Chapter 27 — The Day the Wall Blinked
Eidon's scream was impressive even by Eidon standards.
"UKIIIIIIIIII!"
It tore across the desert a fraction of a second after one of Cipheron's concealed cannons opened fire from the pyramid. The beam descended in a white-hot column, struck the centre of Eidon's magnificent land crawler, and converted an astonishing amount of gold plating, polished metal, speakers, cushions and entirely unnecessary decoration into a rapidly expanding cloud of burning debris. The vehicle came apart with enough force to scatter pieces across several hundred metres of desert, and for one absurd moment the sky seemed to rain glittering fragments of Eidon's taste. A smoking crimson panel bounced once in front of him. A speaker landed upside down. Something that had previously been part of a drinks cabinet rolled past his foot and caught fire. Through all of this, Eidon's glasses remained perfectly balanced across his face.
He slowly lowered his microphone.
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Then opened again.
"Cipheron."
The word emerged in a tone so calm that several nearby Aetherkin instinctively tried to back away.
Dark cables prevented them.
Dozens of thick black cords spread outward from the wreckage surrounding Eidon, disappearing into collars, armour, flesh and mechanical sockets attached to the monsters under his control. Some of the enslaved Aetherkin twitched as his anger travelled through those cables like an electrical current. Others straightened despite wounds that should have dropped them to the ground. Their eyes dulled, muscles tightening under a strength that wasn't entirely their own.
Eidon looked down at the burning remains of his transport.
Then he screamed.
"THAT TIN-PLATED, ONE-EYED, HUMOURLESS SCRAP HEAP DESTROYED MY STAGE!"
He kicked a burning piece of metal hard enough to send it spinning over the head of one of his soldiers.
Caelan, watching from a distant ridge, tilted his head.
"Stage?"
Raikōmaru whispered, "Don't question it."
Eidon threw his red cape backward with such violence that it nearly struck one of his own puppets, raised the microphone to his mouth and pointed dramatically toward the pyramid.
"So that's the show you want, Cipheron?"
His voice boomed across the desert through amplified sound, rolling over dunes and rattling loose stones from the pyramid's outer surface.
"Fine!"
He spread both arms.
"Then let's give the audience a finale!"
The microphone shrieked.
Music erupted.
It wasn't coming from speakers anymore.
It came from Eidon himself.
A savage rhythm rolled through the ground, each beat carrying power with it. Dark energy raced down the puppet cables, and the exhausted Aetherkin attached to them jerked upright as muscles swelled and breathing sharpened. Wounded creatures that had been stumbling moments before suddenly roared with renewed aggression. Others began shaking violently as Eidon twisted the frequency, reason giving way beneath an induced frenzy.
Shun's eyes widened behind his glasses.
"He's strengthening them."
Daichi stared over the edge of the dune.
"He's doing more than that."
One of the puppeted monsters began clawing at its own armour in its eagerness to charge.
"Berserk condition," Shun said grimly. "He's suppressing pain and restraint."
Airi grimaced.
"Lovely."
Eidon spun the microphone around one finger and pointed toward the pyramid like a singer introducing the final number of a concert.
"Everybody together now! Tear! It! DOWN!"
The horde surged forward.
Cipheron's outer defences answered immediately.
Panels slid apart along the pyramid's sides and rows of energy cannons emerged from beneath the ancient stone. Beams crossed the battlefield in precise lines, carving through sand and striking the charging Aetherkin. Buried mines detonated beneath the first ranks. Bodies flew. Dark cables snapped taut, and Eidon simply jerked his arm as though pulling marionettes upright. Several creatures staggered back to their feet despite injuries that would ordinarily have ended the battle.
"Oh, don't give me that!" Eidon shouted into his microphone. "The show's not over until I say it's over!"
He snapped the fingers of his free hand.
The cables moved.
Three controlled Aetherkin suddenly changed direction in perfect unison, using the remains of a destroyed monster as cover while another group charged directly through the cannon fire. A beam struck one of them in the shoulder and spun it around. Eidon pulled sharply on the cable attached to its spine, forcing it back into formation.
There was something grotesque about the precision.
He was not leading an army.
He was playing one.
Another cannon swivelled toward him.
Eidon noticed.
His grin returned.
"Ah-ah."
He raised the microphone.
The next note was much lower.
The desert vibrated.
