52. Battle for Atla Pt. 3

  “I know how to deal with the cursed blade,” the avatar I sent to deal with that particular issue reported in the corner of my mind that he occupied. “I don’t like it.”

  “Whatever it takes. It’s weakening Atla’s attempts to support us,” I said.

  “It’s a sacrificial power,” he said. “One that we both know. It’s a remnant of the Dread God we faced together, the blade of his high-priest.”

  I cursed. I didn’t like where this was going at all. “What’s the solution?” I insisted.

  “I sacrifice myself,” the part of me that answered said. “Goodbye. I’ll see you once I’m done on the fields of suffering.”

  Abruptly, that part of me ripped itself away, and I could not stop him as he plunged the dagger into his own chest. He puffed into mist, and a fraction of my soul was ripped into the false fields of the afterlife that the dreadgod had created.

  It took a moment.

  It took ten thousand years.

  Both parts of myself were in agony for the entire time.

  I had tried to cleanse those fields of suffering once. I had given up and turned my face away from those who had trapped themselves in their own twisted version of the afterlife.

  I was a better man now than I had been then.

  For a moment, my soul was split in twain, half alive, half dead.

  For ten thousand years I suffered with the sinners of another world.

  Abruptly my other self rejoined me, and I was struck by lightning as I experienced another tribulation of my soul. Even as the memories of the field of suffering were fresh in my mind, I felt the battle shift. The sun returned and the sky turned blue once more.

  “Enough!” I said, for my patience had reached its end. “Atla, are you better now?”

  “Yeah, the yuckiness is gone,” He admitted. “I can focus again.”

  “I’m sorry to ask this of you while you are so young,” I told my world-son, “But we must do battle. Lend me your strength, as I lend you my guidance.”

  “Okay,” Atla agreed.

  And he manifested his Eidolon.

  In me.

  Together, we would put an end to this.

  ~~~~~~

  They were loosing.

  Shisuke regretted answering the call to arms. The fate of Mer’cah was nothing to him. Why had he left Nonpo just to die in the defense of a foreign power?

  The agreements with the Many Peaks Alliance didn’t demand it of him. But he was a Diamond Ranked cultivator, and his world was under attack, and it had seemed like the thing to do.

  But now that he was here, he was constantly being driven back. He faced foes that were his equal, and he watched his juniors dying by the thousands at their hands. This was impossible.

  Then he sensed it.

  He turned, and he saw.

  The Worldfather strode through the ruins of the city of Mer’cah, larger than life. He raised his hand, and spoke a word.

  It was not a word that Shisuke understood. It was a blessing that he could not understand, for it was a word of purification and death. Abruptly the battlefield changed again as two-thirds of the remaining enemies had their soul-wounds reopened. They suffered terrible tribulations for their past crimes, and in their moments of weakness were struck down by the defenders of Atla.

  Shisuke, sensing the opening, slew three of them himself.

  The Worldfather spoke another word that Shisuke did not understand,

  And the leader of the enemy burst into flames.

  He spoke another word.

  Another platinum ranked foe was slain as their body broke in different ways, revealing the corruption that had been hiding beneath the surface.

  The remaining forces took this opportunity to surrender.

  But the Worldfather’s rage had been invoked, and they too were slain one by one.

  Shisuke’s eyes opened wide as the worldfather stepped into the center of the coliseum. The amount of Qi that the worldfather was drawing to himself! It was staggering! No mortal could contain such power!

  And then Shisuke was back in Nonpo, sitting in his office where he had been hours ago. He blinked in surprise, not knowing what it was that had just happened. He turned to his left and saw one of his generals, a man he had seen die on the battlefield just moments before, sitting there looking back at him, an expression of horror on his face.

  “Am I alive? Or is this another vision of the afterlife?” he asked. “Because if I am still dead, I would much rather skip the paperwork involved.

  ~~~~~~~

  The great miracle everywhere all at once. Everyone, whether they were aware of the battle occurring in the skies of Mer’cah or not, abruptly found themselves standing where they had been standing six hours earlier. They experienced a profound moment of deja vu.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  And those who had died clutched the wounds that had slain them, only to find themselves whole.

  Di Ram touched his face, then turned and was embraced in the hug from his youngest adoptive daughter, who cried into his chest and told him that she was scared. He patted Little Bug’s youngest sister and told her that everything would be alright.

  Hien Ro held his daughters tight, tears in his eyes with relief as the girls told him how afraid they had been. He assured them that everything was alright now. He didn’t know how, but the Worldfather had saved his people once more.

  Yara found them together and they embraced each other.

  Around the city, those who had been caught in the terrible destruction stared blankly. The things that they had witnessed while they were dead would haunt them for years to come. Some would recover, others would not.

  Let nobody say that the Worldfather was all-powerful, that his power to restore was limitless. For those injured souls would forever prove them wrong.

