Exploration (Welcome to the Multiverse Book 10), page 67
The blow hit me across more than one axis of existence. Space folded inward while time lagged a fraction behind it, and the two met inside my chest like colliding tectonic plates. I felt ribs shatter in three different moments at once, felt my organs try to occupy the same space, and then the sky was gone.
I tore through the air like a meteor, the city rushing up to meet me in a blur of stone and flame. The impact was deafening, then immediately silent, sound crushed flat by the violence of it. The ground erupted beneath me as I hit, a shockwave rippling outward and pulverizing whatever buildings still stood, flinging debris in every direction. When I finally stopped moving, I was embedded at the center of a crater that looked like a god had punched the city.
For a moment, I couldn’t tell if I was alive. My senses came back in pieces, the smell of burning wood and scorched stone, the copper tang of blood filling my mouth, the ringing silence that followed something too loud to process. My body screamed in protest as pain flooded in all at once, every nerve lighting up like it wanted to be heard. I forced myself to breathe anyway, dragging air into lungs that didn’t want to function.
I didn’t give myself time to assess the damage. I cast Celestial Restoration on instinct, and the spell’s healing power poured through me. The healing was more painful than the damage. Bones ground back into place, torn muscle stretched and knit together, and internal bleeding sealed under the relentless insistence of healing magic. Thankfully, the spell worked fast, and fast was all that mattered when injured as badly as I was. Looking up from the bottom of the crater, I could tell our side was losing the fight. They needed me up there.
I hauled myself upright and staggered out of the crater, boots crunching over rubble that had once been homes and shops. Fires burned in broken lines where lantern oil had spilled, and smoke hung low, mixing with dust until the air felt thick and heavy. Screams echoed somewhere distant, muted and confused, but the immediate area was eerily empty. Kalix’s strike had not been subtle.
That was when I saw Lexa.
She lay half-buried beneath shattered stone, her massive wooden form cracked and splintered, bark peeled back to reveal glowing veins that flickered erratically. The life that usually pulsed through her was stuttering, surging, and collapsing in uneven waves. Void-aligned residue crawled across her like frost, eating away at the structure of her being. Whatever had been done to her was unraveling her existence.
I was beside her in a heartbeat, hands already glowing as I poured Celestial Restoration into her. The magic hit resistance immediately, sliding off portions of the damage as if it couldn’t find purchase. Where it did take hold, it repaired surface fractures, only for deeper instability to worsen, the Void influence of whatever was ailing her twisting and corrupting the magic I was pouring in. I pushed harder, teeth clenched, but the spell simply could not reverse what had been done. That was a first. It could undo curses and even death itself in the right circumstances, but this was too much for it.
Panic clawed at my chest, sharp and unwelcome. This wasn’t something I could fix with more power or better technique. Lexa wasn’t dying in the way living things died, and she wasn’t injured in the way my magic understood injury. The Void had disrupted something fundamental in her, something that defined her existence rather than damaged it.
Then the pull hit me.
It was a pressure behind my sternum, a tug that came from the same place my awareness of the Ways now lived. I felt pathways and potential intersecting, then saw an opening that did not exist a moment before. My new role was offering an option, quiet and dangerous. A Seed.
My hands shook as I realized what it meant. Planting a Seed of the Ways was intervention on a scale I had never attempted before—an act that could alter Lexa permanently or destroy what remained of her. There was no certainty, no promise of success, only the knowledge that doing nothing would end the same way.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I didn’t know who the apology was for.
I formed the Seed with intent rather than spellwork, shaping it out of ambient potential. It felt heavier than it should have, dense with possibility and consequence. I pressed my hand against the ruined center of Lexa’s chest and guided the Seed inward, feeling resistance give way as it anchored itself into the damaged core of her being. The moment it took hold, something deep and vast stirred, then went quiet again.
Your current potentiality has fallen, but your maximum has grown.
