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DRR Book 4, Chapter 56 — Path to Victory
🕑 Added 2025-06-16 15:28:29 +0000 UTCKauku didn't know how any of this was happening. He burned with anger, and for once in the long, long years of his existence, he couldn't take that anger out on everything around him.
More accurately: he was trying to, and he was failing.
Still, his chance would arrive soon. Ethan wasn't nearly prepared enough to fight him, and all his forces were occupied taking apart the Remnants. What did it matter if he'd acquired an army? Kauku had matched him and more, and the end result would just be exactly the same.
He'd already fought Ethan directly. He and his allies had utterly failed to defeat him. That was why Ethan had resorted to this to begin with; because he couldn't beat him alone.
Yet...
Kauku couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was off. That things would be different this time. There was no good reason it would be—it wasn't like Ethan had grown monumentally stronger, and the rest of the Trialgoers were dropping like flies against his Remnants.
It was only a matter of time until he won, wasn't it?
Except those Trialgoers were starting to push him back. He was pouring everything he had into his Remnants, but somehow, those Trialgoers were starting to beat him back. How...
They were looping.
He realized it a moment too late. They were dying, but every time they died, they came back, pouring out of the planet's Heart like pests that refused to be crushed. Worse, every time they came back, they were stronger than before. They were using the design of the Trial against him.
And if that weren't bad enough, every time they did, they fed into Ethan's Truth.
A high-level battle between two practitioners of Firmament were ultimately battles between the Truths that lay in their cores. All else being equal, it was the strength of your Truth and your ability to prove it that allowed you to assert your power over another.
Both he and Ethan carried the same Truth. They were wielders of the same Talent. They sought to Change the world around them. But Kauku was expending his power with every moment that passed, pouring it into maintaining all the changes he'd wrought.
And Ethan?
He brought his Truth with him. He embodied it, almost. Every life he'd touched had been irrevocably altered, not through the power of his Talent but through the force of his will and the strength of his beliefs. All that now converged back on him, and when Kauku tried to look in his direction, well...
All he could see was a tidal wave of Change.
And it was headed straight for him.
—
"You look different," I say when I stand before Kauku again. He does. He looks tired, for one thing—there's an exhaustion in his bones that wasn't there before. The glow of his eyes is a little dimmer, and the force of his presence doesn't push down quite as hard around me.
Kauku glares. "And why do you think that is?"
"Because we're winning," I say bluntly. "You need to stop this, Kauku. Even if you beat us and consume the galaxy, even if you wake your greater self and kill the other Scions—what are you going to do after?"
"After?" Kauku lets out a hollow laugh. "After doesn't matter. Not as long as I kill them both."
"Is your revenge that important to you?"
"As important as saving all these lives are to you, Ethan Hill." Kauku deflates a bit at the question. He seems almost sad now, oddly enough. "I cannot give up my revenge, just as you cannot give up trying to save those who cannot be saved. We are similar in that regard, but..."
He pauses, then shakes his head. "A part of me does wish that we could have met before all this," he says. "Or perhaps that Rhoran had never interfered with my feelings. I think I might have liked being your friend."
I'm silent for a moment. "You're not saying that because you'll change your mind, though."
"There is a certain irony in that those of us that embody Change are often the most fixed beings of all," Kauku says with a chuckle, though there's no real mirth in it. "We are those who impose our Change on the world, not those who are open to change ourselves. Your Knight Inspiration should be able to tell you more about that."
The Knight is silent for a moment, and then—to my surprise—it asks for my permission to speak. I allow it to take over, and the words emerge, rough and full of regret. "You have always been a rigid soul," the Knight says. "One who would do anything for power. In that, you and your fellow Scions were alike... though I always hoped you could be more."
"I almost was," Kauku says.
"Almost," the Knight agrees. "I am glad we were partners, Kaukulnan of the Endless Plains. And I am sorry that we must end this way."
"Partnering with him really mellowed you out." Kauku sighs, and for a moment he looks like he's lost in a flood of memories—and then he shakes his head. "Very well. A fight to the end, then?"
The Knight withdraws, and I find myself in control of my words once more. "If that's the only way we can stop you."
"It is." Kauku hesitates, then shakes his head, and offers me a wry smile. "For what it may be worth—though it surprises me that I can say even this—a part of me hopes you succeed.
"The rest of me, though..." Kauku reaches out, and I feel terrible power gathering into his hand. Ahkelios tenses beside me, his heart hammering in his chest as his Truth suddenly begins to resonate. There's a blade forming—a black-purple construct of pure, destructive Firmament, crackling with energy.
