Shadowbane

I finish wiping up the blood off the wall and bury the towel underneath a bag in the dumpster.

Okay, now I'm ready. Taking the time to clean up the wall, bury the man deeper into the dumpster, and eat his soul was worth it. I need to slow down and not rush this. Also, I didn't realize how starved my core was until just now. I may have kept most of my strength after the revive, but apparently I lost most of the sustenance I received from the Chimera.

That's a problem... If I enter a starvation state my core will start to eat away at my strength and mana to fuel itself. I should be fine for a few more days, but after that I'll need to find some people or monsters to eat. A couple of human souls are nothing but a pittance to me at this point unless I need their memories or sustenance, so I didn't bother with the two men operating the platform. Hell, it didn't even occur to me because of how insignificant they are at this point.

I grab the handle on the suitcase and restart my walk toward the bridge in the distance. Once I exit the alley onto one of the main streets I see people out and about everywhere. The most intriguing part of all is the people driving around in windowless single-person vehicles that are pulling medium-sized hauls behind them.

Actually no, the ones with hauls are turning left toward the bridge, while the ones returning have nothing behind them. So this city must shuttle a lot of goods to the other ones? Hmm, this was also the only city where I saw people descending into the darklands. Whatever they're doing here, it all ties back to that.

I cross the thoroughfare and walk in the direction all the hauls are going. On the way I pass by street performers, guitarists, and hundreds of other people.

Same as Xelba, Viktor doesn't withhold information so these people definitely know what happened to the rest of Urza, and they couldn't care less. Most don't anyways. The ones who do care, and make the mistake of voicing their discontent, will all mysteriously disappear, while any others keep it to themselves.

I cross the last street into a massive lot surrounding the bridge and immediately I see a major obstacle for going forward.

Of course there'd be a bunch of fucking skeletons at attention with an active bone engine in the middle of the bridge's entrance and people are swiping some kind of card to pass through the turnstile. Two problems I can't overcome without starting a fight, or...

I look at the 'bridge', scanning it from the top all the way down to the sides, looking for places devoid of people.

There are no people-free zones, but there are a few places I may be able to improvise. On the side of the bridge there is a large rest area full of street vendors cooking food. There are a couple of spots close to the bridge with a few people reading books, but the major problem is the lights. That's a problem concerning this whole city though aside from the edge. There are lights everywhere.

Breaking a light so I can turn invisible and scale the bridge works, but people will both see and hear that. It would be best if I could find a place without light to turn invisible... after that I can just leap over the lights. But where? I don't see anything damnit. Nothing but benches, people, food, and little patches of grass here and there.

I sigh and walk over to one of the vendors.

"Hello, Miss! What'll it be for you?"

"Give me four hotdogs and bury them in ketchup and mustard." I used to love these as a kid. I wonder if they're as good as I remember.

The vendor's eyebrows shoot up as he looks me up and down. He shrugged soon after that and began to put my order together.

Why did he... Oh. The hotdogs he's making are huge, so he's surprised that I ordered four of them. It might be a bit much for a girl with my frame.

"Here you go! The drink is free by the way. I do that for all my new customers." The man holds out my drink and a rectangular paper plate barely holding my food.

Liquid isn't necessary but I do feel a little better if I remember to drink something every day. I wish I didn't forget to do that all the damned time.

Attempting to not make the same mistake again, I hand the man only one bill this time. He accepts it and says hello to the man waiting for his turn behind me. I walk through the rest area until I reach a road with four lanes far in the back. Perfect, I can see the back of the bridge here.

I sit down on a bench nearby and begin eating while scanning the backside of the bridge. Behind it is a large sidewalk next to the road, and of course the damned thing is lit-up. But there are no benches and foot traffic is kind of low.

I peel my eyes away from the bridge and focus on enjoying my first junk food in fifty years.

My god, this is a hundred times better than I remember... And I don't need to worry about getting fat either! When I'm in a comfortable enough position to relax all day and eat, I'm going to find ways to burn through my energy reserves just so I can keep eating. Assuming that day ever comes.

I devour the rest of my meal and down the water. Ugh, I was hoping it was soda. After that I throw the remains away in a trash bin nearby and stride over toward the bridge until I reach the backside.