+4%/5.92%
Nothing happened. It had drained more than a full percentage of my potentiality, and it still hadn’t worked. I was confused. This was what I was meant to do, I knew it.
There was no burst of light, no surge of power, no immediate change I could point to and say I’d done the right thing. Lexa’s condition did not improve, but it didn’t worsen either. The Void residue hesitated, its spread slowing just enough to matter. That was all the reassurance I was going to get.
The air above me cracked with thunder as another exchange shook the sky. Kalix was still up there, still fighting, and every second I stayed grounded was a second the battle tilted further out of our favor. I took one last look at Lexa, committing her position to memory, then launched myself back into the air, wings of force and space snapping into place beneath me.
As the ground fell away and the battle rushed back into view, doubt and guilt rode with me like unwanted passengers. I didn’t know if I had saved Lexa or doomed her, and I wouldn’t know until it was too late to change anything. All I could do now was finish the fight that had put her there in the first place.
I felt it as I climbed, a violent lurch in the fabric of space that had nothing to do with Kalix. It was raw and unbalanced, like a knot being torn apart instead of untied. The pressure I’d been half-aware of since the battle began ruptured all at once, and a wave of energy rolled outward hard enough to blur my vision. Tad had finally broken through the sphere.
A scream made it clear that there was a backlash for the sphere’s creator. Rathmar’s agony was apparent. Whatever control he’d been exerting collapsed in an instant, his concentration shattering as his own defenses failed him. I felt his presence flicker, then destabilize completely.
Decimus didn’t hesitate.
The demon moved with brutal, feral efficiency, all pretense stripped away the moment the opening appeared. He was grievously wounded from attacks made by the fey mage, but that wasn’t enough to stop him when he smelled blood in the water. One massive claw closed around Rathmar’s head while the other tore through his chest as if there’d been something tasty on the other side—which, as it turned out, there was. The motion was swift and final, ending with Rathmar’s head in the dust and his soul ripped free in a stream of pale, writhing light.
Decimus consumed it in a single motion, dragging both soul and Vitae into his mouth like he feared it might escape. Power detonated outward from him, violent and uncontrolled, and I felt his presence spike like a reactor going critical. His form convulsed and he began to grow, muscle and bone warping as something ancient and hungry asserted itself. The air around him screamed under the strain.
He screamed at the sky. “Yes! I shall be restored! What was stolen shall be returned!”
I knew this wasn’t a good thing, but I already had one big problem. Hopefully, Tad’s control of Decimus would remain in place. Now I had a job to do, and I had a good idea of what that job would entail.
I rejoined the fight in a rush of displaced air, the pressure of Kalix’s aura slamming into me the moment I crossed back into his reach. The sky around us was torn and scorched, clouds shredded into spirals by forces that didn’t care about weather or physics. Selena and Samvek were no longer moving through the battlefield, but their signatures were still present, if dim. The relief of knowing they were alive barely cut through the fear clawing at my chest. They were down, and that meant there wouldn’t be another rotation or fallback if this went wrong.
Azuria was still there, massive and furious, her wings beating thunder into the air as she tore at Kalix with teeth and claws bright with lightning. Each strike landed with enough force to shatter mountains, and for once he couldn’t simply ignore it. I realized that I might have underestimated just how much a dragon’s bulk empowered them. She could take hits that would kill me or Samvek and keep right on going.
Urg moved with her, not striking directly so much as shaping the space around Kalix, pressing him into angles he didn’t want to occupy and denying him the freedom he’d relied on since the fight began. Together they were pinning him, not winning, but forcing him to spend effort just to exist where he wanted to.
Kalix was fading, but it was the slow kind of fading that still killed people. His aura flickered and stuttered, his already weak control now ragged at the edges. His movements had lost some of their impossible precision. But even wounded, he warped attacks aside with contemptuous ease and lashed out with blows that landed across multiple instants at once. He was still an ascendant, and the gap hadn’t vanished, only narrowed enough for me to see how wide it truly was.
