Elys sighed. There were only a few seconds remaining until the activation of the Grand Teleportation Array. It had been a rather clever setup, obfuscated behind layers of false designs and seemingly unrelated endeavors across the battlefield.
The scale of the sacrifice involved would have made even the most ruthless human balk, but Leviathan considered his people as no more than resources to be expended. He would likely trade the entire empire he had built over the past decades in exchange for Phoenix’s cooperation. The sad part was that the Titan of Water must have still been in secluded meditation, attempting to break through into true divinity. All of this deception would have been planned by his viziers and the rest of his council, knowing they had his blessing. Results were all that mattered.
Deep down, it frustrated her, that these people had concocted a plan that she hadn’t been able to see through until it was too late. It was little consolation that they would have been some of the most brilliant minds in the world, with myriad techniques and bloodline abilities, all scheming for this very moment.
It was so pointless. Their conflict would consume the entire world, when the Titans should have been working together to strengthen the material realm.
She didn’t blame Leviathan necessarily, the same way she didn’t blame a hurricane for the devastation left in its wake. He had been shepherded into the body of a power-hungry cultist, the culmination of centuries--if not millennia--of esoteric breeding and experimentation. If the Titan of Water had ended up in her, or in Cyril, perhaps things would have gone differently. Instead, Leviathan had immediately crushed the soul of his bonded Vessel, most likely sensing the plots and duplicity they intended. In the end, he had doomed himself to treading water.
Leviathan, in the body of a cultivator, had done absolutely nothing he couldn’t have done in his own form. He had ignored all of the variety that the world had to offer, just to pursue the same Destiny as before. While it had let him rapidly ascend to the peak of power and inflict his will upon his lessers, it was such a waste. So much unnecessary death and devastation. Leviathan, the embodiment of Mutation and Adaptation, was a stagnant entity.
When her time dilation ended, she expected a colossal mess would be left in her wake. She trusted the rest of her tribe, along with Behemoth--her brother--to deal with the fallout.
For now, she had to think.
At least she had been making her own preparations for this sort of inevitable confrontation. Her divine vision dissected the world around her, feeding an incomprehensible amount of information directly into her mind. Now that all the pieces of the puzzle had been assembled, she could clearly see the Grand Teleportation Array painted in blood and offal. Leviathan’s forces had even infiltrated the Underdark to set up focal points and leylines hidden from view.
Time crept by, its passage reduced to nearly nothing by her frantic mind. She hovered above the battlefield, wreathed in wings, an ethereal phoenix drifting above her head. This knowledge spirit, a manifested facsimile of her bonded Titan, observed the battlefield with a second set of eyes, functioning as a complementary mind. The familiar had been the boon of her Seventh Sphere of Knowledge.
Most of her people had heeded her warnings and fled in all directions. Elys wasn’t surprised to see Tyrin and a few others rushing toward her, with Cyril trailing behind, dragging along some drow consort he had picked up. Elys grinned at the thought.
She sent Knowledge qi throughout the length of the Grand Teleportation Array, sensing its dimensions. Attempting to dismantle it would be pointless. In fact, she saw the potential to use this to her advantage and strike a blow against the true culprits behind this attack. Teleportation arrays, even ones powered through so much sacrifice, had to obey the Law of Conservation. She possessed a truly frightening amount of metaphysical mass, which meant there would need to be an equivalent exchange across the spatial dimension.
She understood their plan immediately. Dozens of Cerulean Scales had prowled the battlefield, engaging in heinous acts of espionage and violence. She had personally melted most of them to slag. Such weaklings always operated in groups.
Her investigations of the array fed back into her mind and through the phoenix familiar. Esoteric stimuli competed for her attention. She was forced to prune most of the Knowledge network in order to free up her mental energy. Before it vanished, she sent messages to her most trusted companions; then, after a moment of hesitation, she put a five minute delay on the transmission to Cyril.
Her spiritual eyes dissected everything around her, converting it into a maelstrom of knowledge. She plucked the specific information she needed: the destination point for the other side of the teleportation array. As she suspected, it led to one of the wings of Leviathan’s Waterfall Palace, one that hovered about a thousand miles above the capital city of Oceanhold. One of the major portions, if not the most important of all, though the full extent of the Waterfall Palace was spread out across the world, linked through dimensional portals and mirrors.
The other anchor point indicated two hundred targets contained within to counterbalance her metaphysical mass--a century of the Cerulean Scales, in other words.
Without her, it was a force capable of wiping out most of the desert. At least, before she had empowered her tribe, and Behemoth had come home. She would have to trust it would be enough.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
A beatific smile growing across her face, Elys extended her arms. Her Phoenix aura, spread out over her tribe’s entire territory and a little more besides, retracted back towards her in a raging inferno. At the same time, she circulated as much raw qi as she could manage, cutting off the supply of energy to most of her extraneous functions. The barrier across her negative emotions vanished, and out spilled reluctance, horror, exhaustion.
They didn’t matter. All of it became fuel for her Magmatic Heart. But, she had to admit, she really hated dying. It was such an inconvenience.
She shaped her hands into the mudra of her ultimate technique, Supernova. The pure desolation coursing through her body turned her hair into a blazing torch. Her skin melted, flesh boiled. The spirit familiar dissolved away in a wash of white intensity.