Okay... A few people in the park could still see me if they happened to look this way as I turn invisible, but that shouldn't be a problem. The distance is rather far after all. The issue is the vehicles passing through, and the seven people walking this way after the light turned green. Most problematic of all is the streetlight above me of course.

I rest against the back of the bridge, waiting for the seven teenagers to pass by. They all give me weird looks as they walk past me, and a few giggle while pointing at me. Eventually, they turn to the right and disappear behind the bridge. No one walking this way from my right, and the people waiting for the light on the left are talking to each other.

After a few more seconds of waiting for traffic to thin out, I enhance myself and pick up the suitcase, throwing it into the light above. As the light shatters I jump up and catch the suitcase, quickly turning invisible before the sound alerts anyone. Immediately I jump onto the bridge and begin wall jumping vertically plus a little to the left. After I'm fully on the left side of the bridge I continue jumping up while avoiding the lights shining out from different windows dotting the massive bridge. I hear loud moans from one of the windows as I pass by it. Ugh... Are there hotels in here? Maybe even brothels too.

It takes a few minutes but eventually I reach the top of the bridge. I drop my enhancements and begin walking toward the next platform. It's slightly angled up but somehow I'm not slipping at all...

The bridge is made from the same material that was covering that flower room at the bottom of the mountain. Except this is much harder while somehow keeping my feet from losing traction. It could be something they extracted from the darklands, but I've seen strange structures built by the Xerath before, so this is probably their handiwork.

Nearing the apex of the bridge, I get a good look at the rest of Jericho. There are fourteen platform cities, with one other being as big as the one I'm currently on.

Thinking about it now, if we hadn't stopped Fin, he and the grinning Demon might have actually destroyed this place. Kellog died in the end anyway, so if we weren't there... I don't like this line of thinking, but I also don't want to lie to myself. Of course, they still had one gigantic problem to overcome. Nothing in his diary mentioned it, but you don't just sacrifice people and that's that. The Demon, regardless of what type it is, will need to channel that energy into the attack for it to actually accomplish its goal.

The Satyr Keith summoned didn't just snap its fingers and turn the land to lava while casting hellfire simultaneously. There's no way in hell the Xerath, who control the fucking sky, and whatever sensors the cities have wouldn't notice the grinning Demon sitting in the mountains channeling a spell big enough to destroy Jericho in one spell.

I stop at the top of the bridge as it begins to slant down.

This one exits at the very edge of the city, so there is no backside this time. Hmm...

Enhancing myself, I turn invisible and start walking down, and while my feet are sticking to the surface, the more the bridge slants, the harder it becomes to stay upright. Deciding to just risk it, I sit down and lift my feet. I begin sliding forward slowly but it quickly ramps up, so every few intervals I stomp my feet down to stop myself.

After about two minutes of this I'm finally nearing the bottom of the bridge, but the next arc is almost entirely vertical.

I stand up and walk to the right, scanning the area below. This one has people lounging about eating junk food from the vendors too, but there are far fewer citizens around this time. I drop down onto my side and begin sliding until I start to fall off the edge. Every so often I kick off the wall as I drop down, keeping my acceleration to a minimum. Nearing the bottom, I glance down and see only one person below, a young male writing something on a bench nearby. It should be fine.

As the lights come into view I remove my aura and jump below, landing about twenty feet to the young man's left. My feet absorb most of the sound, but a little still echoed out as I landed, making the young man look in my direction.

I wave at him, "Sorry about that, didn't mean to disturb you."

He looks at me for a moment before shaking his head and going back to his notebook.

Turning to my left, I walk through the rest area, giving the entrance a wide birth, until I'm at least one hundred yards away from it. I activate my tracker at max range and spot Ishar's silhouette moving toward the left.

The left... That direction leads to the bridge that's connected to the mountains.

Alright, now that I know which way they took him, I want some more junk food and several liters of soda before I finish the rest of my journey. After I'm sufficiently overeaten, it'll be time to see where that bridge leads.

Fortunately for me, the top of the bridge going into the mountains had about a ten-foot gap above it so I didn't need to come up with a plan to walk through it. I'm outside the bridge now on the other side, looking at what I believe is the real capital of Jericho.

It's honestly amazing...

Both sides of the interior are lined with hovels full of light, and the main city at the back of the cave looks to be at least half the size of Viseux. There's a large swath of area between me and the city, but I can't really see what's down there because it's covered in fog. Most impressive of all though is the circular white opening above the city.

