Seismic Shift

Aga - The Falling Throne

The room was no longer a room. It was a landslide in a box.

Aga scrambled up a shifting slope of gold coins and rubble, dragging Gaidan behind him. King Aurum, the Golden Tumor, was screaming, fused to his throne as the dais cracked in half.

"My gold!" Aurum wailed, clawing at the melting walls. "Do not take it! It is mine!"

"Forget him!" Aga shouted to Gaidan. "We need to get to Root!"

Root stood on the highest tier, manipulating the flow of energy with his iron hand like a conductor leading an orchestra of apocalypse. The white pillar of vented Ether roared past them in the distance—Faren’s work—saving the mountain from nuclear fire, but the earthquake was still tearing the room apart.

The man from the desert got there first.

He launched himself off a falling pillar, clearing twenty feet of air. He landed in front of Root. He was unarmed. The black scimitar was gone, dropped into the pit to cut the seal.

Aga expected the lethal fluidity he had seen in the camp. He expected the man who had dodged his sword without sweating.

But the man who landed in front of Root stumbled.

He looked diminished. His shoulders were slumped, his movements frantic and uncoordinated. His eyes, usually glassy and still, were wide, darting around with the raw, wet terror of a child lost in the dark.

He struck—a desperate, flailing punch aimed at Root’s chest.

Root didn't even need his mechanical arm. He caught the man's wrist with his flesh-and-blood hand. He looked at the desert warrior with pity.

"Oh, look at you," Root purred, his voice cutting through the roar of the collapse. "The scabbard trying to be the blade."

Root twisted.

The desert warrior screamed. It wasn't the stoic grunt of a soldier. It was a high, thin shriek of pure, unadulterated agony.

"Did you think you were the warrior?" Root asked, leaning in close. "You are a vessel, a small, little, man. A cup. And without the wine, you are just... empty clay."

Root shoved him. The man didn't roll or recover. He sprawled onto the debris, clutching his hands, sobbing.

Aga froze. The realization hit him harder than the falling stone. The sparring match. The way the man had soothed the sword. We do not touch the Edge.

The man wasn't Zalim. The sword was Zalim. And the man was just the meat it wore to move around.

"Aga!" the broken man screamed, his voice cracking, devoid of all the cool, dangerous confidence he had worn like a mask. "Help me! Please! He has Him!"

Aga didn't need to be told twice. He roared, channeling the wild magic of the Maw into his form. He leaped, bringing his longsword down in an overhead smash meant to cleave Root in two.

Root didn't block. He simply stepped aside.

But Aga anticipated it. He twisted his swing mid-air, turning the blade flat, and slammed it into the side of Root’s mechanical elbow.

CRUNCH.

Sparks flew. The iron limb buckled. The red runes flickered.

Root snarled, the first sign of real pain he had shown. He lashed out with a kick, sending Aga sprawling back down the debris pile with the swordless swordsman.

"Annoying pest," Root hissed, clutching his damaged arm. "Primitive."

Suddenly, the violet light from the pit pulsed.

The sound of a massive, grinding inhale filled the room. The Stone King was taking a breath.

"It is done," Root whispered, checking a gauge on his damaged arm. "Capacity reached. The vial is full."

He tapped a sequence on his wrist.

"Detach."

Above them, in the foundry, the clamps holding the black tower released. The cables snapped back like whips. Tendrils retracting.

"He's leaving," Gaidan realized, looking up through the shattered ceiling. "The tower... it's an escape pod. By the Arcana!"

Root looked down at them. "The patient will survive," he called out. "But the recovery will be... arduous."

Root stepped backward, vanishing into a teleportation circle of crimson light — completing with a bloody skeletal hand cradling Root to safety.

"No!" Aga scrambled up the slope, but he grabbed only empty air.

The room gave a final, violent lurch. The floor gave way completely.

Aga, Gaidan, and the weeping vessel fell into the dark, tumbling down toward the waking face of the Stone King.

And as they fell, the god opened its eyes.

They were rotating tunnels of diamond and fire.

And they were looking right at them.

Elara - The Gantry

"Faren!" Elara screamed, watching the scholar slump against the railing.

She ran across the bridge, the metal buckling under her feet. She grabbed Faren by his robe and hauled him up. His hands were blistered and raw.

"We have to go!" she yelled over the roar of the venting Ether. "Bolla said the ore-transports are automated. If we can reach a loading bay..."

"Look," Faren wheezed, pointing down.

The Throne Room floor had collapsed. Aga, Gaidan, and the desert warrior were falling into the pit.

"No," Elara breathed.

She raised her cannon. She didn't have a grapple. She didn't have a rope. But she had physics.

"Trajectory calculation," she muttered, her mind entering the cold, safe space of mathematics. "Wind shear. Gravity. Mass."

She swung the barrel high, ignoring the screaming descent of her companions to zero in on the one environmental variable heavy enough to arrest their fall—a massive, swinging cauldron of molten slag suspended by a single rusted chain.

"Bolla!" Elara shouted into a comms-crystal. "Blow the chain! Sector 4!"

There was a static hiss, then Bolla's voice. "You're crazy, glitter-eyes! But I like it!"

A distant explosion rocked the ceiling. The chain snapped.

The massive iron cauldron swung down in a pendulum arc.

It intercepted the falling group perfectly.

Aga slammed into the side of the cauldron, grabbing the rim with one hand and Gaidan with the other. The desert warrior didn't catch himself—Aga had to snag him by the back of his silk tunic and haul him in. He landed in the bottom of the bucket, curled into a ball, shaking.

The momentum of the swing carried them across the pit, over the waking, screaming face of the Stone King, and crashed them into the loading dock on the far side.

"Go! Go! Go!" Elara grabbed Faren and sprinted for the service elevator that led to the docks.