Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 700: Brilliant Remover of Darkness

Raven’s gaze followed the long cut that had left its indelible mark in the sky. Any attempts to move through it produced no results, and any attacks directed at it phased through like it wasn’t there. It was impermeable, untouchable… but not beyond understanding. As he’d predicted, travelling through it required a method of movement no one alive could replicate. To chase Gerechtigkeit and end the cycle permanently would require Sophia to remake someone in a manner that would make them compatible with this portal. That was the only foreseeable route.

“Elenore,” he said, speaking in his mind through the link established. “I’m ready to prepare Sophia. What’s the situation?”

“The Trial by Fire is abating in the more distant continents, and the fighting is resuming. Argrave’s killed the Hopeful. Anneliese is fine. Blackgard is still quiet, safe. You can enter through the southern valley. There’s a lot of Shadowlanders, but they’re all on our side. I can safely say we’ve won that fight.”

“I’ll be there immediately.” Raven cast a glance at the sky, then began descending with [Absolute Movement].

Moments later, he felt great tremors cutting the air and opened the eyes on the side of his head. Miles away, a gilded white saber cut the air with the speed of a meteor. Instinct screamed at him with enough ferocity he simply stopped thinking. Raven whipped his body around and swung his obsidian staff, while hands spawned from all over his body and conjured wards. The blade pierced his S-rank shields like they were porcelain plates, and when it met his highly-compressed obsidian staff, shattered it. The white saber punched a hole in his chest and sent him spiraling downward far faster than he’d intended.

Before Raven had even hit the ground, his formless body compressed to heal the hole in his chest. It abruptly split back open as the sword reversed course, abating much of his momentum and leaving him suspended in the air. What looked like an automaton modelled after a white horse and a long-maned rider came into his view. It had four arms, the second pair just below the first. The rider of the automaton caught the sword with its right arm, galloping through the skies like it was the natural course of things.

Raven corrected himself by recasting [Absolute Movement], diverting all of his attention toward this new arrival. Its approach was as swift as the blade it’d thrown at him, and he felt that death might be the inevitable outcome when they clashed. He readied a spell, yet before its matrix could even close the rider was already upon him.

It sword arm swung twice, halving Raven’s body with each. He completed the spell, fortunately—a shamanic spell, meant simply to teleport him the hell away from this monstrosity. The spirits whisked him away… until he was abruptly torn from the spell by the automaton’s grasping hand. It had intercepted his shamanic magic, and he peered right into its face as it clutched him with vice-like white fingers. Its face was that of a monkey with eyelids stretched open by clamps, and a terrible frown split its face. In those eyes, he saw the cold fury of Gerechtigkeit. It raised its sword up, preparing to end him.

A red blur slammed into the both of them, freeing Raven of its grasp. He kept his eyes trained on the thing to see it swat aside one of the lunar dragons with one arm. Its second pair of hands wiped the saber it held, imbuing it with white cleansing fire. It looked liable to utterly destroy that lunar dragon, but before it could, another joined—Lorena. She hammered her hammer-like tail against Gerechtigkeit’s automaton in a tremendous burst of energy while the other dragon sped off into the distance.

“Lorena will hold the Zanti,” Elenore’s voice instructed him. “Fall back to the Shadowlanders. They’ll buy more time. He’s hunting you—don’t forget that.”

Raven had only a few moments to heed that instruction before the thing Elenore had called the Zanti caught Lorena’s tail, dragged her down as effortlessly as a towel, and swung its sword straight through her gigantic dragon body. When Raven was again claimed by the spirits, he heard a roar of pain and witnessed the leader of the lunar dragons split in half, showering blood and gore.

Raven anticipated the coming attack every second the spirits whisked his form away. One second, two, three—then, a sharp pain, and a tremor of force that echoed through his whole body. The Zanti had struck him instead of grabbing this time, and when Raven slammed and skidded against the ground, he understood why.

While Raven fixed his thoroughly-battered body, the Shadowlanders worked in total unity to fight the Zanti. With the leadership of the white-haired woman who’d inherited the genius of their greatest historical figures, their coordination proved an incredibly devastating force. Grasping tendrils restrained while ebon projectiles assaulted this terrifying cleansing force, and flying figures controlled the sky with glancing blows.

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In response, the Zanti held its upper arms to the sky. Whirling vortexes of fire coalesced in a single ball of blinding white fire that seemed a peer to the golden sun in the sky. The lower arms clenched the saber by its heart, as if in prayer. Then, it thrust the blade up, piercing that white fire. The sword absorbed that mass of flame in an instant.

