The Restored: Chapter Thirty-Six

Hadiya’s eyes slowly opened, and she let out a groan of pain as she shoved herself to her feet and looked around. The entire world around her was glowing red…

No, that wasn’t right. It was the lights in the ceiling that were glowing red, and crackling as they passed magical power from point to point. It was like someone had hijacked the entire power grid.

Her eyes flared open wide and she snapped back to full alertness as she realized that it wasn’t like someone had done that – they HAD actually taken over the city’s power grid. 

How long had she been out? She fished around for her purse, but it wasn’t there. She turned and looked down before letting out a curse. Of course debris had to crush her purse. It was only her entire stock of combat artifacts. Hadiya squinted as she noticed the debris was glowing. 

It wasn’t random debris – it was part of the spell they’d been working on to contain the influence of the Fallen Void. She reached out and picked up the brightly glowing chunk of magic, and her tattoo started to burn. She dropped it, spitting out a curse in the language of ancient Ulacto that roughly translated to ‘this thing’s mother was a goat and its father was a whipped dog’. 

Her brain struggled to figure out why the magic was glowing and why it had hurt her. Did she have a concussion? It was definitely possible. The last thing she could remember was Alyphize riding into the air, then a big explosion that hit her and Rhys, shattering their defenses. 

She froze. Fallen Void, what about Rhys?! 

Hadiya leapt to her feet and spun around, ignoring the sounds of battle around her. Wait, why was there a fight? Focus! She needed to focus. 

“Rhys!?” she called, and started shoving aside some of the rubble. It seemed like the explosion had knocked them into a warehouse and knocked them out. Her head didn’t hurt, though. She wasn’t a biologist, but she hoped that ruled out the idea that they’d been concussed, because she was pretty sure that passing out for a long period from a concussion was the kind of thing that could lead to brain damage.

No, what she suspected had happened was much worse: soul damage. The soul was mysterious and difficult to measure, but it was known that it could repair itself from moderate damage with enough time. She didn’t think they’d suffered enough to have permanently maimed themselves, but they might have been passed out from the explosion as their souls recovered from the damage of the demonic attack. 

There had also been some physical damage. Her entire body, especially her torso, ached like someone had taken a hammer to it, and she suspected she’d be severely bruised. But it wasn’t so bad she couldn’t live. 

A flash of weirdly pale skin caught her eye, and she shoved some of the pebbles out of the side to expose Rhys. He was still passed out, but–

Her train of thought was interrupted when a demon entered through the partially crumbled front door. It was tall and unnaturally thin, its shoulders only as wide as a lamp post despite being almost as tall as Axel was. As it leapt at her, a dozen chunks of the containment ritual that had been blown around the room flared with light, and the demon dissolved into red light. 

Hadiya blinked and stared. She hadn’t designed the ritual to specifically protect from manifested demons, but if it had managed to disconnect the creature from the Fallen Void, she supposed that would probably kill it. It hadn’t dissolved in the same way most vessels did, as there was no chunk of solidified aura falling to the floor. But that opened the question of why someone had brought a demon fully into the room, if not for something like a familiar binding ritual? 

“Wha?” Rhys called out from behind her, and Hadiya turned, shoving aside some more of the rubble. The large man sat up, blinking, and Hadiya was relieved to notice his pupils seemed normal. That was another point against a concussion. Probably. 

“Rhys, you’re awake! Good,” Hadiya said. “I think we have soul damage from the explosion.” 

Rhys stared blankly at her before his eyes widened. 

“Alyphize!” 

“Exactly,” Hadiya agreed with a nod. “I’ll give you a minute to collect yourself.” 

She walked over to the entrance of the warehouse and shoved her head outside. The entire city had been washed in red light, and it had transformed into a disaster zone. There were flickering flames from where airships had crashed into buildings, and she only had a moment to be thankful for the fact that they no longer used the old models that required combustible air.

Demons flocked through the skies, swam through the earth, and raced along the streets. The sounds and smells of blood and gunpowder were everywhere as the inhabitants of the city of metal fought back against the threat from another world. In the distance, she could make out a massive Throne, floating unoccupied in midair, waiting for someone powerful enough to claim it.

The Throne of Sacrifice. 

For half a second, Hadiya considered trying to claim it for herself. Such an action would instantly end her humanity, turning her into a demon of sacrifice, but she could probably control herself, and not immediately cave into her instincts. Couldn’t she? 

She shook her head and closed those thoughts out. The idea was tempting, but if she lost control and tried to sacrifice the city for personal power… No, it was better not to risk it. The temptation was cut short as Rhys limped up to her, and she looked at his leg he was limping with. 

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” he said. “I don’t think it’s broken, since I can walk on it.” 

He looked around the city, taking it all in, then he looked back at the warehouse. 

