– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 219, Season of the Setting Sun, Day 41 –

Bjorln looked over the destruction they had brought to one of the many platoons moving to reinforce the Twisted Duchess. His snow-white hair and frizzy beard moved with the wind while his eyes moved across the landscape.

Brynn's most powerful anti-magic constructs were securing the perimeter, while soldiers selected by Chadwick were securing supplies to redistribute among their own forces.

With the transportation assistance by Amelia, they were moving swiftly while sabotaging the Lich Kingdom supply lines.

Even so, Bjorln couldn't help but frown. They had agreed to not use the communication talisman with Terry unless they had something important to share, but the silence was gnawing on his nerves. Hearing nothing was according to plan, but he couldn't help but worry.

Bjorln turned around to look at the second dwarf with snow white hair that was approaching. "Any clue regarding the lynchpin or the missing duchess?"

"As before, we're not getting anything out of survivors." Isille joined him with a scowl. "They're either killing themselves before we can interrogate them or they don't know anything." She hated this.

As a bounty hunter, Isille wasn't a stranger to magic or even forceful means of interrogations, but the Lich Kingdom soldiers were resolved to die, numb to anything, or left completely in the dark about what they needed to know.

"Continue," said Bjorln solemnly, and cracked his knuckles. The longer this hunt continued, the longer their children remained in peril.

"Two minutes until Amelia picks us up again," announced Emaldine from further away.

Isille clenched her barrier spear tightly and commanded Brynn's constructs to gather around so that she could place the anti-magic golems back into the specially prepared storage items.

"Any change on Calam's side?" asked Bjorln.

"No trouble on that front," replied Isille. "The dimensional mage with him is very skilled and keeps guerrilla hubs connected. In a few hours, they should be able to flank the Twisted Duchess. Elenec also sent a message that everything is going as planned. Mia is keeping the major battlefields connected and supply lines short. She's periodically checking in with Brynn and Mina. They're pushing the Risen Duchess hard."

Isille clicked her tongue. "I'd say it's about time the Lich Kingdoms show what they are planning there. I don't buy that we're going to win that battle like this."

Her mind reverberated with a message from Brynn.

"Damn it," growled Isille. "Dimensional gates have appeared behind the Risen Duchess with Lich Kingdom reinforcements pouring in. I knew something was up, but damn."

"Can Mia handle it?" asked Bjorln with a furrowed brow.

"She's already on it, but the other side is unexpectedly skilled. Mia might even be at a disadvantage." Isille sighed and bit her lips.

"Crap." Bjorln closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes again and pressed Isille's hand. "Continue."

"Yeah…"

***

"Found her," declared Terry firmly. "And the lynchpin." His expression hardened. "They're here."

He was unsure if he should be happy that they had discovered the location early thanks to their gamble that had proven correct, or dismayed that they would have to get past the Tainted Duchess and her forces to get to it.

Underground…

Terry immediately transmitted the sector coordinates to his allies together with the number and average mana level he could detect. It was information for them to coordinate, but the plan for Ying and him didn't change.

"Concealment," said Ying.

Without hesitating, Terry put the ring on his finger. He felt the frown on his companion's expression. "What's wrong?"

"There's a spatial lock down there," said Ying. "The kind that would block even unanchored transfers. Even I wouldn't be able to set up a lock of that quality and size."

Terry's invisible face contorted in a scowl. They had suspected the involvement of a dimensional mage when the Tainted Duchess had suddenly disappeared from their means of tracking, but hearing that this dimensional mage was even more skilled than Ying was an entire new world of problems.

I should be able to deal with a dimensional mage if I have to, but I'd rather not.

"And if I'm right, there's also a spatial intrusion detection field," continued Ying gravely. "We're lucky that we chose a location this high up or it would have triggered already."

Terry closed his eyes and concentrated on his mana touch. "I'm sensing mana signatures that practically scream wards and traps."

"Terry, I understand if you want to leave now," said Ying. "You've done your part and I'm grateful for that."

"Stop it," hissed Terry. "I'm not done here. If they have a dimensional mage, then our best shot is to take them out together."

Option: Slowly descend. Try to avoid all traps and wards… Would that even be possible?

Terry had confidence in detecting the associated mana signatures, but he wasn't exactly equipped for disarming wards. He could trigger traps from a distance, but he might as well start singing in the town square to announce his presence.

Not an option then.

What other option is there?

Terry carefully judged the distances between the lynchpin, the Tainted Duchess, and the other forces. He considered the cards they had to play, their strengths, and the benefit of surprise. He puffed his cheeks.

This is a bad idea, isn't it?

"Probably," muttered Terry. He took a deep breath and looked towards his invisible companion. "I have a suggestion."

Our first gamble worked out. Time to double down…

***

Terry checked his equipment and then clenched one core in each hand while reshaping the metal from the dimensional pocket hidden in his bracer.

