Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Arthur Leywin
"Fate is an apathetic thing, Arthur-Grey."
The scent of salt filled my nose with longing. The kiss of a cool breeze brushed across my face with fingers that felt like the softest feather. It filled my lungs, scouring away the taste of copper and bitter defeat that wracked my body.
I wasn't in pain. Not anymore. No, I was strangely… content. Peaceful. I moved my arms, feeling the soft blades of grass beneath them. The scent of earthy soil mingled with that sea breeze, filling me with an impossible calm.
The grass felt so soft. So inviting. The sun smiled with light so warm I thought I could drift forever in the relaxation.
"How do you know?" I asked, my eyes still closed as I lay in the grass.
I could hear the rustle of the wind whistling comfortably through the trees. The lapping of water against a sandy shore. The cries of birds and… something else.
"Aurora Asclepius knew it. She who defied Fate, in a way, knows it best," that familiar voice came again. There was something soft and sad nestled in the cracks of that tone. "One need only look at this world."
I opened my eyes, wincing against the glare of the sun. Only a few clouds crisscrossed the sky, leaving an endless expanse of pale blue. I took a moment to just… stare, absorbing it all.
Then something dark crossed my vision, streaking with a flap of wings and glimmering obsidian scales. A massive dragon flew a bit further into the distance, twisting as it went.
I slowly pushed myself to my feet as the large dragon passed, a gale of wind blowing through the long grass. I was on some sort of bluff overlooking the sea, the sun slowly setting in the distance.
And standing there, lit by the setting sun, was Regis. His hands were locked behind his back, interlaced in a simple manner. His long, wheat-blonde hair flowed in the wind, accentuating the lithe lines of his body.
And instead of the dull armor of my previous life, he was adorned in plated scales of glimmering silver, each flowing gracefully as they embraced lines of dark obsidian-gold beneath.
He looked… Regal. Like a king overseeing his subjects, he stared out across the horizon.
I walked forward slowly, feeling the press of the grass beneath my feet. Yet as I approached the now-changed Regis, my eyes drifted up to the colossal dragon gallivanting high above. She bellowed to the sky, a triumphant, echoing thunder that made the soil beneath my boots tremble.
Then she dipped low, diving toward the water in a hairpin turn. Her wings pulled in, streamlining the muscle and power in her physique. And for the first time, I caught a glimpse of her back.
Two figures were there. A little girl with hair that bore the color of autumn leaves, as auburn as my mother's. Her eyes were a brilliant teal that sparkled with excitement as she squealed with delight, her hands thrown out to the side.
A younger boy with silverish hair, however, showed no such joy. His hands clenched into little fists around his sister's simple shirt, his eyes screwed tight. But as the wind rushed past him, tearing droplets of water from his eyes, he finally forced them open as he screamed.
They were as blue as the sea that was rushing for them all.
At the last moment, the majestic dragon of chiseled obsidian pulled upward, flaring her wings wide. The boy, who had been screaming in terrified contrast with his sister's cackles, finally managed to laugh, too, his cheeks flushed from adrenaline and trembling fear.
Someone else laughed. A melodic, beautiful laugh that sent tremors through my soul.
I turned my head, looking down at the seashore far below.
A woman stood there on the porch of a simple cabin, smiling with amused delight as she watched the children play on the back of that graceful dragon. A demure hand was raised to her full, pink lips, masking the smile beneath. Those emerald eyes glimmered with love. A basket of woven vines was clutched close to her side.
She shook her head, locks of perfect gunmetal gray reflecting the shimmering dusklight. She seemed to steady herself as she embodied a hint of that refined poise I knew so well. "Dinner, you two!" she called, her voice like rose petals drifting on the wind. "Get back here before I call your father!"
The girl on the great dragon's back said something snippy, but I was having trouble hearing it. My vision blurred with wet tears. My legs shook, and it was all that I could do not to fall to my knees.
As the great dragon—Sylvie—banked toward the shore, her amber eyes glimmering, I remembered my dream. A cottage at the edge of the sea, with a family of my own…
"Before Lady Dawn broke Fate… this would not have been possible," Regis said beside me, watching the scene with fond eyes. "Everything would have rested on your shoulders, then. There would not have been room for love and happiness, for the World demanded an Atlas of you."
Tears streamed freely from my eyes as I watched Sylv—some distant, yet possible version of her—land on the sand, so graceful that it resembled a feather alighting upon a branch. The two children slid from her back, the girl rushing and hollering. Her brother growled, struggling to keep up with her as he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him.
The young girl finally reached her mother, skidding to a stop in the sand. She smiled widely in that way only children could, saying something to that mirage of Tess. My childhood friend—who had become a beautiful woman who could capture the light of the stars themselves—nodded affirmatively, kneeling down and brushing off her daughter's shirt.
When the boy reached his mother, she gave him a light hug, before ushering the two of them inside. Sylvie, in her human form and looking like a young woman, strolled up next, exchanging a few heartfelt words with Tess, before following the kids inside.
Just before Tess followed them, her eyes turned up to the cliffs where I stood. She locked eyes with me, a genuine smile painted across her face. I stood there, transfixed, before she turned back to the door.
"And now?" I asked, forcing that terrified question out of my clenched throat. I felt as if I'd swallowed the sea itself, the thousands of tons of water keeping everything opaque. "Now… can I? Can I…"
I choked off, unable to pull the words from my soul. Can I earn my happiness?
Regis turned away from the cabin, looking me in the eyes. His pupils were so gold, like a melted crown. But beyond the utter emptiness and apathy that had always marked them, now I could see the depths of his care. No longer was it restrained by the shell of a broken boy.
"I do not know, Arthur-Grey," he said, his voice a perfect mirror of mine. "I am the crown and the sword. I am your right to rule. But I am not your decisions: those are now yours alone."
