Wakespire (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 7), page 38
"We aren't losing." The voice spoke from the side and Fiyu struggled to sense who had spoken through the brilliance. Before she could figure it out, someone swept past her.
Adversary Cannium was buffeted backward and the columns of light around Fiyu shattered. She looked to the source and could not believe her eyes: Friend Nauda stood beside her, glorious and beautiful, a new cloak whipping around her body. Her cantae flowed with an Authority's intensity. It seemed that she had understood the goal as well, because she only gathered her power in her staff instead of attacking.
"You're an Authority now too?" Adversary Cannium staggered backward as he recovered, staring incredulously. "Where did you come from?"
"Your team is looking a little thin on Authorities." Friend Theo floated down on Fiyu's other side but remained hovering in the air with small rocks levitating around him.
Even though the Dortorus group still had the advantage in numbers, Fiyu did not believe they had the upper hand. With her standing in between Friend Nauda and Friend Theo, they looked indomitable. It seemed that the others were making the same calculation, because they threw down their weapons. Eventually Adversary Cannium cursed under his breath and finally released his light.
"You really aren't here to attack?" he asked. When he wasn't shouting, his voice was surprisingly melodious.
"We do not want to hurt anyone." Fiyu tried to put all her earnestness into her voice as she spoke to the entire group. "Please, many are only fighting each other because they believe you are attacking. If we all stand down now, the battle can be ended peacefully."
"I..." Adversary Cannium took a deep breath, then abruptly turned back to the others. "Stand down! Let's go talk to the princes and get to the bottom of this!"
As the group began to leave, Fiyu searched carefully for some further layer of deception. Yet it seemed as though the Dortorus teams were truly giving up the fight. They began picking up injured allies and departing through the hole that had been made in the sides of the spire. Hopefully they would tell all of the other Dortorus soulcrafters as well and there would be no need for more violence.
"Gah, that hurts." They hadn't been alone for long when Friend Nauda spoke. She reached into the neck of her robe and pulled out a blue mask, which she threw to the ground. "That thing was burning hot by the end. How did that Gatrium soulcrafter wear it on his face?"
"Most likely he had an armament chamber for it," Friend Theo said. It seemed that he had already understood what Fiyu was only then realizing.
With the mask separated from her body, Friend Nauda's cantae diminished. She was only a Ruler, as she had been before. "You didn't ascend," Fiyu breathed.
"I want to do it right." Friend Nauda looked between the two of them, smiling wearily, and her gaze lingered on Fiyu. "My soulhome isn't as good as either of yours, but I want it to be. I want to soulcraft until I can keep traveling with you."
"Oh, Nauda..."
"Touching." The new voice spoke harshly and Fiyu realized in alarm that someone had managed to slip within the range of her senses without her noticing.
Unknown Nifanos Dortorus floated in the air, silhouetted in the hole that led to the outside. Her elegant wrap, her hair, and her wings were all untouched by the battle. It could be difficult to tell the emotions of hovering Authorities, due to how they held their muscles, but Fiyu misliked the tension around her eyes.
"If you're really interested in peace," Unknown Nifanos said, "then you'll come with me. Some parts of this don't add up."
Fiyu glanced toward Friend Theo, afraid that he would want to continue fighting. But even he raised his hands and shook his head. "You don't need to threaten. I'd like to get to the bottom of this myself."
"Then why don't we head inside?" Unknown Nifanos floated closer to them and the implicit threat of her aura made them all retreat deeper into the tower. "Something about this has never made any sense to me. One of our own was killed... a murder, or to cover up a crime? And then the underclouder attack on our soulcrafters... allegedly there was no connection, but we all know better."
"Your lineage is hardly innocent," Friend Theo said as they walked deeper. "You've been harming people from the beginning."
"There's no more need for such lies. I know that Ractifus gave you a key so you could subvert the Wakespire."
The woman's tone made Fiyu flinch away, ready to defend herself. But Unknown Nifanos showed no sign of attacking them and it didn't seem as though she had planned a surprise assault. Given her power, she didn't consider it necessary.
