Fifty-Eight

The world dissolved under the spinning currents of black wind and lashing rain; only in the moments of lighting was the world revealed. And it was ruin.

Daniur's wrath was death and destruction made manifest. The great stadium they'd been in had dissolved like water in sugar, a fantasy of solidity that had washed away in the screaming winds. Thousands were harvested as the rain increased its potency, filled with energy now they landed with the strength of bombs, blasting apart the ground to leave craters.

Kon took a while to realize that this was all incidental damage. Daniur had brought her strength to bear and this world was too weak to handle it. The world itself was trembling as she let her strength show. All except the small room that Benny had decreed was safe. Only here in the refuge of his power were they spared.

Daniur's spillover might be destroying the world, but her directed wrath was more instant. The few cultivators still strong enough to withstand the storm were throwing themselves at her with little to no effect. Kon watched as demigods battled above him and felt his mouth grow dry.

All the strength he'd gathered over the last year was meaningless before these battling cultivators. No matter how strong he was he couldn't have survived even trying to run away from this fight. The rain itself would have left him no more than a scattered mist of flesh and blood. To survive one of the wind blades she was constantly sending out around herself or the bolts of lighting she threw was beyond anything he could hope to reach anytime soon.

"Wonder when she'll realize," Benny said calmly. His faded eyes watched the fighting above with a clinical disinterest.

"Wonder what?" Kon asked. The only one who could pull their eyes away from the display of might.

"That it's a distraction," Benny said. His words were a prophesy as a moment later a bolt of fire burned through the center of the storm, engulfing the cultivator before striking the earth. Kon didn't have time to feel fear before the bloom of heat washed over them.

The world turned red and Kon looked around as a wall of fire washed over the world. Benny hadn't even flinched, the others hadn't had a chance to react, but the old man seemed almost bored with all of this. Nestled in the seat of his power where he'd let a piece of his true form out, even the ship-to-ground laser weaponry of a warship was nothing to him.

Kon looked up into low orbit and saw it sitting there now that the skies had been cleared of the black stormclouds. An ugly, squat ship that was already turning to present its wide broadside at them. With a flex of his will Kon activated his runes and his senses sharpened, piercing the rising clouds of steam that were rising from the ground.

Dozens of barrels tracked them, the entire broadside of a capital ship, even if it was a relatively small one. It had been built to raze moons and destroy kilometers of steel and all of its strength was pointed at the figure who floated in the sky. Daniur's form smoked, her crown of black winds gone while her armor of electricity fizzled and snapped.

She looked only passably like Diur. His companion's narrow, delicate features were refined, her outward persona manicured and presented in a way that gave no hint of the woman beneath it. Diur was manners and civilization, the distillation of centuries of careful words and manners.

Daniur was something more primal. There was an edge to her, beyond the umbrella of power that he was currently under. A harshness to her features, a bleakness to her eyes and a cruelty to her mouth. She smiled rapaciously as she looked toward the ship that had shot her.

"Oh, they pissed her off," Alice said slowly, shaking her head. She still hadn't removed her mask and held her axes as if battle might start at any moment. Benny grunted in agreement as the storm stilled.

Swirling clouds stopped, the remnant of the falling rain froze and the crackling lighting ceased. Then it began to compress, shrinking as it was pulled back toward Daniur as she took a step and crossed space. She appeared before them, hair floating around her as electric arcs danced from her fingers, she looked over Diur once before nodding.

"Bear witness. Few of my line have seen this," Daniur said. Then she was gone again, appearing hundreds of kilometers away. Kon could hardly make her out, even straining his runes as he was.

"Magnify, Benny murmured and the air in front of them distorted until they could see Daniur as if she was right next to them. Daniur held her sword in both hands, shoulders relaxed as she stared down the broadside of the capital ship.

"Who's ship is that?" Kon asked. It wasn't a human warship, of that he was certain. Benny would have reacted faster if it had been.

"Old cruiser, appropriated by the Void Walkers a few years ago. Crewed by non-cultivators that are sworn to their sect. It's their primary war vessel," Benny said. Kon nodded as he watched the line of cannon barrels fire toward the floating cultivator.

Weapons designed to hit other warships weren't so precise as to be able to accurately hit a single floating woman. Kon had seen her move and knew she could have avoided the bursts of fire coming at her. He didn't know if it was laser or plasma fire, but it took less than a second to cross the distance and he realized it didn't matter if the cannons weren't accurate if they covered the world in overlapping waves of fire that could burn a city to ash.

Daniur took a step forward, lowered the tip of her sword toward the ground, then snapped her wrists upward. The dozen beams of light were redirected upward, rising past her and piercing the heavens to fly off planet. The riposte continued, a wave of air and energy that struck the side of the warship. Kon watched as thick armor plating split like rotten fruit, the cruiser snapping in half. Fires exploded along the length of the ship as the cut continued, shearing through a mountain range, carving a canyon a kilometer deep before finally petering out to form a deep depression in the far distance.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Flashy," Benny said drolly. Daniur was beside them a moment later with a frown on her face as she looked them over.

"You have faded, old one," Daniur said. There was a moment there, a hunger or need that made violence seem imminent. Then Benny met her gaze and smiled, wide and long to show all his teeth.

"Not that faded that some pup like you could usurp me," Benny finally said. Daniur waited a moment, tension rising between their group as if there was about to be an imminent, apocalyptic, meeting of ancients. Then Daniur threw her head back and laughed and it was the sound of thunder.

