Chapter 14: Mocking Echoes
The once glorious city of Ostia had during the schismatic war been devastated. Situated upon several large flying islands, the city had seen several of those islands fall into the sea of mist below during that war. The attacking Megalomesembrian armada had attempted to counter the awesome magical powers of the royal family using wild magic. It had ended poorly. The very magic holding the islands up in the air had been torn to shreds and in a storm of explosions, fire, thunder and chaos the city had fallen apart, large parts of it vanishing into the sea of mists below. Only some of the islands had remained afloat, large parts of the city that nevertheless was savaged and ruined. Rebuilding had a painful and drawn out process, not the least due to the war that broke out not soon after Ostia's fall.
Yet thirty years after the city's fall, things were looking up for the city of light. Reconstruction had started already during the Megalomesembric occupation and for all their other faults, the Megalomesembrians had done a fine job. Most of the city had been rebuilt already before the occupation forces had surrendered to Vespertatia's royal army. Said surrender had spared the city further damage and now, seventeen years after the war ended, something unprecedented was going on.
Thousands upon thousands stood along the edges of the main island, watching out across the mists to the south the sun shone brilliantly over the city, Sol itself watching what was happening now. Several kilometres from the platform an entire armada of ships were slowly rising from the mists below, hovering in a ring around one of the fallen islands. Their hulls and the magical projectors mounted at the tips of the ships both gleamed in the sunlight like a band of burning pearls around the large, grey rock that slowly rose out of the sea misty seas below. It created a halo of lights keeping the fallen island afloat and from the other islands people watched with amazement, eager anticipation and excitement.
Slowly, slowly, the island rose up into the sky, dragged skywards by the dozens of ships around it and the blazing ring of magic energy they wove around the fallen island. Eventually they reached the apex of their ascent into the sky, the island coming to hover at the same height as the others. The ring of burning discs around it now flared. The light turned into a blindingly bright halo as the ships' magic generators blazed, making most of the people standing by the platform look away. A deep, humming sound accompanied the light, resounding through the people watching from the other islands. For several minutes the magic blazed, filling the world with lights and sound, it was immense in both aspects, none being able to look at it.
Then, it all came to a halt. The magic stopped blazing, vanishing as the light and sound instantly stopped to be. In the wake was left merely a void of silence and natural light, one that to the onlookers seemed so insufficient for a while. The world was sunken into a twilight landscape due to their eyes having struggled to adapt to the blazing light. Therefore, it took them a while to see clearly the isle that the ships had lifted into the air. The shining band of discs around it was gone and though the ships still hovered around it, the isle stayed afloat of its own power, having been reintegrated into the streams of magic running through the world here. Amazingly enough, the fallen isle was back where it belonged, high in the air above the sea of mists. The onlooking crowds exploded into wild cheers now, an overjoyed roar ascended towards the skies. All of Ostia cheered, hundreds and thousands of people filling the air with the sounds of happiness at the sight. And also, high above the islands, floating high above the imperial palace the mothership Takahata Takamichi gently hovered, a woman smiling at the sight from her position at the front of the bridge.
Her majesty Asuna looked at the sight, smiling as her hands covered her mouth. She hardly dared believe what she saw. The once torn-down island was now floating in the air again, that which so many had thought impossible had just happened! Her eyes misted up now, the storm of emotions being almost overwhelming. The people around her were working at glowing, ethereal control panels and holographic screens but not one of them had their full attention towards their job, instead they were as overjoyed as their queen. In the entire arch-shaped bridge over a hundred people worked, nearly all of them overjoyed bar one exception.
"Fate..." she begun, her voice breaking. A young boy standing close to her, seemingly only around fifteen but in truth much older, looked at her from his position diagonally behind her. Unlike the queen, who stood clothed in vibrant reds, oranges and purples, he wore only a plain white robe.
"Yes your majesty?" he asked, his voice steady and not betraying even one iota of emotion.
"Ask for anything right now, anything I can give you, and I will." the queen said with her voice quivering.
"I require nothing, your majesty." Fate said, bowing towards his mistress, "You know this well."
"What do you want then?" Asuna asked, looking back at him, stressing the word "want". "Please Fate, let me repay you somehow." she walked up to him, taking his hands in hers. "Thank you..." she said now, even closer to tears now. "I don't know how... thank you." she now broke all kinds of royal etiquette and embraced him. "Thank you." she whispered once again, her voice having broken as the tears ran down her face. Fate returned the embrace stiffly, these many years of serving the queen had only partially alleviated his coldness but his mistress did not mind.
This man – for she refused to see him as anything else – had found a way to restore the floating isles of her beloved city, she held him too dear to ever think anything bad of him for his cold demeanour. Letting go of him, she walked over to the window once again to look down at the floating island, the joy making her almost bounce as she moved. Seeing the isle and how the ships around it had started to break formation around it, moving away from it to let it float on its own, she gave up a small laugh of pure joy once more. Several of the crew members were busy watching the isle, sneaking in glances constantly towards their queen and the joy she showed. To all of them the sight of their queen's utter bliss of happiness was more precious than diamonds.
