Timewalk

Coda

A/N: 4 of 4

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Ali stood in silence as the guild’s finest raiders assembled within the Grand Library Arcana, their shuffling amplified by the clanking of their armor as they peered curiously – and somewhat confused – through the open door into the plaza of the mostly restored Dal’mohra beyond.

“So, Aliandra,” Vivian said, keeping her expression well under control. “What was important enough to muster the full raid team?”

Ali met her gaze for ...

Afterword

A/N: 3 of 4

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A huge thank-you to all of you for your support – it has been a delight and an honor to write for you. A special thanks to everyone who left helpful comments, thoughts, corrections, and all the theory discussions in comments and on discord, or even just shared a quick ‘thanks for the chapter’ – I never imagined how much I would come to value your input, whether it be encouragement, laughing at a funny, or scratching my head and wondering how the ...

Chapter 585: Epilogue (Part 2)

A/N: 2 of 4

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Mato

Mato roared, taunting the Penumbra Wyrm away from the others and ripping through its shadowy scales with his void claws. It did not bleed like normal monsters, but the black ichor that sprayed out counted, at least according to his Bleed Proliferation enchantment. The bleeds spread to the other Wyrms, making them hiss with anger, and in moments, they all turned on him with their ripping fangs formed from shadows and their dark breath attacks...

Chapter 584: Epilogue (Part 1)

A/N: 1 of 4

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Calen

From his vantage point high up on a rocky ridge, Calen surveyed the steaming jungle nestled in the valley below. Three days of slogging through muddy swamps and bubbling hot springs spewing sulfurous gas into the untamed verdant growth had left him drenched and eager to be done with his search, if for no other reason than he badly needed a bath.

Sure, he could have popped back home with a quick teleport and taken care of it, but he wou...

Chapter 583: Vigil

A/N: 3 of 3

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Vivian Ross

Vivian stepped up to the crenel and stared out over the blasted plains lying below and to the south of Myrin’s Keep’s severely battered battlements. The endless sea of the dead was finally beginning to visibly thin out, the sun blazing brightly down on their dark bobbing heads as if supremely indifferent to the struggles of those below.

Beautiful day. Almost painfully beautiful. Yet it was a welcome break from the L...

Chapter 582: The Lich’s Phylactery

A/N: 2 of 3

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When the time comes, no matter what you feel, you must release the arrow.

- Lyeneru Silverleaf

Aliandra

To Ali’s intense shock and surprise, she woke up. This was not the first time she had been surprised to be alive, but hopefully it would be the last. She lay curled up, with someone’s arms gently cradling her body. Her good hand was being held, and a familiar power pulsed through her like a heartbeat of soul mag...

Chapter 581: To Kill Death

A/N: 1 of 3

Sorry for the cliff yesterday >.>

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Malika

Malika groaned, spitting the moss and dirt from her mouth. Slowly, she raised her head. She found her throat was dry and raw from screaming, and somehow it wouldn’t heal or resolve even with her healing magic still trickling through her body.

Ugh, I feel like I crawled out of my own crypt and fell on my head. Her arms trembled as she pushed herself up with the last remnants of her...

Chapter 580: Hidden in Plain Sight

A/N: 2 of 2

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Mato

Mato roared at the Elder Red Dragon taunting him from behind the transparent black shield and stamped his paws in frustration. He swiped his claws across it, but they screeched ineffectually along the surface, skittering and scraping as they had every time so far. He growled. This was the first thing he had ever encountered that he could not tear to shreds with his void claws. At best, he’d managed to leave infinitesimally fine lines scor...

Chapter 579: The Defiance of the Meek

A/N: 1 of 2

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Gaze upon her, all ye wicked, and despair, for you have driven her to wrath.

- Book of Future Echoes, Part 8, Section 17 by Tol’zerath, The Seer of Divergent Paths (New Elorthian Edition).

Lirasia

Lirasia smiled softly to herself as she slipped out of the heartwood of the World Tree and into the forest, shedding her trance like shedding autumn leaves.

Kerrin had most certainly advanced from the infusion of mana...

Chapter 578: The Corrupted Coil

A/N: 2 of 2

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Aliandra

The immense noise of the gong reverberated through Ali’s frozen body as energy surged up from within Malika. Her eyes would have shot wide if they could. What is that?

[Realm] Malika Yu [Savior of Aman Rak] has used The Ninefold Way: Gaze of the Shattered Soul.

What? Malika – just, what? A burst of jumbled thoughts crashed through Ali’s mind at the sound, and some sense of tension...

