85

A Prayer

Rian lost sight of the battlefield. Machine gun fire swarmed past him, streams of golden tracer rounds. There were six, seven jets—maybe more—screaming through the air, firing dozens of missiles at Yindra’s tower and everything nearby. Explosions like miniature suns, starburst novas, erupted throughout the sky.

Mom, Yindra, Altrexis, Yatagara, Corvis—Rian had lost track of everyone amid the chaos. He headed for the ground, descending feet-first.

No, he thought in despair, if Mom loses line of sight to Yindra—

Then he saw what was happening below.

Like he’d seen before in the raid against Nostdal, the gates of Hell had opened: an unending horde of Miracian creatures was surging across the ground. A nightmarish tidal wave of monstrous beings, thousands of hands, limbs, claws reaching forward as they climbed over one another, trampled each other, writhing like they were in agony. They’d already reached the military base in the distance. Soldiers, tanks, artillery—everything was being overrun. Flashes of gunfire and artillery sparked amid the waves of flesh and limbs before sputtering out like extinguished flames.

Rian couldn’t spot Tsenira anywhere in the tsunami of hellspawn. He could still sense her presence along with the rest of the Loyalists, but he couldn’t pinpoint any of them. Just because his Perception was high didn’t mean he could sort through the endless amount of information that was bombarding his senses.

He gripped his fists. He could still do it: all he had to do was get into position with Fast Travel, use Breath of Goam with Mirage: Piercing Wave, and with one punch he would destroy everything Tsenira had spawned.

But as he was about to cast Fast Travel, portals of darkness cracked the air. Eyeless demons, gigantic bats and hawks that were quadruple the size of normal creatures crawled forth from Purgatory to unfurl their wings and take to the skies.

A greater roar filled Rian’s ears as another jet approached, and he slowed his descent, watching to ascertain its trajectory. Something black shot across the gray metal wingspan. A flicker of light.

The jet split in two as Altrexis appeared beyond it, holding his katana with both hands, trailing an afterimage. The jet exploded behind him, just another detonation among dozens of others.

All around Rian, more jets engulfed in flames careened to the ground in pieces, leaving trails of smoke like meteors breaking up in the atmosphere. The swarm of flying creatures blotted the sky, enormous hawks plucking the jets out of the air with their talons, sparks spraying, shredding metal. The pilots ejected only to enter the jaws of gigantic four-winged bats which crunched down on them, ejection seat and all.

Rian retreated until he was out of the battle’s midst. He saw his mom off in the distance, flying to get away from several hawks that had broken off from the main swarm. One by one, the creatures vaporized from the center outward as if an invisible drill had spiraled through them, spraying their innards and flesh out behind them.

When Rian looked closer, all Mom was doing was turning her gaze toward the creatures.

A new sound caught Rian’s attention: not the roar of a jet but the rapid alternations of a propeller. Even further out from the battle was a helicopter—not a military one, but a news helicopter by the look of it. They had to be so far out from any cities that it only could’ve been one that happened to be nearby. There was even a man aiming a shoulder-mounted camera, hanging halfway out of the helicopter and gawking as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Then Rian felt it.

The temperature dropped like the sun had suddenly gone out. He looked to the sky. An expanding sphere of darkness had formed under the portal.

Rian swallowed, gazing up. It was Yindra. She was manipulating space-time not just to curve it, but to completely stop all light around her from traveling outward. It was like a black hole had opened in the sky. There was no way Mom could see through something like that.

There was no stopping it now.

The creatures in the air and those nearer to the tower suddenly vaporized—their feathers, fur, and skin peeling back, bones igniting with blue flame through melting flesh. A thousand cries filled the world, a cacophony of dying beasts. Wisps of souls emerged from skeletal husks as they burned. Even Rian felt it: the pull as temporal energy began to flow out of him and toward the dark sphere.

The only thing that had saved him was that he was further away from Yindra than most. He could physically feel it: all of his stats dipping lower as he floated on the outskirts of a tremendous field of negative energy, tugging on his soul like spiritual gravity. At the very least, he was still far away enough from it to take no damage.

The skies had gone empty. Rian didn’t see the Loyalists anywhere, but he could still sense Yindra’s presence behind the darkness. And as thousands of souls surged into the black sphere around her, everything nearby began to freeze over. Below her, a sheet of ice twenty feet thick instantly grew down the inverted tower until it reached the ground. The clouds themselves coalesced into icicles the size of mountains and began to fall. They burrowed into the tundra for miles like blue spires of arcane power sapping the land of any heat that remained.

