Heretic Spellblade 7 - Ch2v2

Chapter 2

Nathan’s words barely left his mouth before Fei blurred across the palace grounds. Hundreds of knights clattered to life, drawing weapons or grabbing nobles.

Magical bells boomed from the palace itself, shaking the foundations as they rung out across the city. Speakers implanted within the walls automatically reacted to the use of an unknown Champion ability at the palace gate, and began ordering a full lockdown. The rapid clank-clank-clank of enormous magical gears above Nathan sounded, and the great steel-plated doors leading into the palace itself began to swing shut automatically.

The grounds filled with screams and shouts as the nobles tried to flee at the sight of combat. Many instinctively rushed toward the doors, only for a wall of Royal Knights to block the way. Before more panic set in, even more of Nathan’s soldiers appeared, pushing the nobles behind them, ushering them toward the other buildings and pathways along the sides of the palace.

Outside the palace, the crowds exploded in fury and disbelief. The alarms sent many running, but just as many tried to push past the soldiers holding them at bay. Religious fervor burned in their eyes, and Nathan heard their screams and shouts even over the din of the alarms. Fyre’s flock seemed unwilling to stand idly by.

Within only seconds, Nathan’s preparations turned a potentially catastrophic assassination attempt into a relatively controlled mess. All that needed to happen next was for Fei to rush the attackers, crush them with her trigem abilities, and then they’d clean up.

Everyone else had the same thoughts. He’d deployed two Champions at the gates to stop any potential attacks: a duogem and a monogem. Both had initially rushed the assassin, but stopped dead upon seeing Fei practically teleport across the grounds.

Even with her physical enhancement split across strength and speed, Fei moved with a speed unmatched by anyone other than another trigem.

She slammed down before the assassin, whose ice ability remained in effect. Both Champions possessed sapphires, but the power difference seemed apparent. Even so, the enemy produced another dagger and rushed toward Fei. Her speed suggested a pure speed enhancement.

A whirlwind of blue flames cascaded off Fei as two of her sapphires glowed. The ice from earlier disintegrated upon being touched by the fire, and she billowed great plumes of her magic-eating inferno toward the assassin. Instantly, the scene vanished in an azure blaze.

Only for a strange golden light to sparkle from within it. Nathan felt an odd power thrum within the leylines that stretched out from the palace, which was a local confluence of them. The palace itself acted as a binding stone and seemed to react in sympathy to this power.

“Shit,” he muttered.

He slapped Fei with a mental pulse, telling her to take this seriously. His favorite kitten immediately activated her trigem ability, and her body became encased in her own flames.

At the same time, Nathan raised an arm and reached for the power of the palace. Binding stones granted the ability to reshape reality around them. This close to the palace, he could do whatever he wished. Conjure up walls, create prisons, and even create automated defenses. Most of the palace’s defenses ran on this power.

A dozen twisting vines of steel rose from the ground around the blazing inferno Fei created, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Nathan struggled to sense the Champions, however. He could make out his knights, and shifted the ground beneath them to pull them out. Some had already rushed away, unharmed by the flames but freed from the ice. The rest were pulled away by their comrades as Nathan saved them.

Gareth looked between Nathan and Fei with a frown, then raised his staff and began casting a spell. A glowing gold pentagon shimmered between his fingers and the end of his staff, indicating he was preparing a fifth rank spell.

“Really, Pike? You think the inferno kitty doesn’t have this handled?” Erica asked.

“I’m not the one who backed her up first.” Gareth pointedly stared at Nathan, who remained focused on the power of the palace.

Cursing, Erica rolled her shoulders and clapped Beth on the shoulder. “Keep Pike safe. I bet there’s more assassins around. If I was behind this—”

“You’d use a distraction. I know.” Beth glowered up at her compatriot and brushed her hand off her armored shoulder. “Straub—”

“The alarm is going off for a reason,” Nathan grunted, but he was checking the palace all the same. “The palace is full of Champions. Astra will keep Alice safe. Fyre can take care of herself. No matter how badly the Twins and Tarako feud, they can easily sweep the interior for any infiltrators.”

