“Let me show you.” After placing her sword within her void storage ring, in a flash of pink and a flutter of wings, the nimble fairy hoisted herself into the air. She grabbed onto a handhold, pulling herself through a crack that seemed smaller than it actually was. In the deep shadows, far from the light of the surface and the torches of the caverns below, a pseudo-night vision was the only thing allowing Ori to see.
Ori followed behind her—less gracefully. On several occasions, he exhaled, sucking in his stomach or scraping deep gouges along his bare torso as he climbed.
Midway through the ascent, as Ori hauled himself up the jagged passage, a familiar low, clicking sound echoed ahead—and around him in the darkness. Moments later, howls joined the unnatural noise, sharp and grating, blades scraping against stone.
Between the darkness, the exceptionally limited space for movement, and his natural claustrophobia, Ori’s heart sank at the thought of being caught in such a state, so close to escape. He barely had time to summon a weapon before the first Slaugh crashed into him, its blade-like forelimbs snapping forward, scraping against his Prismatic Shield.
As one of his bonds, a reciprocal shield sprang up around Rue just in time to deflect a heavy, knife-like stab from a longer-than-average limb. Ori’s Prototype Array of Du?lism struck forward into the darkness, no longer holding back on his soulbound enchantments as multiple Slaugh came racing at him from the shadows.
The weight of the beast drove him back against the rock, their multi-jawed mouths gnashing inches from his face. Another Slaugh skittered behind him, claws striking sparks against his shield as it climbed the walls.
Rue grunted as she slashed out with her knife, catching the creature’s side, but not before a retaliatory slash carved a deep wound into her arm, a bloody flap of skin now impairing her grip and movement. Though her initial attack was effective, it barely pierced the chitinous hide.
Then the Carnifex emerged.
It stepped from the gloom, its sword-like arms scraping along the stone, its featureless face locking onto Rue. Ori saw the curve of its blade-limbs arch back—a kill strike aimed at her neck.
Throwing caution to the wind, Ori unleashed the full breadth of his Aethermancy.
Reach of the Progenitor manifested four additional ghostly limbs, each of them armed with a blade of the soulbound array of short swords. Scything through the infernal beasts and parrying the slash against Rue, Ori ploughed through the weight of Slaugh pinning him down. His blades severed limbs, black ichor spraying across the cave walls. Every strike empowered his shields, every defence sharpened his next attack.
Scraping against rock and knife-like limbs, he pivoted, slicing with impossible sharpness—and took the head off a second Carnifex before it could pounce.
Rue wasn’t fast enough.
Another Carnifex’s blade arm punched half a foot into her side. Trapped against the rock, she would have doubled over in pain had the wall not held her upright.
Ori moved without thinking, his soulbound weapons flashing in the dark. A single, decisive swing severed the Carnifex’s arm at the joint—before it could finish Rue off. The creature shrieked, staggering back, black ichor spilling over the stone.
Unable to press forward, the Carnifex struck again—but this time, a second Prismatic Shield sprang up. Meanwhile, Ori’s phantasmal hand shot into the dark, gripping the Carnifex mid-attack. Then, his spell Prismatic Weapon illuminated the cave, cooking the creature from the inside out.
The Carnifex twitched, its limbs spasming before going limp.
Silence.
Then, a ragged breath from Rue.
Ori turned. She was slumped against the rock, one hand pressed against the wound at her side, her breaths shallow and wheezing.
He squeezed through rock drenched in monster blood to reach her, pressing his palm over hers.
“Stay still.”
The Prototype Array was unsummoned, replaced by Seraphine’s Beacon. His hand glowed with Purifying Light, before restorative energy surged into her wounds through Channel Restoration.
Rue’s eyes rolled back, her body going limp as she lost consciousness.
Ori finished the healing, ensuring the gash along her side and arm sealed properly, then leaned back against the stone, catching his breath.
No words passed between them as he held her in his arms, her ragged breathing slowly evening out as she recovered and regained consciousness.
The corpses of Carnifex and Slaugh littered the cave around them, the air thick with the metallic scent of blood and ichor.
They were alive.
But they weren’t out of danger yet.
The once stale air grew colder as they ascended the narrow seam within the mountain. At one point, Ori’s hip became so stuck that he had to resort to using his Wandsmith spell, Echo Forging, to transmute and reshape particularly stubborn impediments in the rock.
