POV: Glaustro
I had heard the stories, of course. Who hadn’t? Crewe didn’t get to where he was by being a cuddly, backseat commander who just hid behind his troops and did nothing. He was known for subjugating worlds, not annoying them into obedience.
So, to see him unleash the full extent of his fuck-you-in-particular attitude on the irritating jinn was a treat. Organizing my troops to follow up on the collapse of the city was also in line with the plans we were handed for the invasion.
All that remained was my own contribution to the slaughter, as well as the standing order to regroup immediately once our troops hit their stride so we could reinforce the lieutenant general against any shenanigans the jinn might try to pull off.
It was unlikely, of course. Now that he was no longer holding back, along with the weakening of the World Will’s hold on us, there was little the jinn leadership could do. Still, Crewe had gotten burned last time when they pulled out weapons and spells designed to counter demons in particular, so he was no longer taking any chances.
I couldn’t fly, something that still stung. But then again, neither could my brother. What I could do was conjure my stone armor. That made it easier for me to dash across the battlefield, and it came with the added bonus of satisfying ‘crunch’ sounds when I happened to step on a floundering jinn.
By the time I reached the location of the main palace’s collapse, Graighast and several other officers were already there, crafting some kind of complex spell matrix. Crewe was in the process of mopping up the jinn leaders. Over a dozen jinn clustered in front of a barrier thick and complex enough to halt even Crewe temporarily. They were doing their best to keep their heads attached to the rest of their bodies as they harassed the lieutenant general, trying to keep him from attacking the barrier.
He hissed in frustration, and a backhanded strike took out the entire upper body of a jinn who had lingered a bit too long in his vicinity. Then Crewe’s scythe lashed out again. But while the barrier shuddered and showed signs of cracking, it still held.
Behind the barrier huddled the one jinn leader who had addressed us. He was wounded and bloody, his hands gripping the shoulders of a terrified child.
“Make the wish! Wish for me to heal! Fully and permanently!” the enemy leader screamed at the child. My eyes fell on the bodies littering the ground around him, as well as the children huddling against the opposite side of the barrier.
I had wondered, of course. In all the cities we came across on Lagyel, children were either few or nonexistent. The memories I got from the local souls I had nibbled on suggested children were a rarity, all of them getting collected by the jinn shortly after birth.
“I— I want you to heal,” the child whimpered, then screamed as the jinn shook it, quickly tacking on, “fully and permanently!”
Even through the barrier, I sensed the child’s soul light up. Potential, desire, everything that made up the future of a bright young soul was stirred up to the surface and drained away, making the little girl’s eyes dim into complete apathy.
When the jinn let her go, she collapsed bonelessly, not even fighting to stay on her feet. In contrast, the jinn swelled with life and power. His body still bore clear, bloody lines where Crewe’s scythe had severed his limbs, but now the limbs were attached again. He flexed them, nodded in satisfaction, then grabbed the next child within his reach. A glance at the barrier Crewe was in the process of destroying made him scowl.
“You, boy!” the jinn roared, lifting the child in question off his feet. “Wish for indestructible wards to protect me from my enemies. Do it!”
The child did, collapsing right alongside the jinn’s last victim. The jinn immediately reached for the next, angrily demanding power and might to smite his enemies.
By that time, his repaired defenses were starting to crack all over again. No matter what the jinn forced the children to wish for, there was no absolute victory to be had, and the potency of granted wishes ultimately depended on his own base power.
Sick of this show, I rushed towards my brother, joining my power to his. I didn’t know what they were working on, but I didn’t need to. I sent my mana to trace Graighast’s, and he accepted it easily, showing me exactly how to contribute.
“It’s good you’re here,” my brother said, with a frustrating amount of sincerity. I felt the old instinctive need to lash out and insult him, or quip about how his talent and power made my presence obsolete, but I was able to tamp it down easily.
As it turns out, letting people into your life and actually cultivating relationships helps a lot with overcoming life-long bitterness and feelings of inadequacy.
“Why are we making a ward-cracker instead of helping Crewe eliminate those jinn?” I asked.
“Because he only sacrifices the children faster in response.”
Fair enough, I thought. Besides, it wasn’t like Crewe needed us. Already, he had more or less accidentally reduced the number of jinn attacking him to half of what it used to be. When one of them wised up and tried to go for us instead, Crewe was immediately there, his scythe reaping yet another soul.
The spell we were crafting was monstrously complex, and I had to keep a scowl off my face when I realized Graighast and I were carrying most of its construction. I refused to believe that a bunch of officers, a good number of them dedicated mages, had skills less powerful than my piddling magical talent. Of all the times to hold back their efforts so they could gorge on souls more easily later, this was about the worst.
I resolved to talk to Crewe about it once Lagyel was fully subjugated. If I was lucky, he’d demote the whole lot of them.
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At long last, our work was complete. Graighast must have given Crewe some kind of a signal, because the unnerving terror demon suddenly blurred out of the way, and all the leftover jinn were dead. Their heads hit the sand at the same time our spell hit the barriers. It melted straight through all the shields and slammed into the jinn leader just as he went for one of the last remaining children with life in their eyes.
The enemy leader screamed in utter anguish, and then screamed again when Crewe was suddenly there, and he lost an arm once more.
That, however, seemed to be the last straw holding together the jinn’s sanity. He burst into laughter.
“Fine, then. If eradication of my people is what you want, have it! Know, however, that I will make sure you at least die once.”
The jinn’s voice echoed throughout the world, backed fully by all the years his race had spent ruling Lagyel. A burst of mana accompanied the words, and the jinn collapsed onto his back with just as much energy as his child victims.