It was then that Asuna froze.
For one instant, everything turned dark, twisted, malevolent and just plain wrong. It came out of nowhere, like a tidal wave it washed over her, annihilating every last bit of happiness and only leaving pure horror and nausea in its wake. The isle below her shook, for one second it seemed as though it would fall and the ships that had been leaving it instantly acted and begun to turn towards it again to support it. The isle remained upright however, the queen didn't. Up in the ship, Asuna had sunken down to her knees. Her hands clutched at the railing as her body slumped forwards, her face staring at the floor, her eyes wide and face pale. She begun to sweat and her breathing became ragged, desperate.
"Your majesty!" Fate was at her side in an instant, kneeling by her side and coming up to look at her face. "what happened?" he asked, Asuna not answering.
"No..." she whispered hoarsely, "No...no...no, no, nonononono." she kept going, over and over again, faster and faster until she was hoarse.
"Your majesty!" Fate said again, more frantically, but his mistress did not answer. Fate didn't manage to reach her, she was lost to the world around her, the horror having torn her into its grip and devoured her whole. In the end, her hands had to be pried off the railing when healers arrived and took her off the ship. The crewmen were harshly ordered to silence by Fate, the man's face still unemotional but his eyes blazing with fury.
Inside the large military control room of the Vespertatian royal guard frantic work could be seen everywhere. The soldiers, chosen from the finest of the Vespertatian armed forces, ran back and forth as they worked to understand the strange phenomenon which for just a split-second had flared across all screens. In the orange and green lights from the holographic panels and screens they all struggled to understand and moreso track the source of the strange burst of magic which had suddenly blazed across the screens. It was to this sight that Fate Averruncus entered the room, looking around with his eyes blazing. The sight of their intense work did not soothe him, that was the wrong word to use right now. Yet, it still made his rage swell no more than it already had. The same was as true for the officer that instantly came up to him. Still, Fate was furious.
"Thirty-five minutes and forty-seven seconds ago an emission took place." Fate said, his voice cold as ice and as intense as a blazing wildfire. "I want to know its source and type, now." The officer nodded and motioned for Fate to come over towards one of the screens. By it, the man showed a large 3-D map of the world around them.
"We tracked the source of the emission down to the fallen isles." the man told Fate, showing him on the screen where he meant. A spot down amongst the fallen isles were blazing a bright red. "It is of a kind we've never seen before, blazed with an overwhelming power for a split-second, then it vanished."
"Send down teams to secure and seal off the area." Fate ordered.
"Already on it sir," the officer said, "A strike team is heading down towards it as we speak." He indicated a tiny white dot that was rapidly descending towards the area.
Meanwhile, down inside the large shuttle that was heading down into the mists below the city of Ostia the twenty heavily armed soldiers chosen to go down were grimly reading their weapons. These men were a far cry from the sometimes ramshackle soldiers of the resistance, they were the new model soldiers of the Vespertatian army, with firepower to equal and even surpass any other soldier in this world and the training and skill to bring it to bear with perfect accuracy. They were putting fully charged magazines into their guns, strapping their combat knives onto their left legs and pulling down their glowing goggles over their eyes. The first battle of these half-breed soldiers, one part magical and one part mundane, had earned them the name "shadow reapers" as they wiped out an entire pirate fleet in one bloody night through stealth, surprise and taking out one part of the fleet after another. The magical world would sooner or later comprehend them and compensate, yet as it was, they had no peer in this world amongst all the armies that existed. They were too alien, too powerful, and right now they were thirsty for the blood of whatever had caused the emission that sent their queen into an anxiety attack powerful enough to render her catatonic.
The large shuttle reached the ground soundlessly and in the instant the hatch opened the men were out of it, brandishing their guns and spreading out. With gritted teeth they advanced towards the position of the emission. The old maps of the city told them that right ahead the old library would lie, an ominous position for a strange emission to happen at. They didn't care, whoever had caused their queen, their great saviour, the messiah of the Vespertatian people, to suffer this attack of panic and sheer fear would bleed.
Yet, as they approached a massive figure became visible in the gloom that their goggles could only partially help clarify the identity of. It was huge, towering above them and the silhouette did not tell them much. When they approached and found out what it was their hearts froze at the sight. The men for a short while remained standing still, staring up at the incredible sight in front of them. Their communications crackled now, radio contact having pierced the thick fog around them and reached the unit.
"Strike team, report in." the command was succinct and snapped the commander of the team back to reality, however barely. The commander slowly reached up, his fingers touching the comm equipment to open the channel.
"This is strike team." he said absently. "We've found traces of the emission." it might have been the correct thing to say, but to call what he was seeing right now "traces" felt more than absurd, it was outright preposterous.
"Specify." the man on the other end said and the commander looked at what they had found for a while, trying to find the words. "Strike team, please respond!" the man on the other end said after a while. There was something frantic to his voice.
"You won't believe me..." the man said, looking up at what they had found. A dragon, an ancient such by any standards. It was huge, with teeth as long as their arms and with a wingspan like a cruiser. Also, it was stone-cold dead, pierced in dozens of places by what could only be described as a swarm of giant black spikes that had shot out of the ground in front of it. Blood streamed down the spikes still, covering the ground around it.
