Eight 5.35: The Plan in Action III

Author's Note: Just a reminder that these are first-draft chapters, and some of them are definitely going to be rough, including this one, for example.

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The obsidian knife floated closer, so that Fala could examine the runes. Then, she flew through the rest of the chamber in her own inspection of the walls. ‘This is a complicated spell. How can we know Baxta’s intent?’ 

‘Oh!’ A spike of discomfort went through Yuki. 

You okay? I asked.  

‘Our extension outside just died,’ they replied. 

What? I thought. That shouldn’t have happened. Even if the soldier Yuki inhabited had been crushed by the landslide, the extension inside him should’ve survived. 

A moment later, a fresh batch of the newly dead streamed into the chamber, the most notable of which was the fortress’s commander. He appeared before the egg and then strode toward it, not looking back once. 

A portion of Yuki’s mind had been monitoring the events outside, ready to warn the rest of us when the Maltrans recovered enough to start making their way to the egg chamber. ‘The empress just had all the survivors stationed at Eagle Fortress executed,’ they said. ‘Including Sotwansein even after he shielded her from the landslide.’ 

Wait, wait, I thought. Start from the beginning. 

‘When the failsafe triggered, Sotwansein interposed himself between the falling mountain and the empress. Our soldier was close enough to be included; he was within the dome the commander created. Then, here, see for yourself…’ Yuki merged our consciousnesses and relived the memory for us. 

We felt the suffocating panic of Horos of Kolsenta, the adrenaline pumping through him even though the earth had stopped rumbling and shaking. He was slow to stand, his legs as soft as porridge. His team leader should’ve been scolding him into doing his duty, but the man lay nearby. A stray rock had caved his head in. 

Horos’s eyes sought out the empress. Her guards held candle stones, and she was illuminated by their light, standing tall amid the chaos as if the world ending were of no consequence. And her eyes were locked onto the back of the man who’d saved them all—the commander of the Eagle Fortress. He was a pillar, the bulwark that had protected them with the dome of his influence. 

The earth shook once more, but this time it was the area protected by the commander rising until the survivors were no longer buried. The ceiling broke, and dim sunlight shone through the hazy air thick with dirt yet to settle. 

Horos began to cough, his body clenching from the effort to clear his lungs. Still, from between slitted eyes, he saw the soldiers who’d remained in the fortress come down to help rescue them. With so many silvered, surely things would be all right now. 

With the empress here, everything would be all right. 

Then, when it was clear everyone was present except for Hall’s Glory, the empress gestured to her attendant who then stepped forward. And the commander split in half, the two sides falling apart, blood spraying as if from a burst sausage. Then, one by one, all the other soldiers who’d been stationed in the fortress died in the same way. 

Some stood stock still unable to move; others tried to run. Either way, they died. The attack was inexorable, like fate. It never missed. Caught by the coughing, Horos could only wonder what was happening when he too was cut in two. Yuki’s extension had died at the same time, and the memory ended. 

I fell away from the union with Yuki, shaken. The fear-soaked last moments of the man named Horos lingered. Did you… did you count how many are left? 

‘Thirteen,’ Yuki replied. ‘Ten guards, plus Sister Moon and her attendant. Also, Kolwei was spared; we don’t know why.’ 

My beloved frowned. Yuki had briefed Fala without the benefit of memory, but she still sensed how disturbing it’d been. ‘Those thirteen will not be easy.’ 

The Deer God eyed us. ‘Will they come here or withdraw?’ 

In turn, I asked the others, Why do you think the empress had the soldiers executed? 

Fala answered, ‘With the failsafe triggered, she feared a trap. And it didn’t matter if the survivors were traitors or not, because they’d failed in their duty.’ 

So what does that mean for Baxta? 

‘She doesn’t know if the ritual was also sabotaged or not,’ Yuki said. 

‘And she has to find out, because if her enemies have sabotaged a plan as secret as this one, then where else are they planning to strike?’ Fala asked. 

