WIEDERGEBURT Act VII: Chapter 15

The sun rose over the mountains as Siv and I floated high above Vahn. Nobody could see us right now, though, because I had created a simple cloud covering to protect us from prying eyes. It was relatively easy to create by combining hundreds of millions of crystalline fragments into mist. The hard part was actually getting the cloud to look like it was moving naturally, especially since we were a little lower in the atmosphere than most clouds formed.

“How about it?” I asked Siv. “Think you’ve got the city layout memorized?”

“I think so,” Siv said, though she still sounded uncertain. “I’ve used my understanding of space to create a false map within my mind that’s an exact replica of this city. Can you show me where I’ll be transporting the two groups?”

“Sure. It’s right there, in the very of that plaza. It’s called Central Plaza and is the largest plaza in the city. You can’t miss it because it’s also got that giant statue of Vahn’s founder in the middle.”

“Mm. Got it. Let’s go back.”

“Right.”

Since it looked like our task was done, the two of us began floating back toward the edge of Vahn, staying within the cloud as it “drifted” along on the breeze. It was slow going because of that, but we picked up speed once we had left Vhan’s general line of sight.

Making our way back to the forest, we set down and wandered inside. We eventually reached the clearing. The army was already waiting for us.

All of the tents had already been disassembled, Spiritualists were standing in orderly lines like soldiers’ heading toward the battlefield, and the Lightning Giants were just a little further back. Several squads had been composed of those with us. Each one was being led by someone who had reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism, including my son. Of the groups, two of them were off to the side, led by Alexis and Ashten. They were the ones who’d be traveling into the city.

“Welcome back, you two,” Kari said to us. “Siv, do you think you can transport everyone inside of the city?”

“Yes,” Siv said with a determined nod.

“Excellent. In that case, I believe we should move out.” Kari turned to Fay. As the greatest Spiritualist among those who had not traveled to another realm, she was nominally in charge of everyone. “Will you do the honors?”

“If I must,” Fay said with a sigh. Her ears were a bit red, but she still turned to look at everyone assembled and spoke in a voice so loud that it reached every corner of the forest. “Everyone! The time has come to retake Vahn! Are you ready?!”

“YEAH!”

Her words were met with resounding cheers from everyone. Fists were shook, feet stomped on the ground, and the noise was enough to cause the forest itself to rumble. I was certain we’d frightened all the wildlife in this area.

“Then let’s move!”

I took my place at the head of the assault team with Fay. Kari, Lin, Siv, and the other assault leaders followed a little behind us. Because the Lightning Giants were so large and would be easy to spot, they came last.

Our march took little more than fifteen meters before we were out of the forest, standing several kilometers from the city we aimed to retake. I took a moment to appreciate this peace. It wouldn’t last long and many people would die. This was something I accepted, even if it made my stomach churn.

Then I looked at Galdr. “You’re up. Wreck ‘em good.”

“YOU CAN COUNT ON US!” Galdr said in his booming voice.

The other Lightning Giants roared before, as one, they transformed into bolts of lightning and took toward the sky. It was… an amazing sight. Five hundred thirty meter tall humanoids all turned into brilliant sparks of electricity shaped like a person, then vanished in a crackling burst of thunder so loud my eardrums felt like they were bleeding. Poor Siv had to cover her ears.

“How long do you think it will take them to reach Vahn?” asked Alexis.

“Lightning travels approximately 350,000,000 kilometers per hour,” I said. “Vahn is only thirty kilometers away, meaning they are probably already there.”

“Then I guess we’d better get going.”

“Yes, we should.” I looked at the smallest among my wives. “You’re up, Siv.”

Siv shook a little when I called on her, the blood rapidly draining from her face. I could tell exactly what she was thinking. She had always been afraid of others, but she had worked hard to overcome that, and while I wouldn’t say she was sociable, she didn’t try to hide behind me every time a new person showed up. Saying that, what she now feared the most was failure. She wanted to be useful to me and the others. At the same time, that desire to be useful brought with it the fear of not proving her worth.

