The anxiety of the group gave way to astonishment, shattering it and giving them the ability to speak once again. Xavier was the first, sidling nervous up to the primus with a gulp before what he saw took his breath away. “Um... What is that? That looks bad.”
The highlands framing the valley stretched on for a bit before connecting with a wide expanse of black mountains. At the bottom of one was a pulsing, fleshy protuberance that spread purple-black veins through the surrounding landscape. A detached organ looking thing that... Well, by all measures of understanding, it looked like a heart. With bits of glowing crystal emerging in places. And it was beating, they could feel it in the rock beneath their boots.
“Honestly, lad.” Vidarr shook his head. “I've no idea. Do you know know what this is?”
“Not a clue.” Both Jartor and Octavian replied in the negative. With Hastur indicating a similar lack of familiarity with it based on his hunched back and eyes squinted in awe.
“This is all wrong. A dimensional anchor shouldn't possess a biological component. Even given the presence of what might be mana crystals, I...” Before anyone could ask, he 'got to the point'. “That thing has anima!”
“What does that mean?” Jartor asked. Hoisting his warhammer aloft and tossing it about with disinterest plain on his face. Scholars had their place, but it wasn't the battlefield. “Can we not simply smash that heart and be done with it?”
“It certainly does look like a heart.” Hastur nodded. “But true anima shouldn't exist on this side of the rift in things native to the environment, it's... Impossible. I don't think that's a heart, I think that's an egg. Or some kind of reproductive apparatus.”
“Meaning?” Jartor asked.
It was Octavian who would respond. “Something on this side of the rift is adapting and converting itself to enter our world in a permanent form.” His resolute eyes and hard frown brooked no arguments. This was a godlike being, intent on birthing itself in preparation for an invasion. “We have to go, now!”
“Understood.” Jartor nodded. “Vidarr, get my left, Octavian on my right. No mana, until we destroy it. Follow me.”
“Mm.”
Each of the three moved differently, as if the simple action of running was a diverse concept that could be interpreted in many ways. Well... 'Running'. Jartor ran, stomping great divots into the earth, while Vidarr blurred forward without his feet ever leaving the ground, and Octavian pounced – bursting from the ground and shooting through the air like a bullet. Each was unique in aspect, personality, and how they influenced the world around them in a way that no human could ever understand. Their near tangible auras utilizing the spira in vastly different ways, mechanically speaking. It was so fast, ultimately, that each was little more than a blur – even Tyr couldn't follow them with his naked eye. Roughly a half kilometer separated them from the heart, and they were all there in seconds. One who stood next to a primus might think that their wild strength was untamed, unbridled and lacking restraint, so great was it.
A visceral pressure, a true display of their majesty. But that wasn't it. Tyr had felt it, quite literally, just standing in a location subjected to the focused violence of the spira was enough to incinerate him down to his last atom. To disappear on the spot. Not burnt in a way that heat turned material to ash and low energy waste, but simply gone. His very existence denied by one of the few that could wield the worlds will, at will. Once separated from the lesser beings behind them, and they were lesser, reality began to warp and shift. Spira here was an abstract concept. There was none in the literal sense, only enough of it lingering around as a byproduct of the alien beings to this dimension who came here before dissipating. Three primus' was more than enough to make Tyr feel as if he'd never stepped foot off their own world. Throwing it off of them like rays from a sun.
The very earth itself shivered in excitement, an oppressed and chained thing that had been broken from it's original body and could finally breathe again. Like a man near drowning given a taste of the sweet air once again. The mana surrounding the heart was thrown back with a thunderclap, unable to handle the sudden expulsion of a worlds energy. The skies began to ripple before erupting into a boiling mass of mana rapidly approaching a solid state, before it did. Mana crystals in their simplest form, something that could not exist in their own world. Tyr caught some of it in an outstretched palm, watching as it melted away like a snowflake as a side-effect of his spira. It was snowing in the highlands again, but it wasn't snow. It was all just... Mana. Tiny crystals of the stuff rendered a temporary solid through some mockery of a change of state in matter. An alien concept to something immaterial, made real by the contradictory forces.
A vibration ran through the land, and with it, a titanic trumpeting came from all around. Culminating in a tear in space, separating the air and all of the snow on the ground, a split left in the clouds above. All three primus striking as one. Both of Vidarr's new hammers held aloft and striking down at the heart like a smith at an anvil. Jartor's maul doing the same, with Octavian leaving an open wound in the fabric that composed this place where nothing should exist with a sword beyond mortal keenness. Leaving behind a gaping tear through which stars could be seen. Just the briefest of moments to observe it, less than a tenth of a second before it was gone, the world repaired.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Sounding like a steel chisel grinding against the surface of ceramic, all of these combined attacks struck the heart at the exact same moment, erupting in an aurora of spira. In it's basic form, it looked gold, but expelled via their individual aspects, it took on all hues. Stillness returned to the land for another brief moment. All of it happening so fast that none of those behind them could follow the events unfolding before them. All told, the entire process took less than a whole second. Not quite enough time for any of them to wonder why their presence here was even necessary.
