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Chapter 1311: Loss

“My lord…” Siacis could barely believe what stood before him.

The Sky Lord was drenched head to toe, as though he had been hauled from a pool rather than a sky. His armor was cracked and splattered with blue blood—demon blood, not human—and one half of it was crushed entirely. The Parasitic Eye Demons that should have flanked him were gone. Being vigilant creatures of the sharpest reflexes, Eye Demons were useful only when stationed at a grand lord’s side; their absence said everything about what had befallen them.

The scene might have made sense had their enemy been the Sky-sea Realm. Against mere humans, it made no sense at all.

Hackzord was not in the mood to explain. He seized his subordinate by one arm and hauled him bodily through the Distortion Door.

The next instant they were back inside the Red Mist region.

“Sky Lord, the soldiers on the island—” Siacis caught up with the situation swiftly, and his expression curdled. Even accounting for the catastrophic losses the explosion had torn through their vanguard, a portion of those troops had survived. To leave now was to abandon them all on Archduke Island. Their Red Mist reserves would last days at most.

“I can no longer open another door.” Hackzord’s answer closed the subject. The value of Primal Demons weighed nothing against a grand lord; there was nothing to discuss.

“Then I will escort you back to Sky City.”

“First tell Totolock to get the humans to send our vanguard back on sailboats—as many as they can recover.” The Sky Lord’s voice came through gritted teeth. “As for the Symbiotic Demons, let them hide on the island for now. Once the Red Mist has enveloped all of Archduke Island, the main force launches its attack on Sedimentation Bay and the other positions immediately. You and Totolock will command the assault.”

“My lord, is this not a little hasty?” Siacis ventured. “It would not be too late to begin after you have had time to recuperate—”

“This is my command. Say no more.”

“Yes. I have overstepped.” Siacis bowed his head quickly. “As you wish.”

Hackzord watched his subordinate’s retreating figure, and his remaining hand closed into a fist.

He knew it was hasty. He knew it better than Siacis did. But dragging the campaign out with humans was worse. For the first time since the Western Front began, the Sky Lord understood in his bones that time was no longer his ally. Within a single year, relying on nothing but a handful of witches and magically-inert males, the humans had threatened a grand lord. What would they look like in another year? Another three?

They could not be given room to breathe.

The Western Front had to be brought back onto its proper course.

Several days later, Hackzord returned at last to the foot of the great rupture.

The Red Mist here was thick and ancient, saturating the air with a density that could not be found anywhere else. He felt his spirit knit back together the moment he stepped into it, the searing pain in his palm dulling to something he could almost ignore. He descended directly to the Red Mist Pond at the base of Birth Tower.

The Nightmare Lord lay exactly where he had left her—motionless, eyes closed, utterly still.

Looking at her, Hackzord felt anger surge through him like a second wound. If she hadn’t buried herself in the Realm of Mind, none of this would have been necessary.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

If he had been free to simply move troops, the frontline’s advance would have been faster. If the Nightmare Lord had led the forces into battle, not one of the Graycastle people evacuating with the fugitives would have escaped. They would have struck while the humans were still panicking—a two-pronged assault, his forces pressing from the west, seizing the Hermes Plateau before anyone could regroup. That had been the real Western Front plan.

His fury was cresting when, hand raised, he hesitated.

In the end, the Nightmare Lord was the person he had always looked up to. Once—during the uncertainty of the upgrading process—he had even believed she might become sovereign of the race.

No. Hackzord shook his head. He was utterly loyal to the King; that had been ignorance, nothing more. In terms of rank, the Nightmare Lord was no different from him now. At most, she had a slightly deeper understanding of the Realm of Mind.

He made up his mind.

The intrusion might damage her memory, draw her fury, perhaps sever every thread of insight into how the humans were absorbing their legacies—but none of that outweighed what was happening on the Western Front. At worst he would back Silent Disaster in the Holy See meeting and concede that Upgrade Theory was correct. The origin of the legacy shard could be studied after the war was won. If the humans’ shard could be swallowed, everything they held now would become a single step forward for the entire race.

He inhaled once, sharply, and drove his palms toward her with a violent pushing motion—breaking the Realm of Mind’s hold, pulling her back from the Fountain of Magic—

That was what was supposed to happen.

The Nightmare Lord’s eyes did not open. Her body tilted sideways into the Red Mist Pond like a shell that had been empty all along.

Fear seized Hackzord by the throat.

He had not felt terror like this even when his magic had turned on him during the upgrading process, even when the Sky-sea Realm had ambushed him without warning. He lunged forward, caught the Nightmare Lord before she sank further, and reached for her consciousness—

Emptiness.

Alive but forever sleeping. That was the mark of being lost in the Realm of Mind. Once submerged in that endless red sea, return was impossible. Even a moment of lucidity would eventually be eroded by the surrounding churning mass of alien consciousnesses and drawn in, becoming part of them.

Hackzord’s heart dropped entirely out of him.

They had lost the Nightmare Lord.

How?

With her power, her discipline, she had no business being trapped in the Realm of Mind—not unless she had encountered something no skill could prepare for. What on earth had she found in there?

He did not allow himself to think further. He rose and launched himself upward toward the tower’s summit, his own injuries entirely forgotten.

The King had to be told immediately.

The situation on the Western Front had changed dramatically.

“How is everyone recovering?”

At the Cage Mountain command post, Iron Axe asked the question with genuine concern.

“With Nana here, what could go wrong?” Agatha set down her Sigil of Listening and shook her head, smiling. Her mood was plainly excellent. “According to Wendy, Maggie had healed so fast that she was skipping about on the first day. Lightning was fully recovered by the second—both are already back on frontline patrol.” A slight note of regret touched her voice. “My only disappointment is that I wasn’t part of the ambush.”

“We were taking a very real risk.” Iron Axe’s own smile was wry. “And in order to fit that enormous flintlock into the Seagull, we had to strip out every passenger seat. There was no room for anyone extra.” He paused. “I thought your only regret would be that we couldn’t finish off the grand lord in a single strike.”

“Winning against a grand lord with that lineup is already an extraordinary victory.” Agatha turned toward Edith—Pearl of the Northern Region—and pressed a hand to her chest. “I underestimated you in the past. Reality has proven that was a mistake. There are many capable people among those without magical ability who should not be dismissed lightly. Apart from His Highness Roland, you are proof of that.”

Edith accepted the compliment without false modesty. As the architect of the entire ambush, humility would have been its own kind of affectation.

“It is a pity that the bastard Hackzord escaped alive,” she said, patting the documents in her hand. “But we reaped a great deal from this battle. At the very least, our enemy is no longer a mystery to us.”

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