It's shining brightly and I swear I see something inside of it... There's also smoke shifting around between the top of the city and the... portal? I really think it's a portal, but the only way to prove it would be to jump through it, which I'm not going to do unless Ishar's silhouette ends up going that path.

Not willing to risk whatever dangers lay below, I run to the side of the interior and begin wall-jumping toward the city. Whatever vehicle was carrying him went below, I can even see the road going into the fog, but I'd bet anything he was taken to the city and not some random house in the fog.

I pass above and under dozens of hovels full of people on their 'balconies' chatting with other people nearby.

The closer I get to the city, the more I realize that the light from the portal isn't hurting me. I wonder if it's light from somewhere else shining through, and that's why it isn't affecting me?

I reach the back-left side of the city and slowly descend toward an area full of buildings that are obviously warehouses. Looking around, I see nothing nearby except some loader trucks.

After placing the suitcase under a truck I run straight ahead toward an open garage in the distance. I'll be right back Arkaios, there's something I need before we proceed forward. Passing under the garage doors all I find is a bunch of trucks and one man smoking a cigarette on a couch, watching TV. After one quick glance around, I remove my veil and go to snap this man's neck too but he barely dodges it and whips a gun around in my direction.

I grab his wrist with both hands and break it sideways, the gun goes off as the man begins screaming for help. I jump over the couch and kick him in the side of the chest, sending him flying backward into the TV. I jump on top of him as he attempts to stand. Pressing my knees hard against his forearms, I over-enhance my right arm and punch the man in his face as hard as I can. The fight lasted long enough for him to enhance himself so the first punch is mostly blocked, but the impact damage alone knocks him out, eliminating his enhancements. I quickly destroy his head and rip his soul out, gobbling it down before running out of the garage, back the way I came.

Invisible again, I rip out some blood and create enough mesh to hide inside. I grab the suitcase - flickering my aura so it turns invisible too - and begin to scale the wall behind the warehouse just as I hear noises from the garage. Soon after that lots of lights flare to life and an alarm begins blaring from somewhere deeper in the citadel. Once I'm high enough, I stick the mesh to the mountain and camouflage it as I crawl inside. While all the madness is going on down below, I turn the soul into memories, but I don't dive into my soul realm yet.

In the large parking lot below, people begin sweeping the area with flashlights and a multitude of different weapons. Mostly large rifles, but there are sword and mallet users as well.

Honestly, this might be my most broken ability? At least with the invisibility all you have to do is shine a light on me. However, you'll never find me in my mesh without running into me directly or hitting me with a ranged attack. The mesh reacts harshly to outside sources of mana or hard impacts. I could turn it into armor, but armor can't be camouflaged, making hiding in it much more difficult. I'm also happy to see that there aren't any security cameras. Viktor hates surveillance inside his own cities. Luckily for me, that part of him hasn't seemed to change.

After a few hours the men thin out, with most of them dispersing through the fog below, apparently believing I ran that way. Okay, time to take a look at this man's memories.

After scouring the man's memories for a few hours, I was able to find a few notes of interest, with one of them being of particular interest to me. The people who brought supplies to the guardhouse behind the citadel had all become sick with something, so this man had to do their duties for a few weeks. Also, as a side note, the reason he responded so fast to my ambush was because anyone who works in the citadel needs to go through a highly intensive training course before they can work here. Even as a warehouse worker.

Two things stood out to me immediately when I reached that part of his memories. First off, the 'guardhouse' is massive and is responsible for guarding almost a dozen different portals. The other is the prison on the first floor. When you walk through the front door, there are two massive cages in the back full of lots of different people I've never seen before, and two I had seen before. Ishar and Nisha.

Unfortunately, the man wasn't on shift during the time the Demons assaulted the citadel, but now that I know this area is filled with portals, it all starts to make much more sense. Arkaios said they were taken to a different moon, and it's not hard to imagine how that happened when there are a dozen portals back there. Now I just need to figure out which one he was taken through.

The large gate I've seen watching slowly begins to ascend. Finally, I've been waiting hours for someone to come through here. I've already stuck Arkaios to my back again, it's time to finish this. I come out from my hiding spot behind a bunch of broken bicycles and run through the gate, passing by a massive truck. The inside is the same as I saw in the man's memories. A long tunnel with dim lighting, but at the opposite end a bright orange glow can be seen. As I near the tunnel exit the light starts to hit me, forcing me to remove my veil. Once I exit the tunnel I dive behind an emergency communication booth near the wall on the right.