Chapter 577: Gaze of the Shattered Soul

A/N: 1 of 2

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Malika

Malika’s body vibrated with thrumming power as she strained against the will of the Blind Lich, but it was useless. She had broken through to the third tier, and since then she’d been fighting against the Lich and his implacable minions for long enough that Second Wind’s Abiding Perseverance was blazing within her heart, driving her to heights of power the likes of which she’d never imagined, and yet, she was bound, held helpless by...

Chapter 576: Dragonsworn (Part 3)

A/N: 3 of 3

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Aliandra

Ali’s awareness wobbled precariously, returning in a vibrating swirl of black and gray that slowly faded as the glow of her protective barrier and the dimly lit forest returned to view. She took a tentative breath.

I just died. Again. While her body seemed whole, her awareness must have dimmed, but this time, she hadn’t passed out for more than a moment. Ali took stock of her predicament. Nevyn Eld hovered entirely uns...

Chapter 575: Dragonsworn (Part 2)

A/N: 2 of 3

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Mato

Mato let his roar thunder forth, not just to keep Bragni Doomhammer’s attention – he had that well-secured – but to refresh the strength debuff. The heavy hammer shimmered with power and blurred, becoming three hammers attached to three mithril-clad, undead arms. The triple strike landed with the force of successive descending meteors. He blocked the first with a lowered shoulder check, the second he caught with a hastily summoned void shi...

Chapter 574: Dragonsworn (Part 1)

A/N: A three-parter today. 1 of 3

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Naia

Naia wobbled happily as she slowly made her way through the Forest. She hadn’t felt Ali-friend’s word vibrations in far too long, and she had so many new things to share. Ali will love the Shadow Slime, she decided. Or maybe the Wobbling Wormhole I got from those two unsplit brothers.

Ali’s brothers.

She bobbed a bit as she went, her membrane sampling the ground and the soothing...

Chapter 573: Showdown at Lira’s Grave

A/N: DoK is officially 2 years old today!

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Nothing is absolute. Find the counter strike.

- Kamari Ren, Ahn Khen Elder, legendary master and inheritor of the Ninefold Way: Fists of Coherent Integrity.

Aliandra

Ali grimaced at the grievous damage the Blind Lich’s mere presence was wreaking upon the beautiful grove of Lirasian Oaks she had once used to sustain Lira’s life. Huge trees blackened with decay as their leaves wilted an...

Chapter 572: Malika’s Vision

A/N: 2 of 2

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Malika

“Malika, he’s coming,” Ali said. Her brow was furrowed with concentration as she drew cascading fountains of runic magic from her glowing Grimoire, and Malika could tell it was not just the challenges she was dealing with here in the dungeon. Ali was fighting a battle on multiple fronts, the strain was showing.

“I’ll buy you some time to finish,” Malika said, blasting a pulse of Soul Strike through the stray Banshee’s he...

Chapter 571: The Counsel of the World Tree

A/N: 1 of 2

Calen

Calen teleported back into the fray as soon as his Lightning Amplification wore off, not relishing the resumption of the painful jolts and prickles from the arcing black lightning aura that crackled about the flying wraith of Thaldorien Stormshaper.

He drew and fired; a full volley of arrows from all his mirror images zipping across the throne room to detonate brightly among the continually spawning Dark Souls drawn to Thaldorien’s crackling power throu...

Chapter 570: Aegis and Authority

A/N: 2 of 2

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Aliandra

Without Malika, Ali would have died so many times.

The pretty, gurgling stream that normally flowed through this peaceful clearing just inside the cavern Lira had once inhabited was broken and churned up by the armored boots of the Death Knights and ran dark with ichor that blighted the plants downstream. That was, the parts of the stream not frozen entirely solid by the auras of ice.

The Divine Archon champion was gone, but ...

Chapter 569: The Three Kings

A/N: 1 of 2

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Mato

“Fourth time is the charm,” Mato said, grinning at Havok and Sabri before turning toward the throne and the three enormously powerful undead guarding it. This dungeon, the Crypt of Kings, had provided some of the best fights he’d ever experienced. First, there had been Haverron, the Devastation Knight general. Then Kryostria, the Frozen Scourge, a third-tier Dracolich. And now this – the three undead kings of ancient Dal’mohra, raise...

Chapter 568: Making a Stand

A/N: I couldn't figure out a clean way to split this chapter up into manageable chunks, so you get an extra long chapter instead of 2-3 parts. Sorry to those of you who are reading on tiny devices and have to scroll for ages.

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Calen

Calen crouched down beside the glittering rift and fished pieces of shattered ceramic out of the slag and rubble that had once been ice-covered granite.

“What do you plan to do with that?” Lyeneru asked.

“Let’s ha...

