by Rae Nantes
A mass of candles lined the place, bathing all in a warm glow. The flames would twitch in unison at every passing draft.
One of Mondego’s cultists politely stepped up to offer a gold and black box. It clicked open, and in it, rested a ceremonial dagger. He took it with both hands as if an offering, then eased it to the king.
The king closed his eyes, ready to take on the painful carving of the holy mark.
The massive doors to the cathedral exploded. Wood chunks and splinters skid along the marble floors. Candles extinguished. The crowd collectively gasped and turned to see Ediha with an army in tow.
Mondego looked up and gave him a devil’s grin. “A blessed day,” he said to all, “that we be gifted the presence of the Third.”
Ediha said nothing. He had found himself in a den of devils, countless players with strong auras who stood from their seats at the sight of him. Some were taking their guard, ready to face this intruder.
“Do you blame me?” Mondego asked.
“I do,” Ediha said.
“It was written. It was fate. What choice did I have?”
“What choice do I have but to blame you?”
A new voice broke in, coming from the second floor above Mondego. It sounded like a wise old man yet filled with vigor. “There was never a choice to begin with.” A robed figure stepped out of the darkness and into a pillar of light that fell from a rose window. It was Pope Leo. A shimmer of a golden glow surrounded him. His robes were white laced with gold, his hat tall, his ceremonial sword sheathed in his hand. “This, all of this, had long been written.”
Mondego roared in laughter. King Francis was turning pale, ashamed at the sight of the pope. “This blessed day,” Mondego growled.
5:10
Bastille was essentially a small fortress. Massive walls dotted with towers that stood high, about five times the height of any building nearby. At the heavy iron gates, two dead guards, their blood and entrails spread far. Along the wall, legs and arms dangled off the side, scarlet dripping into the open square below.
Some dozens of French soldiers were here, on guard against whatever killed their comrades. An officer barked orders and the prisoners, with their shackles and sack-covered heads, were forced toward the gallows. A line of nooses dangled, ready to be used.
Marcion walked toward them, unarmed.
“Halt!” a voice cried out.
Muskets trailed to Marcion. The soldiers were anxious, in a hurry to dispose of the prisoners so they could leave before the coalition arrived.
Marcion held out open palms in surrender, and the soldiers fanned out and approached.
5:11
“Well, father,” Mondego said as he waved his arm at the congregation. “Now that you have seen them, what do you think of the followers of truth?”
“Ah, yes, the dreamers,” the pope said. “Those who bear the dream of us, those who have enslaved us to fate. Though I must say, this world we inhabit is far from a dream - it is a nightmare, filled with suffering and strife.”
“And who are we to care with what the dream was filled?” asked Mondego. “Something is far better than nothing, and there is no harm in entertaining these angels of heaven.”
The pope furrowed his brow. “They are far from angels. They are demons. They seek only conflict without regard to the sovereignty of man.” His voice rose into anger. “This is the true heresy. Heresy against the human spirit.”
Dozens of Swiss guards, the pope’s elite forces, emerged from the shadows to line the second floor. Guns were drawn, aimed below. The congregation was now clearly uncomfortable. They stood on their guard with their weapons drawn, waiting patiently for the conversations between the two popes to finish. Those who were unarmed fled to hide along the edges of the cathedral.
“What does it matter?” Mondego said, maintaining the grin in his voice. “This is where, by fate, they have led us. So what if we didn’t choose, an end is an end, and as long as something entertaining happens, it doesn’t need to be good.”
Ediha stepped forward. “It’s because there is no hope without freedom, and freedom cannot exist in a world governed by fate.”
Mondego turned to him. “Who are we to challenge the designers of our world and the laws by which they govern us? We exist to entertain and naught else. Though it matters not in the end, we could either accept the dreamers or reject them.”
Ediha gripped his sword and aimed it at him. “Then I reject them as I reject you.”
Mondego burst into laughter. “Dreamers!” he ordered. “If you wish for what you came for, then bring me Ediha’s heart!”
A stained-glass window shattered, and three figures toppled in and among the dreamers. It was Rika, Valgus, and Saito. Rika looked wide-eyed at all the players that surrounded her, at the pope, at Mondego and Ediha, and said, “Oh shit.”
5:12
Vic was running along the river when he heard a deafening explosion. He turned against the shockwave and stared in awe at the Notre Dame. The roof had erupted off like a volcano, pieces of it still falling through the cloud of smoke, slamming down onto the streets and splashing into the river.
Every bit of him hoped that Mondego had died just then and that the war would already be over, and that life would resume and his family safe again. He shook off the worry and continued to Bastille.
He found the gates open, unguarded, and those French soldiers who meant to guard it were already slain. It appeared a terrible beast had raged through here, tearing and shredding men to pieces, spraying their blood into mist to wet the earth.
His heart raced and beat through his ears as he saw the gallows - and the piles of dead near it. When he checked the prisoners, none were familiar. Pierre was missing, and when he realized it, he could breathe again.
Something coughed nearby. Vic swung over his shotgun and aimed it at the sound, only to find a French soldier resting against the wood foundation. The man’s arm gripped his stomach, his uniform torn and soaked. He was dying.
