Lillene

Enjoy!

“Surrender or die,” Serenity repeated for the third time as he almost effortlessly disintegrated another projectile while he blocked a spell. He didn’t want to kill but he knew when he didn’t have a choice and this was that time. So far he’d only had to kill two of the guards; he didn’t expect the number to stay that low.

They were clearly expecting him to run out of energy soon. They had no idea that he was so flush with both mana and essence that he had to get rid of some of it. It was worse than when he injured Lykandeon with the man’s own ritual; that pushed up his Core’s Tier, which was bad enough, but this didn’t have that outlet. Oh, it’d pushed it to the top of the Tier, but it hadn’t even tried to push beyond that. 

That was probably because at least some of the overload was from a Skill. Helping Echa die, even if that wasn’t his intent, had leveled Serenity enough to unlock his next Skill, and it was a doozy to unlock at the death of a god, even a vastly weakened one. The death of a god was significant.

Death Absorption

Death empowers the Incarnate of Death, whether that is Death-attuned mana or the loss of existence. Each empowerment is related to the Death that causes it. The ability replaces Eat Death and Adept Aspect Form.

It probably wouldn’t last more than a few hours or perhaps days as the overflow drained away. For now, he was nearly invincible, if somewhat deficient in control. It was harder to not kill things that hit his shield than it was to disintegrate the weapons, which was wild. 

Killing the bonds that held molecules together or even killing matter itself was not something that was within the normal power of a Tier Eight; worse, it was usually a highly dangerous energy-releasing activity. It would have been deadly dangerous here as well, except that he killed the energy it released.

It was a flashy exercise and completely unneeded, except that he absolutely had to dump excess energy. The fact that it seemed to feed energy back to him through Death Absorption told Serenity that he’d be an absolute monster on the battlefield, with his kills effectively costing far less than they should, but it was still a fairly significant net loss. He wasn’t going to go into battle if he could avoid it; even if he had to, he’d want to use his Skill more efficiently. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even be able to start the exceedingly wasteful process he was using; if he somehow could, sustaining it would quickly drain him.

Dispersing the bodies as well as the weapons would have consumed even more mana and some essence, but Serenity wasn’t about to do that. It was too bad he had to kill them; the least he could do was leave bodies for their loved ones to mourn. 

There were only two bodies so far; one was the chief guard, who attacked him with a knife when the spear didn’t work, while the other was a guard who tried to grab Serenity from behind when he wasn’t looking. It didn’t work. His shield didn’t depend on seeing an attack. If he hadn’t caught the motion from the corner of his eye, the guard’s body would probably have been destroyed.

He’d chosen not to kill the ones that tried to stab him then stumbled too close when their spear was destroyed. It was difficult, unlike leaving the bodies; killing them was well within the normal capability of his shield, which made it harder to stop, unlike his choice to leave the bodies intact. If this continued, he might not have the choice, but for now he’d stick to only killing when he had to.

Another spear hit him, then another. They were carrying far too many spears for a set of guards. Even with relatively affordable places to store weapons so that you didn’t have to carry them, most people didn’t keep half a dozen on hand unless they expected a fight, and each of the guards had thrown and lost that many already. Yes, delvers would, but that was because delvers fought away from support routinely. Guards normally expected shorter engagements; they could resupply if the fight was longer than expected. 

It was also a little strange that the guards didn’t have anyone providing proper support. All of their attacks were physical, mostly stabs with a spear, though quite a few were thrown as well. He’d expected some of them to be mages; mixed combat ability was a little harder to train for but it could be far more effective. Perhaps they depended on the elders for magical support?

Lightning seared through the air but vanished when it hit his shield. That was new; the elder’s initial attacks were all plant-based. Serenity sighed to himself and moved towards the spellcaster. Elder Inchabe didn’t look much like the formal, severe woman she’d seemed when he met her. Instead, she was shouting about killing him and blasphemy. The guards were following her direction, or at least most of them were. There was a group to the side that was watching, unsure what to do.

“Separate them! Stop the fighting!” 

Serenity glanced over his shoulder to see Foremost Elder Omprek shouting again. This time, he yelled at the stationary guards. They seemed to listen to him and moved in towards their fellows. Serenity noted that none of them had spears in their hands; several spears rested where they’d stood when Elder Omprek yelled at them. 

That might well help, but none of them were headed towards Elder Inchabe. Serenity couldn’t blame them for that as more lightning flashed through the air only to disappear into his shield. If he didn’t have this level of protection, he wouldn’t want to face that either. Lightning stung.

Two quick steps brought him alongside Elder Inchabe. She rotated to face him but didn’t step away; that was convenient. He moved quickly to grab an arm. His hand hit her shield; normally, that might be an issue, but with this much overflowing power he simply told his own shield to kill it. Bright light flashed around her for a moment as her shield was forcibly killed and she screamed. 