However, Siv had come a long way. She wasn’t the timid young woman anymore, and she proved it by squaring her shoulders and stepping forward.

“Can you all please stand together? I’m transporting you now,” Siv said.

The two groups led by Alexis and Ashten moved in closer together, until they formed a relatively small circumference. Siv took a deep breath, held it, and blew it out after counting to three. Then she reached out with her hand as though grasping for something.

None of the people there save maybe myself and Kari could see what was happening. Even so, I was certain they could all feel it. The sensation of shifting locations as space folded it on itself was an odd one. Everyone looked around as though wondering what was going on. Undulations and ripples were forming in the air and the people within the circle were growing more distorted.

Then they were gone.

“There,” Siv murmured with an exhausted look in her eyes. “They’re all in Vahn now.”

Siv swayed on her feet before falling backward. I moved to catch her, but Fay and Kari were closer to her than me, and so they were the ones who supported her.

“Good job, Siv,” Fay complimented. “That was really incredible.”

“I knew you could do it,” Kari added.

Siv gave them both a tired smile. “Thank you.”

“Hmph. This princess could do that if she understood the Concept of Space,” Lin muttered.

I chuckled at her. “Don’t be jealous. Your time to shine will come soon enough.”

“It had better.”

“All right. I think it’s about time we moved out as well.” I looked back at the gathered army of ten thousand strong and raised my voice. “Let’s get going, everyone! The party has already started, and we don’t wanna be late, do we?!”

The emphatic “NO!” I received made me wish I had the foresight to cover my ears with a layer of wind energy. In either event, it was now time for us to march. We were retaking Vahn today.

***

Rasenclaue wished he could have been placed on the front lines with the other Warlords who had proven themselves. He hated the fact that he was stuck in Vahn. Ever since the city had been captured, all he did was order patrols to spread out to other cities so they could enslave more people. He never actually went anywhere himself.

“Hey, did you hear? I heard a rumor that Dieb and Wutend have begun their assault on the dragon’s stronghold,” his fellow Warlord said. His name was Ulick. He was another who had failed to make the cut and was thus sent to this backwater dump instead of the front lines. Unlike Rasenclaue, however, Ulick didn’t particularly care if he went to the front lines or not.

“Where did you hear that?” asked Rasenclaue.

“A messenger came by the other day,” Ulick said, tusked face splitting in a big grin. “They said the assault is going well, but they need more fodder. Dieb and Wutend are demanding we find more sacrifices for them.”

“Haaa… just how many humans do they think we have enslaved? We’re already down to our last one hundred thousand,” Rasenclaue grunted.

Ulick shrugged. “I know, but orders are orders.”

Most of the people from Vahn had already been sacrificed for the sake of their goals, and the Zehn Todesharr had ordered them to spread across the Northern Plains and find more. While this sounded like a simple task, it was actually quite difficult. Every village from here to the Rotfang Forest had been abandoned after their sacking of Vahn. Rasenclaue didn’t know where everyone went, but they had vanished so thoroughly that his patrols would be lucky to find even twenty humans.

They normally found zero.

Rasenclaue was about to further lament his unenviable position—when something slammed into the ground right next to him. He screamed as pain seared into his face and front. It felt like his face, chest, and legs were being against molten steel. It was too much for him to take and the world around him went black.

An unknown amount of time passed as Rasenclaue came to. It was the pain that forced him to consciousness. Everything hurt.

He opened his eyes with a groan and took several moments to just feel how much his body ached. It felt like his entire front had been scorched. He blinked several times and belatedly realized he was lying inside of a crater. Groaning again, he rolled over onto his stomach, painfully pushed him back to his feet, and climbed out of the crater.

“Ulick! Hey! Ulick! Where’d you… oh.”

