Lady Fairynor was a mortal. Perril had recently advanced to Nascent Heart, but compared to the strength of the tower, she would struggle alone.

  So would Ash. It would help to have these two with him, if only a little. But he would need healing.

  They both cast him a nod.

  He placed his hand on the door, slotting his fingers into a crack of black, oily grout, then delivered a puff of Aes. The gate rippled then faded away, shimmering out of existence and revealing a mist-filled hallway.

  He stepped in, turning his shoulder forward. It was like passing through an atmosphere gate of a starship’s hangar. With a pop, he passed through the film, and Lady Fairynor and Perril were just behind him.

  “It’s just mist, aye?” Perril asked. “You’re not seeing things I’m not?”

  Ash extended his senses out in a broad arc. Nothing in the hallway.

  “We must keep moving,” he said.

  Although the Citadel tower looked thin and spindly from the sky, it was a different story when they were inside it, traversing it on foot. At its base, it was a half mile across, and the hallway only cut halfway through it.

  When they reached the end of the hallway, they passed through another thin sheet of mist. Ash turned his shoulder forward, pushing through the barrier, and it popped around him just like the first one.

  The mist ended in an abrupt wall, depositing him in a room filled with white pillars and a marble floor. At the very end, a rectangular gateway nearly three times his height stood upright, filled with light. It was gold and sepia, but when Ash squinted, he could make out a forest on the other side.

  It was the next level of the tower.

  “Here we go,” he muttered. He drew his Whistling Blade and held the sliver of amber out to the side, then marched down the aisle at the the center of the pillars. The tower had challenges every floor.

  There were nearly a hundred floors to ascend before reaching the top. For a moment, he allowed himself to hope that the first floor wouldn’t have any challenge. That he could just walk to the gateway and begin ascending.

  Then a deep, stone-y crack echoed through the chamber. The capitals of the pillars began moving, and the gargoyles that perched on every corner of every pillar’s top leapt down. They landed with a thud.

  All of them were shaped like hunched over men with two massive wings on their backs and claws at the tips of their fingers. They were made of patinated white stone, just like the rest of the hall, but blue light filled the cracks at their joints, allowing them to move.

  “Watch out,” he said.

  “These are the guardian constructs,” Lady Fairynor said. “They’ve never let anyone unworthy begin the trials.”

  Ash couldn’t sense anything special from them. They were simply just guardians of the tower. He pointed his sword at the closest, and it opened its mouth. With a breathy screech, it gnashed its stone teeth together, and its eyes flared with blue light. Before it could get the jump on him, he widened his stance, triggered a card with half a mind—he barely had to think about his cards or what they were even called, he just knew what he was capable of, what he wanted to accomplish, and how he wanted to accomplish it.

  The gargoyle slid toward him, gripped by a net of turquoise light. It scraped along the stone, and he cut it in half with a horizontal cut. The construct collapsed into a pile of dust and stone chunks, and the blue light disappeared, fading away into the walls.

  “What is it?” he asked Lady Fairynor.

  “It is not a monster,” she replied. “It is more like a kyborg. A golem of stone. No one knows where this tower came from. Some believe the Split itself created the tower, and in some lore tomes, it is described as the first true dungeon, which the Luminians modelled their tombs after.”

  At least Ash wasn’t alone in not knowing its origins, then.

  “Close up,” he said. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

  After he’d defeated the first gargoyle, the rest of them charged. He didn’t count how many there were. He just focused on crushing them with pulses of attraction power and force, moving them to ensure that he always had time to protect the others. Lady Fairynor sniped what she could. Her rifle was a single-shot muzzle-loader, but it allowed her to load more powerful blasts. It was enough to stall the guardians for long enough for Ash to kill them.

  He fortified himself with a unique technique, which functioned best with lots of enemies. Instead of pulling them toward him, he pulled himself off them, making hundreds of thin turquoise tethers with his power and launching himself around the crowd.

