Crimsoncrest (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 10), page 20
The strength drove him back a step, and a few weeks ago Theo wouldn't have been able to compete, but he dug in and pushed back. As he judged it, their strength was roughly equal, just for different reasons. The Tymetronese Stronghold had fully built his fifth floor and had more strength chambers, but Theo had more efficient chambers and a basement. If he'd soulcrafted his fifth floor, he might have been able to overpower his opponent, but as things stood they were equally matched.
While they engaged in a direct struggle, Theo had a moment to examine the rest of the battlefield. Attacks were raining down over the area, being absorbed by a defensive shield that prevented them from wreaking havoc on the mountain or even the fields of crestflowers around it. Theo would not have prioritized those, especially since the shield was draining one of their Strongholds.
There was no time to argue and they likely wouldn't listen to them anyway. The newest Asplundat soulcrafter had formed a sphere of stone and engaged in battle with Jazin, who was hurling attacks against the outer surface. It seemed ineffective until there was an abrupt implosion, a force crumbling the stone down to a point and consuming it.
It captured Theo's entire attention: had that been something like a black hole? No, the cantae and stone seemed entirely gone, annihilated. He wasn't sure what sort of technique-
He couldn't afford to distract himself, not while still locked with a powerful Stronghold. The man roared and tried to push him back again, which Theo realized was just a distraction. Something flared within the man's soulhome and Theo saw his fallen sword leap into the air to attack Theo even while they were grappling.
Time to take this seriously. Theo stamped one foot on the ground but created a portal just before his foot hit: the kick emerged from another portal behind his opponent, slamming into the back of his knee. While his opponent grunted in pain and went down, Theo lunged forward with a torsion headbutt.
When their foreheads collided, Theo released his grip. The twisting energy blew his opponent away, sending him spiraling into the air, smashing through the barrier. Theo rose into the air as well, to keep the fight from causing unnecessary collateral damage.
The swordsman snarled and wiped blood from his mouth, now fixated on him. He summoned a second sword and wielded one in each hand, yet Theo could tell that he was ready to make them fly on their own again. Fighting an opponent like that could be tricky, so maybe it was better to try to take him out quick.
Just as they leapt at one another, the air went crimson. Theo felt the immensely powerful sphere only a second before it floated toward them and his eyes widened.
Wiltur had ignored his own battle to unleash one of his explosive spheres directly toward them. He could pretend that he was trying to help an ally, but when Theo saw the man's expression, he was certain that Wiltur was hoping that it would injure them both.
Years ago when Theo had last seen Wiltur's signature attack, he had been a Ruler and it had been an unstoppable explosion. Now he might be able to survive the blast, but he wasn't going to risk it. Theo opened a portal just in front of himself and flew out in the sky overhead instead.
"Coward!" The swordsman had already found him again and snarled, even as he swung his sword toward the crimson sphere.
As soon as they touched, the explosion rocked the battlefield. It sent the Tymetronese soulcrafter flying away and shook up all the other combatants. The shockwave washed over the defensive shield, severely draining the Asplundat Stronghold and even knocking some of their Authorities below off their feet.
Some might look down on Wiltur for being trapped at Stronghold for decades, but that meant he had absolutely maximized his current soulhome space. If Theo had fought him, he would have needed to use better tactics, forgetting about the physical maneuvers he used to rely on his Corporeal Chambers.
But they were on the same side, ostensibly. Theo met his gaze and Wiltur glared back, but then they turned away to their opponents.
In all the chaos of the explosion, the woman with the ice staff was unleashing a storm directly against the top of the mountain. That seemed to make their goal undeniable: they didn't want to steal the Asplundatcrest, they wanted to destroy it. Then Tymetron had known and just wanted to weaken their opponents before the invasion.
The Asplundat Stronghold tried to retaliate with shards of stone, but their strength was split maintaining the barrier, so the woman easily froze them out of the air. Whatever had happened to the other Asplundat soulcrafters, she needed to be intercepted, so Theo changed targets.