He had more Champions than he’d listed, but they were scattered across the Empire. Even if the Diet wanted to vote on a declaration of war, as far as Nathan was concerned, they were at war. Many of his Champions excelled at commanding or logistics and therefore needed to be on the frontlines. Fei had been there until he’d called her back for the Diet session, in fact.

Beth nodded, an almost proud look on her face. “It’s good to work with somebody who plans ahead. A far cry from—”

“Focus,” Gareth snapped.

Fei’s flames began to dwindle, and the reason became clear. Confusion reigned on the catgirl’s face and she fell into a cautious stance, holding her scimitar aloft. Her tail lashed the ground warily, sending sapphire embers coursing across the palace grounds with every movement.

The knights caught onto Fei’s emotional state and formed a bulwark around the dying inferno. Both Champions down there began bellowing orders to get the nobles out.

While the knights understood the issue, confusion rippled through the slowly calming crowds. Surely Nathan’s mightiest Champion had defeated the assassin?

Then the flames vanished, and the problem made itself clear.

The carriages remained little more than ash, leaving the assailants clear as day. Three of them stood in a golden bubble. All women. All duogem Champions from Falmir without a doubt. The dagger-wielding ice mage had brought company.

A tall and pale-skinned knight loomed over the other two Champions, her greataxe firmly implanted in the ground around her. It glittered with the same gold as the barrier. Presumably, she was its source. Two diamonds sat in her collarbone, although they looked more like solid gold.

The third Champion surprised Nathan. A wolf beastkin, much like most of those in the Royal Knights. Dressed as a servant, her two red garnets marked her as a lesser Champion than the others. At least, lesser in the eyes of Falmir.

Nathan knew damn well that gems meant little compared to the skill of the user. Vala had been one of his best Champions in his world despite her garnets.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but Jafeila’s flames are supposed to eat magic, correct?” Gareth asked.

“Yes,” Nathan said.

“So that barrier shouldn’t be up.”

Nathan didn’t grace his friend with a response. Whether Gareth could sense the power within the barrier or not wasn’t Nathan’s issue.

Because he sure as hell could. The power of Omria flowed from the pale knight projecting the barrier.

No, not Omria. Charlotte. The palace reacted in sympathy to the gems of these Champions because they were somehow channeling the power of a prophet. What the hell had Charlotte done to give them this sort of power? Fyre seemed incapable of it. Hell, even the Champions Nathan knew of with gems empowered by outer beings didn’t feel the same.

The barrier lowered and all three Falmirian Champions tensed.

Only for every steel spike under Nathan’s control to snap toward them at once. In an instant, his power over the palace and its surroundings allowed him to send countless tons of sharpened reinforced steel directly at the assassins.

Then, as if the steel tendrils struck solid, invisible walls, they came to a dead stop several feet away from their targets. Nathan’s power continued to pump into them, pushing them onward, but they remained stuck in place. In fact, every mote of power he shoved into the tendrils rebounded back and he began to feel his body strain under the pressure. Sweat formed on his brow.

“Nathan?” Ciana gasped out, reaching for his arm.

The assassins rushed forward, and that impenetrable bubble moved with them. Nathan’s summoned vines collapsed as they got near them, and he understood the real problem.

Somehow, his reality bending powers failed in a small vicinity around these strange, empowered Champions. It wasn’t a barrier they projected, but a bubble that denied his power outright.

He immediately withdrew his power from the tendrils, leaving them as they were. They stopped collapsing as the Champions rushed forward, because they’d become ordinary objects in the world.

The problem became killing the assassins now.

“Charlotte’s giving them her strength somehow,” Nathan said. “They’re far more powerful than duogems. We need to shut them down. I’m calling in backup.”