The wind blew through our hair, tugging at the locks that would not stay. I exhaled a shuddering breath, recalling all that had transpired before I had awoken in this place.
"Then I must seize it," I said quietly, closing my eyes, allowing the tears to stream. My fist clenched, the leather of my gloves creaking against my palm. Resolve smoldered like a sure fire in my stomach, reinforced by every part of this souldeep vision. "I must craft it. I must make it."
I would make it. With Grey by my side. With Tess. With Sylv. With Mom. With Dad. With Ellie. With every one of those I loved, I would forge my future. I wouldn't let my past grip me anymore.
It was time I let my future define me.
Regis smiled. It was a wise sort of smile: the sort I always saw on Virion's face, or Marlorn's in a long-lost Earth. It was a smile that knew you would figure it out in time, even though you might stumble and fall along the way.
"So you shall, King of Two Worlds," he said softly. "So you shall."
And then he waved his silver-plated hands. The air shimmered and warped, purple particles of aether pressing into the space between everything. In his palms, something slowly coalesced from the matter of existence.
A crown, dark as the deepest shadow and reflecting no light, wove itself from nothing. Its matte-black surface seemed crafted from the shadows themselves, flowed in a simple circle. Shimmers of reflective translucent purple stood stalwart and strong all along the rims, each like a spearpoint defending castle walls.
Just like Dawn's Ballad, I thought, recognizing the materials the crown was forged of. Except…
Four gems were inlaid across the front. They misted and swirled with the ambient mana, each notch of crystal warping one particular element.
A ruby pulsed with the heat of fire, red flaring about it. Across from it, a sapphire professed a blue deeper than any ocean trench. A topaz glinted with the stalwart resolve of stone, standing still in the face of a glinting emerald of wind.
As I stared at this perfect crown, sensing what was required of me, I felt… Hesitance. A quiet question pressed itself from my throat.
"If I've been judged worthy… What have I been judged worthy for?" I asked, remembering my first conversation with Regis. "I've taken on so many burdens already. This power that is offered… What will it require of me?"
Regis considered this for a moment, still holding that perfect crown in his hand. He looked down at it, his eyes somber.
"Your Fate was laid for you when you were born in this world, Arthur-Grey," he said quietly. "Now… there are things that you may still be destined for: but this is only agency, over yourself and those who might swear their loyalty. You can use the power granted to you however you wish, once it is levied. For good or ill."
The sea breeze blew through my hair. I closed my eyes, absorbing the sense of this vision.
"As a king would, without repercussions."
"Except from yourself," Regis replied, "and those you love."
As it always has been, I thought with a sardonic smile.
A few months ago, I might have been terrified to bear this burden. The weight of a crown—symbolic or not—was no small stone to haul.
But I can share that burden, I thought, remembering Sylvie, Tess, and the rest of my loved ones. I'm not alone in that, bearing the weight.
My legs had trembled after witnessing a vision of what could be. But as I slowly knelt, my limbs were sturdy and strong. My clenched fist dug into the long grass as I stared up at Regis, genuflecting before this manifestation of my deep psyche.
"Then I will bear the burden," I said softly. "I will wear the crown."
Regis' smile misted away. I saw that same expanse of endless battlefields and war-torn lives as something serious and Grey rose from the depths. A hint of what had always judged me glimmered in the back of golden pupils, the radials flashing purple.
He held out his hands, that crown glimmering in his palms. "Then go with my grace, King Grey," he said, his voice resonating with otherworldly power. The land around me slowly began to break apart, the illusion of potential washing away alongside the dusk. "Go with my grace, King Arthur."
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight settle across my head. The metal was cool as it hugged my scalp. I could sense the energy humming through its structure, nearly vibrating with contained power.
The mana flowed around me, pulsing and bending to my will. Each and every particle… fire, water, wind, and earth… They danced around me, guided and moved by the aether. Like light and shadow, mana and aether danced together, separated by… a curtain. A veil.
And I am that veil, I thought, exhaling. I am the Grey Between Light and Shadow.
When I opened my eyes again, I was once more within the crook of Tessia's tree, amethyst light bathing me like a halo. Though the battle between Toren and Cadell continued to rage outside, making Xyrus rumble and the tree shake, it was truly silent within this little hovel.
I looked down at the stump of my right hand, seeing the blood oozing there. I cast my senses out, searching for that extension of my body.
After all, my entire body was my weapon, just like Dawn's Ballad. Why should I not be able to summon my limbs back?
In a simple flicker of aether, my severed right hand phased into existence, displacing the air as I caught it. The palm was still gored through where Cadell's midnight lance had impaled it, and the edges burned with soulfire.
With a dismissive snort, I snuffed out the flames. Now that I could see, they were contemptuously easy to dismiss.
I turned, looking at my worried and terrified family. For the first time, I noticed Elder Camus and Albold at the edges of the tree room, both in states of exhaustion and unconsciousness respectively.
"Hey, Sylv," I said awkwardly. If I could afford to, I would've scratched the back of my neck in embarrassment. "Could you help me reattach this?"
"Arthur," she said quietly, her eyes wide with awe and uncertainty. Our bond was alight with activity as she was finally able to sense my connection with Regis. "Arthur… What's happened to you?"
My gaze panned across those who had cradled me not long ago, keeping me safe in a deep embrace. Tess, Mom, Dad, my bond… They were all here. And most of them were gaping at me, different mixes of awe and confusion radiating from them.
They stared at the black and purple crown on my head, each razor tip gleaming with aether.
"There is not much time, Arthur-Grey," Regis' voice thrummed through my mind. "You are yet exhausted. Your limit approaches."
