Black Onyx - Phoenix Resurrection

A group stood in the sparsely decorated Drow command center. High Priest Antasaghar stood in the middle of the room, his eyes glued on a shining surface hanging in the air. A Scrying Pool. Magic from the Divination Path, capable of remote viewing as long as it had something to anchor itself to.

That anchor, in this case, was the Widomaker.

The generals stood behind the High Priest in somber silence. The celebratory mood from a few minutes ago was gone, forgotten like a fart in the wind. They were watching the final moments of the battle they should have won through the eyes of Olivia, the Widowmaker.

They were so close. The humans were all dead, with only the shapeshifter and his guardian golem remaining. The metal construct, though made of high-quality material, turned out to be no obstacle to their champion. After it was beaten, only the master remained.

Except it was all a ruse!

The cheers of victory stopped abruptly, the room plunged into silence. One punch was all it took to break their greatest creation. To bring the Widowmaker to her knees.

They were tricked. They thought the humans sent a disposable bunch like they usually did, and while for most of them, it was true, the elite soldier that hid among them was enough to bring their nation to a grinding halt.

Some regretted not going personally, their Sky Realm powers enough to turn the situation around, but it was too late for that. The High Priest was silent, so they wouldn’t speak either.

The humiliation of their champion continued. As expected, they noticed the golem was in fact completely fine. Its destruction was greatly exaggerated. As they watched the metal man keeping their champion restrained, they helplessly watched as their soldiers, not knowing what they were getting themselves into, rushed at the monster in human form.

It looked like a swarm from afar. Thousands of Drow warriors and their machines attacked at once. The sky darkened from spells, curses, Avatrs, and destructive magic, enough to bring an army to its knees. None of that happened. They didn’t even get to touch that one single man.

There was a… pulse. An expanding sphere of… something. Chaos. A chaos so vast, traveling outward from the shapeshifter, that it disrupted even the Scrying Pool, a magic cast by one of their elite. When the connection reestablished itself, the fight was already over. The man still stood in the sky, but he stood there alone. Not a Drow or drone in sight.

They could still remember the torrent of reports of Soul Lanterns breaking all at once, coming from all over the land. From thousands of Drow that died there, less than 20% returned. Those that were far enough told of this massive wave of energy, so all-consumingly massive, they didn’t even know how they died.

There was simply a pressure, and then they awoke in a Stasis Pod, back in the safe chambers of their bastions. The secret chambers of the Stasis Pods, full of bodies that would never reawaken.

The vision on the Scrying Pool changed, and the shapeshifter reappeared, carrying a metal collar in his hand. Then a sound came through, the words distorted by the vast distance.

[I wanted to leave it on the Doc, but it looks like she will sleep for a bit longer. Not to mention she is no fighter. You, on the other hand… Well, try to relax.]

They could see the Widowmaker struggle for a bit, but she was quickly overpowered, and the collar locked around her neck. Abruptly the connection was cut off, the remote viewing spell collapsing into nothing.

A quiet murmur spread through the group. The Widowmaker was captured, the head researcher lost, and thousands of their loyal soldiers were dead. The losses were incalculable.

“How was she so weak?” One of the generals whispered to himself.

“She was the elite of the elites! How could she be so easily defeated?” Another said louder, outraged.

“We have spent mountains of resources just for… this?” Another chimed in.

“Is it possible that we were betrayed? Was this all a trick? You know of her origin…”

“Impossible! The brainwashing was perfect.”

“Whoever that human was, he hid his power well. He had a purely physical build, the magic was just a distraction.”

“I disagree. The magic was real, even if he was much physically stronger. The blast proves it, the man is a dangerous mage. I would not be surprised if he used an Arcane Focus to achieve what he did.”

“You must be mad! An Arcane Focus? Years-worth of energy wasted on basic magic like that? No, he must have had an Amplifier or some other such relic.”

The quiet discussion slowly increased in volume, turning into an argument. With no concrete facts about their enemy or the event in general, they could only speculate. And speculate they did. Loudly.

High Priest Antasaghar, after staring at the spot where the Scrying Pool had disappeared minutes before, slowly turned, making his way through the crowd. He was quiet, and his face was expressionless. Even his eyes were clear, without a speck of emotion.

That’s because he was angry. So angry in fact, that his emotions crossed their maximum value, and spilled over into the void.

He left the chamber, walked along a hallway, and entered a room where he stepped onto his personal teleportation platform. He tapped a few keys and twisted a dial on a nearby stand, and then waited patiently as a white light whisked him away.

He appeared on a similar platform soon after, that one slightly larger than his own, and exited the room it was situated in. A shadow covered his face, a looming mountain chained to the ground, floating high above him in the air. He didn’t spare it a glance.

