Heretic Spellblade 6 - Ch21

Chapter 21

“So, what do you want us to do?” Maura asked before Nathan could say or do anything else.

The Twins crossed their arms beneath their oversized tits and glowered at him, as if they had expected to be included in his orders.

Then again, given the earlier discussion, maybe Narime had gotten their hopes up that Nathan might send them out to deal with the remaining fortresses in danger of being invaded. Their mental magic would allow them to deal with any wary Bastions.

“You might be of use to me when I help Seraph claim her first binding stone,” he said. “So you’re coming with me, of course.”

“Sure we will,” Laura droned.

“This involves mental magic. Or is that not your specialty?”

They rolled their eyes at him and let out a joint harrumph.

Even if he had a good argument, they evidently just wanted to fly off and cause havoc with his blessing. By contrast, he still didn’t want them messing with the heads of random people.

Narime might be right that they wouldn’t openly betray him, but these succubi had their own agenda. If he allowed them to start using their mental magic on ordinary Bastions and soldiers, what might they get up to? His only method of limiting their influence would weaken drastically and they might use that weakness to accomplish whatever they desired.

For him, he suspected. Or, more accurately, for whatever vision of him they had in mind.

Nathan didn’t want a host of female Champions mysteriously and “randomly” asking to be transferred to his command immediately after the Twins were nearby.

“Hey, we wouldn’t be that overt,” Maura protested.

But the succubi grinned from ear to ear and their red eyes gleamed with mischief.

“I’d accuse you of spying on my thoughts, but I’m guessing I wasn’t subtle in my musings about you,” he said.

“It’s pretty easy to pick ourselves out of your surface thoughts, especially when you’re thinking lewd things.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I’m pretty sure the idea of us going around and collecting all of Trafaumh’s Champions for you counts as lewd,” Laura said, intentionally misrepresenting his apprehensions toward them.

When Seraph and Ciana shot him odd looks, he merely ran a hand over his face.

“Let’s just go,” he said.

“We won’t judge you,” the succubi sang out.

“If I’m ever judged by you, I’ll question how far I’ve fallen.”

“Oh, you’ve fallen far.”

He’d walked into that one.

Once he waved his hand, his Champions stepped close to him. As did the Twins. Then he cast his teleportation spell, clearly visualizing his destination.

When he’d first seen Chateau d’Polierre it had been while responding to a breach further west, not long after the defense of the Gharrick Mountains. The castle had stood as an immense, if dense, ivory mountain that straddled a growing river and was more than capable of fending off demonic hordes that might threaten it.

Nathan had fond memories of the place. Not least because he’d rekindled the flame with Narime there after she’d run off following the events in the Federation.

Also, like he’d often done when given the chance to meet Jafeila, he’d marked the battlefield with sex. At the time, she’d had some rather pertinent questions over Baudelaire’s use of Ysabelle as a rallying cry.

While Baudelaire never created a false prophet, as the Twins and Kadria intimated she managed with Reine, Ysabelle had become the closest thing. The Order believed her blessed by Omria. A woman who spoke of visions with a fiery fervor, with a bell-like voice that enraptured men, and a gorgeous figure that many dreamt of—both religiously and otherwise.

At the time, Nathan had strongly disliked her. Her dyed hair, pompous behavior, and increasingly delusional belief in her own status as one of Omria’s chosen. Dark, malicious, and often lascivious rumors spread about her. In his youth, Nathan believed them, although he had at least refrained from spreading them.

Today… well, he still distrusted Ysabelle.

But Jafeila’s words rang in his ears as he recalled the memories of their talk above d’Polierre.

“Sometimes belief is all we have. Ysa isn’t stealing alms to feed the poor and enriching herself. She lets people believe that maybe Omria still supports us, after everything that’s happened. What do we gain if that’s taken away?”

Nathan found himself pondering that question as the ruins of d’Polierre appeared in front of him.

The ivory stonework lay across both sides of the river. There had been a bridge built into the fortress once, but it appeared to have collapsed into the waters and been carried away. Great gouges tore the earth open on this side of the river, revealing flooded basements several stories deep.