A visible distortion rippled through the air and struck the cannon housing. Metal screamed as sound pressure crushed inward from every direction at once. The weapon folded against itself and exploded.
Eidon laughed, performed a little spin in the sand and pointed toward the remaining turrets.
"That's better! Now you're participating!"
Caelan watched from behind the distant dune with the others.
He had successfully brought Eidon to the pyramid.
That portion of the plan had gone rather well.
Possibly too well.
Renji lowered the binoculars.
"He's enjoying this."
Caelan glanced at him.
"So am I."
"No one asked."
Daichi was crouched beside Shun, nervously tracking each explosion as though worrying hard enough might somehow improve everyone's chances of survival. "Laser cannons on both flanks. Mines along the lower approach. At least three concealed turrets higher up. And whatever else Cipheron hasn't shown yet."
"You're making it sound worse," Airi complained.
"I'm reporting facts."
"Your facts are unpleasant."
"They don't become safer if I phrase them nicely."
Airi pulled the edge of the dust-coloured travelling sheet farther over her hat. "Then phrase them silently."
Shun ignored them both, his laptop balanced across his knees beneath the camouflage. The battle was creating exactly the sort of interference they had hoped for. Cipheron's defence network was active everywhere now, signal channels opening and closing as the pyramid redistributed energy.
"There," Shun murmured.
Renji leaned closer.
"What?"
"A weakness."
Everyone looked.
Shun enlarged part of the pyramid schematic.
"Not an opening yet. But Cipheron is rerouting power toward whichever side Eidon pressures most heavily. Every time he does, security density drops somewhere else."
Daichi adjusted his glasses.
"So we wait."
Renji's mouth tightened.
"I hate waiting."
"Haruto hates it more," Airi said.
That was difficult to argue with.
The Sigils they had come for were inside the pyramid.
Misaki's.
Yuto's.
Shun could feel both through the Linker network now. Their resonance was faint at this distance, but unmistakable.
Airi glanced toward the battlefield.
"We're depending on Eidon to accidentally help us."
"No," Shun corrected. "We're depending on Eidon to behave exactly like Eidon."
Caelan smiled.
"Much safer."
Daichi looked at him.
"That is objectively not what the word safer means."
Another explosion threw sand high into the air.
They ducked automatically.
When the dust settled, one entire section of the pyramid's lower defence line was burning.
Renji watched it for several seconds.
"We could move."
"No," Shun said.
"We have an opening."
"We have a tempting opening."
Renji frowned.
"Difference?"
"One gets you inside."
Shun tapped the screen.
"The other kills you halfway there."
Daichi nodded enthusiastically.
"I like this distinction."
Renji sighed and returned to watching.
Raikōmaru crouched beside Caelan, tail twitching.
"How long?"
Caelan's Eyes of Fate opened briefly.
Several futures unfolded.
Most involved somebody being shot.
"Not yet."
Raikōmaru settled again.
For all his impatience, he no longer argued.
Two weeks with Luminel had accomplished miracles.
Inside the pyramid, Cipheron did not have the luxury of enjoying any of this.
His four small feet shifted restlessly beneath him while his long arms stretched from console to console. One enormous hand manipulated the outer defence network while the other continued working on the process that mattered infinitely more.
The Wall of Fire.
Its architecture filled the central display in layers upon layers of shifting restrictions. Cipheron's yellow mechanical eye tracked code sequences while the organic red eye buried inside the cracked cavity on the right side of his face stared almost feverishly at the breach calculations. Above both, fractures ran across the great dome of his head. Through several damaged sections, pulses of light could be seen flashing from the computer engine housed within.
He was close.
So very close.
Another alarm appeared.
DEFENCE TURRET 17 — LOST.
Cipheron swatted the warning aside.
"Replaceable."
DEFENCE TURRET 21 — LOST.
"Replaceable."
OUTER MINEFIELD — 47% DEPLETED.
Cipheron's enormous fingers twitched.
"Replaceable."
Then the system displayed Eidon dancing on the remains of one of the turrets while singing into his microphone.
Cipheron's organic eye widened.
"Insufferable."
Eidon struck a pose.
Cipheron's repaired arm punched through part of the console.
He stared at the dent.
Then slowly removed his hand.
That arm had only recently been repaired.
He blamed Eidon for making him damage it again.
Cipheron returned to the Wall.
