Barbarian's Adventure in a Fantasy World-Chapter 329: Turning the Tide (3)

A dozen possibilities flashed through the Tower Master’s mind and vanished just as quickly when he heard Ketal’s request to be taken to Hell. He sorted through what was left and drew out the answer that seemed closest to the truth.

“Are you interested in Hell itself?” he asked Ketal, at last.

“I am,” Ketal replied. “I want to know what kind of place it is.”

He pictured a horizon beneath a red sky and could not stop. He imagined the shape of the land, the movements that stirred across it at night, and the way demons lived when they were not killing. He thought of the lesser beasts—what they consumed, where they slept. Curiosity pressed against his ribs until it became a kind of hunger. He needed to see it with his own eyes.

The Tower Master watched the want flicker in Ketal’s gaze and breathed out through his nose.

“So it is personal,” he murmured. “You want to travel.”

“That is right.”

Personal was not the worst reason. The Tower Master felt real relief and made sure not to show it. He rubbed at his chin and weighed the risks again.

“It is not impossible,” he said slowly. “Not easy, but not impossible.”

“Difficult?” Ketal asked him, watching his face.

“Not simple,” the Tower Master said, “but as you say, not impossible. You wish to go directly—and that, I admit, is no foolish idea. I also dislike being struck without striking back. The gods are already readying their assault on Hell itself, so there’s no reason for us not to set foot across the threshold. It’s an opportunity worth taking. Give me a little time to prepare.”

“Thank you,” Ketal said, and the gratitude was plain.

He left in a good mood and went to the elven sacred ground.

“You are here!” Serena cried, and she actually bounced when she said it. “I did what you asked. I have been treating Karin and Ignisia.”

She looked up at him with bright, hopeful eyes, and Ketal laughed and set his hand on her head. Serena closed her eyes like a cat under a sunbeam and let the small sound of pleasure escape her throat.

She had held a line alone against Necrobix’s puppets and had not broken. Ketal had praised her then, and the praise had lit her as surely as light fills stained glass. She had discovered, since, that she wanted more.

Ketal did not find it difficult to give. He patted her hair once more, then turned to the beds.

“Karin. Ignisia.”

“You came,” Karin said, sitting half upright.

“Ketal,” Ignisia said. “Welcome.”

“How are you?” Ketal asked them.

They had both fought at full measure against Necrobix’s puppets. They wore small and large wounds across arms, ribs, and flanks. Ignisia had been worst of all. She had tried to force a self-detonation at the end, which had shaken the power within her body until it tore.

“I am all right,” Ignisia said. “Serena did a great deal.”

Her color was not as bad as Ketal had expected. Serena was the Holy Sword, a bearer of a Hero’s holy power. In healing, no one on the Mortal Realm surpassed her.

Ketal nodded, the breath in his chest easing. “Good. I would have been very sorry if trouble found the few friends I have.”

“Thank you,” Ignisia said, then looked up at him with a seriousness that did not often live in her eyes. “You won, did you not? Against that thing.”

“I did.”

She had already heard. It felt different to hear it from him. Something untied in her expression, and a breath came out that she had been holding since the field went quiet. “You won...”

Karin and Ignisia were both Heroes. Together, fighting for their lives, they had barely held. Even then, they had fought a puppet, not the original body. Necrobix had stood above them like a mountain that would not move. Yet, Ketal had killed it.

“You are the monster,” Ignisia said softly, and her body gave a small, involuntary shiver. “Every time I remember fighting you, I get chills. If you had truly meant to kill me that day, I would not be here.”

Just then, boots pounded outside. Someone ran down the corridor as if trying to beat their own echo to the door.

“Ketal!” a voice shouted, and the door banged wide.

Arkemis stood there grinning, all quick hands and bright eyes. Ketal’s smile answered hers at once.

“It has been too long,” he said. “Arkemis.”

“It really is you!” she laughed, and she reached him with the ease of someone who no longer cared whether she looked foolish. Karin lifted a hand in greeting.

“You’ve arrived, Arkemis. Have you resolved the matter on your side?” Karin asked from her bed.

