Nero and Eleanor stepped through the rift. Immediately, the air changed, from a beautiful, fresh breeze to the disgusting stench of constantly running forges, rotting bodies, and ash. The sky was no longer clear, cloudless, and warm, but even on the brightest days, it was dark, because the sun was covered by a gigantic layer of smoke clouds. The temperature also dropped drastically, so Eleanor immediately shivered. He had almost forgotten how cold it was in this world. They arrived a little above the main staircase to the entrance that led into the interior of the castle.
Nero's five generals knelt directly in front of them, none of them daring to look Nero directly in the eye.
At the very front knelt Xersies, who was probably the least conspicuous of the generals. He was neither tall nor muscular, nor did he have countless eyes. The only noticeable thing was his long black hair, which moved in a faint wind and, of course, the two long horns protruding out of his skull.
To the right, a little behind him, knelt Ramor, an ancient Polykenas whose skin seemed to hang only loosely from his bones. His hair was grayish and only sparsely present.
Directly beside him knelt a giant. His muscles were so large that they were probably wider than Nero's. Where his forehead should have been, there were many small yellow eyes that moved in unison, almost exactly like a spider's.
At the very back knelt the last two of the generals with the lowest ranks. One was a small member of the Polykenas, covered from toe to head in black fur that resembled that of a dog, though he moved more like a predator cat. Always sneaking, without making even the smallest sound. Only his front claw did not fit, so one could still make out the place where his real leg had been cut off.
Beside him knelt another really tall Polykenas, though this one was as thin as a praying mantis. His posture even resembled that of those animals somewhat. His face could not be seen because he wore a black raven mask, but behind two panes of glass, you could make out small yellow eyes surrounded by pale white skin. .
High up on the walls behind the generals, countless glowing yellow eyes in all possible shapes flashed as the army of the Polykenas watched their duce return. With steady steps, Nero walked up the stairs.
"Welcome back, my duce!" Xersies greeted him as Nero passed him. He handed his Duce the small blue stone with which he had just opened the rift. Nero accepted it in silence.
"Were you successful?" Xersies asked immediately afterward.
"More or less," Nero said. "We will discuss everything in the conference room."
Eleanor walked silently beside Nero. The rift in space slowly closed behind them as the magic of the blue stone faded. Not long after, every trace of the rift had vanished. Nero opened a small sack that was completely covered in dirt because it had been buried deep underground.
He pulled out a long, thin object that was so dirty Eleanor briefly thought it was a stick, but then he recognized the limb of the small Polykenas, which had been severed. Nero threw it to Fril, who skillfully caught it out of the air. He bowed deeply. "I cannot put my gratitude into words, my Duce."
Nero looked at him with cool eyes. "Nero looked at him with cold eyes. "You have failed, Fril. This is not a gift to you, but only because I still need you. Never disappoint me again, or else I will have to seriously reconsider whether you are the best 'assassin' or whether your chaos energy would be better used to create new Polykenas!" Nero threatened, his voice cold and emotionless, accustomed to being obeyed.
Fril shuddered. "I would not dare to disappoint you again, my Duce," he swore submissively.
Nero did not go further into the topic, but pulled out another object, this time from his own bag. It was a dirty cloth on which a few dozen symbols could be seen. Nero unwrapped the cloth and revealed the Eye of Aryha, which immediately emitted a strange aura. It lay still in Nero's palm. He handed cloth and Eye to Xersies, who carefully accepted the stone.
"What do you think of it?" Nero asked him.
"Depends… what exactly is it?" Xersies asked back.
Nero was just about to describe what it was when Ramor interrupted him. He had been walking beside Xersies and had also been observing the objects with interest, but now he pointed at the cloth in complete confusion. "Where did you get this cloth?"
"This was given to me," Nero answered. "It hides the aura of the stone."
Ramor nodded. "That, and of course, it reveals your position."
