[Severed Divinity] 68. Cosmovault

Isen only had one blade on him—the Shard of Erasmus.

Not yet, he thought. Not for this.

As he appeared behind the nearest assassin, he used the momentum from the rapid dash to empower a jab, throwing all his weight into the movement. At the same time, he grabbed the arrow nocked to the string and stabbed it into the woman’s hand, barely managing to penetrate. But the arrow had been energized with a nasty green glow, and that now seeped into its creator.

Nails tempered by the light of Legacy tore through the cloaking fabric and the metal gorget beneath. He knew it wasn’t enough when the cultivator immediately began to shift and turn his way, reaching for a blade at her belt with her off hand while hurling the bow around like a makeshift staff, its wickedly spiked end thrust toward his head.

Isen’s hand was already on her blade’s hilt. There was no logical way he could’ve known where the shortsword was hidden in her magic fabric’s folds, but he had known anyway. He pulled her own blade from the sheath and sent as much energy as he could through his body’s meridians.

With the armor over her neck already ruined, the blade tore through her throat, stopped only by her tempered body’s natural constitution. Her bow’s path wavered, but still struck, the sharpened end spearing Isen’s shoulder, leaving only a thin gash. She released the weapon and pressed her hand to her throat. It was eerie, seeing the masked woman—her face completely obscured—choking in such a way, soundless aside from the click of her armored hand on the gorget.

Isen swept her feet. She still had enough presence of mind to sidestep the attack, and her other hand jabbed toward Isen, covered in caustic green energy, having released its grip on the bow.

Isen pushed off the ground and narrowly avoided it. At the same time, he used his right hand to snatch the bow along with the arrow that had fallen from the woman’s injured hand, the one currently pressed to her throat.

His left hand threw the sword at her eye. It was a poor throwing implement, too long and heavy, but Isen was used to throwing the Shard of Erasmus, which had a similar length. What really mattered was range.

The woman was so, very close.

She convulsed on the ground as the sword protruded from her skull, having sunk deep into the socket.

The woman’s companion had turned to train his bow on Isen. He’d already shot one arrow, which had missed when Isen had dodged around the woman’s caustic jab and stolen her bow.

Isen wasn’t deluded. He’d done well against the tier two drayavin in Shevenar, but had the sense that they were cannon fodder, far from elite warriors. These Aranite assassins were trained and deadly, likely at the peak of tier two. Isen had only succeeded against the woman because he’d ambushed her.

He wasn’t at all confident in triumphing over the man.

Already, another arrow was coming Isen’s way, too fast for him to dodge. He shifted his body just so and the arrow plunged into his ribs, deflecting off the tempered bone. The arrow hadn’t been ordinary, though—it pulsed with a horrific energy that circulated through his flesh. It almost seemed to hurt more than just his body. He could swear it was scouring his meridians.

He couldn’t run—the man would just shoot him in the back before he reached cover. After seeing Julra in action, he had no confidence in evading a skilled marksman’s aim, even in the dark.

Instead, he channeled energy to the meridians in his legs. He didn’t get the chance to invoke shadow step before the assassin jolted in place, a trio of needles stabbing the back of his head. They didn’t kill him, unable to pierce through the helmet beneath the mask and his tempered skull, but they messed up his shot.

Isen halted the nascent technique. Now that the shadow cultivators had entered the fray, not only was the energy expenditure wasteful and unnecessary, but it would cause complications if Welco’s cultivators noticed him using Femera clan techniques.

He ducked into the rocks and held back a whimper as his hand pressed to his side, slick with blood. The pain was fading with every beat of his heart, but in its wake was an eerie deadening of sensation. He was unsure if the pain was lessening because the effect was wearing off, or because he was losing the ability to perceive it. The latter terrified him.

Steeling himself, he jumped out from the rocks and ran for the assassin woman’s corpse. With a schwick, the sword pulled free from her skull. He grabbed a handful of arrows from the quiver as the bow bounced on his back, hooked over his uninjured shoulder.

He pulled the bow from his arm and moved to nock it. Before he could let the arrow fly, the male shadow cultivator dealt a decisive blow, and the Aranite assassin collapsed to the ground.

He and Isen locked eyes—or rather, Isen stared at the dark smear of energy where the man’s shadow cloaked face was, and the shadow cultivator stared at Isen’s shrouded facade.

By unspoken agreement, they approached the engagement between the tier threes. Isen lingered behind as the male cultivator joined his companion. Supporting one another, they walked into the confluence of killing intent.

Isen trained the stolen bow on the fight, not that he thought his arrows could help. He watched with growing trepidation as the shadow cultivators drew closer. With a start, he realized it was more than just trepidation—it was the sixth sense telling him to leave.

Jorin, Kelsina, he thought, all but convinced of their identities, please, don’t die.

He raced to the safety of the rocks. He looked back and saw Kelsina retrieve a small object from her clothes; it almost looked like a simple stone from afar. A torrent of shadow energy formed around it, though it was dwarfed by the nexus of energy swirling all around. Jorin pressed one hand to it, lending his strength, while his other hand stretched before him, shadow energy flickering over his fingers, ready to defend them from any stray attacks.

And still, they were ignored, the tier three fight reaching a fever pitch.

Even when Kelsina and Jorin lost their strength in the ensuing seconds, slumping to the ground as shadows roiled around the stone, none of the tier threes reacted.

Then, suddenly...

Darkness.

Shadows.

