Wandering Knight
Chapter 498: Do Not Retreat
With every member of the Utopia's forces and every tower obstructing the surface of the Ashen Wastes annihilated, nothing remained to hinder Skyborne City's advance.
All manner of wizardry runestones engraved around the outer rim of Skyborne City's main deck activated at once. Drawing upon the void, they shielded the fortress from the combustive energy rising out of the Ashen Wastes, allowing it to descend stably toward the underground zone.
Hurried footsteps echoed down Skyborne City's inner corridors. A researcher clutching a clipboard was sprinting at full speed. His head snapped left and right, eyes scanning the markings on both walls.
"I have to get this to the academy. This could change the entire battle! Faster... faster..."
His breath came in ragged gasps. Though a man in his physical prime, he was nearly fainting from running flat-out for so long.
"Apollon? Why are you running around like this? Get back to your station! Skyborne City will be entering the Ashen Wastes at any moment. The final battle with Utopia could happen down there. At a time like this—"
A door opened up ahead. An analyst poked out his head, frowning at Apolon as he tore past.
He oversaw several interior zones of the fortress; seeing a familiar colleague sprinting wildly instead of manning the communications he was responsible for, he quickly moved to scold him.
But before he could finish speaking, Apollon seized him by both shoulders. The wild, frantic gaze in his eyes cut the analyst's rebuke short.
"I was verifying a data entry earlier. There's a hidden flaw in our calculations—an extremely subtle error associated with a certain parameter. If we leave it uncorrected, the World Anchor could misfire the moment it's activated. We must fix it. Take me to President Icarus—or join me at the World Anchor!"
Apollon spoke so fast his words were nearly slurring together, but the analyst quickly understood the urgency of the problem. He glanced at the sheaf of documents Apollon had shoved into his hands—a dense lattice of equations, verifications, and corrections. It was clear Apolon had triple-checked everything before daring to raise the alarm.
"A flaw... Alright. Let's go."
The analyst hesitated only a moment before making up his mind. He knew Apollon well enough to trust him.
"Keep up. If you really found an issue, then we'll have to fix it now."
Magic swelled around him. Air currents seized both men and dragged them forward in a low, rapid glide. The labyrinthine corridors meant nothing to a magician's mind: with a handful of locations memorized as reference points, he could navigate blind.
They plunged down layer after layer. Skyborne City's internal structure was infamously vast and hundreds of floors deep. Without teleportation, traversing the corridors on foot would take ages. Internal teleportation arrays managed by the machine spirit were the only efficient option for transportation.
This was because spellcasting within Skyborne City was heavily restricted. Those with advanced clearance could use first- and second-tier spells for mobility, but anything involving spatial displacement required at least fourth-tier magic and was barred. Memorizing the placement of every teleportation array was essential.
After descending five or six levels and cutting across several corridors, the duo reached a sealed metal gate. The analyst swiped his identity card across the detection sigil. The gate swung open to reveal a dormant teleportation array within.
"Member of the Light of Guidance Society. Wartime secondary clearance. Requesting teleportation, destination: World Anchor maintenance chamber. Purpose: correction of a critical flaw."
He recited the required permissions request briskly.
"Teleportation approved."
About thirty seconds later, the machine spirit's mechanical voice echoed in the chamber. The once-dim array flared to life, fully charged.
"Let's go. Apollon, you're sure this flaw is real? If you're mistaken, this could cause a big fuss for no reason."
"Trust me."
Apollon's reply was terse, his panic now replaced by forced calm. He seemed more certain after the question, not less.
"Alright."
The analyst nodded, stepped onto the array, and activated it. Space warped. In a blink, they stood in a different chamber entirely.
"Fas—"
Apollon took a single step forward. He managed to utter only one syllable before a crimson beam struck him squarely. The next instant, his body dissolved into drifting motes of ash that scattered through the sealed chamber.
The seventh-tier spell Life Disintegration erased living matter while leaving other sources of matter intact.
"President Icarus, was Apollon truly a member of Utopia?"
The chamber around them was entirely sealed, enclosed by layer upon layer of high-grade alchemical alloy. Beyond the walls, alchemical incendiaries of terrifying yield had been set in place, enough to ensure that even a legendary knight trapped inside would be killed long before breaking through.
"I don't know. But we can't take the risk."
