Chapter 12 | The Chaos's End

They arrived in Germany on Monday morning beneath a gray sky.

Matthias had slept badly on the flight. Joseph had spent most of it reading, which apparently counted as rest if the book was old enough.

At the airport, two of Joseph's local contacts met them with vehicles and a stack of folded maps.

Joseph accepted the maps before remembering to introduce everyone.

"Our allies," he told Matthias. "Their families have worked with ours for generations."

One of the men looked at Matthias, then at the twins beside him.

He seemed to reconsider a question.

"Good to have you here," he said instead.

Matthias appreciated the effort.

The network had arranged rooms in a guesthouse outside the Teutoburg area.

Matthias had barely put down his bag when Joseph appeared in the doorway with his green backpack still on.

"You're leaving?"

"There's a train in forty minutes."

"We just got here."

"The people I need aren't all in Germany."

Over the next three days, Joseph would travel between the three families' allies across Europe, asking for fighters, supplies, and help keeping the public away from the forest. Some had already answered his calls. Others wanted to hear the situation from a Marco before committing people to it.

Matthias looked at the backpack.

"What should we do?"

"Rest. Look around. There's plenty to see."

He waited for Joseph to continue.

Joseph checked his watch.

"You're serious."

"You've trained every morning for two months. Three more days won't make the difference that arriving exhausted might."

"While you go across Europe asking people to fight?"

"They know me. The archives Aki needs are here, and Yuki knows where her family keeps its protective talismans. We each have something to do."

Joseph glanced at Belial and Astreal.

"Take him sightseeing. Stay together and keep your phones on. We'll brief you every evening."

"That sounds suspiciously like a holiday," Matthias said.

"Try to relax. Leave the preparations to the heroes."

Belial smiled.

"We can manage that."

Astreal was already checking a map on her phone.

Apparently, his part had been settled.

On Monday afternoon, they walked through an old town, stopped at a bakery, and spent longer than Matthias expected looking at a church.

Belial remembered the place before a restoration. Astreal disagreed about which restoration she meant.

He ate his pastry while they worked it out.

Other people buy guidebooks.

For a little while, he stopped checking the time.

Then his phone buzzed, and his stomach tightened before he read the message.

Joseph had reached his first meeting.

Nothing had gone wrong.

Belial watched him put the phone away.

"We can go back."

He looked at the remaining half of his pastry, then at the street ahead.

"No. Where next?"

She slipped her hand around his arm.

They kept walking.

Aki spent most of Monday and Tuesday in a library whose oldest collection was available through the network.

By the time Matthias saw him over dinner, three notebooks lay beside his plate.

"Find anything useful?"

"Several accounts of people surviving close contact with Chaos."

"That's encouraging."

"They mostly describe retreating."

"Less encouraging."

Aki opened a notebook.

"The pressure gets worse as you approach. It wears down protection even when the entity isn't directly attacking. The longer we stay close, the harder it becomes to fight."

Matthias looked at a copied drawing. Several figures stood around a dark patch, their weapons pointed inward.

"And that?"

"A core. The accounts disagree about what it looks like, but there's a point where the manifestation holds together. The families tried to reach it."

"Tried?"

Aki nodded.

"Driving it back was usually the best they could do."

He closed the notebook when Belial set a fresh plate in front of him.

"I'll keep looking."

Yuki returned from the Strauss castle on Tuesday morning with dust on her sleeves and a canvas bag that clinked when she set it down.

"Found them!"

She emptied a careful handful onto the table: engraved charms, folded cloth packets, and small woven talismans with faded cords.

Matthias picked up a charm. The metal was worn smooth around its edges.

"These were in your castle?"

"The older vaults. Thirty kilometers from here, and somehow I still spent longer finding the right cabinet than getting there."

Aki examined one of the cords.

"Still usable?"

"Checked them. My family kept the records with them, too. Strauss, Cronqvist, Marco—people from all three families wore these against Chaos. They help you keep fighting when it starts eating through your protection."