When he shot through the air toward the staff-user she immediately treated him as the greater threat and began launching shards of ice in his direction. Theo grinned and combined his inertialvoid with a point of anti-mass to cancel his own - without much inertia, it was easy for him to weave between all the projectiles effortlessly. Thinking that he had an insane number of speed chambers, the woman's eyes widened and she formed a shield of ice around herself before he arrived.
Theo pulled back one arm, telegraphing his punch clearly. She immediately unleashed a shockwave in his direction, intending to hit him before he arrived, but that had never been the plan.
Instead Theo shot to the side and thrust his fist through another portal. The connected portal was actually inside the shell of ice, so his torsion punch struck the woman directly in the face. She smashed through her own ice shield and sailed away from the battlefield.
Just as Theo was about to pursue her, he saw one of the huge spheres of stone collapse inward and then begin to crumble. The Asplundat Stronghold inside wasn't dead, but the man was struggling even to fly. Jazin had taken him out so quickly?
Currently the thin soulcrafter was floating further from the mountain, surrounded by a rotating ring of dark lights. Theo couldn't help but stare: those lights weren't cantae attacks, they were sublime materials. Not raw ones, because he felt some connection to the other man's soulhome, so were they some sort of unusual armament?
Jazin met his gaze and his lips parted just enough to flash his fangs.
Then he could finally get back to his first plan: Theo threw himself across the battlefield. Jazin raised one hand and began launching cantae bolts that arced through the air, trying to home in on him. Theo had to push his inertial skills to the limit to dodge them, twisting and turning as he closed the distance and prepared another punch and portal combo.
The portal opened just as he'd planned, and Theo launched his torsion punch... but there was something gleaming in his opponent's eyes.
At the last second Theo pulled his punch back. Just before it would have collided with Jazin's head, one of the dark lights intersected his path. A shockwave expanded from it, then almost immediately reversed, creating an implosion that seemed to suck away all of the cantae in a radius around it. The implosion partially caught Theo's fist and he felt the energy burn against his skin before he pulled back.
"Interesting technique." Jazin was staring at him - not across physical space, but through the portal beside his head. "If something disrupts this gate of yours while your arm is through it, do you just lose the limb? Seems risky."
It was tempting to answer or ask about the floating sublime materials, and Theo thought that might lead to an interesting conversation, but he judged that his opponent was too smart to waste time. If he was talking, it was because delaying would help him. Tymetron had three more Strongholds and a Dominion, after all, and if they were openly showing their hand...
Theo attacked again, doing his best to overwhelm his opponent with raw speed and strength. Unfortunately, Jazin seemed more than adept at countering that strategy, and he was extremely alert for portals. At one point when Theo tried to slip around behind him, Jazin was already looking back even before the portal had even fully formed.
They stared at one another across space again and the Tymetronese soulcrafter grinned.
As they fought, Theo did his best to evaluate his opponent despite his shielding wall. Like most from Tymetron, Jazin used demonic materials, but that didn't necessarily give useful information about his capabilities. The dark lights weren't demonic at all, instead a linked sublime material, and they seemed to be his first line of both defense and offense.
Having Nauda and her nullification would have been handy in that moment, but Theo improvised. First he used his chaosgem to try to disrupt Jazin internally - the Stronghold's defenses were too strong to be affected, but the new attack distracted him for an essential moment.
In that moment, Theo redirected all his cantae to his tunnelegg chamber: not to create a portal, but a simple tunneling point. Instead of attacking his opponent, he focused on the furthest glowing material, warping it away from his opponent and to Theo. He grabbed it with both hands, seizing it with his own cantae and separating it from his opponent.