Sylv approached cautiously, running her aetheric healing across my wrist. The flesh slowly reknit, my weapon hand finding its place once more. All through the procedure, Sylv looked at me, silent communication flowing across our bond. Her tears flowed freely now as images and memories of a distant hillside overlooking the sea drifted through her mind.
And then she hugged me. The teenage girl who was my bond wrapped me in an embrace that would have pulverized the spine of any lesser mage. Instead, when she began to quietly weep, it was with an aura of purest joy.
"It took you long enough, Arthur," she thought quietly, burying her face in my chest. "It took you so long to figure it out."
I ran my fingers through her wheat-blonde hair—the same shade as Regis'—as she trembled against my chest.
"Art, what's… What's going on?" Mom asked, stepping forward. She still trembled whenever the resounding impact of spellfire rumbled outside, but she couldn't seem to figure out where to look. My face? My black-purple crown? The shade of Regis as he flickered at the edge of mortal perception?
I smiled at my mother, memories of days long ago rising from the surface of my thoughts like vintage film. I remembered growing up in Ashber amidst their hopes, carefree and loved. I remembered living here, in Xyrus, as I slowly trained as an adventurer and attended school.
And I remembered when I lost my smile. When I'd gone to train with the asura. I hadn't smiled a true, deeply genuine grin ever since. So when my mother saw the honesty in my expression, the surety that things would be okay, she closed her mouth, tears brimming at the edge of her eyes.
I looked at my father next. He didn't say anything as I gently pushed Sylv away. He just nodded, the understanding of warriors hanging in the air.
I moved to the edge of the hollow, staring out into the thunderstorm. If I focused, I could see Toren and Cadell slamming into each other, a section of the clouds stained black from soulfire. Little explosions of rippling white plasma and rumbling sound screamed through the air as the two titans clashed again and again.
A smirk tugged at the edges of my lips. It was nice to see Cadell bleed, even if it was only a little. It seemed Toren had some tricks up his sleeve.
"Art," Tess said, running up beside me as she remembered the moment, "Art, are you okay? Spellsong can handle this, I'm certain. I'm sure. Do you really need to…"
I felt her slim hand grip my shirt sleeves, insistent and demanding. As I looked down at it, I recalled the first ever time she had been so… insistent.
Well over a decade ago, a young princess had asked a boy not to go out into the dark. She'd wanted him to stay in the tent to keep the darkness away. She'd been afraid of the things that rumbled in the night, and the boy's presence had helped soothe her fears.
And as I looked into Tess' eyes, that same fear shimmered in her turquoise depths. Except this time, it wasn't fear for herself, left alone in the dark. No, this time, she feared for what the boy might face as he stepped into the night.
I raised my hand to hers, squeezing it lightly where it clasped my shirt. "I'll be back, Tess," I said quietly. "I promise."
Tears welled at the edges of her eyes, and she sighed with pained exasperation. "I'm really tired of you saying that. Always holding out on all your idiotic promises, expecting me to just follow along. It took you five years last time."
"I know," I replied, my tone laced with notes of sorrow. "And I'm sorry for always scaring you. One more promise, though? For old time's sake?"
Tess' lips pursed for a moment, considering. Then she stood higher on her toes, a silent request. I leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Tess' lips. She kissed me back, clinging to me tighter for a moment. An answer in itself.
When we separated, her fingers finally released my jacket. My childhood friend—no, the woman I loved—let out a breath of acceptance as she moved from the entranceway, her eyes still dancing with worry. But still, her lips quirked up in a playful smile. "I don't know why I put up with you. No more worrying now. Just… promise me you'll kick his ass, Art. Fair?"
I chortled in response, turning towards destiny. "Fairest promise I've ever heard, princess. I'll bring you a souvenir."
"Are you ready, Arthur-Grey?" Regis asked. The crown grew ever-heavier on my head, the cold metal slowly heating up against my already-exhausted body.
I am.
It was time that Sylvia was avenged.
The crown on my head glimmered, the purple blades shining for a moment as the space in front of me twisted, and then I stepped through.
My world erupted into noise. The sound of crumbling stones, gasping breaths, and terrified shouts reached my ears. The stench of fear and dying men echoed all through my city.
Blaine Glayder had seen better days. His maroon hair clung to his haggard face, and his powerful frame looked hunched. In the pouring rain, the once world lion of a man looked closer to a soaked housecat.
But his voice—though it was tinged with fear and panic—was strong. He barked orders, directing those soldiers who could still move. Most were unconscious, unable to stand beneath the sheer pressure of aether and mana flowing through the atmosphere. In fact, he was only able to stand because of his daughter.
Kathyln Glayder did not wear her usual ice queen façade. She was similarly drenched to the bone, but she wore it better than her ragged father. She echoed his commands, occasionally conjuring shields of ice to protect from falling debris as she ordered more and more soldiers to go door to door in evacuation protocols.
Except there's nowhere to evacuate to, I thought, staring up at the clouds. The teleportation gates are compromised. There's no escape.
The crown atop my head increased in weight, that band of cold, otherworldly metal telling me how much time I had left.
"Your Majesty!" Kathyln yelled, noticing me at last. Around her, the running soldiers belatedly noticed my existence, gasping in surprise. The princess of Sapin stumbled forward, hauling her exhausted father in tow. "Arthur, we need orders!"
I kept my eyes on the sky, quietly calculating my next spells as Toren and Cadell zipped about like two dancing hummingbirds. "Find Trodius," I said simply, unable to spare the poor, ragged men here much of my attention, even as they escorted civilians from their homes and stumbled away from the increasing nova of breaking dimensions. "Escort as many as you can to the outer rims. The areas in and around Xyrus Academy would be best. They are safest, and the most warded."
I tilted my head, sensing that the moment was about to come. "And if you meet any soldiers of House Wykes… Kill them. They have betrayed Dicathen."