"What?" Eleanor asked, confused. Ramor pointed with a bony finger at several symbols. "These symbols are indeed all there to hide the aura of the stone, and I cannot deny that it is masterful work, but these symbols here are disguised. They look like symbols meant to protect the stability of the cloth, but if one looks closely, this symbol is the symbol 'Vates.' This symbol always appears in two versions: one symbol attached to the place or object whose location you want to know, and one symbol on a map that always shows the exact position of the symbol. But to be honest, this is a very… crude method of tracking. One could simplify it significantly and even make it more precise. If they had expanded the symbol with the symbol 'Imago,' then they could not only determine the location, but also see what is happening in the surroundings, in addition, they could…"
Nero interrupted him, already knowing that Ramor would not stop talking until he had created a new perfect network of symbols. "Do you mean to say they knew where I was the entire time?"
Ramor nodded. "Yes, at least as long as you had the cloth with you. But do not worry, when you went through the rift, the bond between the two symbols broke. Even if you return with the cloth, they will not be able to bind themselves again on their own."
Nero said nothing to that. He felt stupid for not having realized it. Symbols were a clear weakness of his. Symbolics were among the most extensive mages, able to create an almost limitless selection of effects by only arranging the correct symbols together. Nero had been trying for years to at least learn the basic symbols, yet from the complicated drawings that made up the fortress network, for example, he knew only about half a percent of the symbols.
Nero was sunk deep in thought when they had just crossed the threshold of the wall. The gates behind them were just being closed when a sudden change passed through the surroundings, and it hit Eleanor first.
Before anything happened, he screamed, falling to one knee, his face losing all color from one second to the next. Nero frowned and was about to ask what was wrong when it hit him as well. He spun around.
The hair on his entire body stood up. His pupils shrank to a tiny point. A loud pounding sounded in his ears, for which Nero needed a moment to realize that it was his wildly beating heart, threatening to jump out of his chest. Sweat broke out from all his pores, and he retreated several steps. His breathing quickened as he felt like he was drowning.
Beside him, Xersies gasped with a unique expression of panic on his face, just like every one of his generals. Chaos broke out behind them in the ranks of the Polykenas as an incredibly rare survival instinct awakened in them.
Four waves of incredible auras washed over the entire landscape, so suffocating that even Xersies' aura seemed to shrink into itself. Four incredibly oppressive auras swept over the area like a gigantic tsunami, threatening to engulf everything. Even Xersies's aura, normally so glorious, was nothing more than a drop in comparison.
Nero continued to swipe back from the still-open gate when a change swept through the room. Just past the point where Nero had always used the blue stone to open the rift, the air began to tremble violently, and then, with a deafening crash that sounded like billions of shattering glass panes, gigantic cracks tore through the room itself. The cause of this was eight gigantic spikes slowly piercing through the room, so enormous that even Shire seemed tiny in comparison. The spearheads continued to bore through the room as Nero realized in shock that they were not spearheads at all, but eight incredibly sharp claws attached to long fingers covered in black scales, which must belong to a true monster.
After they had advanced far enough, the claws grabbed to the right and left, and like a page made of paper, the two gigantic claws tore space itself apart. It had nothing of the mystical nature of the blue stone, but was an act of pure violence. All that remained was a gigantic crack, beyond which nothing could be seen in the darkness.
Slowly, the two claws withdrew, and the darkness behind them seemed to move like a gigantic body repositioning itself. Gradually, the darkness parted, revealing a large red disc with a long, pitch-black slit in its center. The creature's eye gazed into their world, directly at Nero. This eye was not that of a mindless beast; rather, an incredibly dangerous intelligence shone in that gaze. It seemed to look directly into Nero's very being, deeper than any mortal could see. And there it saw something it did not like. The eye narrowed into a long slit.
A growl, so violent that Nero's blood froze in his veins, could be heard, but then the eye vanished again. Light shone through the rift as the gigantic creature disappeared from it. Seconds later, two people came walking through the rift, looking around the new surroundings with curiosity. One was a woman with bright white skin, long dark blue hair in which countless small white points glittered, as if her hair had been woven from the starry sky itself. Her eyes were endless, deep, intelligent, and ice-cold as they moved over the group of people at the gate who were watching the newcomers. The woman was beautiful in every way. A person of truly divine beauty. She wore a long, elegant dress that had the same strange color as her hair, also studded with countless small glowing points.