And, of course, a fifty foot tall black and white demonic portal hovered in the air.

Roars of fury interrupted Nathan’s assessment.

A quick glance behind him confirmed that hundreds of demons roamed the area. Fyre had yet to appear and close it, given he’d only just asked her to.

Ciana drew her greatsword and Seraph’s tonfas appeared in her hands.

Before either could do little more than make their gems glow, the Twins snapped out their arms. Darkness flashed along them.

Then every demon in sight collapsed. Their bodies fell apart in the process, cleanly sliced in two by the succubi’s spatial slashes. Trees thundered to the ground in the distance and shrubs burst into leaves.

“Does that count as useful?” Maura asked snippily.

Her red eyes seemed to glow with annoyance as she shot Nathan a sidelong look.

Yeah, Nurevia’s comments after the dominion battle had struck a nerve.

“Do you want me to pat your head?” he asked.

Now her eyes definitely glowed. Laura snickered.

“I am not your dog,” Maura ground out. “It’s the goat’s job to bend over and ask to be bred.”

All the more reason to pet her. He reached up and rubbed his hand along the top of her head.

Her cheeks reddened in response to his touch for a few seconds, before she swat his hand away. He kept at it.

“The subbening is complete,” Laura intoned.

“Oh, fuck you, Sis. I’ll bend you over and shove the biggest—”

Seraph interrupted them with a cough. “Shouldn’t we close the portal?”

“Nathan said he needs Fyre to do it,” Ciana said.

The other Champion blinked, then nodded. “My apologies. Continue.”

Annoyed, the succubi glared at the unicorn, who merely waved her hand in a “get on with it” gesture at them.

This caused both Messengers to stop arguing and they stared at Ciana with wide eyes.

“Oh my god, she’s actually been truly corrupted. She’s acting like a brat,” Laura gasped out. “That black horn hasn’t just been for show.”

“Black horn?” Ciana frowned. “Wait, that’s not just Nathan’s corruption fetish?”

“Hey!” he said.

“Nah, your horn has been acting weirdly since you started thinking lewd thoughts.” Maura shrugged.

“It’s a bicorn—” Nathan said.

“We’ve heard that,” both succubi droned.

Maura sighed. “Look, we don’t care about the fantasy shit of this world that much. Worlds tend to fly past so fast that they get muddled up too easily.” She screwed up her face. “Although, I guess we probably should care a bit more. We’re going to be stuck here with you for ages.”

It was Ciana’s turn to look annoyed. Likely because they’d just dismissed her existential crisis over becoming a bicorn without a care.

“You know, I think both of you would look better with dog ears and tails,” she said. “Can’t you modify your bodies? Or at least create illusions? You used them to look like ordinary beastkin.”

Awkward silence. Both succubi looked at each other, as if aware they’d stepped on some sort of trap.

“Uh, yes, but—” Laura tried to say.

Ciana tried to clap her one hand, then grimaced before simply grinning at the succubi. “Great. Nathan, order them to grow dog ears and tails. And to bark. And—”

“Ciana, I think you’re getting carried away,” Fyre’s voice said from above them, loaded with amusement.

They looked up as the horsegirl fluttered down to earth. She’d presumably just teleported in, as Nathan hadn’t heard her until just now.

“Don’t you agree with me?” Ciana asked her friend after rushing over to her.

“Yes, but I think they should bark without being ordered to.”

“Oh, fuck you. And after all we’ve done for you,” Maura snapped.

“… which is?” Fyre asked, tilting her head to one side.

“Um… help you with the goat?”

“I’m pretty sure I helped you, and that was entirely for Nathan. I’d do it to you as well if he ever asked me to.” Fyre’s eyes hardened into blood red gems.

The succubi gulped, but not out of fear. “Damn. You are so much hotter than you were when you started doing all the preacher shit. It’s way better knowing that it’s you saying this as well, instead of the goat or somebody else pulling the strings.”

Fyre and Ciana stared at the succubi, then at Nathan. Almost as if they wanted him to intervene and make the succubi actually react negatively.