"Transmit an image." the commander heard mission command say and wordlessly obeyed, his goggles relaying the image of the killed beast up to the large room.
Up in the room, Fate took one look at the image before his construct heart froze. The man blinked, his face betraying his shock as the mouth fell open. This person, known to all of the soldiers around him as unflappable, ice cold and ever focused became dumbstruck and horrified. He stared at the screen, deaf to the officer's questions of what was wrong. After nearly ten seconds, one word came across his lips, inadvertently.
"Impossible..." he whispered, feeling for the first time in twenty years pure, unadulterated fear.
Fate watched the small piece of blood steel with a grim look on his face. Seated by his work desk in his private chamber, the servant of queen Asuna sat with hands clasped in front of his face as he stared down on the roughly one foot long piece that had been extracted from the spikes below. The area was sealed off and heavily guarded by forces fanatically loyal. They wouldn't speak of it, that wasn't the issue. The issue was what he saw in front of himself right now.
Touching the piece, he watched the light from the many sources around it bounce off it, clearly showing its matte surface and the dark, almost black, reddish-brown colour. It was blood steel, no doubt about it. In the wake of the battle of Mahora Megalomesembria, funders of the academy as they were, had gotten their hands on the blood steel left after Thanatos, eagerly hoarding the new and mysterious material. The financial crisis that came after they lost the enslaver war had forced them to scare up more money wherever they could find it. Selling the blood steel had been one of the ways they had tried to fill the gaping hole in their treasuries. And the world had rejoiced, running his fingers over it, he thought of how everyone from Ariadne to the Transcendent Guild had thrown themselves at the opportunity.
The material was a dream come true, powerful, strong and could be shaped reasonably easily. There had been an explosion of new, powerful technologies and artefacts based on this vile creation, the solidified blood of the fallen son of the thousand master. Yet, there was a set amount of it and the world had eaten through the amount that existed in a few years, much to Asuna's relief. She couldn't deal with the idea of using the remains of her dead... whatever he had been to her, like that. When it was used up she had hoped to never see it again.
Yet now, Asuna was still in the throes of the panic attack and even though she had mostly calmed down, she was nevertheless desperate for him to figure out what was going on. The reason? An emission of magical energies accompanied by the slaying of an elder dragon. And what had been left in its wake? Blood steel, tonnes of it.
It was impossible, nobody could created this. The entire magical world had tried to recreate it, nobody had succeeded, not even the utterly amoral Transcendent Guild who shied no means to advance their skill. Once again touching it, he channelled some power through it and felt it flare up. It terrified him, knowing well how powerful this material was and the skill of the fallen Negi, Thanatos. It was a lethal combination, a dark reaper walking this world. Many would have sought alternatives, hoping for other explanations, Fate didn't. Thanatos was back. The monster who, along with his master Malfeas, nearly had ended the world, was back. This appearance was a provocation, a spitwad to the face to make Asuna come after him. Thanatos was trying to lure the queen to track him down in a fit of fear and anger. The thought made him grit his teeth in anger, the twisted games of that fiend made him want to throw up with equal parts nausea and bile.
"No..." he whispered, taking the piece of blood steel in his hand and raising it. "You are not the piper this time Thanatos." Fate had already formulated a plan and fortunately, all the pieces were available for it to work, especially that one woman. Ironically a childhood friend of Negi Springfield, that woman was the foremost scryer in the world. If she found Thanatos' position, they could and would cut the head of that snake. Fate looked out through the window, narrowing his eyes as he looked towards the moon. In the light he could almost see the ministra he lost many years ago, both to his own mistake and the scars left in her soul by Thanatos. He never would have thought of it like that, but the chance at killing her tormentor made him happy.
Fortune favoured the bold. It was time to show boldness again.
Asuna sat in the large comfortable armchair, clothed in only a soft, warm bathrobe as she looked out of the giant window. The day outside was brilliant, the sun shining warmly and a gentle wind playing with the leaves of the trees. Birds flew through the air, chasing each other in seemingly wild games. Unlike them however, Asuna sat silently, sitting in the darkness of her room which only the light from outside illuminated, a light that was all too faint since the sun shone on the other end of the palace, leaving the entire side at which her window sat in the shade. It suited Asuna, she felt safer here where it felt like she couldn't be seen.
Having mostly recovered from the attack of sheer horror, the queen of Vespertatia never the less couldn't forget or ignore what had happened three days ago. Her people had been told it was just exhaustion that had struck, an explanation that many had swallowed as they knew how hard Asuna worked. But Asuna knew the truth... It one, painful and horrible second certainty had struck her, a strange feeling of knowing, without any doubt, that something very terrible had happened. She didn't know what it had been, but she knew it was true.
Somehow, in defiance of all common sense, Thanatos was back. The certainty had echoed through her entire body and she had been unable to doubt it even one iota. That possibility which had terrified her all these years had come true and Asuna didn't know what to do. She had struggled, all these years, with keeping her emotions under control. After the pitch-black hatred which had consumed her during the last parts of the enslaver war almost had led to the resurrection of Thanatos she had refused to let any anger, any fear or despair find a home in her. She had forced herself to remain serene and calm no matter what, hoping desperately that she could seal him away that way. With all that having fallen apart however, she was left shivering with fear and despair.