She wrinkled her nose when the stench of the world reached her.
Her partner was a thin man who was quite tall. He had fiery red hair that stood out in all directions. He grinned from one side to the other, and he was dressed in a white suit that was perfectly cut. His eyes never seemed to stand still, but were in constant motion, as if he was trying to take in every impression at the same time.
From them came two of the four enormous magical auras. "Who are they?" Ramor asked while retreating further.
Nero opened his mouth, but for the first time in a long time, he had no answer. Had they followed him from Noira? But then, how had Eleanor not seen them? He would bet that their auras shone kilometers into the sky like beacons.
Before he could come to a conclusion, the woman raised her hand. It was a small movement, yet to Nero this movement felt as if an executioner had raised his axe.
He would die here.
This fact overcame Nero. This realization reached him as if he should always have known it. It was the truth, it was his fate, his future. It was a fact, like the rising sun every morning, like the blowing winds, the growing trees, the dying beings, and Nero's very existence itself.
The woman's aura surged even stronger as a gigantic star shot from her palm, directly toward the castle. The attack was so fast, so incredibly fast, that Nero only realized what had happened when it was already too late. Blinding white light enveloped everything as the star struck the wall, with such unbelievable power that the steps beneath it shattered, broken down into their components by the force of the star.
Nero thought that was the end of him, but something unbelievable happened. The thousands upon thousands of symbols spread across the entire castle, across the walls, every street, every house, and even deep underground, lit up as if trying to defy the light of the star.
The entire fortress shook violently as the symbol network used all its strength to withstand the attack. Nero's generals fell to their knees, blood flowing from their facial openings as the symbols sucked the power out of them to use it for their maintenance, but they had still been lucky. Millions of weaker Polykenas died instantly as they were completely sucked empty. Cracks spread across their entire bodies within milliseconds as every smallest amount of magic was torn out of them. Only the most powerful Polykenas barely survived.
Only this sacrifice ensured that the woman's attack was blocked. She raised her eyebrows in shock. "Amazing!" she called out. "Such an incredible symbol network!"
Her partner grinned. "Do not get distracted," he said. "Let us finish this quickly."
The woman nodded and prepared the next attack. "BACK!" Nero roared as he retreated. Xersies and his generals did not hesitate but ran beside him.
"We have to go into the dimension of the Polykenas!" Nero decided with a firm voice. He did not care if fate wanted to see him dead here; he would not simply give up. He spat in death's face.
"Only the Queen can still protect us now!"
Xersies nodded. "HOLD THEM OFF!" he roared, ordering the surviving Polykenas. "SAVE YOUR DUCE!"
This seemed to bring the Polykenas around them back to their senses. Growling and hissing angrily, they turned toward the two intruders. This was their fortress, their planet, their home. They would not die without a fight.
"Where is Krell and his Patron?" Nero asked, looking around. Ramor touched the symbol-covered road while running. Not one second later, the blue Patron appeared before them, led by Krell, who knelt before Nero.
Some of them were dead; only the strongest had survived, and they were in terrible shape. Only Krell seemed to still have more than half his strength left.
"Bring us up to the tower beneath the gate!" Nero ordered immediately. The space mages grabbed the five generals, Eleanor, and Nero, but Fril stopped them.
"I will do what I was made to do!" His yellow eyes looked up at his Duce, who simply nodded. Fril turned and disappeared, while the rest teleported to the top of the highest tower of the fortress. They looked upward to where the infinitely small point was located, invisible to the naked eye, in which the dimension of the Polykenas existed.
Nero could see over the wall, where thousands upon thousands of Polykenas were streaming toward the two mages to stop them from attacking the fortress a second time, but they were nothing more than flies to the two. The man split into thousands of versions of himself, none of which could be distinguished from the others, yet each of these clones was more powerful than the strongest Polykenas fighting them. The woman, on the other hand, was surrounded by millions of stars that moved through the Polykenas army and killed thousands every second.
Nero knew it would be at most a few minutes before the Polykenas were completely wiped out.
