An Unwavering Craftsman

"How?" asked Damien. "I saw your corpse!"

"Turns out Gaia had a rank nine healer hidden away who could resurrect. Your mother, Grace and Lana are fine too."

"I've never heard of any healer, at any time in history, who could resurrect the dead. How do I know this isn't some sort of trick?"

Shigeo pondered, thinking not being his forte. "Uh... How about I answer that later, and we get away from all these people who want to kill us first?"

Damien looked around, where it did indeed seem that the nearby guards were starting to twitch as they shook off his command. He flexed [Bloodwave], starting to form his spears.

And then he stopped.

"Fine," he agreed, looping the blood around himself and his father instead, lifting them off the ship and heading north, trying to stick close to the sea's surface to better evade watching eyes. "Where's Mum?"

"At the eastern source light. Grace went west. I don't suppose you saw her?"

"No..."

"Can't have made it in time, then. Fleta can take care of herself, but given the reception I had, we should probably rescue Grace."

"I... don't think that'll be a problem," admitted Damien.

"Right. Because if any defenders were still alive, they would hardly have let you destroy the source-light."

The pair flew on in awkward silence, not so much towards anything as away.

"I have to say I'm disappointed," sighed Shigeo. "I never took you to be the mass murdering type."

"They knew," snapped Damien. "Knew and did nothing."

"Giving you a lecture would be somewhat hypocritical, given that I suspect I'd behave in the same way were I in your shoes, but even so... Didn't you stop to consider maybe they were just afraid? Remember when you questioned the guards, and only half of them responded that they'd murder someone simply because the Five told them to? Yes, any at all were too many, but not all of them were happy with what happened. They just didn't see they had a choice."

"You didn't see Thale afterwards. It was... normal. Merchants on the street, hawking their wares. People shopping. The guards on the gate just... doing their jobs. As if it was nothing but a normal day. No-one was protesting. I didn't see anyone who looked afraid, or even bothered, by what had just happened."

"Well... I'll leave the telling off to your mother. For now, shall we head to Jurelli?"

"What for?" asked Damien, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Because Gaia would quite like to meet you."

"That's nice, but I can't imagine I..." started Damien, before the light at his back flashed brighter than it had ever shone before, then blinked out. It took tens of seconds before the sound caught up with them, a deafening cacophony of shattering glass, with strange echoes and harmonics that threatened to strip Damien of his bowel control.

"So that's why it didn't tell me to destroy the source-lights. In the end, I wasn't the one that broke either," he stated as the sky shattered and the Other broke through. "I suppose I'm [The Judgement], and not [The Sealbreaker]... It just wants me to deal with the Five."

"Crap," said Shigeo, far more bluntly. "Who in the bowl could have done that?! Wait; you didn't destroy the western one either?"

"The western one was Valerie, albeit I tricked her into it. But the southern one could have been anyone. If Grungle gave me one of his daggers, who knows who else has one. With us distracting the defenders, someone else could have snuck through."

"Grungle? The Maker is involved in all this too? All that we heard was that Illumis and Kakkerxat wanted to kill you, and Gaia wanted to heal you. Murill is dead, and Grungle wasn't supposed to be involved."

"Not involved? Grungle started this!"

What Shigeo's thoughts were on that matter were left unheard, because at that point, Arach-achanol started tearing islands from the bowl, which resulted in an overwhelming amount of noise.

And then it turned the bowl inside out, leaving the sky a familiar blue.

"Crap," echoed Damien once it was all over.

"Change of plan; Grace is going to need that rescue after all. We're going back to Greenrim!" demanded Shigeo. "Fleta will make her way back to Jurelli, but we need to pick up Grace. Although... I admit I have no idea where Greenrim is. Did you see?"

"No, but it doesn't matter," replied Damien as he activated [Gate].

It failed. After all, they were now back in the real world, and [Gate] couldn't connect two points within the same realm, even if Greenrim still counted as a previously visited location. "Crap," he repeated.

Fleta, being somewhat more eloquent than Shigeo, had managed to avoid a fight. That didn't mean she was welcome. She was left on one of the further out ships in the fleet, weapons taken, hands cuffed behind her back, with a number of guards keeping a watchful eye on her.

She swept her sharp eyes back and forth across the bowl, looking for any signs of anything approaching, or anything going on at the southern source light. She saw nothing whatsoever. Damien was far too small to pick out at the distance, but any particularly flashy magic should have been visible. There didn't appear to be a major fight going on down there.

So it came as a complete surprise to her when the source-light shattered.

"Shigeo..." she murmured, knowing he would have got there in time, and, given her own reception, hazarding a guess at what had happened.

Alas, she didn't have time to think any further before the sky broke and the Other slithered through. The source-light behind her dimmed as thick tentacles wrapped around it, blocking most of the light. They squeezed, and the last source-light shattered, raining shards of divine materials tens of metres across down upon the defensive ships. The closest ships sunk almost immediately, great rents torn through their hulls, a couple cleaved completely in two. Fleta's more distant ship lurched as the falling fragments of the source-light displaced seawater, causing huge waves, but managed to avoid any direct damage from the falling debris.

