PART 13: THE SECOND OVERTURN
Chapter 047
VIII - The Rising Crown
“I’m scared,” Vynelor said, wrapped and suspended by a magic thread. “I don’t know what’s happening. Why are there so many bad people?”
Donnor kept the boy tightly held with every bit of trembling strength he had left. As he leapt across rooftops, scouting the horizon, he noticed soldiers closing in from every direction—left and right, front and behind, even from below. Armor, weapons, magic. All prepared to execute him and Luminar.
“Not sure, bud,” he said, stopping long enough to catch his breath. He lowered the kid onto his feet. “But one thing I know, my other part has made quite a ruckus. Sorry for bringing you into this.”
Vynelor hid behind him, looking around as figures approached at rapid speeds from all sides. They came in waves, like ants marching toward their prey. He whimpered. “I want to see my dad. When can I see him?”
“Well, I can answer that after all of this is over,” Donnor replied. “You’ll have to stick with me a little longer.”
“W–why?”
“Let’s just say you’re an uninvited guest. These people hate uninvited guests.”
“Oh…” The child sniffed, widening his stance as the threat closed in. “I want to leave.”
Donnor chuckled. “That makes the two of us—”
Suddenly, the ground shuddered and flashed. A burst of wind surged from below. Donnor turned just in time to see three soldiers vault up to his level. He backed away with the child, but they pursued. Swords raised, they charged and struck in rapid succession, aiming straight for him, ignoring the boy clinging close. Donnor used his TM to deflect and defend. With swift, practiced movements, he drove them back, forcing space between the soldiers and the two of them.
The first soldier panted. But it wasn’t from exhaustion, but in fear. His face was pale, hands trembling on the hilt of his sword. “S–sir, with all due respect, we have to follow orders. It’s… it’s not like I want to.”
“Y–yeah,” the second added, equally pale, legs barely steady. “If we don’t do this… Heh… haha. Doesn’t this all sound ludicrous? L–like a sick joke. I just want to live. No hard feelings!”
Donnor raised a hand, doing his best to calm them. He studied their frantic breaths, their cold, shaking fingers. They were the men he knew. Men he trained.
“Rroma. Dehro. Eloth,” he said. “I still have much to teach you.”
“I’m sure you do,” the third—Eloth—said shakily. “I remember our morning walks. You remember that too, right? Those days we talked about life? About the time we dug a hole under a carpet and Duxe fell into it?”
“Sir,” another said, voice cracking, “let’s just attack you and not kill you. M–maybe… surely, the system will stop.”
Donnor shook his head. “Systems do not accept half-hearted plans. Do what you must.”
Dehro’s eyes welled as he failed to lift his sword. “Donnor, you should’ve let me hit you the first time.”
The space fell silent. All eyes fixed on Donnor. The child remained still, gripping the man’s cloak tighter, watching the soldiers exchange words with their commander. There were more questions than answers.
He looked up. “Donnor… who are they? Are they bad?”
Donnor took a deep breath and reached back to pat the boy’s shoulder. He looked at each of them, faces filled with guilt rather than conviction. He remembered the days they ran from drills, the clumsy, frightened trainees who now held weapons in the name of order. He knew the answer.
He whispered, “None of them are bad or evil. They’re just afraid.”
“S–sir,” Rroma said, “do you know what’s happening? It’s—”
The ground shook again, briefly. Donnor’s gaze snapped outward as more soldiers closed in.
“Why is all of this happening?” he asked again.
Shake. Stop.
“Do you know why the kings—”
RUMBLE.
Donnor, Vynelor, Rroma, Dehro, and Eloth lost their balance. The soldiers lost their grip on their swords, which clattered against the floor, rattling without ever settling. The weapons jolted up and down, shaking in sync with the rooftops beneath them.
The child wrapped his arms around the man, squeezing his eyes shut in fear. The soldiers dropped to their knees, their legs finally giving out. Donnor scanned the area as a low growl awakened beneath them. Buildings twisted and shifted—back and forth, back and forth. He felt unimaginable energy rising underfoot, swelling with a deep, creeping unease.
