Arson had been impressed with Almarine, but understanding that she had been holding back, even while fighting off four masters of combat and magic, was a lot for him to come to terms with.
Combat shifted drastically in the favor of the masters when Osiris and Sea entered the fight, but Almarine’s growing smile while fighting only made Arson more worried for his teachers.
Osiris’s large figure and the use of his massive tower shield all but took Arson out of the action. While Sea used a style of fighting that Arson had never seen before.
Weapons appeared from thin air. Sea pulled spears, swords, maces, and many more styles of weaponry from thin air, swinging the intricately made magical weaponry once before it disappeared, never to be seen again.
The various bodies of Almarine appeared and disappeared as she attacked endlessly. The need for any type of defense seemingly unnecessary as every master was incapable of keeping the woman locked down, or landing a blow.
Of those gathered, it seemed Almarine took Osiris most seriously and treated the rest as mere distractions from the good fight being had between the two. A fact that Osiris seemed to agree with, the smile on his face only the second or third one Arson had ever seen the man wear.
Arson himself grew more eager to fight, dismissing any notion that he should hold back for the survival of the masters. After realizing that the fight was completely unbalanced and his own longevity was being balanced on a thread with the textile strength of prehistoric dental floss.
Come on Arson, you're better than this!
Arson’s training over the previous fortnights began to bubble up to the surface, and in a matter of moments chaos grew in scale once more.
He summoned the weapon given to him by Breaker, handing it off to Jack to use; the Living Hand Construct becoming a blur as it struck at blindspots and points of vulnerability at every opportunity it was given.
“Gestalt!”
Arson summoned his Gestalt forms, Temper, Glory, Bloom and Thinker all climbing from his shadow one after another as he moved around the exterior of the rooftop the battle occurred on.
“Focus fire,” yelled Arson, receiving nods in return from all but Thinker who trailed behind Arson, whispering in his ear as they rushed about, calling out targets for Arson.
“The last stone wall Magnus summoned is on the verge of breaking, fire at the bottom left, and Glory and Temper will be able to approach more easily.”
Arson fired an arrow dripping with conductive waters, moving to fire at his next target even before the shot landed, trusting Thinker’s word completely.
The wall exploded on contact with Arson’s arrow. Magnus turned to two smiling youngsters, one in the middle of a slide tackle, Temper, and the other amidst a superman punch with an upraised shield aimed at her solar plexus, Glory. Both had charged through the wall even before the stone structure had even truly began to crumble from the explosion caused by Arson’s arrow, giving the woman little time to react.
“Son of a—“
The woman’s legs were taken out from underneath her smoothly, causing her to slam into Glory’s shield with a clang. Yet the master’s clothing lit once struck, and an explosion of mana sent both Temper and Glory flying backward.
“Bloom, orb barrage now!”
Thinker’s yelled command made Arson glance at Bloom who flew outside the limits of the dimensions of his Closed Eye Dominion. The area displayed in his mind with his every blink not showing him Bloom’s shaky flight patterns above the battle.
“Boom!”
Bloom’s single word was the preface to a hail of conductive water orbs, fired in what Arson thought was a completely random pattern. Until he saw how accurate his Gestalt form’s attack was.
Every one there had been struck by one or more orbs. Acu, Merlin, Magnus, Sea, Osiris, Rebellion, Almarine, Arson, Temper, Glory, Thinker, and even Breaker’s unconscious figure were touched by explosions.
Arson and the rest of his Gestalt forms had been knocked off their feet, while Almarine and the other masters managed to stay upright, seeming more annoyed than affected.
“Bloody sparks, Bloom, watch where you are firing,” yelled Arson as he kip upped.
“Yes, bossy big brother, Bloom bigger Boom next time!”
“No, Bloom, wait!”
Arson’s yell was in vain. The crackling power that Bloom raised above his head grew from a small ball of conductive waters, into a halo of violent sparking lightning and distorted sunlight, twisting around a storm of dark energies that Arson felt was similar to that of a black hole.
