Riven hadn’t known what to expect if he ever witnessed one of the most powerful Deathless in the whole world showing up. Better to not have any expectations at all. Whatever he could come up with, it would never hold a candle to the real thing.
When it happened, the experience definitely exceeded whatever foolishness his imagination had conjured.
The world itself had twisted at the Cataclysm’s approach. Riven breathed, but he was inhaling a miasma. Each pocket of air he took in was different from the previous—some freezing, some burning, some moist, some dry as desert bones. None similar to the last. Light grew grey as though he was being filmed in those new silent cinemas, where every edge was blurry and indistinct, and everything in the distance was too faded to recognize in any way. The mist had risen from the ground to form a ceiling of whitish-pink clouds, an audience for the upcoming debacle of a film.
“The Chasm is going on?” Riven asked. He sounded tinny and distant to his own ears, as though he was speaking to himself through a long pipe.
“A Cataclysm, that’s what,” Viriya said.
Riven could see that. Could see that very well, in fact. The demon in questions was descending from the heavens, floating down in a form that screamed out they were too perfect for this world.
His body was humanoid like all others, but where they had scales in place of skin, he glowed with iridescent light. Pearls, opals, and more multihued gems Riven didn’t know about covered his body in place of scales. Hundreds of thousands of them everywhere glimmered, radiant as a rainbow and shining like stained glass with the sun behind. He was spindly, thin as a man emaciated but still flowing with impossible strength and power. Two massive jade horns curled out from his head on either side like a buck.
Most eye-catching though, were his wings. Or whatever they were supposed. A dozen appendages shot out from his shoulders like cape, longer than his body, hairy and segmented like tarantula legs, jarring against the radiance of the rest of him.
“You were saying something about moving?” Riven said, staring at Mhell.
The witch was entranced by the new, brilliant arrival, but still responded. “Running, yes. Escaping. It’s still not too late.”
Her voice was nearly panicked, nothing of the usual suave and grace anywhere to be found. Someone who could go toe to toe with an Infernal—one that had given them so much trouble—had now been reduced to this frightened state, this moment where she was ready to drop everything and run. Hadn’t she said something about missing Spectres? Riven could barely remember. He was frozen too, stuck in this place just like the others, just even as the Guards and demons far behind him. Even if any of them ran, where in the world would they go? They were all trapped in this silent film, readying for whatever the Cataclysm held in store for them, stuck in the demon’s own personal world that they’d brought with them.
“We need to go,” Mhell repeated. “Move, now.”
On the ground, Anvarroh cackled. Had Riven really heard him speak like such an educated aristocrat only a while ago? “He is here. He has come. You all shall now perish. You shall now know—”
Viriya swing a vicious kick at the demon’s disembodied head, sending it flying as he squawked in outrage.
She nodded at Mhell, and moved. But not away from the demon. Instead, as though in a trance, she walked towards the Cataclysm. Her hands were clenched too tight, her shoulders set with something Riven couldn’t tell since she had her back to him.
“Where do you think you’re going? Riven asked. As so often, she didn’t respond. “Viriya! Come back, you idiot.”
She didn’t hear, or pretended not to, or just didn’t give a damn about what Riven said. He growled. Damn, she was going to get killed, and get everyone eradicated in the process as well. Riven had to pull her back, but he was still frozen. Viriya was only a few steps away, but she was already fading, her outline blurring, her form grainy as though the film was of the shoddiest quality.
“What… what’s going on?” Riven asked again. “Why does everything look like this?”
“It’s the Cataclysm,” Mhell said.
“Yes, I think I could surmise that much.”
“Dear, don’t get uppity with me please. Cataclysms, and all other powerful Deathless, bring in a bit of the Beyond with them. A small part of the world they naturally inhabit cling to them, for it is their immense power that creates that world in the first place.”
Riven stared at her. “How do you know all this?”
She shrugged. “Life takes us in weird directions.”
Riven was about to point out she didn’t technically have a life anymore, but the Cataclysm finally moved, and his attention was hooked.
The demon waved one arm in a slow arc over the whole area, as if brushing away dirt from an invisible screen through which he viewed the world. His eyes opened to reveal two black whorls, pinpricks of deep darkness that sucked in all light.
With jagged thunder, a crack shot open in the ground. Riven stumbled backwards as the ground shook, dust leaping off, and bits and flakes of broken Coral and earth skipping and skittering everywhere. His eyes were fixed on the crack though. Fractures ran from it everywhere, a hundred tributaries winding away from the main river. Fractures that he had seen before. Back in Welmark. Back only yesterday when he had travelled with Mhell.
The Cataclysm had opened a path straight to the god in the pit.
“Mhell, what’s the demon doing?” Riven asked.