“I’ll make them act like dogs next time they misbehave,” he said.

That got a rise from Maura and Laura.

“Act like!?” they screamed.

By now, Seraph had wandered over to the flooded basements. As if to aid her in her desire to shift the conversation back to normality, more demons appeared.

The demons vanished just as quickly. At this point, common demons barely required consideration from Nathan or his subordinates, unless they were in immense numbers. Although the thousands being spawned at once suggested the hordes stomping around Trafaumh would be truly dangerous. He knew his knights would need Champion support.

“Fyre, close the portal,” he ordered her.

The prophet nodded, then fluttered up to the eyesore tearing reality open. Nathan had no clue how she closed portals. He wanted to monitor her.

While he did so, Seraph asked, “Is the binding stone underground? I can’t see it anywhere else.”

“It is. Four stories deep,” he answered while watching Fyre hover in the air. “We’ll need to block off the river, remove the water, then remove any rubble in the way.”

He heard no reply, but suspected Seraph had nodded.

Fyre began building up power along the leylines, similar to what he sensed when she or Charlotte had done prior. But the scale was orders of magnitude smaller. If he wasn’t paying close attention, he might not have even noticed the way she was putting this “prophet energy” into the leylines.

Had Fyre been doing this all along whenever she used her special magic?

Belatedly, Nathan recalled his battles alongside her. Even some of the earliest.

When he’d first seen her in action, she’d appeared to vaporize a Champion through her gems. They had glowed gold, then she’d vanished in a beam of golden light, as if something had reached through the gems and incinerated her. She’d done something similar when Sunstorm encountered her prior, causing a Champion to collapse like a doll whose strings had been cut.

In other fights, Fyre could somehow reach through Nathan’s links to his Champions and “empower” their gems. Even prevent his Champions from dying somehow, as had happened to Fei while fighting Siv. Fei’s gems had glowed gold at that time.

Just like Fyre’s gems often did.

If Fyre’s magic allowed her to reach through the leylines like this, was she in fact interfering with gems directly? Perhaps through the binding stones? Was that how she could close the portals? Nathan knew that the binding stones and portals were closely linked, but so were the leylines.

And if so, weren’t all gems?

A cold sweat broke out on Nathan’s body.

If Fyre could do this, couldn’t Charlotte?

The portal flickered out of existence. The interference in the leylines stopped growing, although it remained very small. So small Nathan only spotted it because he’d been paying careful attention.

This level of disruption couldn’t cause that strange cascade, he realized.

“Is something wrong?” Ciana asked him, gripping Nathan’s arm out of concern.

He bit his lip. While he wanted to say no, Fyre had already noticed. Both women monitored his emotions and her face was wracked with concern. He felt that mirrored in the emotions swaddling his mind.

The Twins simply shot him odd looks.

When Fyre descended in front of him, Seraph noticed something was wrong and returned.

“I felt what you did,” Nathan said.

“And?” Fyre asked, confused.

“You affected the leylines in the same way as when you used the power of Soreaux or the Pearlescent Canyon.”

She stared at him. Her wings raised a moment later as fear struck her. “Am I about to cause a cascade? I didn’t—”

“No! Not like that,” he corrected.

Fyre calmed down.

“There are two problems. One is that I’m now certain that whatever power you have, it’s intrinsically linked to magic itself in Doumahr. The binding stones, the leylines, and even Champion gems themselves.” Nathan bit his lips. “That stomps one idea I’ve been thinking of.”

“Which is?” Seraph asked. Her disappointed expression suggested she might have had a similar one.

“Once you became a Bastion, I’d wondered if you could have given me gems,” he admitted.

The Twins burst out into peals of laughter, loud enough to make him want to knock them down with mental magic.

“It was a bit of a hare-brained scheme,” he said. “But as strong as I am, some sapphires or diamonds would give me an edge against a Messenger.”

“But if it’s linked to Omria, you can’t risk it.” Fyre’s eyes hardened. “Not because of me, but because of Charlotte.”

Well, also because of Fyre. Not that he’d say that.

