The Restored: Chapter Twenty-Seven

Alyphyize lashed out, blurring with movement fast enough that a human’s eyes would have thought she teleported, but the Contractor spun his hands down, and his magic bound her hands to the ground.

Her hands.

Which weren’t touching the ground.

Were bound to them.

That wasn’t even possible! His magic was binding people with demons and their magics. She would believe he had found ways to tether in magic from the dreamscape or fae.

But not physical objects. The ground had no soul for her to be bound to!

She toppled over as the strands of soulstuff reached into her manifestation and bound her to the ground, but for all that he had caught her by surprise with the trick, Alyphize was a master of curse magic, which involved moving the field of luck around people and objects to create negative fortune-pressure. Blessings, the movement of luck to create a positive pressure, were the equal and opposite.

She shifted fields of luck around her, even as she flipped into a full handstand, re-organized her enhancements around her legs, and slashed out at her uncle’s throat with a kick that would kill him. Her foot crunched into his chest, and a lance of red light speared through him, carrying a deadly amount of curse magic, even for one of her kind.

She shunted the resultant positive luck into her body. Managing to command both was quite the feat, and the woman she’d learned it from had managed many great deeds with the technique.

It was enough.

The spell binding her hands to the floor snapped and she flipped back onto her feet, landing gracefully and looking at the body of her uncle.

Except, it wasn’t dissolving into soulstuff.

Alyphize, even with all the enhancements running through her, only had a second to widen her eyes as a circle of binding magic erupted from the floor under her feet, and bound their fortune together. The spike of cursed energy flew into her chest, where her own positive luck armor absorbed it.

Then the contractor’s hand, sharpened into multiple-inch long claws of glowing red light slammed into her throat, cutting soulstuff from her body. She slashed out with her own claws, misfortune trailing along their tips while positive luck flowed into her arm, guiding the strike.

Her magic bound to her own heart, changing the direction of her claws. She was her own demon, and she broke her uncle’s magic in a second, but that second bought him the time to slide to the side, avoiding the strike.

He whipped behind her, slashing with his claws, but she was faster, spinning and cutting the air between them, but he kept spiraling out binding magic that tied her hands to the floor, ceiling, and walls, that tied her magic to her own heart, that tied her curses to their output, and more.

She was almost twice as fast as he was. Every one of her blows had far more strength than any one of his spells. She was filled with more soulstuff and aura than his entire being.

But she couldn’t land a hit.

He raced back along the hallway, spinning out of the way of her cursed tail, binding her claws to her tail to avoid the swipe of sharpened red light, and then bound her back to the ceiling to throw her off balance.

She was carried upwards, only for him to leap into the air and bind his own claws to her flesh, guiding them to strike her heart even as he enhanced them with strength.

They bit her flesh, and she shattered the spell guiding them, as well as the spell sticking her to the ceiling. Both began to fall, and her tail whipped out with a speed and charm-magic enhanced might that should have torn even a weaker Throne in half.

But he negated her magic, binding the positive and negative together, then bound himself to the floor, and her back to the ceiling. He fell too fast, and her tail grazed him, ripping his suit open, rather than killing him.

She shattered the magic again, and they both landed on the ground in a crouch. Their tails had grown thicker and more beastial, and their horns were on full display as they eyed one another seriously. When they spoke, it wasn’t in the language of Elderglass, but in a tongue that was built into demons from their spawning.

“I admit, uncle, I am impressed. If you wish, I will let you kill the Soulwitch and take her place as my enforcer.”

As she spoke, she watched him, felt his aura and his soulstuff.

“I do not know whom you speak of, and I do not care.”

He was weakening. She wasn’t sure how or where he had amassed the skills and power to match her, but his reserves were running low.

“Are you so frightened of the return of one of the Sundered Thrones? Have you not yourself said that the creation of new Thrones is a good thing?”

She checked her own reserves, as well as the reserves stored within the Sundered Throne. Her own power was almost entirely depleted, but the Throne, even in its destroyed state, was already restoring her to full power. She would win… eventually.

“I do not fear their return. But to reach , you will sacrifice near-on every mortal in Elderglass. It is that which I do not care for.”

It was the ‘eventually’ that was the issue. She had to match the timing of the rest of the ritual. No doubt he had somehow learned that, and hoped to bring it to failure by delaying her.

Though she was loathe to do so, she actively tapped into the Throne’s reserves, flaring her Aura and soulstuff around her. Unlike with the passive connection, this would permanently deplete the Throne’s reserves, and they would need to be replaced.

She exploded at him, her athame in hand. He reacted admirably, a dozen spells exploding from his body, depleting his entire aura in a single second, and draining the reserves of soulstuff he held.

It was a mighty barrage, and if she had been connected to the Throne of the Gambler, it would have been enough to stop her dead.

If she hadn’t been burning the Throne’s reserves directly, it might have been able to slow her down long enough for him to escape. For all the power it held, it was still Sundered, after all.