Erica shot him a concerned look, but nodded. Her warning about this being a distraction lingered in his mind, but could he take the risk of letting the distraction get people slaughtered?

There was one person who could turn the tide here. Whose power countered Charlotte’s.

Fyre, get to the palace gates, now! he roared over his mental link with Fyre, the beastkin prophet and Champion who served him.

A strong affirmative came back across the link, accompanied by concern. No time to worry about that, however.

Fei met the trio of charging assassins with gritted teeth and a surge of azure flames. The garnet Champion and ice mage fell back, letting the barrier knight slam to a stop and conjure up another golden shield to protect them.

Expecting this, Fei shot forward. Her body rippled with fire as she crashed into the gleaming barrier, scimitar-first. The point of her blade slammed into the field of light, only to stop dead.

The pale knight grinned, and the other two Champions shot past her, convinced Fei had been held up. Which was true, except Fei had allies. The catgirl didn’t spare a glance at the assassins rushing past her. Her green eyes focused on the assassin in front of her as her sword began to dig into the barrier.

Her azure flames coated not only her body, but her blade. They lashed at the barrier. To no effect, at first. But all three of Fei’s sapphires roared with power, indicating she was actively using her trigem ability.

So far as Nathan knew, nobody else understood how Fei’s power really worked. They likely just saw her as a force of destruction who moved fast and spread magic-eating flames.

Her true power was that each of her gem abilities fed into one another. Her monogem ability granted her the magic-consuming flames that made her famous. Her duogem made her self-sustaining, as she powered her gems using the magic she ate and could even overcharge herself and become stronger and faster than usual.

But her trigem ability made her a veritable demigod. Fei converted her very body to magical fire. She became impervious to physical harm, and only powerful magical attacks too strong for her to instantly consume were able to hurt her.

More importantly, this extended to her weapon. At the moment, her scimitar was formed of pure magic-consuming fire, powered by three sapphire gems that fed off Nathan’s binding stones, and was slowly but surely penetrating the golden barrier of the pale knight. Her blue flames transformed into a wicked green as they merged with the golden magic.

With each fraction of an inch Fei’s scimitar dug into the barrier, she stole vast quantities of power from the knight.

Terror swept across the pale knight’s visage when she finally noticed. Panicking, she unsummoned her barrier and leaped backward. Her diamonds stopped glowing gold as she raised her greataxe in a defensive posture.

Probably her greatest mistake. Her last mistake, really.

Fei transformed into a black and blue blur. Without anything stopping her from closing on the knight, she pounced. Her speed advantage made any defensive posture meaningless.

Her first swing took the pale knight’s hands off at the wrists, cutting right through her plate armor. The cross-section she’d severed glowed bright blue as it fell to the ground.

Before she could even scream, the pale knight found her face covered by Fei’s spare hand. A hand coated in fire. The pale knight’s diamonds flickered gold, attempting to protect herself.

They dimmed a moment later, activating too late. Her face reduced to little more than a molten mess in an instant.

But while Fei had claimed victory over her target, the other two assassins had pushed onward.

A solid wall of Royal Knights barred the way forward for the assailants, accompanied by a monogem. The other Imperial Champion, a duogem, had been caught on the far side—too far to assist.

In ordinary circumstances, dozens of Royal Knights would be able to at least slow down or help a monogem against one or two duogems. Their training, equipment, and the limited magical capabilities of most of them allowed them to overwhelm monogems with ease. Hence why Nathan had felt comfortable with his defenses for the Diet session.

The garnet beastkin moved with terrifying speed, however. While the Royal Knights prepared their spells, she blitzed across the grounds with the same speed as Fei, a trigem. One of her garnets shimmered with that eerie gold glow. A physical enhancement, no doubt. She wielded a longsword and shield. Bog standard stuff for a beastkin Champion from Falmir. She should have been a perfect target for the Royal Knights.