At first, he saw nothing unusual in his periphery except moving structures and frozen men. But when he turned, he noticed something wrong.
A few rooftops away, a thread of magic plunged from sky to ground. It pulsed with broken rhythms and exhausted light. Donnor recognized the color immediately, the crimson red. His heart sank. He knew what was happening. The source was obvious. Like prey realizing a hawk had spotted it, Donnor lifted his head.
King Trotto stared back.
High above, where the floating land loomed, Trotto was embedded in the cliffside. Rock crushed inward around him, flesh grinding beneath immense pressure. Blood streamed from his eyes and mouth, pouring into his magic as he summoned the Second Throne’s Elect.
“That child is mine.”
Rippling Magic ? Lv. 29
At the base of the colliding magic, bright veins erupted outward in a flash. They spread in all directions, enveloping streets, tables, doors, pillars, walls, homes, and rooftops. Donnor watched the ceilings become webbed in light. The soldiers and the child cried out, sensing the dreadful magic about to manifest.
“These patterns… r–rippling magic,” Dehro said, panic breaking his voice. “We have to get out of here!”
The veins vanished.
The ground convulsed. Stones began to rise.
Meters from the center of the surge, cracks split open. Roots snapped. Bricks crumbled. A circular line carved itself deep into the land, dividing one mass from the other. The ring groaned while everything beyond it remained eerily calm. Soldiers farther away stared in disbelief as the ground shifted like a living thing. Then, before their eyes, the land took its first step into the air.
“This—” Donnor clenched his teeth and turned to his men. “Fall back! Get on your feet and leave!”
They nodded in terror and scrambled away from the rising land. Donnor grabbed the child and bolted. He vaulted over a roof. “Vynelor, we need to use the homes to hide! While the soldiers are distracted, we’ll go down—”
BLAST!
A beam of magic struck the ground directly in front of Donnor. Light speared through the ceiling and detonated debris in all directions. Shrapnel and stone slammed into both him and the boy. Smoke swallowed his vision. He crashed down and skidded across the ground, his grip on Vynelor breaking as they were thrown apart.
Donnor groaned, blood pouring more freely now. The child rolled several times before stopping. He lifted his head, a thin line of blood running down his scalp, and stared at the fallen man.
“Don—!”
BLAST!
Another beam crashed between them. Vynelor recoiled, shielding his eyes. Donnor sucked in a sharp breath and rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky.
Through the thinning smoke, he saw Tyllidan firing beams of magic down toward them. The clouds barely concealed their malicious gaze.
The kings refused to lose.
“I will slaughter this child,” Tyllidan said, coughing blood as his arms trembled. He glanced just below Trotto and added, “It was quite ambitious of you to raise another land on your own. Any more than that, and you will be long gone.”
Trotto laughed raggedly. His limbs hung limp as he replied, “I am simply cutting time more than what Luminar is calm with. I can live with only this much.”
He chuckled again. “What a wicked king.” He looked behind him and said to Kallanor, “Endure just a little longer. The child will be gone soon.”
Ahead of them, at the center of the floating land, encircled by a ring of drifting stone, Luminar—battered and bloodied—charged forward again. Kallanor blocked her path, forcing her back each time. She summoned magic and hurled boulders toward him, but every attempt was dodged or deflected. When he pressed the offense, it was equally fruitless. He knew exactly how much strength Luminar had left compared to his own.
He was being cautious.
Watching the hopeless exchange, she shouted toward Tyllidan and Trotto, “Don’t you dare kill my god! Do you hear me?!”
The plea went unheard.
Back with the two kings, Trotto said hollowly, “The dust is settling. I still see the boy alive. Do not miss this time.”
Tyllidan scoffed, steadying his arm with his other shaking hand. “Worry not. I will not miss the next.”
His palm began to glow.
The third beam was coming.