Shadows bubbled up and formed into countless puppets that swarmed the Aranites. That was their cue to disengage, and the tier three duo disappeared without a trace. But they reappeared a moment later, wreathed in dogpiling shadows. They silently cut through, barely dodging as the drayavin woman’s assault continued in full force.

“What is he...” Lumina’s thoughts trailed off.

With the shadows harrying the tier threes, the drayavin woman finally landed a decisive blow, tearing open one of the assassins’ chest. The wound looked grievous, but Isen knew tier threes could take lots of punishment.

If that had been it, perhaps the cultivator would have rallied. Isen watched as the man held a hand to his mouth, a pill manifesting magically between his fingers as the mask’s fabric parted to reveal his lips. Isen had never seen a healing pill at work, but he’d heard the kinds of miracles they could produce.

Shadow puppets swarmed him. Small ones, like mice, that scampered into his sundered chest and feasted, others invading his mouth. The man writhed, muffled howls inaudible given the deafening clamor from the water and the continuing fight between the drayavin and the other assassin.

The shadow mice ate into the man’s flesh as though he were merely mortal. Isen knew he’d be hard pressed to leave more than a faint scratch on the core consolidation stage cultivator. The mice clearly had ferocious power behind their diminutive teeth and claws.

The dying cultivator’s companion, the young man with the hawk-like nose, tried to save him. Through the torn mask, Isen saw traces of desperate fear—concern. Green miasma and a powerful aura spilled out. The shadows bubbled, but remained coherent. As the cultivator swept the injured man off the ground, caustic energy seared away the shadows.

Isen jumped in place as the drayavin’s tail speared through the young man’s back.

He jerked forward, blood pooling on his lips, and rasped something indistinct. Because of the ruined mask, he wasn’t silenced.

Suddenly, the most potent killing intent yet sprung from him. Isen instinctively cowered, hands trembling. Energy billowed off the Aranite, saturating Isen’s energy perception. It swirled and built and bulged...

It was unstable.

Celavee recoiled in visible horror, her tail melting away within the man’s body. She tore it free and squirmed back—

Only to be stopped by a wall of solid shadow.

Shadow wasn’t a naturally physical aspect. It wouldn’t hold like earth or ice. But for a critical moment, it stopped the drayavin woman’s retreat.

The Aranite’s energy exploded. It was clearly a self-destructive, all-or-nothing, suicide technique. The caster died on the spot, the energy consuming him, devouring those lively green eyes. He’d tossed away the other cultivator, sparing him from the same fate, though he now appeared to be unconscious.

Celavee’s body was consumed by a horrible misty acid that seeped into her eyes, lungs and clammy skin. She shrieked until her cries became a ragged garble, her gray-tinged blood spilling everywhere. After she collapsed and fell forward, her body continued to disintegrate.

That was when Isen noticed the shadowy dome cast over the two unconscious Femera cultivators. A figure stepped from the dome as though walking from a shadowed portal. He wore a cloak that shone darker than black, murky and indistinct in the extreme, and paced slowly to Celavee’s still twitching corpse. Small shadow puppets swarmed the woman’s body like ants, even entering her mangled orifices. Meanwhile, a different group of puppets attended to the still-alive Aranite tier three who lay bleeding out in a boneless heap.

Taking in the scene, Isen could hardly breathe. Just like that, three tier threes—nearly peak existences on the surface—were dead, or nearly so.

“I underestimated Femera’s ambition,” Lumina noted. “I presume you did not predict this?”

Isen nearly gaped at the question. He was intelligent—not omniscient. “I did not.”

Suddenly, one of the shadows emerged from Celavee’s ruined eye socket with a golden orb the size of a fist. Its putty-like hands tried to tug the orb through the too-small socket. Welco tsked and the shade split apart, pushing the skull in opposite directions. After a few seconds, the skull cracked, and the orb fit through the enlarged aperture.

Welco received it, wiped it with a spare cloth, and rolled it between his pale hands.

“What is that?” Isen asked.

“A cosmovault,” Lumina replied. “Extraordinarily rare.” He heard bitterness in her mental voice, and he didn’t think it was because the artifact was valuable.

Something lay within it that she wanted. No, needed.

After pocketing the ball, Welco’s shadows seemed to... slip into the unconscious Aranite, controlling him like a puppet. As the shadow dome fell, the Femera tier two cultivators rose, though something about the motion was off, unnatural. They also seemed to be under Welco Femera’s control.

“Does he know I’m here?” Isen asked her.

“It seems unlikely—he was only summoned here later by a short-range shadow call, after you had already hid yourself. His clansmen would remember you, but they’re not in a state to speak.”

“Then... I guess I should go back.”

“You should.”

He waited until Welco departed with his three puppeted subjects. They appeared to slip into the shadows, disappearing into the night.

“If you retrieve that cosmovault from Welco and get it to me or Allezin, I will be in your debt,” Lumina said. “The favor of a tier four is worth more than you can imagine.”

“If I can do it... A favor,” Isen said, “and one of your prototypes—the kind that will work on me.”

She didn’t hesitate in answering. “That is acceptable. On you... it might not even be a waste.”

“And also—”

“Greedy,” she interjected, though not coldly.

“—something to heal my injuries. If I return like this...”

“Ah.” She pondered for a moment. “Return to the habitable part of the lower level. I will guide you to someone who can help. I would move as quickly as you are able—the falls are loud, but a fight between tier threes is assuredly louder.”