Her cheerful expression became serious.

"They slow it down. They don't make you immune. If yours starts breaking, tell someone."

She pressed a woven talisman into Aki's hand.

"These work. I'm not saying wear it to the festival. I'm saying wear it Thursday."

Aki put it on.

"Wasn't going to argue."

"Your eyebrows were."

Matthias fastened his beneath his shirt.

It felt very small against his chest.

He was glad to have it anyway.

They spent Tuesday and most of Wednesday sightseeing as instructed.

Matthias took photographs of the twins beside old stone buildings. Belial insisted on taking some with him in them. Astreal found a restaurant, checked the route back, and denied that this counted as planning their afternoon around possible escape roads.

"The food is well reviewed," she said.

"And the roads?"

"Also adequate."

He laughed.

It was easier by Wednesday. Joseph sent updates between journeys, Aki had his notes, and Yuki was sorting enough talismans for the arriving allies.

Aki spent Wednesday checking the accounts against one another. Joseph's updates came from a different city each time; by his final call, the promised fighters and supplies were already on their way to Germany.

Matthias wasn't being left out. He had simply been given a task that didn't involve getting hit before breakfast.

He tried to appreciate it.

That evening, they joined the others at the network's staging camp outside the forest. Joseph had finally returned, and reinforcements were arriving behind him.

Some carried weapon cases. Others unloaded medical bags and supplies.

By the fire, Belial passed Matthias a warm cup while Astreal checked the fastening on his talisman.

Joseph spread a map across a folding table.

"Tomorrow morning, we move into position."

The conversations around them stopped.

They entered the Teutoburg Forest on Thursday morning.

The allies had scouts ahead and people watching the access roads behind them. By noon, the last reports confirmed that the nearby paths were clear of visitors.

Matthias stood beside Joseph over the unfolded map.

"The strongest readings are here," Joseph said, touching a clearing. "Sylvia's people are already gathering on the far side."

There were more marks around the clearing than Matthias liked.

"How many?"

"More than us."

Aki adjusted the talisman at his collar.

"Then we keep them busy somewhere narrow."

Astreal pointed to the trees bordering the approach.

"Here. They can't bring their whole force through at once."

Joseph nodded.

"Matthias, the twins, and our allies hold that approach. Keep Sylvia and her people away from us. Aki, Yuki, and I engage Chaos when it manifests."

"And if we finish first?" Matthias asked.

"Send help. Keep the wounded covered. Nobody pursues Sylvia alone."

He looked around the group until everyone had nodded.

Behind them, the allies checked their weapons and helped one another fasten Yuki's talismans.

Matthias watched a woman tighten the cord at her companion's wrist. The man thanked her, then went back to checking his sword.

Joseph had asked these people to come, and they had come.

Matthias drew a slow breath.

He intended to hold his part of the line.

The eclipse began at ten past two.

At first, Matthias could still see patches of sunlight through the canopy. Then the light thinned, and the shadows beneath the trees lost their familiar shapes.

The temperature dropped.

Someone behind him shivered.

As the sky darkened toward totality, pressure settled against his ears. He swallowed. It didn't help.

His talisman grew warm.

Across the clearing, the air bent inward.

Matthias tried to focus on it and felt a sharp ache behind his eyes.

"Don't stare," Belial said.

He looked away.

Through a break in the branches, a white ring hung where the sun had been.

Then the cultists came through the trees.

There were far too many of them.

Dark robes, ordinary coats, drawn blades. Some ran. Others advanced with their faces lifted toward the clearing, smiling at something Matthias could barely bear to look at.

Sylvia stood behind them.

He recognized her untidy hair and the dark hollows beneath her eyes.

She raised one hand.

Black circles opened among the trees.

Of course, she brought those too.

Bone struck the ground. Something larger unfolded itself behind the first row of skeletons.

"They're moving," Astreal said.