“What happened here?” Vic asked.
“A lone man came through.” The soldier’s voice was weak. “He killed everyone and took a single prisoner.”
“Which way?” Vic rushed out.
The soldier struggled to speak but couldn’t. He brought up his limp arm and pointed east. Vic took the hint. As Vic stepped out of the fort and back into the streets, he spotted it.
A line of blood droplets that trailed up the street.
5:13
“Dude,” Stef said. “Did you see that?”
“How could I not see that?” Nick said. “It’s in the middle of the city.”
Stef peered through his binoculars and down at Paris. From their hot air balloon, they could see the entire battlefield. The Notre Dame had just exploded. The entire French defensive line had fallen back to the city island and were now struggling to defend the bridges on every side. The war seemed almost over.
“I’m going to send Rika an ultimatum,” Stef said. “Bring Ediha back before we shell the city.”
“You sure that’s alright? Ediha won’t be happy if we accidentally kill Mondego.”
“Neither of ‘em can die, not by us.”
They both watched in silence as the Spanish forces in the south broke through the French defense. They poured across the bridge and onto the river island.
Nick put on his gloves and eased over the side of the air balloon basket. “I’m going to knock out a few bridges and buy them some time.” He gripped the rope tether that led to the army camp below. Hundreds of huge mortars were lined out front.
“How the hell you gonna aim it?” Stef asked.
Nick smiled. “I’ll just eyeball it.”
5:14
Rika shook off the dirt and splinters and got to her feet. The cloud of dust still covered them, and she squinted her eyes against it. Valgus and Saito were missing. She, along with the entire congregation, was scattered around the place. Players and cultists and Aztecs and soldiers and Swiss gu
ard all mixed and dotted the place, all struggling to their feet and gathering themselves, all staring one another down in confusion, then rage.
War had finally come to the Île de la Cité, and it was an outright brawl. Aztec warriors slammed against French soldiers, players were gunned down by Swiss guards, the Spanish army had somehow joined the fray and were trying to kill anyone they could in this confusing mess of a battle. Magic spells zipped by, popping with lightning, or grinding against the streets as blades of wind. The air was thick with dust and gun smoke. The world around them a chorus of metal clanging against metal, erupting gunfire, and wild shouts of combat.
Rika defended herself against an attacking player, but she was more concerned about Ediha. She jerked her eyes around for any sign of him or Mondego or the pope, but they weren’t outside.
She wouldn’t have time to look. In an instant, the river island began to explode, flashes of smoke and shrapnel and debris blossomed out around her, splashing into the water, destroying a few bridges, slamming into soldier and player alike.
Shards of wood scathed her Aura, and just as the shock of the bombardment came, it ended. The fight continued where it left off, and the dust began to settle.
Rika cut down a few more passing foes and started back toward the cathedral. Ediha was surely still inside. She hurried toward it, she was nearly there. She stopped. A party of players stood in her way.
She groaned at the sight of them.
It was Klaran, the leader of the underground guilds, the woman who tortured her. Beside her, bodyguards and co-conspirators. They shot Rika faces of angry amusement when they saw her alone.
She channeled a spell into her sword and met their charge.
5:15
Notre Dame stood on failing legs. The roof was missing in sections, bathing the debris and rubble below with pillars of sunlight. Only three men stood against each other in a duel of strength.
Mondego stood between them, a sword to block Ediha in the front, another to catch the Pope behind. They grunted against one another, sword edges grinding together, faces of resolve staring one another down. He grinned, then the space around him flashed with arcs of lightning.
Ediha disengaged and landed away from him. The pope pulsed with reflective light, the lightning spell gripping him and shooting sparks before dissipating completely. Pope Leo attacked again, but Mondego parried and stepped back.
The king’s body lay tossed in the corner, coated in dust.
“Mondego. You speak of fate fondly, as if you know fully the weight it carries in our world.”
“Of course, Leo,” Mondego shot back. “It is but the guiding hand of God, the divine judgement, the righteous path, the holy destination. You of all should know to respect it.”
“Yet fate and the Word of God are not compatible,” the pope said. “With fate, without the freedom of will, it would be no fault of a man to sin, for how could we punish those unable to act otherwise than how fate prescribed? The truest crimes stem from a guilty mind, but without such agency, we would be forced to punish a man whose only sin was that he was born into the wrong circumstance - the wrong fate. There is no power greater, and it has enslaved us.”
A cold blue glow pulsed from Mondego. “Then let us worship this power, and we shall praise it as God!”
From every surface within the cathedral, jagged edges protruded and formed, sparkling white and freezing mist.
A swirl of dust formed at Ediha’s feet. “The power of fate is not of a god, but of a demon.”
The white knives from the wall exploded out to crisscross around them but were soon caught by a torrent of wind. As if a hurricane had manifested in the cathedral, shards of ice slammed against the walls, the floors, the remnants of the ceiling, against the pope’s protective spell, and against Mondego’s protective vortex. At the threshold of Mondego’s spell, the wind balanced and countered the currents, and sharp chunks of ice dropped at his feet.
A spear of golden light pierced through it, but Mondego caught it.