Assimilation. He's copied part of Ahkelios's Truth and imbued that blade with it? That's...
"The rest of me," he says, "just hopes you'll die quickly so I can get this over with."
He slashes.
The world warps around the force of his blow. The air itself shatters like glass, as impossible as that should be. Carried on the edge of his sword is an apocalyptic call of destruction, a slice that embodies pure separation: a blow designed to cut through Firmament itself.
I recognize it. This is the same skill that was once aimed at Naru's core, but more than a thousand times as strong. Trying to catch this one would be tantamount to suicide.
Before I can dodge or try to call up a shield, Ahkelios darts in front of us. He draws forth a construct of vibrant green Firmament, something that resonates with his Truth and echoes back into the fundamental fabric of reality. Unlike Kauku's, his sword carries a song of protection and homecoming.
At the same time, he pulls on the link we share, and I feel my will melding with his own. I Anchor his blade into reality, making it blaze a deeper green than any I've seen before; his Truth digs its roots into the fundamental nature of the world around us.
Pure separation meets protection. Destruction itself meets a promise of a better future.
And hope parries the blow.
The destructive line of Kauku's power hovers midair, frozen in place by Ahkelios's blade; he snarls, taking a step forward and following through with a cut that sears the air and dissipates the rest of the strike. "Don't you dare try to use my own Truth against my friends," Ahkelios growls, his body trembling both with exertion and rage.
Kauku grimaces as his Assimilation fails. He abandons the blade, tossing it down into the Fracture and instead reaching up with a hand and twisting. I feel a new Assimilation settling into place, this time targeted at Guard. He's copying Guard's ability to express skill constructs as simple circuitry, and as he does, he iterates and expands on it, Anchoring a massively complex diagram in the air above him.
Guard narrows his lone optic, then speaks to me through our bond. "He is using a skill circuit to combine the effects of multiple skills in a way that would not ordinarily be possible," he says. "Similar to what Ghost can do."
"Can you stop it?"
"Yes. But I will need your help."
I nod. The bond between us opens up, and an enormous amount of energy begins to flow between us. Guard has massive quantities of Firmament of his own, but my Truth lends him a certain solidity that he doesn't have alone. He can't just make an inverted circuit the way he could with something simpler, but he can identify a weak point in the array.
He's had time to study Ghost's methods, after all.
Guard aims toward a corner of the array and fires. Prismatic Firmament blasts out of his hand and into Kauku's circuit. It doesn't do anything at first—the entire thing is Anchored, reinforced against alteration like that—but then I Anchor the blast into place.
I can feel the startled incredulity from Kauku as the Firmament he's pouring into it suddenly shifts and targets him. "How did you—" he starts, then abandons the train of thought with a snarl, trying to cut off the flow of his own Firmament. Guard and I don't let him do that, of course. We start flooding the array with power of our own, until he's forced to fly up and smash the whole thing, lest he destroy himself.
"You little shits," he says, panting. He pulls back, a thin line of Firmament appearing in his hand and turning into the bow of a violin; he draws it across an invisible instrument, and a terrible, discordant sound suddenly begins to fill the air, Anchored into being. There's a different skill imbued in every note, I realize. The first one is set to erupt with all the force of a volcano.
Before it can reach us, Gheraa steps forward, trumpet in hand. Like with the others, he draws on my link with him, and I Anchor his instrument into place. When he begins to play, a golden shield flickers into existence, carried forth by a triumphant song.
The notes stick to the shield, carrying them right back to Kauku. Gheraa grins. "Don't you have anything original?" he teases casually. "No, wait. I know the answer. You don't, do you? All your skills are copied from all the Trials we Integrators handled for you. Everything you can do has been done by someone else before."
Kauku snarls in frustration. He reaches up and clenches a fist, and I feel an enormous hammer of pure willpower coalescing in the sky; light itself warps under the effect of his strength, amplified by an Anchoring that makes his weapon something more than real. It feels like he's wielding reality itself against us, like he's taken a slice of the landscape and transformed it into a weapon.
Normally, trying to fight his ability to Anchor with my own would be suicide. He has far more experience with the Talent, and a lot more power to pour into it besides.
Right now, though, everything feels different. I'm stronger. I haven't done anything like a phase shift, but something about what I've done—about the tide of battle as a whole—feels like it's empowering my Truth.
Anchoring is done against the will of the world, but right now, the will of the world aligns with me.
I pit my Talent against his—
—and Kauku withdraws.
He snaps back his Talent a second before our wills would have met, his eyes glowing fiercely in his sockets. They look like they're bright with defiance, but there's a secondary emotion in there.
