Book 4: The Breakers Recap

WARNING: Spoilers abound throughout this section.

• Opens with Ed, Matt, Fernallus, Candice, Tamona, Harry, and Xax repelling an Allied incursion above a lake of white lava south of Findenton. Matt and Tamona are now in a relationship. The claw wound on Ed’s face left a side effect that allows him to see into other realms where bend bending portals like Distance Doors and Realm Gates have been used.
• In the Inparadis’s extra dimensional ice maze, Czar Balpors lurks over Muné’s perfectly preserved corpse with Frulgrath, knowing the stage is set for her resurrection to at last occur with Tamona’s life force, who is meant to be the new Goddess of Justice. Rather than risking her presence on the raid attempt that will no doubt occur, Frulgrath offers to help capture Tamona ahead of time. Balpors assigns a newly spawned fleshmancy ice assassin, Lancelot, to assist Frulgrath. Following the killers’ departure, Balpors and Thaena visits Celsis Kri in her lonely cell at the center of the ice maze. The Czar again makes the offer to free her in exchange for joining them. She refuses. Unknown to Corsis and his many Proxyms, Celsis has been watching Avril’s exploits this whole time through her forehead tattoo. Celsis knows Ashe and Avril are close to staging her breakout.
• In a picked up the thread from the Book 2.5, Ashe and Avril talk to ViRauni and Durduun in the Realm of Thought’s Divergence. Ashe gives the pair his consent to resume their old relationship, much to Avril’s disapproval. ViRauni then warns Avril to beware of Celsis Kri. “She is not what you think.” After discussing the routed kliost infestation of Narath, they part ways. Avril notices Ashe is weary from the war in Sufrinzon, as they prepare to go to Findenton at the Grells’ request for aid in the mounting invasion.
• Following the successful repelling of the Allied attack over the white lava lake, Xax leads Ed’s group to the Cool Spot in the Fire Well, where Wrenrot, the prior Arms Master, was killed. Xax uses a controlled Irreal Flare to open a path to the otherwise inaccessible location within the smokeless inferno. A spear pins Wrenrot’s skeletal body to the ground, binding it to the spot where he died. His ethereal-powered weapons are intact and Harry takes them in his sheath pocket dimension that Vick made for him, including a cursed two-handed sword he takes care to not to touch. A burning ghost agent of Corsis called Glime then harasses them until Xax forces the fiend to leave. In the aftermath, Matt figures out how to remove the binding on Wrenrot’s body. They bury his remains outside of the Fire Well, then head to Findenton as the invasion gathers all along the Grym Gulf.
• Vick and Een encounter Ashe and Avril in a fight with Horrinshal Demons outside of Findenton, just as an unnatural sandstorm hits. Ed’s group also arrives on their transport with the storm’s onset. The Hobgers created it without coordinating with the other defenders to hinder space-bending by the Allied invaders. However, the attackers erected three Fields of Quandric that block the storm on key areas where the Allied forces are focused. The disparate groups split off to handle each area.
• Ashe heads to the site where Ed killed the Lizard Proxym in the third book. He meets Fernallus, Matt, Tamona, and Xax. Frulgrath and Lancelot attempt to capture Tamona here, but Xax stops them. Determining that they stand little chance against the assembled Players in a head-to-head fight, Frulgrath backs off and goes invisible to observe them in action. Lancelot does not follow his lead. She attacks Ashe and Xax, but they capture her. The group also captures Jenx, a Darkothe with a vendetta against Ashe for killing his family members in the second book. Matt and Fernallus stay to contain the prisoners while Tamona takes Xax and Ashe to assist in the third location.
• Meanwhile, in the second location, Ed, Harry, Candice, and Een run into Avril as Ebon attacks the security HQ with a Dragon. Shelocke has been defending it on her own. Harry uses his agony whip to flog Ebon and captures him. With Ed’s diversions, Harry also stabs Wrenrot’s poison blade in the Dragon’s mouth, and incapacitates it. In the aftermath, Harry and Avril have a strained but amorous reunion. She hasn’t aged due to the healing properties of Halonir’s sap. Harry has. With no time to deal with that turn of events, Candice stays behind to drain Ebon and the Dragon. Ed, Harry, Avril, and Een head to the third shielded area.