There was so much she didn't comprehend here, how could it even have happened? What was Thanatos, to come back from death over and over like this? What did he want now? And most of all, why did this wraith of the past have to come back once more? Asuna buried her face in her shaking hands, silently praying to sol that it would all be an evil dream. She didn't want to believe it, wanted it to be a misinterpretation of something else. But she couldn't believe that, not with the vile blood steel Thanatos had used suddenly present in such amounts. In the near two decades that had passed since her flight from Mahora and the terrible war that had followed she had managed to find some modicum of peace. While bereft of almost everyone she loved, with her people and nation devastated and struggling with her own darkness, she still could find some kind of serenity, at least some times. Slowly rebuilding her nation, Asuna had managed to find ways to smile again, genuinely, at every rebuilt town, every new born and free child and every success of her rebuilding nation. Vespertatia was battered, but not beaten, and every day had seemed to carry new possibilities. Until now...
Asuna was afraid, she was so afraid she didn't know what to do. Fate had left yesterday, saying he had a possible lead to check up on. Asuna wanted to trust him, she hadn't had any reason not to all these years, but some voice in the back of her head told her that Fate, for all his powers, had been enslaved by Thanatos many years ago and could just as well be that again. She refused to listen to that voice. If she didn't have Fate with her now, who did she have? Nagi? He was impossible to reach and only popped in occasionally, mostly being in some or other strange place nobody had ever heard of. Kurt? He had suffered a series of severe bouts of disease and nowadays was almost infirm physically. Ormgeirr? He and nearly two hundred of the bergafolk had renounced her and formed a terrorist group currently carrying on the "war" against Megalomesembria, in truth however they were simple fanatics and murderers, denounced by both her and the bergafolk council, the closest thing to a political entity the bergafolk had these days.
Yes... if Fate couldn't come up with something, nobody could.
"Your majesty..." a voice said behind her and Yuuto came up beside her. Her first servant and current majordomo of the royal palace had aged with little grace, he was nowadays a hunched-over, wrinkled figure who, when glanced from the side, seemed more like a pale, gnarled root than a person. Yet he still moved with speed and certainty and was just as sharp as always. She was grateful for him.
"Yuuto..." She begun. "Who am I?"
"You are my queen." he answered, the minute, almost imperceptible delay before he did so showing how surprised he was. "the saviour and messiah of Vespertatia."
"I fear..." she begun, silently having heard his words. "That what comes now might be the end of everything..."
"If it does, the people of Vespertatia will gladly march with you into oblivion." the servant said. "I do not exaggerate, you have earned their uttermost loyalty, few in this nation wouldn't sacrifice everything for you."
"But I don't want them to..." Asuna said, her voice cracking. Once again this damned loyalty. She knew she had it, and she hated it. She didn't want anyone else dying for her. Too many had died already and every death only made it hurt even more."
"Yet they do your majesty." the servant told her. "Because they know you will take good care of that trust."
"I will?" Asuna almost snorted. She couldn't believe that they thought that. What had she accomplished that hadn't been either directed, suggested or indeed achieved by the people around her? She was a figurehead, a well-meaning but clumsy and incompetent figure who kept a smiling facade and sucked up the glory belonging to better men.
"Yes." Yuuto said. "and if I may be so audacious, they will expect you to as well." Asuna sighed, burying her face once again in her hands. Expectations... demands? No, duty. Duty to those who had invested this trust in her. Asuna realized that it was business as usual. She was the leader, a decision had come to make and she had to make it. It was what she did, for the safety and prosperity of her people.
"Send a message to supreme commander Takeda." Asuna said after a short while. "tell him to start assembling a task force of our absolute best soldiers. Top secret. It's got to be mobile, stealthy and able to take out anything, with emphasis on anything." Asuna clasped her hands to make them stop shaking. She wasn't just Asuna anymore. She was queen Asuna. If Thanatos thought she'd be as easy as at Mahora to defeat he'd get the surprise of his life.
"As you command, your highness." Yuuto bowed to her and the gnarled man left quickly. Asuna looked out through the window. Beginning to summon up the old mental strength she had been forced to build up during the enslaver war, the queen of Vespertatia prepared herself once again for battle.
The two hundred men stood lined up in ten rows of twenty men each inside the large hangar of the royal palace The sight of them to many in the magical world would have been terrifying. Only twohundred men, but they were armed to the teeth in the very latest of the Vespertatian Royal Armouries' weapons systems and armours. Metal covered most of their bodies, not huge and bulky designs like the Megalomesembrian or Hellassi forces, but rather relatively sleek designs coloured a matted black with goggled helmets and built in backpack generators. Their assault rifles were short, stubby and had magazines heavy enough to belong on a machine gun. Grenades and swords were hanging from their belts and not one of them moved a single muscle. While this happened a grey-haired, one-eyed man was currently hobbling back and forth in front of the assembled soldiers. He wore a long black coat and the missing eye was covered by a black patch. They were the only people present, the hangar was empty other than that.
