David could barely stand, but he was too confused to move. Instead, he stood there, before Ishkar, torn. The decision was a heavy one, but there was no other path forward. He wrestled with himself, hoping she would answer and that whatever she said would convince him.
She said nothing. Perhaps too tired.
Her silver hair floated weightlessly in the glow of the white, endless space. The strands curled like the roots of a great tree. David traced the chains wrapped around her limbs and torso. They vanished into the emptiness below. The power within was endless and sickening, but its effect from hidden in some complex layer of illusion. He couldn’t see it, but he had fixated on it enough to sense it.
“I don’t understand,” David said. “Help me understand, Ishkar. Your avatar sent us here. Why?”
To save her, Ignis growled. Your fear is blinding you to what is right in front of you. The longer you delay, the more danger you will face after this.
She looked up then. There was something akin to disappointment in her gaze. David let wash through him, gaining no reaction from him. She was too weak to be a threat. In this state, he could defeat her.
“Maybe,” Aza said. “This place is eating at you, too, David. And she can use the essence here. You can’t.”
“All the more reason not to free her.”
She winced, adjusting to ease the bite of the chains. Nothing worked, so she gave up and focused on David. Her lips had torn and healed. He could see the traces of dirt on her hair now. Although the space was spotless. Perhaps she’d been dragged?
“He didn’t,” Ishkar whispered. “I did this to myself.”
David frowned, hating how far down he sank with every word she gave. More confusion. More questions. And she provided very few answers. He wasn’t even sure he could believe her.
“What?”
“He found that I can act as a channel…” She stopped talking, her breathing audible. David’s grip on his hands tightened; the tremors had increased. And he was trying hard to calm his racing heart. He blinked faster, trying to focus, so the dim edges in his vision would fade or thin.
Her voice trembled like glass under pressure. The chains pulsed around her, biting deeper into her. Black veins webbed from where they entered her flesh, stretching up to her throat and face. David took a step forward and leaned down. The veins were strange, spreading.
Did that mean she would die too?
“This world is insatiable,” Vith warned in his mind. “Worlds are like baby monsters. They need resources to nourish them, keep them going. But that is for fully made ones. This is something else, David. It devours everything—space, essence, life. The longer she stays bound like this, the more it will need. If you wait too long, David, there will be no breaking her free. It will feed on her. But before her, it will get to us.”
David knelt slowly before Ishkar. Her breath hitched, and her eyes fluttered. “Please,” she whispered. “I…I didn’t want this. Not…this.” The words were barely audible. They tumbled out of her with great effort.
David stared hard at her, his resolve slow in coming.
The towers were terrible. They tested him, took from him, and sometimes tried to deceive him. Somehow, he had changed. He had become harder than he was before. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but it was necessary. He had to be what he had become so he could save his family, his friends.
Yet, he couldn’t see deceit in the girl’s eyes. They carried power, pain, and a flicker of hope. David decided he wouldn’t let fear ruin both of them.
Spell: Left Hand of Chaos
The gauntlet shimmered into form around his left arm. It had been so long since he faced something this powerful. But Aza’s gauntlet filled him with cold resolve. The air around him went still, then surged forward, clinging to him, weighing him down.
David extended his left hand. He hadn’t felt Aza’s power in him so clearly before. It was distinct in its wildness, expanded. It was ferocious in how it burned against the taint in the air. The power gushed and rushed. A monster of a kind.
David groaned. The effort, the power pushing against him was a mountain. The space seemed warped, and his legs shook. He felt like a leaf dancing in a storm—drifting sideways, unable to determine its fate.
A thousand whispers screamed in his skull as the gauntlet touched the chain. It drew David in and held him in place. The white became a kaleidoscope of streaked black. The surface was so oily it reflected David’s face. There he saw himself screaming as he shrank—both in power and form.
He snagged his arm back, staggering back, away from the chained girl. He was breathing with his mouth. His chest hurt as if there was a fire there. He was weightless, and his left hand was weak. But the gauntlet was still there.
Its presence was tasking, but David nestled on the fact that he could still summon it. Once it would have taken all the essence he could channel to use the gauntlet once, but now it was basically a glove.
He glared at the chains. Those were the real problems. With direct contact, they fed off him faster, almost completely draining him.
You have attempted to tame Chains of Dominion!
Chaos effect has been negated!
“That will kill me,” he whispered.
Do it anyway, Ignis barked. You are a dragon! And a dragon does not give in to fear!
Aza’s voice followed, quiet but urgent. “Dragons and their stupid pride. David, think before you act. You can’t tame the chains without a stronger authority. You will have to overpower it physically.”
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“That’s worse,” David growled, feeling the exhausting increase every moment. “Touching that thing without the gauntlet will be a problem.”
“That is because you are thinking like a human!” Vith snapped. “You still think of the gauntlet as tools. They are not. And you are not human either.”
David held the torrent building in his chest. He swallowed his irritation. There was no need to fight the fragments, and this was the worst time to veer off their purpose. Instead, he took her words and turned them around in his mind, searching for a meaning within.
With a grim expression, he let the gauntlet vanish. Ishkar’s eyes were pleading. Perhaps she thought he was about to give up.
Once again, David realized no one could hear the conversations in his head.
“Do you know how these chains are connected?” He asked the anchor. Her head swayed slowly, tiredly. David didn’t expect an answer anyway. He couldn’t see where the chains ended below them. There was just nothing there.
He bit down on his fear, closing his mind to the legions of worries echoing in his head as he reached forward. He leaned down and grabbed one of the chains again. The one wrapped around her torso. The moment his fingers closed around it, his vision darkened. Power drained from him like blood from an open wound. He shuddered, his breath a sharp stroke in his chest.