  He only took a few hits, which Perril was sure to heal quickly. She hadn’t set up a fire yet, but she was carrying a cage with a dog-sized Foundation-Eater silverfish in it. They didn’t feel pain, and they were pests that ate the foundations of the skytowers, so her drawing vitality from it to heal him wasn’t much of an atrocity.

  When they’d destroyed all the gargoyles, he set off toward the portal at the end of the room. There was no time to waste, and they had to get to the second level.

  “Wait,” Lady Fairynor said again. “Ash, steel yourself. It won’t be gargoyles in the higher levels. This tower is the reverse of a Vault Core. It takes impressions of monsters and darklings from all around the galaxy and throws them at you. But they won’t just be regular darklings—you’ll face Nightmares.”

  He nodded. That was exactly why he’d waited so long.

  He just wasn’t ready.

  “I understand. But I have to try.”

  34

  SOLUTIONS

  The Luna Wrath dropped out of hyperspace just outside Santuree. It had once been a Realm communications outpost, much like the one on Celacor X, but much more powerful. It could broadcast a wireless telesignal to pretty much anywhere in the galaxy capable of receiving it.

  The problem was, it’d fallen under Alliance occupation.

  They hadn’t destroyed the outpost or deactivated it yet. The low-level Alliance leaders believed that, when they won, they would be the ones in control. They didn’t know that the Hand planned to annihilate the entire galaxy as a sacrifice to the Enemy.

  The planet itself was far from its system’s star. It had no breathable atmosphere, and its major cities were completely enclosed under a mesh shield-aspect Aes. They’d once been sunlight-aspect, but ever since the Hand had taken over the core and sent out the decrees across the galaxy, such meshes weren’t allowed anymore. So Santuree, a glistening standard-sized world made of polished metal and dark purple rock deposits, was left in the cool blue gloom of shields, not real light.

  Now, only a trio of Alliance battleships floated above the planet. They were Phélese, covered in black and red paint and with golden dragon ornaments above their ram-prows. Casemate turrets lined the sides, scanning the void for any targets.

  “Uh, Kinfild,” Ken said. He was sitting in the passenger’s seat. “How the hell are we going to get down to the surface? And take over the communications outpost?”

  Kinfild reached up and adjusted the engine telesignal, sending a command to Err-Seventeen to pick up speed. “Take over? No, no. You shall see.”

  “So we’re not fighting anyone?” Ken sighed.

  “Don’t let it sour your mood,” Kinfild said. “We’ll have plenty of chaos once they figure out that we were the ones to send the signal. Moreover, when we muster the fleet here, there will be plenty of fighting to take the outpost.”

  “So how⁠—”

  Before Ken could finish, the transmitter crackled to life. A voice came through the transmitter, speaking in Phélese, “Turn back. This is a restricted zone. If you continue, we will destroy you.”

  Kinfild cleared his throat. His Phélese was a little rusty, but he could do well enough with time to think. Slowly, he replied in their language, “Apologies for alarming you. We are contractors brought in to help with the cleanup. We have history working with Alliance members—you should find us in the registries of the Scavenger’s Sect. If you check for us, we assisted with the Ifskar operation.”

  “What did you tell him?” Ken asked in the common tongue.

  “We’re contractors,” Kinfild replied. “So you’d best get changed. Head to the stern. I have safety vests and maintenance equipment.”

  “Are we going to be doing manual labour?”

  “Correct. And you’re going to learn void welding.”

  “I’ve never welded a day in my life.”

  “Which is why I said learn. And you’re not going to do it with their equipment. You’re going to practice using your cards. We will have time before Ash is ready, and we’ll make the best use of it that we can.”

  After a few minutes, the transmitter crackled again, and the same voice came through, speaking in Phélese again. “Luna Wrath, you are cleared to land at the central hub, where you will receive directions. If you veer off-course, we will destroy you.”

  “Thank you,” Kinfild replied. “We won’t disappoint.”