Just like Ying, Terry had already downed all the consumables that could help them.

Terry was ready. He just needed to wait for the signal.

The moment he felt the sign from his invisible companion, he briefly burst his mana. He ignored the shattering sound in his mind and allowed himself to be pulled by Ying's teleportation spell.

The sound of an alarm shifted together with their location. The enemy was alerted, but in exchange, they could teleport exactly where they wanted to be.

Terry's mana spread out while his eyes registered the mass of wriggling mana-corrupted worms that were the body of the Tainted Duchess. Before the duchess had any chance to react, Ying's portal opened behind her while she was incinerated by the scorching fire from two sublimated cores at once.

The powerful explosion blasted the Tainted Duchess through the gate, which Ying immediately closed behind her.

First objective: clear. Get the duchess out of the way.

They had presumed that the duchess had an artifact that shielded her from unanchored transfers, but such an artifact did nothing when being forced through a dimensional gate.

Terry deactivated his spell from his reshaped metal that had protected them from the explosion. He moved the metal back into his dimensional pockets while divine barriers blocked the duchess's forces until…

Another dimensional gate appeared between them and the enemies. Earth pressed towards the enemies since the gate had been connected to a location underneath and gravity was pushing relentlessly.

Ying's shadow panther soul spirit jumped into the shadow to scout while the spirit and Ying together used a mana ability to lock down the shadow plane.

Ying retrieved and spread light sources previously prepared with specific angles for Terry to transfix. The light distribution minimized the shadows around them and served as another layer of defense against intrusion from the shadows.

Second objective: clear. Cut them off.

Terry maintained his divine barriers as a fallback behind the gate, but hoped that they wouldn't need it. Even though a dimensional gate's primary purpose was transportation, it also served as a frustrating barrier. It didn't matter how much firepower the other party could bring to the battlefield, if it simply passed through without damaging the anchors in any way.

Unless they have someone wielding anti-magic, abyssal aspects, magic-disrupting aspects like the Bright Lady's holy aspect or the hellspawn withering aspect, or oscillating mana, this should hold until their dimensional mage shows up.

If it comes down to it, I can harden a thin layer of earth and turn it immovable…

Focus.

Terry knew that they only had a single shot at this. The surprise had been sprung and there was no going back now. He hurriedly went to work while Ying was concentrating on maintaining his spells.

Terry described everything he sensed from the ritual construction while moving his mana touch through every inch.

Ying told him which inscriptions had to be removed according to what they had theorized about the ritual.

Terry compressed his Immovable Object spell until he could overpower the mana in the inscriptions' base material and then unleashed his unstoppable shifting grinders to destroy the inscriptions while continuing to align with Ying.

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Whenever an inscription was sufficiently destroyed, they relied on spatial blades, sublimator discharges, or material manipulation to hasten the dismantling process. They peeled away the protections layer by layer while the seconds ticked by.

They had come in fast, but their enemies didn't remain idle.

From the sides…

Terry didn't bother distracting Ying with the information that some enemies had tried to get around the gate by liquifying the stone and earth. The tunnel was artificial. A construction of solid stone, so it was a perfect target for the Immovable Object spell, which put an immediate stop to all attempts at liquification.

Before their enemies could rethink their approach, Terry had already used the material manipulation runes in his armor to cover all gaps around them with a double layer of immovable stone added to the tunnel.

Terry spotted every single magic their enemies were attempting. Many of them were useless or nothing to worry about, like the vampires attempting disruption discharges against the immovable rock while Terry's spell structure remained compressed, stable, and safe close to him.

Terry happily let the enemies waste their mana with useless attacks, but alas, it wasn't something that could last.

When he sensed some of them using shadow-aspected spells, Terry had to get more involved. He shaped disruption fields to target the heads and hands of the casters. It was more mana-efficient than a large-scale disruption domain that covered the entire area, and his practice with moving the smaller fields allowed him to move the fields so that the target couldn't get out easily.

Let's hope the disorienting effect on their mana sense is enough to distract them from realizing why I'm targeting them specifically.

Terry knew that, sooner or later, they would figure out that he was targeting specifically those that had tried to cast shadow-aspected spells. He just hoped it would be later rather than sooner. Once they all realized that shadow could disturb his spell's effect, he would be forced to deploy a more mana-hungry disruption domain.

Crap.

"Some are turning ethereal!" warned Terry, while continuing to dismantle the lynchpin's protection.

"They're also contesting the shadows," growled Ying. His shadow panther was of high enough level to wield an eminent authority ability in the shadow plane, but it wouldn't hold forever.

Crap crap.

"I think the next layer is not just a simple protection, but a trap," said Terry with a scowl.

I should have learned the runic system for this…

"Never enough time," mumbled Terry quietly.