Rasenclaue trailed off when he finally stood up and saw what was happening to Vahn. Giants. Giants were everywhere. To his left, a group of giants were kicking several Sekbeists so hard their bodies soared through the wall of a building. The entire building then collapsed from the force. On his right were several giants hurtling lightning into another group of his brethren, burning them to a crisp. Sekbeists were dying in droves everywhere he looked.

“What the… what is going on?!”

Rasenclaue forgot all about Ulick in the face of this catastrophe. Yet while he might not have been powerful enough to travel with the Zehn Todesharr to the front lines, he was still a Sekbeist Warlord. Among the slave caste, he was the most powerful type, and he had seen his fair share of combat.

Darkness gathered within his hand, a swirling mass of black energy that coalesced together and took the shape of a jagged spear that had four points. He had always preferred spears over swords. They gave him extra reach and could better impale his enemies. One of his favorite actions was stabbing an enemy and lifting them high into the air so he could watch them squirm as they died.

Once his weapon had formed, Rasenclaue charged toward the nearest giant with long, loping strides. He reached his foe quickly and stabbed his spear into the giant’s heel. The loud cry of pain was like music to his ears. The giant tried to kick him with a lightning covered foot, but Rasenclaue moved out of the way and thrust his spear forward again. This time his weapon was unable to penetrate the giant’s body because it had put up a barrier made of lightning.

His foe held up his hands and gathered lightning above his palm. Energy crackled to life and formed a sphere that soon became about the size of Rasenclaue himself. The giant swung his arms down and sent the sphere shooting forward, toward Rasenclaue, who grimaced as he set himself in a wide stance, tucked his spear into his torso, then thrust it forward.

“HAAAAAA!”

The lightning attack was powerful. Rasenclaue put everything he had into breaking this attack. Sweat poured from his forehead, veins bulged on his arms, and his feet slid backward along the ground, but he unleashed a powerful roar and was rewarded when the lightning attack exploded. He took several deep breaths. Exhaustion seeped into his bone, but a grin appeared on his face. Ha! It looked like he had been able to—

The last thoughts Rasenclaue had seconds before he died from being smashed into the ground by a bolt of lightning was of his victory in blocking the giant’s attack.

***

Alexis nearly stumbled as she, Ashten, and the one hundred Spiritualists who were with them suddenly appeared in the middle of Central Plaza. She gasped and panted as she tried to regain her bearings. It was hard. The entire world was spinning. She felt like she was going to be sick.

“That was… not pleasant,” Ashten muttered.

“Not pleasant at all,” Alexis groaned in agreement. “But we don’t have time to stick around here. Everyone who is with me! Let’s move!”

The other Spiritualists were also experiencing a strong sense of vertigo, but they got over it quickly and split off into two groups, one following Alexis and the other Ashten. Their objectives were completely different. Like the Lightning Giants, Ashten and his group were just a distraction. That was why his group was bigger. Her group was composed solely of a few elite members of the Battling Valkyries who had been with her during the sacking of Vahn.

A lot of damage had already been dealt to the city. Alexis looked up to see sixteen Lightning Giants in her line of art, rampaging through Vahn as they slaughtered Sekbeists like it was going out of style. One of them suddenly roared and stumbled back. A large spear of darkness protruded from her eye, but she yanked out the spear and hurled a lightning bolt at the ground. Alexis could not see where it struck. She assumed, however, that the attack had been aimed at the Sekbeist who got that lucky throw in.

Alexis was not as knowledgable about Vahn as Rienhard was, but she had been to this city several times on official business, and she had lived there with everyone else after Midgard was destroyed. She led her group of ten Spiritualists through alleys and side streets instead of main roads. That would have been faster, but her goal was to remain unseen so none of the Sekbeist would know her objective was freeing the enslaved citizens.

“I sense several Sekbeist up ahead,” Janet said suddenly.

“Let’s take them out quick,” Alexis ordered.

