Crystalise: The Exaltation System: ASCENDANT Read online

  Liam had but a second to glimpse his brother toppling back over the railing and into the abyss of clouds below.

  06 | Vengeance

  Liam called out his brother’s name and deployed a lifeline of cords to try and stop his fall. The cords went taut around Liam’s arm as James took hold. Laurent tackled Liam before he could pull James back up to the bridge. Liam struggled against the fire exalt and kept a white-knuckled grip.

  The weight on the cord shifted as James’s freefall became a face-first swing straight for the columns beneath the bridge. Liam breathed a sigh of relief when James’s fall broke with a cursed grunt. Just hearing confirmation of his brother’s survival was enough.

  Laurent looped one arm under Liam’s chin and bore his knew down into Liam’s back with his full body weight. Despite Liam’s struggle, Laurent wrestled Liam into submission and his arm curled into a chokehold. Liam roared with his attempt to tear away from Laurent’s efforts to break his neck.

  He could feel the fatigue in Laurent’s body. The Eighth Pillar was baking himself alive in his own sentisuit. Liam could feel it in the tiring of Laurent’s screams and the silence that followed his nonsensical ramblings about protecting the Chevalier.

  “James, hurry up! I can’t hold him forever!”

  “I’m climbing!” James answered.

  Liam’s LCR depleted as the flames licked at the cords binding him to James. At that point in the fight, the only amalgamation of metal Liam could muster had a pathetically low melting point against Laurent’s unrestrained fire.

  Even in that moment, wrestling under Laurent, Liam could only watch in horror as the cords softened and perspired small droplets of liquefied brass and lead. When fully exposed to the flames, the woven iron threads at the heart of each cord would melt and split.

  Laurent’s sentisuit hummed and strained to keep the interior cooled against the inferno around them. Scorching heat leaked through the cracks in Laurent’s armor. That armor couldn’t possibly take much more abuse.

  Liam elbowed Laurent and did his best to fight with one hand literally tangled up in a metal lifeline to his brother. Every motion was a blur of tangled limbs and brief glimpses of wild bloodlust in the Eighth Pillar’s eyes.

  Liam’s luck ran out. His strangled arm, tangled in cords, was suddenly free of James’s weight. The dripping remnants of the cord whipped free as Liam’s stomach sank.

  No—James!

  The fire exalt laughed and pinned Liam again before he could attempt to catch his falling brother. Liam’s senses dulled and his head spun. He could hardly keep up with Laurent’s wrestling in the seconds that followed the snap of the cord. The realization that James had fallen hit Liam with numbing force.

  A tidal wave of utter pain swallowed Liam. He could only sense the free-fall that consumed his brother in that moment.

  Laurent’s hoarse laughter boomed as reality caved in on Liam.

  The Eighth Pillar grabbed Liam by the back of the helmet and yanked his head back. Liam’s face then smashed into the ground with dizzying repetition. His visor had already taken damage in the blast of the alkali bomb. Now, those cracks split even deeper across his visor.

  Liam’s body gave exhausted protest in his efforts to struggle back against Laurent. His limbs felt too damned heavy to move and his adrenaline surge dwindled into fatigue.

  Every crash of his face into the ground knocked his head against the inside of his cracking visor. Sharp pieces of lucidium-plated polycarbonate cut into his skin as he squeezed his eyes shut and felt the inferno’s heat trickle in.

  Warnings of compromised armor integrity chimed and fell on deaf ears. Liam conjured more cords from his waning lucidium reserves. All he had left were pathetic metals that could barely withstand the heat.

  Liam’s skull rattled with each slam against the ground. Growing fractures splintered across his visor with every blow.

  Then came a different cracking sound—there was something else on the ground beneath his helmet. Sleet and ice spread across the bridge as it crystallized once more.

  On his glitched UI, the temperature plummeted.

  Cold air filtered into Liam’s visor. As frosty as it was, anything other than the heat was a godsend as he lay trapped beneath a human incinerator.

