“Here we are,” I said, staring down the headquarters. It was a formidable building, I had to give them that.

“This has to be the tallest building in the town, right?” Kyle was fooling around with his knife again, causing it to disappear and reappear with a few flicks of his wrist. Was that a nervous tic?

“Probably,” I said, craning my head up. “I would believe it.”

If it wasn’t this building, then one of the other Church headquarters probably qualified. Finding this place had been far easier than I’d expected—after confirming where it was on the map, we’d been able to visually locate it pretty easily. I didn’t know how it had passed through my notice during our sweep of the city. Maybe I’d just been too focused on the mission at the time…

This place was huge. It had to stretch up at least fifty meters, near doubling the size of the smaller branch we’d fought through earlier. Spires pierced the sky here and there and stained glass windows punctuated the white marble of the branch’s building, producing a sensation of majesty. It brought to mind images of the royal castle, as if they were issuing a challenge to the Crown’s authority.

They may very well have been. Developments had been rapidfire and had occurred in a rather brief period of time, but it didn’t seem like they were exactly jumping at the bit to support the noble cause, at least.

“It certainly sends a message,” Kyle said.

“It does,” I agreed. “Let’s send them one of our own.”

The doors to this branch were locked as shut as the last ones had been. There had actually been guards in front of this one, but Kyle had taken them down in a matter of instants. Whoever the best of the best were for the Church, they were likely inside or elsewhere. Their external guards were as helpless against the jester’s bushel of effects as an everyday commoner walking down the street.

I formed unstructured magic lazily, enjoying the smooth flow of my oath and the sensation of that magic coming from the divine nothingness that Inome was composed of. With a gesture, I ordered it to strike at the door—

And I found the door a little more resistant than I had thought it would be.

“It’s warded,” the jester added, maybe a moment too late. “Probably against spells and physical attacks.”

“Got it,” I said, focusing more on the magic I assembled this time. “I’ll get it.”

If there was one thing I was allergic to, it was this bullshit kind of order. Barriers and boundaries and everything that just wanted to get in my fucking way and keep me from progressing.

No matter. I’d been raised inside those constraints, and just as I had torn those down then, I would ruin any of them in my way today.

This time, I put focus into it, forcing it to bend to my will. If viewed sideways through a dirty glass, one could interpret it as putting an exceptionally rough frame onto my magic.

I didn’t know if this was classified as a spell, but it felt right. There was something in my way, and it needed to be gone.

Off of practiced instinct, I sparked it, using the same spark I might for a magic missile. That didn’t feel quite right, just a little off like I’d been trying to write with the wrong hand, but it worked. My magic blasted forth, a sphere of pure darkness wider across than my head was, and when it made contact with the door, the wood flared bright gold.

No runes will save your proprety today. The darkness ate the gold, reducing it to the nothingness from whence it came. A moment later, the door followed, now sporting a brand new gaping hole in its middle.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Not a moment off tempo, Kyle sprinted towards the doors and leaped, slamming them open with one mighty diving kick.

Just like that, we were off.

The insides of this branch of the Church made this place seem even more like a castle than the previous place. Come to think of it, I was pretty sure the foyers in the royal castle had been decorated the same as the one in this place. That was a little unusual, wasn’t it?

If I averted my eyes and ignored a smattering of Church regalia on a few of the walls, I could well and truly believe that I was inside a noble’s household right now.

What did that say about the Church? I wasn’t stupid. Nobles weren’t shit humans just because they were nobles—it was the imbalance of power and wealth that enabled their base impulses that made them shit. I’d thought that I could identify with the Church’s current mission, with their crusade to bring down their nobility, but looking around, I was growing to believe that doing so would replace one shitty group with another.

“Two sides of the same coin,” Kyle said as if he was reading my thoughts.

Wait, was he? I glanced at him, doing my best to convey vague suspicion through my eyes.

“I’m not reading your thoughts,” the jester sighed. “I just turned my perception up, and I’m naturally decent at cold reading.”

“You’re right,” I said, ignoring the second line. “Where’s the line drawn? What’s the difference between one shitty indoctrination and the other?”

“I believe,” the jester said dryly, “That the garment that one places on their head changes.”

I snorted.

Ahead of us, there were people—servants, I was pretty sure. They hadn’t noticed us yet, it looked like, but that was probably because of the entire fucking orchestra that they had in this place. At least, that was what it sounded like.

“This a meeting or a social event?” I whispered. “I swear, this is louder than the godsdamned royal ball.”

“Looks like they’re celebrating something,” Kyle said grimly. “I’d like to find out what that is.”