"I don't know your game, but I don't care." Adversary Nifanos began to glow like an emerald sun as the lines of her Ethereal Floor wove their way through her wings. "The three of you are right at the heart of this rot. It ends now."
Chapter 46
Nauda wanted to trust in the strength of her friends, especially given how they'd ascended to Authority. Fiyu looked better than ever, comfortable in her darkness and brimming with new power. But they were facing an opponent who had been at the same tier for years longer than they had. Nifanos had cut no corners: she brought the full fury of a veteran Authority upon them.
Fiyu was remaining mobile, unleashing storms of light before slipping away ahead of the retaliation. The problem was that her bolts didn't seem to get through the emerald aura and Nifanos wasn't striking back with the full blast she'd used to annihilate them earlier. Now that her targets could dodge, she was conserving her strength and only using ordinary cantae bolts, at least insofar as any Authority's cantae could be "ordinary".
That was what kept Nauda running ahead of the others instead of trying to assist. Her defenses might survive one or two bolts, but if Nifanos actually got a grip on her or pinned her down, she'd instantly become a liability. She wouldn't let herself bring the group down when her allies were managing the fight so far.
They sprinted up another staircase, but they were rapidly running out of room. Theo and Nauda kept moving, but Fiyu dodged to the side and hid herself again. When Nifanos flew after them, Fiyu unleashed a light storm directly into her flank, far more intense than before.
Nifanos staggered in pain... and unleashed raw destruction in response. The emerald beam encompassed Fiyu completely and Nauda let out a cry, afraid that she had just seen Fiyu reduced to ash. But the other woman became visible as she struck the opposite wall, still intact: even if her opponent had an immensely powerful Ethereal Floor, Fiyu was an Authority now and wouldn't die so easily.
Before Fiyu could hit the ground, Theo had a gravitational grip on her and she fell toward their position. She was able to regain her feet shortly and thrust out a finger. Nauda could barely hear her "That way!" between gasps, but the instruction was clear enough.
Their group turned the corner around the edge of the spire and Theo touched the key to the stones where Fiyu had pointed. A wall of darkness emerged on the other side, none of the light from the corridor falling past the entrance. It was the old dark room... Nauda let her friends pull her in and trusted that they would keep her safe from all the obstacles rushing through the air around them.
"This won't hold her long," Theo said tersely. "Fiyu, hide us. I'm going to open the opposite side, then distract her so we can get clear."
"Is our goal to run?" Nauda asked. "Do we actually have backup?"
"My relative will help us," Fiyu said, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
Before they could fully execute the plan, the sound of cracking stone interrupted their whispers. Nauda couldn't see anything, but she heard Fiyu gasp and could feel the room shaking around them.
"You think I'm going to come in there after you?" Nifanos called. "Don't insult me."
More cracks erupted around them and the darkness flickered. Nauda caught fractured glimpses of the very walls and ceiling of the dark chamber breaking apart, then they all shattered at once. The explosion sent all three of them flying in different directions. Nauda skidded to the edge of a path, nearly falling into the abyss below. With the spire malfunctioning, she didn't want to know what would happen if she fell below.
Nifanos floated in the door, her eyes still burning green. "That's better."
Theo rose into the air and began casting his bolt technique. Midway to their target, the bolts suddenly entered a hovering portal and reappeared behind her. She retaliated, but Theo deflected her attacks with some new technique while he continued to strike her from all sides. Nauda could see her wince with each impact, even though they didn't penetrate her aura. Was he using small singularities instead of his usual technique? When she tried to charge at him, he would vanish and reappear across the room.
For a little while, Nauda thought that he could actually do it. She was fully prepared to leap to assist Theo when he faltered. Then he teleported himself away, as usual, but this time Nifanos pursued. She blurred across the room, leaving emerald afterimages, and blasted him into the wall.
Theo struck the stone and started to move, but Nifanos had no intention of making the same mistake a second time. She closed on him, grabbing his smoking coat and raising her other hand to deliver a blast directly to his face.