Back on the ground below, Donnor felt the approaching dread. As debris rained down from the earlier blast, he shouted with everything he had, “Run! Get away! Hide!”
The force in his voice made Vynelor flinch. His breathing spiked, legs screaming to move. He sprang to his feet without question, never questioning Donnor. With no time to think, he turned and ran.
BLAST!
The beam struck where he had been lying. The explosion hurled him away, rubble tearing into his back as he was thrown into the air. He cleared the ledge and fell hard onto the ground below.
–38 HP
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HP: 79 / 129
He slid before finally coming to a stop. Breath hissed through clenched teeth. A shrill ringing overwhelmed his thoughts. His vision swam. His face went numb. Still, with everything he had left, he tried to push himself up.
“I need to hide…” he whispered, tears burning but refusing to fall. “I have to go somewhere and—”
“Master?”
His breathing stopped.
The voice came from afar, a woman’s voice, distant yet unmistakable. Recognizing someone by voice was not difficult, especially this one. Something in it slowed his heart.
Frozen, he lifted his gaze.
There she was.
Lefaulta.
Her eyes were wide, one wrist half-raised as if to shield herself from what she was seeing. She stood rigid, her normally composed posture cracked by disbelief. She blinked again and again, unable to process the sight before her.
“Those eyes,” she said softly. “They look like my Lady’s… It can’t be.”
Time seemed to slow as the ground beneath her steadily rose. First her feet vanished, then her knees. They stared at one another in silence—confused, searching, stirred by something neither understood.
“They died long ago. Who… who are you?”
She asked, though the child had no way of hearing her.
As the land rose higher, until even her chest slipped from view, Vynelor opened his mouth to speak.
But just as he opened his mouth, Donnor landed nearby and swooped him into his arms. He dashed away just before another beam struck the place Vynelor had been lying on. The boy cast a quick glance at the man, just to be sure it was Donnor. When he looked back at Lefaulta, she was no longer there.
Or rather, the land they stood on was ascending, approaching the three kings who awaited.
“Kid, go hide,” he said. “There are bad men up there trying to hurt us. Make sure not to flee, and don’t jump to the ground floor.”
With frantic breaths and a hesitant nod, Vynelor ran to a rooftop canvas, heading for the half-open doorway. Hugging the threshold, he looked back and asked, “Um, are we going to be okay? Why are we going up?”
Donnor sighed and gazed at the floating land just above. The ascent was brutally slow. And it would be like that for as long as they were alive. This was the cost.
He replied, “Not the most ideal, but the best I could think of.”
When he thought about it, he was at a crossroads. He could flee with the boy and be chased by the soldiers claiming Donnor’s head. Or he could stay on the rising land and bring the boy to the kings—as they wanted. Another option would be to allow the child to run alone; however, the chances of the kings ordering the soldiers to pursue him would be certain.
But as counterintuitive as it sounded, Donnor would hinge this decision on one unprovable factor. The only reason he chose to bring the child to the very ones who wanted him killed was as he said:
“Let’s hope Luminar has done the brunt of the work tiring the kings. We’ll aim to kill them ourselves with that advantage. If they die, the decree dies. And when the decree dies, I can take my comrades out for a drink.”
“K–kill them?” he said, feet growing cold.
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to raise a finger anymore. Did you notice what the beams did to the soldiers we fought earlier?”
“Beams? The ones with like a bunch of them?” he asked. “I think so. I couldn’t see from all the light. We scared the bad guys away, didn’t we?”
“I suppose,” he added, best not to tell him. “Just go and hide. If you hear danger, you know what to do. All of this will be over in a—”
Then he fell silent.
Vynelor had already gotten the gist and was heading inside, but he paused and looked back at the strange cutoff. Donnor’s mouth was still open, his focus fixed on the sky above. Not an ounce of sound came out of him. The boy noticed the man’s eyes gradually widening. The air went still, even as they continued to rise in altitude.
He had felt this dread before. He had experienced enough to sense impending danger. Was it another beam?