  When Lessa woke up the next morning, they ate breakfast from their supplies. As they ate, Lessa asked, “Which card should we upgrade?”

  “I was thinking,” Jace said. “Well…we’re going to need to put the Split into balance. I have no idea how to do that, but [Questforger] is the closest thing to an answer. I mean, it can help me find the answer. It may not help us against the last Sentinel, but we’ll need it.”

  “Do you think it will just…give you the solution?”

  “No, but…” Jace shook his head. “I mean, we’re directly manipulating the Split, right? We’re screwing with the hyperspace channels, which are technically the Split. Which means that there has to be a way to let me use the card to do something with balance.”

  “It’s gonna be a bit of a stretch. But you’re right, it’s the best thing we have for directly manipulating the Split.”

  “What could you do with it?” He winced. “I mean, you know this card making stuff better than I do. Did the Academy have any insight, maybe?”

  She pressed her lips together, then took a bite of her ration bar. “Well, at the moment, I’m just trying to think of what we have available. What would we actually need to do to put the Split back into balance?”

  “The Enemy has gotten too potent and powerful in its isolation, right?” Jace asked. “And it’ll annihilate the regular Split if we let them merge back together at once. But if I could merge them slowly, it could give the regular Split time to figure itself out.”

  After a few seconds of silence, she grimaced, then said, “We could use the card to hold the Enemy, similar to how the card technically takes in a fragment of the Split in its current form. I’d have to make it work with light and dark, and open it up to holding far more of the Split or the Enemy by reforging it.”

  “But how would that help? Or would we just be putting off the inevitable?”

  “No,” Lessa said. “You can vent excess energy from a card. So I’d add a mechanism to do that before reforging. Normally, it’d go back into the universe and reintegrate with the Split. But you can store it with [Impact Channel] as excess energy as long as you activate it first.”

  Jace nodded. “Okay, so say I did that. Wouldn’t it eventually vent when I activated [Impact Channel] for a second time?”

  “Yeah…but it would give you time to balance it. If you stored both light and dark inside [Impact Channel], you could tame and moderate parts of the Enemy.”

  “I…could?”

  “Well, I make it sound easy.”

  He chuckled. “Of course. What exactly does taming entail?”

  “No idea. I haven’t figured that part out. I’m just a country girl.” She cast him a grin. “But it’s most certainly going to involve you fighting a fragment of the Enemy. A manageable fragment.”

  Jace raised his eyebrows. “Right. I can do that?”

  “That has yet to be seen.”

  “I think we’re also going to have to modify [Impact Channel] again, then. I mean, I’ll need to be able to either enter the card, or project the energy out of it without releasing it.”

  “The former. I mean, that’d be far easier.” Lessa tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I could, in theory, cause it to loop around on itself and create a pocket dimension.”

  “Huh?” Jace tilted his head.

  “Well, they warned us about this in the Academy. You can cause errors in the Split if you fill a card with way too much impact, or way too power of a fragment of the Split itself. Really, impact and Split fragments are the same thing. The point being, we were cautioned not to use certain types of loops, because they’d cause this problem.”

  “What, you don’t want to accidentally create a pocket universe?” Jace asked sarcastically, rubbing his forehead. “That sounds dangerous.”

  “It is. For cards that have a short time limit. If the card’s effect deactivates while you’re still stuck in a pocket universe, it’ll close on you and you’ll literally be stuck in hyperspace forever. But you’ll have about ten minutes each time to defeat the fragment of the Enemy. It’s going to create an especially powerful pocket universe for you because of the sheer amounts of impact we’re going to be storing in the card.”

  Jace nodded. “But won’t most Wielders just die if they enter a pocket universe? If the pocket universe is literally made of hyperspace?”

  “Yeah. Low-level Wielders. High-level wielders tend to have ways to survive that kind of thing. The problem is, you won’t have access to the card that created the pocket universe while you’re inside it. There’ll be a portal or something, but you won’t be able to actually use [Impact Channel] while you’re inside it.”