Because she was in a hurry, Alexis entered the Fourth State of Spiritualism and turned into a streak of lightning. She shot from the alley faster than the human eye could track, slammed into one of the Sekbeist that had been standing on the other side, and started a chain reaction as lightning jumped from one Sekbeist to another. All of her enemies were nothing but smoking corpses by the time she transformed back into a flesh and blood human.

Alexis turned to Janet. “Are there anymore nearby?”

Janet had reached the Fourth State of Spiritualism for the wind element and could use it like a sonar map. Alexis didn’t how it worked, but she could basically see objects and people within a several kilometer radius.

While her hair was not the same fiery red as Fay’s, the woman had a deep red hair and doe-like eyes. She was currently decked in Battling Valkyrie armor, though it was covered in dings, scratches, and dents. They had been doing their best to pound out all the dents, but they had been battling so much that they were unable to keep up with armor maintenance.

“There aren’t any nearby, but there are several Sekbeists over that way.” Janet pointed toward the southwest. “They are also heading this way. However, they won’t arrive for another few minutes.”

“I don’t want to be here when they arrive, so let’s move,” Alexis ordered.

“Yes, Lady Alexis!” her ten Spiritualists said.

They quickly left the road for another alley, cut through several more side streets, and eventually arrived at the Paladin Sect’s headquarters. It was an imposing building of about five-stories. Made from brick, it featured a number of balconies and archways, and the roof was also flat. Alexis couldn’t judge how large it was, but it was wide enough that it took an entire street to itself.

“So this is the Paladin Sect’s HQ,” Janet said in a whisper. “I’ve never been here before.”

“I’ve been here a few times to speak with Rienhard, but I never stayed long,” Alexis said, her eyes narrowed. “It looks like this place is being guarded.”

There were two Elites standing outside the door and several on the balconies. The fact that they remained where they were despite the chaos happening around them was proof that there was something important here. According to Lin, there were non-Sekbeists in this building. That was why they had determined the people they enslaved must be inside. She hoped Lin was right.

“I’ll take out the two guards on the bottom,” Alexis said. “You ten will each take a guard on the balconies. You’ll have to kill them in one shot, or they might alert the other Sekbeists inside to our presence.”

“Understood,” Janet said.

Karen nodded. “We won’t let you down.”

“I know you won’t,” Alexis said.

Once everyone had selected their targets, Alexis counted down to three before throwing out her hand and launching two bolts of lightning. Both slammed into the Sekbeists guarding the door and sent them hurtling into the wall. She winced and hoped that hadn’t alerted the others inside to what was happening outside. When she released her attack, the other ten women also released their own techniques. Fire, ice, and wind raced forward. Some of the Sekbeist were shredded by wind blades, others were burnt to a crisp, and one was skewered through the chest with a spear of ice.

Unfortunately, one of the Sekbeist had quicker reflexes than the others. He dodged the first attack, and while a second ice spear grazed him, he still managed to make his way inside.

“Damn it!” Alexis swore. “Okay. New plan. We’re going in hot. Kill anything with green skin. Let’s go!”

Alexis raced toward the door, leapt forward, and slammed her foot into it. The pair of sturdy double doors, which were made from a type of alloy, flew off their hinges and hurtled into the lobby beyond. Several broken tables lay scattered around the room and the counters where people gave and accepted quests had been destroyed. There were also several dozen Sekbeist waiting for them.

“Kill the intruders!” one of them shouted.

That one lost his head when Alexis created a giant dragon head out of lightning and made it chomp down. It bit his head clean off and fried his insides. However, while she had killed the one, there were still at least thirty more Sekbeists in the room, and they all raced forward to attack.

Alexis soon lost herself to the flow of battle.

Two Sekbeists came in, swinging the swords in their hands, but she stepped forward and threw a lightning coated fist at them. The first one tried to block her attack with his sword. Metal snapped like a twig as her fist plowed through his weapon and then slammed into his face, sending him hurtling like a cannonball into the wall. The other Sekbeist continued through with his swing. He swung at her outstretched arm as though hoping to take it off, but the lightning coating her acted like armor. The sword snapped. Then Alexis snapped his neck by kicking him so hard that his head twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.

