Chapter 48: The Filter

  It felt like sticking a fork into a breaker box.

  The Wild magic hit my left hand first.

  I felt vines trying to grow in my veins. I felt the urge to dissolve into spores.

  My body became a refinery. The Edict of [The Constant] flared in my chest, a golden anchor.

  I clamped down on the chaos. I forced it through the prism of my soul. I stripped the "Wild" out of the mana. I peeled away the aggression, the entropy, the rot, burning it off as metaphysical waste heat.

  It hurt. It felt like my blood had been replaced with boiling sand. Smoke began to curl from the sleeves of my coat as the fabric singed from the inside out.

  But out of my right hand, a stream of pure, blinding white light poured into the Obelisk.

  HUMMMMM.

  The machine woke up. It didn't just hum; it roared. The intake fans spun up to a whine. The bar graph of light on the side, which had been sitting at a dismal 82%, flickered.

  83%... 85%... 88%...

  "It's working!" I yelled, my voice cracking as the heat built in my throat.

  Then, the forest screamed.

  The Wilds sensed the vacuum. They sensed the theft. To the predators of the forest, I wasn't a hero; I was a gaping wound in the world, bleeding delicious, concentrated power.

  From the treeline, a howl tore through the night. A pack of Rune-Wolves burst forth, their slate-grey bodies streaking with blue fire. Behind them, skittering on legs of razor-sharp diamond, came Crystal-Spiders, mandibles clicking in anticipation.

  They charged. Not at the village. At me.

  "Hold the line!" I shouted, unable to move, my body locked into the circuit.

  Vrex didn't shout.

  [Tectonic Sunder]

  He slammed his hammer into the earth.

  I watched, through the haze of my own pain, as physics gave up. The ground in front of Vrex just crack and it liquified. A cone of earth, thirty feet wide, suddenly turned into churning, roiling quicksand.

  The lead wolves didn't even have time to yelp. They hit the soup and sank, their momentum carrying them face-first into the mud. The solid earth grabbed them, dragging them down.

  "Crowd control," I wheezed, impressed despite the agony. "Nice."

  But the spiders were fast. They skittered over the sinking wolves, using their light weight to traverse the mud. Three of them launched themselves at Vrex.

  Vrex entered [Fortress Stance].

  His stone skin glowed with a deep, amber light. Runes of reinforcement etched themselves across his chest. He didn't dodge the spiders. He let them hit him.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  CLANG. CLANG.

  Their diamond fangs sparked against his skin. It sounded like someone hitting a church bell with a chisel. Vrex didn't even flinch. He grabbed one spider in a massive hand and crushed it, the sound like breaking glass echoing in the clearing. He swung his hammer in a flat arc, pulverizing the second.

  "Focus!" Vrex roared, his voice booming like thunder. "Do not stop flowing!"

  I didn't stop. I couldn't.

  My physical body was taking damage from the sheer volume of energy passing through it. My skin was cracking, glowing lines of white light shining through the fissures in my flesh. I was literally coming apart at the seams.

  95%... 98%... 100%.

  "Full!" Vrex shouted, smashing a wolf that had managed to flank him. "Disconnect! We have the quota!"

  "Not enough," I gasped, seeing the bar graph turn green. "The Magister said 100% buys a month. I'm not... doing this... again... in thirty days."

  I pushed harder. I stopped filtering gently. I grabbed the storm and shoved it.

  The Obelisk whined. The light turned from white to blinding gold.

  110%... 120%...

  "Kaelen!" Vrex warned.

  A massive shadow detached itself from the treeline. An Alpha Rune-Wolf, twice the size of the others, its body wreathed in violet lightning. It didn't run; it leaped. It cleared the Tectonic Sunder in a single bound. It was airborne, jaws open, aiming for my exposed throat.

  Vrex was engaged with three spiders. He was too far away. He turned, reaching out, but he was slow. Too slow.

  I didn't move. I couldn't move. I just poured more power.

  The Obelisk hit 150%.

  The machine vented. It couldn't hold the input speed. It released a pulse of excess energy through the path of least resistance—the Wards.

  FLASH.

  The dome above the village didn't just flicker; it solidified. It flared with the intensity of a supernova. A wave of pure, concentrated Order blasted outward from the village center.

  The Alpha Wolf didn't hit me. It hit the light.

  It dissolved. The chaotic magic holding its stone body together was scrubbed clean by the sheer purity of the blast. It turned into dust before it touched the ground.

  The light washed over the Wilds. The spiders shrieked and scrambled back into the dark, their diamond legs cracking under the pressure of the Order. The trees stopped thrashing. The storm was pushed back, a mile, two miles, five miles.

  The Obelisk readout screamed a final number. 200%. Capacity Critical.

  I let go.

  The connection snapped. I collapsed, hitting the dirt hard. Smoke was rising from my skin. My coat was smoldering. I couldn't feel my arms.

  Silence returned to the clearing. But it wasn't the silence of the void; it was the silence of safety. The Wards overhead were humming with a thick, robust sound, glowing like a second sun against the night sky.

  Vrex walked over. He was covered in ichor and stone dust, the amber glow of his stance fading. He knelt beside me, the ground trembling slightly as he settled.

  He checked my pulse with a surprisingly gentle stone finger.

  "You are smoking," he observed.

  "I'm... refined," I croaked, staring up at the blindingly bright shield. My vision was blurry, swimming with afterimages. "I feel like... charcoal."

  "You look like charcoal," Vrex agreed.

  Elder Oren ran out from the hall, followed by the villagers. They stopped at the edge of the field, staring at the Obelisks. They were glowing so brightly it hurt to look at them.

  "Two hundred percent," Oren whispered, reading the gauge. He looked at me, his eyes wide with disbelief. "That... that is a year. A full year of power. The Spire won't ask for a tithe until next winter."

  I struggled to sit up, wincing as my Horizon slowly ticked back up from 2. Every inch of me ached, a deep, cellular ache that felt like I’d run a marathon inside a microwave.

  "Consider it... an advance payment," I wheezed. "For the bed and breakfast."

  Vrex hauled me to my feet. I leaned against him, my legs feeling like jelly. He was solid, warm, and real.

  "That was a stupid idea," Vrex said, supporting my weight.

  "It worked," I countered, a weak grin forming on my cracked lips.

  "It worked," Vrex conceded. "But next time, we buy a bigger battery. I do not like it when my partner catches fire. It smells like burning ozone and bad decisions."

  I laughed, but it turned into a cough. "Deal."

  As the villagers surrounded us, offering water and awe, I looked at Vrex. He stood there, a mountain of stone covered in monster guts, letting the children touch his armor. He looked tired. He looked battered. But he didn't look like a mercenary anymore.

  He looked like a Guardian.