No choice but to wing it.

Which parts do I know?

Wait…

Terry increased the density of his mana inside the mechanism to get a better resolution for his mana touch.

The trap would be for the person messing with the lynchpin. Most of the ritual candidates would require precious materials. Adding to that the value they place on Siyu, and there is no chance the trap would destroy the lynchpin. Otherwise, this would be too easy. We could trigger the trap and be done with it.

But what if the trap seals the lynchpin away even further? Worst would be if it gets teleported away. With both Ying and me here, we could stop that, but they would know to protect against space magic since they know about Ying. What if there are other ways that would make it worse?

There has to be a way to disable the trap layer. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to move it. I refuse to believe they always employ anti-magic when they have to move it. They would have to start from scratch every time.

"Not so different from the dungeon puzzles…" Terry mumbled, while figuring out all the moving parts. Knowing which pieces were movable and how they served to connect the mana lines allowed him to decide on an approach.

Terry transfixed the parts he didn't want to move. He drifted the parts he wanted to move until he arrived at a problem.

The damned thing is completely coated in mana-osmotic material.

There was no way for Terry to target that part, because his mana was blocked by the osmotic material.

I can't just pull at it with my glove. I have to move it around that— Got it.

Terry had almost forgotten about the shadow bangle he had received from Rafael because he used it so rarely. For most of his uses, the shadow rope appeared redundant with his bidirectional attraction inscriptions. The fact that he could bind it to the king spear was nice, but Terry barely ever allowed his favorite weapon out of his hands.

Terry circulated his mana into the shadow bangle underneath his left bracer, and the shadow followed his mana along the pathways inside the mechanism. Terry chose the route in order to wrap the shadow weave around different parts until he arrived at just the angle he wanted.

He attached the weave to the shadow of the mana-osmotic material and then pulled. The shadow rope tightened and the last part moved with an audible click. The glow in the mechanism's active mana lines faded.

"Got it," said Terry, and unleashed his shifting grinders on the next layer without pause.

Behind Terry, Ying killed another incoming ethereal opponent with a powerful spirit-aspected spell. Their ethereal state protected them against physical attacks and secondary effects of magic, but their spirits remained vulnerable.

While Terry had focused on dismantling the trap layer, Ying had resolutely taken charge of eradicating the enemies crossing into their fortifications. No words had been necessary for them to coordinate.

"Something is slipping through the shadows!" warned Ying.

Small worms crawled up from tiny specks of shadow. The shadow-aspected carrier creatures began vomiting out worms of other aspects that gathered together.

Ying and Terry moved quickly to interrupt the nauseating reassembling process of the Tainted Duchess, but their enemy had learned from their initial ambush.

Fire-aspected worms rushed forward to feast on the fire-aspected blast from Terry's mana sublimator while other worms clung to the earth and shadows while serving as anchors for all the others to hold on.

Spatial blades cleaved through the mass of worms, but it was only a slight slowdown. The mass of creatures didn't care about a single blade.

Ying created small gates around the duchess that dispersed Terry's next attacks to all sides simultaneously.

Terry switched up his mana cores to blast the Tainted Duchess with every aspect that dungeons provided. In the background, his unstoppable grinders never halted working on the lynchpin construct.

Worms hurled themselves through the small dimensional gates. The Tainted Duchess used her enemies' gates to spread her body all around the cavern. She wouldn't allow herself to be thrown out through a larger gate again.

Divine hammers whirled around the area to squish whatever worms Terry could target, while most of his attention was taken up by the ritual construction.

More enemy soldiers turned ethereal approached from outside, with death specters and phantoms joining the fray under their whispers…

Spell structures shaped up in front of several of the Tainted Duchesses's worms…

Terry was about to contract his mana to shape up a disruption domain when he heard Ying's growl.

"I'll handle it." Ying's mana burst with power, and a whirlwind of shadow, spirit, and space ripped their enemies to shreds.

Not sustainable.

Terry frowned slightly.

His frown turned into a smile when he realized he had reached the final protective layer.

"DAMN IT!" roared Ying. "They'll come through the shadows next! I failed to stop them!"

Terry noted grimly that Ying was bleeding from his eyes.

The shadow panther soul spirit must either be dead or gravely injured. Ying must have refused to pull it back.

Screw this…

Terry decided he had to step up the pace. He had treated their infiltration as the first of many options. They had arrived earlier, which had freed up time for potential fallbacks and other options.

Terry had considered the initial ambush their best chance, but not the only one. They could adapt if it didn't work out.

However, Terry realized now that Ying had never thought of it this way. With their goal so close and in their sights, there was no way the desperate father would turn back to regroup or coordinate with their allies.

Terry's mana rushed into his magic equipment. Bidirectional attraction, plane drifts, and his shadow rope all pulled together to break away the centerpiece of the ritual construction.

