Deep inside his mind, the faint, comforting, brilliant blue pulse of Valerie’s astral tether violently sputtered.
*KZZZT... POP.*
"Valerie?" Sebastian gasped, his head snapping around. He completely ignored the white light actively burning away his right shoulder. "Seattle, what’s going on? Talk to me!"
The audio feed in his head was a chaotic, horrific mess of screeching metal, popping mana conduits, and a woman gasping for air.
Millions of miles away, deep beneath the ruined, ash-choked streets of Earth, the Sanctuary command center was officially dying.
*WHRRRRRR-BANG!*
A massive, thick titanium pipe on the side of the Astral Spire violently ruptured. A geyser of superheated, blinding blue steam exploded across the grand hall.
"We’re losing containment!" Galleon roared, throwing his arms over his face as the steam melted the paint off the nearby walls. The dwarven engineer was covered in black soot and severe magical burns. "The primary runic array is completely slagged! The machine is eating itself!"
At the base of the towering, jagged spire, Valerie was a horrifying sight.
She lay flat on her back on the Resurrection Altar. The pristine white marble beneath her was cracked and glowing cherry-red from the sheer, apocalyptic heat radiating off her body. Her mechanic’s overalls were actively smoldering, the fabric turning to black ash around the edges.
But it was her face that made the room feel like a morgue.
Her eyes were locked wide open, entirely swallowed by a blinding, terrifyingly bright blue light that looked like raw plasma. Thick, dark red blood poured freely from her nose, tracking down her chin and pooling in her ears. Every muscle in her body was locked in a state of violent, agonizing paralysis.
She was acting as a living, breathing copper wire for the entire planet’s leyline, and the current was far too strong.
"Boss, please! You have to stop!" Wraith screamed.
The Level 25 Assassin sprinted across the room, completely ignoring the blistering heat. He grabbed a heavy, insulated containment blanket from a supply crate and threw it over her shaking legs, desperately trying to ground the rampant magical energy.
"I... can’t..." Valerie choked out.
Her voice didn’t sound human. It sounded like two massive tectonic plates grinding together. Blood bubbled over her lips, splattering against her chin.
"He’s still... he’s still pushing," she wheezed, her entire physical form vibrating. "If I drop the line... the void eats him. I promised... I’d leave the light on."
"You’re going to die, Valerie!" Corbin shrieked from behind his reinforced steel desk. The rogue code-smith was weeping openly, staring at his wildly flashing holographic monitors. "Her heart rate is at two hundred and forty! Her blood pressure is entirely off the charts! Her brain is literally hemorrhaging!"
*CRACK!*
Another massive section of the Spire’s runic plating shattered, raining glowing blue glass down onto the floor like deadly hail.
"Valerie!" Sebastian’s voice tore through the tether, echoing directly into her mind. It sounded frantic, desperate, and entirely stripped of his usual deadpan armor. "I can feel the lag! Drop the tether! I’m ordering you to drop it! I’ll hold the wave! Just log off!"
Valerie forced a weak, incredibly strained smile. Blood dripped into her mouth, tasting like hot pennies and ozone.
"You’re... not the boss of me, Seattle," Valerie gasped.
She closed her blinding blue eyes. She didn’t let go of the connection. In fact, she dug deeper. She reached past her own biological limits, plunging her hands into the very core of the Earth’s primary mana pool. She grabbed a massive, raw chunk of unstable planetary energy and violently yanked it upward.
"Give him... everything," Valerie commanded.
*KRA-DOOOOM!*
The Astral Spire couldn’t handle the surge.
The massive, jagged titanium structure violently detonated. A blinding, deafening explosion of pure arcane fire and blue plasma ripped through the grand hall of Sanctuary.
"Get down!" Galleon roared, tackling Wraith to the floor just as a massive chunk of heavy metal shrapnel embedded itself deep into the stone wall where the Assassin had been standing.
The explosion shattered the remaining monitors. It blew the heavy iron blast doors completely off their hinges. The entire subterranean Citadel shook as if hit by a massive earthquake.
And on the Resurrection Altar, the bright, brilliant blue light pouring out of Valerie’s eyes instantly snapped off.
Her body went completely, terrifyingly limp. The violent trembling stopped. Her head lolled to the side, her brown hair matted with blood and sweat.
*BEEEEEEEEEEP.*
Corbin’s surviving medical monitor let out a single, long, flat tone.
