Chapter 8: Intervention

No matter how big the horse may have been, riding a horse with three people was still awkward, especially since Aenbharr would allow none but Alexis to steer him.

Elaine was worried the whole trip through. Jordan was a good guy. When they had gotten selected for the Awakener project Jordan had been a scrawny kid, the nerdy black kid portrayed in so many TV shows. As they went through the program Jordan became more and more muscular, though it had never made the guy any less awkward. Quite the opposite in fact. He still wore the nerd glasses, too. But even if he lacked confidence it didn't make him any less competent. He was smart, capable in a fight and very studious when it came to training his water magic.

Elaine realized that she hadn't really talked to Jordan in a while. The kitsune, one of the werewolves, and two other girls had taken up with him and Elaine had had her own hands full, too.

She wouldn't forgive herself if their last round of ribbing ended up being the last words she'd ever speak to him.

It only took a few minutes for them to reach the post office, Ophelia easily keeping up with the horse. She'd even ran backwards a bit to demonstrate how little this pace bothered her.

When Elaine had read the words “post office”, she'd assumed Jordan had been talking about a sizable building, but the place was barely large enough not to qualify as a shack, painted white and with an access ramp leading down the side to the handicapped parking spots.

Much more worrisome was the horde of beings roaming the streets looking for Jordan and his team. There were about two dozen zombies and a few weird things that Elaine had never seen before. All but one looked like dust clouds held in vaguely humanoid shapes, but the final one made Elaine shiver.

At first glance it looked like a floating person wearing a yellow hooded robe, but that illusion faded the longer one watched it. It did indeed have a thin yellow membrane that looked like a robe and out of the arm holes of the robe reached emaciated tar black arms that ended in gruesome talons. But where that hypothetical person's legs should have been, it instead had a mass of black tentacles, suckers and all, but all of them tipped with razor-sharp barbs. And out of what passed for the hood came another mass of smaller tentacles, making it look like it had a squid face like Cthulhu under that robe, but the fact that its face was wreathed in shadow and invisible except for the tentacles coming out of it made it look a lot creepier than it otherwise would have.

All in all it looked like a larger, more terrifying version of the Yellow Wraith.

Elaine scanned them, first the ash cloud things, then the big one.

“I guess we need to leave those Ash Wraiths up to you”, Elaine told Ophelia.

“Finally”, Ophelia said. “But what about that big thing?”

“Yeah, give me a moment”, Elaine said. Thankfully, the Demi-Lich hadn't spotted them yet, so she took the time to send a message to Jordan.

It only took Jordan a minute to reply.

“So, did you come up with something?”, Evelyn asked.

“Yes”, Elaine said. “Ophelia has to be the one to take care of these Ash Wraiths, so she'll use her Hounds of Hades. If she kills a few normal zombies with them as well I won't mind. Alexis will ride Aenbharr through the crowd, plowing through the normal zombies. Between her spear, her horse, her magic and her shotgun she should be able to deal a lot of damage to them. Evelyn and I distract the Demi-Lich. I would like to get rid of that thing immediately, but if its shielding is as tough as the scan said, I think we'll be at this for a while. Plus, if there's two of us attacking it we can push each other out of the way of the Darklight attacks. And once it's distracted Jordan and his team should be able to get out and join us.”

“What is this Darklight stuff anyway?”, Ophelia asked. “I have abilities that protect against it but I don't even know what it is.”

“It's... the Outsider version of light magic”, Elaine explained. “It functions basically the same, but instead of illuminating, it darkens the area around it. It can be used for beam attacks and to create physical objects. Issue is that most armor does sweet fuck-all to defend against it. Ours is better, but not by much. You do not want any Darklight to touch you if you can help it.”

“Gotcha”, Ophelia said.

Ophelia placed her fist over her heart, summoning the Hounds of Hades which manifested as the translucent outlines of a wolf's front half that ended in ghostly trails instead of hind legs and a tail. They levitated off the ground and circled Ophelia, demanding ear scratches. She gave them some and then the hounds rushed forward as if they knew what to do by themselves. The Ash Wraiths were either too stupid to notice the danger or felt secure in their invulnerability, either way they made no effort to dodge as the hounds rushed into them. But when the spectral jaws bit into their forms, they tore huge gashes through them, swiftly dispersing the Ash Wraiths before the hounds turned and immediately attacked the next ones without pause. When they were done with the Ash Wraiths, Ophelia directed her hounds at what few zombies Alexis hadn't yet managed to dispatch while weaving a shadow construct to use against the Demi-Lich.