All the masters froze, but Arson and his Gestalt forms were already rushing off, knowing that Bloom wasn’t going to stop. His chaotic Gestalt form had a tendency to take any and all opportunities to use as much mana as possible, and as Arson glanced over his shoulder while jumping to an adjacent rooftop, the unfamiliar runes forming above the attack above Bloom told him that this situation was no exception.
The draw on Arson’s mana made his head spin, making him dizzy as he continued to run. A crackle of power pulsed out and Arson stopped to look back once more, only to see the masters and Almarine all trying to fire various attacks toward Bloom, coming up short as everything directed at the Gestalt form was pulled into the storm above.
“This isn’t going to end well, is it…”
Arson could hear nothing but space ripping around Bloom’s attack, and his Gestalt form laughing hysterically. When he looked for his other Gestalt forms, the only one he could see was Thinker. As Glory and Temper were incredibly far and no longer within sight.
The Gestalt forms were all powerful in their own rights, but Bloom was comparably on a level of his own. The growth of the Gestalt form was minimal at first as were all his forms, but after training with Merlin and Magnus, Bloom’s increased power alarmed Arson.
It was this abnormality that led Arson to believe that something was wrong with his mana. Bloom drew on his power base, and was able to produce attacks well beyond what Arson felt he was capable of.
After contemplating for a near fortnight, Arson came to the conclusion that Bloom didn’t have the same mental precautions in place that made Arson restrict the amount of mana he was willing to use to preserve his own life.
This was proven by how many times the Gestalt form was forced to return to his cerebral realm to enter his soul and heal after losing arms and or legs to explosive experiments with his sun golden mana.
“Thinker, is this going to cause a chain reaction?”
“What do you think you, idiot? Just keep running!”
Arson felt the gravity around him distort and knew that Bloom had attacked. He looked over his shoulder to see the Gestalt form smiling as he flew in his direction; all the masters scattering, and the destructive halo descending like a slowly falling meteor toward the rooftop he’d fled from.
The gleaming attack ripped and tore the air. Shifted the light in the entire environment, and even managed to draw in all of the lightning Merlin had used to attack Almarine with.
Arson was yanked off his feet, not by the explosion, but by Almarine who was running pass him, dragging him by his collar while she cackled.
“Not going to lie child, I’m beginning to like you!”
Arson wasn’t even able to respond. One, because of how quickly Almarine was running, and two because of the detonation.
Everything froze momentarily with the exception of Almarine, who instead seemed to speed up. Arson watched as the attack imploded to such a magnitude that multi-floored buildings were pulled from the ground and flung, hurtling end over end toward the impact zone. The unbothered Almarine simply ran, jumping to run across spinning structures as easily as she would on an even plain.
Arson’s eyes flicked about, taking in the destruction as everything occurred in slow motion. Bloom flying through the chaos. The rest of the masters slowly moving from rooftop to rooftop as the buildings they ran across crumbled underneath their steps. All while a crackling orb of golden white lightning charged where Bloom’s attack had descended, eating all the materials drawn in to charge something Arson felt would cause destruction to levels of untold proportions.
“Then Arson felt something surge into his soul space, filling him with so much mana that he immediately passed out. His eyes drifting closed as the second detonation initiated, as a lightning bolt at almost tribulation levels of power snapped down to meet the ball of mana like a spark to kindling.
…
Carter Omni paced below a bank vault, waiting for his sister to send him a message. A message that should have come already.
His agitation grew as he continued to wait, not only because of his impatience, the groans of the men and woman who lay dying all around him, nor the blood that clung to his cloth shoes that made his sensitivity to his feet being wet prod at the corners of his mind with every step he took.
“You know it is inevitable Carter…”
Carter paused and looked up at the caged goddess that flew in a swirling tank full of mana. Her prison like that of a vivarium the size of a large manor, filled with life sized attractions to keep the immortal entertained.
Her eyes were a balanced swirl of silver and deep purples and reds, framed by a luscious mane of loose, golden tangles that seemed to be caught in the wind. Yet not a single strand ever covered her face.
Her dress was immaculately white, and also seemingly blew about as if she stood at the center of a storm. Her immense power enable of truly being contained by her own vessel.
