I gaze out on my lake of shit and corpses, basking in the calm familiarity of it all. Heads bob at the surface of the lake, wearing the faces of friends and family, twisted in grotesque expressions that my eyes mostly slide right off of, not noticing or caring. It's nice here. Peaceful.
"Peace is fleeting," croaks a frog.
I turn to look at him, for it is a boy frog, colored a beautifully fluorescent greenish-yellow purple.
"You're fleeting," I counter, since it is merely a pathetic mortal frog.
"Your peace, especially, because you win it with pieces of others," the frog continues rudely.
"Are you a poisonous frog?" I ask. "Or are you just an annoying one?"
"All things die, good things especially," the frog ribbits. "Your peace will die. Your safety will die. Your love will die. You will make sure it is so, because that is what you are."
I narrow my eyes at the frog. I do not like the cut of his jib.
"Victory will solve nothing," the frog promises me. "You will be afraid forever. You are surrounded by enemies in the most complete way possible."
"I hate you, frog," I curse him. "I will eat you. I will eat your tadpoles. I will eat every fear, every evil. There will be none left."
"You will not," the frog croaks. "Because after you've devoured your enemies, your abusers, your friends, your family, your lovers, and your very world, there will still be you."
"It is time for you to croak a different way," I tell the frog, lower lip trembling.
Then I scream, lunging at him and trying to bite him in half. He hops away and I fly past him, landing face first in the putrid lake of shit and corpses.
Memories of my drug-induced hallucination are not what I want to be thinking about while I run for my life, but for some reason my mind wanders there anyway. After tossing Vitamin on my shoulders and grabbing Penelope I sprint away as fast as I can. Lyn grabs Rowan, and together we escape as quickly as we are able, not wasting breath on idle conversation. I don't know how long we have, and I don't like the idea of being underground when it happens. I feel my legs shattering already, only half-healed from when Penelope worked on me while I was unconscious. It doesn't matter. I hold my broken body together, because it is the only way any of us have a chance of making it out of here. I suspect Lyn can go faster than me if she chooses to, but instead she matches my pace, having to rely on Vitamin to navigate.
Part of me wishes she remembered the way and could go on ahead, but it's nice having her here. If we all die and get eaten, at least it will be together.
The tunnels are long, mazelike and winding, but Vitamin knows the way. It's quite the contrast from our approach, desperate and breathy as opposed to careful and quiet. I'm barely even paying attention to my soul sense; I couldn't care less if we run into someone or get seen. Soon, we are out of the tunnels, back in the sewers. We don't run all the way home, instead taking the first exit to ground level. I feel it. It's coming. Half a dozen people jump in surprise as we burst up from below, and I waste no time drawing my bloody spear and pointing it away from the center city.
"Run!" I shriek at them. "Run to the outer walls!"
I feel confusion, not fear, and my mind can't even comprehend why they stare at me rather than turn to run. The all-consuming knowledge, the crushing weight of the Mistwatcher's gaze, it doesn't touch them like it does me. My heart is hammering hard enough to hurt, my whole body wants to scream, to run, to be on a completely different island, and these people feel nothing.
Fucking humans. Why do I bother? How close are we to the center? How big will the impact be? Is everyone here going to die?
"Drop me and get to the kids," Rowan tells Lyn, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. "Love you."
Lyn nods, setting him down and vanishing down the street in a blink. Penelope extracts herself from my arms, standing as imperiously as she can manage.
"I am Lady Penelope Vesuvius!" she bellows. "By my authority, you are to evacuate to the outer walls immediately. This area is not safe. I repeat, this area is not safe. Evacuate immediately!"
Now people start to move, Penelope's words somehow better than my own. We rush to a larger street, trying to warn as many people as we can, screaming at idiot civilians to move, to flee. Now, panic starts to spread like flame. No one knows what's happening, but finally, finally they are starting to run.
I have only an instant for my extra senses to catch movement at their periphery before the world explodes.
The walls to the inner city are visible at the far end of the road, but that quickly changes as they are swallowed by a shockwave of rubble, dust, and destruction. The island itself seems to shiver in terror at the impact, a violent vibration that collapses the very ground beneath us. The sewers we just escaped rush up to meet the city as the streets are dumped within them. I take the fall unharmed, but dozens of souls in my range are not so lucky. I check to ensure Penelope, Rowan, and Vitamin are not among them, only to meet Penelope's horrified face as she stares straight up.
I follow her gaze, despair rooting deep in my bones. The island has erupted, displaced by the fury of its god and thrown to the sky. Enormous masses of stone and debris blot out the yellow sky, some miles in the air. Chunks of homes, of opulent statues, of the great miles of stone under our city, of corpses that were once a part of it... they inevitably and inexorably make their way back towards the ground. We may have survived the Watcher's emergence, but that won't stop us from being buried under the miles of rock it unearthed. Off towards the center city, the corner of my eye catches not one but three massive tendrils of flesh, raging and writhing, scraping away their surroundings like a furious potter taking out grievances on wet clay.