To be blunt, the possibility that Fyre might leap on the chance to abuse her power and make Nathan do everything she wanted was higher than he cared to ever say to her face. He’d grown to care for Fyre, but he also knew her far better now.

She wanted him. Mind, body and soul. She might not care if that required her to abuse her power to achieve.

“Not just Charlotte,” he said. “The true power between the goddess is constantly hunting me whenever I say her name.”

“Which you keep doing,” Fyre said, a touch shrilly. “I don’t even know what you did last time. I felt the power pouring off your mental wards and…” Her face reddened and she fidgeted a little.

“Oh, it was fucking hot,” the Twins said together.

Maura grinned. “I thought watching him bitchslap that pompous asshole would be the highlight, but nope, had to be creaming my pants as he mentally bitchslapped the equivalent of an outer being.”

Is that what he’d done? He’d just been pissed off.

Nathan coughed. “In any case, I don’t want to allow a connection to the goddess that might grant her leverage over me. It’s too dangerous.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“Super smart. She’s looking for cracks in your defenses,” Maura said.

“You’ll be her slave like that.” Laura snapped her fingers.

Fyre appeared disappointed. Seraph simply nodded, her disappointment over a failed idea fading instantly.

“The second problem is grander,” Nathan explained. “One that I can’t believe I missed, as it’s been explained to me. I know why these cascades and invasions are so bad. Every time you use your powers, you’re leaving a huge imprint in the leylines—and therefore magic itself. That’s connected to the portals, which are the way the outer beings attack Doumahr. And what is the main limit on their power here?”

Fyre, Seraph, and Ciana were completely lost.

But the Twins nodded along, as if everything he said had been the basics of basics. They’d probably worked this out ages ago.

Or maybe they hadn’t and were just following along.

“I don’t understand,” Ciana said.

“In history, whenever the goddess is missing, demonic invasions decrease in intensity. That’s why Messengers became myth,” he said. “It’s why humanity had time to rise following the faeries. It’s also why she leaves in the first place, because the invasions become so bad. If she doesn’t, then…” He frowned.

Huh. Tarako had mentioned that civilizations usually burned down due to huge demonic invasions, but the faeries had collapsed primarily due to the dark elf rebellion and the loss of Omria. Tarako had even said that the demons had only really destroyed a small amount of their empire.

Why had Omria been leaving so early from the faeries and humanity?

Shaking his head, he continued, “When the outer beings use more power and send stronger Messengers, the goddess can respond in kind. They balance each other out. But right now, we have two prophets battling for legitimacy. We’re letting all the Messengers go nuts.”

Fyre shook where she stood. Her wings fluttered.

Before she could take off, Ciana grabbed her arm. Nathan grabbed her other and reached for her mentally.

“Stop,” he shouted. “Fyre, I—”

Something slammed into him and he felt his body weaken. Ciana’s first diamond glowed. Pushing through the pain, he remained standing despite his shaking limbs.

Fyre stared at him in a mixture of shock and terror. Her wings stopped flapping and she descended to the ground. Automatically, she grabbed his shoulders and tears fell from her eyes.

“Nathan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—Please forgive me,” she cried out, panicking over something.

He had no idea what was going on. Neither did Ciana or Seraph, who looked at Fyre in confusion, then around them in a panic.

The initial pain faded, leaving him with a dull headache. He simply held Fyre against him, his arms easily closing around her small body as she poured her heart and eyes out into his chest. His hands ran through her blonde hair over and over.

It was the grim countenances of the Twins that told him what had gone down.

The thing that had slammed into him had been a mental strike. Which is why neither Seraph nor Ciana knew what had happened and the pain had faded.

And the cause had been his own uncontrollable power. He’d ordered Fyre to stop, hit her with mental magic, and she’d almost certainly lashed out with some sort of defensive spell.

Maybe he’d been rash to assume the Champion that Sunstorm saw collapse had been killed through the leylines. Fyre could clearly use mental magic attacks, just like Kadria.

Once Fyre stopped crying, he pulled her away from him.

“It’s fine, Fyre. If anything, it’s my fault,” he said.