Rian evaded the falling ice as he flew, hurrying over to his mom.

“Rian,” she called out, horrified. “I can…”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“A call is going out from that base,” she said. “I can hear it.”

Aside from an increasingly menacing hum that was growing from the black sphere, he wasn’t picking up much else.

“I don’t hear anything,” he said. He listened closely, then gazed off at the distant air base. The remaining creatures had climbed over everything, half the buildings destroyed. But a radio tower remained.

“Your Perception isn’t as strong as mine,” Mom said. “But it’s…they’re going to call in an air strike on the tower’s location.”

“Do we need to leave?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Mom said. “They’re not just going to bomb the area again. If they can’t contain her, they’re going to launch ballistic missiles and destroy everything. Everything.”

“What? But Canada doesn’t have any nukes!”

“The call’s not going to the CAF. It’s going out to the United States.”

His blood went cold. The totality of the danger they were in felt like the sky was caving in on him.

But it almost seemed like their only choice, the only way to stop Yindra: somehow get her locked inside of Mom’s gaze again until the missiles came, and then they’d all go down together. A flash of light and it would be over. At least it would be instant.

He looked up at the sphere of darkness. It was steadily growing. The amount of energy Yindra was gathering was unlike anything Rian had ever seen, but he had a feeling that he simply couldn’t comprehend the scale of power involved.

How likely was it that a literal goddess from another universe could survive a nuclear blast? Rian was beginning to suspect that Yindra was preparing for that exact scenario. She was pulling all this energy to protect herself. And on the other side of the coin, Rian couldn’t imagine surviving even if he were to flee at top speed right now. He doubted it would be a low-yield warhead if both Canada and the US understood how much of a threat Yindra was.

And if they all died here, would they come back to life in Miriad, or would they be gone forever? They were on the other side of the portal. If souls were real in Miriad, then…

Oh god, Rian thought, wanting to laugh at the insanity of it all, how did I go from playing what I thought was a VR game to fusing with an alien and getting nuked by the US? What the actual hell is going on?

Rian took note of the battlefield again, looking for information. He supposed Yindra was preparing to block the incoming nuclear strike, but it didn’t seem like she was mounting a form of defense.

“Really?” Yindra said. “You think I’m scared of a little fire magic? The only thing that could’ve stopped me was the Godslayer. And now he’s dead—thanks to you.”

Another harrowing thought nearly stopped Rian. What had been keeping people from bringing their Vessels—and fragments of the System—from Miriad back to Earth? Could his dad have crossed the Bridge with his Vessel and brought his godlike admin abilities with him?

It didn’t seem likely. He’d seen it, earlier: the System was ingrained into the fabric of Miriad’s universe. The only reason Rian still had access to the System, he supposed, was that he was tethered to Miriad in some way, being near the portal. If he went any further out, he’d lose access to the System. He’d keep the attributes of his body but would lose access to things like class skills.

Yindra could’ve fled already and started wreaking havoc across the Earth. But she was staying here for some reason.

Focus, he told himself. There has to be an answer here. What do I have left?

He opened his inventory. The Breath of Goam vial was still there. The last meaningful item he had.

He held it in his hands, closed his eyes, and brought it close to his chest.

Please. I’m just not strong enough. There has to be something I can—

His eyes shot open.

He looked to the sky.

The portal was still there, engulfed in darkness. More clouds had gathered at the edge of Yindra’s reach, where the extent of her gravity spell ended. The clouds weren’t just spiraling around them now—they had formed a cylindrical wall that towered for miles above. It was like they were standing inside the eye of a hurricane.

At the same time Rian looked up, he felt Yindra’s demeanor change. He couldn’t physically perceive her, but he could still sense the presence of her soul. Likewise, her Perception was certainly as high as Mom’s, if not even higher. And the thought paralyzed Rian: he couldn’t hide anything from Yindra.

Not even his plans were safe in his mind.

But Yindra’s reaction told him all he needed to know. She had changed her target. Now she was focused on the portal above her. She had stayed here to vie for control of it because she’d known how much of a threat Rian would be if he had unhindered access to the temporal energy on the other side of the portal.

Rian was on the right track. He knew it would work.

Goam, he prayed. Lend me your strength.