5:16
“Halt!”
The voice stopped Vic in his tracks. He turned to see a few knights on horseback trotting over, rattling chainmail with every step. They wore red tabards over their armor. Vic turned to greet them.
“What is it?” Vic rushed. “I’m in a hurry.” His eyes traced the world around for any sign of Marcion.
“Who do you serve?” asked the knight.
“The pope,” said Vic. “I am a duty-bound catholic, known as Inquisitor Vic.”
In the distance, a figure in a brown coat ran across the street to disappear behind the line of storefronts. The battle had already passed through this intersection, and between here and there, bodies and rubble and house fires littered the place.
Vic noticed the English knights fell silent. He looked over to them, and his heart stopped beating. The hairs on his neck stood up on end. The knights in front of him held wide, menacing auras. They were whispering to each other.
As discreetly as he could manage, he gripped the gun at his back.
“Ah, Vic,” the player said. “We’ve heard of you.”
5:17
A nearby rattling of gunshots startled Pierre awake. He was being carried. In a moment of panic at the world around, he writhed in his captor’s grip and flailed around like a fish until he wormed his way off him. He slammed hard onto the grit of the street.
“Relax, relax,” Marcion said. “It’s me, your father sent me.”
“Oh, Marcion.” Pierre took a deep breath. His eyes began to water at the realization of all that had happened. “Did father find out that I—”
“Come on,” Marcion grabbed him by the wrist. “It’s not safe here. The place is crawling with soldiers, and they’re already massacring the civilians. If they find us, they’ll kill us.”
5:18
Rika slammed a henchman down on his face, pinning his arms behind him, and using her sword to dig a hole out of his back. The guild leader was charging back in after being tossed into another crowd, and the old man threw a series of Wind Blades at her.
They slammed against an Ice Wall.
As the player beneath her writhed and howled in agony, she snapped off the ribs that were in the way and cut out the man’s heart. To Klaran's horror, she gobbled it down.
This was the first time Rika had the opportunity to use Blood Frenzy in an actual fight. Her body tensed almost solid, her skin seemed to emit energy itself. Klaran thrust out her hand to throw lines of black threads, but a thick beam of light ripped through them, and through her.
The old man stopped mid-sprint at the sight of Klaran as she stumbled, a healthy third of her body charred missing, and he began to turn tail and run. A wind shear forced him back, snapping an arm, tossing his body into a tumble. Rika’s sword flared out in a bluish-white flame, she swung it, and it bathed the street in fire.
She won.
Though the battle still raged here - thousands upon thousands in the streets and alleys and buildings and the cathedral square - there was now a gap between her and Notre Dame. She noticed flashes of different colored light within.
Spanish reinforcements marched up in formation. The officer ordered a halt, the presentation of arms, and the soldiers leveled muskets in her general direction. Valgus ran in front of her, using all his mana to bring up a crescent of Ice Walls between them. “Go on,” he said. “I can keep them distracted.”
Rika said nothing. She turned back to the cathedral, found Saito winning another duel, and they both charged in.
They were too late.
A black wind roared out from Mondego as he tore into King Francis and dug out the heart. The Pope was pinned against the wall, frozen in a shell of ice. Ediha stood, shield forward, against the threat.
“Ediha!” Rika yelled against the deafening storm. “You gotta get out of here!”
“No,” he said without looking. “This is something that must be done.”
The earth around Mondego sunk, bloo
d smeared over his face, his throat gulping hard. With an unchained laugh, he cast the spell. An impossibly black substance exploded out from him, neither liquid nor solid nor gas, but at the same time all three.
With his shield still out, Ediha stabbed his sword into the floor and threw his hand out at Rika and Saito. In a flash of light, Saito vanished. Ediha glanced back to see Rika alone and said to himself, “So you’re the Fifth.”
5:19
Marcion sensed that someone was approaching. He sent Pierre to hide behind a fallen building and turned to meet yet another enemy.
The man was far. A weary mess, coat torn, wet with blood, face hidden beneath a wide-brimmed hat. He was limping, tired, almost as if he just crossed a desert alone and without water. It was probably another shell-shocked civilian, wandering after witnessing an atrocity. Marcion started to turn away when something within him - or beyond him - forced him to look again.
The man had a gun in his hands. Marcion couldn’t take any chances, so he raised his looted musket at the distant man.
He focused his eyes, aimed down the sight, squeezed the trigger, then paused.
That man was Vic.
Marcion tossed the gun aside to run over to him, and when they saw each other, they offered smiles of exhaustion. “You have him? Vic asked.
“I do,” Marcion said.
Vic lowered his head, his worries all extinguished. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Pierre!” Marcion called out. “It’s safe, come out.”
Pierre peeked his head around the rubble and spotted his father. His eyes brightened, and he stumbled over himself to greet them. Then, he froze. He stood staring, eyes wide with fear, mouth agape.
The sky was darkening.
Marcion and Vic turned to see a black sphere plume out over the Notre Dame like a bubbling black cancer, reaching out over buildings, slinging tendrils through roads and alleys and bursting through roofs to ooze down the walls, growing and pulsing and darkening the world.