He flicked his wrist again, a card flying into his hand.

“New magic delivery method?”

“Kind of. You’ll see.”

“That’s helpful.”

“Come on. There’s not going to be much more time until some fucker glances over and—“

He had to say it, didn’t he? Even as he spoke, one of the servants that was busying themself pushing a cart of some kind around turned towards us==purely by chance, I was pretty sure—and made eye contact with me.

I put a finger to my lips, but it was already too late. Maybe there hadn’t even been a chance. We’d seen enough proof that the Church was willing to use mental compulsions.

The servant turned towards the massive double doors at the end of the entrance hall, the place where the music had been coming from, and shouted something inside.

“Fuck, they noticed,” I grunted. “Time to get going, I’d say.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Kyle said.

“How are we feeling about killing these ones?” I asked. “They’re supposed to be leaders, right? Masterminds?”

“They jury is still out on that one,” Kyle said dryly, summoning a sphere to prepare for battle. “If you want my honest opinion, it is that we should generally try to avoid killing, but we should not actively shy away from it if it comes down to them or us.”

“Makes sense,” I said. A week ago, I would’ve definitely just said that the correct play here was to disregard the lives of those we were against. After all, they were fighting me. At one point, that would’ve been enough for their lives to be forfeit.

Now, though, it warranted a second thought. It was almost scary how much a single day of forced self-relection had begun to influence my views in battle, but that was an issue best left for when I actually had time to self-reflect.

Together, Kyle and I stepped forward into the next room, the servants clearing out of our path after a single glance at our magic.

This hall was somehow even larger than the one we’d seen in the previous establishment. It made sense, given that this was supposed to be one of the Church’s headquarters, but the sheer scale of it boggled the mind. It was almost as large as the great hall might be in a noble’s house or even, potentially the royal castle itself, and what it lacked in general opulence it more than made up for with religious fervor.

From the ground to the ceiling, it was stocked full of paintings, reliefs, and statues. On the ceiling above the main chapel, maybe a whole forty meters off the ground, there was a massive circular window with the Church’s concentric circle logo emblazoned onto it, letting light filter in to the chapel itself rather than having to deal with solely internal illumination.

As we got our fill of the view, the nobles—er, clergy—were mobilizing. Even as people started shouting and pointing at us, there were a certain subset of the Church officials that were being protected and taken away. I didn’t bother trying to fire a spell at them. I knew it wouldn’t have worked, and besides, none of them had started to fire on us.

“This is going to be a pain,” I muttered. If my senses served me right, the room was practically full of oathholders.

On further examination, the room was kind of arranged like it was meant for large meetings. Three huge circular tables arranged in a triangle formation took up most of the space on the ground, and it looked like there’d been a podium for a speaker. Despite the religious decorations, it felt curiously like a noble’s receiving room and much less of an actual chapel than the last branch had been.

They’d been gathered for some reason, but it didn’t look like we were going to get that explained anytime soon.

“That’s a lot of enemies,” Kyle said, cocking his head. “Engagement might not be the best play.”

“A little late,” I said.

A moment later, someone activated their oath, and the ground beneath us erupted.

“Tsau oath!” I called, casting a shield beneath my feet as quickly as I could. Kyle did the same, our combined efforts keeping us on our feet and

Fuck, this was bad. I’d dealt with one-against-many situations plenty of times before. Had dealt with it just last night, in fact. This, though, this was different. In past times, I’d been easily able to isolate one-on-one fights, but this wasn’t exactly a situation where I could do that.

Moreover—

The hair on the back of my neck raised, and I ducked, the primal urge to run coursing through me.

I dropped not a moment too soon, a blazing blue spear of light arcing straight through the air where I’d been.

“Fucking hell, that would’ve killed me,” I said.

“This might warrant taking the kid gloves off,” the jester replied, an Adaptive Wall cast directly in front of him. “Just a hunch.”

“Yeah.”

The second reason why this was so much of a change was because of who we were up against. Before, I’d had fights against several decently levelled oathholders at the same time, but I’d never been against so many powerful ones. They radiated magic strong as any oathholder I’d seen—if not quite on the level of Lasi, their classes were certainly higher than mine, at least. I’d gotten stronger with time and experience and Inome offered unnaturally strong powers, but against all of these people, all at once?

Holding back was suicide.

My oath kicked into overdrive, the part of me that connected to my god realizing that I needed all the help I could get. I cast another simple shield, holding no illusions that it was going to actually protect me for long, and started working on a larger spell. I didn’t have access to much that was more powerful than a magic missile, but I could tinker with the structure.

