Chapter 26

“The subject of the afterlife is seldom broached in polite company. We speak of how the dead live on in our memory. Or how a necromancer might interact with the energies that the dead leave behind, but it is never considered politic to acknowledge that those energies are the dead themselves, and the place from which they have been called is somewhere that no amount of dimensional travel has successfully located or penetrated.”

—Beginning After The End, Laprodia Velment

A focused Inversion saved him mid-swing. Gravity wasn’t flipped, but redirected away from Sylvas. It peeled him off the surface of the titan’s chest even as it dragged its swinging hand to a halt. It wasn’t completely untouchable, he could still slow small movements. That’s something at least. 

Kicking off from its chest and seizing hold of the orbital structure inside him, Sylvas took flight and let the Inversion die as he did, so that all of the power that had been held back from the swing was suddenly returned to it. The blunt fist hammered into the titan’s chest with an audible crunch that rocked it back a step.

But beyond that else nothing else happened. 

If the dwarf inside was shaken by the impact, it didn’t show and Sylvas had no way of knowing otherwise. The massive body certainly hadn’t reacted as if it had been struck with the kind of blow that could have felled an eidolon.

Sylvas couldn’t restrain a sigh. There went another idea. 

You know that ‘stop hitting yourself’ was something of a playground solution, right?

“Shut up and let me think.” He growled back before he had time to realize he was talking to himself.

The fist that had slammed into its chest was now sprouting a fresh crop of stalactites, as was the rest of the titan’s body. Slowly but surely, spikes emerged all over it as Sylvas tried to piece together his next move. The earth mage had him beaten on mana reserves alone. It didn’t matter that Sylvas could restore his on the move, the extra circle of difference between them allowed this mage to upcast spells at more powerful intensity that it was starting to feel impossible for Sylvas to bridge the gap. Nothing he did could physically effect the dwarf through his earthen armor.

One last attempt at a focused Gravity spike, this time aimed low down in the construct’s stomach had as little effect as he previous ones. Gravity affinity spells just didn’t have any direct damage on the level that would be required to break this thing, and what he could cast from other affinities wouldn’t be sufficient. He had no stone for mind affinity mana, so even an indirect attack was completely beyond his reach. 

He was out of options.

Sylvas brought himself down again, landing directly in front of the titan’s rampaging path. He let his senses sweep over it. His second sight showed him nothing but a solid mass of earth affinity mana, his gravity sense could detect nothing through its density, his more obscure senses, relating to the ties that the other caster had to cold storage were too weak to locate him at the best of times and through all this interference, basically impossible.

The dwarf had meant to release those spikes in every direction at once, expending a massive amount of mana, without a doubt. Sylvas could avoid it with the right timing, using cold storage or teleportation, but he’d be no further forward.

Sylvas stood his ground in the face of its advance. There was no sign of hesitation in the titan’s movements. The dwarf was not pausing to reconsider stamping on him. He was committed. The massive foot rose, blotting out the starlight, and then it came down. In the shadow of what looked like certain death, Sylvas took the only option that he could think of remaining to him.

He clenched his fist and swung with all his might.

He gave it everything that he had. Just like that first punch that he’d swung at Hammerheart. Without any regard for the harm it would do him. Without any hesitation. Everything that he had now orders of magnitudes more than it had been back then when he was using an untrained body. Before he’d learned to master the flow of gravity and weight throughout his body. Before he’d reinforced and enchanted that body so that it could better withstand the forces that his magic exerted on it. 

He moved so much mass through his body in preparation for the strike that the sand beneath him lifted at the new source of gravity, it flowing with the punch all the way through him. The stone foot that had been coming down on him had a density beyond anything stone could muster, but it was far from the upper limit of what the universe allowed. 

Sylvas reached for that limit.

When his fist hit the stone, the flesh peeled away from his knuckles. The metal-coated, rune reinforced, crystalline bones beneath twisted and warped at the awful force being pushed through them. All down the length of his arm, bones crumpled and bent. All across his body, fractures opened up and he began to bleed as the mass of gravity moving through him distorted his organs the same way that his focused Spikes could do to an enemy. He put everything he had into that one blow. 

And this time it was enough.