Alexis meanwhile was barreling into the horde of zombies on Aenbharr, wielding Areadbhar in her right and holding the reins in her left.

She'd never ridden a horse in her life and yet she felt at home in Aenbharr's saddle. Likewise, she'd never wielded a spear, but the magnificent weapon she managed to summon felt like an extension of her limb to her. The tip was so large it allowed her to cleave with it as well as thrust, though she noticed quickly that the weapon could only do its full damage on thrusting attacks. When slashing, it had a tendency to bounce off of bones and, she suspected, armor.

Between the huge horse sending zombies flying and the spear cutting and skewering them, the cute blonde cut a swathe of destruction through the horde.

Elaine and Evelyn stood side by side, only half a foot in between them. Elaine's crystal swords were thrust into the asphalt so she could quickly grab them if need be and both women began firing their assault rifles at the same time. Three round bursts, again and again, right into the Demi-Lich's center mass, though of course the shield absorbed all of it.

The Demi-Lich reacted swiftly, sending a tight burst of three reed-thin lines of Darklight at the two women.

Elaine had been expecting it and tossed the rifle out of her hands, trusting the three point sling to keep it within grabbing distance, as she pulled one of her crystal swords out of the ground and used it to deflect the beams. Two were sent off into the air and the third, for the briefest moment, ricocheted back into the Demi-Lich's shield, dealing more damage to it than two entire assault rifle magazines had done.

The Demi-Lich roared, or at least did something equivalent to roaring. It threw its head back, the tentacles on its face flailing in the air, and let out a sound that was half nails on a chalk board and half drowning on one's own phlegm.

To Elaine's immense surprise the CARD was able to translate the noise into speech, showing subtitles low in her vision. Not that it was particularly useful. The thing had said:

“I'll feast on your souls you insignificant worms!”

**

Jordan Walker had never been one to let a good straight line go to waste.

As the monster had roared, he and his team had charged out, guns blazing and magic flashing. One of his teammates, a mousy brunette named Anna, held a Soul Shard of Poseidon and used it to call up something called Oceanic Dominion, which drastically amplified water magic in the area, both her own and that of her comrades. Jordan held a hand up, the blue glow around it condensing into a projectile that he fired at the creature, shouting:

“Feast on this, motherfucker!”

Sending out disintegration rays? Cool.

Sending out disintegration rays while quoting Evil Dead? Turbo cool.

The disintegration ray was a nifty piece of work that required a somewhat skewed understanding of what water magic was like. Where most water mages used their spells to pelt enemies with waves or projectiles of water, this spell instead harnessed the ability of water to, over millennia, grind down mountains into sand, except magically enhanced to do so within seconds and with only a few ounces of water required.

Even enhanced by Oceanic Dominion the disintegration ray didn't manage to break the shield but it did significant damage to it and the now furious Demi-Lich turned to face him and his team.

It was stopped when Alexis' Areadbhar thrust into its shield, not quite breaking the whole thing but putting a noticeable hole into it. She jumped back and then sent a beam of light magic right at the hole.

The shield was tough. But funnily enough it was tough on the inside as well, so when the laser beam entered the shield through the hole it bounced around inside the ovoid shield again and again, burning through the Demi-Lich in eleven places before petering out.

The thing lost its mind with pain, sending out a cascade of Darklight beams all around itself.

Elaine shouted a warning, but then she felt someone shoving her away, out of the line of fire of a Darklight beam she hadn't even seen. She turned and saw the beam searing through Evelyn's body, rime coating the edges of the wound.

“Yay”, Evelyn gasped, a horrid smile on her face and blood coming out of her mouth, “I finally made amends.”

Then she collapsed.

“EVELYN!”, Elaine screamed.

**

Ophelia hadn't been idle. When she saw Evelyn drop, she used her supernatural speed to rush towards the building across from the post office, into the shadows it cast.

She'd been planning to use all those nice EXP she'd gotten today to buy the Shadow Cowl skill, but she wasn't going to let someone die for a better skill, especially not a party member and especially not someone who'd sacrificed themselves for Elaine. Elaine was too good a person and would never forgive herself for that.

Shadow's Embrace would confer five times the user's regeneration to the target and Ophelia was sure that whoever had designed that skill hadn't been thinking of vampires when they had. Five times a human's natural regeneration would be decent. Five times her regeneration? That would be enough to regrow limbs in minutes.