Suddenly, a massive shadow rushed in, painting the streets and walls in darkness. The air was being sucked upward. Donnor turned to the boy in horror. He snatched him with his TM and sped away as fast as he could. No words were exchanged. He dashed through alleyways, knocking over boxes in his path and rebalancing himself mid-run.
Vynelor was in utter confusion. The shadow deepened, growing slow, dreadful. He raised his head to see what it was. At the sight, his heart dropped. His pupils constricted, as if facing death itself.
Far and farther they went, until Donnor spotted the edge of the land not yet swallowed by shadow. Vynelor kept his eyes raised, and feeling it was already too late, he shut them tight.
But the man tossed the boy into the air, throwing him with everything he had down the narrow stretch.
Vynelor opened his eyes. He felt himself shoot through the town. Head turned toward Donnor, he watched the man brace himself for the incoming impact.
And—
CRASH!
An inverted spire of stone—one of the spikes of the inverted crown—thirteen stories tall and as wide as a district block, fell straight onto the smaller landmass below. The curve of the spire struck Donnor directly.
Stone cracked and exploded. Buildings flattened instantly. Smoke burst upward and outward. Shards, boulders, stone, and shrapnel blasted in every direction. Winds howled as they rushed outward. Rocks flew far, dust chasing after them like an avalanche. Surrounding buildings toppled. Row by row, all of them fell. Stones spilled beyond the ledge and crashed onto the ground below, striking RrodKa beneath piles of rubble and boulders.
The floating land absorbed the impact. The monolithic spire, shattered into pieces, made the land roar as it broke apart. One side sank low, tilting the entire surface into a steep slope. Every loose remnant of destroyed buildings—floors, bricks, fragments of the spire—rolled downward and plunged to the ground far below.
Up on the original land, Trotto and Tyllidan watched. After missing their third beam, they had spent a significant amount of effort cutting through one of the spires. Then, using their TMs, they latched onto its base and swung it toward the smaller, rising land. But the weight was overwhelming; they could only hold it for so long before it slipped from their grasp. They grinned as they watched it land with such devastating force.
“What a sight—” Trotto gagged blood, his lungs most certainly filled with it.
TROTTO
HP: 48 / 656
Tyllidan wheezed and fell to his knees. His arms dropped, fingers numb. Blood dripped from his lips as he whispered, “That should do it.”
TYLLIDAN
HP: 89 / 670
He turned to face Trotto, who could no longer form audible words. Stepping closer, he said, “Let’s get you out of this mess. We still have work to do.”
They looked away too soon.
Vynelor was on the upper ledge of the slanted land. The blasting wind shoved him backward. He clung to a fence railing, stubbornly anchored to the nearest building. His feet could no longer feel the ground. He looked down, seeing the world below from an impossible height. Rocks, wood, and every assortment of shattered debris poured downward with a relentless growl.
With everything he had, he gripped the fence. Both hands. Never letting go. He climbed it like a ladder, hauling himself back onto the land just as it straightened again. His breathing grew heavy and hollow. He crawled to the building and leaned his back against it, staring at the ledge with one hand pressed to his chest.
VYNELOR
HP: 70 / 129
Then several pieces of rubble, trapped and unable to roll away, burst apart. Donnor emerged from beneath them, one arm shattered, his cloak shredded. His scalp was torn with cuts, blood matting his hair and streaking down his face without mercy. He groaned deeply and scanned the area, searching for the child.
DONNOR
HP: 142 / 639
On the first land, Trotto and Tyllidan noticed the sudden blast from below and froze. When they turned, hoping to finish Luminar once and for all, they saw Donnor alive and walking. Rage filled their eyes, along with something else. Their teeth clenched. Tyllidan spun around, intending to call for Kallanor’s help, but on the battlefield he saw only Luminar staring back at him. Her dress, once white, had turned crimson, the fabric soaked in a mixture of her blood and that of the three kings.