Remember, I thought, she intends to do more than just conquer the Three Cities. Her ambitions are greater. 

‘She won’t let this go either way,’ Yuki said. 

‘Human folly,’ the Deer God added. 

‘What are the odds she has an Earth-Touched with her?’ I asked. 

‘Almost guaranteed,’ Yuki replied. ‘They’re too useful.’ 

‘But she killed Sotwansein,’ Fala pointed out. ‘The Maltrans will now have to break through their own warding before being able to enter the fortress.’ 

We’ve lost our eyes on the outside, but there are no other changes, I thought. The plan rolls on. 

### 

Don’t think we’d forgotten about that bastard, Baxta. The smugness on his face only grew more apparent as I continued to search the chamber for weaknesses to exploit. 

I felt him watching. His remaining options for whose body to inhabit were the Deer God, Fala inside the flying knife, and me, and I was apparently the most interesting of the three, which was fine. We’d accounted for that. 

A notification popped up on my phone. 

The Spirt Arts skill has increased to 13. 

The Strategy skill has increased to 9. 

The Acting skill has increased to 7. 

I contained my own smile; three at once was a good sign our efforts were paying off. Meanwhile, on Fala’s Status page, I saw that her Acting skill also went up—now at 12.  

The influence on the runes keeping Baxta inside the chamber intensified, and I walked over to peer at them. That was what he would expect, right? And for my own influence to falter when faced with Baxta’s big, bad, old self? 

I let him start to win, the runes slowly altering. 

Do you know how he’s doing that? I asked Fala. It’s a handy trick. 

‘I’ve been wondering,’ she replied. ‘My thought is that since the spell connects to him, he’s using the connection in turn.’ 

That’s probably not easy, I observed. 

‘It’s not,’ replied Yuki and Fala simultaneously. 

I glanced behind me at the egg and let myself frown. The boundary between life and death had become paper thin. The lightest touch of Baxta’s hand would break through it—his spirit back in this world. 

The toxic sludge was starting to bother me again, but I couldn’t spare the water to fend it off. A numbness pervaded the toes on my left foot, the feeling slowly spreading. My frown deepened. 

Yuki was about to say something, but I cut them off. No back seat driving; I have this. 

‘Parallel, parallel,’ Fala reminded us both. ‘Keep pushing on all the lines.’ 

And she was right. We didn’t know how things would play out, so we had to pursue every angle to make sure we hit the right one or ones. It was just that I had a fondness for the old bishkawi trick—baiting a trap with the seemingly weakest member of the troop. 

I pulled the water surrounding my body away to reinforce the search. It’d weaken my spiritual defenses, but it had to be done. The Deer God was going too slowly. He’d be at the altar for ages. Well, that was an exaggeration, but he wouldn’t finish before Sister Moon and her people arrived. 

“We have to go faster,” I said aloud. 

Almost as if it was a signal, the egg’s boundary stretched. It clung to Baxta as he pushed through it, his right hand emerging first and then his face. Breached, he streamed into the world, and the red haze around us deepened. 

Baxta didn’t have authority without a body; he didn’t have influence. His talents and his magics were locked behind death’s door. And yet, a weight settled on me, reminiscent of the Deer God’s presence. There was power here, a force outside the World Spirit’s systems. 

The Deer God leapt to catch Baxta between his antlers, but the ghost slipped from between the tines to stream toward me. I saw a manic grin on Baxta’s face as a crystal the shape and length of a short spear materialized in his hands. He stabbed at my left foot. 

‘1-3-1,’ Yuki yelled into my mind, excited. ‘Go, go, go!’ 

Whole sections of the overall plan fell away, as we followed the branching scenario. That meant the obsidian knife shooting toward the egg behind Baxta and the giant stone sculpture disappearing into the Hoarder’s Pocket. A moment later, the altar followed. The Maltrans would be denied their use in the future. 