We have been perceived, and found wanting.
I desperately try to think of what we could possibly do. There's nowhere to run, no safe spot we could make it to before we’re crushed. I could find an intact building and try to use Norah's talent on it… no, there’s no way she's strong enough. Maybe if I smash enough of the souls in my storage and feed them to her, her talent can hold. But then what? Would we even be able to get out? Would every soul in my storage even be enough?
A gleam of light catches the corner of my eye as I see something streak upwards in the sky, in defiance of the wrath that falls. Brilliant white armor, adorned with accents of red. She's high up in the air, beyond the range of my soul sense, but the moment she starts casting it becomes obvious who stands between us and our death.
Galdra the Annihilator.
Flames grow in the sky. A field of flickering heat, licking at the air, grows in all directions, dwarfing the woman creating them. They glow red, then orange, then yellow, white, blue, and soon the heat is beyond bearable, the color beyond visible. Even from a mile below, even past whatever impossible level of control that keeps Galdra from dying to her own magic, the simple act of watching is like thrusting my head into an oven. Boulders the size of houses char black in a moment, then melt, then vaporize, twisting back up into the sky under the force of a plasmic updraft. Not a single speck of dust passes through the spell that gave her her cognomen.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
But Galdra cannot cover the entire sky. Other shapes move up after her, first one, then a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand, each clad in the same armor of white and red. Countless copies of Braum the Ubiquitous fly upwards, heedless of gravity, and take their fists to the largest stones, crushing and shattering entire city blocks of rock into pebbles. The shattered debris seems no less dangerous, but yet another High Templar unleashes power from amidst the sea of Braums. A massive tornado grabs and launches everything it can catch away from the city, off into the forest.
"High Templar Cassia the Maelstrom," Penelope whispers, answering my unasked question as she rises shakily to her feet. "We should… we should be okay. Hiverock rather seemed to enjoy trying to bombard us with debris from above, the Templars are explicitly trained for—"
A deafening crash cuts her off, the island shaking again as the wrath of the Mistwatcher continues, a mighty tendril slamming into the earth. She and I both collapse to the ground, unceremoniously falling in sewage.
"…But perhaps we should get ourselves further from the perception site regardless," she adds shakily.
"It would be nice if they actually dealt with the thing creating all that debris," I complain, failing to hide the tremor in my own voice.
"Magic doesn't work on the Mistwatcher," Penelope dismisses. "Which, frankly, is probably a good thing. Imagine if we were capable of angering it further. Now come on, help me out of here."
I grab both her and Rowan as best I can, which is a bit awkward considering that they are both quite a bit larger than I am, and I jump up to what I hope is a more stable part of the road. All around us, the city has collapsed into its own foundations, streets and buildings fallen into the cavernous sewer system below. A sewer system that I know extends underneath my home.
"You all run," I order, setting Penelope and Rowan down as Vitamin hops up beside me. "I need to help Lyn."
"She'll have gotten there by now," Rowan protests.
"I know," I agree. "She's fast, but I'm strong. If the kids are trapped under something…"
"I'm coming with you," Vitamin insists, hands on her hips.
"Vitamin—" I start to chide, but she cuts me off.
"They're my family as well. And you're not the only one who's strong."
Strength flows out of her soul, through her limbs. It's Remus's technique, the power to push his limbs beyond human limits. She’s stacking it with the natural capacity of Revenants to move their bodies with their soul, an odd cloud of power suffused around the veins of strength I gave her.
I don’t really have time to argue with her anyway.
"Fine," I snap. "Let's go."
I turn to run, but Penelope moves forward and wraps her arms around me, squeezing tightly. I stop and give her a reassuring pat.
"I'll be fine," I promise her.
"I know," Penelope lies. "I just wanted a hug."
I give her a return squeeze, accept a hair ruffle from Rowan, and then I'm off, Vitamin dashing along beside me. The tentacles continue to rage, not a single structure around them having any hope of surviving the onslaught. Sky is certainly getting his wish; almost nothing in the center city will survive. My home is thankfully far enough away from there that it's not in danger of a sudden tentacle smash, but judging by the degree to which the entire city seems to be partially or entirely leveled, the quake caused by their arrival alone was probably enough to destroy it anyway.
I don't have the luxury of wallowing in worry for long, as for a moment I feel a rush of ephemeral pressure suddenly and inexplicably lift from me, an ever-present crushing force somehow getting weaker for a short moment before the sky splits in half. A thick line of perfect, golden yellow screams from the ground and cleaves some of the larger pieces of debris out of existence. Mana. A concentrated beam of pure mana.