The ancient barrier fought him every step of the way.
It changed encryption before he finished breaking it. Paths he opened sealed themselves. Permissions rewrote themselves into forms that should not have existed. It was less like hacking a machine and more like wrestling with something that knew he was there.
That only made him more determined.
He had already come too far.
The old records had never agreed on what lay beyond the Wall. Some suggested an isolated region. Others described a contamination. The most damaged fragments did not describe it at all; they simply contained warnings copied so many times that the original authors had been lost to history.
DO NOT OPEN.
Cipheron considered that insufficiently technical.
He also considered it rude.
Another layer folded.
Cipheron's red eye brightened.
"Yes."
The Wall's resistance intensified.
A warning filled every monitor around him.
CONTAINMENT INTEGRITY AT RISK.
Cipheron laughed.
"That's the idea."
Outside, another explosion shook the chamber.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
Cipheron ignored it.
He had almost reached the central restriction.
Hours seemed to pass while the desert tore itself apart.
Eidon's army dwindled.
Cipheron's outer defences did too.
The puppeted Aetherkin lay scattered across the battlefield, some dissolving into essence, others still trying to crawl forward because the dark cables embedded in them refused to permit surrender. Eidon himself remained very much alive and very much furious. His cape was torn along one edge, dust covered one lens of his glasses, and that indignity appeared to have made him even more dangerous.
He leapt onto the back of one of his larger remaining puppets and raised his microphone.
"Again!"
The creature charged.
Eidon launched from its shoulders.
His body twisted through the air with startling agility.
For all the ridiculous poses, he was still an Elite-stage fighter.
He landed directly beside a pyramid cannon, ducked beneath its rotating barrel and struck the weapon with a rapid sequence of monkey-style blows. Palm. Elbow. Backfist. Heel.
Each impact carried sound through the metal.
The cannon ruptured from the inside.
Eidon backflipped away from the explosion and landed with both arms raised.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
Nobody applauded.
His smile disappeared.
"Tough crowd."
Behind the dune, Renji lowered the binoculars.
"His army's almost gone."
Shun nodded.
"And the pyramid has lost more than half the defences facing us."
Airi looked at the battlefield.
"Can we go before they somehow become friends?"
Everyone stared at her.
"What?"
Daichi shook his head.
"That may be the least likely danger you've suggested all month."
Caelan remained focused on the pyramid.
His Eyes of Fate flickered again.
Possibilities shifted.
The window was approaching.
Not open yet.
Approaching.
"It's nearly time."
Raikōmaru's fur bristled.
Shun glanced at Caelan.
"How nearly?"
Before he could answer, a new sound rolled across the desert.
Not an explosion.
A roar.
Deep.
Metallic.
Familiar.
Every head turned east.
Something enormous burst from the haze.
Airi gasped.
Daichi dropped flat behind the dune.
Renji's eyes widened.
Shun forgot to type.
Even Caelan straightened.
The creature hurtling toward them still carried traces of Ryu in the shape of his head, the set of his jaws and the dark reddish-orange scales visible between armour, but almost everything else had been transformed into something far more imposing. The small Juvenile dragon was gone, and even his powerful Adult saurian form would have looked modest beside the enormous war-beast now tearing across the sky.
Ryu had reached Elite stage.
Properly.
Not as Gravefang.
The Virtue Sigil of Courage blazed through Haruto's Linker from somewhere atop the colossal creature's back, and the evolution it had produced was nothing like the distorted monster born from fear. Ryu had become a towering, heavily armored draconic war-beast, his muscular reptilian body wrapped in thick silver and gunmetal plating from head to torso and down across much of his limbs. Only stretches of dark reddish-orange scale and flesh remained visible between the mechanical sections, making it difficult to tell where living body ended and machinery began. His head had become fiercer and more dragon-like beneath a massive horned mechanical helm, its ridges and spikes giving him the silhouette of something bred for siege warfare rather than ordinary battle.
Enormous mechanical structures rose over both shoulders, layered with armour and weapon housings, while both arms had developed into massive combat weapons ending in oversized clawed gauntlets. One was dominated by heavy metallic plating and tremendous talons; the other burned with a hotter orange glow between its armoured claws, as though heat and flame had been trapped inside the limb itself. His legs remained thick and bestial beneath reinforced plating, ending in tremendous talons capable of gouging trenches through stone.
