Read Novel Full Chapter 1904: Careless Blunder
Chapter 1904: Careless Blunder
Beyond the arch, in a colonnaded gallery built as a killing ground, waited the honor guard of the high clans: three thousand veterans in rune-dense blacksteel, tower shields interlocked rank behind rank into the dark, twin ballista platforms flanking the far end.
Their commander had watched the tide of magma die at the threshold, and his voice rang out in triumph.
"You see that, lads?! The old stones hold! He can’t cast in here!" A blade swept the length of the gallery. "He’s one man with a saber! Loose! Cut him down!"
Quinlan, two steps past the threshold, had stopped.
"Ah," said the Primordial Villain. "I forgot."
He had not called Kaelira and Black Fang.
The first ballista bolt caught him square in the chest while his mouth was still open.
The crew had been laying that shot since his boot crossed the line, and it arrived as the whole argument of dwarven siegecraft in one length of blacksteel.
Synchra surged to meet it, living plates stacking at the point of impact, shrieking with the effort of the catch, and the effort was not enough. The blow went through armor and ribs alike, and the Primordial Villain left the floor.
The bolt’s force carried him back down the gallery, back through the arch, past his women still on the safe side of the line - just about to step through after him - and out across the landing beyond, where the mountain’s masons had thoughtfully provided forty feet of polished stone for him to land on.
"Quin?!" Kitsara’s ears shot straight up.
"What are you doing?!" Ayame hissed.
Quinlan, for his part, spent the flight productively.
’I’m a terrible husband. How could I step into the no magic barrier before inviting them?’
He hit the landing on his back, skipped once, and slid the rest of the way in a long scream of sparks, coming to rest with one boot hanging over the top step of the processional stair.
Behind the arch, the gallery went insane.
"He’s down!" the commander was roaring, hoarse with joy. "Did you see it, lads?! The stones hold! Ancestors bless the old stones, the stones hold!"
And the rebellion, cresting the processional stair at exactly that moment, did not wait to see whether he would get up.
The war hymn broke over the landing, and the under-tier’s first wedge came boiling past the crash site: tunnel-wardens with mining picks, smiths with forge-hammers, porters in scavenged plate, thousands more on the stairs behind them.
They had fought up through their whole city for this door, and they went through the arch first, straight onto the shield-wall of the finest soldiers their mountain had forged.
His girls did not charge anywhere.
They gathered around the crash site instead, settling into a loose circle around their man, arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
Serika watched him raise one hand and wave it vaguely: the universal signal of a man requesting not to be perceived for a moment.
"You’re too tanky for your own good. Synchra pampers you so much you’ve become careless."
"You forgot to invite Kaelira and Black Fang, didn’t you~" Lucille’s purr carried zero surprise. "I was wondering when you’d notice~"
Blossom said nothing at all. Her tail hung limp behind her, and she was fighting the hardest battle on the landing: refusing to meet his gaze. Her eyes kept sliding toward him anyway, and kept being hauled back, and what finally escaped her was barely a mutter.
"Master... bad...! Careless!!"
It landed harder than the ballista had.
Synchra’s plates were still rippling over his chest in agitated waves, examining a dent the size of a shield boss. Cracks ran through three of them. Something deeper creaked when he breathed.
Quinlan reached along the link. Out here it was alive, and it was already occupied.
"> <Quin.>
He blinked at the ring of faces above him.
"> <Kaelira. Perfect timing.>
Flat. Suspicious."> <Where are you?> Flat. Suspicious.
"> <Hm? Why do you ask?>
A pause that had weight behind it.
The furious girlfriend tone alone told him he was in deep trouble."> <Damn.> The furious girlfriend tone alone told him he was in deep trouble.
"> <Quin.>
"> <I may be exterminating the dwarven resistance at the moment.>
The link fell silent. It did not close. It simply sat there against his mind and sulked, loudly.
Quinlan chuckled out loud, and his ribs made him pay for it.
he admitted.
"> <Mhm.>
"> <I was just about to invite you over. There’s a door here with your name on it.>
"> <Mhm.>
"> <I mean it.>
"> <Mhm.>
He sat up inside the semicircle, wincing, and opened the warp gate.
"> <Voilà.>
Kaelira stepped through it four seconds later in full armor, hammer already in hand, violet eyes finding him instantly: sitting on the ground, dented, at the crime scene. Black Fang came a silent half-step behind her, blade in its sheath.
Then both of them just looked at him.
A glare, he could have weathered. What he got instead was the stare of two kittens who had just learned that dinner had happened without them. Kaelira’s version came with wounded violet eyes and long ears quivering with grievance. Black Fang’s version was no expression at all, held on him one full second longer than no expression requires.
"What happened doesn’t mean you can ignore me now..." Black Fang muttered under her breath.
He’d armed her with a bunch of pills, effectively ending their wager. Now she no longer needed to be around him.
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that at all," Quinlan managed, hand arriving on his dented chestplate.
"Hmph." Kaelira swept past him without another word, chin high, straight through the arch and into the war, waiting for nobody. Black Fang followed her in, and the sounds of the battle promptly gained two new instruments: a hammer, and a silent katana that killed things.
The semicircle filed every second of it away for later.
Quinlan, still sitting in his crater, began opening more warp gates. They spun open across the landing one after another, cut to places scattered across half of Iskaris, and his old guard came through them ready.
Lyra arrived in full tower-shield harness, pink braid bound for war, Ria at her heels already laughing at the dent in his chest. Sylvaris followed in moonlit glory.
Cedric and Selene came through sword-first, and Abudha took one measuring look at the arch and cracked his knuckles.
Blackjack ducked out of the next gate wearing the grin that had emptied border towns, and Raika came through scoffing, furious that the fight had started without her. Orianna walked out of the last one, read the anchor-stones, the arch, and the battle beyond in a single unhurried look, and said nothing at all.
Two gates stayed shut. Sera was still tending Iris’s wounds tonight, and not even a war got to interrupt that.
"Fair warning," Quinlan called over the din. "No casting past the line."
Ignis arrived overhead on a pillar of flame at exactly the wrong moment to hear it.
"You’re joking. You called me?" He landed grinning, fire still crawling on his shoulders. "I thought you’d forgotten about me."
"I kinda did, to be honest."
"...You’re only honest at the worst of times."
Quinlan elected to ignore that. "Also, would I summon you for a joke?"
"Yes."
"...True." Quinlan gestured grandly at the arch from the ground. "Regardless. In there, you’re a tall man with good shoulders."
"No problem." Ignis seemed full of confidence.
Two more gates opened at the back of the landing, well clear of the arch, and this time nobody came through armed for a charge. Liora stepped out with light already pooling at her fingertips. Shallan followed, and took in the landing like a quartermaster claiming ground. Adventurer Kai’s ex slaves, Kaelira’s teammates.
"Past the arch, nothing heals. Could you two build me a station? Anyone who comes back through that line bleeding is yours." Quinlan told them, nodding at the first wounded rebels already being dragged back over the line.
"Leave it to us," Liora said, already moving toward the nearest stretcher.
Shallan was already redirecting rebels with a voice that expected obedience: walking wounded to the left, dying men to Liora first.
All gates were opened with clear purpose.
The last, he opened on a whim.
Morgana Ravenshade stepped through it with her staff in hand, crimson eyes sweeping the landing, the arch, and the mountain in one cold inventory.
"Where," she said.
"Through the arch," Quinlan said pleasantly. "One detail. The hall beyond is a null-domain."
A silence arrived and settled in.