When the Zanti thrust the sword down, Raven had sufficiently recovered to use his spirits. He transferred himself toward the southern valley of Blackgard, and for the first time proceeded unimpeded. It was only upon reaching the active array beneath the mountains of Blackgard that he was blocked. He stood at the mouth of the valley, peering ahead into the utter destruction the Hopeful had left in his wake. He ran, manifesting eyes on the back of his head.

Where he’d been moments before, a tornado of that cleansing white fire had risen up. It ate through the unified ranks of the Shadowlanders like nothing else had before. Even amidst the chaotic nightmare of that tornado of fire, he could see the Zanti break away, pursuing him single-mindedly. It reached the entrance to the valley the same way he had, and though the arrays impeded its speed, it was still faster than him by many magnitudes.

“Argrave wants you to trust him, and keep running forward no matter what you see,” Elenore said into his mind.

Of everything, it was only those words that brought some hope to Raven’s mind. He redoubled his sprinting efforts, sprouting legs until he was a match for a centipede in his mad dash. He passed through battered, broken checkpoints, and ahead, began to feel an incredibly unsettling power. The path ahead started to be obscured by a familiar crimson mist.

Raven ran and ran, pounding his thousand makeshift feet against the uneven stone. He watched as the Zanti spun its saber through its fingers, sending white embers dancing through the air in increasing frequency and intensity. Its fire burnt away what little debris remained of the checkpoints, purifying everything it touched until nothing remained.

Before long, everything ahead was a rich red while everything behind was a blinding white. Raven trusted in Argrave despite the ominous signs, diving headfirst into the whirlwind of power that seemed as deadly as the one behind him. When the Zanti came close enough to slice at his haunches, he still persisted, driven by faith.

Then there was a shift in the air, like something in the world had broken and snapped. Ahead, a power of the same magnitude Argrave had initially struck Gerechtigkeit with exploded forth. A bolt of energy wide enough to fill the valley burnt the air and shattered the earth, far surpassing the speed of that dread automaton. Even despite it all, Raven kept running headfirst into doom, keeping as low as he could.

Death came… and passed Raven by.

As he’d been instructed, he never stopped running. The bolt missed him by such a thin margin that the tremors as it passed by still cut him in half a thousand places. The Zanti, though… it halted, turned, and attempted to exit the valley. Aided by the expelling force of Blackgard’s arrays, it rode away, then upward toward the sky. Though that ultra-powerful bolt of blood followed, it seemed likely to escape.

Until, that is, a single F-rank ward intercepted it.

Anneliese, appearing almost from nowhere with the aid of spirits, met the terrifying automaton and Argrave’s blood magic head-on. She cast a ward, ensnaring the foul thing. And then, a great explosion of blood magic and white fire consumed the sky. Raven saw no more after that. He passed by Argrave, who seemed to be gathering himself.

“Good luck,” Argrave said simply as Raven passed him by without slowing a beat.

Raven fled, eager to complete the final piece of this puzzle and destroy Gerechtigkeit utterly. Argrave, though, walked to confront the final fight before the end of things.

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Argrave had felt some very genuine terror when he learned that Raven had nearly died. That call had simply been too close. Argrave had consumed the body of the Hopeful with his blood magic, and that had given him vitality sufficient to create an attack strong enough to damage this incredibly power Zanti. Anneliese had blocked the retreat, and they’d earned a significant blow.

And yet Argrave knew the thing wouldn’t die that easily.

In truth, Argrave was surprised to see the Zanti. In Heroes of Berendar, this had been a deific form Gerechtigkeit assumed to fulfill a doomsday prophecy that had taken hold. The so-called Zanti was prophesied to descend and bring the most virtuous age upon the world with its cleansing white fire. Another trick to exploit the people, but one that Argrave hadn’t allowed to taken root. He supposed Gerechtigkeit couldn’t pivot from centuries-prepared plans that easily.

Elenore spoke of torch-bearing white giants heralding that same cleansing flame in the rest of the world, continuing to devastate the people of this world. They conjured armies of impermeable angels that wrought hell everywhere they passed. They could only pray the others would hold out, but on Berendar… here would be the true fight. As black blood and white fire dissipated into the air, he laid eyes upon the Zanti.

The automaton stood in the center of the valley, its white metal cracked to reveal some of the black malevolence of Gerechtigkeit. Its white metal was only a shell. Once they cracked it, the beast within was just as terrifying. But opposite him at the entrance to the valley, Anneliese stood her ground. Others joined her, pinning the thing down.

That monkey-like face faced Argrave. He could tell that it would stop at nothing to break past him. Argrave, though… he’d stop at nothing to break it, pry Gerechtigkeit from that shell, and finish this once and for all.