Without his High Human, Nascent Rank constitution and physical endurance, traversing what had to be several thousand feet of solid rock would have taken days. Instead, after what was likely three hours, Ori could finally see the sky.
They rested on the snow. Sharing his enchanted flask, Ori took in the view from what had to be at least twenty thousand feet up.
It felt as though he stood on the edge of the world. The frigid, howling wind had long since forced them both to don thick jackets. Below, snow and ice sculpted ridges of land into frozen waves, the sharp edges catching the harsh light, refracting it like fractured glass. The peaks stretched on endlessly, towering over even their elevated height, with distant mountains carving through the mist while clouds pooled in the valleys like rivers of shifting cotton.
Instead of a sun or moon, a thin beam of light edged the distant horizon, a feature of this particular realm, one unique across all the millions of worlds of Fate. Above, the sky was an endless, unnatural grey-blue saturated with shimmering aurorae of greens and pinks, turning what might have been a bleak, inhospitable landscape—more akin to the Himalayan mountain range—into something precious and arcane.
For obvious reasons, finally seeing the sky for the first time in this realm marked a turning point. For weeks, his entire existence had been dictated by forces originating from caves and caverns of this mountain. In a way, perhaps the rest of his life would be shaped by it as well.
But no longer would it be so narrowly confined, his choices so desperate. The sky now represented a gateway to possibilities and opportunities—ones beyond mere survival.
Yet, before he could turn towards that bright new future, there was one final task to complete.
“Come, their camp isn’t far,” Ruenne’del said after several minutes of rest.
Circling the mountain, they reached a minor plateau, the summit still at least five or ten thousand feet above, leaving the area in shadow. Tents rustled in the thin wind, and their arrival caused a stir nearby.
“Sir, it’s the guild scout. She’s back,” Ori heard voices carried on the wind. Elven blade dancers and archers in somewhat conspicuous navy-blue armour emerged swiftly from hiding places on the plateau. Although Rue’s bright pink hair stood out starkly against the snow, all eyes fixated on him.
“It’s him.” “The consort.” “Is that the old girl’s consort?”
Murmurs rippled through the dozen or so Sovereign-rank warriors—elves who might have recognised him from when they'd fought on opposite sides during his final trial.
The hard eyes of a former assassin stared at Ori through the slit of a helm. Approaching him, Ori wondered what thoughts passed through the man’s mind.
“So, you found him?” the lightly armoured leader asked.
Rue shared a glance with Ori. “We found each other.”
“I’m Captain Nathaniel Aeriel’Yoka of the Morvaethor Umbra’Sereg. Our duty was to find you, the Consort, and escort you to a destination of your choosing.”
“Hello, Captain. How quickly can you leave this mountain?” Ori asked.
“Why?”
“Because soon, it won’t exist anymore.”
From Harriet, Ori had learned through the Dreaming that they were completing their final mission. Seven centuries of indentured service—this was their final task from their Queen, marking the end of their Geas upon their return.
He had also discovered that they were, in fact, summons—or at the very least, utilised the same summoning magic that transported their souls across space and time to different realms. Upon a normal death or the end of their summoning peroid, their souls would return to their original bodies, retracing the path through space and time.
Though they were under no compulsion to obey him or take his commands as orders, a deference—one Ori could only assume had been passed down through Harriet’s authority to the one who would be her consort—allowed him to offer them some very pointed advice.
After a brief discussion, Ori and Rue watched in bemusement as a dozen Shadow Dancers of the Dying Moon stripped in the sub-zero, biting winds, hastily stuffing valuable armour and weapons into soulbound storage rings.
‘Freya?’ In her incorporeal sprite form, Freya had travelled through the rock to coordinate the retreat from the other side. Meanwhile, Ori checked, then double-checked, his glider’s assembly and enchantments.
‘Done, the celestials are retreating. Jhacrisite sends his regards.’
‘Summoning you back now.’
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With a flash, Freya appeared by his side, her glowing butterfly form making one circle around him before darting into his skull. Though her journey had taken her away from the fighting and the most intense wards, it still carried some risk. To avoid any mishaps, Ori had summoned her back to him as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Lysara remained behind, awaiting a future summoning—her form ill-suited for his planned mode of travel.