She caught the panic in his voice and turned to face him this time. There was no comfort or reassurance to be had there, not with all the cracks running over her face and her eyes like pools of ice. “I wish I could tell you but I don’t know. The Cataclysm has something to do with this god far below. It can only be here for something monumental, not for that idiotic Infernal.”
Riven stared as the crack grew longer and wider, the ground breaking apart as it fell into its depths, taking several broken bits of Coral with it. Viriya’s progress towards it staggered to a halt as more fractures snaked out. She’d fall if she wasn’t careful. A blast of warm air groaned out of the crack, and the earth trembled even worse than before, a violent shaking that made the very air shudder with a booming, deafening sound. Riven crouched down and clasped his hands over his ears. Scions, he should have passed out by now. Dealing with this insanity after everything else was a little too much for one day.
The Cataclysm descended lower, heading straight for the crack which was now large enough to swallow him. Viriya pushed forward.
“Damn it, Viriya! Get back!” Riven shouted. To die so stupidly at the hands of some an unfathomable creature like this Cataclysm after everything they’d been through had to be the most ridiculous thing today. “You can’t fight it. Stop trying to kill yourself!”
He was sure his words carried to her, but Viriya was still Viriya, and she paid no mind. Vision might be indistinct, and sound was strange as well, but he could tell she heard. There was a moment’s pause, a fractional hint that his words had reached her. Had registered. That she had heard, and disregarded still.
Riven held himself back from stomping on the ground. Why was he so damn bent on helping someone so intent on dying? He had to run to her, knock her over and out, then drag her back. Shouldn’t be hard, given her half-dead condition.
He was still stuck. Even moving his arm made it fade before him, the lines blurring until it seemed to meld with the air all around him. Scions, he just had to move. Move.
Move.
Mhell stepped forward, blurring in his sight. “Get back. You cannot use your Essence anyway. Use the demon’s body to gather some Sept, or else you will die.”
Riven stared after her until she too had faded. “What are you talking about?”
The scene went sharp all of a sudden. Too distinct. Even his natural vision was never this brilliantly clear. Every little detail was obvious before him and he had to only peer to check the frayed stands of what remained of Viriya’s jacket, to pick out every stray strand from Mhell’s crownlike hair, to count every single pearl and opal on the Cataclysm’s body.
Viriya had pulled her gun out. The Cataclysm had paused to hover over the crack, facing her with those impenetrable black eyes. She didn’t fire. The same words as before bubbled in Riven’s throat, more pleas aimed at her to pull out while there was still a chance. The Cataclysm had nothing to do with her, nothing to do with any of them.
Instead of firing, Viriya threw the gun itself at the demon’s body. There was a tiny glimmer, a sprinkle of green on the gun itself as it struck the Cataclysm’s opalescent skin before bouncing off, leaving the green glimmer stuck on his body.
Something flashed past Riven, too fast for him to register in his sight, but it was clear what it was. Viriya was supposed to have been out of Essence by now, but it seemed there was some small spark still left.
The Cataclysm frowned down at the mark on his body. Then he looked up.
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Just in time to see the Coral branch that had speared into Anvarroh head straight for him. It shot at him with the speed of a cannonball, the jagged end aimed straight for his chest.
But it didn’t strike them. Didn’t even get close. The air bent. A sphere of twisted air whirled into being all around the Cataclysm, a small piece of atmosphere where light itself bent and the monochrome grey that had seeped into the world disappeared and everything colluded with each other.
Viriya and the Coral spear where both caught in the sphere. She was able to jump back to safety, but the broken branch wasn’t so lucky. With a twist, it shattered to nothing.
Riven blinked, his chest seeming to cave on its own. The sphere of twisting air and light still whirled around the Cataclysm, and it had just… reduced the Coral branch to nothing. One moment, the branch had been there, caught in the sphere, then compressed in the next to nothing more than powders that Riven had to really focus to see. So that was the power of one of the strongest Deathless in the world. What it the world was that creature’s Spirit?
“Go!” Mhell screamed back at him. “Get to the demon’s carcass, now.”
Demon’s carcass? What the Chasm—Oh! Damn, Riven was so stupid sometimes.
He turned and rushed backwards. Somewhere nearby. That damn Infernal’s dying body had to be somewhere close. All that Sept. That was what Mhell was talking about. Riven had exhausted all his Sept bullets, so why not steal some?
For just a moment, he wondered if his horse was all right. Was it now lost somewhere, the Sept crystal gone forever? Someone had to explain how in the Chasm that crazy hunk of rock worked.
There was a tremendous splintering behind him, and he turned around. That sphere of twisting light and air had grown, expanded to an enormous space so that Viriya couldn’t even think of escaping now.
Her blurry form seemed to twist with everything else. Shit. Shit. If she didn’t get out, she’d be reduced to nothing just like that Coral branch of hers.