“How are we not dead?”

“The ritual to cut off all access to the Fallen Void is still active,” Hadiya said, waving her hand dismissively. “A demon tried to come in, and got torn apart by the complete power of the mortal world.”

“How? It was blown apart,” Rhys said, before answering his own question. “Well, we designed it to be able to be projected out along designated lines. A magical wand still works if it’s snapped in half, so long as the anchoring magic isn’t broken. Does that mean the other four points are still active?” 

“It might be,” Hadiya agreed. “It’s definitely being overpowered on a large scale, but there’s got to be an imbalance in the ritual feeding the Throne of Sacrifice aura to help keep in our world. Look that way.” 

She pointed out the two slices of the city that were in the middle of a power outage – still not great, but definitely better than having power actively siphoned into a demonic Throne. 

“Sixty percent of the ritual is still active,” Rhys said. “If we take down one more slice, it might be enough to take out the whole thing.” 

“Maybe. It depends on if she created the ritual as five spells with a unifying spell over all of it, or if it’s just one big spell. If it’s one big spell, it should be on the verge of going out already.” 

“Well, I don’t think we should assu–” 

He yelped and dove back into the warehouse. Hadiya did the same, and they both narrowly missed getting engulfed in hellfire as another demon dove into the warehouse, seeing two undefended humans as a snack. The bits of ritual they’d managed to construct glowed brightly, and then the demon dissolved. Rhys stared, mouth agape, and then he whirled on Hadiya. 

“How is the spell still active?” 

“The spell anchors were reinforced. You already realized that.” 

“Sure, sure,” Rhys said, beginning to pace up and down the warehouse, then he bent over and picked up a chunk of brass with aura crystal fused to it. “And what’s this?” 

“That’s part of an aura gen… The generator blew up? But how is the ritual still powering itself then? The ambient aura’s being sucked up by the ritual.” 

“Hadiya,” Rhys slowly said, pushing the large bits of spellwork together. “I think it’s connected to the city-wide spell. When Alyphize broke it, she just overpowered it. But this isn’t a force projection. Pushing more power through it might disable parts of it, but it’s what’s kept us alive.” 

“Which means we have a backdoor into the entire ritual…” Hadiya said, tracing her fingers along it. Her eyes snapped up to Rhys. “We need to get the other four major anchor points, and we need to get to Elucidate Labs.” 

“Why?” he asked. “What do you need from the lab?”

“There’s a one of a kind material that Nexus was planning to get their hands on more of,” Hadiya said, before gesturing to the world around her. “They were clearly planning to use this summoning circle to get more of it. Which means they needed a lot of power. I don’t know what it is – maybe it’s the blood of an archangel?”

Rhys’ face hardened, and he nodded. 

“We need to stop them from potentially trying to re-use the circle.” 

“What? No! The summoning is here – we need to try and complete their work. If Nexus gets to do it, they’ll be able to privatize the benefits. If we can flip the summoning, though, we can do it.” 

Even as she said it, her mind flashed back to the disastrous aura generator experiment, and she sounded less and less convinced. 

“Hadiya,” Rhys said. “What aren’t you telling me?” 

And so she told him. He listened attentively, then shook his head. 

“I don’t know if it’s archangel’s blood, or if deep realms are real and this is material from one of them. But I can’t let you try and flip the summoning. What good is changing out death at the hands of a soulstuff snatching demon for death at the hands of metal growing into your skin and bulging your body with tumors? Sometimes limits have to be held.” 

Hadiya closed her eyes, then nodded. 

“You’re right. But that said, I still think we need the drop. If we can get it, and break into the Central Aura Depository, we can probably use its property of expansion to expand the Fallen Void barrier. We make it equal to or larger than the spell holding the Throne, and the whole thing should fall apart.”

“And we’ll consume the drop to power the ritual, right?” Rhys asked, his voice flinty. He was normally so soft and jolly that the tone made Hadiya flinch. 

“Yes. Let’s figure out the ritual?” 

The pair started drawing in the dirt, with Rhys suggesting a variety of different solutions, and Hadiya working to tweak them. Rhys’ solutions were old fashioned, but in his defense, he was an archeologist – of course his magic pulled on ancient concepts from ancient civilizations. That said, this ritual was also incredibly old fashioned, since it was forced to incorporate elements from a Throne that had been sundered before humans had even developed a written language system. There was arguably no-one better to take apart a spell as old as one calling on the Throne of Sacrifice than an archeologist. 

“Let’s go,” Rhys said, picking up the chunks as they finished. “Automobiles are powered by their own generators. If we can make some temporary shielding to prevent the generator from being drained, we can be the only people in the city with the ability to drive.” 

Hadiya nodded, and the pair began moving towards the nearest automobile.