Chapter 206: A Sudden Call [Bonus]

The ground trembled under the endless crimson sky as the huge mountain crumbled before the eyes of hundreds of Stonemen, leaving behind nothing but dust and the memory of the once mighty mountain.

"What exactly happened there?" Rhadak, the Stoneman Chief, asked, his single red eye moving around as he counted the others to make sure everyone had escaped in time.

They had been completely unprepared when the shaking began and the mountain started to collapse, but thanks to Triss’s spells, everyone inside had managed to escape.

Even their Mother was there, resting at the foot of another mountain like an enormous pile of rocks. She was still enjoying the stones being tossed into her mouth, crunching them mindlessly, completely uninterested in everything happening around her.

"Your rock. It moved," Arthas answered the Stoneman Chief.

Hearing him, Rhadak’s entire body trembled. "What did you say?"

His voice came out rougher than usual, and his gemlike eye began to shine with a light brighter than ever before. All the other Stonemen turned to look at him as well.

For a moment, every Stoneman stood completely still, rooted to the spot.

Their Mother grumbled softly when no more stones came into her mouth, and only then did those responsible for feeding her return to their work, breaking rocks into smaller pieces and carrying them to her mouth.

"What was there?" Rhadak asked, finally processing what he had heard as he took a step closer to Arthas.

With his enormous stone body towering over him, he looked quite intimidating, but Arthas didn’t step back. He merely raised his head and looked directly at him.

"I didn’t get to see it," he replied with some regret.

Rhadak then turned to Triss, hoping to get an answer from her. She was still standing there, looking at the ruins of the mountain in apparent shock.

But the Witch didn’t appear to notice his attention at all. She simply stood there, staring at the rubble with an impatient look on her face.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she started walking toward the ruins.

She raised her hands into the air and chanted, "O Spire of the Eroding Coast, Tide that has washed since before the First Age, Tongueless Mother of Youth and Age."

Before everyone’s eyes, the enormous pile of rubble began to move.

They immediately recognized what the Witch was trying to do.

She was simply trying to restore the enormous mountain.

It wasn’t the first time Triss had attempted to reverse the flow of time for something so enormous, but doing so was still extremely exhausting and consumed a tremendous amount of mana.

Still, she didn’t care how much mana she had to burn. She kept her spell active, determined to restore the entire mountain so she could return and check on Magna.

She was also curious whether that passage led to another realm or somewhere entirely different.

Under the spell’s influence, the scattered stones slowly rose from the ground, while larger boulders lifted into the air and returned to their original positions.

The broken mountain began taking shape again as the cracks between the rocks gradually closed.

But as Triss watched, she frowned. Just when the mountain was about to regain its original form, the entire structure trembled, and the stones came crashing down once more.

She was experiencing the same problem she had encountered in the chamber containing the entrance to the Underworld.

She checked her remaining mana and raised her hands again to try once more.

The stones trembled and began to rise, coming together to form the mountain again. But at exactly the same point in time, the structure collapsed once more, turning back into a pile of rubble.

She tried several more times until she could no longer afford to waste any more mana and finally had to give up.

"Arthas," she called, turning toward him.

He immediately stepped closer and bowed his head slightly, awaiting her orders.

"Clear the area. You need to find him," she said heavily.

Unfortunately, she had no Shadow to help with this. It wasn’t that she didn’t have one, but hers was a little different and possessed no physical strength. She had left it in her room at the Tower, where it would be safest.

As for clearing the debris with spells, most of the useful ones were already failing for the same reason. The spells that would still work could only sweep away the entire pile, which carried the risk of crushing Magna in the process if he was still alive somewhere underneath.

Arthas immediately nodded accepting the order.

But before getting to work, he turned to Rhadak. "The boy who moved your rock is under these stones. Help me find him."

Hearing this, Rhadak wasted no time. He opened his mouth and shouted loud enough for every Stoneman to hear, his voice rumbling like a landslide.

"Argh-am Da-m Grak-thor’ukh Krt-thrak-zug. Rukh-grak."

At his command, all the Stonemen, except those still responsible for feeding their Mother, rushed toward the debris.

Seeing this, Arthas felt relieved. If he had to search for Magna beneath that enormous pile alone, it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Even Rhadak rushed toward the rocks after giving his command and began clearing them with obvious urgency, while taking care not to pull out the wrong stone and make the mess worse.

Triss remained off to the side, watching them work as a million questions passed through her mind.

She had already been questioning whether there were other Creators out there, and she had come to believe that there were.

Now she was trying to piece everything together to understand whether Magna was really one of them.

That last scene kept replaying in her mind, when the boy had actually cast a spell using unfamiliar honorific names.

Triss tried chanting those names again, but it was almost as though some law of the world prevented her from pronouncing even a single word of them.

In the end, she decided she couldn’t figure this out on her own and resolved to send a message to the Tower, informing the others of everything that had happened.

But before she could do so, she heard a sound from the sky.

"Caw!" ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

She raised her head and saw a metallic-colored raven flying toward her with a long cylindrical container strapped to its back.

"A message from the Tower?" She narrowed her eyes as a bad feeling rose within her.

The raven landed in front of her, and she bent down to retrieve the paper from the container on its back. She unrolled it and began reading.

By the time she reached the end of the message, her hands were trembling. She raised her head and called out.

"Arthas. We’re going back. Now."

***

GenF: Please read the Author’s Thoughts section below, as I don’t want to unnecessarily increase the word count here. (Let’s keep the Chapter price lower.) Thank you!