Chapter 567: God Maker

Aliandra

A clinking tide of shining, mithril-clad Knights spilled through the still-widening portal into the Forest Cavern, spreading out while their curses and magic crackled through the air and coated the trees with thick layers of ice. Massive abominations clawed their way through, mountains of stitched, zombified flesh forcing their way into the Grove. Howls and wails filled the air as the undead minions of the Blind Lich unerringly turned toward the remaining demons, brandishing ...

Chapter 566.5: Malika – Status Sheet

A/N: 2 of 2 (chapter and status sheet)

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Name: Malika Yu
Race: Human
Titles: Street Rat, Rift Warden, [Savior of Aman Rak], God Maker

Active Buffs: Infinite Perception, Perfect Body, Soul Armor, Enlightened Evasion, Well-fed, Warpaint

Class: Soul Seer of the Nine Paths – level 250

- Martial Artist – level 108 (+4)
Requires: Unarmed.
You are proficient with unarmed and acrobatic martial arts fighting styles. ...

Chapter 566: Soul Seer of the Nine Paths

A/N: 1 of 2 (chapter and status sheet)

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Malika

She’s ok. Thank goodness she’s ok. Malika’s hand found Ali’s shoulder, supporting her grim-faced friend more from the security of physical closeness than any need for healing. Malika met the Fae’s amber eyes for a moment of shared understanding, and she nodded.

The mental haste buff Ali had cast on her had faded before she’d finished navigating her convoluted evolution paths, and she had been f...

Chapter 565: The Fangs of the Frost Wyrm

Aliandra

A sudden hush descended upon the Grove as all eyes turned to the dark, robed figure silhouetted by the slow pulsation of the crawling violet light leaking from the portal. Even the titanic struggle between Dekarradon and the growing army of Death Knights and Abominations faded into muted background noise and flickering backlight that kept his features shrouded in darkness.

“Ali?” Malika called out from her spot behind a protective barrier over by the shrine, but she...

Chapter 564: The Fearsome Roar of the Frozen Scourge

A/N: 3 of 3

Edit: sorry I missed a chapter - post is up now.

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Calen

Calen’s heart trembled, and his blood ran cold as everything around him fell apart. One moment, they were all in perfect formation, fully buffed and advancing, and then, in the blink of an eye, half the raid was frozen and dying.

Kryostria roared.

It was a noise so vast that his bones rattled inside his skin. The cavern shook, and giant slabs of ice sheared off the roof ove...

Chapter 563: The Lair of the Dracolich

A/N: 2 of 3

Edit: sorry I missed a chapter - post is up now.

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Mato

The cavern was deathly cold, and despite his thick hide and fur, Mato shivered. Dark too, but his eyes did not struggle to see. At the far end of the cavern, across a cracked and icy landscape, the rift glittered against the black ice of the walls.

The Lair of the Dracolich. The first true challenge of the Blind Lich’s Crypt of Kings. Ever since he had fled this chamber wi...

Chapter 562: The Lich’s Army

A/N: sorry - I missed posting this one.

1 of 3

There are 3 chapters today - and I posted this one out of order. I'll fix the order in a bit.

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Malika

Malika touched down gently on the battlements above the South Gate, where Commander Gerald Brand himself was studying the seething masses of undead crashing against the town’s defenses with mindless, tireless regularity.

Arrows and spells whistled out over the throng, shredding banshees, ghosts, ...

Chapter 561: Rushing the Crypt

Mato

Mato shook his head and stomped his front paws to loosen up the muscles and shed the last jittering tremors of the last fifteen minutes of lightning assault upon his body. According to the scouts, the room was clear, besides the Well and its guardian, but even if they hadn’t said anything, the fact of Calen’s Motes of Light patrolling the entire amphitheater would have told him that nothing invisible remained.

“We’re ready, Mato,” Calen said, all nine images of hi...

Chapter 560: Bloodwielder of Aman Rak

Aliandra

A sea of writhing darkness churned below the glittering gold of Myrin’s Keep’s dungeon-reinforced battlements. Without the strength of barrier magic reinforcing the enchanted granite, the walls would have fallen under the onslaught hours ago – Myrin’s Keep was no Southport with its war shields and dwarven enchanted walls, and yet, her adopted hometown had not yet fallen to the Blind Lich’s cold, implacable fury. Ali pressed her lips together firmly. Would not fall.<...

Chapter 559: Divine Archon Versus Haverron

Aliandra – Divine Archon

Ali stood out at the front of the raid group beside Mato, and for once, she could level a look to meet his eyes with her feet still on the ground. The Divine Archon she was inhabiting was tall; without his evolution that had packed more muscle, heavy hide, and wiry, ruddy fur, she would have been gazing downward to study the bear.

Mato inclined his massive head and chuffed softly – softly for the immense bear. It came out as a half growl, heavily imb...