Accidentally Summoned To The Dark Throne

Chapter 10: The Architecture of Heresy

The sound of the diamond pillars cracking was like a rumble. It vibrated through the ground a sound of math being rewritten. Purple data lines bled from the stone. They were not cracks, but infections. Evander was using his skill to target the code that held the grand sanctuary together.

High Priestess Seraphina stared at the spreading corruption. Her eyes were wide with terror. She had been the voice of the Radiant Dawn her whole life. She had commanded kings. Executed heretics.. Evander was not a heretic. He was a force dismantling the board she played on.

Her shock lasted a second. Then her training took over.

"Blasphemy!" Seraphina shouted. "You are a glitch! I will correct the error!"

She thrust her hands forward. This e air is superheated. A blinding wave of plasma rushed toward Evander. The heat was so intense that the quartz beneath her feet began to melt.

Evanders system interface warned him.. He was calm. He knew magic was just coded energy. Energy could be reallocated.

"Sub-skill activation " Evander thought. "Resource Reallocation. Target: Incoming kinetic matrix. Destination: The liquid gold capacitor below."

The proxy shell raised its iron arm. The holy fire hit the metal. Was drawn down the arm. It vented out the bottom of the iron boots. The redirected plasma shot downward. It struck the surface of the pit of gold. A massive geyser erupted.

The proxy shell remained standing. The false golden armor was melted away. The dark scarred iron beneath was revealed. The silver mask was charred.. The crimson light glowing from the eye slits remained steady.

"Your miracles are poorly optimized energy transfers " Evanders voice rang out. "You spend much mana trying to look impressive."

Seraphina fell to one knee. She gasped for breath. Her white robes were singed. She looked at the iron golem through the steam. Her mind struggled to comprehend what had happened.

He is not fighting me with magic Seraphina realized. He is fighting the room itself.

She stood up. Her posture shifted from a spellcaster to a desperate commander. She needed to destroy the anchor. The true soul controlling the machine.

"Core directive!" Seraphina screamed. "Initiate purge protocol! Ignore the shell! Find the tether! Find his soul!"

The Core of the Radiant Dawn responded. A beam of light shot down from the core. It struck the quartz bridge between Evander and Seraphina.

The light splashed outward like water. It flooded the chamber with brightness. It struck directly at Evanders connection.

Below Evanders real body convulsed. He collapsed onto the stone floor. Blood poured from his nose and ears. The pain felt like someone had driven a hot iron spike through his consciousness.

Vespera rushed to his side. She glowed with mana. She tried to stabilize his heartbeat.

"Evander!" Vespera cried out. "The synchronization is tearing your soul apart! The core has bypassed your proxy defenses!"

Evander could barely hear her. His vision split into two feeds. One showed the stone of the throne room. The other showed the geometry of the core chamber.

"System warning. Hostile infiltration of the network link. The Core of the Radiant Dawn is attempting to execute an override on the Abyssal Coordinator class. Time remaining until system deletion: Forty seconds."

He gritted his teeth. He was not going to die in a hole. He had not clawed his way up just to be erased.

"System command " Evander thought. "Initiate protocol. Network partitioning."

A new window opened in his vision.

"Protocol initiated. State parameters for network partitioning."

"Cut the tether to the proxy shells feedback " Evander commanded. "Isolate the pain receptors. Transfer one hundred percent of processing power to the Structural Deconstruction module."

"Warning " the system replied. "Severing feedback will render the proxy shell blind to physical damage. You will be operating the vessel through data only. The risk of proxy destruction increases by eighty-seven percent."

"Do it!" Evander roared.

The agonizing spike in his mind vanished. The blinding light filling his vision snapped off. His connection to the surface was not broken. He could no longer see through the eyes of the iron sentinel. His interface shifted into a wireframe map of the core chamber.

He was now flying blind. He piloted the proxy shell through a radar.

On the wireframe map the proxy shell was an avatar. Seraphina was a hostile red cluster of energy. The twelve diamond pillars were targets. The core above was a sphere of white code.

The Structural Deconstruction module was still active. The cores defense mechanisms fought back. They tried to heal the code in the pillars.

"I need processing power " Evander thought. "The core is drawing on the collective soul energy of the upper district to defend itself. I need a distraction. I need to starve her of her power sources."