  Jace stood up and walked to the hotel room window, looking out over the city and the rising sun. “So, clarification. We enhance [Questforger], use it to capture fragments of the Enemy and store them in [Impact Channel], create a pocket universe where I can fight them and destroy them, and let them merge back with the Split to balance it.”

  “Sounds about right,” Lessa said. “This is insane. You’re probably going to die.”

  “Perhaps,” Jace said. “But if it’s the only way…I have to try. Besides, this way, it means we can take the fight right to the Hand. It means we have to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ash and Kinfild are buying us time. Kinath-Aertes is buying us time. I may not have advanced as far as I need to, but we’ll have a solution. And when the Split starts returning to balance, as long as I have the right level of balanced spirit-severing and Aes flame, I should also advance. But if we’re going to win, the Wall needs to fall and let a little bit of the Enemy in. The Hand needs to get what he wants.”

  “And we have to be there in time,” Lessa said. “If Kinath-Aertes falls too quickly, then we won’t be able to capture the Enemy.”

  “Exactly,” Jace replied. “So, what do you say we start working on the cards?”

  “I’m going to use up the last of my supplies,” Lessa said. I’ll add a few upgrades to [Questforger], allowing it to work with a dark aspect—and then it should be ready for reforging. Hopefully, I’ll have twisted the hidden extra effect enough to allow us to break off fragments of the Split.” She hopped over to the desk. “Then, I’ll upgrade [Impact Channel]. It won’t need much—I’ll just need to add a second circular loop that causes nasty, error-inducing interference and creates a pocket universe. Why does this sound like a terrible idea?”

  “I mean, the answer is supposed to be ‘because it is,’ but we’re in Australia, preparing to fight the tests of a weird machine god by killing its Sentinels, so I don’t think we can really have a worse idea.”

  “I just hope we’re right about this. Otherwise, the galaxy is gonna go out with a pretty pitiful whimper.”

  35

  THE NEXT UPGRADE

  All things considered, enhancing the cards went relatively smoothly. It just took time. By lunchtime, they’d finished the enhancements to [Questforger].

  This time, the requirement for Sentinel materials was vastly reduced. There was enough room on [Questforger] to make proper modifications, and with the Sentinel material already permanently added to [Impact Channel], there was enough space, and the card was robust enough to support more adjustments.

  While Lessa modified the cards, Jace ran a few last Vaults with the Vault Core—eventually, they’d take its resources and use it to reforge a card, but not right now. He used it to practice his techniques, to see what the new [Impact Channel] was capable of, and how far he could push his limits. But all too often, the Darklings the Split sent him to deal with were far too weak. He wouldn’t have said that at the start of his academy term, and technically, most of them were around the same level as him.

  But most Wielders didn’t have as many cards as him nor as strong of cards.

  A few minutes after noon, he traded the new [Questforger] card for [Impact Channel], and Lessa began enhancing the latter. It was only one Vault Run before she’d finished the enhancements to [Impact Channel].

  Jace assessed both of the new cards:

  [Technique Card: Impact Channel]

  Grade: Legendary

  Type: Utility

  Compatible Classification: Hunter

  Compatible Aspects: Light, Dark

  [For the next ten (10) minutes, traps all excess impact capacity from cards used, and channels it. Triggering this card again will funnel all impact capacity into the next card used, improving its effect proportionally. The impact-gathering efficiency of this card has greatly increased. This card has a cooldown period of thirty (30) minutes, but can be used twice before entering its cooldown state. WARNING: This card has a high risk of warping the Split with too much impact.]

  “That’s a good sign,” Jace remarked.

  “What is?”

  “Well, aside from the modified aspects and reduced cooldown—and an increase in rarity, that too—I got a warning that this card would cause a warp of the Split. I assume that’s a precursor to a pocket universe forming.”