Her guards levelled their crossbows at her.

"Seriously! This is not the time!" she shouted.

"You said you and your husband would protect the source-lights. Does that look protected, you liar!"

"You didn't want to let me protect anything! It was all I could do to convince you to let me wait here, disarmed. Your counterparts down south probably chased my husband away!"

"Or we successfully stopped you, and your husband convinced them he was there to help and backstabbed them."

"Why is everyone so... so... stupid!" complained an exasperated Fleta. "Whatever; I need to get back to Jurelli."

She peered around at the new horizon, which extended in a complete circle around the ship. No longer was it within spitting distance of the rim. And who knew which direction the boat had been spun in by the waves of the falling source-light.

"You really think we're going to let you go after this?"

"No," she sighed as she dexterously leapt into the air, bending her knees and swinging her arms beneath, bringing her cuffs to the front just in time to catch the first crossbow bolt with the chain, which shattered, freeing her hands. "I'm not naïve. Just disappointed."

More bolts followed, but Fleta blurred between them, knocking out each guard in turn. Thankfully, they hadn't exactly left the best of the best to watch her. More like the worst of the worst, given that the best had left to aid the crusade and the best of the rest had been on the central ships.

Not that the sinking of the ships had killed them all, and the survivors were swimming at class-enhanced speeds towards the still seaworthy vessels. Before any could reach her, Fleta paid a visit to the captain. Fear worked both ways, after all, especially since he had a maritime class and not anything that specialised in combat. The point of a sword drawing a drip of blood from his back did wonders to convince him to get out of the area. He even had the navigation skills to work out which way the local islands had gone, and Fleta had seen enough of the Other tossing islands around to work out where that was in relation to Jurelli.

Damien pondered his choices. The black void place was out of the question; the space itself seemed to be fatal. So it was between the forest and its carnivorous plants, the flesh cave, or an uncontrolled portal. Or he could fly, but he was in a hurry, and [Gate] would be quicker.

The flesh cave, despite being somewhat gross, at least hadn't attempted to eat him. And it wasn't as if he'd be there long.

"This is gonna get weird. You should probably hold your breath, just in case," he warned, then he cast [Gate], stepping through the red portal. His feet squelched as he landed.

Shigeo, who was somewhat heavier, sank a little into the floor. Blood oozed out and pooled around his ankles.

"What the f..." he started before he was silenced by Damien dragging him straight into the next [Gate], not wanting to spend any time there.

Shigeo emitted a stream of rather impolite words.

"I'd recognise that voice anywhere," said Grace.

"Wow, good aim kiddo," said Shigeo. "But even so, please don't do that again."

"Sorry, but I can't move between two places in the same world, and that's the best intermediate world I've found so far."

"... I'd hate to see the worst."

"Sorry to interrupt," interrupted the lieutenant of the immortal legion, "but could you explain what just transpired? The pair of you are here, apparently on good terms, yet the southern source-light was destroyed."

"It wasn't me," said Damien, looking around at who he was talking to.

And seeing Valerie, standing behind a group of guards.

He immediately took a defensive stance, expecting a burst of fire at any moment, but [Foresight] gave no warning. The woman looked catatonic, standing with her eyes open but glazed over, focused on nothing and not reacting to Damien's arrival at all.

"Woah there! We aren't your enemy," said the lieutenant.

"What about her, behind you?" asked Damien.

"We... don't know what's wrong with her," admitted the lieutenant. "We assumed her condition was something you did."

"I did trick her into destroying the source-light. Maybe it's shock from that?"

Flickers of anger flashed across the faces of all those from the legion as Damien openly admitted being responsible for this source-light, but they were professionals and had their orders.

"Look, Grungle wanted them destroyed. If the one who made them made that decision, they'd have ended up broken sooner or later whether I took part or not. All we can do is make the most of what we've got."

"Grungle? How is the Maker involved?" asked the lieutenant, confused. "Gaia never said anything about him having a role."

"I don't know! Let's go ask. I can teleport us as far as Thale."

"I believe I can navigate us back from there. We had a good view of the actions of the Other from here."

"Yes. Particularly the part where it destroyed Jurelli," added one of his subordinates.

"... We don't know how bad the damage was. And remember that Gaia has Kari."

"Wait, what?" asked Damien, not having seen that part at all from his vantage point at sea level.

"It smashed its tentacles down on four of the cathedral cities. Only Murill's was spared, presumably because she's already dead."

"No..." said Damien.

"No?"

"I don't think the Other would have killed the Five. He left that to me."

"We watched that thing utterly flatten the cities. You really think everyone survived?"

"Oh, no. Not at all. Almost certainly everyone living there is dead. But the Five themselves..."

"Let's just get over there," sighed Shigeo, so Damien once again used [Gate].