Nightmare Realm Summoner

The only sound in the Mirrorlands other than the distant crackle of Riftwarped Qi storms was that of heavy breath and the faint, sizzling hiss of purple acid eating away into the ground. Relative silence had fallen back over the small portion of the city that the portal to the Cracked Steps was housed in.

Aaron rose to his feet, brushing the dust off his clothes as he stared down at the corpse of what had not been a man for quite some time. Alex couldn’t help but join him. No part about Vaxon felt like it should have been possible to look down upon.

A part of Alex still wasn’t convinced the giant was dead. It told him that there was always a chance the piston on his back would pump once more and he’d come rumbling back to life to finish them off. But that wasn’t going to happen. He’d felt the magic from killing Vaxon enter him.

The giant was gone.

It wasn’t the proudest that Alex had ever felt after winning a fight. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t happy they’d won. But this wasn’t the kind of fight that should have ever happened in the first place. Vaxon hadn’t wanted to fight them.

Not for the right reasons, at least.

Anyone that entered a fight looking to lose wasn’t someone that should have been in the fight in the first place.

His hands tightened at his sides. Alex was under zero delusions as to just who the Great Families were. Nobody got truly powerful by playing nice. Not a single billionaire had been a philanthropist from birth. Perhaps things could change when one got older… but you only got to the top if you had two knives in your hands with which to climb the mountain of people in your way.

And even still, trapping one of your own people in a torture device just to make sure it’s got a guard is still somehow uniquely screwed up to me.

Alex shook his head. Part of his melancholy was definitely coming from the fact that Vaxon had been actively holding back against them. That was how desperately the man had wanted to die. For someone to be brought to such a level…

He wasn’t done with the Great Tide. They’d probably had more presence on 274-50 beyond Valley Ford. And maybe trapping someone in a Disruptor was just standard practice. Perhaps all the Outworlder Families did it. But he knew the Great Tide did it — and he’d already been planning on being a thorn in the Outworlders’ hides.

This just gave him a bit of an extra target and a boost of motivation.

Besides, it wasn’t like they could hate him any more than they already did.

“So,” Aaron said, finally breaking the silence. “This happen often?”

“More often than you’d think,” Alex replied.

“He means that,” Claire agreed. She studied Vaxon pensively for a moment. “What should we do with him? That acid dripping from his body is finally running out. I still don’t want to touch it, though. It’s definitely strong enough to eat right through flesh.”

Alex approached the fallen giant carefully, making sure not to accidentally step into any of the lingering acid around him. He extended his hand toward the man, letting it rest on a portion of his wretched armor. There was a shimmer of energy. Then Vaxon vanished, swallowed up into his spatial ring.

“Well,” Claire said. “I suppose we now know that your ring specifically just doesn’t like bears.”

“So it seems,” Alex said with a dry smile. Whatever material Vaxon had been made out of… Mite would probably be able to get some use out of it. They could give the man a more proper burial at the very least. It seemed like he deserved at least that much. His family certainly wasn’t going to do it for him.

He walked back over to Claire and Aaron. Then they all looked down at the fallen Baveroth. It still laid on the ground where Princess had dropped it. The monsters internal organs were definitely pretty liquified at this point. Princess had been swinging its corpse around like a limp baseball bat.

“That thing makes a very good weapon,” Aaron said. “Could just leave it as it is. Keep using it that way. The disrespect has to deal extra damage.”

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“Tempting offer,” Alex said. “Though I don’t know if anything other than Princess is going to be strong enough to swing it around. Derek, maybe? Though… maybe not. Giving the guy with the new Rot Legacy a corpse feels like a terrible idea. The town would smell terrible immediately.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Aaron grimaced. “Good point.”

Alex drew on his magic. He was not among the list of those who could carry the Baveroth’s body. And even if he had been, he had no desire to be.

He cast Encore.

Power twisted out from his body, pulling his monsters back from the beyond. The ground bubbled at his feet as he called Princess to rejoin them. He called Glint for good measure as well, the ringing crack of shattered reality cutting through the air to mark the Glasmir’s return.

Glint stepped out of his cracked portal to join them as Princess lumbered over to the dead bear and picked it up, slinging the large monster over her shoulder with a wet, splattering thud.