• The groups converge against a powerful band of multi-headed Dragons and Titans that Vick, Flynn, Bander, and Yvette already duel. Avril combines her reclaimed blade with Yvette’s wand to unleash an electric attack that turns the tide. (This has ramifications in the Game War.) Harry boards Vick’s Battle Engine armored aircraft with Een and Tamona while Ed, Ashe, and Xax directly fight the Dragons and Titans. Harry’s innate Arms Master skills immediately accustom him to the weapon systems. His precise attacks incapacitate the Dragons with the help of Ed and the others. This finishes the worst of the fighting as the Hobgers and Grellish Skin Bots mop up the remaining attackers. The amassed Players have beaten back the invaders in Findenton, but the larger invasion looms.
• Celsis Kri has witnessed the battle through Avril’s tattoo and dares to hope that they will free her from the ice maze. The victors confer on Vick’s Battle Engine. A powerful force of seven of their number will infiltrate the ice maze and its adjoining dungeon annex of Inparadis to free not only Celsis Kri, but also Muné’s body, Xax’s friend, Vance Vulcan, and a captured Grellish Skin Bot spy, Vermillion. With so many prisoners held in the same location, the group knows this is likely a trap, but they must still make the attempt. The rest of the Players will provide security on the many captured prisoners as they’re taken to a western detention center. As the group heading west departs, Frulgrath sneaks on the Grellish sky cit to free Lancelot and the other captured detainees.
• The force of seven comprises Ed, Tamona, Candice, Harry, Ashe, Avril, and Xax. In order to maximize their success as they head east, they opt to approach the entrance to the ice maze’s pico realm by an unknown route, the subterranean Shallow Sea. Xax knows of an entrance to it through the mountain stronghold of Vurg, the God of Protection. Vurg, who’s still recovering from supplying the energy to contain the Fire Well centuries earlier, gives them a friendly greeting and supplies Harry, his newest Arms Master, with additional weapons. Harry distributes the weapons among the group. Vurg also reveals that he’s Ed’s great uncle. His only condition for helping them is that they bring Celsis Kri back to him, as he wishes to tell her something face-to-face. Xax names the group the Breakers because they’ll be breaking the Game’s Rules. And he likes the group names starting with “B”. They meet Vurg’s friend, Kixie Artis, far beneath the mountain in an underground dock and they board her submarine, the Toff, and begin their trip through the submerged channels leading to the Shallow Sea.
• While the Breakers make the long descent, Fernallus, Matt, Vick, Een, Yvette, Flynn, and Bander interrogate Lancelot aboard the Argot, but she reveals she’s a clone daughter of Vick’s old lover by the same name, and she provides no further answers. Frulgrath then breaks her out with Jenx and Ebon in the same group of cells they escape down into the Mad Lands connected to the Fire Well’s Outer Wall. A red haze of toxic etherea saturates the entire area, making mancy unreliable. Frulgrath ambushes them and wounds Bander and Een before he withdraws with the other escapees. Yvette stays behind to heal their injuries, which is significant for the events of the fifth book. The rest of Fernallus’s group pursues the escapees to the dimension hopping Red Fortress, where Crimsa allows Frulgrath and the escapees to withdraw to the ice maze and its dungeon, as they’re all more interested in stopping the looming raid on Inparadis.
• Crimsa fights Fernallus’s group as a diversion and she breaks the imprisoned Faith out of Matt’s mind. Still descending to the Shallow Sea on Kixie’s submarine, Tamona senses Matt’s distress. She has Avril establish a connection to Matt through the Realm of Thought and the project their spirits with Candice to help Matt. Crimsa is Candice’s mother and Faith’s sister, and the Breaker’s rebellious Draqu helps banish them from Matt’s mind before they have to return to their bodies. In the physical world, Vick uses the toxic etherea to threaten Faith’s incorporeal body, which forces Crimsa to withdraw in order to protect her loyal daughter. Fernallus’s group regroups on the damaged Argot, where the recovered Een and Vick make love following her recovery. They need to wait for repairs before they head back to New Grelland to help remotely support the Breakers.
• The Breakers reach the Shallow Sea, which is only a few thousand feet deep in its vast, low-pressure cavern. At the borders of the underwater nation of Yintu, one of the twin rulers attempts to embroil them in a plot to harness Ed and Ashe’s fires. However, Tamona subverts this with her Perceptia. She identifies a traitor and then coerces the other twin ruler to sign an agreement where Ed will return to offer his power to their dynamo after they finish the raid on Inparadis in exchange for safe passage. Kixie, who’s a cousin to the twin rulers, vouches for their honor. The more amicable twin queen agrees and signs the agreement, which sets up the events of Book 4.5. The Breakers travel unharassed through the luminous interior of the Shallow Sea and then make their way to the surface waters.