A Dog’s Agility spun through me, and I leapt aside, turning in the air so that my left foot was out of Baxta’s reach. Backpedaling, I dodged the follow-up thrusts, letting the spear pass me. 

Think about it, in all the times I’d visited the observation deck, who was the weak one? Who had to hold onto the Deer God to keep from being sucked into the egg chamber? And who, oh so conveniently, was a whole man with a healthy body ripe for the taking? 

I’d spent so much time in my younger days on Diaksha acting as bait for my team. In a way, it was comforting to assume the role again. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like the looks of that spear. The last crystal weapon I’d seen had the power to annihilate souls, but there was thrill to the hunt and satisfaction in seeing a plan put into action. I was capable of being both frightened and excited at the same time. The two were just different sides of the same coin, after all. 

So, Baxta chased me around the chamber, and I stayed out of his reach, even when he distorted his ghostly body in strange ways to get at me. In the meantime, Fala reinforced the runes trapping Baxta inside the chamber, and the Deer God stood where the altar had been, his antlers glowing with vibrant, verdant life. 

‘Ready check ten,’ Yuki said. 

Ready ten, I replied, counting the beats and diving past Baxta’s next strike. My left foot swung behind me once more. My heart was thumping, hopped up on Dog’s Agility and adrenaline, but my authority assured me I was in the right. It helped me find the right way forward, aligning the world so that I didn’t stumble. 

I expected Baxta to be a better fighter than he was. He favored sweeps leading into thrusts and doubled feints that ended in true attacks to the eyes or heart. The style was aggressive, imposing even. From the way he attacked, he seemed to expect me to be timid and fearful.  

Was I supposed to be cowering from the spear? The weapon wasn’t in any of Amleila’s memories. He’d acquired it after he’d enslaved her. The important thing was that I didn’t feel the same sense of dread as from the death crystal atop the Pyramid of Despair.  

I slipped into the spaces Baxta’s spear left open. The more we fought, the more I understood that he was used to fighting in a group, which jived with what I knew of him. It was only in his early days that he ever fought alone. Afterward, he was always with someone, his allies coming and going like they were days in the year. A small handful remained core to his entourage, yet he was the one in the end who ended up betraying them. 

‘In,’ the Deer God sent, and the earth spirit stepped into the herd and back out again, his antlers goring Baxta from behind. He disappeared just as quickly to avoid Baxta’s retaliation, a reversed thrust. 

‘In,’ Fala sent, half a beat later. She’d infused the knife with spirit mana and shot at the back of Baxta’s head. 

He’d sensed it coming, though, and twisted aside. His short spear began to turn, the style looking familiar, reminiscent of the hunters’ forms for dealing with multiple opponents. Baxta became hard to approach, especially since the ghost didn’t restrict himself to movements allowed by a physical body. His spirit leaked from the holes the Deer God had poked in him, but the wounds didn’t slow him down. 

My turn came, so I infused Bearbane with spirit mana and attacked, a zigzag series of cuts with the spearhead meant to draw his defense toward me and expose his back to my allies. Except that damned ghostly body of his let him spiral past the spearhead and toward me. 

I immediately withdrew, and my allies swept in, only for him to twist out of the way again. That sequence of attacks and counters signaled the start of an impasse that lasted nearly a minute—which might as well have been forever at the speeds we were all moving. 

The fight pitted our teamwork against Baxta’s inhuman flexibility, and even when we did manage to cut him, he never flagged. The ghost’s resilience was unprecedented. 

Meanwhile, the water in the chamber answered my call and gathered in a pool nearby. Under my influence, the surface shimmered with silvery light, beckoning the dead to move on from the world. Hints of green also appeared as the Deer God wove in the power of nature’s order—the dead should not linger. Even Fala added her share of power, enhancing the water’s fundamental purpose. 

Baxta was not unaware. He saw the pool gathering and the resulting light show, but we’d kept him too busy to do anything about it. We had him completely on the defensive. 

Or so it seemed.