One week later, I was having to fight off attempts to stop me from my chosen course of action.

  Literally.

  “Grab him!” Isolde shouted, pointing an accusing finger at me. In a disturbingly eager manner, Bleddyn stood up from his chair and jumped over the table to land behind me. Moments later, I felt large, rough palms clamp themselves down on my shoulders. There was a…slight implication of claws in the fingertips that dug lightly into my flesh.

  But I wasn't moved by the sudden dramatic gesture.

  Instead, I was just irritated by it.

  “Really?” I asked them with a snort. “Do you really think this will stop me if I want to get away?”

  Isolde glared evilly at me. “No, but it’ll slow you down.”

  “I can break your legs if I hafta,” Bleddyn told me in a disturbingly casual tone of voice. I looked up to glare at him in response.

  However, our little confrontation was interrupted by a nervous cough from the corner of the room. All eyes followed it, to find Simeon sitting in a chair holding one of the clipboards I’d introduced to the Order, a fist held up to his lips. He quailed briefly at the attention, before his spine firmed.

  I’d always thought the man wasn’t necessarily a coward. Just…socially awkward.

  The last week had proven me right.

  “There’s really v-very little risk to his endeavor. T-Truly,” Simeon said, with only a slight stutter. I was almost proud of the man for standing up to the force of both Isolde and Bleddyn’s glares. My Commander and her betrothed were, putting it delicately, strong personalities. “We’re ninety-five percent certain the device will f-function as it should.”

  “And the other five percent?” Isolde asked, with a narrowed, suspicious gaze.

  Simeon coughed into his fist once more. “Ah…”

  “It could, possibly, maybe…amplify the effects,” I finished for him, laughing at the incredulous look I received from Isolde. After a moment, I just shrugged at her. “But that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  “Nate, I get it,” Bleddyn piped up, releasing me and leaning against the back of my chair. “I really do. It’s a damn good thing for a leader to be willin’ to risk his butt, but…”

  “It doesn’t have to be you,” Isolde said firmly. “Any one of our soldiers would be perfectly willing to conduct the experiment with these…APD’s.”

  “Aetheric Pressure Dampeners,” Simeon helpfully offered, only to quail under the glare Isolde shot him in response.

  I just leaned forward onto the table, cradling my chin in thought as I did so.

  The last week had been…hectic, to say the least. Chaotic and depressing was the more accurate thing to say, really. Lord Ausfeld’s worst cast scenario of two to three times more casualties over the days following the Skyfall had turned out to be false. Either he had underestimated the will of the Herztalian people, the Healers themselves, or maybe just how extreme the injuries had been, the result had been the same. There…were still further deaths from a myriad of complications caused by the catastrophe, but that number had been somewhere in the, well…seven hundreds, all total.

  That was still a massive disaster, but we had to take what victories we could when we found them. The simple fact that the number hadn’t been greater before the last of the wounded was treated by the heroic Healers of Blutstein was enough for celebration.

  Sadly…

  That was about the only thing we could celebrate.

  Lord Wersk’s insane speculation that the Skyfall was affecting all of Vereden at once…had turned out to be correct.

  The High Lord of the Sea had, perhaps callously, ordered one of his fastest ships out to sea, in the hopes that they could scout the extent of the phenomenon. Five brave men and women of the good ship Totality had done so, vanishing over the horizon beyond the wards. Nobody had really expected them to return from the suicide mission.

  When they did, though, three days later…

  The information they brought back to the city was both dire and…confusing.

  At least initially.

  Only three had survived the journey home, and those three had a strange story to tell. They confirmed that the event stretched out as far as the eye could see, but that actually wasn’t the most important thing they had to say.

  The corrosive effect wasn’t present out on the open ocean. It was there in the waters just off the coasts, beyond the wards. The journey through them initially and on the return had been what had caused the crew to become deathly ill. But the broad expanse of the sea beyond the coasts?

  It was safe.

  This was…puzzling, until Simeon had tentatively offered up a hypothesis at one of the daily meetings I dragged him to.

  The ocean was an Aetherial dead zone. It was well known that monsters didn’t spawn away from the coasts when you were out at sea. The only things that naturally spawned out in the open waters of the ocean were regular old fish, the old-fashioned way. There wasn’t a drop of Aether to be found within the deep waters of the world. The sky was, apparently, still obscured by whatever this whole mess really was, but it couldn’t corrupt what wasn’t there.