"We need chaos energy to get through!" Krell said in a rough voice.
Nero hissed, of course, that was clear to him. "Did you not notice how millions of Polykenas died? Do you not know what happens when someone of your kind dies, Krell?"
Krell retreated one step, ashamed of his stupidity.
"But does the network still have enough power to gather the energy?" Xersies asked skeptically.
Ramor bent forward and connected himself with the fortress network.
He nodded. "It is just barely enough, but only to keep the gate open for at most one minute," Nero growled.
"That has to be enough! Begin!" he ordered. Immediately, Ramor activated the network. A movement passed through the air as the chaos energy released by the dead Polykenas was gathered into the air in a beautiful shimmer. Alone, it was invisible, but now it was like a beautiful river slowly spreading into the sky. The entire fortress shook violently once more as it was pushed to the limits of its power. Even from up here, Nero could see the first symbols going out.
"Something is happening there!" the red-haired man said to his companion when he saw the chaotic energy forming in the sky.
The woman hissed. "These annoying insects really dare to stop us."
The man rolled his eyes. "Alright, I will deal with those. You go and deal with whatever that is!" he said while snapping his fingers. Immediately, his thousands of clones burst into a sea of clear mirror shards, which spread in a storm. Seconds later, far more than half of the Polykenas had been wiped out. After that, the man clapped his hands, and thousands of mirrors opened behind him.
They reflected places and people who seemed to be attacking the mirrors, but when the attacks struck the mirrors, they simply passed right through into reality. Countless attackers surged toward the Polykenas, slaughtering them in droves. This gave the woman enough room to cast a new spell.
Nero watched, gritting his teeth, as a massive star shot from the woman's palm, aimed directly at the wall. The star struck the wall, and for a split second, it seemed as though the web of symbols might actually hold, but then, with one last flicker, the symbols faded away. The gigantic star crashed through the wall and into Nero's fortress.
With cold glowing eyes, Nero watched as his black fortress, his masterpiece, the symbol of his rule and his triumph, was almost completely destroyed as if it were nothing more than a fragile farmhouse. The woman noticed that nothing would stop her anymore, so with a cold smile, she now turned her attention to Nero, who returned her gaze without the slightest trace of fear. For a brief moment, something came over the woman when their eyes met. A fear she could not describe nor grasp, but this feeling vanished again as quickly as it came.
'Did I only imagine that?' she asked herself, but did not focus on it any longer. Instead, she floated high into the air, carried by a white star on which she stood.
She prepared a new attack, this time aimed directly at Nero and his generals.
"Careful!" Nero growled to his generals, who saw what Nero saw. Only Ramor could not allow himself to be distracted, because it got a lot more difficult to control the flow, after such a huge chunk of the net got destroyed.
The generals activated their magic, and shields of darkness, light, and blood spread before them. Shire only grunted as his entire body swelled. Slowly, he stepped to the edge of the fortress. He looked at Nero. "I will hold her off!" he said with a firm, deep voice that sounded as if it came from the throat of a dragon. Nero nodded. "Take this!" he said and gave Shire his cloak. Not because he hoped it would protect Shire, but so Shire might perhaps last a little longer to buy them time. When the gigantic star shot from the woman's palm, Shire jumped toward the star with the cloak spread before him. He roared with rage as the gigantic mass struck him. The black symbols on Nero's cloak, sewn with threads created from the black crystals themselves, lit up briefly and actually protected Shire for a short period of time. Then they failed and shattered in violent black explosions as their primordial magic dissolved.
Shire, Nero's third general, the leader of the black Polykenas, the majority of the army, his personal bodyguard, and probably his most loyal servant, did not survive for two heartbeats in the light of the star without the cloak before he was vaporized. The only thing that remained was a large amount of chaos magic, which immediately joined the stream of the others.
The star struck the shields of the remaining generals and Nero with incredible force, and they burst one after another. Cracks spread across all three of them as they held nothing back. Just barely, with their last strength, they managed to stop the star.