“Get out!” Riven shouted again. He was screaming, voice straining against his throat as though the volume was too much for his windpipe to bear. “Get back!”
No way to tell if she heard him at this distance, or if external sound even penetrated into that sphere. But there was nothing else Riven could do other than scream. Not that it helped.
Mhell was closer. She placed both hands before her, and her grey aura shot out to rush straight at the demon’s sphere. It touched and somehow passed through. At the same time, the twisting air and light became violent, swirling like a tornado ripping everything to shreds, and Viriya screamed.
“Fuck!” Riven screamed with her. “Viriya!”
The sphere disappeared, leaving only the febrile air that slowly regained its monotonous grey and grainy film. A huge chunk of the ground was missing around the crack so that it now looked more like a sinkhole. A sinkhole like the Severance Pit, the ridge of which stretched across the northern horizon.
“Viriya,” Riven shouted again. There was no response. No answer at all. “Viriya! Viriya!”
She would have said something. If she’d been there, if she could hear him, the screech that his voice had become trying to call her name over and over would surely have elicited some response, despite her habitual silence. He made to charge forward to check but Mhell glared at him. Her eyes were colder than the depths of a glacier.
Riven swallowed, then turned around. He searched around, staggering everywhere, tears threatening to burst free from his eyes. Scions, his face was burning. The demon’s body. Sept. That was his objective. He just had to believe they were fine. Had to believe that Viriya was alive, that Rio hadn’t been killed, that the demons and the Guards had called a truce as the most momentous thing in any of their lives took place.
Anvarroh shouted obscenities at him when he got close to the demon’s head, but what good would a little head do? And there was no Coral branch sticking out of the ground to mark where the body was either. Maybe it had dissolved to dead Sept by now.
Then he saw it. About a score of yards away or so, the demon’s body was lying on its front. Or what was left of it, rather.
“You will die soon,” Anvarroh said. The Infernal spat at Riven. “You first, then your friends, then your family, all torn limb from limb then reattached to form—”
Riven took a page out Viriya’s book and kicked the damn head. It flew off, Anvarroh shouting, yelling, and cursing all the while.
He pulled himself to the broken body. Sept was still coming out of everywhere, forming a hundred little pools and piles that Riven needed to take advantage of. He sank into the piled, the edges of which were leaden and grey. Dead. It was hard to tell in this monochrome, but the ones closer to the Infernal’s remains seemed to be more lustrous. Almost shining, if Riven was asked.
Now that he’d found the body, he looked back towards the crack. Towards Mhell and the Cataclysm. Towards where Viriya was supposed to be. The demon hadn’t descended into the larger crack, still floating and hovering as though there was something off. Something amiss that he still needed to take care of. Something like Mhell, who was stepping backwards, eyes turned towards the Cataclysm and head bowed ever so slightly like respecting the potential of a dangerous predator who could kill her with little thought.
The Cataclysm, apparently, wasn’t satisfied. He waved his stick-figure hand at them, and another sphere blew up all around him, swirling with air and twisting the light reflected and refracted within. It was even larger this time. The sphere grew and grew, encompassing the whole area and going past Riven before he even had the time to realize what was happening.
Before Riven could understand what was happening, he was trapped.
He gasped. The air was suddenly normal, serene and calm and no longer feeling like it was a conglomerate of every kind of air existing in the world. Within the sphere, light was back to normal too. No longer a monochrome, the colours were back in their proper places, the soft cream of the ground, the black of Riven’s shirt, the burgundy of Mhell’s dress. Even the blue of the sky had come back. Maybe it was the membrane between what was within the sphere and what as without that made everything inside seem to twist.
But he was caught. Caught in the Cataclysm’s Spirit.
“Now, Riven!” Mhell shouted.
Taking a deep breath, he plunged his hands into the Sept. It crawled all over his skin as though it was alive, a hundred thousand ants that were trying to make his hand a home. His Essence. Riven needed his Essence back. A shield. Fast.
The actual twist came without warning. It spread out from the Cataclysm, the ground shivering before it soundless shattered to nothing, light warping around it as though space itself was crushing everything it held to oblivion. Space! That had to be it.
“Riven!” Mhell had drawn close to him, the desperation thick in her voice. Nothing about her powers would be enough to protect anyone. Just as it hadn’t protected Viriya.
Viriya. Damn the Chasm, and damn the Cataclysm too. Survive. He’d have to survive, only then could he find her. As the twist of air and light and ground grew, as the rush of contorting space came right at him, golden lines shot forth from him. Too many to count, innumerable fibres finer than hair shooting into the air and spinning everywhere as though trying to stitch a shield out of space itself. The perfect counter for the Cataclysm’s Spirit.
But the demon was a Cataclysm. So utterly idiotic to think Riven could somehow stop that kind of power when the Infernal hadn’t had too much trouble breaking through Riven’s shield. Ridiculous. He’d die.