He opened a communication channel. He linked directly to the lower district network node he had established earlier.

"System command: Send priority message to Guild Master Ovan. Authorization code: Abyssal Tyrant."

In the district of Castra the fog had thickened.. The streets were not quiet. Rumors had taken root like wildfire. Thousands of citizens had gathered in the main market squares. They were armed with pitchforks and heavy blacksmith hammers. They stared up at the walls of the upper district. They watched the column of golden light shooting, into the sky. They believed the church was preparing to slaughter them.

Ovan stood on the balcony of his guild hall wrapped in furs watching the mob with a mix of awe and terror. He had never seen the common people of the empire rise up like this. The weight of their panic was a physical force in the air.

Suddenly the small purple communication crystal in his pocket grew hot. Ovan pulled it out. Dropped it onto the wooden railing. The crystal projected an image of the iron sentinels mask the eyes glowing with a cold ruthless light.

"The time for waiting is over Ovan " Evanders voice crackled from the crystal. "The High Priestess has initiated the purge sequence. If she completes it everyone in this city dies. You must break the secondary synchronization nodes to cut her power supply."

"What?" Ovan shouted over the roar of the mob. "The secondary nodes are located inside the district walls! We cannot breach the gates!"

"They cannot slaughter you if you move as a wave " Evander replied. "The sentinels are confused and cut off from their command. Tell the mob to tear down the iron gates and smash the crystal capacitors in the courtyards. Lead them Ovan. If you fail your wealth will burn with you."

The transmission cut out leaving Ovan staring at the crystal. He looked down at the thousands of faces below him. He was a merchant, not a leader.. He knew a losing equation when he saw one. His only way out was forward.

Ovan turned to his guild guards drawing a beautifully crafted ceremonial sword. "Open the guild armory!" he shouted. "Give every man there a real weapon! We march on the district! For the survival of Castra!"

The mobs roar was deafening. A massive chaotic tide of humanity surged up the winding streets crashing against the iron-reinforced gates. The Vanguard sentinels stationed at the gates watched with horror. They raised their halberds. Activated their defensive barriers but they were vastly outnumbered. Their morale was broken. They had not been fed properly in two days and rumors of the churchs betrayal had infected their ranks. When the mob crashed against the gates wielding heavy mining picks and battering rams the sentinels hesitated. That hesitation was fatal.

The gates groaned under the pressure the iron hinges screaming before giving way. The mob poured into the district washing over the pristine avenues overturning carriages and setting fire to the ecclesiastical tapestries. They flooded into the courtyards locating the glowing golden crystal capacitors and began smashing them with heavy hammers.

Deep underground Seraphina felt the impact. She was standing on the bridge channeling the cores light to trace Evanders soul, when a sudden shudder ran through the structure. The blinding golden light filling the dome flickered, dimming by a fraction of a percent.

Inside his digital wireframe view Evander saw the white sphere of the cores data destabilize. Error notifications popped up on his screen. "System update. Secondary power nodes in the district have been compromised. The core is experiencing a ten percent reduction in mana absorption. Structural defense matrix weakened."

Evander seized the opening. He allocated all processing power to the Structural Deconstruction module. The purple data lines infecting the twelve diamond pillars surged forward digging deeper into the stone.

On the plane the sound of the pillars cracking amplified into a deafening roar. Massive chunks of diamond broke loose plummeting down into the pit of liquid gold. The entire subterranean dome began to shake dust and debris raining down from the high ceiling.

Seraphina stumbled, barely maintaining her balance on the melting quartz bridge. She looked up at the core, panic breaking through her exterior. "You are destroying the foundations of the world!" she screamed at the iron sentinel. "The core is what keeps the chasm from expanding! If you break the pillars the entire city will fall into the abyss!"

Evander did not hear her words. His analytical module translated the vibration of her vocal cords into a text string on his interface. He read her plea. Felt nothing.

"Let it fall " Evander thought. "The empire was built on top of a graveyard. It's time the ground reclaimed its property."

Seraphina realized words were useless. She had to sever the link before the dome collapsed. She pulled out a slender dagger made of pure crystallized holy water. She charged across the bridge her eyes locked onto the glowing crimson slits of the iron mask.