Once in the shadows, Ophelia began frantically scrolling through her level up screen.

Evelyn, you are so going to owe me for this.

Once she'd purchased the skills she immediately tried to use Shadow's Embrace. She'd expected it to be hard to control but directing the shadows ended up easier than moving her own actual limbs. The shadows coiled and grasped along the ground until they'd reached the heavily wounded redhead and wrapped around her.

Ophelia let out a gasp. Evelyn was in bad shape. The Darklight beam had punctured a lung and the edges of the wound were severely frostbitten.

But as she'd expected it was nothing her new skill couldn't fix. The energy flooded into Evelyn, the wounds slowly creeping closed as Ophelia cradled her body in shadows, protecting her from further harm.

**

Elaine Caldwell wiped the notification away.

She didn't care.

She saw red.

Summoning the Winds of Magic, the stuff of creation, required strong emotions.

Right now, Elaine had strong emotions in spades.

The density of Winds around her was so high she could barely see through the glowing white threads spinning in her vision. She thrust her right hand out and her three crystal swords followed. She took one in each hand, letting the third drift behind her as she jumped at the Demi-Lich.

It was still throwing its tantrum and Elaine jammed her two swords into the hole in the shield that Alexis had created, wedging the shield open with sheer brute force. The magic came easily and Elaine created another two swords while tearing at the shield with the ones she had.

Finally she wedged it open and stepped into the bubble.

The Demi-Lich tried swiping at her with its talons but two swift cuts later the Demi-Lich no longer had arms.

It tried to shred her with the spine-tipped tentacles that made up its lower body but she shredded through them instead.

The Demi-Lich tried to grasp her head with the tentacles on its face, trying to pull her under the cloak to whatever horrors awaited her there, but she cut those off to writhe impotently at the bottom of the shield bubble.

She could have stabbed its main body and been done, but this thing, this Outsider piece of filth, had hurt her girl. Maybe Evelyn hadn't been hers for long, but she was still hers and nobody was going to take her women from her.

The Winds still swirling around her she gathered a sphere of rapidly swirling air, making the air inside it denser and denser, making it swirl faster and faster, growing hotter and hotter and finally it was getting too hot for her to hold onto.

By that point, all who were present confirmed during the debriefing, Elaine had created a ball of plasma in her hand and then, with a final “DIE!” she had shoved that ball of plasma right into the Demi-Lich's face. A giant hole seared its way through its head but before it could come out the other side, the ball of plasma went wild, dispersing and sending out waves of heat that made the rest of the Demi-Lich's body shrivel up.

Elaine keeled over and lost consciousness as the notifications started flashing before her eyes.

**

Stollos Cypher was impressed.

It was not an emotion he was in the habit of feeling. His experiments either performed as expected or failed to perform as expected, but it had been centuries since the last time his test subjects had exceeded his expectations.

Ever since the commencement of operations yesterday he'd been studiously monitoring the progress of the Awakeners and Shard Bearers. The compound had an entire monitoring division but he had specifically asked them not to filter anything out and to give him all the information to sift through himself.

It had taken him hours to get over the annoyance of seeing that eight Shard Bearers hadn't even attempted to join any Awakeners and that had caused him to almost overlook the explosive growth some of the subjects had gone through. Now, on the second day, there were already two teams with members who had collected enough EXP to reach Level 5.

Certainly both of these teams had entered situations they should by all rights have suffered heavy casualties from, but that was the nature of the beast. Only by giving their all could they unlock their potential.

Speaking of potential, Stollos had not expected the vampire girl to realize that her abilities could synergize with her preternatural abilities as a vampire. Or at least, he hadn't expected her to realize it at such an opportune moment.

Still, those children had taken down a Demi-Lich. Even though Stollos tried to watch everything with clinical detachment the fact that any of them had walked away from that confrontation was impressive. The fact that all of them had survived was staggering.

So there was an unusual bit of swing in his steps as he made his way toward Jeanne's armory.

When he reached it Jeanne was clearly not busy and so he asked her to have a word.

“I had been wondering when you would show up”, she said to him.

“You act as though you already know what I want to talk about”, he said.

“I do. You want to ask me if I am willing to assist with performing the Oath of Crystal Tears”, she replied evenly.

He shrugged. She wasn't wrong. “I do. And I appreciate you getting straight to the point instead of playing games. So, are you willing to assist with it?”