“Where are we?” Glint asked, glancing around. He caught sight of the dead bear. “Ah. We won. But this wasn’t where the last fight happened. Did I miss something important?”

The three of them were silent for a moment.

“No,” Claire said. “Nothing at all.”

“We’re heading back,” Alex said, nodding in the direction that they’d come.

“How did the Cracked Steps go?” Glint asked. “You didn’t say.”

“We left after the fight with the Baveroth,” Alex replied. “It wouldn’t go into my Spatial Ring. We think it’s got some kind of magical property that interferes with the ring. No idea why, but I’m sure we can figure it out back at Mirrorwane. I just figured I’d let you know before we left. It’ll be a bit before I can summon you again. Encore is about to end.”

I appreciate that. How thoughtful .”Glint’s thin lips pulled back into a smile full of razor-sharp teeth. “How much longer do I—”

Encore ended. Glint vanished, transforming back into a flow of energy that returned to Alex.

“About that long,” Alex said, the corners of his lips twitching in amusement. “Let’s get going, shall we?”

***

“You cannot just sit there,” Blade said, doing everything in his power to keep from pulling at his hair in exasperation.

The large man, whose name Blade had learned to be Derek, looked up at him. He sat crosslegged on the ground at the very first step of the room with his hands braced against his legs.

“Why?” Derek asked.

“That is not the point of the Forsaken Grounds.”

It wasn’t even like the position possibly could have been comfortable. The weapons jutting out of Derek’s body made it so that he had to sit slightly askew just to avoid pushing on one of the various hilts or blades coming out of him. And even with Derek’s best efforts, Blade was pretty sure he was sitting on a dagger.

“Hmm,” Derek said. “I don’t know.”

“I know,” Blade said stiffly. “It is my room. I would think that I understand its function.”

“Maybe,” Derek said. “But lots of people think they know how things work. Doesn’t mean they’re right. That’s life, you know? Not everyone has it figured out.”

Blade wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or bury his face in his palms. “That is very sage. But have you considered the minor difference in circumstance between life and this? You are in a room. My room. Made specifically for training a specific aspect of you. So why would you know more about it than me?”

“I never said more,” Derek said. “I’m just thinking. That’s what I’ve been doing. You know. In case.”

“In case of what?” Blade asked. “You haven’t even done anything! You’ve just sat there!”

“Thinking is doing something. It’s actually quite enjoyable, so long as I don’t do too much of it at once. You should try it sometime.”

Blade would have been insulted if there had been even a strand of vitriol in Derek’s voice. But, somehow, the man was completely and utterly serious. He meant every single word he said. That made it somewhat harder to get mad.

“Would you not consider this thinking too much?” Blade asked dryly. “You have been thinking for hours.”

“Well, that’s why it’s taking so long,” Derek said. “It’s because I’m spacing it out.”

I don’t even know why I bother. I’d have better luck training a hound.

“I see,” Blade said. “And I assume that has earned you some degree of knowledge that can only be received whilst pondering on my training room floor?”

Derek nodded. “Yeah. I think I’ll have meat for lunch.”

Blade coughed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It was what I was thinking about.”

“The best thing you could come up with to think about whilst in the training room as rare as this one is what you would have for lunch?”

“Well, no. I thought about this place first,” Derek said. “But then I got hungry. I’ve been here a while, you know.”

Blade’s eyes narrowed.

There had been a great deal of people that had passed through his room. He’d had seen fools who thought the weight of their family name more valuable than power. There had been those who had trained since birth and thought themselves to be better than any they met. He’d had dealt with every manner of powerful Family and their spawn.

And not one of them had been anything like this. None had been so… indifferent.

You know, is there actually anything wrong with that? What do I get from wrapping up my work early? Silence? Do I really even care?

Blade stood silently for a few moments. He stood and watched. And Derek watched back. Or, at least, it looked like he did. There was a chance he was just staring blankly off into the air in Blade’s direction.

It looked peaceful.

Blade walked over to Derek. He sat down on the ground beside the large man, crossing his legs to look up at the ceiling alongside the other —

Derek was gone.

Blade blinked.

The very instant Blade had crossed his legs, Derek had taken off at a full sprint, racing toward the door at the far side of the room as fast as his feet could take him.

Blade couldn’t help it.

He burst into laughter.