  Despite the disorientation caused by Laurent’s assault, Liam took control of the cords and stopped the blows.

  Above them, James climbed back over the edge of the bridge, followed by a rising storm of frigid mist. Ice spread and crystallized under his body as the silvery veins of his sentisuit glowed with a flood of last-ditch power—an aetherbreak. James must have activated it just in time to turn the wall into something he could grab and climb.

  Laurent lunged for James with a snarl and roar. The tangle of cords binding Laurent slowed him down and only fueled his fury.

  “Oh, you foolish little shit. You should’ve just fallen!”

  Liam manipulated the cords to loop around the spikes of ice jutting up from the ground. The cords tightened and trapped the Eighth Pillar, who tugged and lashed out with plumes of fire.

  Laurent roared, “No! You’ll burn for this!”

  The ensnared fire exalt stood little chance against the wintery aetherbreak which descended upon him. Laurent’s lucidium was too depleted to burn through James’s ice.

  The lucidium converter on the back of James’s suit roared to life with four massive bursts of lucidium exhaust. The sight of an exalt in an aetherbreak always reminded Liam of an angel with great, outstretched wings of light. Bold, shining rays and neon colors billowed from the lucidium converter.

  With James’s lucidium output at its peak, the surrounding temperature plunged and snuffed out the Eighth Pillar’s flames.

  Laurent screamed and thrashed against the cords, which Liam pulled tight to keep Laurent in submission.

  James conjured another ice javelin. In a storm of lights and mist, he released the javelin upon Laurent. A wake of ice trailed behind like waves of a parted, frozen sea.

  The javelin plunged through Laurent’s chest and silenced his screams. With a final, strangled gasp, the Eighth Pillar slumped back over the railing and plummeted.

  * * *

  EXP: +50,000 EXP EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || RANK 7 → RANK 8 || LV.79 → LV. 81 || EXP: 1010029 || stats ATK - 182 → 189 [+7] DEF - 229 → 232 [+3] AGI - 169 → 176 [+7] LUK - 113 → 118 [+5] EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || OKC: 14 → 15 || RANK 7 → RANK 8 || LV.78 → LV. 80 || EXP: 985321 || stats ATK - 223 → 226 [+3] DEF - 167 → 171 [+4] AGI - 219 → 224 [+5] LUK - 236 → 238 [+2]

  * * *

  07 | Liminal Space

  Liam slumped into the frosty slush beneath him. His head spun, still drunk on adrenaline and more emotions than he could name.

  All that mattered was that James was alive.

  “Victory awarded to Odonata Team 5. Officiated kill count to James Sterling adjusted to 15,” an automated voice chimed over the comms.

  James’s footsteps crunched over ice as he approached Liam.

  “You didn’t really think I’d go out without a bang, did you?” James teased.

  Although Liam had closed his eyes to ease his dizziness, he could still sense the cocky grin on his brother’s face.

  It must be nice to have zero sense of your own mortality.

  “Don’t even talk to me right now, man. I thought you were dead. I thought I’d never fucking see you again.”

  “Don’t get all misty-eyed.”

  James offered support as Liam climbed to his feet.

  The man who killed Jove was dead.

  Liam’s stomach turned slightly when Jove crossed his mind. Jove’s two children back home in Euclid would never see their father again because of Laurent.

  This kill was for them.

  The expression on James’ face softened.

  “We did it,” James said, as if on the same wavelength. “For Jove… for Lo and for Art.”

  “I know.”

  “
Fuck that guy. Let’s keep going. We can’t stop now.”

  The Spire of the Chevalier and the exalt’s gateway lay not far ahead of them.

  “You think this whole tower is the Chevalier’s Trial?” James stared up at the massive spire. “How many floors do you think it has?”

  “Fifty-one,” Liam answered. “I’ve read that most floors are for research. Sentisuit development, lucidium tech and whatnot. The Chevalier protects it all.”

  “Protect it all…” James muttered with bitterness in his voice. “From other realms?”