"That’s going to be High Templar Arden the Ironsoul,” Vitamin says, and I glance at her in surprise for a moment before remembering she has Remus’ memories.
“The High Templars sure got here fast,” I grumble. "I would have expected most of them to be out dealing with vrothizo."
"Yeah," Vitamin agrees. "Lucky for everybody in the city though, I guess."
The idea of a Templar presence being lucky for anyone leaves a foul taste in my mouth, but I don't argue the point. We would be dead without them. Purple spiderweb cracks start opening in the air overhead, twisting and branching out like lightning in slow motion. They fill the sky, hovering above even the wrathful tentacles, one of the three finally starting to slip back through the island, down to the mists once more. The cracks in the air start to widen, vibrating dangerously, horrible screeching sounds reaching the ground and nearly splitting my abused eardrums. With a bone-deep shudder, the world dims for an instant before the cracks and all the rest of the debris above them vanish without sound or warning. A second afterward, the backblast of whatever terrifying spell that was slams me into the ground, breaking my nose in the process. But that's the end of it. Some detritus that made it past the Templars starts raining down around us, pebbles falling like hail, but for the most part we have been spared the threat of complete and total annihilation.
“...Uh, well,” Vitamin breathes. "That one, I don’t know."
“Whatever,” I hiss. “It’s better than being crushed to death by rocks.”
After picking myself up from the ground and stemming the blood flow coming from my nose, I don't really care enough to respond. We are almost back home, or what's left of it, and the closer we get the more dead souls I feel inside my range. I hate the idea of leaving the souls for the watcher, but I'm terrified that my family will be among them. It's going to start soon. The reaping of souls, following the wrath. It didn’t take very long for the watcher to scoop the souls that died in the last perception event I saw, and now there are several orders of magnitude more deaths for him to slurp up. I have every reason to believe that the mass graves will result in mass undead, as well. Disaster sites like this one only get followed by yet more disasters.
A god's fury is not quelled kindly.
I feel the range of my senses encompass what's left of my home, and my jaw clenches. Not a single one of my family members is present in the structure. But Capita is.
"Where are they," I demand as soon as I'm close enough. My home is indeed utterly destroyed, and I search around for evidence of death but only find the pink-haired woman I tried to murder earlier this very morning. Half of her, anyway. Only a single one of her two bodies is there, smiling pleasantly and waving in greetings.
"Greetings, oh work of art," Capita says happily. "Fear not for the flock of the shepherdess, they graze in greener pastures."
"Where," I growl, stepping forward with murderous intent. I don't give a single shit whether she answers before or after dying.
Capita must notice the look on my face, and has the decency to finally stop smiling.
"…Peace, sister," she requests. "I sent them to the outer walls. They hold, they are safe."
The outer walls? There's no way Sky controls the outer walls, that's military. And with Lyn having a different face courtesy of Penelope, they won't recognize her as wanted, so it probably would be the safest place to drop my family in a crisis like this one.
"So you teleported my family to safety, and are just sitting around waiting… for what?" I ask. "To pleasantly ask me not to kill you?"
Capita hesitates.
"…Yes?" she hedges.
"You're fucking insane," I tell her, gesturing around us. Dozens of dead souls are in my range in every direction. "You really are just completely fucking insane."
She gives me an apologetic shrug.
"I'll happily send you to them," she offers.
"You'll do that anyway."
The moment I jump towards her, however, her second self teleports in, presumably having been watching from outside my range. They link souls and vanish a split second later. Leaving me nothing but rubble and a strong urge to swear profusely, which I indulge in.
“Was she telling the truth, at least?” Vitamin asks, walking up beside me and hugging my waist.
“Yeah,” I tell her, one hand idly playing with her hair as a tendril strokes her soul. “She was. Lyn and the kids are safe. So that’s something.”
“We gonna head back then?”
With another thunderous slam, I’m forced to my knees as the Mistwatcher hits the island again, scraping away more stone before partially slithering back to the mists, leaving only one physical tendril left. I sigh, getting back to my feet.
“No,” I tell her. “Vitamin, are you strong enough to head to the lab on your own? I think Theodora and Margarette might be trapped.”
“Count on me, mom!” Vitamin declares. “But what about you?”
I look towards the center city, the utter annihilation, the final Watcher tendril writhing in all its dread glory. How many souls will it feast on today? How many will it carelessly shatter? How many uncontrolled zombies will end up released on the survivors?
“Mommy needs to go do damage control,” I tell her, picking her up in a brief squeeze.
Vitamin grins.
“To prove you’re a hero?” she asks.
I put her down, shrugging.
“To prove I’m not a psychopath, I guess.”
Then I turn and run towards what was once the center city, where the Watcher’s last tendril waits.
...Hopefully, it won’t notice me.