Icarus's voice came through the mechanical spider at the monitor's feet. The moment they had teleported in, the two men had been separated: the analyst had been confined to a small observation room with visual access to the cell, while Apollon was dumped directly inside the locked containment chamber.
The analyst had witnessed the entire execution—the burst of magic, and Apollon's body subsequently dissipating in the form of ash. He still struggled to accept that a colleague he had known for years had been a traitor.
Inside the cell, alchemical constructs skittered out, beginning to collect the items left behind. The moment one touched a particular sphere, unstable void energy mixed with raw magical turbulence flared outward in an explosion of catastrophic force.
"Well hidden... the Utopia must have mastered some technique we haven't encountered yet."
On the display, Icarus watched the sphere swell with power as it detonated. Skyborne City's high-energy detection arrays had failed to register it, which was deeply alarming in itself.
The analyst stood frozen. He had never imagined that Apollon had smuggled something so destructive into the fortress. Had it detonated near the World Anchor, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
In a flash of orange-gold light, the sphere vanished into a sudden rift via the seventh-tier Banishment. It sent the sphere directly into an elemental plane. Whatever void energy stabilizer it carried didn't matter—the entire facility was enveloped in the World Anchor's field. Its protections were meaningless here.
"To be safe, you'll need to be isolated as well. Forgive my caution."
The mechanical spider relayed Icarus's words beside the monitor's feet.
"It's fine. I understand."
The analyst sighed. He still hadn't quite recovered from the shock.
"Have you analyzed the data?"
Astartes addressed Icarus from the command chamber. They had already copied the contents of Apollon's papers—on Skyborne City, nothing escaped the machine spirit's notice. Hiding something from Astartes was all but impossible.
"I checked. The error isn't fabricated, but it's only a deviation in one branch of the calculation. Our usual failsafes fully compensate for it. The World Anchor's self-correction was designed for this exact sort of error."
"Same as my results," Astartes replied from the ceiling speakers. "The error is mechanical. It's subtle enough to miss, but too conveniently placed. It doesn't feel natural—more like something intentionally left to be 'discovered' at this moment."
The machine spirit and Icarus were in agreement.
"So there are Utopian infiltrators still among us—or rather, hidden among all the intelligent races of the continent. Those who held high positions in the kingdoms couldn't conceal their identities before the war, but the nameless, the unnoticed... who truly knows where their loyalties lie?"
"By any means necessary, hm? Then I can't afford to be merciful."
Icarus activated the purge system. The prison chamber that had held Apollon was engulfed in cleansing flame. All of his possessions were incinerated, with no traces left behind.
Apollon's goal had been the Boundary Anchor, but Astartes had never even allowed him near it. That cell was located on a concealed section of Skyborne City's upper deck, isolated and expendable—able to be ejected from the fortress entirely, if necessary.
That was Icarus's safeguard. The Utopian infiltrators would stop at nothing to sabotage the Alliance. Hidden saboteurs were a severe threat, and Skyborne City lacked any way to reliably distinguish who was compromised.
Thus, a cruel policy had to be enacted: anyone attempting to open a teleportation gate to the World Anchor, no matter the reason, would be diverted here and executed instantly.
"I believe you're fit to be the one making these decisions. You've done well."
Astartes' voice was calm. Ruthless, effective measures were necessary for a commander.
"Thank you. But if I had the choice, I wouldn't have wished for any of this."
Icarus accepted the praise, yet the weight in his voice made clear the price of such decisions.
At that moment, a flood of transmissions arrived.
"..."
Icarus was silent for several seconds, then issued a single instruction.
"Do not retreat. Advance."
The incoming messages halted abruptly. One by one, the final acknowledgments came through. Then, there was silence.
"Understood."
Meanwhile, across the continent—in Aleisterre, the elven capital of Liaheim, the dwarven Ironforge Bastion, the naval domain of the merfolk—everywhere beyond the Ashen Wastes...
Edward and Charles watched the heavens shift, the once-clear blue bleeding into a deep, ominous violet. Sif and Gewen turned toward the titanic silhouette emerging across the distant plains. The Bronzebeard dwarves stared at the surge of void energy erupting from beneath the earth. The high priest of the merfolk felt the ocean churn as something colossal moved in the depths...
"So, they've come."