The mana came rushing back into the 'blank spot' with a vengeance, a raging torrent of hurricane winds blasting all over the highlands. Throwing a thin layer of blistering snow, microscopic razors prised to flay the flesh of anything within the area. Tyr stepped forward as the others took various positions of defense, or did nothing at all. His spira was nothing special, but it was more advanced than most others that he'd met. Only the primus' and a rare few of those he did not consider human could surpass him in that regard. Perhaps the only unique part about him, even if others could do more with less. Simply emitting it as a barrier shouldn't be too hard.
Breathing deep, he flattened his palms, holding his arms out to the side as if to accept and embrace the coming storm. Just before it hit, he slammed his palms together vertically, forcibly composing his spira into a wedge shape that split the sheet of frozen water and mana flakes. Dissipating most of it and allowing the rest to sail around the group. Overcompensating and inadvertently shattering the ground at his feet. More impressive in appearance than in mechanics, if nothing else. The muscles in his legs were shredded to bits, and all of the bones from his waist down were crushed in the process.
“Well...” Abe coughed. One might expect to see him scribbling into his grimoire again, but his hands remained clutching his staff. “That happened.”
“Makes you feel insignificant. Doesn't it?” Girshan asked. “The ant and the boot. You've been living around them your entire life? I find myself suddenly grateful that I did not come so near your father on the battlefield. Even so, he hadn't done that. I thought he was just... Very strong.” He looked to Tyr.
Tyr shrugged, it was just another day. Seeing three at once in action was a first, but he'd felt energy fluctuations for so long that it didn't shock him in the slightest. There were things that were impossibly beyond his capabilities, and that was okay. Presumably, now that he'd lost his aspect, he wasn't much different from the other Tyr's, and he wasn't upset about that either. There was something, though... Signe voiced it instead.
“That actually felt quite weak.” She mumbled, looking at her son despite her awareness that he wasn't the type to know what was going on. But, he could sense spira in a way that she could not, the finer sight of it rather than a rough guess. “Is it because of the astral space?”
“I don't know, but that thing isn't dead.” Tyr pointed at the place the heart, or the egg, had been. It didn't look like either thing now. The veins were gone, and so was the fleshy organ with crystals patterning its sides. Now all that remained was a swirling mass of energy. Multicolored, striped with radiant bands of violets, purples, reds, and black lightning writhing its surface. A mass of energy was important to note. All energy. Mana, anima, spira, and something else Tyr did not recognize, and had never seen before. But oddly enough, it felt familiar. Even at such a distance, he could see his father and the others crouched in combat ready stances, staring at the thing cautiously. “Mother... What is that?”
Signe did not respond. Her hands shook briefly before she steadied herself and replaced her curved scimitar with a long black halberd. An unrealistically large weapon that based on appearance would be impossible to wield effectively, but she managed it somehow. The weapon even taller than she was. All of the assembled Tyr's donned their masks and pulled out their various weapons, in many cases exchanging those they'd used before for others.
“Arcanum...?” Hastur breathed. Soul arms, a crystallization of the self that could take all manner of form or function. Not all were weapons, but in the hands of these... Clones... They were all forged with violent intent in mind.
They burst into action, not quite so dramatic as the three primus', but impressive nonetheless. Approaching the shining sphere at blistering speed with their weapons aloft. The sky shook again, but this time – rather than splitting – it was condensing and imploding inward toward the sphere. The egg absorbing mana at an incredible rate. Causing the true mages among the party to wilt and sag as their bodies were sent into trying to compensate for the thinness of it. More light returned to the highland. It had existed in a sort of half-lighted state since Tyr had woven his 'spell'. Now, it was like day and night existed as one. The land lit by alternating hues of white and red with a burning circle of an eclipse shining fel light down on them.
He couldn't hear, but he could feel the tower screaming. All of the souls within were screaming in a way that evoked imagine of scratched faces and bleeding eyes. A refusal to accept what was happening, for reasons that couldn't possibly be good.
There was that trumpet again, but louder. An inhuman, belting, triumphant sound. The birthing screams of an entity that knew neither the passing of time nor the changing of states. A thing outside the order. A long tentacled appendage lashed out of the sphere, catching Octavian directly in the chest and sent him hurtling off into the mountains. Careening through the air with enough force to break the sound barrier before disappearing into a crater within the rock. Jartor and Vidarr were a bit faster, given the warning, but as more of the appendages began to shoot forth, it was impossible to approach the egg and strike it directly. Knowing that using their spira as a weapon had been the catalyst that had set this... Set this thing free.