“Consort Suba, our preparations are complete. Do you require anything further?” the pale elf asked, standing in nothing but his underwear—the familiar eyes and voice confirming him as the captain.
“No, all good here.”
“Very well. One of us has volunteered to stay behind and observe.”
“Really?”
“Yes. While we take your claims seriously, having one of us remain will provide valuable intel on the aftermath of whatever plans you have in store for this location. The rest of us will return as soon as your… contraption has proven itself.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Ori hesitated, considering whether to say something or hand over a letter or gift for the captain to take back to Harriet and Poppy. But he decided against it. News of his escape would have to be enough for now. The rest would have to wait until he visited Lunaesidhe.
Ori had zero practical experience with flight beyond simulators and a few half-remembered equations from an aeronautics engineering textbook he had once read out of curiosity. Were it not for his enhanced constitution and the pressing need to be at least ten miles away from the mountain before detonation, he certainly wouldn’t have risked it. On second thought, perhaps facing the hordes of demons would have been the more conventional path forward. However, as Ori was beginning to realise, he wasn’t particularly a man of conventions.
“Ready?” Ori asked. Fully secured to his makeshift paraglider, he held out a length of rope. Not far ahead, a near-sheer drop plunged at least a few hundred feet before the impassable, snow-covered terrain was swallowed by clouds. Rue gave him a dubious look.
“Let’s just hold on to each other,” she replied.
“I… That doesn’t sound safe,” Ori frowned.
“Will you let me go?”
“No, but—”
“Don’t I also have wings?”
“Yes… but we—”
“Then it will be fine.”
She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, her head resting just below his collarbone due to the height difference. Ori hesitated for a moment before returning the embrace, but as he considered the logistics of flight, he muttered, “This won’t work.”
Before she could respond, he bent down, hands lowering to firmly grip her buttcheeks before hoisting her up with ease until their faces were level. Ori’s smirk shifted into something softer as their eyes locked and breath intermingled. She was exquisitely beautiful—something small and delicate but powerful and competent in ways he could scarcely understand. Despite the layers of clothing between them, her warmth and softness stoked an ever-present hunger within. He suddenly found himself struggling to restrain his desire.
“If we’re doing this, wrap your legs around me and hold on tight,” he said, the huskiness in his voice surprising him, his fingers tightening around the curve of her ass as he adjusted his grip.
Rue’s cheeks flushed as she shot him a brief, scandalised glare. Still, she didn’t hesitate, her legs coiling around his waist as a slow, flushed smile mirrored his amusement.
“Ready?” he whispered, their lips less than a couple of inches apart. Her near-imperceptible nod was all the confirmation he needed.
Shifting one arm to wrap securely around her back, he freed the other to reach for the handlebar that would allow him to adjust his position.
With Rue’s negligible weight wrapped around him like an extension of his own, Ori ran, his strides lengthening as speed built beneath him. The makeshift paraglider resisted at first, dragging behind before finally catching enough lift. It functioned more like a massive airbrake than magical wings—a far cry from the idealised visions where, by now, gravity should have yielded to flight.
Last-second doubts and primal instincts screamed at him to stop, but as he leapt off the edge and plummeted below, he could only entrust himself to physics and fate.
Glad he had forgone eating, his stomach lurched into his throat at the sudden sensation of weightlessness. The rigging strained, and the rustling of fabric intensified as icy winds slashed across his face, his eyeballs drying out as his vision was forced into slits. He tilted the handlebar, shifting the centre of gravity, and the glider’s downward trajectory angled away from the vertical drop—though not nearly enough.
Reach of the Progenitor’s spectral hands twisted fabric that tore through the air, rapidly altering their pitch until they levelled out, then up, bleeding speed. All sense of direction blurred as Ori fought for pitch and yaw control.
A third of his Split Mind was singularly tasked with holding onto Ruenne’del as he wrestled with the creaking, flapping glider. Their erratic, yo-yoing flight path was a desperate battle to avoid a stall, which could lead into an unrecoverable spin. The thin layer of clouds rushed toward them, the minutes of flight vanishing in a blur as the distant landscape crept ever closer—the once-distant valleys and ridges growing larger with each passing second.
