Broken Lands

Chapter 385 – The Tower Must Fall

Sophia directed everyone to the places she’d picked out, even Taika. He might not have an aura that was as strong as the humans’, but he could still help. 

She took a deep breath. She really hoped this worked; she couldn’t even see what she was trying to get rid of. She’d put together a ritual based on a short description and a few first principles. That ought to be enough, but if there was a specific phrase the Emperor was supposed to use to give judgement or something, that could completely mess things up.

Sophia was going to have to hope that it wasn’t that formalized. It probably wasn’t or the Wanderer would have said something.

She tried to banish her doubts. The only thing more likely to mess up a ritual than leaving out something that mattered was doubting it. It interfered with directing your Intent and could completely defeat the point. Doubt would be bad in anyone; it was worst in the leader.

She had to trust that the Wanderer told her enough. Even if he didn’t, she might still be able to make it work. That was part of the point of getting the others to help, after all; they’d reinforce the power of the ritual with their auras.

Sophia took another deep breath, then moved to her position next to the breastplate. “Ysalix Kestii, called the Broken Lord, come and hear my judgement as Empress of Kestii.”

Sophia paused. Nothing happened, so she took another deep breath and extended her aura to cover the entire room before repeating her statement. “Ysalix Kestii, called the Broken Lord, come and hear my judgement as Empress of Kestii.”

This time, she felt something. There was something else, someone else in the atrium, someone she couldn’t see. That was clearly what the Wanderer meant when he said she’d be able to tell when the Broken Lord was present.

The feeling gave Sophia confidence. The third time she spoke, it was a command, not a request. “Ysalix Kestii, called the Broken Lord, come and hear my judgement as Empress of Kestii.”

Flickers of light appeared in the air, like static electricity discharges. They were far smaller and weaker than the electricity the Broken Lord channeled during the fight. The crackles in the air seemed to turn into words. “The Tower must fall.”

Sophia grinned in triumph. It was definitely working! Everyone would be able to see that, too, so they could definitely help herd the Broken Lord to her. “Okay, concentrate on pushing the Broken Lord and his lightning to judgement. He should move away from you. Once you’re certain he’s not coming close, start walking. Amy and Jaycen, you will need to move slowly; push him out of that area and into the main atrium.”

Sophia reached into her Hoard and pulled out a couple hundred feathers, fewer than she normally used for a fight, but she didn’t expect a real fight here so she was unlikely to use up many of the feathers. This ought to be enough to give her a fairly decent granular control of her Domain, even better than her normal aural control. For a moment, she considered using Plume Shift to merge with her Domain, but she decided against it. She was just as much of a symbol as her feathers were; she needed to be in the spot she wanted Ysalix to coalesce.

“Kill the Hallowed,” the lightning whispered. “They help the Tower grow strong. The Tower must fall and so must they.”

Sophia frowned at the whispers. They confirmed the story that the Broken Lord’s Hallowed killed the other Hallowed after the Tower fell, or at least confirmed that the Broken Lord wanted them to. She could only assume that he had some way to communicate with his Hallowed, even if she didn’t know how he managed to become a Patron when Ansuz seemed to think that he shouldn’t be.

What she did know was that she needed to continue the ritual. That meant that it was time to tell him what he was being judged for. This wasn’t the place for the American-style judicial process; this was the declaration of an Empress.She was going to have to rely on what Ansuz said for the beginning. “Ysalix Kestii, you were sent to the Tower of Kestii to resolve the situation with the Maze.”

“The Tower must fall,” the lightning answered.

“You were not sent to destroy the Tower,” Sophia declared. “You were sent to deal with the Maze. You would not have been able to destroy the Tower without your father’s death.”

“Sacrifice is necessary to break the Tower,” Ysalix Kestii answered through his sparks. “The Tower must fall. The Emperor would not act; the Emperor must act. A new Emperor was needed.”

“You had your father assassinated,” Sophia said, surprised more by the admission than by the fact that the convenient death was planned. It saddened her that it was even an option for him. Sophia’s father was literally immortal, but even if he hadn’t been, killing him would not have been an option in Sophia’s mind. Her parents were wonderful people and wonderful parents, even if they weren’t always around as much as she’d have liked.

That wasn’t true of all parents, but it wasn’t a personal reason Ysalix had him killed. Her voice hardened. “More than that, you had your Emperor assassinated. Your reason does not change the fact. Indeed, it makes it worse; you had him killed because you could not convince him to follow your plans.”

Sophia glanced towards the opening that led to Ansuz. Jax stood just inside the opening, while Ci’an had already started circling the room. Sophia’s aura still permeated the area and she could not feel any of Ysalix’s sparks in there, so the two had completed that part of the cleanout. 