Jeanne paused for a second, just to show him how serious she was and how much it meant to her. “Stollos Cypher, listen closely, because I do not wish to repeat these words. Lady Venus did not send me here against my will. I volunteered to be sent here. I know what the Oath of Crystal Tears entails. I know that it requires the willing cooperation of a pure-blooded demon and a pure-blooded angel. I also know that Rachel and I are at present the only ones at this compound who fit your requirements. I believe that, under normal circumstances, the Oath of Crystal Tears holds an unacceptably high risk. However, these aren't normal circumstances and we are in a situation where the ends might actually justify the means. I came here because I believe I have the necessary detachment to make the proper decisions in this matter.”

“So that means...” he let it hang in the air.

“I am willing to assist you with it, but I will do so on my terms”, she told him. “I decide when the risk is acceptable. I know that the difference between those who harness the power and those who fail to do so is strength of will. I also know that you are monitoring the cadets for the necessary willpower, trying to find one with a decently high chance of success.”

He shrugged. He was doing exactly that, though he hadn't actually told anyone that. The stat screens of all test subjects held a few hidden stats that only Stollos could view and Strength of Will was one of them. Very useful when resisting the mental attacks Outsiders were so fond of and the deciding factor in whether one would succeed with the Oath of Crystal Tears.

“If you can present me with a test subject with a higher than ninety percent chance of success I will consider lending my aid. If you approach ninety-eight percent or higher I promise to help you. Anything below ninety percent? No. And I will make sure to instruct any other angels who may be stationed here to adopt the same stance.” The way Jeanne said her piece told Stollos that she expected to be greeted with protest.

Instead Stollos nodded and said: “Deal. These subjects are too valuable to risk on numbers lower than that anyway.”

Jeanne blinked. “Really?”, she asked, honest confusion on her face.

He shrugged. “I only ever wanted to make humanity strong enough to stand up against the powers seeking to hold it down and Project Divinity has given us a way to strengthen these mortals without the risk of turning them into mindless monsters.
“The Oath of Crystal Tears gets more immediate results but it is too risky to perform it without proper monitoring and I would not jeopardize any of these test subjects for a low chance of success." He paused, then added: "At least so long as the situation doesn't get any worse.”

“You sound quite different from the man we were all taught to hate”, Jeanne told him.

He sounded weary as he told her: “The only thing that has changed for me since the Invasion is that these days I think Up-Above and Down-Below are the lesser evil.”

“How... generous”, she said, not sure how to respond to that. Jeanne had heard stories of the callous researcher Stollos, the one who was supposed to be this horrible thorn in both Heaven and Hell's sides, but this driven scientist was quite different from what she'd expected.

“Anyway, I thank you for the chat and the assistance, but I shall take my leave now.”

“You do that”, she said. “I am glad we see eye to eye on this.”

He nodded and left.

**

What Stollos hadn't shared with Jeanne was that today one of the Awakeners had grown in willpower so far that for her the chance of succeeding with the Oath of Crystal Tears was at 89%.

This Awakener was so far the most impressive piece of the puzzle. Her team wasn't the largest, but her teamwork with her chosen teammates was exceptional and she showed actual enthusiasm for all aspects of the program. Though she kept grumbling at him about the side effects his experiments had had, as if some minor physical alterations changed anything.

Once back in his laboratory he pulled up the information he had on her.

The stat sheet of an Awakener wouldn't show them what their Soul Shards were because the procedure of turning them into Awakeners also precluded them from being Shard Bearers.

However, a Lacrima would have full access to their Soul Shards, to an extent that even the Shard Bearers couldn't dream of. Lacrima could communicate with their Soul Shards and learn from them instead of leeching off their power.

Lacrima, the tears shed by humanity over an uncaring and vicious world.

He'd named them centuries ago, but the name seemed more apropos than ever now.

He shook his head and pulled out the file for the Awakener in question, the one that held all the redacted information.

Interesting.

He nodded as he read. Those with Awakener potential were far rarer than Shard Bearers, so for someone like her, who showed potential for both, they had gone for the Awakener route. But that didn't necessarily mean that her Soul Shard was weak. He flipped the page and looked at the Sergeant's Soul Shard, or rather her Soul Shards, for she had two.

Oh my.

They weren't names he'd been expecting to see, much less on the same person.

If she could harness the first she would be a force of nature. He knew, for he himself held a Shard of that same being.

If she could harness the second she might be able to empower her Shard Bearers to far greater heights than Stollos' most generous models had foreseen.