  “Anyone who may seek to weaponize this tech against Libelle. Invader or not…” Liam replied. “Chances are, there might not be anyone else left alive out there, anyway.”

  It was disheartening to imagine that other realms around the world may have collapsed. Liam did not want to think of the human species as near extinct.

  Reality, however, was as merciless as it was cold.

  At one time, thirty-six lucidium-powered realms kept mankind safe from the frozen world beyond shimmering, translucent borders. Sixteen of those realms had collapsed since the beginning of the so-called Lucidium Age. Some crumbled under system or structural degradation. Others broke under the weight of civil unrest.

  Realms were closed ecosystems. It only took a short few years of resource scarcity before a realm went to war with another out of desperation.

  However, it was not only mere human nature which killed the fallen realms. The remains of humanity soon learned of another threat that wandered the wasteland.

  After the fall of the sixteenth realm, humans witnessed and survived to tell the tale of the massive beasts hidden in the endless blizzard.

  “Malefic & Oppositional Beasts”—mobs.

  The beastly anomalies spawned from wells of unpurified lucidium bubbling up to the planet’s surface. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised anyone to discover this. After all, similar beasts spawned in certain parts of Libelle. The vast greenbelts and preserved forests between cities, a region referred to as the Field frequently saw these anomalies spawn.

  Mobs within the realm were beasts born of raw, festering lucidium that had aged out of its inanimate, harvestable phase of life. Military exalts stationed outside of each city ensured that mobs would never live to cross urban borders.

  The beasts outside of Libelle, however, were massive monstrosities.

  Liam had once read that the wasteland mobs were easily the size of the Chevalier’s Spire. Beasts like that gathered in numbers to whittle away at the Realm’s life-preserving bio perimeter.

  Without military exalts protecting Libelle from the wasteland mobs, the beasts could easily decimate the delicate system which preserved the realm’s artificial climate.

  Liam could understand why it had been sixty years since Libelle’s last known contact with any other realm in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps it would only be a matter of time before the wasteland mobs took Libelle down, too.

  The gates of the crystalline tower before them opened and the color scheme in Liam’s UI shifted from red to green. This shift indicated their entry into a neutral, combat-prohibited area.

  A liminal space—a space to stop, recover, and then move on.

  “Any traps?” James asked.

  “Not picking up anything on the UI,” Liam answered.

  “Good. I need a minute,” James exhaled and pulled off his helmet.

  Liam did the same. With the ambient temperature within a safe range and no external threats identified, he welcomed the cool air against his skin.

  With his helmet off, Liam’s world took on a hazy blur. Halos bloomed around every light source. He was born with poor vision that worsened as he entered adulthood. Twenty years ago, this may have exempted him from Exaltation.

  Too bad I wasn’t born a couple decades sooner.

  The visor in his helmet sharpened and clarified his view, compensating for the structural deficiencies in his eyes. Without that or his glasses, he could only just make out their surroundings with a tired squint.

  A cold and sterile atmosphere dominated the entry foyer of the Chevalier’s Spire. Ivies sprawled and twisted across white walls and floors. Small glimpses of green gave the space an eerie air of forgotten life. Tall marble statues of past Chevaliers welcomed the newcomers with inanimate indifference.

  Liam squinted up at them. Despite the fuzziness, he could still identify each effigy of Chevaliers he’d studied in his youth.

  Heroes from their history books. Icons of their childhood. As kids in Euclid, they recognized each elite warrior and grew up being told that they must aspire to become them.

  Exalts were always meant to be warriors in wait to protect humanity from the potential second coming of the beasts that left their world in its frozen state.

  The Evigilari.

  They came from the stars and they drained the planet of countless elements and natural resources. The first exalts forced the invaders out and bought humanity enough time to heal from the calamity that was the arrival of the Evigilari.

  Liam walked alongside the statues slowly. The statues of Kier Cuevas, Adrian Harlequin and Jonas Blackwell among at least eighteen others all stared down at the two with empty marble eyes.

  The visor on his helmet crackled and popped as the repair module reconstructed the cracked polycarbonate.