Beside me, Kyle triggered his spheres, three of them flying out from behind his wall of force, gaining color, and—

And then they failed. Not a single one of them made it all the way to the clergy, shot out of the air by a colorless distortion. I couldn’t tell which person that blast had come from, but it said a lot about the level of those that we were up against that they could just casually do that.

What the hell was this power disparity? The first branch we’d been to had been barely able to scratch either one of us with their full manpower, and now we were up against at least two dozen oathholders, each of them strong enough to be a professor at Yaguan.

Somewhere in the distance, I thought I could feel someone’s [ANTICIPATION].

A spell smashed through my shield, destroying it instantly, and I reacted instinctively, lashing out with both the overcharged magic missile I’d built up and my unstructured magic.

Darkness met light and neither emerged.

Shit, that was both my offenses and defenses gone in one swoop. I reestablished a shield pretty easily, but it was getting clear that that wasn’t going to be enough.

“Can we retreat?” I asked. Not a question I would normally ask, but circumstances kind of necessitated it.

Kyle glanced behind us, then looked back, shaking his head. “Pinned in.”

I glanced back as well. We’d entered through an arch large enough to drive a carriage through, and it was entirely walled off now. Shimmering walls of force layered upon each other stretched from floor to ceiling. Not an Adaptive Wall. Prismatic Barrier? Whatever the case, it was something that had far too much power invested in it for me to casually break.

“Fuck,” I said. “Can you do anything about it?”

“Given some time and support, yes.”

An array of spells flashed towards us as one, flashing bright as they hit Kyle’s wall of force and went straight through it, and I hit the ground again. It was a bad move to make, but I couldn’t afford to try blocking it again. All I could do was hope that our enemies didn’t retain enough control over their spells to hit me when I was down.

“How do they even know to attack us?” I started forming magic again as I spoke, rolling to a kneeling position to give myself more room to move.

“Information travels fast. Faster with oaths.”

I didn’t bother with a proper frame this time, instead settling on just sending a mass of unstructured magic in a single blast.

The air warped again, and this time I could track it back and see where it was coming from.

At the back of the room, there was a white-haired man who looked old enough to have been around since before the continental war. He hadn’t even gotten up from his seat.

With a flick of his hand, my ruin dissipated into nothingness.

Who the hell are you?

Some of the oathholders nearest us were growing more confident, and I could see in their posture that they were getting ready to run towards us. Timed to go with the next volley of attacks, maybe?

“I can devote some of my attention to the wall,” Kyle said, holding up the card he’d showed me earlier. “As well as some to shielding us.”

“No attacks, then,” I said, filling in the blanks.

“None. You’ll have to handle it.”

There had to be a better way to handle this situation than that, but that was the best we had for now. I nodded, leaving him to start casting. As I looked away from him to face the next wave of his enemies, I saw his card start glowing.

Huh. A unique tool of some kind? Had he copied an Aedi oath’s inspiration?

I could ask about that after this fight. If there even was an after this fight.

Even though I was still maintaining my own shield, the bulk of the magic aimed at us had been absorbed by Kyle’s wall. He’d had to put up another one after the first mass volley had managed to smash through it, but this one was holding up better. It looked like the frequency of spells being tossed at us had decreased despite no decrease in the number of oathholders.

At the far end of the room, armored soldiers began to filter in at a brisk pace, already sprinting towards us.

“See what a heretic’s oath gets you!” someone shouted. I ignored her, looking towards the old man instead.

He was the biggest threat in this room, I was pretty sure. The others had impressive offenses, sure, but it was him that had completely removed our magic as a weapon against the gathered oathholders.

And he looked back, meeting my eyes from across the room. Slowly, he shook his head.

The hell was that supposed to mean?

“Too weak to hold up against our magic, too weak to even fight back the devoted yet to be Chosen!” the same woman shouted.

Oh. Was that what it was? They wanted to prove their superiority over us so bad that they were intentionally weakening their attack?

Kind of a stupid play, but I would take what I could get.

Only six soldiers. They were vastly outnumbered by the oathholders, and as far as I could tell they didn’t have oaths of their own. That didn’t mean that they were non-threats, far from it—their armor could be Aedi oath-made, after all, and swords were still swords no matter how powerful you were—but I was definitely a lot less concerned with them than I was with the oathholders.

Behind me, Kyle was still casting towards the wall, a waterfall of different colors and effects hitting it. It was having some effect, I was pretty sure, but definitely not enough to get us out of here quickly enough.

And then the soldiers were on me, and I had more important things to worry about.