Chapter 307: The Dwarven Cave of Mantamia (9)

“Unfortunately, I cannot keep this going for very long,” Ketal said.

They had bound the mine with the Dragon Tongue, then he had strengthened himself with the Myst and lifted the whole mine besides. His reserves were scraping bottom. He needed to end this quickly.

“So die.”

“A—aaah!” Raphael yelled.

Ketal charged. Raphael flailed with the panic of a cornered child and screamed as he threw power around, the terror of dying plain in his eyes.

Power lashed out in a frenzy. Adamantadium surged up and pressed the very air aside as it rose in a wall. It was not so much an attack as a desperate plea for distance, a barricade raised by someone who could not bear to let his enemy draw near.

Ketal came on with the axe veiled in Myst. He struck at the wall that had blocked even his raw strength. Adamantadium, which had endured everything he had given it a moment ago, parted like cheese beneath a hot wire. The barricade offered no real resistance at all.

He was on Raphael in a blink, swinging hard. Raphael jerked aside in alarm, dodging just barely, and the stroke grazed him, carving a long line across his chest. Taken by itself, the wound was nothing to marvel at. Ketal had caved in demons’ skulls and torn off limbs before. A shallow cut did not count as real harm to creatures like these.

However, Raphael’s reaction was different.

“Aaah! Aaaaaah!” He shrieked like a mortal man, not like a noble demon. Beauty and poise fell away. Only fear remained, the raw fear of an ending that would not be followed by a return.

“You do love to scream,” Ketal muttered.

Power crashed. Raphael raved and tried to shove Ketal back with sheer force. Ketal hewed through everything he raised. Each time the axe fell, the air split and Raphael’s workings unraveled. Ketal cut his way forward and closed again.

A blow landed, and Raphael went tumbling, spine arching as he hit the floor and skidded. He twisted as if to flee.

He froze, feeling an immovable wall at his back, absolute and unyielding. This was a mine with only one exit, and without that single way out, there would be no escape. Hopelessness sank into Raphael’s gaze, slow and dark.

Then his eyes flashed as an idea had occurred to him. He lifted his hand and gathered his power until the demonic energy coiled thick enough to stain the air.

Ketal’s mouth tightened. This would be the last flailing strike, and it would not be small. He set himself to answer it no matter how Raphael shaped it.

However, Raphael did not throw it at Ketal. He drove the gathered demonic energy into his own chest.

“Hmm?” Ketal’s eyes widened.

“Huh?” The Holy Sword was similarly dumbfounded.

The power detonated, and Raphael’s body buckled before collapsing. As he fell, his form began to fade from the world. He was being pulled back to Hell, banishing himself in defeat. Relief softened his face as he went, like a man who had outpaced a storm by a single step.

The Demon of Jewels, Raphael, was gone from the Mortal Realm.

Ketal watched the empty air for a few heartbeats more, then spoke. “He killed himself.”

“It... looks like that is what happened,” the Holy Sword replied.

“Why?” he wondered.

Every demon he had met had fought to the bitter end. Even if they died here, they simply returned below. There was no reason to fear the moment itself. However, it seemed like Raphael had feared. He had ended his life rather than risk taking another stroke. It had been like watching a man who believed that if Ketal’s Aura touched him again, he would truly die.

“In any case, it is done,” Ketal declared.

The enemy that had seized Mantamia was gone. It was a clean victory.

The Holy Sword raised the question it had been holding down while the fight lasted. “Why could you suddenly draw out the Myst?”

Until now, Ketal had not been able to pull it free of his frame. That was the reason he had come here in the first place. Yet he had reached for it mid-battle and used it. The sword had kept quiet while blows were flying, but the surprise had not been small.

“I made a deal,” Ketal said.

“A... deal?”

“I persuaded the beast within me that this would benefit it when all of this was over. It agreed to let me draw out a little. It is excellent.”

He smiled, pleased. The Holy Sword did not accept the answer easily.

“It is your power, but you have to bargain for it. I have wondered for a while. Are we certain that thing is the Myst in the first place?” the sword asked him.

The beast of Myst moved with a will of its own, resisting the commands of its wielder. It was possible to speak to it and reach an agreement, but that made it feel less like the world’s Myst and more like an Anomaly merely wearing its shape.

“Hm,” Ketal said.

He could not contradict that. He had thought of it as the Myst. He had believed that when he forced it down, the will of the world was pushing back. Now, his mind was changing.

“Well, if it works, it works,” Ketal decided.

“I am not sure this is what people mean when they say that,” the sword replied.

“I think it is fine.”

Whatever the thing was, it could not harm him. That much was clear. There was nothing here that could turn on him from inside. He traded a few more words with the Holy Sword and walked out of the mine. Dwarves and Ignisia were waiting at the mouth.

“How did it go?” Ignisia asked him.

“It is over,” he said. “Raphael is no longer present on the Mortal Realm.”

A sound rose from the dwarves, low at first and then growing. Then it burst into a cheer that rolled like a tide along the cliff and down into the camp.

“

Ho—ooh!

”

“We did it!”

“We took our holy land back!”

They had won, and their joy went on for a long while.

***

“It has been a long time,” Grombir said, his face gone thoughtful and soft as he stepped into Mantamia’s halls again.

They had finally taken back the home that had been seized by a demon. Raphael’s domain still clung to a few places, but with time, it would fade. Once it was gone and they reconsecrated the halls as Hephaite’s holy land, the restoration would be complete.

“Thank you,” he said. “We owe everything to you.”

“It was a bargain,” Ketal said. “You need not fret over thanks. Are you all right, though? It seems like some problems, big and small, have come up.”