The sparks still filled the rest of the atrium and a shape had begun to form in front of Sophia. It was little more than flickers of light in the shape of a person, but it was there.

“He listened to the Hallowed,” Ysalix declared. “He would not listen to those of us who knew what must be done. The Tower must fall.”

This was not how any judgement Sophia had ever seen went, but it seemed to be working. Maybe the Kestii tradition was to argue back and forth. She didn’t know, but she was willing to run with it. It was forcing Ysalix to manifest in front of her. “Once your father, your Emperor, was dead, you used his power to bring down the source of the Empire’s power: the Tower of Kestii.”

“It was my power,” Ysalix countered. “I broke the Tower. It had to be done.”

For all that it was a stupid decision, it apparently was within the power of the Emperor of Kestii. That made it a relatively weak argument in her judgement, except for one thing: the consequences. “Breaking the Tower scattered monsters across the land and broke the very fabric of the land into pieces. Each enclave of civilization is surrounded by wild lands where monsters rule; beyond those lands there is only a sea of death.”

Sophia hadn’t actually seen the “sea of death” that lay at the edge of each shard of the Broken Lands. All she had was descriptions, and even those were rare. It seemed that very few people actually made it to the edges because of storms a lot like the Mazestorms, where the very world turned against the land. If you did sneak past the storms, the land or sea was supposed to end in a shimmering wall. Approaching the wall was supposed to be overwhelming and touching it supposedly brought either death or at leas tthe loss of whatever you touched it with.

The stories were fantastical and probably overstated, but Sophia fully believed there was an element of truth in them. Monsters did roam the wilderness. There weren’t nearly as many as there were in the Maze, but there were enough to make settling in an area difficult. The true difficulty was probably in finding enough food rather than actually fending off the monsters, because it would be impossible to have second upgrade guards watching enough farmlands to feed everyone. 

Izel could manage because some of its Challenges produced large amounts of food and Mazehold worked because of the Gardens. Without something like that, a city needed enough farmland that it was impossible to completely protect it.

“The Tower must fall,” Ysalix answered. “The cost must be paid to save the Empire.”

“It killed your Empire!” Sophia snapped. “You broke the connections between the Minds that stood throughout your Empire and the cities. There was no Emperor and within two generations, there were no Regional or City Lords. They were dead and no one could take their place.”

Sophia’s words were a guess, but she was fairly certain it was close. She’d heard as much from Bai.

“The Tower must fall.” That seemed to be Ysalix’s answer to everything. It gave Sophia the distinct feeling that she was arguing against someone who wasn’t really there anymore. The Broken Lord was probably only a faded echo of the original Ysalix Kestii.

That made it even more important to finally put him to rest. Sophia reached out to the edges of her aura. The sparks were all well away from the edge; inside that, they were rotating with the movement of her team and Arak. Sophia lifted her hand and gestured for them to come closer, beginning the spiraling approach that would force Ysalix to finish concentrating in a single location.

“Once the Tower fell, you became the Broken Lord.” That wasn’t really a damning statement, simply a statement of fact. Sophia wanted to get more information out of Ysalix, but in the format they seemed to be following, she couldn’t just ask. She could say something and get a response, however. “A Patron, or so your followers believe.”

“Not a Patron, never a Patron,” Yselix’s sparks whispered. “I am their Lord by their oaths to me, not by some foolish choice of how the Patron conquered a Tower when it was still small. The Tower must fall and the Patrons would have it stand. Their Hallowed stand before them, so the Hallowed must also fall.”

That didn’t really answer the question, but it wasn’t like Sophia could ask clarifying questions. Ansuz didn’t have the answers; maybe the Wanderer would. “You told your followers to kill the Hallowed. You cut down the strongest fighters exactly when your Empire needed them the most. You then had them killed for no reason other than being Hallowed, for centuries, killing those who were good or lucky enough to earn a Patron’s interest for no crime other than that interest.”

“Hallowed would climb the Tower. The Tower would grow. The Tower must fall,” Ysalix answered with the same insistent dogma as before.

The spiral was closing in. Sophia’s team had completed only a single revolution of the atrium since she had them start to spiral in, but that still meant they were more than five feet from each wall. They were being careful to stay on the far side of the sparks to keep pushing them in and it was working well; Sophia couldn’t feel any sparks in her aura outside the area they covered. 

The atrium was longer than it was wide, but that still meant it was probably about eighty feet long and fifty or so wide, including Ansuz’s space. That was only ten feet or so, but the fact that it was already clear meant less space her team would need to walk. Two or three more revolutions was probably all they’d need, and they’d be faster because they were smaller.

Sophia didn’t have to time her speech to their progress; if they finished early, they could gather in a circle around her, while if she finished early she could simply wait on the final line of the judgement. Closer would be better to keep the Intent focused, but it didn’t have to be perfect.