He turned his attention to me as I closed, eyes burning with cold certainty. “You struggle against inevitability,” he said, voice carrying even through the chaos. “Ascendance is not power you can steal or imitate. It is what remains when all limits are cast aside, and the hand of the Lawgiver lifts you up.” The words weren’t shouted, and that made them worse, because he believed them with absolute conviction.
Something in me hardened then. I stopped thinking about what this would cost me later and stopped measuring what I had left. I let go of restraint and committed fully, drawing on everything I was and everything I was becoming, regardless of the consequences. If this ended me, at least it would end with me standing my ground. A part of me knew that this wasn’t even really my fight, but I couldn’t stand to turn my back on a friend.
I surged forward into the storm of his presence, no longer trying to survive him, but determined to end him.
Urg acted before I could close the distance, but it was less about physical movement and more a surge of power, with an aura I was unfamiliar with. But that wasn’t entirely accurate. The best way to describe it was like an extension of the astral plane, emanating from him like a fire radiates heat.
I understood it now. This was Astral Ideation, and it unfolded like a pressure wave that didn’t touch the air at all, only Kalix’s mind. It bent perception and certainty, not by brute force but by reframing what he believed possible, and for the first time, his control truly faltered. Kalix roared in fury, the sound tearing across multiple layers of reality at once, and he spat the words like poison. “That should be impossible.”
It wasn’t enough to break him, but it was enough to tilt him. That alone showed how much more powerful Urg had become, and perhaps it explained the dramatic boosts to Mind and Will I saw on my stat sheet. Once again, Urg had known what I needed from him before I had.
I took the opening without hesitation, triggering Blip and letting the world skip. In that gifted second, I leaned fully into The Majesty of Space. Reality folded around me and I split into three true spatial instances, bound by intent and timing. Each of us struck across a two-second span, offset just enough that Kalix couldn’t anchor his defense to a single moment.
The first blow carved through his aura and drew blood, bright and incandescent as it spilled into the air. The second cracked the black-and-gold armor across his chest, fractures spiderwebbing out from the sunburst like the symbol was finally failing its purpose. The third hit with everything I had left, driving him backward and down as his certainty collapsed under the weight of being struck where he should not have been vulnerable.
Kalix fell.
He smashed into Decimus mid-descent, the impact detonating the air around them in a concussive shock that rippled out across the city. The demon howled as ascendant mass slammed into him, and the collision tore through buildings and streets alike, stone and fire erupting upward in a violent bloom. I felt the backlash even from my spot in the sky, and knew that whatever Decimus was becoming, this was not part of his plan.
I followed them down, heart hammering, power burning, and doubt clawing at the edges of my focus. Kalix was injured and falling, but he wasn’t finished, and neither was this fight. The ground rushed up to meet us, and I braced myself for whatever came next, knowing there was no turning back now.
Everyone was gathering around. Fara stood next to Tad, who seemed dazed. Kalix and Decimus were tangled up into a mess of misplaced righteousness and unholy fury, culminating in a multi-dimensional grappling match. Selena, Samvek, and Urg soon reached my side. Without even thinking about it, I multi-cast Celestial Restoration, bringing everyone back to health.
They were ripping into each other while the rest of us took turns sweeping in for attacks that cut or injured one or both. From what I could tell, Kalix’s aura was at the breaking point. Whatever Decimus had taken from the void fey had pushed him to the edge of ascension, so he was trying desperately to siphon away any Vitae he could get from Kalix. I didn’t want the ascendant to survive, but I also didn’t want to bet that Tad’s hold on Decimus would continue if he ascended to become a full demon prince again.
I decided to risk my trick again. “Urg… hit Kalix with Astral Ideation again, and hold him as best you can. I think I can finish him. The rest of you, strike Decimus with everything you’ve got.”
