Low-Fantasy Occultist

The ethereal space was beyond mortal comprehension, filled only with the presence of the Almighty Star.

To stand before the Sun was to be laid bare. It was a force of cosmic truth, an unforgiving light that did not burn flesh but incinerated falsehoods, secrets, and imperfections.

Nick alone was untouched by the brightness. The star’s mysterious force washed over him, but [Blasphemy] flared and deflected the divine light around him, declaring his existence beyond the reach of the heavens' judgment.

The homunculi were not so fortunate.

They were creations of human artifice, hollow vessels animated by the tortured, fragmented souls of Toneburg’s missing citizens. In the material world, they were mighty weapons. Here, under the Sun’s gaze, they were merely lies.

Nick watched dispassionately as the four constructs began to dissolve. There was no fire, only a rapid unspooling of their existence. The trapped soul-fragments shrieked in chorus as the Sun burned away the runic bindings that held them in torment, reducing their spiritual anchors to drifting ash.

Once they were gone, he turned his attention to Nestor.

His armor, despite being heavily warded against esoteric intrusion, could not exist in this space; thus, his soul was bathed in the blinding light, shivering and naked, stripped of every defense he had spent years perfecting.

Unencumbered, Nick surged forward, driving [Stream of Consciousness] directly into the Artificer's exposed essence.

For once, he didn't strike to obliterate. Killing Nestor here would be easy, but Nick needed to know more.

Plunging deep into the unprotected mind, he ruthlessly bypassed the natural defenses and dove into the memories, which he found organized like a library.

At another time, he might have stopped to peruse it, but the clock was ticking, so Nick tore through the shelves without much care.

Within moments, he found what he’d been looking for.

Images flooded his mind, and he saw a massive construct within the depths of the Elpen estate, bathed in profane flames, only to resist them. He saw the intricate, multi-layered ciphers needed to unlock the primary lift. He saw the null-glass cage, a sprawling containment unit being built all around the forge. Most importantly, he saw the nature of the wards that guarded the lower levels.

With a grim smile, Nick ripped the cluster of memories from Nestor’s soul, locking the knowledge in his own mind.

Such a violation had severe consequences. Nestor’s soul let out a silent scream. The trauma of losing a core piece of his intellect violently sent a shockwave through the tether linking his spirit to his body, which could have been fatal if he were weaker. It still might be, given the sheer trauma.

In the material world, Nestor’s physical heart stuttered, missing several beats.

That turned out to be a miscalculation on Nick's part.

The moment the vital signs faltered, the laboratory’s emergency protocols registered a lethal threat to their master. The failsafes, wired directly into Nestor's life force, engaged at once, ripping the connection to the ether apart and breaking the ritual.

Reality crashed back over them like a tidal wave. The Sun's blinding light vanished, replaced by the flashing red glow of emergency lumen-stones embedded in the walls.

Nick stumbled as his boots hit the marble floor, groaning in pain as the backlash from the broken ritual hit him.

Around him, the four elite homunculi collapsed into heaps of inert metal and stitched flesh. Without the soul fragments to animate them, they were mere puppets.

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A surge of power flooded Nick’s veins, filling his mana coils with fresh energy and momentarily driving away the pain of the backlash. But he had no time to savor the milestone.

A deafening shriek echoed through the keep.

Nestor was slumped over his basalt pedestal, blood pouring from his eyes, nose, and ears. He was alive, if barely, and his mind was a ruined mess. Yet his faltering heartbeat had already sealed their fate.

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"Fuck!" Gaelen shouted, recovering from the disorientation of soul-space.

Nick cast [Empyrean Intuition] downward, immediately feeling the estate's wards shift. The primary lift mechanism, their only path to the Forge, slammed shut. Dozens of layered protections snapped into place, radiating an impenetrable pressure that Nick knew was Prestige-tier, wards not among the memories he’d just stolen.

It seemed Ephor Ultimer had not been as careless as they’d thought, leaving everything to Nestor. The path to the lower levels was now closed to them.

Nick didn’t have much time to consider the implications as mana flowed through the laboratory.

The panels in the walls blew outward. Hundreds of hidden apertures revealed themselves, unleashing an indiscriminate barrage of fire, cold-iron bolts, and sweeping beams of light.

"We have to retreat!" he roared over the din of shattering glass and exploding workstations. It hurt to admit it, but there was nothing they could do to break through such protections, not now.

He swept the Shard of Human Ambition around, summoning the [Crest of the Thunderbird]. The barrier caught the first volley, iron bolts shrieking as they ricocheted off the ceiling, while fire washed over the divine shield in brilliant splashes of green and violet.

"The door is sealing!" Rhea warned, pointing toward the antechamber.

Thick blast doors were sliding down from the archway, designed to seal the master suite into an inescapable tomb.

"Move!" Nick commanded, using his shield like a battering ram. Lightning sparked at his command, delaying the door just long enough for Gaelen and Rhea to sprint for the exit and dive under the door as it cleared their shoulders.

Nick followed a fraction of a second later, canceling his shield and using [True Flight] to propel himself through the narrowing gap.

The blast doors slammed shut behind him with a booming thud, sealing Nestor and his laboratory off.

But the antechamber offered no safety. The sirens blared throughout the keep, and the thud of armored boots echoed from the main corridor.