“But I—”

“Didn’t really do anything. I barely even have a headache,” he said. “You’ve experienced my lapse of mental magic before. It’s happening in the real world now. I’m guessing you have some measures to protect against them now?”

She nodded with a grim smile. “I added some after the battle against Charlotte. Those glamours annoyed me so much. The idea that an enemy might try to beguile me by waving their tits around and use some mental magic on them needed to be punished. I just didn’t think… I’m sorry.”

This would go around in circles forever.

Nathan briefly explained what had happened to Seraph and Ciana.

Then, finally, he finished what he had started with his explanation. “There’s nothing we can do about the growing ability of the Messengers. We absolutely need you for the future of Doumahr. But it does mean we need to deal with Charlotte sooner rather than later. Ideally without the two of you openly battling each other again.”

Fyre nodded. This time, she didn’t try to fly away out of shame.

At least until Nathan reminded her that she needed to return to help Nurevia deal with other portals. She’d blushed, then stole a kiss from Nathan before teleporting away.

Which meant it was time to focus on the binding stone.

They looked at the flooded basements. Seraph grimaced.

“This would take weeks to handle normally,” she said.

“Months,” he said. “Cleaning up the breach is one thing, but the roads and surrounding area would be ruined. Getting the mages and equipment in to fix a problem of this magnitude would be a gargantuan effort. I’m not entirely sure why so many binding stones are underground.”

“Because they’re natural features,” Maura droned. “Why do you think there are so many near mountains and highly arable land? Large concentrations of magic, like in crystals in mineral deposits, or fertile land, means lots of binding stones.” She paused. “Or it might be the other way around.”

That didn’t explain why they were underground, but he nodded anyway.

Nobody else possessed abilities that helped with blocking a river. So Nathan summoned huge sandbags to cut off the basement from the inflow.

Despite the distance from his binding stones, the effort seemed no harder than usual. He swallowed his concerns. This should have drained a ridiculous amount of magic from him. His closest binding stone was well over 100 miles away.

Once the river had been blocked off, he and Seraph began clearing away the water. Slowly.

Sure, Seraph could vaporize huge amounts of water with a single blast of her monogem ability, but the basements were massive. Chateau d’Polierre was one of the largest fortresses in the region. Clearing four flooded basements of water was the work of a summoned water spirit.

Nathan knew battle magic. The fact he wasn’t a real sorcerer showed.

Eventually, the Twins grew irritated, flew up into the air and turned the entire area into a huge empty cube of excavated dirt.

“You can do this as well, you idiot,” Maura shouted at him from the sky while flashing him with her complete lack of underwear. “Try spatial magic next time.”

With the area cleared out, Nathan and Seraph leaped down.

The binding stone hovered several feet above ground. It looked like a featureless stone orb. A pair of black bands ran across it, protecting it from being claimed by any random Bastion.

At least, in theory. Nathan knew how to access Trafaumh’s binding stones because Baudelaire had given him the codes to their sealing magic. Only he and Gareth had been granted them, because she trusted almost none of Falmir’s Bastions with them. But she had known that some Bastions might need to claim a binding stone in Trafaumh’s territory in case of a breach.

More than that, with his new mental magic no method of sealing binding stones could stop him. Falmir had probably changed their codes under Charlotte, but that wouldn’t matter.

He still found it odd that she’d never questioned how or why he’d claimed their binding stone following Siv’s invasion at Prophet’s Hope.

Seraph stared up at the binding stone. He’d been training her to claim binding stones for months now, including how to bypass sealing magic. Given her past training as a Bastion, she’d picked everything up easily.

The hard part had been teaching her the methods that used mental magic. Unlike him, Seraph wasn’t trained in sorcery at all. So trying to teach her the techniques necessary to adjust the basic Bastion training proved difficult.

Nathan had picked everything up on the fly, often by feel as he slowly understood more and more of how magic actually worked. He’d connected the dots between his “Bastion magic” and ascended magic while the Twins taught him and even taught himself life magic.

Expecting the same from Seraph was insanity.