Most striking of all were the wings.
They were immense, but there was almost nothing delicate or exposed about them. Broad dragon wings extended from his back beneath overlapping sheets of reinforced metal, armoured from their heavy roots to the long outer edges. Mechanical plating followed the shape of each wing like the shell of some enormous flying fortress, with thrusters and reinforced components built directly into them. They did not look like organic wings with machinery attached afterward. They looked as though metal had become part of the wings themselves.
Ryu was no longer a dinosaur that had merely gained armour.
He looked like a dragon rebuilt for war—flesh, steel, claws, wings, fire and machinery fused into one colossal weapon.
Haruto was riding near the base of one armored wing.
His goggles were crooked.
His grin was enormous.
"WOOOOOO!"
Renji closed his eyes.
"Of course."
Daichi stared.
"He was supposed to remain on standby."
Caelan smiled.
"He did."
"What?"
"Until he was needed."
A section of Ryu's armored chest split open.
Shun's mouth fell open.
Two missiles launched.
They crossed the battlefield trailing white smoke.
Cipheron's defences turned.
Too slowly.
BOOM!
The side of the pyramid vanished behind fire and shattered stone.
When the smoke rolled away, a vast breach had been torn through several layers of outer wall.
Haruto punched the air.
"YES!"
Ryu banked sharply, the armored wings shifting with surprising precision despite their tremendous size.
"Haruto."
"What?"
"You are exposed."
"Oh."
One enormous clawed hand opened beneath him.
Haruto scrambled down into the protected cradle formed by Ryu's armored palm and curled talons.
"Better?"
"Much."
Ryu drew the massive gauntleted arm toward his chest, shielding Haruto behind layers of metal and claw, then angled his armoured body toward the opening.
Shun finally found his voice.
"That's Elite."
Renji looked at him.
"We noticed."
"No. I mean a controlled Elite evolution."
Everyone understood.
For a moment even the battle around them seemed less important.
Haruto had done it.
The same boy whose fear and desperation had once forced Ryu into Gravefang had now pushed him two stages above his natural Juvenile baseline without losing control.
Courage had answered differently this time.
Caelan's smile softened.
Then the pyramid fired at Ryu.
"Admire him later."
That restored everyone's priorities.
Ryu twisted sideways, his armored wings folding and adjusting around the incoming beam before he drove straight toward the breach he had made.
At the same time, two smaller figures appeared along the eastern ridge.
Yuto rode on Michael's back as the little Light-type Aetherkin flew as quickly as his Juvenile wings allowed.
Misaki came from a second position with Sakura beside her.
Haruto had collected them on his approach, exactly as arranged if the assault reached this stage.
Their Sigils were inside.
They had to be present.
"Now," Caelan said.
Everyone moved.
The dust sheet flew away.
Renji and Alex ran first.
Daichi followed with Clark.
Airi and Flora stayed close behind Shun and Tesla.
Raikōmaru bolted beside Caelan.
The remains of Eidon's army were too busy throwing themselves at Cipheron's defences to notice the smaller group racing toward the breach.
Eidon noticed.
He pointed at them.
"You!"
Caelan looked over.
Eidon's face twisted with recognition.
"You planned this!"
Caelan smiled.
"It took you long enough."
Eidon screamed.
A cannon fired.
He had to dive out of the way.
Caelan laughed and kept running.
"Later!"
Inside the pyramid, alarms became continuous.
Ryu smashed through the damaged corridor with all the subtlety of a landslide.
The structure had never been designed for something his size. Pillars broke against his armored shoulders. Ancient panels buckled beneath his plated feet. The metal-covered wings folded tightly against his back to fit through the ruined passage, yet even then their reinforced edges scraped stone from the walls as he forced his way deeper. Every step drove the group farther into the interior simply because there was no longer enough corridor left to remain outside.
Haruto peered from the protection of Ryu's massive armored hand.
"Sorry!"
Ryu broke another wall.
Haruto looked at it.
"...Mostly."
Yuto and Misaki entered through the breach behind him with their partners, followed seconds later by the others.
Caelan was the last through.
He stopped briefly at the opening.
Eidon was still outside.
Still fighting.
Still furious.
Perfect.
Caelan turned inward.
"Move."
They disappeared into the pyramid.
Cipheron heard them enter.
He didn't care.
The Wall mattered.
Nothing else did.