Then another hand closed around a second chain. He groaned; the sound vibrated within him. The pain was a curling thing. It dug into him with cold, thorny claws, sucking him dry as it filled him with the dizzying taint.
David pulled. His arm stretched, muscles contracting with essence and raw, physical power. Vith was right. He felt his arms ripple with strength he didn’t have before. He growled, the sound flowing out of his throat as frustration pooled in his chest. The white space trembled and stretched.
Something sliced into place beside him, gathering slowly.
David turned to see Elisha’s right hand form last. He was back in his armor, but it was smaller now. The helm was different; this one exposed his eyes. His real eyes. David eased his hold to regard his brother. Elisha’s face was bruised. His nose seemed askew with dried blood, and his breathing came out heavy and ragged.
He didn’t say a word. He looked at David, then at Ishkar with the chains wrapped around her, and nodded.
David let him have one of the chains, so he could focus on the other. The brothers pulled in tandem, each howling with effort. The chain burned into David’s hand, and the left side of Elisha’s armor winked out, exposing his bloody arm. David swore to cut the Qael Dorei commander if they survived.
Focus, Ignis called, but David barely heard the dragon.
His heart echoed in his head, and a pinching ache was building up slowly at the back of his skull. With horrifying clarity, David realized they would fail. This would be the place they die. All of them. He bit through the curse. Trying futilely to keep the flickering candle-flame of hope one.
It dwindled slowly, nearly on the verge of sputtering out.
The chains were not made for mortals to undo, David thought, folding inward under the burden. They were being eaten alive.
“It’s not working,” he gasped, head bowed. “Ishkar, you have to help too, please.”
Elisha’s armor was gone. Even the helm. He was covered in cuts, the left sleeve of his robe soaked with his blood.
Iskar whispered. Her lips barely moved, but her hair shimmered.
Essence hummed violently as if the space itself was vibrating too fast. David felt the heat on his cheeks. The air pulsed, and her silver strands lifted, spreading out. Some of them brushed David’s shoulder, and suddenly the invisible weight on them lessened.
David inhaled deeply, a diver coming up for air. He blinked frantically, using the chain in his hands to keep himself stable. With brief relief came a starling clarity.
They’d been looking at the problem the wrong way.
“It’s not the chains,” he whispered. “It’s the space.”
He let go and gestured for Elisha to do the same. His brother staggered back, then sat down leaning forward. The effect of the chain had been harder on him.
Spell: The Left Hand of Chaos
The gauntlet formed fully again, and David dropped to his knees. He pressed his hand to the floor beneath them. It felt solid, but only because it was supposed to seem to.
That gauntlet won—
“Silence, Ignis,” David commanded. The silence in his head was almost too sweet. His mind was clearer now, poised at a task he could understand.
When he was sure of what he felt below, he reached for it. It was laughingly easy to grasp. It had been right there, yet he’d been too distracted by Ishkar and the chains to realize.
He reached down with his perception, wishing he’d done this earlier before he fed his essence to the chains pointlessly. Then he released the gauntlet’s power and felt it brush against something below.
You have tamed chaos!
David grinned.
The magic that had formed the impossible space rippled, twisted, resisting the weak influence of David’s gauntlet.
So he spammed it.
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
You have tamed chaos!
The space rippled physically as he pushed his influence as the master of chaos against the structure. It should have been torn apart easily, but he was weaker than he used to be. But that didn’t matter. David kept going until he heard the space groan, a rupture appearing at the core of the spell that formed the place.
Ishkar flung her head up, her eyes wide and her mouth opened in a soundless scream. She was frozen in that position for a fraction of a moment before she started jerking frantically, flinging herself forward and back.
David didn’t stop. He couldn’t. Not even if he thought she was going to die.
And the white world cracked open like brittle glass.
Reality roared back as the small void spat them back into startling darkness.
David and Elisha collapsed on a bed of low, uneven grass. Cold wind with a faint whiff of something detestable wafted against their faces.
The dome was gone. The artificial world was undone. And yet, Ishkar remained. Still chained. David blanched when he saw the people gathered, staring at them. The silence lasted for a moment, then essence flared around Ishkar, straining and overwhelming the bindings.
The first chain snapped. Then another. They all broke in a cascading burst of power.
David let himself fall to the ground, truly this time. All strength leaving his body. Elisha was already unconscious.
Ishkar floated. Strands of essence, thick and branching, stretched from her like roots pulled free from a dying tree. Her body glowed radiant, features sharper than before. Her form stretched, her skin alight like silver moonlight.
She looked older now. No longer the frail girl encased in sorrow. She had grown, looking more like the First Hand of Balorn again. The light expanded until David had to shield his eyes.
Then it dimmed, and she was standing before him.
Still ethereal. Still strange. But real.
You have freed the Anchor of the Veiled World!
New event: The Destruction of the Veiled World!
Time remaining: 01:00
David cursed and scrambled toward Elisha. But Ishkar stepped into his path. Her eyes were divine in their beauty. David looked up, panting. “We need to go. Now!”
“I know.”
She snapped her fingers and the world bent again. The color shifted, covered in black, and then restored. The stench vanished.
You have been transported from the Veiled World!
You have completed your task!
She stood over him, her feet not quite touching the ground. Her face was serene. Her body was aglow. And though the black veins of corruption still marked her skin, they looked like scars now.
“I owe you my freedom,” she said softly, but David looked away from her, searching the field. He found Elisha first, still on his back, completely out.
“Your family is safe, Lord Ruler,” Ishkar said. David turned to her. Her smile was supposed to be assuring, but David couldn’t bring himself to believe her. And not until he heard Zoey’s and Chloe’s voices moments later did he feel any relief.