• While this happens, Celsis uses her tattoos to establish covert psychic contact with Vance Vulcan and a teammate of Vermillion, Kon JuReth. Vermillion is unconscious and inert with the attempts to pry the information from him. And the other prisoner, Captain Crystala 99 is kept sedated for fear of her using her annihilating dark light hyper powers. Vance and Kon agree to help Celsis in their escape attempt.
• Celsis is then able to contact the Breakers with a temporary link to Avril. Celsis revises their plan, telling them to first break out Kon and Vermillion, and their leader, Crystala 99. Then move on to Vance and Muné’s body. And finally, Celsis herself. Her dismissive attitude toward the Breakers does not make a favorable first impression. Xax and Avril have a heart-to-heart about his anguish over not being able to save Vance before now. Ed and Candice grow closer as they get to know each other better and they test her abilities against Harry’s new shield he got from Vurg, which can repel her siphoning abilities.
• When the Toff reaches the island leading to the ice maze realm’s portal, the Breakers discover the submarine can’t get close since there are too many sea-based defenders. Tamona tethers a pliable thread to the other Breakers and Candice can lend her Unnotice Aura to all who are connected to it. Tamona Al’laan shifts the group to the island as Kixie reluctantly departs in the Toff. The Breakers sneak up a steep flight of stairs leading to a temple. Candice dominates a guard to let them enter undetected. They sneak past the internal defenses and enter the portal leading to Inparadis and the ice maze and dungeon annex within it.
• The Breakers tread through a vast stone plain with legions of defenders in the sky and the ground, including the black, monolithic, gem-like Octahedrons. The cone-shaped, mountain-sized pyramid, the Dragon Caldera, looms at the center of the pico realm, and the ice maze and its dungeon annex are beneath it in the subterranean levels. They notice that Vermillion’s unconscious body is being held atop the Dragon Caldera, plainly as bait for a rash action. The Breakers stick with Celsis’s plan and opt to free Crystala and Kon first in the dungeon annex. They penetrate through an auxiliary entrance and skulk through the interior, and first free Crystala. Celsis earlier informed them she has disintegration hyper powers, but she’s cotton-headed with all the sedatives her captors pumped into her. She’s cool toward them and disdainful of Ed. The Breakers then reach Kon, but one of the guards finally sees through Candice’s Unnotice Aura and they have to kill him as they free Kon, which alerts the entire complex to their intrusion. Tamona Al’laan shifts them to the top of the Dragon Caldera to get Vermillion, which breaks the thread connecting them in the process. All of Inparadis’s defenders pour down on them. A chaotic battle erupts.
• Candice uses all the power she’s absorbed over the last two books and streaks into the sky to distract the aerial defenders. Ed rouses Vermillion and frees him from his bonds while Harry defends him from Crimsa, Glime (who’s also traveled to Inparadis), and Ebon. Ed gets his powers temporarily negated by Crimsa and scores of Demons dog pile on him. Thaena swoops in from a Distance Door and ensnares Tamona. Ashe and Xax grab her legs just as she flies through another portal and all four combatants leave the fight. They land in Muné’s tomb in the ice maze where Balpors’s entourage is readying a plex hex.
• Ashe and Xax are captured in a stasis field that prevents them from moving. Tamona is readied to have her life force absorbed into Muné’s corpse to make her rise as an undead thrall. But Tamona has enough power to Al’laan pulse Xax and Ashe out of the stasis field. Xax utters a negation phrase as Balpors speaks Hrolish, protecting them from harm. Ashe plows his way to Tamona before she’s totally drained. They escape after Xax uses a controlled Irreal Flare from his exposed arm to warp a thick wall of durable Frivon Ice to lock in Balpors, Thaena, and their lackeys with Muné. Balpors has to divide his attention between trying to maintain the plex hex and escaping from their entombment. Tamona has lost her powers and Xax is weakened from venting his interior. They have no way to contact the other Breakers, and they plunge into the ice maze on their own to free Vance and Celsis.
• Avril saves Ed from the dog piled Demons and he regains his power. He streaks into the sky to take more pressure off Harry, Avril, Vermillion, Kon, and Crystala as they fight their way down the Dragon Caldera’s long, sloping stairs. Crimsa and Glime pursue him. Glime again drains him while Crimsa fights Candice. Candice saves Ed from Glime by siphoning the fiend’s flames. She kisses Ed in midair in a momentary lull and they make their way back to help Harry and Avril’s group.
