Space suspended Ranvir above the storm. Rain turning to sleet, turning to snow as it fell.
Inside him, Graywing’s mana raged. The long dark feathers rustling in remembered winds. It slipped from him now, trailing into the wind. Churning forth gusts, adding rain. Creating frenzy. Graywing stirred, folded up wings hiding its bare head and neck. A neck that now strained and fought, struggling against an immense weight. Rising, rising, rising. Head high, the vulture let out a scream to pierce the firmament and echo in the storm.
And Ranvir followed. Affront turning to anger, turning to rage.
Below, people scurried. Fighting turning to struggling, turning to death.
They yelled, cried, and scream. Tears fell as often as blood spilled. Many spent more time shoving each other than using their weapons. Yet the injuries piled up. Combat extended, adrenaline waxed and waned. Mana flashed and dissipated.
Fear turning to desperation, turning to nothing at all.
Ranvir watched. And so did Asmar al-Firman.
The grid of space flashed and disappeared, leaving a momentary flash of right-angled lines in Ranvir’s vision. The storm tore at his already ripped clothing, peeling flakes of blood from his bared chest, speckling him with melting snow.
Space opened, and sand spun out to surround him. Emerging below the clouds, Ranvir spread his wings. Air hauled at him, straining his mana-enhanced muscles. Sand whirled into a vortex around him as yet more followed. Amorphous, they swiftly shifted into pointed oblong lances.
Amanaris
***
Sand Spear Barrage - 409
Ranvir unleashed desperation upon the men and woman fighting below. He burst into mana white-yellow mana fire as he drew more mana through Amanaris than he could control. More than mana than anyone there but Ayvir could.
Loce peeled from his form, following his senses away from the battle. For a minute, Ranvir held his bombardment. Sand sprayed higher than the school building, only slowly peeling back to him. Each spear struck with enough force to tear down a house. The other noises of combat died to stentorian blasting of his assault.
Some defended, he sensed them still underneath the sand. Fighting to protect themselves and others. For a minute Ranvir rained death upon the Purists. Finally, his space ran empty, the few grains he pulled back not enough to resupply him.
Streaming into strange purple mirrors, sand swirled through space to appear next to him. Controlled through his Disciplines, he returned his weapon to storage as he descended.
The command center was silent. Tethered, one and all masters, watched him warily as he descended, purple eyes burning with heat. His shirt torn, half a dozen cuts across his torso from his fight with the warp-tethered he’d trapped alongside himself and Shiri.
Fighting them, stopping the space from deteriorating, keeping the space-tethered trapped, and protecting Shiri had proved troublesome. Yet she was safe in Korfyi and he had arrived.
They had been erecting a pavilion, Ranvir’s arrival had evidently paused the preparation. Snow drifting to land on their map tables. “Why are you still fighting?” he asked.
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Quiet persisted before a commander stepped forward. “We had trapped them against the wall, sir,” he said in coarse Elensk. “They were losing. Maybe we could-“
“Maybe?” Ranvir asked, staring into Asmar’s yellow eyes. In this light, they appeared to have a sickly tint to them. “If you would not fight Dhaakir, kill them.”
“I didn’t want to escalate the-“
“Escalate?” Ranvir asked, cutting off leader of the Sleeping Sons. Silence drifted with the snow as if to settle on a bear trap. The hair trigger trap shivering as each flake fell on it. Each precipitous drop could be the last.
Purple sparked off yellow. Immense power clashed silently, both tether-senses retracted. Who was the bear and who the trap? Who would be caught and who would snap? Asmar firmed up his stance, soul readying. Ranvir met him each step of the way.
“Sirs,” Idrees said. “There are greater considerations-“
“Are you afraid of me, Asmar? Are you afraid of him?” they both sensed him, even now, inside the school.
Snow flake after snow flake, building on the next. Jaws quivered as the bear approached.
“Afraid? Only of your short-sightedness,” Asmar said. His voice burned with a fever to match his eyes. Sickly and intense. “Do you know what you have done? They have us outnumbered in masters. They hold no ground, have no people. They will strike at anything and anyone to win this war.”
Snuffling, the bear nosed the snow around the trap. Metal jaws glinted in the light, ready, eager to snap. Ranvir rose into the ground, turning his attention to the school and Dhaakir. “You will choke on your fear, Asmar. If any of my friends are dead because of your inaction, no army can stop me.” Huffing, the bear had turned away from the trap.
Amanaris
***
Dune Blow - 491
Ranvir swung a hand, the move echoed by a colossal descent of sand. It struck the recovering Purist tethered around the school, spray high to rip at the wooden shutters. Gashes were torn into the stone as hundreds of keys ground against the facade, polishing away the weather worn finish.
Following behind, Ranvir alighted on the once grassy floor before the building. He’d spent months here, working to create a new life for his friends and for himself. Something safer than delving folds, stable.
How apt this empty building now seemed. All of his reasons ringing hollow. All of his attempts were for naught. There was nothing within but worn effort, wounded friends, and savage enemies.
Dhaakir had turned towards him, hovering above Kirs’ prone form. Rotating around his withered form hung Ranvir’s friends. Fought and lost. Injured and scarred. Defeated and paraded.
“You broke free,” he said. His voice had, like his body, had turned to a burnt husk of what it once was. Wheezing and thin, he visibly struggled with his pronunciation. “Yet you came here so fast. I would know how?”
He differed from the man Ranvir saw in Elusria City. Reborn in the injuries and pain he’d suffered. Closer to his spirit. In Dhaakir’s new intimacy of body, mind, and soul, there was no longer room for malice and corruption. Each piece of him moved as if part of something greater. A symphony of himself.
Master in truth, Dhaakir was achieving an understanding that would spur him beyond any of his peers. Ranvir could see it. Alignment lay in Dhaakir’s future, perhaps more. One glance was all he needed, the simple purity of his presence. It was as clean an image as Ranvir had ever seen, and as far removed from human.
He had divested himself of all, Ranvir sensed. He could’ve killed all the soldiers outside, undermined the Purists, and installed Minul as the Queen of all northern territories. In this moment, Dhaakir would not care. Whether he was truly incapable or it was by decision mattered little anymore.
Ranvir could still sense the change in the air. He could feel on the lines. A charge sparked during the assault. First fueled by the injury on his arm, then ignited by the loss of his leg. Yet that had not been enough. A last thing had pushed him. A source to mark his face a dozen times over.
Kirs, who now lay on the floor. A soul split half a dozen times over, mimicking a myth she’d read so long ago. Ranvir wondered at what she did to herself. Close examination left no doubt that she was not a tethered but something different. Whatever she’d done had changed her. Bestowing upon her a terrible strength.
“You cannot have her,” Dhaakir said, dropping the others to focus on Ranvir. “I will need to understand what she is.” Ranvir’s friends landed with a clatter of breaking obsidian and fleshy thumps. Most of them didn’t stir despite the meters long drop.
“What a horrible gift you have received,” Ranvir said, lifting into the air and out of the doorway.
Dhaakir cocked his head and followed. “How so?”
“To gain an understanding of yourself as fully as you have. Beyond any other I have seen, only for it to come on your deathbed.”
“Deathbed? Hah! Because of you?” Dhaakir laughed, his throat straining with the effort.
“I am merely here to usher you forward.”
Dhaakir sneered at him as they circled above the tree, above the building, through the snow, and into the clouds.
“You came for me. For my loved ones. Attack my home and my family. Your existence threatens the life of my family! And you don’t even have the decency to die at my hand! Dhaakir Blackstorm, you are a worm! A pathetically struggling through horror you cannot fathom!”
Affront turning to rage, turning to malice.