His long arms stretched across the controls as the final restriction layer flickered before him. Yellow mechanical light and organic crimson reflected together across the cracked dome over his computer engine.
The Wall resisted.
Cipheron pushed harder.
"Open."
The system refused.
His repaired arm hammered another command into the console.
"OPEN."
Warning symbols filled the chamber.
BREACH WILL COMPROMISE CONTAINMENT.
Cipheron's fingers froze.
Some small surviving part of the mind he'd once possessed examined those words.
Containment.
Not access restriction.
Not quarantine.
Containment.
Something was being kept out.
Or kept in.
His organic eye twitched.
Then he remembered Eidon.
Remembered laughter.
Humiliation.
Rage overwhelmed caution.
"I don't care."
Cipheron seized a massive control lever built into the side of the console.
Ancient symbols glowed across its surface.
He pulled.
Nothing happened.
The mechanism fought him.
Cipheron's four small feet scraped against the floor as he braced himself, both long arms wrapping around the lever.
"COME ON!"
Metal groaned.
The computer engine inside his cracked dome flashed violently.
Cipheron screamed and pulled with everything his repaired body could produce.
The lever slammed down.
For the first time in an age beyond Cipheron's ability to measure, the Wall of Fire faltered.
Not collapsed.
Not destroyed.
Just faltered.
For less than a second, the endless barrier of burning red light folded inward around a single point.
A hole appeared.
Small.
Black.
Absolute.
Cipheron's triumph died before it reached his speaker.
The opening did not resemble darkness.
Darkness was merely the absence of light.
This looked like the absence of something more fundamental.
The space around it seemed wrong.
The screens nearest the breach calculation began losing symbols. Not shutting down. Losing them. Lines of code vanished as though they had never been written.
Cipheron stepped backward.
"What..."
Something moved beyond the Wall.
He could not see it.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
Not speech.
Not exactly.
A sound forced itself through the gap, and every screen in the chamber shook.
It carried rage so old that rage was no longer an adequate word. Agony twisted together with contempt, hatred and an emptiness so complete that Cipheron's damaged emotions suddenly seemed childish by comparison.
Then it laughed.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Cipheron stopped moving.
The laughter crossed the Wall.
Every monitor in the chamber went black at once.
Cipheron's yellow eye flickered.
His red eye widened.
"...Who's there?"
No answer.
Only laughter.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The pyramid's systems began dying.
Not crashing.
Not shutting down.
Processes simply ceased to exist.
Defence controls disappeared.
Network routes vanished.
Cipheron's carefully constructed intrusion programs were erased so completely that even their error logs were gone.
"No."
He lunged toward the console.
His huge hands flew across the controls.
Nothing responded.
"No, no, no—"
He tore open an access panel and dragged out a bundle of cables.
The system ignored him.
Cipheron rerouted power manually.
Nothing.
He switched to emergency control.
Nothing.
For the first time since he had begun manipulating the network, Cipheron was not the smartest thing inside his own machine.
He wasn't even participating.
A single monitor flickered back to life.
Cipheron froze.
Something appeared on the screen.
A shape.
At least, his visual processors classified it as a shape because no better category existed.
A vast geometric object rotated slowly against a black background, something like a polyhedron whose surfaces continued dividing whenever Cipheron attempted to count them. Metallic structures resembling strands of DNA curled around it in spirals, except each strand moved independently, tightening and loosening like chains wrapped around something that had never been intended to touch reality.
Cipheron's processors attempted to identify it.
UNKNOWN.
Again.
UNKNOWN.
He opened the diagnostic tools.
They closed themselves.
"What are you?"
The object continued rotating.
A line appeared beneath it.
Not written in any language Cipheron knew.
His system translated it anyway.
Not because he commanded it to.
Because whatever had entered his machine wanted him to understand.
RUNNING.
Cipheron's four feet scrambled backward.
His long arms struck the wall.
For the first time since Eidon had broken him, Cipheron experienced an emotion that had nothing to do with anger.
Fear.
Real fear.
He looked toward the lever.
Toward the Wall.
Toward the impossible program now moving through his computer engine.
The laughter returned.
Softly this time.
Almost amused.
Cipheron finally understood the one possibility he had never seriously considered.
He had not opened a door for chaos.
He had opened a door for something that regarded his entire world as the thing on the other side.
And whatever it was—
it had noticed him.