We were all professionals here, so there was no need for more instruction than that. Azuria dove, the impact of her body carrying the force of a cruise missile. It blasted them apart with so much energy that Urg and I had to raise force constructs to protect everyone.
Decimus was hit by multiple spells and weapons at once. When he stumbled backward, a sharp voice from under him said, “Say hello to Ballbuster!” Then from the ground, right beneath his legs, Violet let go with everything her weapon had, blasting straight upward. Who woulda thunk it? Apparently even demons had soft spots.
Once again, I turned everything I had on Kalix. He was barely holding it together, and I had to take advantage of that before he could regain his composure.
Urg blasted him across every spectrum he could reach, physically binding him, trapping him in space and unleashing Astral Ideation on him repeatedly. The ascendant groaned and shrieked as his own mind turned against him.
This was it—the moment where he wouldn’t be able to respond. I shot forward as quickly as I could and touched him with both my hands and my aura. Then I activated Self-Propagation.
Normally it would have been suicidal to expose myself like that to an ascendant, since he could simply rewrite me, but in this case he was an ascendant in title only. His power was broken, and I intended to make it stay that way.
As my identity spread through the cracks in his aura, those cracks ruptured even further, until the ascendant became a mortal man for a single second. That was enough for Urg to behead him, ending the threat. The backlash struck me hard, since I had partially fused into him. That one moment might have shown me a path forward to ascension, but this wasn’t the time to think on it.
I found myself lying on my back staring up at the sky with Urg cradling my head. Decimus. The thought struck me like a physical blow, but as I sat up, I saw the rest of the team standing back from the fallen demon. Samvek alone squatted over what I was now certain was a corpse.
I felt it then, through our connection. Hunger had triggered, and he’d consumed the Vitae out of Decimus. But the demon had been on the cusp of ascension, and it was a lot—perhaps too much—for Samvek to take in. His eyes turned yellow as Talia approached him. “Mine!” he growled, swatting at her with a furry paw. Then he, too, fell unconscious atop the dead demon. Talia rushed to his side, followed by Azuria.
I looked around. The devastation in the city was near total, but somehow, we’d won. There were a lot of boxes that remained unchecked, but I’d take the win.
As always, that was when the notifications appeared.
You have defeated an ascendant, and an elder demon. Your share of the XP raises you to level 280.
I pushed that one aside. It was important, but there were others that I needed to see and I was already exhausted.
You have completed your quest to remove all members of the Order from Basetown.
Queen Simari grants you access to the quests of the Fey System. Seeing your potential, you are granted the Creator of Fate class. This is the equivalent of a legendary class. It starts at level one, but can be leveled through the creation of items, situations, and the advancement of allies.
You will gain 100 free stat points with each level gained. This is not subject to the titles of the Heavens system.
I was about to read more about what being a Creator of Fate entailed, but something in the back of my mind screamed as I felt the dimensional barrier around Aerth rip wide open. Tad and I each called out a single word.
“Father!”
“Ryan!”
Chapter Seventy-Six: Across the Void
I heard Ryan’s call for help in my head, quickly realizing it was a message he’d managed to send across the Void. It was simple, but the need was profound. He’d helped defend Earth. Without him and his people, the Malfon would have overwhelmed my home planet. He’d helped again at the Battle for Galen. Now he needed my help.
A part of me wondered how much aid I could give to my ascendant blood-brother, but then I looked over at Kalix’s beheaded corpse. There was always a way forward, and as even my new class indicated, perhaps the thing that was most important about me was the way that fate seemed to dance around me. I worried that someday the bill for that would come due and I wouldn’t be able to pay it, but I didn’t have time for anxiety.
Before I could get to the message, I needed to check on Samvek, then figure out a way to cross the Void to the Divided Realms. Although, truthfully, I already knew how to do that. Spirit Walk would allow me to do it, but I wasn’t sure about taking others along for the ride. The solution loomed over me, spouting smoke from her nostrils. With Samvek’s blessing, I could convince Azuria to carry us all.