“That is true enough.” Grombir’s mouth tightened.

Ketal had shouldered a weight like a mountain range, moved it, and set it down. The shock had gone through Mantamia like a tuning fork.

The result was that the perfect lines and balances that had once defined the place were now disrupted, some by the width of a hair, others by the span of a hand. Ceilings stood just slightly askew, tiles that had once lain in flawless stretches had lifted and scattered, and hairline cracks had appeared between pillars that had never shifted before. The imbalance showed itself everywhere he looked.

There was more. The mine sat outside now, exposed, which meant they needed countermeasures they had never had to consider.

“Even so, we prevailed,” Grombir said. “This is far better than letting a demon keep our home.”

“I am grateful you take it that way,” Ketal said.

“You kept your side of the bargain. It is our turn.”

Ketal had done what the dwarves had asked and driven the enemy out. Now they were obliged to keep their word in turn.

“Wait for me,” Grombir said. “I will call upon Hephaite again.”

“I am looking forward to it,” Ketal said, smiling.

The next day, Hephaite once more descended into Grombir’s body.

“That was a monstrous strength,” Hephaite said through Grombir.

“You were watching.”

“Where my worshipers stand, my eyes stand with them. I wondered how you would do it, but I did not imagine you would pick up the mine and throw it outside. That was not in my book.”

There was an edge of disbelief in their voice. Even to a god who bent concepts and tempered realities, it had been a surprising sight.

“I am sorry about tossing it out,” Ketal said.

“Leave it. Better that than letting the insides be stripped bare. You did well.” They fell quiet then and looked at him with a steady, curious gaze. “You resolved it faster than I expected. That stubborn demon should not have folded so easily. What did you do?”

“This,” Ketal said, and lifted the axe. The Myst flickered along the edge. Hephaite’s eyes lowered.

“That’s Myst, is it not? For one of the beings from the Inside to wield that... truly strange. But even so, that alone should not be enough to make him run away.” Hephaite studied silently for a heartbeat more, then frowned. “Wait. There is something off.”

“What do you mean?” Ketal asked the god.

“Looking closely, I see it. That is not the Myst. It uses the Myst for its base, but the thing riding on top is very different.”

“Different how?”

“I will give you a simple example.” Their voice dropped, as if talking to a craftsman at a bench. “If one of our holy relics is stained by the Ugly Rat’s pollution, does it remain our holy relic?”

“It does not,” Ketal replied.

The Ugly Rat could foul anything. Something like that would wear the holy relic’s shape but not its essence. What Ketal had drawn out today was the same.

“It looks more like something twisted has been awakened through the stimulus of Myst. But... there’s something similar about it.” Hephaite looked harder, then suddenly their eyes wavered. “The... Abomination?”

A chill rolled off them, a fine spray of killing intent pricking at Ketal like sleet. He did not react, only watching in silence as Hephaite allowed the feeling to rise before letting it go.

“No, it’s not that. Not quite. It is strangely different. It is not Myst, but not the Abomination either. Has that, too, been polluted and corrupted?” The god let out a slow breath. “Everything in you is mixed. There are things I do not know the names of. What are you?”

“I am just a resident of this world,” Ketal said lightly.

Hephaite gave a small breath that could have been a laugh. “Is that so?”

“It’s strange,” Ketal said. “But there is no problem.”

The beast coiled within him was, at its core, his alone. It could never threaten him, and he knew that truth in his very bones.

“What’s within you is such an unnatural thing... With it, you can kill demons,” Hephaite said.

“Do you mean banishing demons back to Hell?” Ketal asked them.

“No, you can kill demons. You can erase their very existence.”

“I see.”

Ketal understood then why Raphael had turned his power inward. Before Ketal could reach him again, he had fled into Hell.

“The Oldest Ones are capable of corrupting us. The fact that you could not do so was odd,” Hephaite said. The world, in a way, had returned to its proper shape. “The power of the Abomination was especially specialized for killing. I do not know what connection you have to that creature, but it is not strange at all.”

“You are being very forthcoming. I would have expected me to be someone the gods find hard to trust.”

“Some do, I expect. But I am not among them.” They sounded almost indifferent. “You have no intention of opposing us. There are some who see you as a bomb that could go off at any moment and would want to eliminate you out of fear, but... as long as you do not explode, there is no problem. In fact, you could even be of benefit to us. And in truth, you already have been.”

Ketal had been the hinge in taking Mantamia back. Without him, Raphael would still be sitting in the mine and sending wealth below.

“You are a being that belongs neither here nor there. Let us continue to maintain a good relationship. I will make preparations to fulfill your request,” Hephaite said.

“Gladly,” Ketal replied, smiling.

Hephaite left. Ketal exchanged a few words with Grombir, who was breathing hard as a man always does after a descent, and stepped out of the hut.

The Abomination...,

Ketal thought. He had heard the name before.

The assassins who had come for him in the Kingdom of Denian had worshiped the Abomination. It could have been a coincidence, just a cult reaching for a word that sounded suitably dire, but his instincts told him otherwise.

Was there something more behind them?

He had considered sparing them to hear more of their story, but before he could, they had died, so that was no longer possible.

I’ll find out eventually,

Ketal thought, neatly setting the matter aside.

If the Abomination they worshiped truly had some connection to the axe he carried, then they would surely come after him.

If that happened, they would meet again. If they came with goodwill, he could have a conversation with them. If they came with ill intentions, he would simply deal with them.

There was nothing more to worry about. For Ketal, it was just that simple. Humming to himself, he set off at an easy pace.