Blaine's eyes widened, opening his mouth to ask a question. I cut him off, gesturing toward the distant sky.
The emerald embedded in my crown shone with light as I engaged windborne. I pressed my will into the sky, increasing the wind resistance before me manyfold. The sapphire gemstone on my crown lit, too, as translucent blue suffused my physique.
A monster of the darkest hells hovered in the sky, snarling as it hurled a broken angel from their domain. Toren Daen shot downward like a bullet, trailing blood and shattered crystal wings. He gyrated in an uncontrolled tailspin, his heartbeat wavering.
Cadell's form had changed. His horns had nearly doubled in size, each of them thrusting from his head like impossible, gorey points. He was skinnier and lankier in this form, but I knew instantly that he was far stronger than before. His body looked like it was crafted of stitched-together obsidian. Every crack and crevice between that mottled blood iron leaked shadow and soulfire like blood.
The wretched amalgamation of Vritra experimentation looked like something from the old demonic texts of my previous world. This was the thing that haunted the nightmares of the deities themselves, the pinnacle of blood-warped creation.
Toren's hurtling body slowed as it was caught in my void of heightened air pressure, the trailing blood freezing in tune. When he passed that, the swirling net of water I'd summoned bled the rest of his momentum.
I deposited him unceremoniously by my feet. He coughed weakly, the runes along his body glowing dully. Something had scoured away most of his crystalline right wing, alongside the flesh on his right arm. Motes of black fire chewed through his flesh like parasitic worms, trying to reach his mana channels and scour toward his core.
I watched in muted fascination as his heartbeat pulsed. Aether flowed along his veins, washing away the soulfire seeking to corrupt him, before his flesh began to regrow at a visible rate. He blinked blearily, his sunlit eyes dimming for a moment as he leaked blood into the cobblestones.
He was tired.
And in his hand…
"Thank you for returning that," I said honestly, ignoring Blaine and Kathyln's surprised outbursts as they stumbled away from the phoenix mage. "It belongs to me."
Toren looked down at his hand, where he'd been clutching the Lance scepter. He blinked in surprise when he noticed it was gone. He hadn't been able to sense the flicker of aether that had drawn it from his grip.
He looked back at me with narrowed eyes, noting the glimmering scepter of silver and gold in my left hand.
"Anchor," he said, his voice overlaid with that of Lady Dawn. "You are… different. Changed."
I listened to the pulse in the air. That of the thundering ritual, as each rhythmic thump drew more and more aether toward a compressing point. And deep in Toren's heart, a similar pulse pumped aether across his limbs.
It was only now—now, with my new insight into the veil between mana and aether, and all that space entailed—that I could see the only way to stop this ritual. Toren was our only chance.
"See to the ritual, Toren Daen," I said, staring up at Cadell as he readied another attack. I slipped the scepter into my belt, ensuring it was safe. "At its center is a beating heart, pierced through with an inverted horn."
My eyes flicked to the still-kneeling mage as he slowly gathered himself again. Just like me, he was drawing on the plentiful ambient mana around him via mana rotation to replenish his dwindling reserves. "You're the only one who can stop it. Follow the connection you have with the horn. That's the only chance there is."
"But, Cadell," he argued, pushing himself back to his feet. Rain streamed off of him as his telekinetic shroud slowly regrew, plates of mana phasing back into place. "Cadell is still a threat! He will not let me disrupt the—"
As if to punctuate his words, a barrage of bloodiron spears rained down from the dawnlit heavens. They looked wrong, backlit by the Aurora Constellate. Like hateful rips in a beautiful canvas, those hellfire-tipped lances shot down like a dozen needles, seeking to kill everyone present.
Kathyln yelled in sudden fear, raising her wand and conjuring a few futile panes of ice to try and shield her father from his impending demise. The soldiers and citizens of my kingdom screamed in terror as their death approached.
Toren, for his part, started to rise, conjuring barriers of fire and sound. His bloodied teeth were clenched in desperation as he prepared to try and defend the hundred or so gathered Dicathian soldiers around us.
Time slowed, grinding nearly to a halt as I delved deep into my blood. I clawed down into my connection with Regis; into my connection with that crown.
Fire and water. Earth and wind. They were viewed as opposites. Impossibilities that could not coexist, lest they destroy each other.
Before, only the emerald and sapphire on my crown glowed with dazzling light. But as my translucent manaborne body slowly began to flow with the red of fire and the yellow of earth, all four gems gleamed in the aureate light of the Aurora Constellate.
Power unlike anything I had ever felt before coursed through my veins. The will of every attribute of this material plane flooded from my nexus of power, emboldened and heightened. One should have expected water to snuff out fire. Earth would stubbornly refuse the coexistence of wind, as was its nature. And the wind would drift on by, uncaring of the earth's denial. Such was the way of the world. Such was what I had always believed.
But as every element infused my acclorite body, I knew that to be false. Water flowed around and through fire, goading it higher. Wind infused the base of those flames, ensuring they would never burn out. In turn, the hardened earth rolled with the wind, stubborn as ever, but paradoxically in tandem with its inverse.
Water enhanced fire, and earth pressed wind in one centrifuge of boiling, brimming power. The ambient mana around me trembled and warped from the press of my quadra-elemental manaborne form.
After all, was I not a fusion of impossibility? Arthur and Grey, light and shadow, mana and aether?
"I am the Grey Between," I whispered on currents of aether, watching the approaching hellstorm of deadly black icicles. "And you will not hurt those under my protection."
I waved a regal hand, commanding the world to heel.
The rain around us halted in mid-air, before freezing into a million shards of perfect ice. I exhaled a breath, before an aether-tinged wind sent each sliver hurtling like a million needles into the sky. A split-second later, red lightning jumped from my outstretched fingers, the sparking crimson latching onto the nigh-translucent knives of screaming frost.