Joseph summoned his Sun Blade.

"Hold them here."

Yuki glanced back at Matthias.

"See you in a minute, babe."

Then she followed Aki and Joseph toward the clearing's center.

Matthias called his own sword.

"We'll be here."

The first cultist swung too high.

Matthias stepped aside, struck his wrist with the guard, and sent him sprawling with a shove. An ally dragged the man clear before the next attacker reached them.

The second was better.

Steel struck Matthias's blade hard enough to jar his elbow. He gave a step, recovered his footing, and turned the next blow aside.

A skeleton came at his left shoulder.

He cut through its ribs.

By the time it fell, another cultist had taken its place.

There was no pause between opponents. No Joseph calling a halt. No chance to lower his sword and ask what he'd done wrong.

"Right side!" someone shouted.

Belial's staff flashed.

A line of holy light swept through the approaching monsters. The allies advanced into the space she cleared, closing the gap before the cultists could use it.

A man slipped past her staff and lunged.

Her short sword caught his blade.

She turned it aside, struck him back, and brought the staff around again.

Matthias remembered her smiling in the basement after doing the same thing to him.

He had time to be grateful for Joseph's suggestion.

Then he had to block.

Astreal fought wherever the line began to bend.

Her tomahawk broke a skeleton's raised sword. She stepped through the falling bones, caught a cultist behind his knee, and sent him down before turning toward a cry farther along the trees.

A creature with long, crooked forelimbs had knocked one of the allies flat.

Astreal reached it before it struck again.

Holy light cut across its neck.

She hauled the wounded fighter upright and pressed a glowing hand briefly against his shoulder.

"Behind the line. Someone cover him."

Another ally took his place.

They held.

Barely.

Sylvia opened a portal above a fallen trunk. Two more creatures dropped through, forcing Matthias and the people beside him back several steps.

One caught his temple with a glancing claw.

His vision blurred.

"Feet, Master!"

He heard Astreal before he saw the next attack.

Matthias moved, brought his blade up, and felt it bite through the creature's arm.

An ally finished it from the side.

"Still with us?" the man asked.

"Yes."

Matthias wiped blood away with his sleeve.

He wished the answer had come out less breathless.

Beyond the fighting, gold light flared in the clearing.

Yuki was driven backward across the soil.

Matthias saw her recover, Durendal raised. Something struck the blade without ever becoming visible enough for him to follow.

Aki moved to cover her.

The air beneath his feet buckled.

He leaped aside, but the next burst caught his arm. Blood ran down his sleeve.

Joseph reached him behind a sweep of the Sun Blade.

Together, the three pushed the attack away.

Then they tried to advance.

The clearing erupted around them.

Matthias lost sight of them behind flying leaves and earth.

"Watch your front!" Belial called.

He turned back just in time.

Chaos had no shape to follow.

Aki drove Gungnir through a dark surge, only for the pressure to strike from above. Joseph cut across it, and Yuki tried to use the opening to step closer.

The force hit her from the side.

She dug Durendal into the earth and stopped herself from falling.

"Okay," she gasped. "Really getting tired of that."

At the center, something pulsed.

Aki could see it for a moment, then couldn't. Everything around it bent and shifted, hiding the distance between them.

He threw Gungnir.

The spear drove inward through the darkness.

An abrupt twist in the air knocked it sideways.

Aki recalled it and caught the shaft with his uninjured hand.

"Can't get a clear line."

"Together," Joseph said.

Yuki lifted her sword. Joseph stepped beside her, and the three struck at once.

Holy light pushed a gap into the manifestation.

They gained two steps.

Then the gap closed.

A crushing weight dropped onto Joseph's shoulders. He stumbled to one knee, and Yuki had to turn away from the core to cover him.

Aki's talisman burned hot against his skin.

One of its threads snapped.

They could repel the attacks. They could keep one another alive.

They could not get closer.

Matthias's sword arm hurt.