Before she knew it, Nauda was across the room. She swung her staff with as much power as she could and delivered a strike directly to one of Nifanos's wings.
Practically the next moment, emerald light encompassed her. The agony hurled Nauda back and she was shocked to discover that she was still intact. Her notemerald belt burned around her waist, barely able to contain the onslaught.
"A Ruler survived that?" Nifanos stared down at her like a bug, then released another blast.
The next moment Nauda was across the room gasping for breath. Before anything else, she was aware of Fiyu carrying her and surrounding them in a soothing sphere of stealth. Nauda looked across the room and saw that Theo had also escaped Nifanos and gotten to a position for ranged attacks.
It looked like he was beginning his strategy of tunneling blasts again, but more cautiously. They followed him while hidden as he retreated back to the outer corridors toward the next floor. Nifanos pursued inexorably, ready for an attack from all sides.
"We cannot win like this." Fiyu's arm felt strong around Nauda's waist, but her head was sagging. "Not unless we can uncover a weakness."
"Stay and keep hiding me," Nauda said. "Let's see what we can learn from her blueprint."
Nifanos had an ordinary enough soulhome with only one floor of shielding wall, so it wasn't difficult for Nauda's telescope to look inside. Even at a glance, her Ethereal Floor was obvious: all her walls were made of white marble, but only her fourth floor was covered in pulsing green lines.
Inspecting it just made things worse. Nifanos was clearly experienced with this form, because she was only spending a tiny current of cantae maintaining it. Her flight, her normal attacks, and her defenses were all generated by her main soulhome. That left her with plenty of enriched cantae to keep delivering those devastating attacks. Theo was staying away from her by retreating up the spire, but that wouldn't be enough to wear her down.
"What about a single lethal attack?" Fiyu asked. "Her aura is strong, but if I got close..."
"Don't try it." Nauda pointed toward one of the chambers on the corner of the top floor. "That room looks like an emergency defense to me. She knows opponents will try to kill her before she can use her offensive power, so she has that set to explode when she's at risk."
"But... how many defensive chambers does she have? If we could threaten her twice...?"
"Maybe she'd be vulnerable then, but can you afford the risk?"
"I do not know if we can afford to keep fighting like this." Fiyu stared at the cantae flow in dismay. "She is too efficient, and will be able to continue at this pace for quite some time."
At that moment, Theo entered another challenge room and began using his tunneling technique again. Nifanos drew back slightly and watched his portals, ready to deflect any bolts he sent at her. Instead, the burning sublime beast plunged through. It opened all four jaws and tried to fry Nifanos at close range.
Nauda had hoped that she would see Nifanos expend her cantae in desperation, but she only vented some to deflect the worst of the attack. A moment later she unleashed another one of her devastating swaths of cantae, annihilating the sublime beast in an instant.
But that strike, despite its immense power, gave Nauda a flicker of hope. When it occurred, a significant quantity of cantae was expelled through one of the emerald windows. Nifanos couldn't afford to keep spending cantae on attacks like that, which explained all her other efficiencies.
"We need to bait her into using those more," Nauda said. Fiyu had observed the same thing and nodded her agreement.
While still hidden, Nauda began forming a thick swath of defensive wards across the floor. With her new armament around her neck, she thought they could survive one of those blasts, so the only issue was how to get Nifanos to target her. Nauda gestured for Fiyu to move away, then thrust her staff forward.
Her binding technique caught Nifanos in the back but couldn't really hold her in place. It did get her attention: she blurred away from Theo, dodging more of his bolts, and turned on Nauda. She noticed the wards immediately and raised a hand... and then narrowed her eyes.
Instead of using another blast, Nifanos moved directly into the wards. They crackled and tried to force her back, but her Authority-tier cantae melted them in front of her. Without wasting her precious Ethereal cantae, Nifanos was still destroying the barrier. As she pushed through, her hand getting closer and closer to Nauda, she began to grin. It was all Nauda could to do to keep her bound in place, even though it was useless.