"You have all been selected because you are the best of the best." supreme commander Takeda said as he watched the assembled soldiers. "Amongst the thousands of soldiers in this nation, you're the toughest, the meanest and the most loyal. That's why you have been selected to carry out this mission, a secret mission on orders from her majesty herself! Her majesty will now give you the details personally." he finished, standing to the side as a red-haired woman in her thirties came up to the group, wearing a heavy armour, much like theirs but even more intricate and well made, a one-billion drachma system specifically tailored for her needs. The queen of Vespertatia stood proud and strong in front of them, a massive sword resting on her back. The soldiers snapped to attention at once, saluting the queen with sharp movements, a gesture the queen returned.
"Twenty years ago the world almost ended." queen Asuna said. "under the great academy of Mahora in the old world a monster which once had been Negi Springfield tried to give the demon god Malfeas a way into this world. It called itself Thanatos, heir to Thanata, and it was only barely that he was stopped that time. I thought I had killed him, but he's back now." Asuna said with a grim voice. None of the gathered soldiers said anything. "Before it's revealed to the rest of the world and causes a massive panic, we'll have to stop him once more." Asuna continued, "I won't lie to you men, I haven't picked you because you'll crush him easily, but because you're the only ones that can even threaten him, however little. Banishing him will be my job, he's a creature of magic and if I can get close to him, I can annihilate him." Asuna didn't tell them the truth, that she only thought she might be able to do so. In these twenty years she had become a very powerful fighter, Kurt had personally trained her in every aspect of his fencing style and it had been years since he had defeated her even once, even before his disease. It was all they could do. If only they could have reached Nagi... "Questions?" she asked now.
"Where is the target located?" one of the soldiers asked, Asuna nodding to herself.
"We don't know yet." she said, "Right now however, Fate Averruncus is on his way here with that information. He has visited one of the best scryers in the world to get said information. When we find out his current location we track him down and hit him with all we've got. Killing him is all that matters. If he survives, we are looking at a worst case scenario worthy of nightmares. Any other questions?" she continued, the men being silent now. Slowly nodding to herself, Asuna heard the sound of a small shuttle rapidly approaching the hangar. Looking out of it, she saw how the small vessel Fate used was drawing near. Right on time as always... Asuna loved that you could pretty much set the clock after Fate. The seemingly fifteen-year old boy that landed in front of the assembled group with practiced ease had once been an enemy, now he was her closest confidante.
Stepping out of the vehicle, Fate came up to her with his hood upturned and his sleeved tucked into each other to render him almost featureless. When he came up to her he leaned in to whisper in her ears the information he had managed to find, his voice soft. Asuna blinked when she heard his words, not having expected what he told her. A cold feeling settled in her guts but she gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. It was fitting in a way, no matter how much she felt sick at the thought.
"We head for Mahora." Asuna told Takeda, who nodded. Fate nodded and fell in beside Asuna as they saddled up, heading into the transport ships as the assembled soldiers did so as well. The small squadron of black dropships lifted off the ground, soundlessly, and shot out of the hangar at top speed. Already when they passed the edge of the hangar they vanished, activating their powerful cloaking fields. None would know about their departure, as decreed by her majesty, except for the small, inevitable, amount of personnel sworn to silence about the whole affair. Her majesty did not want the rest of the world to know about the horror that was lurking on the horizon, and Sol willing, they would be able to stop it before the world suffered.
It was telling of the capabilities of Vespertatia's dropships that even through they largely went through Vespertatia's own channels and could slip past the surveillance systems still were not discovered even once. A quick trek to the Vespertatian world gate, followed by the transport to the old world, went past with not one single suspicion. Well in the old world the dropships shot across the skies at immense speeds, nearly breaking the sound barrier and despite flying through British, French, German and even Russian territory none of these great powers could even notice a single hint of their passage through their respective air space. Not twenty four hours had passed when the ships shot across the Japanese lands having arrived from the north and now heading south towards the vicinity of Tokyo and the university city of Mahora. Like shadows they had passed through half the old world and now they closed in through the night like the reaper.
As they crossed over the Mahora lake the soldiers on the ships begun to get ready. They readied their magazines, filling them with special cartridges designed to annihilate magic of all kinds. Their goggles were fired up and stiffness worked out of their bodies. Asuna was sharpening her sword one last time. It wasn't her pactio artifact, but it was a good second place, an ancient and powerful blade of supposedly Atlantean origins, presented to her by the treasure hunters' guild ten years ago. She had considered it a grandiose gift only and had never expected to use it. It fit however, the blade seemed almost like it was made for her. What more, it was made to kill that which supposedly was unkillable. The Atlantean magic in it was strange, only partially understood, but it would suffice here.
"We're crossing in over the lake soon." the pilot said over the PA system. "Scans are picking up a powerful energy field over the academy. We won't get in undetected."
"Touch down at Library Island." Asuna said, "We'll get down into the catacombs from there We pass through without being noticed. I don't trust the academy to not have been infiltrated."