She pressed her hands against the interior of her prison and smiled. The god of creation, wearing a face like that of someone in a place of superiority, grinned on the stability of Carter’s nerves. Not only because he had the growing sense that she was aware of details that he wasn’t, but because she knew how much she was bothering him. Their past relationship filled with more than enough fuel to help the goddess unravel Carter at the edges, fraying the strings of fate held within his mind thread by thread.
“Your ramblings are nothing but nonsense, Freedom, as soon as I can—“
The goddess began to laugh as the ground started to shake all around them. Carter scowled as he looked at Freedom of the Origin bloodline, feeling that he wasn’t going to like anything that came next.
He had plans to repurpose the prison that drained the goddess’s power for his own uses, but even as he waited for the prime opportunity a sound drew their attention upward.
A hairline fracture had begun to appear on the ceiling of the prison, making Freedom’s laughter grow more boisterous. She pulled her eyes from the sight, letting her own squinted glare fall upon Carter, sneering at the Cultivator while he was unable to look away from the growing crack. Carter now completely aware that his plans were going slightly awry.
“It looks like my champion has arrived. It will not be long now…”
Carter finally looked away from the slowly opening cage and toward Freedom. The goddess had already begun to dissolve as her escape became inevitable, chunks of her cage falling down more and more all around her as Carter frowned.
“Don’t worry my beloved, I won’t hold my imprisonment against you… for long.”
Freedom vanished and Carter clenched his fist, ripping a hold in space. The dimensional portal snapped open where he’d last seen his sister, just in time for him to bear witness to the destruction of Origin as a whole.
“What in the bloody depths is going on…?”
As Carter stepped through, walking into the open air above Origin, a bolt of incredible mana based lightning brushed by him, slamming into an orb of dense energies that crackled with destructive power.
The Ancient’s eyes widened as a powerful wave of destruction pulsed out from the collision, gravity distorting itself around the halo that swept outward. Everything occurred to Carter in slow motion, letting him watch as all the mana within the dimension was pulled toward the cataclysmic explosion, even as matter was incinerated and used to fuel the destructive force being pushed out.
“Hmmm”
Time snapped back into motion from Carter’s perspective, in the same moment his first bomb went off; the land in every direction literally being lifted upward in a rolling earthquake like that of a world-ending tidal wave made up of a civilization rather than sea currents.
Even as the debris brushed pass him with the physical force of cannons firing continuously, the only thing protecting him was the artifact shielding made by the Clock family, he couldn’t help but be impressed.
“Was this Mari, no… she is brazen, but not this reckless…”
Mana bombs increased the destruction caused by whatever power had triggered this event to start. Entire streets vanishing in an instant, leaving nothing but swept sands that turned into glass underneath the incredible heat of the explosion.
Carter hadn’t wanted to actually destroy the city of Origin, but instead use the bombs placed from corner to corner of the city as a threat to all valuable parties involved to leave.
He’d then wanted to use the imbalance caused by the departure of all the powerful and prominent figures to pull Freedom’s cage into a pocket dimension he’d developed to train his children. Looking around in that moment however, he simply shrugged.
He could have done much with his plans, and the backlash of all of this would probably be yet another blundered mission and the fault would land entirely on his shoulders, but the pressure of his own notoriety had long been something he’d grown used to.
Villains are remembered while the righteous are erased from time…
The words of his father slipped into his mind, and Carter began to chuckle at the circumstances. Bothered only by the words of the Goddess, he knew would repay him tenfold for his choice to cage her for countless centuries.
He’d wanted to escape the ire of his family for loving an enemy, and had originally promised to free his lost love millennia ago. However as time grew and Carter’s life warped his sensibilities, his love for Freedom changed into nothing more than a distant memory. An idle thought that occasionally drifted in and out of his vast mental space.
Finally, the destruction settled and Carter took one more look at the devastation. The only evidence of Origin left, the tops of skyscraper tops and underground bunkers and spaces once used and lost to time, now excavated by the loss of what had been built above.
Sparks, where am I going to find a new power source…?
He thought a moment, sending a message to his sister, before opening another tear in space to leave the dimension completely, chuckling as he stepped through.
“Guess my job is done here.”