My storm of electrified frost shards slammed into Cadell's oncoming barrage of blood iron. Little needles of invisible ice bit into the spears of hardened Vritra-metal, a dozen at a time.
Then the crimson lightning slithered into the basilisks' aberrant metal, before detonating with a boom.
Cadell's attempted barrage was shredded into particles of soulfire and dust. With another wave of my hand, a breath of aetheric wind breezed through the sky, washing away every last remnant of Vritra mana that might harm my subjects.
I locked eyes with the monstrous Cadell. Even in the distant sky, I saw surprise there at my sudden counter, uncertainty in that curdled red.
I conjured Dawn's Ballad, the crown's weight growing on my head as I basked in the atmosphere oversaturated with mana. Fire, water, wind, earth… There was so much more to each element than I had ever imagined. So much more than Realmheart would have ever let me see.
Ignoring the awestruck expressions of my charges behind me—and taking comfort in how Toren beelined for the expanding ritual sphere—I stepped forward.
Space warped, and I was in front of Cadell once more, high in the sky. Dawn's Ballad gleamed purple as I swiped it at his obsidian maw. The monster snarled, letting the blade phase harmlessly through him. At the peak of my arc, Cadell's lanky metal hand cinched shut around my blade. His eyes glinted with malice, a massive spike of blood iron erupting from him. The tip gleamed as it tore toward my multi-elemental chest.
"You should have waited for me to execute you, Leywin," his gravelly voice sneered as that shard of sharp metal readied itself to gore me. "Then you could have died with those you loved."
I clenched my teeth, weary of the weight on my head and the pulsing ache in my core. I gathered what reserves I could spare, siphoning energy across my channels, through my lungs, then across my throat.
I breathed a frosty aetheric wind at the Scythe's coming attack. Arctic cold devoured the erupting spike of blood iron. That frost continued to spread, inching downward like dread hands of winter.
"Yours will not be swift," I countered with a grin, preparing the evolution of my attack. "You'll suffer for everything. You aren't so invincible, Cadell."
My eyes gleamed as I leered at Sylvia's murderer, sensing my frost spell tear its way toward the Scythe's body of Vritra iron, wind, and fire.
The monster must have sensed something wrong when I called to the ambient mana. With sudden panic, he released my fist, instead lowering a sharp elbow to shatter the frozen blood iron spike jutting from his chest.
It erupted into frostfire, the fire and ice mana dancing in a terrible white-blue embrace. If the Scythe had been half a second later, his elemental body itself would have erupted.
The glimmer of sudden worry in Cadell's pitted eyes—two little lights of red amidst the swirl of black—told me I had hit the mark.
I had found one of his weaknesses.
Cadell became nearly invincible by turning his body into soulfire and void wind, meshing with the atmosphere itself. In this new form of his, he'd augmented his power even more by incorporating blood iron into his physique.
But every element had its inverse: weaknesses only I could overcome. Beyond that, his intangibility required him to suffuse the atmosphere with his soulfire and void wind.
Yet I'd caught a hint of that technique's weakness when I'd first blown away one of his atmospheric spells with Absolute Zero. I just needed to command the atmosphere myself, with elements that his basilisk arts could not so easily deny. If Cadell could not escape into the atmosphere—if his meld was damned—then he was, too.
"Don't you know who I am, Cadell?" I taunted, a grin on my face as I twisted out of his iron grip. Rotating wind spun me like a top, red lightning glimmering around my leg. The gems on my crown gleamed. "I am a master of every element: the only master there has ever been."
My voltaic leg slammed into the Scythe's raised gauntlets. And just as expected, my attack connected. The deviant magic surged across the Scythe's blood iron body, attacking and ionizing particles of it as it overloaded him.
He shot through the sky with a crack of sound, tumbling haphazardly as he sprayed chips of mana.
I felt at my mana reserves, feeling the burn in my body. Regis didn't speak, but we both knew we would need to end this quickly.
"You are no different than before," Cadell's voice echoed through the Constellate thunderstorm. "Your strength will fail you, Lesser King. Only give me a fight before you fall!"
The winds whispered of coming danger as something arced up from the ground. I wove to the side, earning a cut along my flank as I dodged the extending point of his void-black lance. It surged toward the waiting Scythe, ready to return to its master.
A grin swelled on my face. Fireborne told me I should just rush forward like the firing of a piston's engine. Windborne advised me to overwhelm him with my grace and evasion. Waterborne suggested that I use his own strength against him. Earthborne thought to weather every storm like an impervious rock.
I found my choice easily.
I stepped forward in the sky, space folding between me and my destination. Cadell appeared hardly surprised as I teleported in front of him, even as he hurtled backward. He swept a conjured blade of black iron toward me, but I deftly deflected it with Dawn's Ballad. The impact rattled up my arm, even reinforced by all four elements.
Twisting in the sky, I planted my boots onto Cadell's greatsword. He grunted as he was forced to readjust his weight, easily fending off another swipe of my purple sword. I coated my feet in a layer of aetheric frostfire, savoring how the combination deviant crackled and shattered like a popping campfire and breaking icicle all at once.
At the same time, I stretched my hand out as the midnight lance returned to its master. I focused on the earthen aspects of my body, creating a tunnel all along my physique.
My fist clenched around the oncoming point of the lance, catching it in the sky. My hand jerked, the weapon nearly spearing me through the eye.
But my plan was successful. The impossible momentum of that hurtling javelin streamed along the pathways of earth mana in my body, compounded and streamlined by the greasing of waterborne. And as that redirected momentum picked up speed under the compound effects of fire and windborne, I knew Cadell would finally feel pain.
All the elements desired to be used—fire, water, wind, and earth? They all wanted to see Cadell fall.