"Roger that your majesty." the pilot said as he led the squadron towards the small island that sat in the lake right outside the rest of the campus. A solitary pier going out from the isle became their landing spot. The five ships formed a ladder formation, letting the troops of the ships higher up use the ones below as a staircase to get down. In the night the pier was mostly empty, however there still were a few people on it. Two people more precisely, a pair of high school students currently occupied with making out. Said two lovebirds became unaware of how an entire company of elite soldiers dismounted only a few dozen meters from them, both the ships and the soldiers cloaked and moving soundlessly. The Vespertatians spread out, watching for any signs of activity. To each other they were fully visible, a quirk in the stealth system to not make them careless, and it meant that they had their guns raised and kept low profiles. Telepathy could be intercepted, which meant they used hand signals instead.
"Two people, forward, take down, silent, non-lethal." the captain of the company told his men with quiet signals, indicating the two high-schoolers and two of his men fell out from the main group, dashing towards the kids and the two lovers found themselves sent into a harmless but deep sleep within a second. The soldiers used their "sleepers", hand-held stun-guns meant for precisely these things, taking out people without violence, noise, light and, most importantly, without any deaths. They'd wake up in an hour, thinking they had fallen asleep. One of the soldiers took the time to arrange their bodies so the high-schoolers were in each others' arms, just to be sure. The rest of the company moved ahead, reaching the end of the pier where also the barrier began. Normally anything moving through here would be discovered. It was a powerful barrier, of Megalomesembric design. Few could ask for anything more than this barrier, but it did not stop the shadow reapers.
They deployed a series of instruments, small but potent, and soon they had put up a softly glowing gateway in front of the barrier. The soldiers rushed in through the gateway, another appearing only a few feet in front of them through which they exited, now on the other side of the barrier. Asuna led the group, remembering twenty years ago, the stupid response of her and the baka rangers to the threat of their current sense, Negi, having to leave the academy if they came last in the upcoming exams. Back then they had gone down into the catacombs looking for a book. This time they were looking for evil incarnate. The locked doors to the library was easily picked open and the troops could move into the library building.
Asuna didn't know what would happen but she knew it'd end here, one way or another. This small force wasn't all she had sent out. It was a lot, but she had one last ace up her sleeve. She'd rather die than let Thanatos return in force. She'd rather annihilate Mahora than let Thanatos come back. The Takahata Takamichi and half her fleet would be here within twenty four hours as well, carrying with itself enough doomsday weapons to render half of Japan a smouldering wasteland. If Thanatos was here, if Asuna fell against him, then within two days there would be nothing left of Mahora or the catacombs below it. A light and thunder show hopefully would scare away most of the people here, but if they stayed, they'd die along with Thanatos.
Asuna refused to take the chance. Gritting her teeth as she and the troopers moved through the library and towards the basement, she reiterated the truth to herself. Mahora was a regrettable, but acceptable sacrifice to stop Thanatos. Her life was the same as was all of Vespertatia, who most probably would fall apart if she vanished. Nothing, absolutely nothing, mattered more than to stop that monster. Mankind could be knocked back to the stone age, all but a few thousands of all living humans could die, it was still better than Thanatos winning. Asuna had seen what awaited the world under Thanatos' master Malfeas and Thanatos was as vile as his master. It would not come to pass, no matter the cost.
The path was clear in her mind, she had spent the entire journey with Fate helping her take those old, faint memories and sharpen them. They didn't retrace her steps however, Fate had managed to map out the route they had once used, she and her fellow students. That path did take them down into the library's deepest parts but it was the most roundabout path Fate had ever seen. Asuna wondered just how well the library club had mapped out the tunnels, from the looks of it it had been a patchwork at best.
Whatever, didn't matter, meant they could get to Thanatos quicker.
After only ten minutes they got out into the large chamber, perhaps fifty meters wide, that Asuna remembered as the place where they had met that strange shadow figure. It still looked the same, with the raised platform at one end of the room and the giant statues around it. Decades ago, that shadow figure had stood between the baka rangers and their prize and Asuna found herself wondering who that had been. There was a lot of strange things here... but who knew, as far as she knew it could have been anything, anyone. It could even have been Negi. The captain came up to her, a handheld instrument in his hand.
"There's nothing here." he said hoarsely, his voice had become a hoarse hiss at fourteen years of age when he nearly had the throat torn out by a Stenata, a pyrith rock hound. Despite that he had kept fighting, coming to serve under Ormgeirr as one of his chosen warriors and now in the Vespertatian shadow reapers. Captain Kaun was perhaps the single best soldier in her army and if he said there was nothing here, Asuna could take his word for it. "Below there's something big." he continued however, "It is off the scales and very malicious so it should be it."
"Good." Asuna said, feeling her guts turn in anticipation. "There's a trapdoor somewhere here. Find it, we'll descend through it." The captain saluted and motioned for his men to start looking. Asuna meanwhile, noticed Fate. His eyes were narrowed and his hands were clasped, almost in a praying motion. "Are you okay?" she came to ask him, worried by his behaviour. Fate usually didn't show emotions at all.