“Perfectly,” Arkemis said. She was one of the strongest Transcendents on the continent, and she had been walking the world breaking nodes of harm as fast as she could find them. Alchemists were rare, and she had found little space to rest because of it. She had only just made time to breathe, and then word reached her that Ketal was in the sacred ground. The rush back had been inevitable.

Her happy face turned to stone so fast it startled her own mouth. She had noticed Serena standing a little behind Ketal.

“Who is the child?” she asked Ketal, her voice striving for calm and almost managing to hold it.

Serena flinched at the look and slid behind Ketal’s shoulder on instinct, peeking past his arm. Arkemis’s eyes went wild for a heartbeat.

“Is that... your daughter?” she blurted.

“That is a common mistake,” Ketal said. “No. She is the Holy Sword.”

“The Holy Sword...,” Arkemis repeated.

Ketal explained with care. By the time he finished, the confusion in Arkemis’s eyes had unwound itself like a tight ribbon set free.

“She asked that I act as her guardian,” he said. “So I am.”

“I see,” Arkemis said, and the relief came out on a single sigh. She studied Serena for a breath, then stepped forward with a sudden certainty that made the girl straighten.

“Serena,” she said. “It is a pleasure.”

“Y-yes. It is,” Serena managed.

“Shall we be friends?” Arkemis said. “I can show you the sacred ground.”

“Ah. Yes,” Serena said, and bobbed her head.

Arkemis took her hand and led her out into the light. Serena went along, flustered and pleased in equal measure. Karin watched them go and let one word out into the quiet that followed.

“Peaceful,” she said.

For the first time, it felt as if the war were truly ending. Ketal had to wait while the Tower Master prepared, so he remained and watched the small life in the sacred ground unfold. People laughed with the kind of softness that only came when the knife had been taken from the throat. Guides spoke under the trees. Children chased each other along the flagstones. Even the wind sounded lighter passing through the leaves. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The Mortal Realm grew peaceful. As the forces of evil pulled back, victory began to feel like the only reasonable outcome. The air itself seemed brighter for it.

However, Hell was not peaceful. A white explosion tore a lake open in an instant and turned water into steam that screamed. Light thick as a slab pressed across the shore, and a hand broke through it, fingers spread. The hand closed, and the blast crumpled like paper.

“Cursed creatures,” Materia said, and the lines on her brow deepened.

The lake had been a place where demons came to rest—a lovely place, by Hell’s standard. Now it was ash that remembered being water.

***

Materia finished the work and returned to a shelter where Caliste, the Demon of the Sword, waited with Abyss.

“How did it go?” Caliste asked Materia.

“We stopped them,” Materia said. “But, the lake is gone. The gods buried it in holy power, and the holy power ate it.”

Materia dropped into a chair and let the strength leave her shoulders.

“They are invading Hell.”

Kalosia had told Ketal the gods would strike at Hell itself, and they had not lied. In a few days, they crossed more thresholds than demons had believed possible, touched down in place after place, and left great empty rooms where halls had been. The people who had always been the invaders were discovering defense at a speed that left them breathless.

With Hell itself under attack, there was no longer strength to spare to harry the Mortal Realm.

“We made them pay,” Materia said, and her eyes narrowed. The gods had come down into Hell. That meant demons could put blades into gods.

“One did not go back,” Materia said, turning to Caliste. “That one is yours.”

“Got it,” Caliste said, as if asked to clear a stone from a path.

“The situation is dire,” she said softly, pressing two fingers to her temple. “If I’m being honest, it may be the worst we’ve faced. Is this what defeat feels like?”

No one answered. The silence had a shape to it.

“What will we do?” she asked them after a moment.

“I do not know,” Caliste said, and Materia’s mouth thinned.

“You are hopeless,” she muttered.

Caliste cared for little beyond his sword. Abyss was a tool—one that spoke only when addressed, and not always even then. It had been Necrobix who once gathered their thoughts, weighed their risks, and shaped their choices until a room like this could reach a decision. The absence of that mind left a hollow ache.

Materia let out a breath. If there was no Necrobix to draw the line on the board, then she would draw it.

“Do we withdraw?” she asked the group

“If we do,” Caliste said, “then when is the next invasion?”

“I do not know,” Materia said, and irritation shaped the admission.