  Curiously, the proof of the battle itself was the recording devices meant to broadcast the events of the tournament. Nobody had turned them off, and once they had sensed the battles in the sky, they had all activated and gone to witness the bravery of the defenders. The historians would bless those records, as they sought to track down, name, and reward them for their sacrifice.

  As for the Worldfather himself?

  He was nowhere to be found.

  ~~~~~~

  Wusho walked through the forest. He was lost, he knew that. He had been doing something a moment ago, something important, but he could not remember what it was.

  Someone had said something to him. Something important. A word that he couldn’t understand, yet its meaning was imprinted upon his soul in a way that he could not deny.

  His path had been wrong. He’d known that when he’d first set foot upon it. It was impossible not to know that what you were doing was wrong when you did the things that he and his soldiers did.

  He reached to his side, where the blade he had carried for years was. It wasn’t there. That was strange, he thought. He felt a moment of profound loss, for the blade had been a constant companion to him ever since he had been brought before the empress at age eleven. When she had named him a chosen child and promised him great power and glory.

  Power and glory in the name of the empire.

  An empire built upon a machine of death. His glory was but a cog in the machine.

  He wandered for an hour.

  He wandered for a thousand years.

  He revisited every moment of his life a hundred times over. Every decision that he had made. Every person that he had hurt.

  Finally, he came to a river. He was so thirsty. He drank deep of the water of lethe, and finally, he began to forget.

  He did not know what came next.

  ~~~~~~

  “How are you father?” Atla asked me as I sat in the quiet fields of the tea plantation. I closed my eyes and contemplated for a moment.

  “I am more worried about you, my child,” I said.

  “I’m fine. You took a lot of Qi to do your miracle, but Qi is one thing that I have in spades. I’d say you spent half of it, and I’m already almost back to two thirds. In a few days it will be like nothing even happened,” Atla answered. He manifested nearby and sat down next to me.

  “No, Atla, it will never be like that,” I said, looking down at the black veins running through my hands. This latest tribulation was as bad as my previous one. I had injured my own soul in order to secure victory. The wound would heal, but there would be scars.

  “I can’t do that again,” I said. “I’m not even certain what the consequences of defying fate on such a scale will be. I was only able to do it this once by overcharging the wards on the tournament grounds. The next time we’re attacked…” I let the sentence hang in the air.

  “Part of you went somewhere. Were you, was that death?” Atla asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I’ve been there before. But that’s not important.”

  “I can tell you’re bothered by it,” he protested.

  “I’m bothered by how many people are suffering right now,” I said. “I’m bothered that I can’t guide them through this time myself, but until I have purified the corruption from the fields of misery, it’s best if I’m by myself.”

  “Some people are saying that you sacrificed yourself to save everyone,” he informed me.

  “I did.”

  “Oh. But they think you’re dead.”

  “I’ll correct that misapprehension eventually,” I assured him. “For now, I need time to heal.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But don’t be mad at me.”

  He puffed away before I could ask him why I’d be mad at him, and when I turned I saw her. Mai Mai was standing there, her hand on her belly, tears in her eyes.

  “You’re alive,” she told me, and she ran forward. I stood just in time to catch her, and we embraced.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have—”

  She silenced me with a kiss.

  It took three weeks to finish purifying the corruption I had taken into myself. They were the best, and the worst, weeks of my life.

  ~~~~~~

  She found it in the grass in one of the parks, lying discarded like someone had dropped it from the sky. It was an old sword in an old sheath, simple and ugly. She drew it half an inch, and saw that the blade was rusty, but dared draw it no further, for she felt a profound draw on her Qi.

  And every instinct in her body told her that to draw that blade was death.

  She ran away to tell the adults what she had found. Her father did not believe her, and when he picked up the sword, he drew it. His lifeforce was sucked straight out of him, and he collapsed, dead, while the blade sparkled like it was newly forged for just a moment before the rust set in once more.

  The next adult who picked up the sword did so with specialized tools for dealing with cursed objects. She placed it back into the scabbard, and brought it to the Di family residence, where it was turned over to Di Ram.

  He stared at the blade that had destroyed one third of the city in the battle that had happened in another timeline and he frowned, wondering how it was that this thing was here, when all other signs of the combat were lost.

  After careful consideration, he decided to keep it at his side. While it was a cursed weapon, it was also a weapon of considerable power. The threat of this weapon had kept the Worldfather’s wrath in check for most of the Battle for Atla, as the Xian Lord and the invader’s general had engaged in a mutual stalemate where neither could act to save their forces lest the opponent exploit the opportunity.

  It was a cursed weapon, but Di Ram had already spent his life protecting the world of Atla once. If it was demanded of him, he would draw this blade once more, and if it cost him his life to do so…

  Then he would still draw this blade once more.

  ?