Her companions were also fighting admirably against the Sekbeist. Karen and Janet were standing back to back as they used a combination of fire and wind. One Sekbeist came too close and received a tornado composed of fiery wind blades to the face for his troubles. He screamed as his face was cut into, but the screams tapered off when one of the wind blades sliced into his neck. The attack cauterized the wound. However, it was still fatal and he died soon after.

Alexis grimaced, extended her left leg, and slammed it into something that appeared behind her. A pained grunt echoed out from whoever she had kicked. Turning, she found a Sekbeist Elite stumbling backward, though he didn’t look too hurt.

She decided to change that.

Raising her hand into the air, Alexis created a gigantic claw out of pale blue lightning, then swung it down. The claw crackled as it rent the air. It slammed into the Sekbeist Elite before he could attempt to dodge, crushed him into the ground, and turned him into a smoking corpse at the same time.

A scream tore through the air. Alexis whirled around to find, to her horror, one of her girls impaled upon a massive broadsword with jagged edges. The Sekbeist Elite standing behind the woman lifted her into the air and grinned as he watched her squirm.

Alexis was not going to put up with that.

She turned into a bolt of lightning and crashed into the Sekbeist, shattering his weapon, then his jaw, and then turning his ribcage into a mess with a single punch. Alexis didn’t even bother to watch him fall backward as she knelt next to the woman. She was relatively young at maybe twenty years old. Her eyes were wide and frightened as she stared at the remains of the sword sticking from her chest.

“L-Lady… Alexis… it hurts… it hurts so much…”

“I know it does, but you’re going to be okay. Just hold on,” Alexis said as she summoned several pills from her storage ring.

There were still Sekbeist around. In fact, there might have been more Sekbeist now than their had been before. A large number of them were streaming in through entrances and hallways, jumping down from the second floor lobby, and a few even appeared out of the shadows.

Karen, Janet, and the others closed around Alexis and formed a protective ring while she got to work. The large group of enemies came forward. One of them swung his massive broadsword at Janet, but she punched him in the chest and sent him flying. The only unfortunate thing was her attack didn’t kill him. She hadn’t put enough Spiritual Power into her attack to override the runes on his armor, and so he got up and rushed toward her again.

Alexis ignored all that as she summoned several pills from her storage rings.

“Take this first,” Alexis said.

She pressed a red pill into the girl’s mouth and forced her to swallow it. The girl gagged, but the pill began working almost immediately after she consumed it. Blood Clotting Pill. It was a pill that helped stopped the bleeding, and while it didn’t work as well on large wounds as it did smaller ones, it would be helpful here.

The girl moaned in pain as Alexis grabbed the sword fragment and pulled it from her chest, blood spurting from the wound like a fountain. After tossing the sword away, she stuffed another pill into the girl’s mouth, but this one was a Plasma Pill, which would help the girl replenish all the blood she lost. Two more pills quickly followed. One was called the Skin Knitting Pill and the other was called Spiritual Healing Pill. Both pills would help wounds heal more quickly by promoting the body’s natural healing and reinforcing the process with Spiritual Power.

This girl was quite fortunate. While the wound went all the way through her back and chest, it had just barely missed her heart. Alexis didn’t think these pills could have healed a destroyed heart.

“Karia! I want you to carry Lilly! We need to keep moving!” Alexis said once she deemed Lilly out of danger.

“Yes, Lady Alexis!”

Karia was a muscular woman with dark skin and a scar over her right eye. She had bright yellow eyes, curly black hair, cat ears, and a split cat tail jutting from her tailbone. This woman carried no weapons. Her nails, however, were several times longer and sharper than the average person’s. Those same nails retracted as she stopped feeding them Spiritual Power and lifted Lilly in her arms.