"No," Wraith whispered, pushing himself up from the rubble, his raspy voice cracking. "No, Boss. Come on."
He scrambled over to the altar, entirely ignoring the searing heat of the stone. He pressed two trembling fingers against her bloody neck.
He waited for a pulse. He waited for a breath.
There was absolutely nothing. Her heart had stopped.
Out in the dark, frozen expanse of the Juncture, the warm, comforting blue beam of astral light connecting Sebastian to Earth violently shattered. It didn’t fade away. It snapped like a high-tension cable.
The connection was severed.
Sebastian froze.
The roaring, chaotic noise of the Genesis Protocol chewing on his giant, glitched avatar completely faded into the background. The blinding white light washing over his torn, pixelated chest didn’t matter anymore.
He stared at the empty, dark space where the blue tether had been just a second ago. The silence in his mind was absolute. It was the heaviest, coldest, most profound emptiness he had ever experienced.
"Valerie?" Sebastian whispered into the void.
There was no static. There was no corporate sarcasm. There was just the quiet, echoing void.
The tether was gone. And the Sovereign of Laws finally realized that he was entirely alone in the dark.
—-
The silence in the subterranean command center of Sanctuary was thicker than a brick wall.
The deafening, mechanical roar of the Astral Spire had died, replaced by the sickening hiss of melting titanium and boiling coolant fluid. Thick, suffocating clouds of white steam and black smoke rolled across the ruined grand hall.
On the cracked, runic-carved marble of the Resurrection Altar, Valerie lay perfectly still.
The blinding blue light that had been pouring from her eyes just seconds ago was completely gone. Her chest didn’t rise. Her hands were slack, hanging off the edge of the hot stone. The only sound in the immediate vicinity was the steady, horrific dripping of dark red blood falling from her nose onto the floor.
*BEEEEEEEEEEP.*
The single, unbroken tone from Corbin’s surviving medical monitor pierced the quiet like a rusted nail.
Wraith didn’t freeze. The Level 25 Assassin had spent his entire life in the shadows, dealing out death and watching health bars drop to zero. Panic was a luxury for people who didn’t know how to survive. He threw the heavy, insulated containment blanket aside and vaulted directly onto the altar next to her.
"Corbin! Give me a fucking stim!" Wraith roared, his raspy voice tearing at the edges.
He didn’t wait for the trembling code-smith. Wraith ripped his thick, leather gauntlets off and slammed the heel of his bare hand directly into the center of Valerie’s chest. He locked his elbows and pushed down with the brutal, calculated force of a man who knew exactly how much pressure it took to keep blood pumping.
*CRUNCH.*
Two of her ribs snapped instantly under his weight.
Wraith didn’t flinch. He pumped her chest again. And again.
"Come on, Boss. You don’t get to quit on me," Wraith grunted through his teeth, sweat dripping from his pale forehead onto her soot-stained overalls. "You’re the Guild Master. You have paperwork to file. Breathe, goddammit!"
Across the room, Corbin scrambled out from under his reinforced steel desk. The mechanic was sobbing hysterically, his grease-stained face pale as a ghost. He frantically kicked aside chunks of shattered blue glass and smoking wires, digging into a metal supply crate. He pulled out a thick, heavy syringe filled with glowing, aggressively bright green fluid.
It was a military-grade adrenaline and raw mana stimulant. It was the kind of thing Vanguard soldiers used to keep fighting after getting their legs blown off.
"I got it! I got it!" Corbin shrieked, tripping over a severed mana-cable and crashing to his knees right beside the altar.
Galleon, the dwarven engineer, stumbled out of the smoke. His thick, braided beard was actively smoldering, and his heavy iron armor was covered in melted slag. He grabbed the syringe from Corbin’s shaking hands.
"Move!" Galleon barked at Wraith.
The dwarf didn’t bother looking for a vein. He gripped the heavy syringe like an ice pick and violently drove the thick needle straight through Valerie’s charred overalls, plunging it directly into her heart. He slammed the plunger down, injecting the entire cocktail of raw, burning chemical energy into her stagnant bloodstream.
For two agonizing, entirely silent seconds, nothing happened.
The flatline tone on the monitor continued to scream.
Wraith cursed loudly, raising his fists to start chest compressions again.
Then, Valerie’s back violently arched completely off the marble slab.