Instead, he took the elevator, the guards saluting him as he passed them by, their gazes fearful yet full of respect. He didn’t react to their presence, simply taking the platform upward. It went through the floating stone island and stopped after reaching the heart of the fortress built on top of it.

He calmly stepped off and then made his way to one of the many stairways leading down. There, protected by wards, glyphs, and runes, was the Core. A small, gloomy red room with an altar-like stone protrusion and a crown in the middle of it.

He took the crown, a simple-looking silver thing, and placed it on his head. As he did so, a myriad of holographic screens appeared in his vision, displaying various statistics and the state of the mountain.

He glanced over the symbol representing integrity. It was low. Way too low for his liking. The restoration effort was not going well.

His gaze shifted to another screen, displaying the energy stored in the Core, showing it nearly full. A small consolation, together with the automatic base defense, that assured nobody could infiltrate the titan… for the second time. The only safe way in, the elevator, was disabled with a thought, preventing anyone from coming in or leaving.

High Priest Antasaghar took a deep breath, glancing at the other symbols whose meaning eluded him. They had barely begun to understand the treasure they found and it would take them a lot longer to uncover all the secrets it held.

With a thought, the massive flying mountain suddenly shuddered, the desired movement not happening as he wished it to.

Suddenly there was a cry of alarm and the sound of hurried footsteps as one of the researchers appeared in the doorway.

“Ah! Esteemed High Priest! Your Excellency.” The man bowed, not daring to look him in the eyes. “The relic is not yet ready. Please…”

The High Priest paused in his thoughts and then spoke. “How long?”

The man swallowed and pulled at his collar, suddenly feeling incredibly warm. “A few... months, your Excellency. We should get it fully repaired by spring.”

“Hmm.” The High Priest took the crown and placed it back on the altar where a thin layer of protective magic wrapped around it. Had he not known the runes required to access it, the ancient relic would have been as valuable as dirt. Those were the first and most important discoveries they had made, something only he and a select few knew. Lady Chalaste, for example.

The researcher allowed himself to relax a little, mentally scolding his peers for always saying the High Priest was unreasonable. The man might seem scary, but he clearly could be reasoned with, that much was obvious.

“One week.”

“Hmm?” The man thought he had heard wrong.

“I’ll come back in a week. I expect it to be repaired and combat-ready by then. If not…” High Priest’s eyes pierced through the man’s Soul with a single look, the gaze alone enough to turn his legs to jelly. “...I’ll have your head.

The High Priest then calmly walked past the trembling man and disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the flying mountain.

Only once he was gone did the trembling man dare to straighten his posture, fix his long hair behind his ear, and snort in annoyance. He was not afraid of the High Priest or the punishment at all. He was, however, not looking forward to the next few sleepless days.

Faaaaak. Unreasonable my ass! The man is even worse than a Demon!

[Well, that fucking sucks.]

“Was she really brainwashed? How does that even work?”

I shrugged at the question Onyx posed. He was carrying the unconscious Olivia while I had Lady Chalaste in my arms. She had to be knocked out many times as she woke up during our return.

[No idea. But whoever did it was a fucking barbarian. I mean, just looking at this mess… They didn’t even delete the memory, just cut it off, tore it to pieces, and crumpled it into a ball before throwing it away.]

The assault nearly stopped after I killed those few thousand Drow soldiers at once. They weren’t stupid enough to just keep jumping into the flames.

“Sounds a lot like deleting them to me.” Onyx commented.

[Nah, not even close. They can all be recovered, though they did deteriorate a bit… Still, I should be able to get her back the original mind, not that there is much left. If we are lucky we might get another ally. Worst case I can just consume her Soul and see if something happens when multiple fragments combine.]

“Oh, yeah… That’s an option too…” Onyx sent through the link. “Thanks for not eating me.”

I laughed and shook my head. It did cross my mind, of course, consuming the fragments. But, for what it was worth, I didn’t feel like they would do much. Some things about the Soul Eater were almost intuitive, but consuming fragments of another was not something they did. As I understood it, which wasn’t saying much, splitting off a fragment of themselves was how they propagated. The fragment would then collect more broken pieces of foreign Souls and eventually form a new consciousness.

Or something like that. Soul Eaters were weird. They were the only creature that did that as far as I was aware.

“I wonder if they will let us just leave with her though. I get the feeling those humans you mentioned can be quite difficult to work with.”

[Difficult is an understatement. And they are really annoying too.] I chuckled. [But you don’t have to worry about that. We’ll get back to John and the others one way or another.]

“Well, whatever you are going to do, do it now. A group of old men is coming.”