Instead, she came to a brief stop in front of the wall of knights, well before their spells finished. Her second garnet lit up, just as golden.

Then she swung her sword. A wave of pressure blasted across the entire courtyard, strong enough that it ruffled Ciana’s skirt.

Dozens of knights went flying backward. Their armor lit up with runes and enchantments, and a deep cut ran through their breastplates as they crashed to the ground. No blood, however. As strong as the garnet Champion proved with Charlotte’s aid, punching through so many layers of enchanted armor was too much.

Cynically, Nathan thought that if Vala had been the one doing the same, she’d have left no survivors. The beastkin Champion was just some random warrior, not an especially strong one.

But she’d made a hole all the same. Binding and attack spells blasted the ground where the garnet beastkin and ice mage had stood a moment earlier, but the assassins had already rushed through. The Imperial monogem struggled to keep pace.

More knights defended the palace grounds, however. Only to be held in place by another of the ice mage’s daggers. A surge of ice cascaded over their armor, stopping them dead.

At no point did the Falmirian assassins stop charging forward, however. They crashed through the carriages parked directly in front of the palace. The garnet beastkin used her duogem slash to blast the carriages into pieces, looking around wildly for her target.

Instantly, Nathan understood the purpose of the assassins. A pair of green squares snapped into existence around his sword, pumped full of energy from his binding stones.

“Ciana!” he snapped, about to give her orders.

“Understood,” Ciana said before he could say anything more.

Her horn glowed a brilliant white and she leaped off the palace steps to the grounds below, directly to the likely targets of the assassins. Whether she’d spotted the same thing Nathan had or detected his thoughts over their mental link was unimportant.

“Milgar,” Gareth breathed out, eyes widening. “Erica!”

Except Erica had already vanished. As a trained assassin, she had almost certainly been the first to understand who Falmir had been targeting.

“One day she’ll actually say something before vanishing,” Gareth muttered. He kept focusing his fifth rank spell. “Beth?”

“I’m not leaving your side. Not with the strange powers they’re using. Never seen this before,” Beth said, eyes hard. “Somebody might be able to handle themselves, but you can’t.” She shot Nathan a sidelong glance, confirming the identity of that “somebody.”

Both remaining Falmirian assassins blitzed toward the most important individual out in the open: Archduke Hans von Milgar. Dozens of Royal Knights attempted to rush him and the Arcadian ambassador to safety, while the mystic foxes took up the rearguard.

The instant the assassins spotted them, the foxes stopped dead in their retreat. A pair of five-tailed foxes took up the lead defense, their tails shimmering with powerful fifth rank spells cast at an impossible speed. Even Gareth couldn’t hope to match such speed.

A pair of dense barriers cut off the attacking Champions from von Milgar, buying time for them to retreat. And for Nathan and his Champions to end this.

Except, as Nathan should have excepted, they had another trick up their sleeve.

A single sapphire in the ice mage’s chest glowed as she drew an oddly ornate dagger. A relic, Nathan instantly realized. Forged by Trafaumh’s horrid experiments from sacrificing Champions, they had powers on par with ascended magic.

With a single slash, the ice mage carved through both barriers. The foxes seemed prepared for this, and fourth rank spells rained down on the attackers. Force blasts, as was typical of the fluffy warriors.

The withering barrage of magic brought the ice mage to her knees. But Champions had an inherent level of magic resistance. Without empowerment from gems, a spirit, or binding stones, anything less than fifth rank barely scratched a duogem. Trigems like Fei shrugged off anything less than sixth rank.

Her garnet glowing gold, the beastkin assassin rushed through the barrage completely unharmed. She swung her sword.

Every fox went down in a sea of blood. Behind them, the knights clattered to the ground, along with those they were protecting.

“Shit,” Nathan snapped.

He tensed his legs, preparing to dive into the fray along with Ciana.