The foot that had been coming down on him was launched back. The stone that it was made of cracked and shattered. The titan staggered and fell, colliding with the dome, the wall, the sand. With blood oozing out of his every orifice, Sylvas flung himself back up into the air and came down again, flooding his whole body with that same, deranged density. It was enough to bypass the barrier and pull people from their feet in the stands as he exerted so much gravity within his own body. He fell like a comet, striking feet first into the chest of the titan. Stone gave way beneath the impossible crushing force of Sylvas, as if he was a star falling from heaven itself.

When the dust cleared, he was on his knees, surrounded by the shattered chunks of the construct of stone. On his knees before Sylvas was the dwarf, shouting wildly as he pressed his forehead into the sand and conceded the match. It was just as well that he had, because Sylvas didn’t think he’d be able to move again under his own power. If the dwarf hadn’t seen that display and given up, Sylvas would have been easy pickings. 

Reaching into the gem still lodged in his wrist, he drew on the Life Affinity mana and cast Vaelith’s quick healing spell to get himself well enough to be able to move. His leg, already injured, was hanging on by a thread, his right arm was little more than twisted metal and shattered crystal, both piercing through what little flesh still covered it. All the rest of him ached from forcing nonaffinity mana through his channels, but despite all of that. He had won.

With one tremoring hand, still attached, if barely functional, he reached out to the dwarf who had finally decided it was safe to rise, taking the shorter man’s meaty hand in his and shaking it. “Good fight.”

There was a tremor in the dwarf’s grip, but he still managed to smile. “That it was.”

With an arm around the dwarf’s shoulder, the two of them walked to where the medics had emerged, both limping and exhausted, in the kind of fraternal company that Sylvas didn’t know he’d ever experienced before his world had died.

This isn’t a victory. You got lucky.

Sylvas hissed back. “Sometimes lucky is enough.”

If the dwarf heard him, he was polite enough to pretend he hadn’t.

From there, his next step was the medical ward, where the process of healing his arm took far longer than anything else. Largely in part because of the amount of work that Sylvas had to handle himself. His body was caught not only in the middle of the embodiment forming process, but the embodiment itself was obscure enough to be beyond the knowledge of the medics. Even when he relented and showed them the schema he’d made it for. 

“I think we might need an expert.” One of them commented as they inspected Sylvas’ injuries. “Don’t know what to even—”

“You mean someone who’s studied the embodiment intensely and knows it so well they managed to get it this far?” Sylvas interrupted with a deadpan expression that neither of them could ignore.

“I, uh, well,” the other medic replied as he struggled to compose a reply, eventually simply stating. “I’ve…I’ve never seen anyone punch the flesh off their arm before. I…didn’t know that could even be done.”

“Well, now you know,” Sylvas grunted before miming a grab towards the healing potion the man was holding, apparently too stunned to administer it. Grunting out an apology, it was quickly handed over.

From there the rest of the treatment progressed relatively steadily as the three of them worked to repair what Sylvas had ruined. Supplement packs containing extra metals and crystals were requisitioned and brought in, where they were then promptly absorbed by the Runeweave embodiment forming spell that Sylvas had recast. An division of work had been agreed to for Sylvas to repair the bones of his arm while the medics worked on reattaching and regrowing flesh. It took long enough that Sylvas counted himself lucky that hadn’t been a third match that day or he would have been faced with losing by default. 

There, that’s all I can do tonight, Sylvas thought several hours later once his work was finally finished and his arm was once again covered in muscle and skin. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and allowed to himself to settle deeply into the bed he’d been placed on. The medics had long since changed shifts and their replacement had recently checked in on him, telling Sylvas to try and get some sleep. An order that he was fully ready to listen to now this work was done.

Except that before he could close his eyes, a flutter of red cloth at the edge of his vision caught his attention. 

What? What was that? He asked himself as he turned his head, only to find that there was nothing there. Yet even so, he couldn’t shake the fact that he didn’t feel like he was alone in the room. So he sent out a request through his eye slate to the brighten room lights that had been turned down, only to be shown that there was nothing there, the room completely empty and the door still close. 

Huh, nothing. I guess that’s sign as good any that I need some rest. He turned off the lights and tried to settle himself, his eyes closing.

Much better. Just you and me in a dark cell. Like old times.

Sylvas’ eyes snapped open at the sound of the voice and instantly saw her. The silhouette of her at least. A shadow in the shape of a woman in a hooded robe. The voice that he kept on hearing in his head. 

He recognized it. Recognized her.

“Mira?”

Oh yes darling. I hope you didn’t think a little thing like death would get rid of me.