As it was, the spell that struck her was like a cobweb thrown against a collapsing building. No matter how well built the web, or how strong the thrower’s arm was, the building would still crush them.

Her athame touched his chest. It bit flesh and continued to drive down. Soulstuff began to ooze from him. His own, personal soulstuff, not just what he had collected to spend in battle.

“You are dead!” she howled, screaming her victory into the air, even as she absorbed the fragments of his essence into her Throne.

Then, after her athame had only slid half an inch into his vessel, the Contractor vanished.

She drove her dagger into the suddenly empty air, until it clattered against the wall, then rose and spun, looking around, drawing soulstuff into her senses to empower them.

“What?! How?! That… No!”

She flooded the entire area with a curse meant to lock onto any demons in the area, and it killed those who had been left to deal with the human guards, but there was no sign of the Contractor anywhere to be found.

She took a deep breath. He had delayed her, that much was true, but there was work to be done, and he hadn’t delayed her that much.

She turned and marched down the hallway, yanking on the soulstuff from her dead demons and feeding it to her Throne. One of the best things about the Throne she was resurrecting was its compatibility. Most Thrones had to be careful about what soulstuff they were fed, since not all demons or mortal souls resonated with the Throne at a close enough frequency. Those could be stored and used for powering a spell, but they could not permanently enhance the Throne.

This Sundered Throne, however, seemingly had perfect compatibility. She did not know if it was because this was one of the thirteen, now eleven, soon to be twelve great Thrones, or if it was due to the nature of the soulstuff that had constructed it, but she was grateful. It was the only reason this city-wide sacrifice would work.

As she strode into the room with the vast crystal, several of the ritualists who had heard her fight unleashed self defense artifacts, but Alyphize simply waved her hand. With a single spell, a half-dozen of them struck the other ritualists, and the rest completely missed her.

She flicked her hand and began drawing on the aura sparks of the two who had died from being struck in the misfired wave of magic, and spun it out into a spell. It was wasteful to burn two aura sparks for this spell, but she needed time more than anything, and she could afford to be wasteful right now.

Curse magic hammered into all of the ritualists who remained, killing them instantly as their bodies failed them. That would have been beyond any mortal archmage, as altering other’s bodies was highly difficult, but she was no mere mortal archmage.

She stepped up to the crystal, drawing the aura sparks from the dead ritualists, and began to spin them out to complete her ritual. She started chanting, her voice the tongue of demons, her magic a burning crimson.

She slammed her ritualistic athame into the massive pillar of an aura crystal in front of her, and it began to drink up power. Red light stained the crystal, as all across the city, defenses in power grids began to fail.

Power swirled into her, and she had to stop herself from laughing with pure joy, since that might have disrupted the ritual. 

The power caused her to begin floating upward, and within seconds she was floating over the entire city, rising on a current of red light. Across the massive, circular city of Elderglass, she could see the power of the five-pointed star, with her at its very center. 

There were some few heavily warded places around, or places on their own power grid, where she couldn’t reach: a handful of the wealthiest airships, including one docked not far from her, and the Malapert overhead. Elucidate Labs, of course, was completely solid and unaffected. There was the private mansion granted to Elderglass’ official Archmage, sitting atop a far-off building, also unaffected.

But those were drops in a bucket. No, drops in an entire lake!

Though she couldn’t see it, she knew that the undercity was undergoing the same process, power flowing up from the earth and into her. In the skies, the aura generators that powered the industrial, non-heavily-defended, ships had begun to fail as all of their power was redirected into her.

One of the points of the star died. 

A full fifth of the city’s power grid, tied to the point of connection where Mist had been standing, was suddenly normal again, the red light vanishing from the connections.

No. No. No! This wasn’t possible!

The moment the ritual had begun, her lieutenants should have begun to be filled with the aura-sparks of her sacrificed demons in the sewers, starting to transform them into demons.

The ritual would have bound them into place, and tied their magic down, so they couldn’t do anything! Even Mist shouldn’t have been able to escape.

She checked on her scrying spells, and saw… nothing. The ritual she was using to spy through had been destroyed.

Mist had, somehow, escaped. She did not know why or how, but somehow, he’d managed to slip free of her grasp.

Then she felt it as another quintet of the city slipped from her grasp. She spun to see that the section where Zone had been stashed and drugged, her red light was already fading back to normal.

Her breath began to come heavy at that. She had a triangle within a circle now. Still a known magical shape, but far less potent than the five pointed star.

She thrust her athame into the air, the focal point for the entire city-wide spell, and spat out the final lines in a rush.

“I am Alyphize, Holder of Lost Knowledge. I am Alyphize, Restorer of Thrones. I am Alyphize, Throne of Sacrifice!”

Then she activated the power that all Thrones had, focusing it on the part of the city where her failed enforcers had once been.

She began spawning demons.