He tightened his grip, remembered Joseph correcting him, and loosened it again.

Ahead, the last of Sylvia's larger creatures tried to force its way between two trees.

"Keep it there!" Belial called.

Two allies braced against its reach. Matthias cut at the limb it planted beside the trunk.

The creature lurched.

Astreal struck from the other side, and Belial's light hit its exposed chest.

It collapsed into darkness.

For the first time, nothing immediately took its place.

Matthias looked up.

The nearest portal was closing. Several cultists had dropped their weapons. Others were backing toward Sylvia, looking over their shoulders at the people who had fallen behind them.

The allies pressed forward together.

Sylvia frowned.

She raised her hand again, but Belial swept a bolt across the ground before her. Sylvia stepped back, losing the space she needed as Astreal cleared the last monsters between them.

Her gaze moved along the broken line of her followers.

Then to Matthias.

She gritted her teeth.

"You've won this fight. I'll come back."

Purple light gathered around her feet.

Matthias looked at the cultists on the ground between them.

"You let them take every blow for you. Now you're leaving them?"

Sylvia's eyes narrowed.

"Coward."

She offered no answer.

A thin purple light passed over her, and she vanished.

Matthias took one step before stopping himself.

There was nobody left there to chase.

Behind him, Chaos struck again.

Belial knelt beside an ally who was holding his ribs.

"Let me see."

He shook his head and pointed past her.

"The heroes. Go."

"You're hurt."

"We can bind this. They can't hold that thing much longer."

One of his companions crouched beside him with a medical bag.

"We'll handle the prisoners and bring the wounded up behind you."

Astreal looked toward the clearing.

Joseph was standing again, but only just.

Belial hesitated, then rose.

"Stay together. Don't come into the open."

Matthias turned with the twins and ran.

They reached the clearing's edge as Yuki cut through another surge.

There was blood above her eye. Aki's left sleeve was soaked, and Joseph was breathing through clenched teeth.

They hadn't reached the core.

From this close, Matthias understood why.

The space around it wouldn't stay still. Dark folds opened and collapsed without warning. One struck the ground beside Joseph; another curled toward Aki from behind.

The heroes turned to protect each other.

Every time they did, Chaos drove them farther back.

Matthias stopped behind a tree.

His talisman prickled against his chest. Pressure pressed against his teeth, his eyes, the inside of his skull.

He wanted to step away.

Instead, he watched.

Aki shifted toward Yuki, drawing a sudden sweep of darkness across their side of the clearing. Joseph raised his blade to counter it.

For an instant, Matthias could see the core from where he stood.

The path closed again.

He looked at his sword.

Throw it.

Aki had already tried. Matthias had seen the spear knocked away.

But Aki was out in the open, fighting beside the other two. Chaos struck at him whenever he moved.

Matthias had reached it from the side, screened by the trees. So far, nothing had turned toward him.

He didn't know how long that would last.

"Belial. Astreal. If I make an opening, can you hit it?"

The twins followed his gaze.

Belial looked at her sister.

Astreal nodded.

"Once," she said. "Make it count."

Matthias shifted his feet.

A sword wasn't a spear. He had no reason to expect a neat throw, and missing would leave him empty-handed beside the worst thing he'd ever seen.

He remembered lying on the training mat, watching Aki catch Gungnir.

He remembered Yuki changing her angle before he could turn.

Don't give it time to face you.

He reached beneath his breathing for the reserve Joseph had taught him to find.

Warmth ran down his arm.

The Sun Blade brightened.

Across the clearing, Joseph stumbled back. The darkness reached after him, and the line opened again.

Matthias stepped out from behind the tree.

He threw.

The sword crossed the clearing in a flash of gold.

The air twisted toward it too late.

Its point struck the core.

And stayed.

Chaos screamed.

Matthias clapped one hand over his ear. The sound was inside his head too, sharp enough to make his knees buckle.

Wind tore through the clearing. Branches snapped overhead.