“They’re here!" a voice bellowed.

A group of Knights and guards flooded into the antechamber, swords drawn and auras blazing. There were at least twenty of them, all of those who had survived their earlier attempts.

Under normal circumstances, Nick would have tried to take them, but he was still recovering from the broken ritual and could tell Gaelen and Rhea weren’t faring much better.

We need to go. I have the information we came for, and it’s just a matter of time before Ephor himself arrives.

Unleashing [Conceptual Steam], Nick cast a sweeping wave of boiling pressure that filled the corridor. The first knights screamed as the vapor bypassed their armor, and their advance collapsed.

He followed up with a rapid series of compressed-air blasts, denting breastplates and throwing heavily armored men backward into their comrades like bowling pins.

It was not enough. He could tell they were only battered, and they were already picking themselves up, such was the resilience of high-level martial classes.

"Keep pushing!" Gaelen yelled, his daggers flashing as he dispatched two guards who slipped past the steam. "If we reach the central staircase, we can loop back to the servant's passage!”

They fought their way out of the antechamber, turning into the wide, tapestry-lined corridor on the second floor. Nick was a terror in the confined space. His raw attributes were so high that ordinary guards felt sluggish and predictable. He parried a heavy broadsword with his staff, stepped inside the soldier’s guard, and unleashed a point-blank burst of red lightning that instantly stopped the man's heart, sending him crashing into a charging knight.

Two more fell to his steam, and another dropped to his knees as Rhea blew poison into his face.

For a fleeting moment, it looked like they were about to break through the encirclement. Nick was carving a bloody path toward their extraction point, and the siblings were covering every gap.

Then the ambient temperature in the hallway plummeted, and the ether broiled.

Two knights halted their advance, their bodies twitching as if something were crawling under their skins.

Nick felt the shift in the ether a second before it happened. A suffocating wrongness bled into the air, distinct from the structured magic used so far. It was enough to stir his connection to the World.

"Get back!" he barked, throwing a shield over Gaelen and Rhea and covering their retreat.

The two knights ruptured.

Their steel armor melted like wax over a candle, fusing with their expanding, twisting flesh. Black, fell flames erupted from the seams of their visors, consuming their human features. In a single heartbeat, the men were gone, replaced by towering, digitigrade monstrosities wreathed in profane fire.

Nick’s [Empyrean Intuition] screamed a warning as their auras unfurled, and he knew they were Lesser Demons.

Ephor must not have trusted his apprentice at all, Nick realized with cold clarity. He was prepared from the start, in case Nestor failed or betrayed him.

The level demons let out a horrific, multi-tonal roar that shattered the glass fixtures in the corridor. The first swung a clawed hand, unleashing a wave of purple fire down the hall.

The flames struck the [Crest]. The barrier, which had effortlessly deflected cold-iron bolts moments earlier, hissed and cracked under the demonic fire's corrupting power.

Nick gritted his teeth, digging his boots into the carpet as the sheer force of the attack pushed him back. The fell flames were inherently destructive, eating away at the ether he was weaving into his spell, and while the World seemed eager to answer his call, he couldn’t let it in.

His own mana was dangerously low, and he knew that if he allowed the planet to take over, he’d lose all thoughts of escape.

Water roared at his command, smothering the clinging flames, but the second demon lunged, covering twenty feet in a single bound. It brought a flaming fist down on the barrier, which shattered like thin glass.

Lightning exploded in response as all the power contained within the [Crest] sought to end his enemy. That was the only reason he was able to twist away, taking a grazing blow to his side that scorched his coat and sent a spike of agonizing pain into his ribs.

He retaliated with a sphere of [Zealous Flame], striking the demon square in the chest.

The holy-adjacent fire exploded, pushing it back several steps, but the demon simply absorbed the impact, its own fell flames battling the spell to a standstill.

Raw power was not going to win this.

"Gaelen, to the passage!" Nick ordered, backing up quickly as the two demons regained their footing. By then, most of the guards had fallen back, fearful of being caught in the carnage, but it didn’t really matter. They were gnats compared to the Lesser Demons.

"It's twenty paces down the hall, to the left!" Gaelen shouted, already sprinting toward the blank stretch of stone wall.

The first demon opened its maw, preparing to unleash a torrent of fire, and Nick dropped all pretense of defense. He drew on all his remaining mana, weaving air and his anger into a volatile point at the tip of his staff.

"Begone!" he roared, slamming the Shard of Human Ambition directly into the floor.

A shockwave ripped through the corridor, tearing up the stone floorboards and destabilizing the structure. The blast caught the demons, throwing them off balance and hurling them through the keep’s exterior walls, briefly burying them under tons of falling masonry.

Nick didn't stay to watch them recover, sprinting through the settling dust toward his teammates even as blood poured down his nose.

Gaelen stood by the seemingly solid stone wall, his palm bleeding from a fresh cut as he pressed it against the masonry. The blood-ward recognized its heir, and the stone melted away, revealing the dark, narrow stairwell.

Rhea dove in first. Nick grabbed Gaelen by the shoulder, shoved him into the dark, then stepped over the threshold himself.

"Close it!" he hissed.

Gaelen touched the wall once more, and the stone reappeared, sealing them in pitch-black silence just as the furious, earth-shaking roar of the recovering demons echoed through the ruined hallway.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

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