Once again, his Nascent Ranker stats did much to mitigate the discomfort and lack of preparation—the cold, dry, thinning air, the racing winds that should have blinded him and frozen his extremities, and the ropes that, at best, ought to have severely chafed.
As the air thickened and Ori’s control improved, the flight settled into a smooth, almost pleasant glide. It gave him time to navigate by starlight and, for the first time since their leap, to fully appreciate Ruenne’del’s warmth wrapped around him.
Through their bond, he could feel her surprise and exhilaration—even she had never experienced a flight, or a fall, from so far beyond the clouds. Ori allowed himself a few seconds to savour his success before focusing on the far more pressing matter of where exactly he was going to land.
He sought out a ridge just above the treeline, one valley over from his current location. His desire to land on elevated ground was born purely from the need to witness the results of the re-enchantment done to the gate room. Still, the ground approached alarmingly fast.
“Will you be alright if I let you go before we land?” Ori asked.
“Yes.” He could barely hear her over the wind.
His plan was loose at best. Either find a forest to crash into, use his makeshift parachute, or attempt a last-minute flare before landing, which, given his new perspective, would almost certainly result in a few broken bones.
“Fuck’sake,” Ori muttered just before impact.
As their feet hurtled towards the ground at over eighty miles an hour, he shifted his weight back as much as possible, twisting the aerofoil to force a rapid pitch-up. The wooden bracing of the wing snapped under the strain, and before he could cartwheel into a death dive, Ori flung Rue free from the plummeting glider.
He groaned, checking himself for any breaks or sprains as he cut the rope still binding him to the wreckage.
“Are you alright?” Rue asked, helping him out of the remains of the glider.
“Fine, just a bit winded. But I’m alright,” Ori said, rubbing a bruised rib while blinking moisture back into his eyes. He looked back, searching for the now distant mountain they had leapt from. It was imposing, as vast in width as it was in height, its peak still notching the horizon’s skyline despite being over ten miles away.
Butterflies stirred in his belly as he turned his attention to his distant enchantment. Scanning the surroundings to ensure they were safe, he found a spot for them both to watch. Rue joined him as he lay prone, his gaze fixed on Ghigrerchiax for the final time.
He summoned Lysara, who had been slumbering deep within the bedrock of the mountain. Her sparking purple form flared to life, a familiar comfort as he reached out and received a tendril of lightning in welcome.
‘Will you be alright following us underground as we go?’ he asked his bonded.
‘I’ll be fine. The more we move, the more charge I accumulate, the stronger I become.’
‘Alright. I hope there’s no one else near that mountain.’ Ori said to his bonds.
‘There shouldn’t be, this region is as remote as they come.’ Freya replied
‘Freya, did you want to watch this?’
In response, Freya zoomed out of his skull, and in a flash, shifted into her Pixie form, her pint-sized weight settling onto Ori’s back.
“Do you really think this will work?” she asked aloud.
“I guess it’s time to find out.”
Taking a long, slow breath in, holding it, then releasing it, Ori wondered if the Overseer remained—if any other prisoners or victims had been left behind. Regardless, he firmed his resolve to rid this realm of its cancer. Whether or not the masterminds and perpetrators of such widescale murder and abuse still lived, Ori had a responsibility to dismantle the machinery that enabled it.
He summoned two soulbound pieces of stone.
Before he could even register their weight in his hands, nearly half a kilogram of matter and antimatter annihilated within a gate room buried deep beneath the prison complex once called Ghigrerchiax.
A kilogram of mass converted into ninety petajoules of energy—an explosion so absolute that, for a fleeting instant, something far hotter than the brightest supernova existed on Twilight for the first time in Fate. Fourteen million metric tonnes of rock, with a volume equivalent to twice that of the Pyramids of Giza, vaporised in a release of energy equivalent to twenty-one megatons of TNT—a blast that, had it been unleashed in the open, could have wiped the city of London off the map.
Even buried beneath gigatons of basalt and granite, the explosion’s fury could not be contained. A pulse of microwaves, gamma rays and searing infrared scattered through fissures in the collapsing mountain, escaping as ghostly blue light in the form of Cherenkov radiation. But the prison itself—entire floors, caverns, all seven reaches and the assorted horrors and demons within—ceased to exist.
A seismic shockwave rippled outward, liquifying the prison’s deepest depths, as the energy sought release. It would register as a magnitude seven earthquake—enough to topple cities had they stood besides the now collapsing mountain.