  When the implications of this were realized…

  Naturally, someone from the emergency council meetings held in Kyronkar leaked the news. There was promptly a mad dash for the ports, as everyone who owned a ship decided they wanted to escape the relative safety of the emergency wards at once. It had only taken hours for the ports to empty out. Even people who didn’t actually own ships had tried to buy out those who did. I myself had received more than a few offers to purchase my Astray, sadly languishing in a private dock alongside Grey’s White Gull. Of course, I had turned each and every one of them down, but that hadn’t stopped the desperate. There had actually been more than one attempt to steal both ships, and as a result, I’d had to assign a couple of guards from my Order to protect them. As far as I was concerned, the ships were a strategic asset now that it was confirmed the open ocean was free from the contamination.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I had honestly thought that having to traverse the dangerous stretch of sea between the end point of the wards and the clear zone would have dissuaded those choosing to flee. After all, it was deadly in the intervening space. But instead, large swaths of Blutstein had chosen to take the risk.

  Now, there was essentially a floating extension of the city, just out of sight. I think, if a clear day was still possible, I would have been able to see them from the top of the lighthouse.

  While all of this was going on, I and those willing to assist from the Academy had been working around the clock on possible countermeasures to the radiation. Officially, it was being called ‘corruption’ instead, considering most people on Vereden had no concept of energetic radiance. Professors and faculty members had formed into various research groups to tackle the problem via differing disciplines. Magi and Cultivators were being grouped together as well, in the hopes that those following different paths might just be able to shore up each other's weaknesses.

  I myself had assembled a team mostly drawing from Abjurationists, with Simeon contributing as well. There were over a dozen of them from the higher-order courses, with crotchety, paranoid old Professor Stahlbrandt himself joining in. To my surprise, we actually had a few Cultivators from the Sealing courses request to join our research team. I often forgot that Cultivators had their own complicated form of Spellcasting, known as Arts, that produced unique Mystical effects. There were far fewer schools in comparison Magic, but I’d been told that the existing five in Sealing, Purification, Movement, Strengthening, and Healing were broad enough for their purposes. I’d welcomed them, of course, and I had to admit it was fascinating watching them work. It was so…different from Magic, but their insights had been genuinely useful.

  To the point that our research team was one of the few who had produced a working prototype.

  The Aetherial Pressure Dampeners, as Simeon had said. APD’s, for short.

  We’d finished our first prototype earlier this morning, and I had come to tell my harried Commander the good news. Only…she had vehemently protested my proposed testing scheme.

  Mainly, that I would put it on and venture beyond the wards to test it.

  “It’s too dangerous, Nathan!” Isolde stressed, looking fit to tear her hair out at my stubbornness. “We can’t risk losing our leader in the middle of gods-be-damned crisis! What if it doesn’t work?!”

  “What if it does, though,” I pointed out, to her frustration. “Look, I get it. I really do. But what will everyone think of me if I callously order someone else to go in my stead? It would look like I didn’t place any value in the lives of those below me. Besides, we’re all very confident in the efficiency of the APDs. You know why I believe in these.”

  After all…I had gotten the base idea for them from poring over the Netherim archive. I’d been looking for something, anything, that could tell us either what was going on or how to stop it. But instead what I had found was a curious little device. Something meant for an entirely different purpose. That little doodad hadn’t been useful to us, but the concept…

  That had sparked ideas.

  As she brought her hands up to curl in front of her, as if she could strangle me with her mind alone, Bleddyn piped up again. “What about sending a Sculpted instead, eh? Surely the corruption don’t hurt them like it does us? They ain’t got flesh to poison, after all.”

  I just shook my head. “No, we already thought of that. The corruption isn’t really targeting the physical self, anyway. What the Healing teams discovered is that it’s affecting the soul, corroding it on a metaphysical level instead. That then transfers along the connection between body and soul, only then causing a form of necrosis of the flesh. It’s just as deadly to them as it would be to me. No. It has to be me. I have to see what it’s like out there.”

  As Bleddyn walked around from behind me to stand next to her, Isolde studied me with a tired frown. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

  “No,” I said firmly.