But all he really needed was a way to allow Seraph to claim a binding stone while she remained connected to him. That should just mean she formed a single mental tether using mental magic, without relying exclusively on Omria’s method.

In much the same way that Nathan could now force connections to Champions and their gems, mental magic could force a connection to a binding stone. Messengers did the same thing when they invaded, even though they were foreign entities that Omria despised.

Seraph looked at Nathan. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Seraph, you’ve trained for this.”

“Maybe. But look around us, Nathan. Does this look like the sort of binding stone a first-time Bastion would claim? A devastated fortress? The binding stone is bone dry. I can feel it, and there’s nothing in it. It’s difficult to even sense it with my limited training and lack of expertise. And even if I succeed, I can’t defend it. Trafaumh will waltz up and retake it.”

Nathan bit his lip.

Okay, she had a point. He might not have thought this through.

He’d claimed his fair share of binding stones in ruins. But they hadn’t been his first.

By the time he waltzed into the truly ruined part of the Empire, he had a few binding stones under his belt and nearly a year as a Bastion. He’d spent months in Castle Karlam, improving aspects of the old fort and rebuilding parts he disliked. So when he finally had to build something from scratch, he knew what he was doing.

And he sure as hell hadn’t done it with an empty binding stone. Those he found in the Empire had plenty of power in them, after months and months of neglect.

Most Bastions sucked at building stuff, though. Seraph would likely fall into that camp. Starting her off like this would only make things harder.

Nathan knew he needed some way to ease her into things.

Unfortunately, he’d missed the low hanging fruit last year with the binding stones that Leopold left behind.

There had to be a way.

The Twins dropped down next to him.

“How do Messengers without mental magic claim binding stones?” he asked them without turning.

“Um, the boss does it for them,” Laura said. “You said it like thirty minutes ago. The portals are an extension of him and they’re connected to the binding stones. So once we’re through, we can just plug him into the binding stone, and he sort of loops us in.”

“I don’t follow that at all,” Seraph said, sounding far more frustrated than she ever let on.

Being so close to a goal she’d let go of, but nearly had in her grasp frayed her tether.

Nathan rubbed his chin. “I think I understand. If I called you his Champions—”

“Former Champions. You’ve had us under your thumb for a while now,” Maura corrected.

“—then that would make him a Bastion. So he claims a binding stone, and somehow lets you use it on his behalf?”

“I mean, yeah?” She frowned. “Oh. I get it.”

Nathan felt out his link to Seraph, then checked that he could feel the binding stone.

Like she’d said, it was barely there and bone dry.

But given his seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy, would that even matter?

If he could somehow claim a binding stone and “lend” it to Seraph, could he create Bastions that way? It would achieve his aim, avoid a lot of the issues in training—particularly as he’d rarely find anyone who had gone through the full suite of Bastion training like Seraph—and allow him to support a new Bastion.

And perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls new Bastions ran into. Such as going mad with power. He could even lend them his own Champions, as he had sincere doubts his Champions had any interest in creating their own.

“Do you know what he does when he ‘loops you in?’” Nathan asked Maura.

“I can show you,” she said.

Abruptly, he felt her presence brush against his mind. Both Maura and Laura in fact.

They played out a mimicry of what he guessed to be the ritual they described. Maura pushed a tether into his mind—or his wards, really, as she couldn’t penetrate them—before wrapping Laura’s tether around her own and jamming it into his wards.

If he had to describe it simply, it was like Laura’s tether slotted into Maura’s from behind. Like Maura had created a hollow hole that she used to push Laura through.

Even before he returned to reality, he knew the succubi would make lewd jokes.

“It’s simple, right? You’re just opening the binding stone up nice and wide for Seraph’s virgin—” Maura tried to say, grinning ear-to-ear.

Nathan slapped her mentally.

“I get it,” he said.

“Aww,” the Twins said.

Seraph raised an eyebrow, but he gave her a serious nod.

The time for her to become a Bastion had arrived.

“I need you to focus on the binding stone just like I taught you,” he told you. “But you’ll feel me guiding you along. Don’t resist me. It will probably feel a lot like a gemming ceremony, but potentially more intense.”

