Free Web NovelChapter 46: Saga 46: The Cost
The first casualty was a Six Brigade captain, crushed beneath collapsing rubble while trying to shield fleeing civilians from a stray tendril strike that had sheared through an entire building’s support structure.
The second was an entire evacuation convoy caught in the open when the creature’s pressure wave rippled outward unpredictably, overturning carts and scattering panicked horses in every direction.
By the time Baldric arrived at the front lines himself, sword drawn despite his advancing years, the death toll had already climbed into the dozens, with more grim reports arriving from every corner of the burning capital by the minute.
"Fall back the civilians another half-mile," Baldric barked at his remaining officers, voice raw and ragged from shouting over the chaos for hours without pause. "I don’t care what it costs us in ground, get every last person out of the blast radius before it expands again!"
Adian fought at his side, magic tricks and theatrical flourishes abandoned entirely for something far more desperate and grim—crowd control spells stretched to their absolute limit, buying seconds that felt, in the moment, like they cost entire years off his life.
Above the battlefield, Sylvia and Kael pressed the creature’s attention relentlessly while Claire’s wards strained audibly, cracks spreading across the interlocking hex-pattern like ice under far too much weight, the sound like glass grinding against glass.
"It’s adapting!" Claire shouted, blood trickling steadily from her nose now from the sheer strain of maintaining the containment. "Every attack we land, it learns from, adjusts to! It’s going to break through the boundary entirely if we don’t change tactics!"
Harriden, exhausted from cutting down wave after endless wave of mutated beasts pouring from every shadow, dropped to one knee, his shadow doubles flickering unstably at the edges. "I’m running dry. Can’t sustain many more clones."
"We all are," Yuki said grimly, reloading his revolver with the very last of his charged rounds, hands shaking slightly from exhaustion.
Kael felt it too—the mounting, crushing weight of a fight that simply had too much mass behind it, too much ancient malice accumulated over three thousand years to be worn down through simple attrition alone, no matter how hard any of them fought.
[Kael. I have an idea. You’re not going to like it, but I don’t see another option left on the table.]
’At this point I’ll take absolutely anything you’ve got.’
[Black Hole can create localized gravity wells, as you already know. If I recalibrate the output significantly, I can turn it into something that doesn’t just pull objects inward—it collapses space itself, briefly, violently. Enough to trap that thing in a pocket dimension. Permanently, if we’re lucky. Very unlucky for you specifically, if we’re not.]
’Define unlucky, exactly. Give me the worst case.’
[It could also just... eat you. Along with the entire surrounding city block, possibly more depending on how the collapse propagates.]
Kael weighed the risk for only a fraction of a second, the sounds of battle raging around him, Claire’s wards straining audibly, Harriden gasping on one knee, Yuki reloading with hands that had started to shake from exhaustion. There simply wasn’t another option left on the table, however dangerous this one happened to be.
Kael looked at Sylvia, exhausted but still fighting with everything she had, at Claire’s straining wards on the verge of total collapse, at the burning capital stretching out beneath them in every direction, and made his decision in the space of a single, unhesitating heartbeat.
"Do it. Whatever it takes."
[Locking in the recalibration now. This is going to feel deeply unpleasant. Possibly the worst thing you’ve felt since the Heart of Ouroboros. Brace yourself.]
’Just do it before I change my mind.’
Space around Kael’s palm began to shimmer and warp, the air itself growing thick, resistant, like trying to move through water instead of open sky. Sweat broke out across his forehead instantly as the strain hit him, every nerve screaming in protest at the sheer scale of what he was attempting to summon into being.
"Whatever you’re doing," Sylvia called down, ducking beneath a swinging tendril of corrupted flesh, "you’d better hurry! It’s starting to notice you specifically!"
She wasn’t wrong. The creature’s attention had shifted, sensing the growing distortion in the air near Kael, some primal survival instinct recognizing the danger even before the spell fully manifested.
It turned, slowly, deliberately, toward him, obsidian limbs already gathering for a strike meant to end the threat before it could fully take shape.
"Not happening," Kael muttered, forcing more mana into the gathering well despite every instinct telling him to stop, to pull back, to protect himself first. "Not tonight. Not while any of you are still standing here with me."
The creature’s obsidian limb swung toward him in a strike meant to end things decisively, but Sylvia intercepted it at the last possible instant, blade meeting flesh in a shower of sparks and shattered stone, her whole body shuddering from the impact but holding firm.
"FOCUS ON THE SPELL!" she shouted, straining against the creature’s overwhelming strength. "I’ll hold it off as long as I can, just finish what you started!"
"Sylvia, you can’t hold that alone—"
"I don’t have a choice, and neither do you! FINISH IT!"
Kael forced himself to look away, back toward the gathering gravity well, every fiber of his being screaming to abandon the spell and help her instead. But he knew, with sick certainty, that stopping now would doom them both regardless, the creature’s full attention already locked onto the threat he represented.
Claire, watching from below with her last reserves of mana keeping the perimeter wards from collapsing entirely, screamed something incoherent with warning as the creature redirected another strike toward Sylvia’s exposed flank.
"Almost there," Kael muttered through gritted teeth, sweat streaming down his face, every muscle burning with the effort of maintaining the spell’s delicate structure. "Just a few more seconds. Hold on, Sylvia. Just hold on a few more seconds."
The gravity well pulsed, brightening, the air around it growing thick enough to taste, metallic and charged, as the final calculations locked into place.
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End of Chapter—
