the ritual’s power exploded outward.

Alyphize’s claws were mere centimeters from Haidya’s throat when the zone of exclusion locked onto her, and her body fell to the ground. She was being torn apart by so many of the Contractor’s spells and boons, and had suffered so much damage from the attack of the airship that the moment she wasn’t able to connect to the Throne for healing, her entire body started to unravel. Muscle, sinew, and bone all dissolved into red light that was washed away into nothingness an instant later. Hadiya looked up at the Contractor and pointed to the Throne hanging above them. 

“Go take it. You only have a few seconds before the ritual starts to cause this crystal to grow, and maybe kills everyone in this room.” 

The Contractor nodded wordlessly and leapt atop the crystal. From there, another jump carried him to the roof of the Depository, where he was caught in the massive stream of Soulstuff floating around it. He held his hand out, and despite not having a single Arch-star, let alone the pinnacle star that allowed for Mage Sight, Hadiya was certain she could follow what passed between the Throne and the demon in that second. 

The Throne of Sacrifice demanded someone who was willing to sacrifice for its position. Alyphize had torn the largest city in the world apart in her effort to create a large enough sacrifice and to gather enough power to un-Sunder one of the Sundered Thrones.

The Contractor was unable, and unwilling, to make such a sacrifice. But he had sacrificed in other ways. The ancient demon had lived ten thousand years. He might not be as ancient as Medb, that Fae which was Winter, but he remembered an age where few megalithic structures existed, where humans were forced to barter with him and his kind for every scrap of power, just to survive in a world that wanted them dead. 

He had given up human contractors that had lived in those era, humans who he had cared for as friends. He had pulled away from humans, grown closer to them in his time. He had held Thrones and given them up, then given up the safety of the Impartiates.

When his Soulstuff had crashed against Alyphize, the Throne had recognized him as the greatest living failure in all the planes. 

Now, as he stepped forward, he rejected that definition. No, rejected wasn’t the right word. He accepted it, but he also pointed out another position. 

Every failure, every success, and every pyrrhic victory had carried him through ten thousand years of sacrifice, all to arrive at this moment. He was not just the greatest living failure in all the planes – he was a demon who had sacrificed more than any other  person.

That smashed down, incorrect, and Hadiya’s eyes blurred for a moment, before refocusing on him again. He held firm, but changed as well. He might not have given the greatest sacrifice in all the planes, but he had given more to sacrifice than nearly anyone alive. And mere moments ago, he had sacrificed one of the few remaining demons who he had a soulstuff connection to, what passed for the blood relation of the humans that the Contractor loved, feared, hated, and admired. The Throne of Sacrifice quivered, and the Contractor took another step forward. The Throne trembled again.

Then the Contractor lowered himself onto the vast chair, and became the Throne of Sacrifice. 

He raised his hand to the sky, and in a ripple of power, the Throne vanished from this world. It had never belonged here, after all, it had always been summoned here by Alyphize, and sustained through magic. 

With the Throne gone, the power flooding through the city and into the crystal Hadiya stood next to was no longer contested. It ripped through the ritual Rhys and she had prepared, and golden light exploded out of her. It passed through the city in a wave, banishing every living demon into the Fallen Void. 

What would happen to them after, how they would listen to the commands of their new Throne? Hadia supposed that was for the Contractor to decide. She just hoped that he would make the right choice. His reputation was good, and Axel seemed to think well of him.

Pain exploded through Hadiya’s foot, and she screamed. In its own way, the pain was probably a good thing, though, as it managed to ground her. A spike of steel that had once been nothing more than a nail had grown to the size of a sword, and stabbed her through the food. 

She fell onto her knees and started to crawl toward the door, when a shadow fell over her. Rhys was there, hauling her up with surprising strength. With his help, Hadiya managed to exit into the hallway, where they both collapsed. 

Rhys tore off his overcoat and started tying his best attempt at a tourniquet on her leg, stemming the blood loss from having her foot skewered so thoroughly by a sword. Hadiya muttered her thanks, but a part of her knew that even if his tourniquet worked, she was going to be losing that foot. There would be too many others in far worse condition who would need help and healing.

The thought bothered her less than it should have. Prosthetic enchantments were nearly universally less balanced and more difficult to walk in than the flesh and blood limb, but their spell had saved the city. Losing a foot for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of lives, wasn’t such a bad trade. 

So as Rhys fussed over her, Hadiya watched the magic. 

She’d managed to direct and limit the growth quite well, for a slapdash spell that had zero existing spell language infrastructure. The growth hadn’t touched biological tissue at all, unless there were tumors in her body too small to see. It hadn’t been entirely contained to the crystal, but it had been limited to the struts that held the crystal in place. Even as she watched, the steel and concrete that made the struts stretched up, reaching for the hole in the ceiling. A handful of objects on the struts were growing, like the wrenches, spell purification devices, and diagnostic artifacts, but only about one in ten of them. Ninety percent didn’t change size at all. 

No, she was content. She’d done well to contain almost all of the growth to the crystal, and she couldn’t help but watch in amazement as it splintered and speared upwards. It had started nearly two stories tall, and it was already five stories. Then before she knew it, the crystal was ten stories high, then twelve, fifteen, twenty. 

Then, all at once, the power of the ritual died. The Miracle Drop was burnt out, and with the way that they’d designed the spell, the instant that was gone, it would stop trying to draw from the sabotaged power grid. 

With no Demonic Throne to draw from it, nor their mass banishing spell hijacking that same connection, the lights of the city returned to their normal color. Many of them burnt out in that second, only having held on as long as they had due to the sheer flow keeping them locked in place, like a rusty pipe falling apart the moment that the water flow is turned off. 

Other devices with higher tolerances, like aura generators, defensive wards, or industrial building enchantments, sparked back to life. Many of them were so damaged that the spells failed, and the explosion of tens of thousands of spell failures popping as they released a bit of force, light, and heat rocked the city. Each one alone was tiny, but their cumulative effect was enough to cause a ringing in Hadiya’s ears, and she was confident there would be a call for more otolaryngologists in the near future. 

Then, once the popping of the spells had faded away to nothing, silence fell across the city. It held for only a single second, of course, before the noises of people across an entire city, calling out for friends, family, lovers, and more began to fill the streets, buildings, and few un-collapsed skylanes in the city.

“Did we do it?” Rhys asked, as if he couldn’t believe it. 

“We did it,” Hadiya said, the sound of disbelief ringing her voice. 

Then they both started to laugh.