He reached for the binding stone as he usually would. But after bypassing the sealing magic, he didn’t simply connect his mind to it.

Rather, he reached for Seraph. He felt her presence hovering outside the binding stone, uncertain but doing her best. The feeling of her in an environment where she wasn’t supremely confident tickled Nathan in a way he knew he couldn’t ever tell her.

He grabbed her mental tether with mental magic, in much the same way that somebody might pick up a child. Seraph gasped beside him, sweet and full of pleasure.

Ignoring her, he returned to the binding stone. His connection remained intact. He’d barely even tried to maintain it, that was how easy it was for him these days.

Careful not to claim it outright himself, he “pushed” Seraph through the sealing magic. Copying Maura and Laura proved more difficult than he expected. He hadn’t ever used mental magic like this.

Usually he just formed a connection to someone or something. This time, he was connecting to something without actually connecting to it, while also intercepting somebody else’s connection.

Was this the true potential of mental magic? Nathan wondered if succubi could use similar techniques to mentally control people through others.

That thought led him to wonder if this was how Bauer used his power on Tomoe. The elite Messenger had somehow been pushing his power through the other Messenger, after all.

Finally, Seraph claimed the binding stone. Nathan felt it thrum with power, weak as it was.

Which was a whole other problem.

He frowned. Bauer had supplied power to Tomoe through some sort of connection like this. Could he do the same?

Gently, he pushed power through his tether, much like he would through a gem. Binding stones usually only gave power, so he’d never even attempted this.

Hell, he didn’t even know if binding stones could accept power. The connection was one way normally. But his tether wasn’t normal.

His power hit the binding stone. Slowly but surely, the stone absorbed it. He felt it suck it up. A few minutes passed like this, and he managed to fill it to halfway.

Yet he felt more drained than he had been in the last 24 hours. Utterly exhausted, he nearly severed the connection. Only the soft grip of Seraph’s hand on his arm—likely from concern—reminded him that he needed to maintain this link to help her.

Nathan returned to the physical world to find Ciana and Seraph holding him from either side.

And the Twins stared at him in a mixture of awe and outright terror. When he looked at them, they gulped.

“How did you do that?” Maura asked.

“You just taught me to do that,” he said.

“I mean, yeah. But I didn’t think you’d easily do it.” She shook her head. “And I didn’t think you’d top up a fucking binding stone. You realize our old boss eats them for fucking lunch? What do you think that means about you—” She cut off abruptly.

Both succubi paled.

“Oh. Oh shit,” Laura muttered. “I think we’ve all fucked up big time.”

Nathan frowned at them. “I don’t understand.”

“Just…” Maura trailed off, biting her lip.

Both Twins looked at each, their expressions unreadable.

“We need to badger the goat about something,” Laura finished.

“Sure.” He shook his head, too tired to worry about Kadria’s nonsense for the time being. “I’ll let you deal with whatever plans within plans within plans you think she’s up to.” Facing Seraph, he waved off her concern. “For now, it’s time for you to be a Bastion, Lia.”

 - - - - -

Commentary: Oh boy, more lore and twists. This is basically Nathan putting together a bunch of loose connections regarding how stuff works, particularly in regards to Omria and the invasion. I had originally planned to have Kadria explain how the prophets are causing the problems, but that would have been a whole can of worms given she's in Fyre's head. The Messengers see correlations in their boss's behavior, but not necessarily the causes.

As I doubt too many people have been keeping track, some of Tarako's comments about history also track with the prophets causing trouble. You'll notice that she explicitly mentioned that elite Messengers and dominions cause more trouble at the start and end, which is Omria is most active. At the start, prophets need to build a civilization, which provides an opening for the outer beings to deploy in force. At the end, Omria is trying to avert collapse, which triggers a death spiral as it lets elite and partner Messengers through. I'll probably state this more explicitly at some point in either this book or the next one.

Seraph also finally gets her big character payoff and becomes a Bastion. Kind of a big deal for her, especially as it leads to some otherwise out of character moments for her as she's out of her depth for once.