"I... am." he said eventually. His voice was thoughtful, but strained. "I will regain my focus your majesty, I merely feel... happy."
"Happy?" Asuna asked carefully, surprised by his reaction.
"Today is seventeen years, three months, two weeks and one day since Tsukuyomi died." Fate said. "I never thought the one responsible would come back, that I would be given a chance to kill him for what he did." Asuna looked at Fate, it was almost like a slap to the face, seeing that Fate held Tsukuyomi's death so close to heart, carried such resent... no such hatred, for Thanatos. She eventually put her hand on his shoulder, deciding to show her gratitude for him.
"When the time comes." she said as she leaned in beside him, "We'll fight together." Fate looked up at her, surprise in his eyes. Asuna nodded. "A magi-ministra combo, are you up for it?" she asked him.
"Amusing." Fate said after a second, "Ministra, follower, and a queen offers to be mine." he said it with what to Fate was a smile however and Asuna smirked in return.
"We be honoured and accept then." she said, giving him a light shove. A call from one of the soldiers made them both stop horsing around and look to the side. They saw the soldiers currently lifting a large stone plate out of its place in the floor, revealing a large hole beneath it. Asuna recognized it, it was in the right spot! Walking up to it, she looked down and saw the distant light of something far down there.
"It's there." Captain Kaun said, "The readings took a jump when you opened it." He spoke through gritted teeth.
"It's like Djavul itself is waiting down there." another soldier of bergafolk birth muttered, idly making a quick prayer movement. The others begun to move as well, readying their weapons as they awaited the command.
"He is." Asuna said, "Or rather, his successor. We go down. It's now or never." Exchanging one glance with Fate, she nodded and the two leaped into the hole, her soldiers following them. Asuna had, despite the countless other things that demanded her attention, taken a special pride in staying personally updated with the techniques her armed forces used so just like them, she put one foot and hand towards the wall, using magic to get a grip and managing to slide down it, just as soundlessly and without disturbing any of the dust that had formed on the wall. As the Opening far down came closer she, like the men above her, tightened the grip on the wall and came to a stop. Slapping her other hand and foot to it, she could move along the wall effortlessly and with quick moves she turned around upside down and crawled down towards the hole below.
She moved quickly, like her soldiers, and they came out of the hole in the ceiling of the giant chamber, moving almost like a swarm of human insects, spreading out with swiftness and perfectly synchronized speed. Someone had likened it to an appearing swarm of cockroaches, an analogy Asuna could buy. Cockroaches were nigh invulnerable and thrived anywhere, not bad qualities for her elite. Also cockroaches didn't carry weapons capable of delivering the most lethal storm of death available in the magical world. Asuna first now stopped before she turned her head to look down. The sight below her was as sickening as she remembered it. A dead wasteland, filled with black dust, rotting corpses and everything vile. She didn't want to think where these corpses had come from and while the soldiers moved out around her she spotted what she was looking for.
Thanatos evidently didn't have too much imagination, the very same giant symbol carved into the ground could be seen below. And inside it... he stood there. Some dark ritual was currently ongoing, Asuna could see him... see it.. Thanatos stood there, weaving some kind of dark ritual. Even from here she could clearly see him, too clearly. His grey robes, the mask was back on his face, in his every movement the man below him seethed of perfection and corruption both. It was like looking down at a sun, a despicable, tainted sun of pure evil. Her eyes narrowed and the hate spiked in her heart at the sight of him, of the most fundamentally wrong being in the world. Gritting her teeth, she made one sign and indicated Thanatos. The men all around her let go off the ceiling with their hands and came to stand upside down, taking their rifles from their holding places on the sides of their backpacks.
Then, Thanatos stopped chanting. Mid-syllable, he stopped and looked upwards, straight at Asuna. A split-second of wild fear hit her when Asuna realized that he saw them despite the cloaks. Thanatos knew they were there! Yet she forced it back, remembering who she was she turned off the stealth and gave one command.
"Kill!" she screamed just as Thanatos raised his hand. The next instant the entire ceiling where they stood were struck by a deluge of razor sharp needles formed from blood steel, the ceiling was massacred, became a pincushion as the needles did not leave one square centimetre untouched. Yet, not one of Asuna's men where heard. They had all leaped out of the way, currently raining down from the sky above him. Cocking their guns, they all aimed them perfectly at him and unleashed their own storm. The crack of thunder was deafening, echoed through the chamber as two hundred rifles with perfect accuracy unleashed their steady streams of enchanted bullets straight at Thanatos. The vile mage had only enough time to raise his shields before he was struck by the torrent of steel, blinding flashes exploding by the hundreds every second as the powerful magics tore into his tainted magic, a storm of magic enough to undo any mortal being. Yet it did not penetrate.
That was fine, Asuna didn't expect that to be enough.
She and Fate were the first ones to land and Asuna didn't even need to give the command before Fate was on his way, shooting with blinding speed towards where Thanatos stood. A second later he was upon him, weaving his most powerful spell and crashing a tidal wave of stone magic into the barriers, a swarm of stone spikes powerful enough to break any barrier there was. That was what they were meant for and they did the job. Not even Thanatos' shields, battered as they were ,could resist this onslaught and they came to collapse. Thanatos still was unhurt however, weaving another barrier instantly.