So I embraced everything.
"I wield all, Cadell," I snarled into the aether. "Every single weakness you have, I have mastered."
All that building momentum flowed out of my boots, hauling that glimmer of frostfire with it. A thunderclap echoed through the air as a torrent of white, blue, and refracting purple howled through the sky for three hundred feet, bathing everything in purest winter flame.
Cadell's arm was consumed. In the moment before impact, the monstrous Scythe had managed to angle his blade slightly, stopping the attack from consuming his head. He snarled as his right arm—frozen and burned in equal measure—dissipated into icy shards as I stamped on it.
He swung a claw at me, his body expanding as he started to take on that atmospheric meld once more. Weakened as I was from constant combat, I wasn't fast enough to dodge entirely. A jagged wound tore its way across my flesh, my body leaking mana at a terrifying rate.
And then, an ominous sound rose from Cadell's demonic throat. It sounded like the horrendous mesh of grinding metal and a roaring bonfire, all pitched high enough to make a weaker mage's ears bleed.
He was laughing.
"This!" he sneered, surging toward me like a disembodied storm front, "This is what I have waited for!"
Thunderclap Impulse made my nerves scream with dancing red lightning, my reflexes heightening. I flew backward through the sky, trailing embers of frostfire that I hoped would slow the beast down.
They did not. Cadell's body—like a dark smog that sought to wear away everything in its path—continued after me, that terrible laughter echoing around him. "I was crafted in the reaching shadows of Taegrin Caelum," he sneered, his fell words trailing him like a cloak. "I was crafted into the perfect specimen. A lesser-made-deity. But never have I been allowed to test my mettle."
My body ached as I conjured a small plane of earth behind me. My feet slammed into the platform, blurring sideways with a hasty piston stamp. Cadell's one-armed form phased into existence where I'd been a split second before, healing soulfire already burning around his stump. He planted his lanky, obsidian legs on the stone, before rocketing toward me with the speed of death itself.
He hit me like a freight train. Translucent purple and blood-black blades shone as they locked in a shearing bind. Red lightning sparked and danced around me as my arms strained against Cadell's terrible strength. Even with only one arm, he pressed me down.
He leaned over our crossed weapons, his cruel smile leering and terrible. I almost thought he wanted to rip my throat out with his too-white teeth."Your Sylvia provided no challenge. She was no dragon in the end, just a winged lizard bleeding alone in a cave. But you, Arthur Leywin, have proven to be more at last. I misjudged you, boy."
Earthborne told me of the ground fast approaching. If this continued, the monstrous Scythe would slam me into the stones, breaking every one of my bones.
I glared into Cadell's eyes, feeling the weight of the crown on my head once more. They were the endless pits of red fit for a demon's nightmare, but I didn't feel fear. Not anymore. Though my heart thundered in my chest and my adrenaline kept every nerve wired alongside the searing pain of Thunderclap Impulse, I saw my path to victory.
"Everyone's allowed to make mistakes," I countered, forcing a jovial tone into my voice. I leaned in close as the wind carried my words, "But I won't let you learn from your misjudgment."
Then I did something the beast did not expect. Guided by countless hours of combat and close-quarters martial training, I let go of Dawn's Ballad. My blade misted away into purple particles as I flowed like wind and water around Cadell's attempt to gore me.
I grappled with the surprised Scythe, my body outlined in an aura of icy silver frostfire. With expert precision, I wove to his back, pressing myself close.
And I erupted in a nova of aetheric frost, taking hold of the atmosphere around us both. Cadell tried to mesh with the air once more to escape my grapple, but his void wind and soulfire were frozen and torn away by my dominion over the World.
I could feel my translucent flesh screaming, my nerves ripping with agony as Cadell sprouted a thousand tiny barbs of blood iron as he changed tactics. But still, I refused to leave as we continued to fall like broken birds.
I hadn't just trained my swordsmanship these past few years. My hand-to-hand combat skills had been whittled and refined toward near perfection for years in the aether orb by Kordri. Every time I sparred with Taci these past few months, I left my training greater.
I wasn't just the better swordsman. I was a martial master of more arts than I could count, something this beast could never hope to contend with. Grappling was no different.
My left hand snapped shut around one of Cadell's massive horns, my grip tight enough to make the ridged structure creak. Dawn's Ballad reappeared in my right hand, the edge alight with aetheric frostfire. And from where I'd grappled the monster, the edge was poised perfectly over his throat. He had no right arm to deny his fate.
I wrenched Cadell's head back, baring his obsidian throat of fire and wind to my blade. I could sense his mana weakening, just like mine. "Sylvia was not just a winged lizard, Cadell. I am Grey and Arthur both. I am everything that Sylvia ever desired of me. I am what she saw, a man who could grow beyond his past. It was her words that led to your end."
I could not see Cadell's eyes, but I could feel his intent as he struggled in my grip, trying to escape his inevitable fate. But despite it all, I never tasted fear. "Your end will be a worthy sacrifice to appease Agrona," he hissed, suddenly going limp.
I sensed the approaching attack nearly too late. Spearing toward me faster than sound itself, Cadell's midnight lance looked realer than the world painted around it. Even amidst the blues and greens and oranges and purples of the artificial Aurora Constellate, that tear in reality promised a death gruesome and slow.
Instead, I flexed my arms, and engaged two Burst Strikes at once. Cadell howled in pain, the first time I had ever heard him do so.His horn shattered beneath my wrenching grip as my piston arm wrenched it backward from his monstrous skull. At the same time, Dawn's Ballad flashed white-blue, intersecting with bloody black.
The shockwave that erupted from Cadell's severed horn flung us both in opposite directions. The Vritra monster slammed through a clocktower, the sound of rending metal and demonic howls tearing through the night. Blackened droplets of tarry liquid trailed in his wake as he erupted out the other side.