Ori watched the silent catastrophe. A far less blinding spectacle than an airburst thermonuclear bomb, but no less final. The mountain caved inward, its peak sagging as rock collapsed upon the internal voids. Then came the secondary detonation—a surge of volcanic ash billowing skyward as stored geothermal pressures ruptured, prematurely releasing a magma chamber Ori had long suspected lay below.
A prison, a fortress, a mountain—reduced to a grave of superheated dust. A fitting funeral pyre for the victims of infernal greed, cruelty, and the countless souls who had suffered within its depths.
Ori counted thirty seconds before the ground rumbled and seventy-five before the atmosphere shattered with sound. A whirlpool of Peritia swirled around him and his bonds long before the world-quaking shockwave reached them.
Through their bond, Ori felt Rue’s fear and discomfort. Perhaps, to her, it seemed as if he had blighted the land with what they had done. Perhaps that was true—or perhaps he had merely unveiled the horrors that had always lurked beneath the surface.
They watched in solemn vigil for over an hour as Ori caught his breath, letting the reality settle—he was finally, truly free. Yet, as the weight of his actions sank in, he considered the broader ramifications of his rewritten page in the Library of Fate. Alongside a new accolade and its associated trait, his Legend within Infernal Redeemer had also been irrevocably altered with serious implications Ori could only begin to understand.
Accolade: "Lesser Terraformer"
Type: Legendary, Combat, Enchanting, Evolving, Titled, Trait
Legend: Named by the Library of Fates, Lesser Terraformer is a legendary accolade granted to those who have demonstrated the ability to reshape the very landscape of Fate—whether through magic, technology, or sheer force of will.
This accolade was awarded after the recipient successfully annihilated Ghigrerchiax, an infernal prison complex buried deep within a dormant volcano on the edge of Twilight. By leveraging the mana source generators of an interdimensional gate, the Lesser Terraformer triggered a reaction so cataclysmic that an entire mountain imploded into an ashen grave, forcing the premature eruption of a long-dormant volcano. This obliterated all remnants of a multidimensional infernal operation and severed the realm of Twilight from its largest infernal gateway.
The seismic and metaphysical shockwaves caused by this act have permanently altered the region’s geology, ley lines, void pathways and mana flow, while removing an infernal stronghold significant to Fate.
Trait: Architect of Ruin. The Lesser Terraformer is recognised by entities attuned to destruction, change, or elemental forces. Such beings may acknowledge your capability, seek your guidance—or fear your potential.
Accolade: "High Redeemer"
Type: Legendary, Significant, Combat, Evolving, Titled, Trait
As named by the Library of Fates, Infernal Redeemer is a legendary, titled accolade bestowed upon those who have demonstrated the power to not only defeat demons but redeem infernal souls. The Redeemer of Infernals stands apart by proving that even the damned can be saved.
This accolade was first awarded after the recipient successfully redeemed a powerful infernal's soul, restoring its original nature upon death. By breaking infernal bonds and purifying corrupted souls, the Redeemer has proven that redemption is possible, even for the most lost.
Now, this accolade also acknowledges a greater feat—the complete eradication of a large-scale infernal stronghold, using interdimensional mana sources to collapse the prison complex of Ghigrerchiax in a cataclysmic detonation. This act not only obliterated infernal forces, including a peak Sovereign ranking Lesser Devil, but also erased the physical and metaphysical infrastructure that enabled their atrocities to propagate across multiple realms.
The sheer magnitude of this destruction has rewritten the fundamental balance of infernal power on Twilight, and across the Elemental Demiplane, marking the Redeemer as a harbinger of absolute judgment.
Traits:
Infernal Blood Sense: Instinctively sense those with an Infernal pact wherever they are within your perception—Merged with Vision of the Progenitor.
Infernal Redeemer: Infernal beings at your rank or lower can no longer harm you and instinctively recognise this. Additionally, this increases the likelihood of purifying or redeeming living infernal entities through soulcrafting and the severance of infernal bonds.
Harbinger of Redemption: Powers and Entities regardless of their affiliation or alignments, now recognise you as an existential threat. Some may seek your destruction, while others may attempt to bargain, demand your presence for mediation, or seek redemption from you directly.
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