Worked for Asuna, it was as she planned it.
The queen was only one step behind Fate, her sword and entire body blazing with immense kanka energies. It all went into her blade, the ancient atlantean blade howling with anticipation as the blood of an immortal beckoned it. Her strike was perfect, ripping into the fledgling barrier which at full power would have been too much, and all her anti-magic and kanka flowed into it, forging two swift cuts through the air. It made short work of the barrier, impacting with Tanatos full force and the tainted mage simply could not react to her speed and power, beyond all but a handful of people in both worlds. Thanatos was sliced in pieces, his head split in two and his torso in four. The physical damage, as frightening as it was, was only a modicum of the spiritual. Thanatos' entire spiritual being was torn apart by two terrible forces, the god-slaying hunger of the blade as well as the endless void of Asuna's magic cancel.
It was the perfect attack, Thanatos had struck completely and his entire being unravelled behind Asuna, falling apart into nothingness. Yet, the very last instant before he was totally gone his voice echoed through the chamber.
"Had it been but me it would have been enough." Thanatos said, his voice amused. The next second, the world unravelled as well and Asuna fell. Everything was undone around her and she was thrown into a void, flung into it like a rag-doll before she understood what had happened. She fell, no, was propelled with soul-crushing force through a void and an endless sea of all-present omniscience, through an eternity of incomprehensible, inhuman and perfect in both purity and corruption.
She lost her mind temporarily, having it so overloaded that she felt all her presence slip away, reducing her to a vegetable unable to understand anything whatsoever. It was just so much, all her senses overwhelmed by everything wonderful and vile, everything toxic and pure. Then, after an eternity or a second she hit something. The ground? Perhaps, she couldn't fathom it at first. Lying still as her mind tried to unscramble itself. For how long she lay there, she didn't know, only that after some indeterminable time she finally could move. Slowly, slowly, her hands moved, getting up to where her head was. She pushed, trying to get up, and could eventually get to her knees. Her eyes were closed, the head-splitting headache in it rapidly receding, yet when she looked up she found herself once again dumbstruck and unable to think.
She had come to some kind of pit, one surrounded by ten foot high walls along which giant thrones stood, sixteen of them. The skies above were storm-torn, clouds dashing forth over her head a impossible speeds in a total silence. What she noticed most of all though was the figures in those chairs. Overwhelming was only the prologue to the endless epic that would be needed to describe these beings. They occupied her entire spectrum of senses, demanding every last bit of her attention and Asuna couldn't not give it. It wasn't their appearances, more like their sheer, endless presence. She tried to look at all of them, only managing to even look at four of them before she was unable to continue since she couldn't process more.
The first was a normal-seeming man, at least as normal as perfection could seem. Perfectly proportioned, body and face, black hair that ran backwards over his shoulders and a conservative robe upon which a golden scale was embroidered on. He sat with his cheek supported by his right arm, a quietly amused and almost contemplative look on his face. The second was a woman, forged out of embers, thunder, smoke and fire. She was lithe, almost childishly built and her only clothes were the smoke spiralling around her. Yet, her naked body carried not one mortal feature, instead smooth as porcelain. Her eyes blazed, in a face showing no emotions they were like staring into the primordial chaos of the dawn of time, total chaos and destruction. The third was humanoid and simply not there. Where he should have been there were only an endless abyss, a hole in all things in the outline of a man. Asuna couldn't look at it for too long, she felt like she would lose her soul if she did so. The last one was impossible to look clearly at as well, it seemed as if as soon as she focused on him her eyes slipped away and she could only glance him, a figure in flowing, dancing robes whose face was hidden in mist and darkness and where two eyes blazed in an azure light. The greatness reeked of them, telegraphing their sheer power with unbelievable intensity and Asuna could tell the rest were just as powerful.
A pounding movement became evident in all of reality and Asuna looked forwards, still mute and unable to think rationally. She saw three figures walk up to the platform, featureless robes adorning them and their hoods up so their face were obscured. Yet they were just as powerful in their presence as the others, more so even, and Asuna almost wanted to whimper as she felt it like she looked at something forbidden to her. The three figures raised their sleeves now, shadowy, wispy hands of smoke revealing themselves.
"The last of the witnesses have been summoned." one of them said, Asuna simply could not tell which of them. The voice came from everywhere and was neither male nor female yet it shook her to the core. "The conclave of the incarnae shall now commence." the voice continued. Asuna feeling how its presence turned towards her. Looking into the hood of the middlemost of the three beings standing above her, first now a thought could form in her mind.
"This... isn't good." Asuna realized how she trembled, being less than bacteria in front of these beings. The full attention of all these beings so infinitely above her was fixed on her, Asuna didn't even know if she could continue to breathe. Like a small, flickering candle, she was about to be absorbed by these raging solar infernos of presences. Whatever she had ended up in, it was bigger than anything ever had been before. She did not know what was going on, didn't even know if she could stay alive in face of this unreal, sheer, power.