The sudden explosion of force just barely allowed me to dodge the piercing anger of the midnight lance, but not entirely. The weapon tore a gash along my side, the wound leaking all four elements of ambient mana.
I spun as I approached the ground, my vision blurry from fatigue and ragged pain. I thrust out my hands, one of them still clutching Cadell's severed horn, and begged the ambient mana for one more favor.
A ramp of ice rose into the sky like a gentle hand, stretching for my exhausted body. A weak breeze helped slow me, but my shuddering mana core could only do so much. The ice cracked as I slammed into the structure, before sliding pitifully down to the city street.
I came to a simple kneel, grasping Dawn's Ballad as she kept me anchored to the stone. My blade shone purple through the black, tarry blood adorning its gleaming edges. Dark steam rose into the multicolored sky.
I needed to move. I needed to finish this battle that I'd been fighting for so long.
But I was so, so tired. Countless wounds marred my body. Jagged claw marks like an animal's savagery stretched across my chest, leaking what mana reserves I had left. A long tear pulsed agony beneath my ribs where Cadell's midnight lance had nearly killed me. And alongside those, dozens more wounds slowly sapped my strength. My body—colored in all four translucent elements of mana—flickered weakly. The gems atop my crown dimmed.
The rain had never stopped falling, the chill of those droplets of water still worming deep into my bones.
I knelt there, my breath shuddering. Mana rotation was all that kept me conscious, the utter density of the ambient mana the only thing that kept me in the fight through my dwindling reserves. But even now, I was reaching the end of my strength.
I peered past my drenched auburn bangs, staring down the street toward the clocktower where Cadell had crashed through. The entire structure was listing precariously, the earth rumbling as it threatened to fall.
At the periphery of my vision, Regis watched. He still judged me, as he always did. As he always would. But right now… right now, there was a surety of confidence there. A confidence that I could draw into myself.
My left hand clenched around Cadell's horn, still gripped tightly. I pulled one leg up, ignoring how my thighs and calves and ankles burned from the effort. The wavering light in my crown dimmed, then solidified once more, even as my manaborne forms drifted away.
I began to walk. One foot in front of another in front of another, I trudged onward, as I always had. The ghosts of those long past breathed their strength into me as my stride became more sure, as my regality returned.
I was King Arthur. I was a warrior trained by the asura themselves, honed to a precise point. My body was a blade, my words a decree. I was the Grey Between, Atlas carrying the World. And while that great Titan sometimes knelt, he would never fall.
I looked up at the clocktower as it groaned, looming forward as it slowly collapsed. I exhaled a foggy breath, then beckoned to the aether.
Space warped as I stepped forward, bringing me to the toppling tower's spire. I stood there, the rain beating against my skin as the spire tumbled forward with me atop it. I didn't move, just basking in the dominion of my strength for a moment, my eyes closed. The world rushed by me as I surfed the collapsing building down to the ground below.
When it delivered me to the street in a cloud of dust and destruction, tremors rising through my knees and across my body, I allowed myself to chuckle. I clenched my hand around my sword's hilt, my knuckles going white.
There is death in the air, I thought. The death of something once great.
Though the world was already covered in a roiling thunderstorm, some part of me felt, deep in my aching, exhausted mana core, that the true stormfront had yet to tear into this city. There was something yet waiting to drop.
I took another step forward, sensing my goal.
I received stares. So, so many stares, all of that familiar mix of awe and fear. Soldiers and mages and civilians, all together, gazing at me with disbelieving eyes. The roads had been relatively clear of people as they gradually evacuated further from the ritual's epicenter, guided by Kathyln and Blaine's orders. Most houses and roads had long since seen their last footstep.
But here, in the wake of the clocktower's corpse, those fleeing Dicathians had gathered as they ran for their lives. People of every race and class huddled together, trying to fight off the effects of the mana and aether suffusing the air.
I swept my gaze across them slowly as they all stared mutely, thunder crashing overhead. The trail of dark tar stretched across this street, and I would need to pass through to finish what was started so long ago.
I saw Kathyln there, her hands trembling as she stared at me with wide eyes. Gone was her icy mask, stripped by the terrible events that had ceaselessly rocked this city. Not far from her, Trodius Flamesworth looked like he had emerged from Hell's forges. His clothes were in tatters, and some of his perfect hair had been burned down to the scalp. Just like all the others, he trembled before me.
I locked eyes with Blaine Glayder at their head, wondering what he thought when he stared at me, his jaw slack. Did he see Grey, the conquering madman drenched in blood? Did he fear the murdering warrior who would see it all burn, as they all used to?
After all, this human king was the one who recognized first what Taci would have turned Dicathen toward. He knew what would become of our continent if a raving deity took its helm, primed for nothing but slaughter.
But as I stared into Blaine's eyes, I saw something… Something I didn't understand. Something I had never seen in the terrified gazes of King Grey's councilors and allies. I knew that fear he felt. I knew that awe at the strength radiating from my very core. But I didn't know that emotion, more powerful than anything else.
The once-monarch's eyes drifted to the gleaming crown atop my head, the four gemstones pulsing with perfection. Something within the former king of Sapin trembled as he gazed upon my crown of lavender and shadow.
And then he knelt. Soundlessly, without a creak to his bones, his body bent as he went to the stones, his pride bending before me. Still, he stared up at that aetheric crown as it shone with the light of this World's dominion.
And like a breeze that blew through tall grass, they all began to kneel in supplication. Kathyln, Trodius, Alanis, the Chaffers… One by one, it rippled through them all. Every single person in that street fell to their knees as the storm grew quiet, subjects kneeling before a tar-black carpet as it trailed toward a throne.
