Chapter 336: Total War (1)

They fell out of the gate in a tumble, as if the world itself had upended them and shaken them loose. The landing tore grooves into the courtyard of the elven sacred ground. Elves on watch, already strung tight by the new sky, flinched hard and rushed forward with weapons raised.

“Who goes there?”

“Demons! Demons have breached the wards!”

“I would prefer you calmed down,” Ketal said, brushing dust from his shoulder.

The panic broke as faces focused and recognized him. A different noise swelled—relief mixed with a kind of giddy fear.

“They’ve returned from Hell! Are you all right?”

“We are not,” Helia answered.

Her face had no color at all. Her hands shook with a child’s tremor, and even sitting upright looked like work. The Tower Master was worse. Bones had splintered and shifted out of shape; his skull did not sit properly on the rest of him. He looked like a skeleton that had forgotten how its pieces fit.

The Tower Master’s life-vessel had been driven to the edge of its capacity and was beginning to fracture. Helia had shattered three holy relics to survive. Only Ketal’s presence had let them walk out at all. If Hell had concentrated even a little more strength upon them, both would have died before the gate finished opening.

The elves saw enough to be frightened and moved at once.

“By the gods...”

“The wounds are severe. Get them to the infirmary now!”

“Tower Master! Speak to us—can you hear—”

Karin and a knot of elves hurried in, shouldered the weight of the injured, and steered them toward a hall that smelled of herbs and hot water. At the doorway, Karin glanced back at Ketal, worry sharpening her eyes.

“And you?”

“I do not need a healer,” Ketal replied. “A short rest will settle me.”

“If you say so,” Karin murmured, not hiding her unease.

She was a Hero in her own right, one of the strongest in the world, and yet even for her, the Tower Master and Helia lived on an unreachable height. They had returned broken, but Ketal had not. The realization pulled a strained laugh out of her.

“You are truly monstrous, in the way that saves lives,” she said. “It is lucky that you are on our side.”

“If you really believe that, be kinder to Arkemis,” Ketal said lightly. “She carries more of the work than she lets on.”

“Then I will buy her the catalysts she wants at an indecent price,” Karin said, trying for dry humor and almost finding it. The smile vanished. “Tell me what happened down there.”

Ketal described Hell in clean, pared lines—the carcass-red sky, the poison-thick air, the silence hovering like a hand above a trap. He spoke of the cave where they found the God of Wrath, Mesereka, seated with head bowed, a thin cut across the chest, and a man with a sword who was no man at all. As the story unfolded, Karin’s expression tightened, and by the end her face had faded past pale into a washed blue.

“Mesereka was already dead...?” she whispered. “And one of the Demon Lords, Caliste, stood there to finish you? And then the whole of Hell moved at you?”

Ketal nodded once. Karin swayed and had to catch her own forehead with the heel of her hand.

“It is a marvel you returned,” she said.

“It was dangerous,” Ketal admitted with a short laugh that sounded far too pleased. “I have not stepped that close to the edge since I came out into the Mortal Realm.”

Karin’s answering sound was half amusement and half protest. She shook her head until the ring in her ear chimed and forced herself back into the room’s weight.

“So Hell lay in wait,” she said. “That is why they showed no movement.”

“For now, yes,” Ketal said. “Though it is too simple to stop there.”

“You mean the silence of the other two Demon Lords,” Karin said quietly. “Aside from Caliste.”

Ketal inclined his head. Neither Materia nor Abyss had shown themselves.

“If they truly meant to erase us, the other two would have moved,” Ketal said. “They did not.”

That meant Hell was building something.

“I have a guess,” he added, and left it there because a guess is not a fact.

Karin worried the inside of her lip with her teeth. “Does it touch heaven’s silence?”

“It might,” Ketal said. “We will not know until we ask.”

They did not intend to go back to Hell for answers.

“We speak to the heavens,” Ketal said, eyes narrowing in thought.

The next day, Ketal brought fruit and silence to the infirmary. He found Serena with her sleeves rolled and her mouth tight with focus, standing between the two beds with her hands lit to the wrist.

“Oh! Ketal,” she said, bright as always. “You came. I have been pouring myself into them!”

“You have done well,” he said, and rested his hand on her head for a beat. Serena beamed. Ketal’s gaze shifted to the beds. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Helia said.

“Not bad,” the Tower Master added from the other pillow. “Not good either, but better.”

They looked less like death. Helia sat up carefully and bowed her head.

“Thank you,” she said. “If not for you, I would still be in that place. I do not say that lightly. They would have toyed with me.”

“I also owe you,” the Tower Master said. “I have lived centuries and convinced myself that death was for people I advised. I was wrong yesterday.”

“We are comrades. Do not give it weight,” Ketal replied. Then, he glanced at Helia. “I am only sorry we could not recover Mesereka’s true body.”

“It cannot be helped,” Helia said with a bitter smile.

To serve the gods was to serve with reverence, and the thought of a god’s body abandoned to Hell tasted like ash. Even so, there had been no time and no road back.

“What will we do now?” she asked Ketal.

“For the moment, we do not go back,” Ketal said.

Hell had laid its snare and waited. They had escaped it once, but that did not mean they could again. There was no reason to gamble when another path remained. Everyone in that room knew what that path was.

“We need information from the gods,” Ketal said.

“The gods should know what Hell is shaping,” Helia replied. “If we hear it from them directly, we can choose our answer.”

However, there was a problem. The line to the heavens had been cut. That was why they had gone to Hell in the first place.