LUMINAR
HP: 68 / 514
She lay on the ground, her legs appearing nearly withered. Her feet and ankles had turned black.
Kallanor was no better. He lay on the floor with his back to the two kings, having repeatedly halted Luminar’s advance at the cost of his own legs, and a large portion of his HP.
KALLANOR
HP: 53 / 633
Realizing it was pointless, they chose to face Donnor themselves.
“The child is dead,” Tyllidan seethed. “But this man still lives. Curse him. Curse him!”
Once more, they returned to the ledge and began bombarding the lower land with magic.
But their systems had been pushed far beyond their limits, each use draining their stats and HP further. The system demanded a cost. If the user could not supply enough Magic, it would consume flesh instead. And since the first Throne’s Elect, it had been in constant decay.
That did not stop them.
TROTTO
HP: 47 / 656
TYLLIDAN
HP: 86 / 670
They sent IMs down on them, raining with relentless force.
“Kid!” Donnor shouted, searching the nearly flattened land. “Kid, where are you—?!”
Beams crashed around him, forcing Donnor to shield his face and stagger away. Vynelor heard the man’s desperate voice. He wanted to answer. He wanted to tell him he was still alive. He wanted to—
But he didn’t move. He refused to show himself.
Vynelor shut his eyes and clamped his hands over his ears. Tears spilled freely as his knees curled inward, his body folding in fear. In a broken whisper beneath the pain, he said, “Dad… save me.”
“Kid! Where are you?!” Donnor shouted again.
A beam struck him square in the shoulder—his broken arm. Flesh was pulverized in an instant. He screamed and collapsed to the ground.
DONNOR
HP: 81 / 639
Donnor twisted and looked up toward the first Throne’s Elect. The distance between the two lands had shrunk. He could see the kings clearly now, the third nowhere in sight. Their eyes met. Two ends converging. Faces twisted in agony, yet hardened by conviction.
Neither side relented. As if abandoning the search for the child entirely, Donnor raised his one remaining arm and fired beams back at them.
And so did the kings.
Incantation Magic ? Lv. 50
Incantation Magic ? Lv. 48
—versus—
Incantation Magic ? Lv. 44
The kings fired wildly, without precision. Their muscles were ruined. Trotto clenched his teeth around his arm just to steady it. Tyllidan lay flat on the ground, draping his arm forward to aim. Every shot exacted another cost.
TROTTO
HP: 40 / 656
TYLLIDAN
HP: 67 / 670
Dozens of beams rained down. Donnor fired back, desperately deflecting those aimed at him. Most he managed to block—
but one clipped the corner of his foot
DONNOR
HP: 59 / 639
—burning through his boot and tearing away part of his toes.
He used TM to shield himself, but it quickly became useless under the unending barrage. Still, Donnor endured. He held on, believing the child was hiding. Believing he had saved what he fought for.
On the first land, Luminar continued fighting with the same belief, that the child still lived. That her prophecies were truth, not delusion. She clung to that hope as she hurled boulders toward Kallanor, trying to crush him. He deflected them and answered with his own attacks. Like the others, both of them decayed with every exchange.
LUMINAR
HP: 59 / 514
KALLANOR
HP: 41 / 633
On and on the two battles went.
On and on.
The gods refused defeat.
Blinded by recklessness and fear they could not admit.
Deaf to the consequences of their own foolishness.
All to claim the crown and reign above the systems.
Even as their flesh failed.
As their souls reached higher than their bodies could endure.
But one would remain standing.
TROTTO
HP: 19 / 656
TYLLIDAN
HP: 22 / 670
KALLANOR
HP: 14 / 633
DONNOR
HP: 27 / 639
LUMINAR
HP: 26 / 514
The second Throne’s Elect leveled with the first. The two lands converged in the sky, a low rumble echoing across the region. The great inverted crown—broken. The smaller inverted crown—standing. Dust drifted and settled. The land grew still.
And upon that land, one would stand above them all.
VYNELOR
HP: 70 / 129