The world flashed as the Grand Teleportation Array activated. A moment later, it resolved into a great chamber within the Waterfall Palace, the walls made of iridescent coral--an area large enough to hold the century of Cerulean Scales she had swapped places with. Ring after ring of runes and mathematical formulae covered the ground, likely meant to trap her inside.
She caught a glimpse of a few members of the Cult of Leviathan’s upper echelon on the outskirts, clad in ridiculous ceremonial robes and gaudy spirit jewelry. Their expressions were hilarious as they noticed the bomb in their midst.
Elys wiggled her blackened phalanges at them, waving farewell to the bastards.
Then, her soul exploded.
* * *
Energy surged across the desert. The ground under Cyril’s feet rumbled, and a purple glow rose from the world around him as the Grand Teleportation Array activated.
He was still several miles away when it happened. Tyrin, on the other hand, had been swooping directly towards Elys’ location, no more than a thousand paces from her. Any attempts to reach out to him through the mental connection had been ignored, and once the Knowledge network vanished, Cyril could only stare in dismay.
A flash of brilliant light blinded him for a moment. He blinked, and all of the sudden, two hundred figures clad in cerulean armor were stretched out in orderly lines where his sister had been standing. A hurricane of Water qi emanated from them, sprinkled with flecks of other Dominions. According to his spiritual senses, they operated as one unit; all of them were at the very least Peak Foundation Stage, but combined, the whole far exceeded the sum of its parts.
It was into this storm that Tyrin flew. His wings flared out, attempting to halt his momentum, but it was too late. The Cerulean Scales immediately noticed him and released a barrage of techniques: glaciers, geysers of acid and steam, whips of blood, and numerous other physical projectiles converged upon Tyrin. More abstract and conceptual abilities wove themselves into the mass--obscuring illusions, mists that reflected and amplified other techniques, ethereal eyes opening across the world to launch a mental assault upon those they gazed upon.
A metallic figure leapt from the ground in a futile attempt to intercept the techniques--Loras, expanding his body to multiple times its normal size in a makeshift barrier. Both of them vanished beneath the sea of techniques.
Cyril came to a complete halt, unable to believe his eyes. Elys was gone, and all traces of the Phoenix had vanished with her. Tyrin likely dead. Loras was resilient, but not immortal. No sign of Soren--the drow had presumably redirected his Shadow Stepping toward safety once the situation became apparent.
Cyril’s Heart pounded in his ears. The reality of what he had witnessed slowly sank in. Part of him noted that Aleytha was struggling to free herself from his crushing grip, and he released her.
The vision of what had taken place etched itself onto his mind, his soul. With each pump of his Magmatic Heart, furious qi boiled throughout his body. The world around him seemed frozen, unreal. His hands trembled.
No. This isn’t possible.
The two hundred assembled warriors from the Cult of Leviathan redirected their focus toward the closest enemy--himself. A low groan escaped Cyril’s lips. Animalistic, dismayed, confused.
Give me everything, he told Behemoth, told himself. The cost doesn’t matter. Elys is gone. Tyrin and Loras…Everyone else is injured or has fled. We don’t stand a chance against this force, even if the drows are still willing to help.
There was a moment of silence. Then he felt something deep within his soul shift, acknowledging his desperate plea.
His hand burned. Earth qi, Sun, Knowledge, Gravity, Mass, Divinity, and a trickle of a hundred other Dominions flooded through his core. Channels ruptured, repaired themselves, ruptured again. All of this accumulated energy, far more than he knew was contained within his restricted spirit, tore through him. He was merely a physical conduit for a near-endless supply of qi.
He instinctively understood. All of the power was being channeled into his reformed hand, the one that had absorbed Behemoth’s Fragment. Cracks and fissures spread across them, sealed back over. Feeling as if he contained the weight of the entire world in his palm, Cyril slowly lifted his hand.
“From my corpse, life. From my spirit, calamity.” His alloy fingers contorted into an unfamiliar mudra, a rough approximation of a humanoid figure. They broke apart into shards, reformed instantly. “Manifest: Hand.”
The gathered qi rushed out of Cyril in a torrent. Gasping, he fell to his knees, his core completely drained. Not even a trickle of energy remained within his body. For a moment, he wondered if he had sacrificed his cultivation and had reverted back to a mundane mortal. Then, a speck of Earth qi reformed within his core, banishing that concern.
At first, nothing happened. Cyril barely managed to keep his eyes open, fighting off pure exhaustion. His body, mind, spirit--his entire soul--had been drained, as well as the excess flood of energy from Behemoth’s focus.
Then, the world rumbled.
Overhead, the various techniques flashing across the sky and illuminating it winked out. Clouds fled.
From the heavens emerged a Titanic Hand of divine stone, perfectly sculpted and identical to his own, blotting out all existence. A conceptual domain surrounded it, overwriting the laws of Gravity and Mass and every imaginable Earthly Dominion.
Two hundred Cerulean Scales stared up at their impending doom. A salvo of techniques fired up at it--none of them made it past the widespread domain. Others attempted to flee by dissolving into mist or stepping into portals, only to find their attempts fully restricted. Beneath the looming hand, the world was sealed.
Cyril pressed his hand against the ground. At the same time, Behemoth’s Hand slapped down onto the world, and the world erupted.