“Everyone! Let’s break through their formation and find a more defensible location!” Alexis ordered.

The woman under her command surged forward, fire, lightning, wind, and water flashing through the air to strike the charging Sekbeist. Several enemies went down. One had half his head blown off when a sphere made of condensed water struck him. Another was killed when a wind blade bisected him, sending both halves of his body flying in separate direction. There was another who got set on fire and died as his fat combusted.

Alexis was leading the charge. She hacked her way through several Sekbeists in front of her, then burst into the hallway, where even more enemies were waiting.

The Paladin Sect’s main headquarters was a massive place, with hundreds of rooms, training centers, and armories. Alexis led her team through each room one by one while fighting against the Sekbeist. They needed to find two things right now: The captives and a defensible location they could use to more easily eliminate the enemy. She would prefer a choke point to reduce the enemies greatest advantage.

They searched through several rooms and two floors, but they had yet to find any sign of the captives Lin spoke of.

A Sekbeist Shaman suddenly appeared from within Janet’s shadow. Alexis shouted out a warning, but it came to late, and Janet screamed in pain and surprise when the Shaman swung a blade of darkness that cut right through her right eye. The cut was clean. Fortunately. Even so, it was clear to Alexis from the way blood and puss ran down her face that the eye was destroyed.

“Damn you!” Karen screamed as she crushed the blew the Sekbeist’s head clean off his shoulders with a fiery punch. “Janet! Are you okay?!”

“Of course I’m not okay!” Janet snapped as she covered her eye, blood seeping between her fingers. “But I’ll live. Let’s not dawdle here. We need to keep moving.”

“Take this,” Alexis said as she placed a pill in Janet’s free hand.

The woman said nothing as she popped the pill into her mouth, grimacing at the taste.

They kept moving, kept fighting, and kept wondering why there weren’t any captives here. Alexis didn’t think Lin had been lying. For all her haughtiness, that woman couldn’t lie to save her life, but that still didn’t help her. She needed to find those people now before her own team suffered even more damage.

“Let’s go through this door!” Alexis decided as she entered through a door that led into an office. She didn’t know whose office it was, but it was decorated with paintings of warriors and had several bookshelves. “Set Lilly down over there. Janet, you should also get some rest. Karen and Illya, watch the door.”

“Yes, Lady Alexis!”

She knew it was a bad idea to rest, but her people were exhausted and they weren’t having any luck finding those people. Crossing her arms, Alexis leaned against one a wall, and tried to think of where the Sekbeists would keep an enslaved people. Could they have been moved? While she grimaced at the possibility, the wall against her back creaked. She jumped away and spun around.

“Lady Alexis?” Karia looked up from where she was wrapping a bandage around Janet’s now destroyed eye.

“There’s something odd about this wall,” Alexis mumbled as she pressed her hand against it and pushed. The wall creaked again. She narrowed her eyes and put some strength into her action, then stepped back as the wall swung inward. “A hidden passage?” She fought over what to do for a moment, but then nodded and turned to her team. “Karia, carry Lilly again. Everyone, let’s see where this passage leads.”

No one contested her decision, and they were soon traveling down a staircase that seemed to lead deep underground. The staircase was fortunately well-lit with monster core lamps. At the same time, Alexis had no idea the Paladin Sect had secret passages like this—not that it was too unusual. Most sects built passages into their headquarters in the unlikely event they found themselves under attack.

“Where do you suppose this place leads?” asked Karen.

“No idea,” Alexis said. “It could be a secret passage that leads out of the city, but it could also lead to a bunker like our Battling Valkyries’ main headquarters. Let’s keep going. Be wary of Sekbeist Shamans. They like to spring from your shadow.”

They continued to move carefully, wary of attack, but not a single Sekbeist came to attack them. This only made Alexis warier. She couldn’t imagine the Sekbeists didn’t know where they were.

All those thoughts fled her when they entered a large room filled with corpses and a strange device she had never seen before.

