Chapter 14 - Convergence

She dove in the trouble current, a mix of Shadow, Light and Space magic raging all around her has they fought against the second intruder. Impossible. Lysandre hadn’t any problems, no parasit, nothing. The current shouldn’t have reacted like that. Elijah confronted it with all her and Pierre’s strength, the lack of air becoming a real problem. The elements tensed more and more like ropes till they tore and let her free. She feel on her hands, but sprang back up as a terrifying cold corroded her skin. Fuck it’s cold! She looked at her surrouding. A large storm was looming over the horizon, black lightnings slowly coursing through it, so slowly you could follow their growth with bare eyes. It was high noon and the sun was shining over her, its ray sharply reflected by the ground. The ground… It was sand, but… frozen sand. In fact, the ground was as hard as any stone, not a grain moving from where it had been stuck in place by ice. She could see that the frozen desert kept going over many kilometers in every directions. She, however, knew where she needed to go. Toward the storm. Of course. She started walking, taking her pipe to start and smoke. As she did, she cast a fire spell, a cloak of ember covering her from head to toes, protecting her from hostile spells but, more importantly, from the cold. Bah, this cold is clearly magical, it’s nearly already an attack in and on itself. Over the frozen wasteland, a tiny figure clad in red walked on the ice, her goal a storm no one should ever approach…

***

Darkness, wet and warm darkness, cosy. A heartbeat, quiet like a whisper, loud like earthquake. Hands, heads and legs, lots and lots of them. A long and peaceful wait. Then movements, shockwaves. Light and air flooding every part of her body. Painful, the air was so painful. She screamed, and her voice mixed with others. Clac. A motherly smell, a warm embrace. She searched something with her mouth. Found it. A liquid, hot and creamy. “Hoho, that’s good Evorionn, but leave some for your two sisters.” Said her mother. She was satiated. She fell asleep in other arms. Clac. “He is beautiful, what’s his name again?” Asked a feminine voice. “He’s named Evorionn.” “Oh? Like grandfather Evorionn?” “Exactly, sister. I always wanted to honor his memory.” “I know. It’s a good name. Ah, I bet you named his two sisters Arakvas and Frovra!” “You know me too well, sister.” The laughed together. Evorionn Lysandre! was happy, she smiled. Clac. “Ba-ba!” She said, shaking her toys up and down. “He said his first word!” Exclaimed her father. “Baba!” She said again, showing her toy to her father. “Amazing. Amazing!” Said his mother. In her arms, her two sisters looked at him her! with interest. “Ba-ba?” Said Arakvas to Evorionn. “Baba?” Then to Fovra. Fovra looked at Arakvas. “Baba.” Then pointed her father. “Baba!” Clac.

***

The landscape was… Gorgeous. I never saw anything like that, even here. Sand had seemingly been blown from long cracks in the ground, then frozen in its momentum, creating gigantic frozen sand sculptures. Wind had already started working, carving those marves with its soft yet unrelanting edge. She felt Pierre weakening through their bonds, her blood rope thinner and thinner. The acceleration has changed again. We’re back at a faster-than-reality rate. “I really wouldn’t want to encounter the thing that did that.” She said all aloud, looking at the sand sculptures. She kept walking. Over the day, the sky became more and more full of dark clouds, the thunder louder and louder, but her tracker still said that her target was in front of her, right in the storm. The cloud started to spin, slowly, around the far center.

***

He she! had a ball in her hands. She looked at it an threw it toward Arakvas, who caught it with dexterity. She looked at her right and threw the ball to Frovra. All of this under the eyes of their mother who, a hand on her chin, was looking at them pensively. Watching at his her! mother, Evorionn caught the ball without even looking at it. He smiled then threw it back at Frovra. “Interesting.” Whispered their mother. Clac. A boy and a girl had stolen Frovra’s toy without even thinking about it and, when she had tried to take it back, she had been it. Evorionn felt something. Anger. But, for the first time, it wasn’t anger for him, because he was hungry or lost something. He was angry because someone had hurt her his! her! his! sister. He walked toward the three of them and made the boy fall, snatching the toy out of his hands. He looked at the boy. To late, he was going to hit him her!, but… “pouf.” His punch had been stopped by another hand. Arakvas was there, at least as angry as he she! was. Clac. He had difficulties writting his name but, as always, Frovra was there, resting her hands against hers his!, helping her to write the complex symbole. Like this, they wrote and worte and wrote, once again baffling the kindergarden teacher. Once she had finished helping her, she went to Arakvas’ side and did the same for her sister.

***

The wind was howling between the taller and taller sand sculptures, lightning booming in the sky and clouds roaring like the end of the world. What rested at the center of the storm had made even Elijah reconsider her position. A gigantic black hurricane, screaming like ten thousands tormented souls, flash of black light coursing from top to bottom and the other way around. Her cincer cloak struggled to keep her body warm as the temperature had falled way under freezing point, piercing it more and more often with dagger of ice. A demon rose suddenly at her side, a captain at least, big, angry. It jumped on her but a gust of wind crashed on him, and he became a frozen sculpture. Shocked, she looked all around her and became pale like a sheet of paper when she discover dozens, no, hundreds of frozen demons mixed with the sand. In the sky, a gigantic Serpent General threw itself toward the hurricane in a desperate attempt to reach… something, she didn’t know what, and became a bloc of ice before being shattered by the swirls. Snow started falling, snowflackes made of the body of a Demon General. My god. Calling god was, for sure, a sign of trouble for a demonist. She can’t be in there! She looked right at the hurricane, overwelmed by its sheer intensity.