Evanders wireframe radar detected her movement. The hostile red cluster was closing in. "System alert. Incoming melee strike. Weapon signature: density anti-magic blade. Estimated impact time: Three seconds."

Evander waited until she was one away from impact. "Command: Execute override. Target coordinates: Bridge segment beneath hostile entity."

The proxy shell raised its iron boot and slammed it down onto the melting quartz of the bridge. The bridge dissolved.

Seraphinas foot found nothing but air as she lunged forward with the dagger. She let out a scream as she plummeted downward her white robes fluttering violently as she fell toward the boiling pit of liquid gold.

Seraphina was the High Priestess of the Radiant Dawn. She was not going to die from a fall. Down the pit massive wings made entirely of blinding white light erupted from her back. She arrested her fall hovering above the boiling gold her face twisted in a mask of divine fury. She raised her hands toward the core above.

"Avatars of the Dawn!" Seraphina bellowed. "Defend the sanctuary! Purge the interloper!"

The Core of the Radiant Dawn responded to its priestess. The massive golden machine stopped spinning. Its outer rings unlatched, opening like the petals of a flower. Six figures descended.

They were humanoid constructs standing twice as tall as Evanders iron sentinel. They had no faces, no armor and no weapons. Their bodies were made entirely of solidified light radiating an aura that burned away the falling dust. They landed on the remaining sections of the quartz bridge surrounding the proxy shell.

Evanders system radar exploded with proximity warnings. Six tier hostile entities had entered his immediate strike zone. "System analysis: Avatars of the Dawn. Entity class: Pure Energy Constructs. Threat level: Critical. Physical attacks will be ineffective. Magical resistance: Ninety-nine percent."

Back in the Underworld Vespera watched Evanders face. He was still lying on the stone floor his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. "What is happening?" she asked softly. The tension in the room was unbearable. She could feel the ambient mana of the underworld shifting wildly as the battle above raged on.

In his mind Evander was analyzing the avatars. They were energy, immune to physical damage and highly resistant, to standard magic. If he had been a combat class he would have been slaughtered in seconds.. He was an Abyssal Coordinator. He did not fight enemies; he managed them.

"Constructs of energy do not have their own internal mana cores " Evander reasoned. "They are tethered directly to the core. They are simply extensions of the machine. Which means they operate on a closed-loop network."

He opened his Territory Management module. "System command: Designate the bridge perimeter as a resource zone. Activate Sub-skill: Energy Siphon Network."

The six avatars moved simultaneously. They raised their glowing arms preparing to unleash a synchronized wave of destruction.

As they let out the energy Evander didn't move out of the way. He started up his energy drain system.

The purple glow around the metal figure flared up violently. Spread across the ground in a complex pattern that matched the human summoning circle but was completely flipped. When the six blasts of light hit the pattern they didn't explode. They were. Held in a kind of suspended state the energy struggling against Evanders digital constraints.

* Warning. Storage capacity getting too high. Energy drain system stability at forty percent.

I don't need to store it Evander thought. I just need to loop it back.

He targeted the energy streams. Redirected them back into the avatars themselves. He created a loop that the holy energy couldn't escape from. The energy fired by the avatar was forced into the second avatar overloading it. The energy from the second was forced into the third and so on creating a chain reaction of divine power.

The avatars froze in place. Their blank heads snapped up as their internal systems began to overload. The white light making up their bodies turned bright and shifted to a dangerous red.

Seraphina saw the loop. Screamed. Break the connection! she ordered the avatars. Disperse!

It was too late. Evander had locked the loop in place.

System command: End loop restraint.

The six avatars exploded at the time.

The explosion was contained within an area of the bridge. A massive shockwave of energy completely vaporized the remaining walkway and blew the proxy shell backward slamming it against the curved stone wall of the underground dome.

In the Underworld Evanders physical body jerked up. Coughed up more blood. The kinetic force of the proxys impact transferred some of its shock through the link.

System update: Proxy shell integrity compromised. Armor plating destroyed. Left arm actuator severed. Core function active.

Evander focused on the wireframe map. The bridge was gone. The proxy shell was pinned against the wall. The six avatars were completely erased from the radar.

The explosion achieved his main goal. The shockwave hit the core above. The huge golden machine was reeling. Its outer rings spun erratically sparking with bursts of unstable mana.