"The sword!" Yuki shouted.

Joseph saw it.

The defenses around him had broken apart as Chaos contracted toward the weapon lodged in its center.

He drew back his arm.

His Sun Blade struck beside Matthias's.

"Now!"

Aki threw Gungnir.

Yuki hurled Durendal after it.

The spear and the great sword drove into the same wounded core. Gold light shone through widening cracks.

Chaos tried to close around them.

For a moment, its attacks stopped.

"Clear the center!" Belial called.

Her silver staff rose beside Astreal's golden tomahawk.

White-blue light gathered around both weapons. The twins stepped forward together, their shoulders level, their eyes fixed on the core.

Matthias hurried aside.

"Ultimum Aeternum."

They spoke in unison.

The light became a beam.

Matthias threw his forearm over his eyes.

Even through it, he could see white and blue.

The beam struck where the weapons had pierced the core. Darkness closed around the impact, resisted, and slowly began to tear.

Belial's staff trembled.

Astreal shifted one foot back, bracing herself beside her sister.

Neither lowered her weapon.

The beam drove deeper.

A crack sounded through the clearing.

Then another.

The core shattered.

The light stopped.

For a heartbeat, the fragments hung in the air.

Then everything began pulling inward.

Soil lifted from the ground. Matthias slid half a step before catching himself against a root.

Belial turned.

"Behind us! Everyone!"

At the trees, the allies had arrived with the wounded between them. One was still hauling a bound cultist by the back of his coat.

"Bring them in!" Astreal shouted.

Joseph caught Aki's good arm. Yuki backed toward the twins, watching the fragments gather tighter above the ruined earth.

Matthias ran to help an ally whose leg wouldn't hold.

Together, he and the man's companion dragged him the last few steps.

"Inside!" Belial called.

Light curved around them.

Astreal raised her tomahawk beside Belial's staff, and the curve closed into a sphere around the gathered fighters, their wounded, and their prisoners.

Matthias lowered the man to the ground.

The fragments at the clearing's center flashed.

Chaos exploded.

The shockwave struck the sphere so hard that Matthias felt it through his ribs.

Beyond the light, trees folded flat. Earth and broken trunks swept past, hiding the forest behind a wall of debris.

Belial's knees bent.

Astreal caught her shoulder without lowering her weapon.

The sphere held.

Matthias could hear himself breathing. Someone beside him was counting under their breath.

Then the pressure eased.

The debris fell.

Nothing struck them.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Matthias waited for the ache behind his eyes to return.

It didn't.

The pressure was gone.

Belial lowered her staff, and the sphere dissolved.

Where the clearing had been, a broad crater opened between the flattened trees. Broken branches lay across churned earth as far as Matthias could see.

A thin edge of sunlight was returning overhead.

"Everyone?" Joseph asked.

The allies called back, checking one another and counting the people on the ground.

All accounted for. No fresh injuries from the blast.

There were plenty from before it.

Matthias touched his temple and looked at the blood on his fingers.

Yuki sat on a fallen trunk, pressing a clean cloth above her eye. Aki let someone wrap his arm. Joseph held one hand against his ribs while he waited for his breathing to settle.

Belial was pale, with a cut along her cheek and blood drying around one sleeve.

Astreal looked no better. A gash crossed her forearm, and her fingers trembled as she dismissed the tomahawk.

Matthias reached them as Belial swayed.

"I'm fine," she said.

He took her arm anyway.

"Of course. Sit down."

Astreal opened her mouth.

"Both of you."

She looked at her sister, then lowered herself beside her.

That worried him more than an argument would have.

"The attack?" he asked.

Belial nodded.

"And holding the sphere afterward."

"We won't be doing either again today," Astreal said.

He crouched before them and passed over his water.

For once, they let him do the looking after.

Once everyone was settled, Matthias and the three heroes picked their way into the crater.

They found the weapons among the disturbed earth near its center.