And they stared at me, silent in the storm, every single one holding an ember of that unfamiliar look. That look I had never felt as King Grey.
"King Arthur," Blaine muttered gruffly, his voice sore and pained from strain and yelling. His eyes drifted to the horn clenched in my left hand, then back to my face. "The Vritra… It lies beyond."
I didn't respond for a moment, still overwhelmed with confusion. Only one person still stood amidst the supplicating citizens. Regis, his form gleaming silver and black, watched with fond eyes.
What is this, Regis? I asked, my body frozen. What is this?
Knowing gold locked with my azure. "It is trust, Arthur," he said quietly. "It is trust and hope. Trust in their king, that he will see them safe. It is the metal from which blades of true loyalty are forged."
Years ago, before this war had begun in earnest, I made a speech. Blaine and Kathyln had stood at my side then, rather than knelt before me, as I asked the people of Dicathen what inspired loyalty to a country, to a ruler. Long before and a world away, King Grey had grasped the fealty of all through power and might. How could one ever resist him, when millions had fallen beneath his boot? What was there to respect? What was there to love?
But as I stared into the eyes of my kneeling subjects, each of them quietly professing their fealty, I knew deep in my soul a truth. I was not King Grey, but he was still there, growing alongside me. King Grey was becoming something more, something better. King Arthur could be loved by his subjects. Those he protected would look to him with reverence not just because of his strength, but also his care.
I exhaled a breath, my body weak as I stood before my kneeling subjects. "Thank you, Lord Glayder," I said, a swell of emotion streaking through me.
And I continued to walk, trailing those splatters of black tar as they sizzled angrily among the stones. The people of Dicathen parted for me as I moved past them. They whispered my names. Godspell. The King. Their Savior. The Chosen of Epheotus. The mana around me bowed in tune, the presence of a true king inexorable and undeniable.
Beyond the crowd, a crater larger than a house beckoned, alight with raging black fire.
I let out a breath as I approached the edge, cementing my resolve. Then I stepped down, following the slope at a leisurely pace.
Cadell bled at the bottom. The great Scythe's demonic form had reverted, leaving a broken shell behind. His ruined throat spurted black pitch, the darkness indistinguishable against his ruined smokey armor. His bone-white hair was burned and charred, leaving him nearly bald. Only one horn remained on his head.
Soulfire sputtered around his wounds, struggling to try and heal them. But with how depleted of mana he was, it only caused the pumping of terrible blood to splatter inconsistently across the ground. He knelt like a man awaiting execution.
"You've accomplished… nothing," he gurgled, his once-gleaming eyes dull as he regarded me. "My death will only… serve the High Sov—"
His words trailed into a coughing burble, hacking ink from his teeth as he wavered like a candle in the wind.
"Agrona has already failed," I decreed evenly. Dawn's Ballad gleamed in my hand as it scored a sparking line through the stones around us. I loped forward like a predator, unbowed by my preternaturally heavy crown. "You will die, Cadell, and the ritual will be broken. Your scheming master's bid has fallen."
The bleeding Scythe tilted back his head as he stared up at the sky, allowing the ruined mess of his neck to weep around the too–deep cut. His ruby-red eyes gleamed once more, some of their light returning for a moment as he stared up into the many-colored storm.
Staring at Toren, who hovered in the sky above the ritual's expanding sphere of fractured space.
"Have you ever…" Cadell wheezed, "torn the wings from a phoenix? Of course, you haven't. The bones… they break so beautifully."
Despite my exhaustion, a streak of uncertainty chipped the surety of my thoughts. Even as his death approached, the Hand of Agrona didn't seem scared, daunted or angry or anything. He just seemed… grimly satisfied, as power flocked slowly around Toren in the sky.
"What do you mean?" I demanded, feeling something prickle along my weary core. I marched forward, my heart gripped by an insidious claw of dread. "Explain, beast."
Cadell only chuckled, his mana signature flickering. The soulfire, failing to heal his throat, began to waver and die. "I'll be waiting…" he rasped, his voice demented and shredded. "I'll be waiting to torture you in hell, Leywin. You will know no rest."
I gnashed my teeth, feeling the sudden urge to move again despite my weariness. I stood before the kneeling Scythe, towering over him as the victor. Yet somehow, even as the phantom of Sylvia seemed to whisper to me from beyond the grave that she was avenged, I felt that something was still wrong: and I knew I could draw no words from this creature.
"I promised Agrona that I would silence his laughter," I said with a sneer, power suffusing me one last time. "Today, I sever his Hand. His throat will not be far behind."
I rammed Dawn's Ballad through Cadell's ruined plate armor, through his mana core, and out the other side in a spray of black. He wheezed, his eyes leaking blood as I followed through, pressing him to the ground. His throat erupted with a shower of ink as his soulfire healing sputtered out, splashing me in darkness.
I snarled, pressing the dying Hand of Agrona back into the dirt. The crown on my head—now far too heavy to still bear—scattered on purple particles.
But the beast was not yet dead. With his last, weak breaths, Cadell's bony claws gripped the gleaming violet of Dawn's Ballad. He hauled himself closer to me, before gripping my ruined shirt with ridged fingers and pulling me close.
"So arrogant," he wheezed, the light draining from his eyes like blood down a whirlpool. "Always… Always towards His end."
And then a new star brightened the night sky, pushing back against the thunderstorm. The ambient mana trembled with a strength among the greatest I had ever sensed.
Toren was anointed with burning runes and golden light. He was nearly too bright to look at as he drew on some power as terrible as the sun, his focus fixed on the expanding ritual.
His Third Phase, I realized with a sudden start, my attention torn from the dying Scythe for a moment as I stared up at Spellsong. He dripped with a true asura's molten gold as the ambient mana sang around him.
Cadell died with a black smile on his corpse.