She hovered outside Sector 11, catching glimpses of its Iterations.
There, down that tunnel, was Amalgam. A standard, almost barren world, with tinier balls of color and potential clinging to it like fuzzy moons caught in its orbit. What the locals called Territories.
Up another sloping tunnel, she saw Asylum. This one was sealed off, and she could see the discs of elaborate script-formations set up by a previous generation’s Gadrael. The scripts were fragmented and flickering, on the verge of failure, but they had been that way for decades.
Beneath the seals, the world itself was smoky gray, locked against intrusion from the outside. Through that barrier of gray, she could dimly see unspeakable shapes squirming, pushing against the restrictions of their prison. Fiends of Chaos, each powerful enough to contend with Judges. Trapped there by the collective will of ordinary humans.
She looked to each of the other worlds in the Sector, some more notable than others.
Then, finally, she looked to Cradle.
It should have been closer to her than any other Iteration, but the Way grew thin and gray as it approached Cradle. The Vroshir influence. If she tried to enter that Iteration, she would be shunted off to the side, most likely into another Sector.
But even obscured, Cradle shone like a star. She could see the powers that made it up swirling, the powerful—but still mortal—fates that clashed inside.
[WARNING: intrusion detected.]
Her Presence drew her attention up, until she looked into the neighboring Sector Twenty-One.
The Mad King’s burning eyes met her own. Around him, blue light crumbled and twisted, the rules and laws of the universe breaking around him.
He wouldn’t enter the Way physically for her. No fisherman dove into the ocean to wrestle a shark.
The Vroshir reached out with one bone-gauntleted hand, and that hand clawed for her in the Way, larger than her entire body. Its weight distorted the swirling world of order, bringing with it the crackling darkness of the Void.
Suriel’s Razor erupted into its true form, from a meter-long bar of blue steel to a branching tree that sparked with light. It was the ultimate tool for cutting away corruption, and she cut at the Mad King’s attack, severing it from existence.
[WARNING: multiple intrusions detected.]
Her enemy wasn’t alone.
A chain of shining stars crashed into the Way to wrap around her, a constellation brought to life. From another direction came a thousand hands of blood. From yet another, a wisp of the same dark, corrosive smoke that Gadrael had faced.
She cleansed or severed each one, catching glimpses of the Vroshir on the other side as she did so. A spear crashed down on her like a meteor striking a planet, and she met it with her Razor.
Outside the Way, that would have been a deadly attack. Here, she could meet it, but it took all her focus.
And more and more of the Vroshir were drawn to this spot.
They swarmed around her, and the Way dimmed. Thread by thread, it unraveled around her, revealing endless darkness specked with distant, swirling balls of color. The Void.
Enemies surrounded her, all attacking. And as they struck, she slipped from one side of existence to the other.
At least it’s working, she thought.
Then the Mad King reached out again. This time, she had to bring the full force of her power to bear against the grasping hand, and the clash of forces stretched the Way even further.
The chain of stars wrapped around her midsection, and she couldn’t spare the attention to stop it. Bloody hands landed on her leg, and a wisp of smoke twisted around her neck.
Her armor began to crack.
[Arrival incoming,] her Presence said.
A flaming sword burst through the Mad King’s hand.
A woman carved through the Vroshir’s attack with her sword, her Mantle boiling behind her like wings of white fire. Even her hair was crimson flame, and she severed the other attacks binding Suriel with one more sweep of her blade.
Razael, the Wolf, turned to face Suriel with a furious expression. “I should have let you die!”
Threads of blue light slipped back in as the Way recovered some of its hold. A shimmering orange diamond appeared over Razael’s shoulder, sparkling with a different reflected face in each facet.
[My host is relieved she arrived in time,] Razael’s Presence said.
A string of twisting symbols punched through the Way again, and Suriel glimpsed a group of Silverlords chanting in tandem. The silver crowns on their heads shone and serpentine runes twined around them as they called on the energy systems of plundered worlds to make their attack.
That working would be enough to rewrite the physics of any local Iteration, but Razael backhanded the ribbon of symbols with an armored fist. The working of the Silverlords shattered.