While his mana pool dipped, the lynchpin core finally tore away from its location deep inside the construction.

Terry caught a clear magenta crystal that glowed with a deep purple. The signature was almost blinding in his soulsight. "Let's go!"

With a swift chain of spellwork, Ying moved to Terry, lifted his spatial lock, and teleported them away.

They had not teleported far, but far enough to buy themselves time. Given everything that they had seen in the ritual construction, they had an idea about the lynchpin's function. Without the corresponding construction, it would not bind Siyu, but as long as it existed, it would be usable for forcing her back under someone's power.

The lynchpin core had to be destroyed or Siyu would never be truly free.

Terry used his mana sublimator to unleash devastating discharges, but to no avail. The crystal simply shrugged off power that would have been enough to kill a juvenile juggernaut champion.

The mana sublimator failed.

The king spear and keen daggers failed.

Terry's only remaining option would be a setup for wrapping the crystal in metal and allowing his unstoppable shifting grinders to carve into the crystal until it broke, but luckily, he wasn't working alone.

"Move!" shouted Ying, and Terry immediately sensed why. A mana distortion was shaping up, which meant that someone was teleporting close to them.

Before their unseen enemy had a chance to arrive, Ying teleported them to another location.

The moment they arrived, Ying unleashed his quickened spatial blade on the crystal. For the first time, there was a slight nick in the smooth surface.

The space aspect is truly something…

"Not enough," muttered Terry.

And not enough time.

Terry stepped closer to Ying, because he could already sense another mana distortion.

"Spatial lock!" shouted Ying frantically, and Terry did not hesitate to burst his mana to free the space and enable Ying to teleport them away again.

When before, Terry could have hoped that the pursuers were simply some soldiers relying on artifacts, he was now resolving himself to meet the enemy's skilled dimensional mage soon enough.

At least we gave the slip to the Tainted Duchess and her soldiers for now.

Although, if a dimensional mage is involved, that can change quickly.

I wish I could do more…

Terry felt useless in the situation. Aside from his ability to break spatial locks, everything in the current confrontation depended on Ying. Ying alone had the spells to teleport them or to destroy the incredibly tough crystal.

Terry noticed Ying dual-casting the space-aspected spells. The vampire teleported them around while continuously empowering a spatial blade.

When Ying finally released the spatial blade onto the crystal thrown into the air, Terry watched the spell fly with bated breath.

Their hopes were shattered together with the spatial blade.

Terry spread his mana and activated soulsight to search for the mage that must be close. Locating a dimensional mage appeared almost pointless since they might teleport at any second, but he simply didn't know what else to do to help.

Terry nearly missed a dimensional gate that had appeared underneath the crystal about to fall back into Ying's hands, but he barely managed to shape a disruption field to destroy it.

"We have to meet up with the others," shouted Terry. They were not getting anywhere like this, but with enough allies around, they might gain the time to finally destroy the lynchpin crystal.

Ying nodded without further reply. He grabbed the crystal tightly and began the next teleportation.

They had only made two more transfers when someone appeared in front of them. "We have to hurry! I warned you, my friend. You should have waited for me!"

Terry only saw a figure in a grey traveling cloak with his face covered by a white face mask and the rest of his head covered by the cloak's hood.

Ying, however, saw his friend and salvation. The Progenitor of Syn had arrived. With the Lightbringer on their side, the enemies' dimensional mage wouldn't stand a chance.

"You're lucky you managed to extract the binding essence," said the Progenitor. "But you really should have waited for me. That's a karmic coalescence crystal they used as a ritual lynchpin. That's not easily destroyed. I can try, but someone will have to protect me."

Ying was about to fly step forward, but Terry subconsciously stopped him with an arm.

Terry stared at the masked Progenitor. The mage had perfectly cloaked mana and appeared perfectly manaless, but Terry's mana touch revealed the man's mana aspects.

Terry had been suspicious about the circumstances of Ying's escape from the Lich Kingdoms before. The timing regarding Ying's external soul manifestation to save Siyu. The location of Syn at the other end of the habitable realm.

Masks. He hated masks.

The mana aspects he felt in his mana touch. Perfectly cloaked.

Undead hellspawn used by the lich kingdoms. Matteo's theories back in Tiv.

Necromancer.

Dimensional Mage.

Masks.

Terry surprised himself almost as much as he surprised the Progenitor when a powerful divine hammer slammed into the Progenitor's face to break away the man's mask.

"Terry, what—?" Ying stared at his companion in shock.

"Anand," growled Terry with unbridled hatred burning in his eyes. The man that had turned his cousin Matteo into a demon. The man that had conspired with Willow to kill his aunt Sigille. The man that had caused countless deaths across multiple empires.

"I wish you wouldn't have done that." Anand sighed.

***

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