“What… what is this?” she asked in horror, but sadly, no one had an answer for her.

***

Kari took a deep breath as she and Lin appeared right in front of the temple that housed the Warp Gate. She didn’t let herself become disoriented as the two dozen Sekbeist Elites guarding the temple entrance gawked at her. Launching herself into a sprint, she created a ransuer made of light, swung it, and removed the head from one of her enemies, then spun around and impaled another before jerking her weapon free.

Lin had already merged into the ground. Several fluid spikes shot from the ground and impaled six of the two dozen Sekbeist. Not all of them died right away, but more spikes appeared, until all her enemies looked like pincushions.

Kari leapt into the air as several Sekbeists tried to attack her, then tossed her light ransuer. It struck the ground and exploded, taking out three more Sekbeists. That meant there were only fourteen left.

Appearing behind one of the Sekbeist by making liberal use of the Flash Step, Kari slammed an open palm into her enemy’s back, breaking it and sending the creature flying. She then recreated her ransuer and swung it at an incoming Sekbeist Elite. Her own weapon sliced through the broadsword her enemy was wielding. Her return swing gouged a furrow from the Sekbeist’s right shoulder to left hip.

Kari and Lin made quick work of the remaining Sekbeists, then wandered into the temple itself.

The temple looked mostly like Kari remembered from her past life. The large space they had entered looked like a place of worship, with statues of short figures with thick beards that stood on either side of the hall. Of course, it was hard to tell how short these figures were because the statues were still several times larger than Kari herself. She knew, however, that these were statues of the Dwoerg. Specifically, they were statues of the Great Overlord of the Second Realm.

“Where is this Warp Gate?” asked Lin.

“It’s down below,” Kari said. “I’ve been here before, so just follow me.”

There was an even bigger statue at the end of the hall, of a stout Dweorg sitting on a thrown and held a massive and intricate axe in his hand. It was nearly two times larger than the other statues. She looked at the axe, which was the key that the Dweorg could use to activate the Warp Gates. Right now that key was in the hands of their enemies. Kari resolved herself to rescue Hriedmar and take that key back before the Sekbeists could use it to further their goals.

Behind the statue was the passage that Kari remembered from her past life. They took it and entered a hallway that led to a stairwell, then traveled down the stairs.

There were Sekbeists guarding the stairs.

“Don’t let them get any further!” an Elite shouted—only to die when Kari stabbed him through the face. She kicked him off her weapon and watched his tumble into his comrades, who she quickly picked off with precise bursts of lightning.

While Kari dealt with the enemies in front, Lin protected her from behind. Several Sekbeist Shamans had tried to sneak up on them by Shadow Walking through their shadows. Lin had sensed them before they could get far and crushed the life out of them with her own impressive shadow manipulation.

Finally, they reached the end.

The room Kari and Lin stood in now was large, though not the same size as the entrance hall. In the center of this hall was an elevated platform with a floating mass of darkness swirling around above it. That was the Warp Gate. Kari remembered how this Warp Gate had destabilized and taken her, Eryk, Erica, and Tungsten to Niðavellir.

She really hoped that wouldn’t happen this time.

There was no Warlord in this room, but several dozen Sekbeists suddenly emerged from the Warp Gate as they stood there. Among them were a number of Warlords.

“How did you get in here?! Nevermind! It seems we have intruders! I, the Warlord Sachteck, will kill you both!”

The Warlord who had spoken tried to rush forward, but Kari killed him by firing a beam of light from her fingers. It pierced his chest and destroyed his heart. While this gave some of the other Sekbeist pause, it was not enough to stop them, and they soon charged at her and Lin.

“I’m going to close the Warp Gate,” Kari said. “Protect me, Lin!”

“Don’t worry, Big Sister! This princess won’t let anyone touch you!” Lin assured her.

The two raced toward the Warp Gate together. They needed to close this Warp Gate as soon as possible.