  “B-Besides,” Simeon piped up once more. “It’s not like the c-corruption is immediately lethal. For someone of Nathan’s level, it would take over six h-hours of exposure for the contamination to become t-terminal.”

  Thanks again, Healers.

  Honestly, besides my team, they had probably been putting in the best work.

  “…alright,” Isolde eventually said grudgingly. “Fine. Just…be careful, Nathan. Things are far, far too uncertain right now to risk losing one of our greatest assets.”

  I stood up from my chair and nodded at her. “I will be. Don’t forget, I have a very real reason to want to live. She’s just downstairs, after all.”

  ……………………..

  Standing before the eastern gate of Blutstein, I absentmindedly stared off into the countryside beyond the glowing surface of the wards. As I did, I rubbed the smooth surface of the APD between my fingers.

  I hadn’t actually been over here since the start of the emergency. In normal times, this was likely the busiest gate in Blutstein. It’s massive, multi-story doors were always thrown open, admitting an endless stream of travelers and merchants as they followed the valley that led to the city. This was the natural entrance into the city, after all. North and south lie Horsaval and Hengiskar, while the western side held the ports. Normally, you could see far off into the distance of the valley when the light was good. It cascaded over the rolling green hills that lay within the valley, illuminating the dozens of different farms and homes. Just outside of the gates were always little pop-up stores as well, hawking cheap goods and food for people waiting to be admitted into the city.

  But not now.

  Now, it was an endless expanse of abandonment, shrouded by the dark skies overhead. Nobody was out there anymore. The signs of empty stalls creaked in an ominous wind, it’s deadly caress rolling harmlessly over long dead wood. In the distance, the many farms that supported Blutstein lay mostly abandoned. Not all of them had possessed settlement wards when the Skyfall came. Only a few of those were still occupied, unable to safely traverse the heartbreakingly small distance to the city itself. The rest of them…their owners were gone.

  It was just…too deadly out there, especially for those with low levels.

  Behind me, I heard a cleared throat, knocking me out of my maudlin thoughts. Turning my head, I saw one of the most unexpected members of my research team. Frankly, I thought I had burned bridges with them too deeply for them to volunteer, through nothing more than happenstance. But no.

  Meia Itzelan had been one of the most fervent researchers I had.

  “Are you ready, Hart?” The half-Orc woman asked me, a slight frown standing out on her grey face.

  Wordlessly, I nodded and looked down at the device in my hand. To a layman’s eyes, it would look like nothing more than a small four-pointed star, wrought from clear white crystal. But to someone familiar with Ward Stones…

  It was a very similar crystal.

  Only…

  The design was different. Tellingly, these were not the common Ward’s that protected every village, town, and city on the face of Vereden. It was impossible to miniaturize a Ward Stone array at a level this small. The power source was too slight to actualize. But…with the Orcish design of parasitic Wards…

  Suddenly, a lot of things became possible.

  This thing…this ADP…it was a hook. It didn’t create any Wards of its own. Instead, it latched on to a designated Ward scheme and created a small copy of what we believed was keeping out the corruption. Even with the Orcish Ward schemata, though, it wasn’t possible to copy the absurdly powerful emergency Wards being generated by the Zenith Stone. Instead, we believed our design would copy the fundamental part of settlement wards, and then project that to protect someone in a very tight radius.

  Tight enough, in fact, to cover the Human body.

  But, well…it still needed to be tested.

  Thus, here I was. Risking my life again.

  Honestly, it was a bit nostalgic.

  I reached up and pinned the ADP to my left breast and took a deep breath. When I was done, I tugged lightly on the ‘safety device’ my team had cooked up for me in case anything went wrong when I stepped beyond the wards.

  Namely, a simple length of rope tied around my waist, held in the broad palms of Itzelan.

  I nodded to her. “I’m ready.”

  “Get going then,” Meia said gruffly. “I’ve…I’ve got you.”

  I huffed a slight laugh and turned back to face the curtain of the wards. At the sight of them, I took a deep breath…and nodded to myself firmly.

  Let’s do this.

  I stepped forward, passing through the dense pane of Aether that was the Wards of Kyronkar…

  And stopped, immediately bending over at the waist in shock at what I felt.

  It was like a bomb had gone off in my head.