Just as the hand broke through her wards and cantae formed to kill Nauda, the floor disappeared under her feet. She suddenly fell upwards, landing just beside Theo on the opposite side of the chamber. He grimaced and shook his head.
"I take it baiting attacks is the only way to drain her cantae? It was a good effort, but she's not dumb enough to waste her strength."
"What do we do now?" Nauda asked. Fiyu was firing from cover, trying to keep Nifanos distracted, but the retaliatory strikes came alarmingly quickly. At any moment, her injured body might appear and collapse to the ground.
"Either we get high enough to reach other fighters or we stall her long enough for Guchiro to arrive. If we can't, we're dead."
Chapter 47
Just when Theo thought he couldn't take any more, he felt Fiyu's stealth technique slip over him. Nifanos was still staring in his direction, so he used another portal to tunnel them across the room. Their opponent sensed their movement and looked around for only a moment before she flew up to block their path onward. She wasn't just using blasts, she was adapting to Fiyu's stealth by scattering sparks of her cantae around the room to track them.
Both of the others were in the technique with him. They'd all taken some injuries and they were definitely lower on cantae than at the start, but they still had resources. The question was whether they had enough to survive more engagements.
"Take this." Nauda pulled one of her manna and honey discs from her soulhome.
Theo took it without question and bit down. Immediately he felt foreign cantae flow through his body... and the pain of his wounds eased. The honey was rich in energy that his enhancement chambers immediately fed on, restoring him more rapidly than before. He saw that Nauda and Fiyu were each eating one themselves, significantly healing them.
"Well done, Nauda." He started to touch her arm, but she shook her head.
"That's all I have. Not for now, I mean for days and days. If we can't survive with this, we can't survive at all."
"That's enough that our injuries won't be slowing us down. We can try more ambitious strategies again."
Fiyu frowned as she stared at their opponent. "She cannot see me, but her tracking is getting better. I fear, with her speed..."
"Our best shot is to keep using the spire against her." Theo turned toward Fiyu. "I'm bad at differentiating these chambers, but is there anything useful nearby? Anything that's still working?"
"Oh!" Fiyu's face broke out into a smile. "The slope is nearby... but can we get her there?"
"You move around to the other side. I know she'll notice, but I'll distract her."
Neither of them liked that plan, but they didn't exactly have any safe options. Theo started to generate a singularity, then nodded for them to go. As soon as they ran around the opposite side of the spire, he closed his hands and tunneled the singularity directly into Nifanos.
She moved aside before it could manifest. It opened beside her, briefly sucking up some of her cantae before she snuffed it out. Theo immediately generated another partial singularity and this time sent it sailing toward her. Nifanos barely even tilted her body to dodge it and stared at him contemptuously.
"Those might be able to get through my aura eventually, but do you think I'll stand still and wait for that to happen?" She began floating toward him, her aura burning brighter. "You're a child, impressed with petty little ranks. I've been an Authority for over a decade, boy."
"If we're talking," Theo said, "can we discuss your accusations?"
"You think you can wait out my Ethereal Floor with babbling?" Nifanos sneered again. "Naive. I'm not interested in what minions of evil have to say."
"Wait, please consider my rebuttal..." Theo had been forming another singularity while they spoke and now teleported it into her face. Again, it only lasted a moment before she snuffed it out, but she snarled and swept after him.
Theo laughed, just to antagonize her, and began sprinting around the outer ring of the spire. He could vaguely feel that Nauda and Fiyu were in position, but he was still a little too far from them. It was all he could do to stay ahead of Nifanos.
No, more than he could do. He failed to dodge fast enough and one of her emerald blasts clipped his shoulder. Theo tumbled over the stone and scraped his way across the floor. His coat had broken apart, revealing burned skin all across his shoulder, which meant that its protective capacity was wearing thin. He'd gotten her to expend more of her Ethereal cantae, but she had more than enough to kill them all if her blasts connected.