The diamond pillars were at ninety-four percent deconstruction. The dome was groaning. Massive fissures spread across the ceiling revealing the earth beneath the city streets.

Evander started the sequence.

He didn't need to touch the pillars. The structural integrity was so compromised that a single point of pressure would bring the architecture down.

He targeted the pit of liquid gold below. The gold was the capacitor that fueled the core and kept the dome stable.

System command: Open Abyssal Vault. Start maximum capacity absorption. Target: The capacitor.

A massive purple portal tore open in the air beneath the proxy shell. It was a vacuum connected directly to Evanders coordinator class.

The liquid gold in the pit began to defy gravity. The huge volume of energy was pulled upward rushing into the purple portal. Millions of gallons of liquefied soul energy were being drained into Evanders inventory.

Seraphina felt the ambient pressure in the room vanish. The power that sustained her wings of light was being sucked away. Her wings. Died.

No! Seraphina shrieked as gravity pulled her down.

She fell, plummeting past the portal. Her voice echoed into the darkness as she dropped into the pit below.

The Core of the Radiant Dawn lost its stability. The huge machine let out a mechanical scream. The spinning rings ground to a halt. The golden light. Snapped off.

The entire underground chamber was plunged into darkness. The only light came from the glowing crimson eye of the ruined proxy shell.

System notification: Core of the Radiant Dawn has been deactivated. Divine Authority protocol terminated. Local regional network is now unsecured.

Evander let out a breath. He opened his eyes. He was exhausted. His body trembled. His skin was pale and coated in sweat.

Vespera hovered over him. Her expression was a mix of relief and awe. The holy ambient mana was gone. The air felt light and free.

You did it Vespera whispered. The light... The core... It's dead.

It's not dead Evander rasped. It's just unplugged.. We just stole its battery.

He opened his system interface. His eyes scanned the numbers finalizing in his inventory logs. The amount of energy he had absorbed was staggering.

There was one final step to complete the conquest of Castra.

System command: Assume administrator rights for the Castra District network. Deploy Territory Integration protocol.

The riots in the courtyards had reached a fever pitch. Ovan and his militia had smashed the capacitors. The mob was battering against the bronze doors of the cathedral.

The massive column of light above the city vanished. The night sky returned to darkness.

Then the massive magic shield that covered the fortress city of Castra flared back to life.. It was no longer gold. A deep pulsating light washed over the city.

The rioters stopped. They stared up at the sky in silence. Ovan stood on the steps. He knew the truth. They hadn't won their freedom; they had simply changed owners.

General Zorion stood outside the city. He smiled. The coordinator had delivered. The gates were open. The defenses were theirs.

The shield has turned Zorion bellowed. The Tyrant calls! March, on Castra!

The demonic army surged forward. A massive tide of darkness poured down the ridges toward the valley.

In the throne room Evander slowly pushed himself to his feet. He stood tall. His mind ran through calculations.

The western province is broken Evander said quietly. General Caelum will wake up tomorrow morning to find his fortress occupied by Zorions army. The empire will have no choice but to sue for a ceasefire.

Vespera stood beside him. Her eyes shone with victory. We have done the Evander. You have secured our future.

Evander didn't reply immediately. He stared at a notification that had just appeared in his vision. It was a file he had downloaded from the cores database.

He opened the file mentally.

System Log Fragment: Core of the Radiant Dawn. Pre-dating Era One. Origin classification: Not created. Extracted. Subject zero containment log attached.

Evanders eyes got smaller. Extracted?

He read more of the up data and felt a chill. The church did not make the machine to fight demons. They did not make it all. They dug it up.. It was not a weapon. It was a lock.

Vespera Evander said softly his voice made the Demon Queen stop celebrating away.

What is it? she asked, feeling the change in him.

The core under Castra... It was not for the church Evander explained, his mind working fast as he understood the implications of the data. The holy energy was not for a weapon. It was to keep something buried. The church did not know how to use it; they only knew how to give it power to keep it running.. I just used up all its power.

The huge dome, under Castra, dark and quiet started to vibrate. It was not the sound of falling stone. It was a beat that echoed from deep down. A heartbeat.

Whatever they locked away there... Evander whispered, looking at the map as a black spot suddenly showed up on the radar right under the city he had just taken. I think I just let it out.