That revealed a dull-looking sublime rock, but there had to be more to it. Theo cracked it open with his bare hands and his eyes widened: the interior was actually a geode, glittering with dark crystals. They were charged with a force he didn't recognize, and more than that, there had been some sort of power contained in the center. When he broke the geode open the power escaped, burning him slightly just like the implosions did. Some sort of weaponized sublime material?
"You seem too smart to use such blunt tactics." Jazin was watching him from a distance, arms folded behind his back. "Nine worlds of sublime materials and you choose to punch especially hard?"
"The goal of a fight is to disable the opponent." Theo thought it would be useless to pretend to be a thug, so he adopted a different tactic. "It's more efficient to do that directly instead of going through multiple steps."
"Hmm, a shame. You're good, but not good enough."
"Let's see if you can still say that after I take away all those rocks."
"Oh?" Jazin smiled and waved his hand, sending a dozen more of the geodes floating from his soulhome. "You think I'm depending on burning powerful materials? No, no, these things are quite common back home."
Theo attacked again, now more interested in feeling out his opponent than actually finishing him. He had a bad feeling that Jazin was a truly skilled soulcrafter, with an efficient blueprint and likely a few Transcendent Monuments. This might not be an opponent he could take on, just at the beginning of Stronghold, so what he needed most was information.
After several more exchanges, and a few burning implosions, Theo estimated that his opponent's limit was related to his soulhome, not available materials. The geodes weren't weapons on their own - few sublime materials were - but instead were weaponized by some chamber in his soulhome. When they imploded, they drew in and eradicated all cantae in a sphere around them.
Nasty trick. It harmed cantae-reinforced bodies, snuffed out cantae attacks, and would likely melt through defenses quickly. Worse, his opponent knew exactly how to use the geodes.
Despite everything, despite the stakes and the threat to the Asplundatcrest, Theo found himself grinning. And just when he started to enjoy himself, the Dominion arrived.
Up to that point, the only arrivals by weirkey had been a few Authorities bringing reinforcements that couldn't actually help much in a battle like this. But then Tymetron brought their full army, and the instant they arrived their power flooded over the battlefield like a shockwave.
There were three more Strongholds, which was bad enough, but Theo couldn't help but look to the Dominion behind them. This one was a woman wearing a massive helm that seemed to have been fashioned from a demon's skull. That worried him less than her cantae, which was incredibly intense... it felt like she had a basement in addition to her current tier.
"Leave and you will not be harmed," the Dominion said, her voice booming over the battlefield. "Plutalgion has declared that this material must be destroyed."
She waved a hand and demonic energy radiated from her. It seemed like harmless ripples at first, moving relatively slowly and just flowing over the defensive shields without harming them. But when the ripples hit one of the Asplundat Strongholds, they were thrown back immediately, away from the mountain. Theo retreated to a safer height, desperately looking for a solution.
They had started with four Strongholds to Tymetron's three, but the battle actually hadn't gone well for them. Both of the Asplundat Strongholds had taken severe damage and it looked like Wiltur hadn't been trying very hard. He did stay near the peak of the mountain, though... was that his plan?
"Enough of this!" Wiltur unleashed another crimson sphere, which floated toward the Dominion. When it met the ripples it pushed through, unharmed, so it sailed toward her.
It never got close. Two of the Strongholds standing near the Dominion intercepted the technique, one exploding it and the other redirecting the blast in the opposite direction. Though Wiltur blurred out of the way, he reappeared with a tattered sleeve and shock on his face.
Meanwhile, the third Stronghold had joined the battle, aiming to eliminate the Asplundat soulcrafters. Theo threw himself into the fight in a desperate effort to neutralize them, using portals to distract Jazin while he disrupted his opponents with torsion bolts. But there were so many of them, and the rippling energy continually pushed them away from the mountain...
Just when he started to think it was hopeless, another group arrived by weirkey. Fiyu wielded it in the center of the group, and she had Krikree and Guchiro with her.
That was sorely needed backup, but could it possibly be enough?