But the knights rose to their feet, seemingly unharmed. As trained, they’d kept a solid wall between the attackers and Milgar. The distance seemingly kept them relatively unharmed.

For now. The beastkin blurred forward with her unnatural speed.

Only for Ciana to appear in front of her even faster, one of her diamonds shining brightly. She borrowed Nathan’s immense physical strength and was likely the physically strongest Champion he had.

Without hesitating, the garnet beastkin slammed her sword into Ciana’s chest. This wasn’t a slash, like before, but a thrust. Her garnets glowed bright gold. Without bothering to block, Ciana instead counterattacked while taking the blow.

The blast of pressure did little more than ruffle Ciana’s uniform. Not even a scratch on her face. Blood sprayed across her body, however.

The garnet beastkin’s shield went flying as Ciana cleanly severed it. A moment later, she nearly removed the assassin’s other arm. Realizing the danger, the assassin screamed and rolled backward. Blood poured from the stump that had been her left arm. Her eyes turned wild.

Even so, her garnets only seemed to glow brighter. The strange golden shimmer extended to her sword. Ciana grit her teeth and slammed her greatsword into the ground.

Right as the garnet beastkin swung her sword wildly at Ciana and Milgar behind her, a solid wall of silver light separated the two. Ciana’s two diamonds shined brilliantly as she easily blocked the attack with her barrier ability.

This time, the ice mage was nowhere in sight. Mostly because Erica stood behind over her headless corpse, her hands and body covered in blood.

“No!” the garnet beastkin yelped, looking back to see her two fellow assassins very, very dead. “I cannot fail Omria! I am her chosen one! I must—”

Her gems began to gain a genuinely terrifying light. Nathan felt the power of the palace being leeched by them.

Before anything more could happen, he pointed his sword at the beastkin’s head and unleashed his spell. She dropped dead without a word.

The strange magic vanished. All signs of Charlotte’s magic and the golden light that accompanied the use of ascended magic and the prophets left with the lives of the assassins.

Yet the panic remained. His knights continued to wrestle with the crowd outside, and the countless nobles screaming in panic after Falmir had nearly breached the palace.

“Well, they weren’t quite as strong as we feared,” Gareth said, still holding onto his fifth rank spell.

Grimacing, the older Bastion raised his staff to the air and slowly released the magic with a wince. Beth elbowed him in the side for dismissing the attack, her eyes locked onto the many dead foxes and scattered knights.

“Trigems are still trigems,” Nathan said. “No matter what trickery Charlotte pulls.”

Yet Charlotte had pulled a truly desperate attack. An open assassination attempt in the middle of Aleich using Champions. No plausible deniability would be possible, as Gareth would surely recognize some and Champions would have gone missing somewhere in Falmir.

More to the point, her target troubled Nathan. Charlotte had tried to kill Archduke Hans von Milgar, one of Alice’s strongest allies and likely the only noble with a powerful army remaining after all the devastation of the past year.

The duel between prophets had ended. Now, Charlotte intended to simply claim her position as the Watcher Omria through force.

- - - - -

Commentary: A return to the short, brutal battles that Champions are known for, after the slugfests of Book 6. I think it's been a while since Fei melted somebody with her bare hands.

Managing power creep is always difficult. I'm actively trying to keep Nathan constrained, given the series has a set length and it would get unmanageable if he started throwing around quadgem Champions or something. At the same time, he needs a challenge if he's facing off against Elite Messengers and Charlotte.

Between the number of Nathan's Champions and their growing power, it's not really feasible to have many individual foes they can't defeat. Artemis is intended to be an apex predator of sorts, and power creeping her invalidates too much plot. So it's time for goddess bullshit (which was originally planned for post-Falmir stuff, but I'm bringing it forward for the two-part finale).

Oh, and this is one of the rare times where the innate magical resistance of Champions is actually used. This was mentioned in Book 1, but rarely if ever comes up (as Nathan and crew have ways of getting past it).