Chapter 15 | An End to an Era

At five on Tuesday morning, Matthias stood in the basement trying not to fire a hole through the wall.

The Sun Blade glowed in his hand.

Too brightly.

"Hold it there," Astreal said.

"I'm trying."

"You're pushing more into it."

He eased his grip. That wasn't quite the same as easing the flow of energy, but his body kept insisting the two things ought to be connected.

The light steadied.

"Better."

Matthias breathed out carefully.

He had thrown this sword into Chaos. Keeping a small amount of energy at its tip should have been the easier task.

Apparently, the sword hadn't been informed.

At the far table, Belial set out the water and towels. Yuki leaned against the wall beside her, watching with her arms folded.

Aki came down the stairs, rolling one shoulder.

"How's it going?"

"Quietly, if nobody distracts me."

"I'll admire the wall while it's still here."

Matthias almost laughed.

The light wavered.

Astreal looked at Aki.

"Sorry."

The basement door opened again.

Joseph appeared with his green backpack over one shoulder.

Matthias looked at his face and let the energy subside. Then he dismissed the sword.

Joseph hadn't come down to correct his stance.

"Sylvia," Joseph said.

Aki stopped rolling his shoulder.

"Again? That woman doesn't know when to quit, does she?"

"She told us she wouldn't," Matthias said.

He took a towel from Belial and wiped his face.

Joseph set his backpack beside the table.

"She's gathered the cult's remnants and established a new base."

He took out his tablet, opened a map, and turned it toward them.

"Romania."

Astreal stepped closer.

Belial's hand stopped over the remaining towels.

"The authorities have formally requested help from the three families," Joseph said. "Their military and national security forces are already involved."

"They know what she is?" Matthias asked.

"They know enough to ask for us. The families have contacts there, and this isn't the first time those contacts have dealt with something like the cult."

Joseph looked up from the screen.

"Before we go further, do you want to take part?"

Matthias remembered Sylvia standing outside the mall.

I will not stop.

He had wanted her to choose something else. She had heard him and walked away.

Now Joseph was pointing to another country on a map.

"Yes."

Belial looked at him. Astreal stayed beside the table, her eyes on his face.

He hadn't needed time to answer.

That didn't mean he knew what he was agreeing to yet.

"Tell me what we're facing," he said.

Joseph nodded.

"This will be different from Germany. We'll be part of a coordinated operation, with Romanian forces holding the ground outside."

Yuki pushed away from the wall.

"Wait. They already have soldiers there, and they still need all of us?"

"Yes."

Her expression lost its usual brightness.

"It's that bad?"

Joseph brought up the reports beneath the map.

"Attacks on civilians. Damage to infrastructure. Enough incidents across the region to spread panic beyond the places she's actually struck."

Matthias lowered the towel.

"She's doing this openly?"

"Increasingly. They aren't simply hiding and recruiting. They're attacking, and the attacks are escalating."

For a few seconds, everyone read the screen.

Then Matthias looked at Joseph.

"What does she think it achieves? Chaos is gone. There's nothing there to feed."

"We don't know her full objective."

"Outside the mall, she kept talking about giving people a common enemy. Bringing them together against a dark lord."

He looked back at the map.

"This just gives them a reason to go after her."

"She may have lost sight of what she intended to accomplish," Astreal said.

"Or?" Joseph asked.

"She's preparing something we haven't identified."

Aki folded his arms.

"Either way, people are getting hurt. We don't need to solve her reasoning before we stop her."

"Agreed," Matthias said. "But I'd rather go in expecting a plan than assume she's acting without one."

Joseph nodded.

"So would the people who asked for our help."

Yuki studied the map.

"Romania. Of course she picked Romania."

Aki glanced at her.

"You approve of the location?"

"I'm saying it's very on-brand. Dracula, old castles..."

Her eyes moved toward Astreal.

"And a certain man who fell off his horse."

"There was an arrow involved," Astreal said.

"Yeah. Yours. I remember."

For a moment, Matthias could almost hear the bubbling hot pot from the night she'd first told them.