Fear.
He doesn't know if he can win anymore.
In that case, time to press our advantage. Temporal Link. The skill flows from me into the others, granting everything we do a hint of that Temporal Firmament that Kauku can't quite defend against. At the same time, the tide of Remnants below us is starting to subside as Kauku diverts more and more of his power back to himself.
At great cost. Every time he pulls back, everyone else manages to push forward. Some of the other Trialgoers make their way through the army to join me, and I feel my core begin to surge in the process. It feels almost like my Truth is beginning to reshape my core.
No more holding back.
Amplified Gauntlet. Timestrike. Compressive Pulse. The skills flow together like they're meant to be, helped in no small part by the All-Seeing Eye; they wouldn't normally fit together, but a simple Anchor allows me to force them together in a way I couldn't have done before.
[You have learned the Submerged skill: Amplified Temporal Manipulators (Rank E)]
Pure temporal energy coalesces around my fists, blazing with power. Reaching out with them feels like I'm reaching out through time itself. The new gauntlets allow me to plunge my fists into the temporal stream and turn it into a weapon.
I snap my fingers, and time itself collapses around one of Kauku's arms.
He screams. There's shock, anger, and pain all twisted together in that single shout, even as his arm begins to decay. A massive pulse of Firmament erupts from him, meant to dispel the skill and push him out of range, but Ahkelios is in place before he can even move, one blade pressed against his neck. Gheraa's music presses down around him, restricting his movements. Guard's chains wrap around him tightly.
And one by one, the others are joining in.
Adeya's here now, the cat on her shoulders hissing angrily at Kauku and causing a hundred slivers of time needles to manifest in the sky around him. Her wings shine a petrifying light on him, causing small specks of his armor to turn to stone.
Taylor and Dhruv have made their way up, too. The night sky itself opens up above Kauku, devouring a portion of any Firmament he tries to use. A concentration of sound turns the air around him into a solid cage.
Kauku tries to tear himself free with a roar, but even when two or three of the restraining skills begin to snap and fray, four or five new ones are put into place. More and more Trialgoers find their way to us and join in the effort, some of them human, others victims of Hestia's loops.
Artor, an old scorpion-like alien that only very begrudgingly joined the fight at Guard's behest, inflicts Kauku with something he calls temporal poison. Ghost creates a massive, auto-adjusting skill array that creates a localized version of our temporal loops.
Lilia shows up again, still with a knife, but apparently one that can cut through time. Her techniques are less complicated than the others.
Which is to say she ducks between all the skills that surround him and stabs him repeatedly.
Something snaps. Kauku erupts with some sort of Death-based blast, Anchored with all his remaining power as he leverages everything he can into ripping himself free; everything around him begins to rot—
Great Filter.
I shape the skill into a sphere centered around Kauku, stopping the skill in its tracks. It strains against me for a moment, making the Filter crack, but Kauku doesn't have the time to push it further—not when Guard's chains are shooting out toward him again.
Taylor joins up with him, and somehow he manages to imbue Guard's chains with his Astral Firmament. The chains shine with the glittering starlight and the void of space, and when they wrap around Kauku's armor, it cracks. Immutable bone begins to break beneath the force of the stars themselves.
And then it's Fyran's turn. He grins at me as he Firesteps into position, holding out a hand toward the chains and lending it the strength of his own truth. Inevitability pours into those chains, holding him down.
"All on you, now," he says.
Something about that sparks a memory.
One of my earliest skills was Temporal Echo, with its ability to create clones of myself from former loops. I'm so far beyond that now, though. Shatter Time has created hundreds of pocket worlds, hundreds of moments out of time, and Temporal Link can only hold the smallest portion of that.
For now.
[Your mastery of Temporal Link has improved!]
Because the air around us is full of temporal energy. Enough to hold Kauku down, despite all his power. It's charged with the strength of my Truth, and with all of that in place, I can reach through time itself.
Everything I've been through, every battle I've fought, every victory and every defeat. Every change my actions have wrought. It's all here, gathered into a single point. I don't even have to do the work. All I have to do is call to it.
And it answers.
[Temporal Link has evolved into the Submerged skill: Temporal Culmination (Rank C)!]
I wield the skill like a temporal spear, Anchoring it with every fragment of willpower I have—
—and Kauku's core, the critical piece of him that lies underneath all that armor and bone... cracks.
Comments
Gingiberry
wonderful display of weaponized friendship made manifest
BeanerOO
Now THIS is how you do a power of friendship culmination arc!!!
Mr.Turtle
That's the power of friendship, Kauku! Thanks for the chapter!