  “Liam.” James leaned against the base of a marble statue.

  “Huh?”

  “Is there a word for like… those moments when you feel kind of… loopy and out of your own body?”

  “Dissociation, maybe. Derealization?”

  “I think I feel like that.”

  “Probably from stress,” Liam said. “Just keep your head on straight. We’re almost done.”

  I feel it, too.

  Some kind of out-of-body sensation.

  A sudden awareness that there are very few pages left in the book—we are so very close to the end. A feeling that I categorically should not be aware of.

  Liam tried to steer his thoughts away from the tension. He was, however, still deeply shaken by nearly losing his brother. They had been born together and in the life path they shared, Liam had always assumed that they would most likely die together. After all—they were exalts.

  Most exalts died in Exaltation if they didn’t survive the mandatory three years or reached the minimum Rank 3. Many who made to Rank 3 voluntarily returned to civilian life—that had been their original plan.

  At least, until James and Jove decided to double down on their gamble for glory. Liam was merely dragged along for the ride. The rest was history.

  The journey had reshaped him—irreparably.

  James, on the other hand, seemed to be born for this.

  We’re alive, though. For now.

  Just let this moment last a little longer.

  The statue of Chevalier Serena Lucienne loomed over him.

  Like the other statues, Lucienne wore her own unique, Chevalier armor.

  Upon finishing her battle with the Chevalier who preceded her, Lucienne’s armor evolved and changed into the immortalized in the statue.

  Liam could still recall that decisive match, almost a decade ago.

  He had been in awe of the way her sentisuit’s lucidium restructured itself into a white and gold suit, accented by glowing, cyan circuitry patterns.

  Like the ever-evolving nature of the lucidium woven through sentisuits, the armor progressed alongside the exalt who wore it. At rank promotions, suits took on greater changes to compensate for intensified lucidium output.

  “You remember the Lucienne and Cuevas match?” James spoke.

  Liam nodded, “Yeah.”

  “What an upset. She was at an elemental disadvantage against Cuevas, too. But still… she came out alive, and he didn’t.”

  “Nobody expected her to live.” Liam smiled softly, recalling an amusing memory, “Dad was so pissed. He placed his bets on Cuevas… and at least three other challengers after.”

  James
snorted and laughed, “…after a couple failed bets, he just got petty. Someone sack this immortal bitch already!”

  Liam reflexively winced—sometimes James’s impersonation of their father hit a little too close to home. While James laughed at the memory of their father’s frustration, Liam’s stomach tightened uncomfortably. The way their mother flinched at that shouting still echoed in the tensing of Liam’s arms and shoulders.

  I didn’t want to remember that much.

  “I miss watching matches as a kid,” James said, staring up at the statues. “All the exalts and Pillars were so cool back then. Now… having fought them… I guess I expected more. Everything really does look bolder on a screen.”

  Liam didn’t realize how morbid Exaltation matches were as a kid until he was much older. As a kid, the grisly deaths of those who failed had simply never felt real. It was as if a part of him truly believed that the exalts killed weren’t really dead.

  Out of sight, out of mind.

  Reality hit like an avalanche when Exaltation came for him years later. He could still remember the nausea and guilt that plowed over him after his first kill.

  Killing stray little mobs in the Field was one thing. Killing other exalts—other people—before they killed him was another.

  James never thought twice about killing his opponents, it seemed. Nor did James appear to think much of it after. It had been James who, after watching the Lucienne and Cuevas match, decided for the two of them, “We’re gonna be the next Chevaliers!”

  Liam often wondered if the realization that death was permanent ever crossed his brother’s mind.

  Every kill was just another set of numbers to James—gains in their stats, prestige quantified.

  In their first deathmatch battle, James hardly reacted to his opponent freezing to death in front of them.

  Maybe it was because they froze so quickly. Maybe it was the way their opponent simply appeared stopped in time, neither living or dead. There was a surreal element to the lack of blood or gore that came with the death of James’s opponents.