The woman sighed in annoyance as she wanted to launch the third attack immediately, but then her gaze snapped to the side. "Almost!" she laughed as Fril leapt toward her. He had almost managed to sneak up on her, but even he had been unsuccessful in the end. With claws drawn back, he tried to kill the woman in a single blow, but she flicked her hand. A few hundred stars shot out of her and riddled Fril with holes. Fril, the fifth and youngest general in Nero's army—a living weapon, an assassin who had managed to plunge an entire world into chaos—died with a single flick of the wrist, like an annoying mosquito.
"DONE!" Ramor called out.
"Go!" Nero ordered. Immediately, two Polykenas appeared behind Ramor and Ester. They inhaled heavily as the stream of chaos magic shot through them. In the next second, they were gone. Krell grabbed Nero's and Eleanor's arms. He inhaled to charge himself with the chaos energy. Xersies beside him vanished, not even a millisecond before Krell vanished.
Krell appeared in the dimension, breathing heavily, and fell to the ground. Xersies looked at him. "Krell!" he hissed. "Where is the Duce?"
Krell blinked in confusion. He looked to where he had just been holding Nero. He was certain he had touched him; how could he have allowed himself such a mistake? With shock, he realized that Nero was not there. Not only that, but his arm had been cleanly severed at the stump. Krell was so overwhelmed by the chaos energy surging around him that even now, he could not feel it the pain from the wound.
"He was… just… I do not know," he gasped, on the brink of losing his consciousness.
"BRING US BACK!" Xersies ordered, becoming loud for the very first time. Nero was their leader. Their chosen savior, the one who was supposed to bring his entire race to unbelievable power. His entire existence shuddered at the thought that he might die. Following his Duce was part of his nature, just as chaos itself was.
"I cannot…" Krell murmured with a hoarse voice. "I would die before I could gather enough magic to transport myself alone, let alone both of us."
Xersies hissed angrily. He looked at Ramor. "Can you do something? A symbol network? Anything?"
Ramor looked at Xersies angrily. "Do you think it is that easy? Perhaps I can manage it if I connect it with the current network in our nest, but that would be a task of several hours!"
Xersies hissed, but controlled his anger. "Then… what are you waiting for? BEGIN!"
On the tower stood only a single person. Nero. He was alone; the Polykenas of the Krell's Patron had all already gone into the dimension. On his arm, still gripping, hung Krell's white, fur-covered arm. A small, wafer-thin mirror had separated the arm cleanly from the shoulder blade. It was such a thin cut that neither Nero nor Krell had noticed they were no longer connected until it was too late.
Now Nero had been left behind. He possessed no magic anymore, no way to escape, no way out. He looked up, where he saw a large mirror flying, behind which stood the red-haired man. He grinned at him one last time through the mirror before it vanished again.
Nero said nothing, but calmly turned around as a new aura spread behind him. The woman was standing right behind him, so close that Nero could take in her scent. She smelled like a beautiful spring day, when everything was in full bloom, and the first warm breezes were blowing through the area. This briefly took Nero's thoughts back to a time when he had still taken pleasure in such scents. It felt like a different life.
The woman observed Nero closely. She looked into his eyes, which seemed endless. She searched for panic, for fear, for anything, but all she saw was cold acceptance. Nero smiled slightly as he crossed his arms. It was the smile of a person who had no worries, no doubts, no concerns, and no fears.
Nero had no fear of death. He had worked hard, he had tried everything, done everything he could. He had no regret.
The woman frowned. "Are you not afraid?" she asked, actually curious. Never in her life had she met someone who was so at peace with his situation.
He shrugged. "Usually, I am the one who invades the worlds of others. I would be a true hypocrite if I were angry at you for doing the same."
"But do you not want to know why? Why do we do what we do?" the woman asked as she stepped one more step closer to Nero.
He shook his head. "Is there a chance that you will let me live?"
"Not a chance!" the woman answered immediately, without hesitation. Nero had already expected that. He would possess nothing that would be important to a person of such incredible power, and even if he did, nothing would stop her from simply taking it after his death.
"Then it will not help me to learn your reason either."
