The Celestial Forge
By: Schin Ka'Tharos
CHAPTER 17
(Part 1)
There is always a silence to be found.
~
We fell and I listened.
Waiting and searching.
On the surface of the layers of noise, seeming to originate from every direction were the screams of the abyssal worms rising to a crescendo. Just below their shrill tenor I could hear the low purring of the Skiffs engine growing faint as it rushed away from us. Interlaced between the two was the wind howling as it twisted through the stone pillars and swirled past our falling bodies. More immediate and intimate was the heavy breathing and rustling attire of Ciara and Adeon beside me.
They were not the sounds I sought. Underneath it all, in the place where I searched, was a void. It was a silence pregnant with the hope of our survival. I focused on that silence in anticipation.
Waiting.
Finally, just before we hit the ground the silence gave birth to the violent sound of the skiffs obliteration. The technique that Ciara had rammed into the core of the Skiff had finally locked in. Core-formed items are famously impossible to tamper with, a fundamental need given their use. However, Ciara was able to corrupt the skiff to the extent that the core itself had a volatile reaction.
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A split second behind the explosion we were hit with a massive concussive power. Due to the propulsive nature of the skiffs core function the amount of raw force was beyond what I had anticipated and reminded me of some of the pressure I had felt when I had been launched from my tower's domain in my fight with the jackals.
We were blasted across the landscape like skipping stones and flew over a hundred yards atop the debris ridden terrain. We were fortunate to avoid most of the obstructions until finally crashing into the base of one of the stone pillars on the outskirts of the arena-like area. I suspected Ciara or Adeon had done something amidst our tumbling chaos to protect and buffer us because we were still alive.
“Bloody hell, give me a warning of what we're in for next time.” Adeon coughed out.
His voice gave me something to orient to and I made my way to my feet and tried to assess the aftermath. Waves of pain coursed through me overpowering the worms toxin.
“I wasn’t quite sure myself.” Ciara replied weakly. “Honestly, this is far beyond what I was expecting.”
Before us the land was wiped mostly clean in a vast circular blast radius. At the heart of the circle now a few hundred yards away from where we had landed, less than a quarter of the sun spider's abdomen was all that remained of the towering corpse. A crackled haze of volatile essence blurred the area but I could make out a handful of writhing forms making their way out of that last bit of solifugae. Worm parts and guts covered the pillar around us, evidence of the part of the brood that had been closing in on us from behind. Intermittent screeches began to fill the calm.
“I’d suggest we move. We need to be done with these cursed worms.” I said forcing myself to move. “We’re fortunate the blast sent us in the right direction. We need to keep heading this way through the pillars. The tower definitely feels closer.”
All three of us were in shambles and we moved frustratingly slow. The silence that had followed the explosion was being filled by an increasing amount of worm screams and I marveled that so many had survived. We gathered ourselves and slowly made our way into the stone forest again leaving the arena and heading towards the tower.
At the time none of us noticed the five cloaked figures observing us from atop the tallest of the stone pillars.
As we traversed the columns a few worms periodically managed to catch up to us but Adeon handled them without much effort. Despite his current state he was still a Disciple rank with superior strength, stamina and speed and with a grace of practiced movements and black blade in hand he would dance around the worm's as they fired their tongues at him before disposing of each.
After a short while the surroundings shifted from stone pillars to a normal forest of trees. Then like stepping from water to dry land, my sense of the terrain shifted.
We had entered the tower's domain.
Next Chapter...
Chapter 17 (Part 2)