Then Belial leaned over the table.

"The location matters for more than its history."

Yuki stepped aside to give her room.

"There's a current of dark energy beneath the land," Belial continued. "Deep and very old. It was there long before Sylvia's cult chose this site."

Matthias frowned.

"Destroying Chaos didn't remove it?"

"Chaos was an entity. This is energy bound into the ground. Destroying one doesn't clear away the other."

She touched the marked area on the map.

"Sylvia can draw on it here. So can the people she empowers. They'll be stronger than they would be away from it."

"That's why the military asked for the families," Joseph said. "They can fight the cultists. They need us to deal with what's strengthening them."

Matthias looked at Belial's finger against the screen.

For three weeks, he'd been glad the pressure in the forest was gone. Somewhere along the way, he'd let that become the hope that everything connected to it would begin disappearing too.

Sylvia had found somewhere else to stand.

"Can we cut her off from it?"

"Yes," Astreal said. "If we can reach the source she's using."

Joseph enlarged the image of a castle complex.

"Here. The tunnels beneath it run close to the current."

Astreal studied the layout.

"With the soldiers holding the perimeter, we may finally have time to work below. We won't be trying to fight our way in and keep the entire cult off our backs at once."

"You think we can sever it?" Belial asked.

"At its root beneath the site. Provided the plans are accurate and we can reach it."

She looked at Matthias.

"A current this deeply embedded isn't something we can remove by striking the ground. We need access to the point feeding the complex."

"And Sylvia has put herself right above it."

"Yes."

Joseph switched to the underground plan.

"The Romanian contacts believe the same thing. They'll brief us in detail when we arrive."

The tunnels spread across the screen.

Matthias had expected a cellar. Perhaps several connected rooms.

This was an entire structure beneath the castle.

"How old is that?"

"Older than the building above it," Joseph said. "The castle was built over existing foundations. These passages served a purpose before anyone put towers on top."

"And Sylvia is down there?"

"That's where the reports place her."

Aki leaned closer.

"How do we get through the compound?"

Joseph returned to the surface plan.

"The civilians in the affected area have already been evacuated. The military has cleared a bombardment of the gates and fortified approach. Once the breach is secured and the fire has lifted, we move in under their cover."

He traced the route from the entrance to the castle.

"Their forces engage the cultists outside and hold the perimeter. We reach the lower passages."

Matthias followed the line with his eyes.

On the screen, the distance looked small.

He remembered how short the clearing at Teutoburg had seemed before they'd tried to cross it.

"What will be waiting inside?"

"Remaining cultists. Likely some of Sylvia's stronger guardians. People she's kept close and given access to the site's power."

Yuki folded her arms again.

"So we get the special welcome."

"Assume resistance all the way down," Joseph said. "The military can open the entrance. It can't promise us a clear path to her."

Belial glanced at Astreal.

Her sister gave a small nod.

Matthias recognized the exchange. He'd seen it in the forest, just before white-blue light filled the clearing.

He also remembered how pale they'd been afterward.

He wanted this operation to leave them walking out under their own strength. All of them.

"And when we reach her?" he asked.

Joseph opened his backpack.

The talisman was small enough to fit in Joseph's palm.

He unwrapped it carefully and laid it on the table. Its edges were worn, but the markings remained clear.

Matthias bent closer without touching it.

"Like the ones Yuki brought to Germany?"

"A different purpose," Joseph said. "Those protected us from corrosion. This will dispel the dark energy Sylvia has accumulated and disrupt her connection to the current."

"Without killing her?"

"It won't harm her physically. It will leave her unable to use that power against us."

Aki looked from the talisman to the tunnels on the screen.

"We still have to get it to her."

"Yes. It doesn't spare us that part."

Joseph moved it away from the edge of the table.

"Once she's neutralized, we hand her over to the Romanian authorities. They take her into custody."

Matthias watched the old markings catch the overhead light.

Since Germany, he'd kept thinking of Sylvia as another fight waiting to happen. Another portal opening above people who had no idea they were in danger.

He hadn't spent much time picturing what came after they stopped her.