• Ashe, Xax, and Tamona fight their way into the chamber holding Vance. He’s impaled to the wall over a pit. And Frulgrath, Jenx, and Lancelot are hiding with scores of other Demons. Xax senses a trap and reacts before they can fully spring it. Frulgrath lops off Ashe’s hand in the fighting, but Ashe uses pyromancy to explode his severed appendage into silver shrapnel, severely injuring Frulgrath and Lancelot, but the pair of killers withdraw to escape his wrath. Ashe then kills Jenx and absorbs his power. He has a brief time-diluted vision of Rithic who says he’ll be able to use the Quench plex hex to control the flames of Fire Well if he kills a few more Darkothes. Xax and Tamona kill the rest of the Demons and Xax frees Vance from the wall. Vance heals quickly, but he is emotionally wrecked from the experience. And furious as he regains his poise. He helps them push toward Celsis.
• Unaware of Ashe’s progress, Harry tells Avril on the Dragon Caldera that they can’t reach Celsis Kri and they have to retreat. Avril hates this and reluctantly agrees. Tamona’s powers slowly return and she senses those outside will die upon the Dragon Caldera if they stay. She gets a message to Ed telling him his group must flee. The above-ground Breakers and the freed dungeon annex prisoners fight their way to the bottom of the Dragon Caldera, as more and more press on them from all sides. Crystala’s power at last manifest and she annihilates Ebon’s flesh, but not his impervious armor. During the fighting, Kon takes Harry’s cursed sword to use the speed and strength it bequeaths him to beat back the defenders. Crimsa then impales Candice on her spear, but Ed wrenches her free. The above-ground team flees through an emergency one-way Realm Gate Ed opens back to Trojis. Candice’s fate is unclear as Celsis screams in despair from her cell, witnessing Avril’s forced abandonment.
• But all is not lost. Ashe’s group reaches Celsis Kri after fighting through more defenders. He’s able to burn his way into her cell and she’s elated to see him. Tamona has a tense exchange with her where she tells her not to waste this chance to atone. Celsis takes them to a less defended section of Inparadis and they’re able to escape to a pre-established rally point in the Nor’Eastern Desert in the Holy Alliance.
• Ed’s team is in the same vicinity. But Ed’s powers are still nullified. Candice is alive but severely weakened. Crystala’s powers fully return after she works the drugs out of her system. She creates a stygian air ship construct and takes them along the wind toward the rally point. Vick and Matt also take the Battle Engine with remote support from Fernallus to assist the Breakers and the escapes.
• Thaena burns Balpors’s group out of the entrapping Frivon Ice in Muné’s tomb. And Corsis’s hateful Proxym resurrects Muné and uses psionic reprogramming to make her think Tamona is an abomination, Celsis Kri is the source of the world’s evil, and that Muné has always been on the side of the Holy Alliance. She, Thaena, Crimsa, Glime, and Balpors lead a horde of an Octahedron, Dragons, and Demons in pursuit of the Breakers and the prisoners.
• The groups converge in the western Holy Alliance and the climax battle ensues. Fernallus remotely helps Ed regain his powers and Ed kills Glime with a feedback of added power. Crystala wounds Balpors. Celsis Kri fends off Muné, who pays more attention to her than Tamona. Vick picks up the Breakers and the escapees with a series of Distance Doors leading to the Battle Engine’s interior. Ed ensures their escape by using a transference of his inertia to the Octahedron, causing it to crash into the desert at hypersonic speed, making a colossal explosion that covers their escape to Vurg’s Stronghold.
• The book ends with Crystala revealing that she’s Heathren’s daughter and Corsis’s granddaughter, but she was mind wiped and doesn’t remember any of them. She’s been a covert agent of Gathiner for a century. Ed and Candice cement their relationship. Harry and Avril also decide to see where things go with their rekindled romance. Vurg tells Celsis that he hopes he’s made it right with her after her long imprisonment. He’s plainly forgiven her past misdeeds. The Grells tentatively grant her amnesty, but it will be a hard road, as many Grells still despise her for her army’s attacks in their homeland. Ashe and Xax have cemented a friendship. The Breakers have a foothold to stand against Corsis.
• But Corsis has schemes afoot. Frulgrath departs to gather a team to bring harm to the Breakers with Lancelot and the resurrected Ebon as a Nuul Entity as the first members. Balpors prepares for the return of Starm with Muné still under his domination. And the final scene reveals Yvette is also a Proxym of Corsis. And those she assisted in this book will regret it.