Chapter 21
Of course, as soon as Fiyu heard her companions were in danger, she had rushed into action. The trouble was, facing the terrible army that Tymetron could field, her usual methods were ineffective. Against one or two Strongholds, she would have collected Friend Nauda and other Authorities and they might have fought effectively. But when the enemy had so many powerful soulcrafters, even a Dominion...
Her first step was to contact House Blacksilver, because that was her sworn duty. After that, however, she became less certain. She returned to their temporary quarters and discovered only Ally Krikree was present, sitting and combing her antennae gloomily as she often did. Ally Krikree was a powerful Authority, but would it be wise to bring her into this conflict?
"We need to go." Relative Guchiro appeared beside her from within his own stealth technique. "The window of time in which we can have an impact is rapidly running out."
"But... will we be able to help them?" Fiyu asked.
"Danger?" Ally Krikree's antennae shot straight upright and she skittered closer. "Theo-sister in danger? Fight?"
"I... I don't know if..."
"We go now." Relative Guchiro reached out and touched her upper arm.
Even though she remained filled with doubts, Fiyu took hold of her weirkeys and transported them to the location of the battle. The space around it was tumultuous, distorted by various forces and anti-weirkey defenses, but she kept her focus on the fields of crestflowers and brought all three of them through in the air overhead.
The result was a shock to her senses as too much information flooded in at once. She sensed at least nine active Strongholds on the battlefield, a troubling majority of them enemies. Friend Theo was battling alongside the Asplundat soulcrafters, but they were falling back before their enemy and she was unable to discern how long he could last.
Worse, the enemy Dominion was holding back and attacking judiciously. The woman in layers of demonic garments could defeat a Stronghold in any given clash and allowed her Stronghold allies to check the enemy, preventing them from ever gaining leverage. In turn this magnified the advantage, letting her strike at the best opportunities. It was a wonder that Friend Theo and the others had not already been defeated... there was at least one Asplundat Stronghold groaning on the ground, battered and broken.
What could they possibly do in a battle like this? Stronghold-tier techniques were flying in every direction and the fields would already have been devastated if not for a defensive shield. It was impressive, but could not possibly stand up to such a beating.
"Theo-sister danger!" Ally Krikree flew away, brandishing her weapons.
Fiyu wished that she could throw caution to the winds like that, but she needed to help her allies, not merely to fight. As passionately as Ally Krikree attacked, a gust of icy wind sent her hurtling away. She survived and rushed to attack again, but it would be difficult for her to be effective. And yet, standing on the sidelines, Fiyu was even less useful...
"Join the defenders." Relative Guchiro put a hand on her shoulder and nodded to her. "Their shield won't hold, but it might with reinforcement. That will prevent the Asplundat side from buckling."
"But..." Fiyu's eyes flickered outward. "The battle..."
"Leave that to me."
She eventually nodded and flew downward, passing through the defensive shield thanks to her identification. It was some sort of powerful Asplundat working, not something she could easily support... but she did have resources of her own.
Reaching into her soulhome, Fiyu grasped the Stronghold-tier shadowlamp and drew it forth.
~ ~ ~
When Krikree threw herself into the fight, it very nearly cost Theo. She attacked with enormous ferocity, but her opponents had significantly greater power and wouldn't be taken off guard. He wanted to reach out and help her, except that if he took his attention away from Jazin, he could lose the fight. Or worse, if Jazin ever managed to counter Krikree, it could be fatal for her.
Every time a blow impacted Krikree she was sent flying. She seemed to crash lightly, hopping up unharmed like an ant that had fallen, but the blows themselves were hurting her. If only he'd been able to finish that armorstone for her...
Worst of all was the Dominion, hurling overwhelming attacks at uneven intervals. They were all carefully chosen: protecting an ally who was falling back, attempting to kill an enemy Stronghold, or hammering into the defensive field. No matter how well Theo fought, if the Asplundat soulcrafters defending the barrier failed, the battle would still be lost.