The golden aura spread all over him and the demon’s twist of space struck.
There was a sound this time. An enormous, earth-shattering, soul-piercing sound that possessed Riven alive, eradicating every other sense and thought with its sheer intensity, stuffing his nose, turning his vison red as blood, overloading his every nerve. A grey tendril worked its way into his line of sight and suddenly, the immensity lessened. Mhell’s aura was spreading over him, and the overextension on every bit of Riven decreased even more until he was again aware of his breathing, oh the world around him.
“It’s failing.” The witch’s words somehow cut through the clamours. “You need to use me as well.”
It still hurt everywhere, his skin dancing like it was on fire, and the side of his face hit by Anvarroh burning as though someone had used it as an anvil. But he could see what was happening now.
Everything within the sphere did twist. The air, the light, the ground itself, all contorting in on themselves and being crush and compressed to nothing. The rending space barged against his shield, a million enormous claws ripping and tearing the golden shield to shreds. It wouldn’t hold for long.
Mhell dropped to the ground next to him. “Use me! Use my Sept.”
Riven was still recovering from the shock, still under too much of its shadow to understand what she was saying. Use her Sept? What was that supposed to mean?
The witch sniffed at his blank expression. She pulled one arm close to him and with the other, she ripped, tearing away sleeve, skin and even flesh. Sept bloomed, slipping to the ground in fading flecks. “Use. My. Sept.”
Of course. His shield was failing, in the same way the Infernal’s Sept was fading. He needed something live. Something still pulsing strong to provide him with the needed power.
Riven placed a hand over Mhell’s wound, some of her Sept squeezing out through the gaps between his fingers and the wound, but most of it was stoppered. The familiar pressure possessed him again, a livewire shooting a continuous jolt through his whole body instead of expelling itself. He stared up, whole body vibrating like a gong. The shield was still dying under the Cataclysm’s assault but it was reforming just as quickly. There was no give. No change in position. Why would it? After all, the Sept from within a Deathless only died after it left the body, so if Riven stoppered the wound, he had access to Sept that couldn’t fade or die. An infinite supply, as proven by his unstoppable Essence.
An Essence that was keeping a Cataclysm at bay.
It stopped. The gouging was gone and the area turned completely dark in a moment, the impossible noise shutting off all of a sudden.
“Wha—what happened?” Riven asked. Whispered, really. He couldn’t manage more than that in his current condition. “Are we even alive, still?”
“Good questions, dear.” Mhell, it seemed, was desperately trying to recall her normal tone. “The vagaries of life are difficult to determine, after all.”
The sphere retreated before Riven could ask more. It shrunk back into the Cataclysm, the world reverting to its previous condition with the monochromatic grey tinging everything, grainy film quality filling everything everywhere. Normal at least, for the parts of the world that hadn’t been reduced to nothing by the Cataclysm’s Spirit.
Riven removed his hand from Mhell’s wound and stood on shaky legs. He surveyed the nothingness everywhere. They stood on a small island of rock, surrounded by a sea of dark emptiness, connected to the distant shore of land by a single spar of rock keeping them from plummeting to the darkness of the pit.
With the Sept connection severed, Riven’s Essence shield died. The air became clear again. Except for the fact that he was standing over that crack, which had now widened and deepened to something akin to an abyss.
The Cataclysm was still floating in the same place. Riven stared at the demon. Those pitch black eyes, those dots of darkness that gave nothing away, regarding Riven with no intention of revealing any of their depths. What went on that thing’s head? Why was it here, and what did it hope to accomplish? He didn’t look threatening. Not really. All he radiated was his iridescence, not any hate or ill-intent.
“Riven, dear…” Mhell’s voice was a little panicky.
With some reluctance, Riven looked back at her. “What?”
She was staring up. Frowning, Riven followed her line of sight, then gasped. The sky. The sky had… broken. An enormous line ran through its centre, stretching from horizon to horizon as though the light blue curtain—now turning dusky navy—had been pulled aside to reveal the cosmos beyond. Where the sun should have been was a cloud of brilliant gold and orange colour, a swirling miasma which was dotted with too many brilliant stars, their light battling with the greyness of the region had sunk into thanks to the Cataclysm.
“What…?” Riven was having trouble forming any coherent thought, much less any legible words.
“That’s a Scion,” Mhell said. She said nothing more.
Riven, of course, had nothing to ask. Why, what, and how mattered not in the face of the sheer magnitude of what he beheld. Of what he was witness too. A Scion? What in the—oh! He noted the shape the clustered blue-white stars formed, gathering to gathering to form another star. A seven-pointed star with four equal arms in an “X”, a shorter one going up, and two longer ones going down.
The same shape he had seen in the sculpture back in Providence city the first time he’d arrived there.
Mhell was right. That thing was a Scion.