“What did you do?!” Crewe hissed angrily. It was my first time seeing the lieutenant general’s entire body covered in short, shifting spikes of darkness. If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume he was spooked.
“Have you wondered, demon, why we buried the sealing golems? Why we refused to activate our most potent weapons fully, even at the cost of their destruction?” the jinn taunted.
I recognized the look in his eyes. Those were the eyes of someone content in the knowledge that he had managed to fuck over his enemies one last time.
“This world wasn’t always ours, and it wasn’t better off without us, either. No, we paid much to ensure the pacification of that monster. Now that you have won, it’s only right that you pay the same price. Of course, it was slumbering when we found it. I wonder how you’ll fare without that advantage.”
The jinn broke into laughter again, but he was silenced instantly by the seething terror demon’s scythe.
“Spread out. Contact the other fronts. We need to know what he unleashed, immediately. Graighast can—”
Crewe didn’t get to tell us what my ever-brilliant brother could do, because suddenly, the very earth under out feet released a thunderous bellow that shook everything on its surface and damn near deafened all of us.
Stunned, we watched the sand stir as a unique mana signature began to rise to the surface of our senses. Looking back, I realized it had been there throughout all my time on Lagyel. But it was so weak, and the ambient mana of Lagyel was so thoroughly pervaded by it, that none of us had even recognized it as one creature’s mana before.
But now, with it rapidly surging in strength and intensity? It was easy to pick out, just as its underlying taste let all of us easily identify what kind of creature it belonged to.
A Primordial.
A true primal elemental titan, born at the dawn of creation and forged out of nothing but its element. A calamity given form. Ruin granted consciousness.
They weren’t unstoppable, not really. But if you wanted to face off against that and live, you’d better at least get to the general’s level.
And that fucking asshole chose to awaken the calamity, dooming us and every jinn, local, and whatever else was left on the damn planet, just to flip us a final middle finger.
“All of you, back to your troops,” Crewe declared, his voice unnervingly calm. “Prioritize immediate retreat. I don’t care how, just get our people back to the Abyss. The legion will reimburse you for your losses. This isn’t over, but our threat assessment of Lagyel will have to be redone from scratch.”
The grimace on my face suggested exactly what I thought the results of that threat assessment would be: Fuck no, not worth invading again. Which pissed me off something fierce. All my plans, all the strings I had pulled…
I grit my teeth. I would make it to major eventually, or I would die trying.
For the time being, though, I had to gather up my band of idiots before they managed to get themselves smushed out of existence.
POV: Hayden
There was something about seeing a planet come alive that was both horrible and awe-inspiring, all at once. The sand was swirling around me with an intensity I’d never felt before, scoring lines in my skin with minimal contact.
Mia had immediately leapt to my side, and even Bronwynn had popped out of somewhere, so the three of us were pressed together as we fought against the planet’s attempts to consume us.
At that point, combat had well and truly ceased. Both demons and jinn were too horrified by what was happening to pay much attention to each other. However, I did note that our rivals for control over Lagyel seemed to have a bit more of a clue about what the jinn leader had unleashed.
When the sand finally settled somewhat, the sight that greeted me was almost worse than the initial explosion. Towering over the horizon, rising over all our heads, was a massive arm made of sand. We could only barely make out a few fingers that stabbed defiantly up into the sky.
Then we almost lost our footing again as the ground rumbled and started to shift. But it wasn’t actually ground, was it? By my best estimation, the thing awakening under our feet was lying down, and we were standing on its shoulder.
And now it was starting to stand up.
“All of you, gather to Bronwynn NOW! I repeat, gather to Bronwynn! We have been ordered to retreat! If any of you fail to comply within the next five minutes, I won’t be held responsible for leaving your sorry asses behind, so fucking get to it!”
Glaustro’s voice echoed in our minds. Clearly, the demonic leadership was no more thrilled about the new developments than their soldiers were.
At least I didn’t have to haul ass. Bronwynn was right there, struggling to stay upright alongside me and Mia as panicked demons began to converge on us. The jinn were panicking too, but it didn’t seem like any of their leaders were doing a thing to organize them. They were staggering and rushing about like a flock of headless chickens.
The ground directly under our feet shifted upwards.
I almost lost it, right then and there. Thankfully, I caught sight of Glaustro inside of his construct, bounding over the rubble and sand towards us. He seemed to be firming up the sand with every step he took. The jinn scrambled to stand on the platforms he left in his wake.
When he finally slammed down in front of the massing crowd of demons, he pushed his way through to us roughly. “All of you, get ready to pass through the portal as quickly as you can! The ground is shifting, so I can only anchor it to the spatial coordinates it first appears in. The sand will cover it up before long.”
We didn’t need any more encouragement. As Glaustro let his construct sink into the sand and scrambled to conjure the portal, all of us prepared for the rush.
When the portal finally snapped open, billowing with the aura of the Abyss and promising safety, the crowd almost carried me right through it.
In spite of that, I dug my heels in, eyes fixed on the horizon. The titanic hand was flexing into a fist, preparing to slam down onto the ground and help heave the awakening creature upright.
I knew I should flee. Glaustro was shouting as much at me, and I was vaguely aware that Mia had paused too, worried eyes fixed on my face.
But something whispered at me to stay. To witness the transformation of a world into something new. Something… primal.
With everything that had happened to me on Lagyel, I felt even more tempted to comply. This was where I took definitive steps towards my ascension. This was where my struggles changed me. The wings on my back were the best proof of that.
I fought past the moment, however. The cold, dark feeling struggling to take root in my mind melted in the face of the concern, and admittedly more than a little anger, of the three people trying to get me through the portal.
I took a deep breath and plunged into the crowd, slipping past the boundaries of Lagyel and into the Abyss, right alongside Mia.