Holy shit, I can't even imagine how much people are paid to work in here. It's got to be closing in on eighty-five or ninety degrees in here. The area itself is covered in smoke, but it's nowhere near as orange as it was in the man's memories. It feels kind of dim right now in comparison. Looking toward the guardhouse, the first thing I see is a seven-foot-tall werewolf in power armor. Now there's a fucking scary opponent. I really don't want to fight something like that right now.

The werewolf is bitching about something while watching some workers in the tunnels on the left side. I activate my tracker and immediately find what I'm looking for. Ishar is floating high in the air, in a weird pose that I don't even know how to describe.

Looks like they're taking him towards the right-side tunnels, but there's no way I can activate my veil in here. It's convenient that they're doing something in the other direction, but if that werewolf turns around, things are going to turn south fast.

The portals themselves were the source of all the lighting in here, but suddenly the area behind the smoke begins to turn a bright orange as well. Immediately I can feel the temperature in the area spiking.

"SEE?! THIS IS WHY I SAID TO HURRY UP!!" The werewolf shouted as he sprinted toward the workers in the distance. That was awfully convenient for me...

I leave the tracker up and begin running down the right-side tunnel. After a quick sprint while keeping an eye behind me, I arrive at a large set of stairs going up.

Somehow the smoke isn't covering the stairs... This is rather strange, but it's not the only strange thing back here. None of these portals look like any of the portals I've seen before, and there are way too many of them. Also, the aesthetics of the guardhouse back there shares no similarities to anything else I've seen in Jericho.

I'm getting the feeling that this place belonged to something else, and Jericho claimed it for itself at some point. All this smoke and heat coupled with the fact that Arkaios said Demons had attacked this place... I think I know who originally created this area. That's a complete guess, but I'd wager it's an accurate one.

The top of the stairs opens up to a small area filled with smoke and a single blazing orange portal. There's a bare path to it just like the stairs behind me. Next to the portal, I can see the final image of Ishar being carried through it. Looks like this is it.

I walk the rest of the way while eyeing my surroundings, expecting some kind of detection magic or security here since Demons had invaded through this portal in the past, but there's nothing I can see. If there is something here, then it must be hidden behind the smoke. I would have already felt it if something pinged me though.

I reach the portal and stop.

Okay, I need to time this right. There's no way in hell I'm jumping through this thing without my veil, but the light from this portal is hurting me with my veil down. I already know what kind of pain awaits me if I turn invisible right next to this thing, so I need to time it just as I hit the portal.

I take a few moments to calm myself and focus. Once I'm ready I jump toward the portal and activate my veil a split second too soon, causing an ungodly amount of pain to ripple through me, but I stifle any scream that's about to escape me as I arrive on the other end.

I hit the ground on all fours the second I land, scanning the area around me. It's a large forest with a bright blue sky, but the trees are blocking the light where I am.

There aren't any Demons or wildlife nearby, but I hear something that's making a really creepy noise. What the hell is that?

I scan the trees until I find the culprit, one of them at least. It's a finger-sized insect with wings, making this loud droning noise that fades in and out over and over. I'm just glad to see it wasn't an unknown monster.

A strong pulse of energy hits my core and wraps around it, dragging a sliver of my soul downward soon after. I can feel it moving very far down until it feels like it hits the core of the planet. Normally I'd be freaking out about what just happened, but I felt the pulse come from Arkaios' artifact.

What was that?

{Reset point. Find my ancient temple. Five tries.}

Five tries... As in, if I die I'll be brought back here? And you have a temple here? I don't even know where the hell we are.

{Yes. Abandoned.}

Taking that as a yes to both. The fact that he thought it was necessary to blow through the artifact's energy reserves to give me more chances to reach his temple is worrying to say the least. I knew Demons came through here, but I didn't fully understand the danger awaiting me apparently.

A small blue ball of light appears in front of me, flying diagonally to my left a little, disappearing shortly after. That way huh... I wasn't sure where to start so that helps a lot.

I stand up and begin running in the direction Arkaios had just pointed me towards. Don't worry guys, I'll be there soon enough... I hope.