“Still no reply?” Ketal asked her.

“I prayed while healing,” Helia said, “and received nothing.”

“Then the blockage remains,” Ketal said. “What would you do?”

Helia’s mouth twisted. “I do not know what we can do.”

“There is only one thing to do,” Ketal said, surprised that anyone needed to say it.

“What do you mean?” she asked him.

“Do you have a method?” the Tower Master said, interest beating out caution.

“The heavens are not answering,” Ketal said. “Something interferes with the line. That makes this simple.”

The Tower Master’s eyes brightened. “Ah.”

Ketal smiled. “If heaven will not come down, then we go up.”

***

Silence made a soft circle around the bed.

“That...,” Helia began, and the words frayed.

“It is not impossible,” Ketal said. “Serena told me the Tower Master had reached the gates.”

“Ah... did I?” Serena said, flustered, and glanced at the lich.

“Can you explain what really happened?” Ketal said, glancing at the Tower Master.

“It’s nothing grand,” the Tower Master said. “Only a personal curiosity.”

He had wondered what lived in that high place, and whether the Mortal Realm could ever reach it. A mage was not a creature built to bear unspent questions. The Tower Master had shut himself away for decades to worry at how one might ascend and had managed, in the end, to touch the door.

“But, in the end, I could not enter,” he said.

“Why?” Ketal asked him.

𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

“The gods did not permit me. The idea seemed to be one of qualification. The door opens only to those who meet it.”

He had not met it, and so he had stopped there. Serena nodded, unsurprised.

“Heaven is not Hell,” she said. “It is where the gods dwell. Not everyone can step through. One must either serve sincerely enough to carry an affinity for the holy that is very high, or one must stand near their station. If anyone on this earth could approach, it would be Helia, I think. Not now—she needs to train—but in time.”

Serena looked at Helia as she said it. Helia did not seem pleased by the prospect, but she did not argue.

“And me?” Ketal asked her.

“Excuse me?” Serena said.

“Could I enter heaven?” He asked it smiling, and Serena tripped on the answer.

“Your affinity for the holy is not high,” she said gently. “Almost absent. But...”

But his rank, in the most basic sense of what he was, reached toward the level where gods listened. It was strange that he still lived as a person tied to soil.

After a small silence, Serena said, “I think you could.”

“Then this gets simple,” Ketal said, and clapped once.

“Tower Master,” he said, turning back to him. “Will you open the path again?”

“It is not impossible,” the Tower Master said, wary. “It will take time to prepare. Are you truly set on going?”

He had approached the door and not crossed it. Even a mind like his had balked at the idea of walking into heaven. For ages upon ages, worship had steeped into people like dye. One did not break that by deciding to be brave.

However, Ketal had been born in another world and did not carry that dye. There was reverence in him where there should be reverence, but no superstition that could bind his feet.

“We have gone to Hell,” he said. “Why should heaven be forbidden?”

The Tower Master thought, then let the thought go. Direct answers were needed, and only heaven could give them.

“Very well,” he said. “When we have recovered enough, we will try.”

“Thank you,” Ketal said, showing all his teeth.

Unfortunately, Ketal did not get what he wanted. A week after their return from Hell, Kalosia descended to the Mortal Realm.

***

Kalosia did not come themselves. They spoke through Shadranes and made her voice ring like bronze.

“It has been a while,” Kalosia said.

“It has,” Ketal answered.

“You look disappointed,” Kalosia said mildly. “As if something you hoped for has slipped past your hand. Has anything happened?”

“Nothing that will not be mended,” Ketal said.

He let the ruefulness go. It was a pity to lose the chance to climb to heaven just to prove that he could. It was good, however, that the gods were able to speak again. He set his thoughts in order and asked the question that mattered.

“You were absent from the world for a long time,” he said. “What happened?”

“Hell,” Kalosia said, with clear contempt. “Hell interfered.”

“You mean the Living Engine of the Ruin,” Ketal said. “The First Tool. Abyss.”

“Yes,” Kalosia said. “Abyss severed the line between the Mortal Realm and heaven.”

Attacking the capital of a country was not easy. There were defenses laid and soldiers inside; an enemy had to bring great force to bear. However, stopping the roads that brought goods into and out of that capital—cutting the lines where messages run—was much simpler.

“It was not a direct strike against heaven,” Kalosia said. “It was a hand on the line.”

This made the work hard to trace and harder to undo. Even now, the gods could not step fully into the Mortal Realm.

“Even so,” Ketal said slowly, “it is hard to understand.”

There were many gods. Their numbers were not what they once were, and their power might be less than the Demon Lords’, but the difference could not be that great. A single Demon Lord sealing an entire network, a single name keeping heaven’s voice from the earth, was difficult to accept.

“Abyss is paying with its own rank,” Kalosia said.

“Oh,” Ketal murmured, and nodded. “Then Abyss is staking its own life.”

“Abyss is breaking,” Kalosia said. “Soon, that existence will be gone.”

Abyss was willing to die, if that was what it took, to keep heaven’s words from reaching mortal ears. Ketal did not waste time on outrage. He asked, “What is Hell shaping?”

“You have guessed,” Kalosia said.

“It would be a lie to say I have no thought,” Ketal replied.

He had asked himself why Hell remained still, why they would sacrifice a Demon Lord’s life only to silence heaven. There was only one answer worth giving voice to.

“The Demon King,” Ketal said.

“Correct,” Kalosia said. “Hell is preparing the Demon King’s descent.”