Serenity might have just damaged her Path; he’d certainly just used enough power to do it. He was kind of amazed his shielding Skill was intact; he’d run far more mana through it than it should have been able to take. His channels weren’t ruptured, either, but that was probably because he was healing as fast as any damage happened. It certainly wasn’t comfortable, but he didn’t think had done any permanent damage yet. 

Serenity pulled her arm behind her and twisted it around so that it forced her to lean forward to relieve the strain on her elbow. There were ways to escape what he was doing, but he didn’t think she knew them; that meant that the only likely escape was if she allowed him to break her elbow. He just had to take it slow enough that she’d try to get away from the pressure instead of not realizing what was going on.

She didn’t. She leaned forward, then sank to the ground. A spell flashed out of her free hand and vines whipped out of the ground in his general direction. Even without his shield, they would only have hit him if she got lucky.

He kept pushing until she knelt on the stone floor. She wiggled and tried to get away, but that was even harder now that he’d forced her down. Once again, she simply didn’t know how. Serenity was grateful for that small mercy.

Two more spears evaporated on his shield before the few guards that were still attacking seemed to pause, unsure what to do. Six of them were struggling with other guards, while four who weren’t in that fight were watching it and seemed to be thinking about intervening. The other five guards were looking from Serenity to Elder Inchabe to Elder Omprek, clearly unsure of what to do.

“Surrender,” Serenity stated. He didn’t add the “or die” this time; it wasn’t necessary and he probably wouldn’t carry through with it against people who weren’t attacking even if they didn’t surrender. If nothing else, he didn’t intend to kill the ones who were restrained by other guards.

He was pretty sure he’d triggered a coup attempt early. The only other option that made sense was if Elder Inchabe had intended to kill him all along. That seemed possible but unlikely; it seemed far more likely that he was the intended scapegoat for the other elders’ deaths.

Come to think of it, scapegoats like that usually worked best if they were dead and couldn’t tell their side of the story. Chances were good that she’d intended to kill both him and Senkovar to help cover her tracks. It wouldn’t have worked; Serenity might not know all of the tricks Senkovar had up his sleeves, but he knew that the apparently harmless old man was anything but helpless in a fight. They’d breezed through a few dungeons together once they got off Earth and Serenity never felt like Senkovar was holding him back.

Serenity glanced over towards where Senkovar had been before the fight started. The old man was still there. The hint of a smile on his face widened a little when Serenity looked at him.

“I’d have killed her, myself.” Senkovar walked up to the still screaming elder and tapped her on her forehead. She collapsed to the ground silent but still breathing. “I’m not surprised you didn’t; you seem to have a soft spot about killing. Be careful it doesn’t get you in deeper trouble than you can deal with.”

“You could have helped,” Serenity grumbled. 

Senkovar chuckled. “I could have, but why should I deprive you of the fun? It didn’t look like you needed my help. 

Serenity opened his mouth to say something, then realized he had no idea what to say. His initial impulse was to deny enjoying the fight, but he was trying not to lie to himself. “I guess it was kind of fun.”

Senkover chuckled. “You don’t make it to Tier Eight as a delver without enjoying a fight. That you’re a fighter was obvious the moment we entered that dungeon on Szhemi; no one really likes fighting steelhawks.”

Serenity shrugged. He didn’t mind admitting he liked challenging dungeons. It wasn’t just the fight; a good bit of it was the challenge. “I can’t get a good fight on Earth.” 

The closest he’d had to a good fight on Earth was when Apollyon sent a demon to A’Atla. If he’d prepared for it the same way he prepared for the fight with Apollyon himself, it wouldn’t have been a good fight. 

Senkovar chuckled again. “You remind me of myself when I was younger. I left Suratiz looking for a future; it wasn’t until I was older and wiser that I realized what I wanted was there all along.”

Serenity tried to raise an eyebrow. They both probably went up; he’d never been any good at that gesture. “I’m not going to abandon Earth. Even if I didn’t care about Gaia, Rissa’s there. So is Jenna, plus my parents, not to mention Russ and Red and-” 

Serenity cut himself off. He didn’t need to list everyone he cared about on Earth. The list did remind him of some people he ought to contact, though; he hadn’t really realized how many friends he had until he started thinking about the people who meant something to him on Earth.

Lillene

In some ways, I feel like I should have done more with Serenity and Senkovar getting to know each other. Cymryn was mostly gone, but Senkovar spent most of that time in Aki’s dungeon, a good bit of it dealing with Serenity.

Unfortunately, I found it kind of boring. Yes, he spent a lot of time shocked at either Serenity or Earth, but … I dunno, it was mostly just them talking. Serenity did show Senkovar some of New York City and Senkovar did talk about Suratiz, but … I had a hard time making it interesting.