“Necrobix is dead,” she went on. “Most of the dark mages on the Mortal Realm are gone. The gods will raise a stronger barrier than before. If we rely on dark mages to pry at the seams, it will take ten thousand years to create a real foothold. A full invasion will take ten times that.”

It was not a short span, even for demons. Abyss’s glyphs shifted.

“The Demon King’s descent,” it asked. “What becomes of that?”

“A hundred times longer,” Materia said.

Perhaps it had slipped into the impossible. The damage had cut that deep.

“So we crawl away,” Caliste said.

“I do not want to,” Materia said.

“Agreed,” said Abyss.

The room fell quiet again. Materia narrowed her eyes and forced the choice into words.

“We have two paths,” she said. “We accept defeat and retreat. Or we lay down everything.”

“As we did then,” Caliste said.

A very long time ago, in the Divine-Demonic War, demons had been pushed to the brink of loss. They had refused to accept the line the gods drew for them. They had risked themselves and their home, truly and completely.

“This is a greater gamble,” Materia said. “We would have to lay down more than we did then.”

They were speaking of Hell itself, of the name demon, wagered on a single throw.

“If I am honest,” Materia said, and a small, sharp smile touched her mouth, “I want to do it. To go as we are going now is intolerable.”

“What of you?” she asked, and turned her gaze from one to the other.

“I will not fall back. And I have a purpose now,” Caliste said. His eyes moved with a very clear light. “That barbarian who killed Necrobix. I want to cross blades with him.”

“I will not yield either,” Abyss said. “The Demon King’s descent must happen.”

“Then it is decided,” Materia said, and the words seemed to lift the room’s weight a little. “We will do it.”

One day later, Hell trembled to its roots.

***

“How are your preparations?” Ketal asked the Tower Master.

“Almost finished,” the Tower Master said from within a magic circle that hummed in a language older than most cities. “I will be ready in two days.”

“In two days...,” Ketal repeated, and he tipped his head back and looked at the sky as if it, too, were an answer waiting to be spoken.

Night had laid a velvet cloth over the world. The stars came down close enough to touch, bright in a way the sky of Earth never managed. The sight calmed him in spite of himself. Then, Ketal frowned.

“Tower Master,” he said.

“What is it?”

“The sky,” Ketal said. “It looks wrong.”

The Tower Master looked up and saw it the same instant Ketal put the shape into words.

High above everything, a flaw ran across the dome. A crack webbed and spread until even an untrained eye could not call it a trick of cloud.

“Reveal Location,” the Tower Master chanted, and he hurled his vision upward. Mana climbed the height like a thrown spear.

However, information did not return. There was one reason a spell like his brought nothing back, which was that the rift had opened at a distance so vast that even his magic could not reach it.

“At the height of the stars...?” the Tower Master murmured, his voice stripped of the authority it usually carried. “How?”

He was still reaching for a better guess when the guess became useless. The crack widened.

A single sound hit the world. It was only sound, with no spell woven into it, and it still shook the air hard enough to make eardrums tear. Men and women clapped hands to their heads and fell to their knees, and even those who stood kept their teeth clenched against the tone.

Ketal narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

“Wait,” the Tower Master said, and he stared as the sky split like pulled cloth.

Beyond the tear lay a depth so black that the eye could not hold it for long. It was not this world’s space. The Tower Master felt his mouth go dry.

“A dimension is breaking,” he said.

Something came through. It announced itself with a rumble that began low and rose until the ground shook as if it had learned how to be water. The thing that appeared was a star. Black and red, a star forced its way through the broken seam and came on. It grew until it filled the high sky, a planet blocking a third of the night.

From it came a sound like metal screamed thin, and Ketal felt demonic energy roll over the world in a tide so pure it felt almost like weather.

“That’s...,” the Tower Master muttered.

Ketal put his fingers to his lips and whistled. “Well now, Tower Master. It seems all that effort of yours was for nothing.”

The Tower Master had labored to carve a road into Hell. There was only one meaning in the sight above them. A black and red world, saturated with demonic power, had come. It was Hell.

“They decided to visit,” Ketal said, and laughter broke out of him in a bright line. “They came here.”