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***

“Mooooom?” “Yes dear?” “Why can’t we play at Killbase with the other children?” “Oh, Evo, you know why you can’t. You three are just too good, other children can’t do anything against you three.” “But… I want to play killbase me…” She looked at him, knowing that his feeling was the same for Arakvas and Frovra. Clac. He was sad. Not only him, Arakvas and Frovra too. The three of them had tears in their eyes and n their cheeks. He knew his mom wasn’t crying only because she was with them, and wanted to stay strong. (dad killed in action against Elves.) Funerals were always sad. Clac. “We’ve been taken!” Screamed Arakvas, holding a paper high with her hand, a beaming smile on her face. “We have? We have!” She he! turned her his! head toward Frovra and, under her usual cold face, he could see the tiniest part of a smile.”We’ve been accepted, sister!” And he she! hugged the two of them. Clac. The training was difficult but worth it. The endured, day after day, learning magic, learning combat, learning how to fight and how to kill, how to work together. The three of them were prodigies, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Nothing could fill the hole they had in their heart, but it didn’t stop them to try and stuff it full of training and vengeance.

***

Orichalcum fell through the portal, taking with her the Wild Duke. They crashed both in a desert, letting long scares in its sand as they kept fighting all th while. Her World-rampart was constricting the demon like a metal snake, the disks its scales. Scared, the monster sacrified two of its arms to make an explosion and blow itself out of the powerful grasp of its enemy. Now they were a few hundreds meters aparts, staring at each other. It’s even easier that I thought, it can’t even properly use magic. She, however, stayed focused. A Duke shouldn’t be more than a nuisance for mekka designed to fight even Demon-Prince alone, but she lacked actual piloting and, moreso, she was both the weakest piloting-wise and Orichalcum was the weakest Clarion-wise in term of firepower. What it, and she, exeled in was defense, support and on-field repair. She was the engineer of Haven after all, not Aliel. She kept the stalemate going, letting time to her IA to compute and analyze battle information and to adapt the Clarion to them. Suddenly, she realized something: She had been so focused on her battle against the Wild Duke that she had overlooked the monstruous amount of Aether swirling in the air. She looked at the source and was stunned by what she found. An humonguous hurricane, way, way bigger than her mekka or the Duke, towering hundreds of meters toward the sky and surrounded by a storm. “What is that?” “Under Analysis...62%...87%...finished. Duke-class Shadow, Wind, Frost and Lightning Wonderstorm. Warning, the spell is damaging Orichalcum’s structural integrity, deploying counter-measures. Warning: Duke-class entity found in the eye of the storm. Advice: reajusting battle priority toward the unknown entity.”

***

Trapped, she was trapped and needed to... Clac. Fire was burning in her hand under the admirative gaze of the whole class. “W-well done Evorionn, you found your atuned element right on your first attempt.” Said the professor, baffled. First day at the Warschool, and he was already shining. Her his! her! sisters looked at him, focused. “K-rak!” Boomed the thunder in Arakvas hand, playing between her fingers like some happy-go-lucky snake. Snowflakes began to fall from Frovra’s hand as a flower of ice bloomed in her palm. “Look, we did it too.” She said smuggly, winking at her brother I am a girl! No you are not! “Argh! screamed Lysandre, seeing clouds and lightning around her before diving right back. “Children, stop this immediately!” Said the professor toward the two girl. “It’s dangerous if I’m not at your side.” He added, his voice quieter. They looked a bit dispirited but extinguished their magical element. “Good, now let’s do some exercice with your fi… why did you put your fire down, Evorionn?” “Master, if my sisters can’t use their elements, I equally won’t. We do things together.” Furious, the professor looked at him then send him her! No, him! to his seat. “Then don’t bother me! Someone with a bit more respect to your master, come here at once!” A young Green Apsolem demon girl rose up directly from her seat and went toward him.

***

“Warning! Magical impulsion in the Wonderstorm core!” She looked at the data input and turned white. “It’s w-worse.” Her voice was shaking with fear. She had never been to more courageous of the Archangel. “The storm is retracting to its eye.” “Analysis… hypothesis… verified. The Wonderstorm is focusing its energy around its core. Magical density on the rise. Warning, the spell level will excede the Duke level. Warning: Oddities detected in the spell structure, evaluation impossible. The spell could start damaging this Clarion. Advice: Call renforcement, or flee.” She heard what her AI was saying but couldn’t take her gaze of the storm. The cloud cover was seemingly implosing toward its center, and the hurricane’s structure morphed. It’s taking an humanoid shape… “Disengage!” “...Order impossible to carry. Due to the magical implosion, the rift just closed. Prepping all system for maximum-power battle mode. Launching overboost of the Halo, Apocalypse system ingaged.” “Fuck!” The Halo fusion reactor will not endure it for a long time. With all her weapons readied, her mind set to battle, she was going to kill the thing that she had disturbed, the monster at the center of the wonderstorm. Or… What is going on? She stopped a second. Indeed, the now humanoid creature had turned its brand-new lightning eyes toward her. No hostility could be felt from them. A bright ray was shot, cutting the space in two. Fuck! The Wild Duke had used her overfocused attention on the new entity to create his very first spell, a fire-based Duke-level spellbeam. So the beam cut the space and… disappeared in the mass of shadowy clouds composing the right arm of the creature. A deep, vibrant metallic voice ressounded over the landscape. “Hostile Wild Demond detected.” The storm-monster said. “Evaluation: High priority threat. Ingaging battle.” And suddenly, twelve pillars of lightning emerged from the ground around the Wild Duke, forming a cage of thunder. ...What the fuck is this monster? That’s not a demon’s way of talking, it’s more like an… an AI.” “Diminish fusion reactor cycle rate under acceptable level and go in stand-by mode, we’ll watch the battle between those two things.” “Understood.”