The woman nodded thoughtfully. Then she smiled at Nero. "Wonderful!" she said, then, "I must congratulate you. What you built here is something no human of your level has ever achieved!"
Nero bowed. "Your praise means a great deal to me!"
The woman's smile grew even wider. "You are not at all how I imagined you. When I received the order to kill a chaos mage, I expected an old fanatic who would defy death until the end. This impression was only strengthened by these…" She hesitated, searching for the right word. "Creatures that swarm outside. Who would have expected to meet such a charming man? If it were up to me, I would spare you," she shrugged, "but an order is an order."
Nero looked at her, but said nothing more. The woman raised her hand and pointed at Nero. A single star shot from her fingertip with such incredible power that Nero, even if he had tried, would not have been able to block it.
The star pierced through his chest, directly through his magical heart, dragging a burning hole behind it. Nero's eyes widened ever so slightly as blood sprayed from the hole. He fell to his knees, unconsciously reaching with his hands for his chest. "What a shame…" the woman said as she watched the man's final moments. She turned around.
Nero saw her figure begin to move away. He tried to gather the remains of his magic, but he had already used all of it. The cracks had already been at his chest; the rest would not save him, and now that a hole gaped in his magical heart, it was only a matter of seconds anyway. He fell onto his stomach. With difficulty, he turned onto his back as his field of vision slowly began to darken. He felt life crawling out of him. His head fell weakly to the side, where he saw his outstretched hand, still clutching something tightly. For a moment, he thought it was the Eye of Aryha, but when he opened his hand, he saw the small blue stone shimmering inside. Right, he had gotten it back from Xersies. Could he have fled with it? This thought shot through his mind for a second before vanishing again.
Slowly, his eyelids fell shut, and the light in his eyes began to fade. With his final breath, he saw something black spreading within the stone before he drew his last breath. He died.
The woman did not know what it was, but something made her turn around again to cast one last look at the man. He lay motionless on the ground, definitely dead. Her gaze brushed over the small blue stone in his hand. This was nothing special.
She was about to turn around again when she suddenly saw darkness spreading inside the blue interior of the stone.
"What…" she managed to say as the stone suddenly exploded. The explosion was small, but its aura was indescribable. The ground trembled, the sky broke, and laughter spread through the landscape.
It was a laugh so malicious, so mad, so incredibly all-encompassing that it sent the woman into shock.
Nero's hand burned with strange black flames that slowly ate their way up his wrist. Darkness began to whirl around him. Then space tore open directly behind Nero, only a small gap, but when the woman tried to see what was behind it, her head began to hurt violently.
She raised her hand with a growl. Thousands upon thousands of stars shot toward Nero's floating body, but when they struck the vortex of pure darkness, they changed into all kinds of chaotic shapes and colors before flying back out. Some of them struck the woman, who barely managed to defend herself.
The hole in Nero's chest slowly healed, and he opened his black eyes. Torn from the grasp of death, his mind surged with confusion. Only the incredible pain in his right arm, in which he had held the blue crystal, tore him back into reality.
He was still alive. This realization confused him more than anything else, for he knew it had been his fate to die here. But something, or, to be more precise, someone, had intervened. It had freed Nero from the web of fate, thereby granting him a second life.
Then he was pulled through the rift by the darkness. For a short time, he floated in pure nothingness. Around him came all kinds of sounds, smells, and impressions, but Nero could interpret none of them. He felt his mind beginning to suffer from it. With one last look at the woman, the rift before him closed again, and a new one opened behind him, through which Nero flew. He blinked as he suddenly found himself in free fall. He spun uncontrollably through the air as the ground beneath him came closer and closer. He tried to activate his magic, but it did not react. He crashed into a dense canopy of trees, where he violently broke through dozens of branches, which broke his bones, tore open his skin, and cut into his flesh, but slowed his fall enough that when he hit the ground, he survived the fall.
His entire body burned, his heart still raced from the adrenaline. He did not know what had happened, but that did not matter for now. What mattered was that he had survived. He had accepted death, but that did not mean he wanted to die.
Nero could not help but burst out laughing. He had actually survived!