Aki freed Gungnir first and used the shaft to steady himself. Yuki pulled Durendal from a bank of loose soil, stopped to breathe, and rested it against her shoulder.

The two Sun Blades lay a few steps apart.

Joseph retrieved his. Matthias bent for the other and discovered how much his back hurt.

He straightened very carefully.

"Still think five in the morning was excessive?" Joseph asked.

"Ask me when I can breathe."

Joseph leaned on his sword.

"Fair."

They stood together and looked at the empty ground.

No pulse. No moving darkness.

Only dirt, broken roots, and four exhausted people who had very nearly failed to get this far.

"For the record," Joseph said when they had climbed back out, "this is the first time in documented history that Chaos has been destroyed."

Aki looked up from his bandage.

"You're certain it didn't retreat?"

"We saw the core break. There's no remaining pressure, no sign of a withdrawal."

Joseph glanced at the crater.

"The old accounts describe containment. Driving it back. Reducing its influence. Nothing like this."

"What changed?" Matthias asked.

Joseph looked at him.

"You."

Matthias lowered his eyes to the Sun Blade.

"I threw a sword."

"From a direction it wasn't defending properly. It reacted to every approach we made. Yours reached the core before it corrected."

"It was busy with you three."

"That helped. So did everyone keeping Sylvia away from us."

Joseph paused to catch his breath.

"But Chaos has spent history working through proxies. Your former self was one of them. I don't think it accounted for that same soul turning against it with a holy weapon. It understood what we were there to do. It was too late recognizing you."

Matthias looked toward the trees where he'd stood.

He hadn't felt like a former dark lord. He had been frightened, tired, and desperate for his friends to stop getting hurt.

Perhaps Chaos hadn't known what to do with that either.

"Could it happen again?" Belial asked.

"Something of this magnitude? Probably not for a few millennia. It took an enormous accumulation to form this entity."

Joseph lowered himself onto a fallen trunk with a wince.

"Cruelty and violence won't disappear. We haven't solved those with a sword. But the thing feeding on them and making them worse is gone."

Matthias let the Sun Blade fade.

That was enough for him to feel the difference.

Yuki lifted her head.

"Right. The castle."

Aki looked at her.

"The..."

"Gothic festival. My family is hosting, and we're all going."

She gestured at the ruined clearing, then seemed to regret lifting her arm so enthusiastically.

"After bandages. And baths. Obviously."

"You've already arranged it?" Matthias asked.

"I called while I was looking for the talismans. Come on, we've got a great hall! We have earned a great hall."

Aki glanced at Joseph.

"You said fun afterward," Yuki reminded him. "It's afterward."

"I can see that."

"So?"

He finished tying his bandage.

"I'm not objecting."

She blinked, briefly robbed of the argument she'd prepared.

Then her face brightened.

"Oh. Great! Food, music, something gorgeous to wear—"

"Something loose," Matthias said.

"I can work with loose, babe."

Belial smiled. Beside her, Astreal's mouth curved faintly.

Joseph closed his eyes for a moment.

"I'll eat."

"Finally," Yuki said.

Matthias started laughing.

It hurt his ribs. He couldn't quite stop.

They walked back toward the vehicles with the allies, moving at the pace of the wounded.

Belial held Matthias's arm. Astreal walked on his other side, close enough for their shoulders to touch.

Ahead, Yuki described the castle's great hall to Aki. He listened without once suggesting they cancel anything.

Joseph had taken out a notebook at the first rest stop. He put it away when someone handed him another bag to carry.

Matthias breathed in.

The forest smelled of torn earth and broken wood. It would take a long time for the damage to heal.

But the weight that had followed them into the clearing was gone.

He thought about his desk, the reports that would be waiting, and the alarm he intended to leave switched off tomorrow.

Then Belial leaned a little more heavily against him.

He adjusted his pace.

For now, there was a castle to reach, dinner waiting, and everyone beside him.

He kept walking.