"I miss treating with ones like you. For too long I have shared my time with weak-blooded fools," Daniur said. She finally let loose the power coiled around her and she landed lightly on the ground in front of them. She sheathed her sword in a smooth motion, the blade unstained as she looked at the wards of power Kon's master had woven.

"I don't think I could break these," she finally muttered, running a hand around the edge of the room. Then she stepped right through the barrier and hugged her descendant.

"Little Diur," she cooed, reaching up and grasping Diur's cheeks and pulling them until the woman's cheeks darkened to a deep blue. Diur stared at her with wide, panicked eyes. Daniur laughed at her before turning to look the rest of them over.

"Turja. I see you still imbibe," Daniur said, giving a quick head bow to the spy mistress. The demon had tossed her meal out of the room at some point, but her mouth was still scarlet stained as she stared at Daniur with scarlet eyes. Slowly the rings of black were pushing the scarlet inward, compressing them into pinpricks.

"Every now and then I feel a bit…peckish," Turja admitted. Kon glanced at the woman and forcibly stopped a shudder from running down his back. That her meal had been a D-Grade Elder of the Purifying Flame told him more than he wanted to about the creature.

"Alice, you can remove your mask. No need for hiding your presence now," Daniur said, slapping Alice on the shoulder hard enough to nearly pitch the taller Knight off the floating platform they were on. The ground beneath their room had been ripped free or burnt away, Kon couldn't tell.

Alice belted an axe to her belt and unbuckled the mask, letting it hang from the belt right besides the war trophy. She looked…the same. Red hair, green eyes, skin with the faintest traces of scars. There was a newfound hardness there in her eyes though, a pale reflection of Daniur's own brand of tempering. Not that Alice had been weak or soft on Crucible, but there was an added weight there now that hadn't been there previously.

"I had our ships moved this morning," Benny said, unconcerned about the reunions. He was already moving, getting ready to depart from the planet now that its purpose had been served.

They knew who had been moving in the shadows, who had launched the missile that had been the Lupine and goblins that had brought down the Dragon's Maw. To Benny this place was a dead end to be discarded. Kon looked over the ruined topside and frowned.

There were hundreds underneath, few of them would have love for the Void Walkers and Purifying Flame, what little remained on the planet. War was coming for them, for he had sworn to stand by Diur as she had stood by him. The Ulmna Confederacy was slated to fall, daggers driven into their hearts by a coalition that involved traitorous humans.

Kon felt that heat in chest, that newfound rage at the thought of those bastards that had stripped him of a future he'd just started to see. Of a home he'd just started to build.

That it had led him to Benny and Diur was besides the point. Their actions, greed, malice, and fear wrapped in the trappings of ambition had seen the deaths of his fellows, of the death of good men and women and now even more were under the threat of their ceaseless hunger.

They were outnumbered, out maneuvered, their enemy had started the war and drawn the lines in the sand before they'd even realized it was starting. Their faction had the power and knowledge of ancient beings, but they lacked in numbers, in steel and magic. Kon looked toward his mentor and the words the man had spoken to him on the moon when Kon had sworn to him, taken his name.

They would find their home. A home that had been taken from them, swallowed under a tide of monsters. They'd need their own warriors, warriors loyal to them and not fickle nobles or those gallivanting Knights who'd arrived to buy the broken remnants of his chapterhouse in silks. Kon looked up and saw Benny watching him with sharp eyes, a hint of a smile ticking at the corner of his face.

"We're outnumbered and outmatched right now. But there are some below who could be made useful. An alchemist specifically," Kon said and he offered Benny his own hard grin as plans began to unfold in his mind. Life bloomed behind Benny's eyes and he nodded slowly.

"I see where you move. Calcification has set in amongst the children. We must shake them free of it," Benny said. Alice looked back and forth between the two of them, confusion on her face. It was unfortunate she was already capped, her runes would drink in the power of body cultivation and leave nothing behind to build the Mage Knights that Kon was already envisioning.

"We have some recruiting to do. And we need armor," Kon said. Benny nodded his head and looked toward Daniur.

"Daniur Hthior, Stormblade of the Ulmna Confederacy, you are able to offer contracts for the entirety of your people," Benny said. He wasn't asking her, but telling her. She wasn't slow, she caught on immediately.

"I offer you a contract. Defense of the Ulmna Confederacy territories, price to be negotiated," Daniur said with a wide smile. Kon felt something lift in his chest, a weight he hadn't known was there. His blood stirred as he thought of righting the wrongs, of clearing the board against those who had wronged them.

"I accept tentative agreement in the name of…" Benny stopped and looked at Kon and Alice.

"It seems that we need a name for our newfound Chapterhouse," Benny said. Alice scowled as she looked between them.

"It requires three Knights and I only see two here," Alice said. Benny frowned and then shrugged before pushing his hand into space and pulling out a blob of twisting, spinning metal. Kon felt the pressure of the treasure against his senses, easily a D-Grade treasure.

"Kon will be there soon enough that I don't mind lying on the paperwork," Benny said. The swirling mass of metal transformed into a long sword, wrapping around Benny's hand. Kon's knee bent automatically as he bent his head, he knew what was about to come, seen enough drama holos about it as a child.

Weight and power touched his shoulder, once on each side before withdrawing. Kon looked up to see Benny staring down at him with the same manic energy in him that had been there when he had declared Kon his apprentice.

"From the cradle of our civilization, home lost to time and distance, a tradition that stretches back so far its origins are lost even to me. Rise Knight Kon Lorgairi, first of his name, first of his Chapter, first Mage Knight of Humanity."

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