Liam’s skull rattled with each slam against the ground. Growing fractures splintered across his visor with every blow.
Then came a different cracking sound—there was something else on the ground beneath his helmet. Sleet and ice spread across the bridge as it crystallized once more.
On his glitched UI, the temperature plummeted.
Cold air filtered into Liam’s visor. As frosty as it was, anything other than the heat was a godsend as he lay trapped beneath a human incinerator.
Despite the disorientation caused by Laurent’s assault, Liam took control of the cords and stopped the blows.
Above them, James climbed back over the edge of the bridge, followed by a rising storm of frigid mist. Ice spread and crystallized under his body as the silvery veins of his sentisuit glowed with a flood of last-ditch power—an aetherbreak. James must have activated it just in time to turn the wall into something he could grab and climb.
Laurent lunged for James with a snarl and roar. The tangle of cords binding Laurent slowed him down and only fueled his fury.
“Oh, you foolish little shit. You should’ve just fallen!”
Liam manipulated the cords to loop around the spikes of ice jutting up from the ground. The cords tightened and trapped the Eighth Pillar, who tugged and lashed out with plumes of fire.
Laurent roared, “No! You’ll burn for this!”
The ensnared fire exalt stood little chance against the wintery aetherbreak which descended upon him. Laurent’s lucidium was too depleted to burn through James’s ice.
The lucidium converter on the back of James’s suit roared to life with four massive bursts of lucidium exhaust. The sight of an exalt in an aetherbreak always reminded Liam of an angel with great, outstretched wings of light. Bold, shining rays and neon colors billowed from the lucidium converter.
With James’s lucidium output at its peak, the surrounding temperature plunged and snuffed out the Eighth Pillar’s flames.
Laurent screamed and thrashed against the cords, which Liam pulled tight to keep Laurent in submission.
James conjured another ice javelin. In a storm of lights and mist, he released the javelin upon Laurent. A wake of ice trailed behind like waves of a parted, frozen sea.
The javelin plunged through Laurent’s chest and silenced his screams. With a final, strangled gasp, the Eighth Pillar slumped back over the railing and plummeted.
* * *
EXP:+50,000 EXPEXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || RANK 7 → RANK 8|| LV.79 → LV. 81|| EXP: 1010029 || statsATK - 182 → 189 [+7]DEF - 229 → 232 [+3]AGI - 169 → 176 [+7]LUK - 113 → 118 [+5]EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || OKC: 14 → 15|| RANK 7→ RANK 8|| LV.78 → LV. 80|| EXP: 985321 || statsATK - 223 → 226 [+3]DEF - 167 → 171 [+4]AGI - 219 → 224 [+5]LUK - 236 → 238 [+2]
* * *
07 | Liminal Space
Liam slumped into the frosty slush beneath him. His head spun, still drunk on adrenaline and more emotions than he could name.
All that mattered was that James was alive.
“Victory awarded to Odonata Team 5. Officiated kill count to James Sterling adjusted to 15,” an automated voice chimed over the comms.
James’s footsteps crunched over ice as he approached Liam.
“You didn’t really think I’d go out without a bang, did you?” James teased.
Although Liam had closed his eyes to ease his dizziness, he could still sense the cocky grin on his brother’s face.
It must be nice to have zero sense of your own mortality.
“Don’t even talk to me right now, man. I thought you were dead. I thought I’d never fucking see you again.”
“Don’t get all misty-eyed.”
James offered support as Liam climbed to his feet.
The man who killed Jove was dead.
Liam’s stomach turned slightly when Jove crossed his mind. Jove’s two children back home in Euclid would never see their father again because of Laurent.
This kill was for them.
The expression on James’ face softened.
“We did it,” James said, as if on the same wavelength. “For Jove… for Lo and for Art.”
“I know.”
“Fuck that guy. Let’s keep going. We can’t stop now.”
The Spire of the Chevalier and the exalt’s gateway lay not far ahead of them.
“You think this whole tower is the Chevalier’s Trial?” James stared up at the massive spire. “How many floors do you think it has?”
“Fifty-one,” Liam answered. “I’ve read that most floors are for research. Sentisuit development, lucidium tech and whatnot. The Chevalier protects it all.”
“Protect it all…” James muttered with bitterness in his voice. “From other realms?”
“Anyone who may seek to weaponize this tech against Libelle. Invader or not…” Liam replied. “Chances are, there might not be anyone else left alive out there, anyway.”
It was disheartening to imagine that other realms around the world may have collapsed. Liam did not want to think of the human species as near extinct.
Reality, however, was as merciless as it was cold.
At one time, thirty-six lucidium-powered realms kept mankind safe from the frozen world beyond shimmering, translucent borders. Sixteen of those realms had collapsed since the beginning of the so-called Lucidium Age. Some crumbled under system or structural degradation. Others broke under the weight of civil unrest.
Realms were closed ecosystems. It only took a short few years of resource scarcity before a realm went to war with another out of desperation.
However, it was not only mere human nature which killed the fallen realms. The remains of humanity soon learned of another threat that wandered the wasteland.
After the fall of the sixteenth realm, humans witnessed and survived to tell the tale of the massive beasts hidden in the endless blizzard.
“Malefic & Oppositional Beasts”—mobs.
The beastly anomalies spawned from wells of unpurified lucidium bubbling up to the planet’s surface. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised anyone to discover this. After all, similar beasts spawned in certain parts of Libelle. The vast greenbelts and preserved forests between cities, a region referred to as the Field