"And they handle the rest?"

"The charges, the proceedings, all of it. They requested our help because of what she can do. We remove that threat and let them do their work."

Matthias nodded.

"All right."

Yuki looked down at the talisman.

"She could have just left after Germany."

"She could have stopped before Germany," Aki said.

"I know. It's just..."

Yuki shook her head.

"Her own life went wrong, so now everyone else has to be miserable too? How many people is she going to drag into it?"

"More, if she's given time," Aki said.

Nobody had anything useful to add to that.

"When do we leave?" Matthias asked.

"We'll arrive in Romania on Friday night. The operation is planned for Saturday afternoon, after the local briefing and time to rest."

Joseph closed the map.

"Travel arrangements will be ready before then. I'll send everyone the details."

"Anything we need to do?" Belial asked.

"Sleep properly. Keep yourselves ready. Don't train to exhaustion between now and Friday."

His eyes settled on Matthias.

Matthias lowered the towel from his shoulder.

"Why are you looking at me?"

"You were practicing energy control when I came in."

"That's what the lesson was."

"And I know what happens when you think you nearly have it."

Aki looked toward the scuffed floor.

"One more attempt."

"Then another," Yuki added.

Matthias turned to Astreal.

She offered no defense.

"Your last session ran long."

"You were teaching it."

"You requested the extra attempts."

Belial handed him a glass of water.

"Rest is preparation too, Master."

He accepted it.

There had been a time when getting him into this room required an alarm and a considerable effort of will.

Now five people were reminding him to leave it.

"Understood," he said. "No exhausting myself."

Joseph wrapped the talisman and returned it to his backpack.

"Good. I'd rather you arrived able to use what you've learned."

Aki left first, checking the time as he went upstairs.

"Some of us still have work."

"All of us have work," Yuki said.

"Some of us have supervisors who notice when we're late."

"I notice when I'm late!"

"And you're very forgiving."

She followed him to the stairs, then paused.

Her gaze returned to the tablet and the castle still visible on its screen.

"Romania," she said quietly.

Matthias looked at her.

"You're thinking about the castle."

"A little."

"The occupied castle full of cultists."

"I can hate what they're doing with it and still appreciate the architecture, babe."

Then she went upstairs.

Joseph shouldered his backpack and followed, already checking a message from the network.

Astreal gathered the unused equipment.

"We're finished for this morning," she said.

Matthias looked toward the training area.

"I wasn't going to start again."

"Good."

She put the equipment away and went up to the kitchen.

He stayed beside the table a moment longer.

Belial touched his arm.

"You answered quickly."

"When he asked if I wanted to go?"

She nodded.

Matthias looked at the empty place where the talisman had been.

"I keep thinking about Saturday. She was standing in front of us, and then she was gone again."

"You couldn't make her listen."

"I know."

He turned toward her.

"But I don't want to keep waiting for the next time she appears. Or for Joseph to tell us who she's hurt since we last saw her."

Belial's fingers rested against his forearm.

"This won't be simple."

"Germany wasn't either."

"That's why I'm saying it."

He fell quiet.

She had watched the sphere shake under the explosion. He had watched her struggle to stand afterward.

Neither of them needed the other to pretend it had been easy.

"I'm not going alone," he said. "And I'm listening to the plan."

Her hand tightened briefly.

"Then I'll be beside you."

"I'm counting on it."

From upstairs came the sound of a cupboard opening, followed by dishes being set on the counter.

Astreal was preparing breakfast. In a little while, Matthias would shower, dress, and go to work.

Friday was close enough that he could already feel himself measuring the hours before it.

He didn't want to spend all of them somewhere beneath a castle he hadn't reached yet.

"We go," Belial said, "we finish this, and we come home."

He looked at her.

"That's the plan."

"And afterward, a Saturday with no interruptions."

"We managed lunch last time."

"I'd like the whole day."

He smiled.

"So would I."

She stayed beside him as they climbed the stairs.

There was breakfast waiting, and an ordinary Tuesday still to get through.

Matthias went to wash his hands.