Chapter 490: You Have Something of Mine

The fissures in space began to multiply furiously, and the sky reddened, and my presence was the only thing giving off light for miles. I felt my soul shudder as Space Resonance almost screamed inside my head.

Nine miles east, a mile of white flesh emerged from the ground and pushed into the red clouds as if it wanted to pull the stars out of the sky. There was no eruption, no shockwave, nothing at all to show that something so massive had come out of the earth, and if I had not been looking directly at it, I would never have known.

My Space Resonance was showing me that where it rose, the fabric of space was being torn open again and again, thousands of times a second, in a silent eruption that would have ground me into pieces if my domain had still been extended.

Hmm, maybe not. My flesh was no longer that of a mortal, and I should have been able to fight through a spatial storm at this level without much problem, but there was no need to reveal my full cards yet.

I looked at it for a while, a mile thick and climbing, with the Khaaz below it pouring east in their hundreds of thousands to gather at its base like worshippers. My threads had not stretched that far, not that they could not, but it would have been inefficient.

The Pale Matron was still virtual, her form not yet taking flesh, more like a memory of itself, as if she was trying to remember what she had been after an unknown span of imprisonment.

My senses caught powerful demonic presences pushing through the much wider fissures, and I smiled. "There you are."

With the rise of that tentacle, the three-horned Narghul Sorcerers began to emerge from the multiplying fissures, alongside a flood of lower demons.

They emerged in the air, and my webs were waiting for them. The first one lasted about a second. The threads closed and he came apart along four lines at once, and the Transport threads had his core before the pieces finished separating. I had focused on him. At this level, they deserved my attention.

[ Stored Essence: 914,187 → 914,404 ]

Two hundred and seventeen. I would have needed to kill more than two hundred thousand Khaaz to get close to that number.

A great many demons were now appearing outside my web, and enough came through inside it that I was culling them effectively, and most importantly, the one demon I wanted would emerge from a fissure within it.

∞

The seams were opening faster now, and the three-horned were coming through in dozens. I could feel them with my Space Resonance, each one a point of wrongness pressing against the fabric of reality.

Eldritch Perception showed me that these demons entering the world were causing it to scream, as if they were poison.

Terra was screaming.

I pulled the web tighter, condensing the lattice into a sphere around me a mile across. The Khaaz and Khaazim that had been walking into it were now hitting a wall of lightning so dense it was almost solid, and they died in waves that piled against the barrier like driftwood against a dam.

My real targets were coming, and I no longer needed six miles. One would do.

The three-horned Sorcerers came through the seams and found themselves inside a killing box.

Each one that entered my sphere was met by a thousand threads, every one carrying a different Script. Sharpen, to cut. Sever, to separate. Break, to shatter. Burn, to ignite. Freeze, to still. Harden, to lock them in place while the other Scripts worked.

They died in pairs, in trios, in groups of five and six. Their cores flew to me along the Transport threads, and I crushed them without looking and fed them to Cor Telluris, feeling my channels grow denser and stronger with every demon that died.

[ Stored Essence: 914,404 → 916,100 → 918,847 ]

Perhaps it was because I had killed him so many times, or perhaps because he was that old and that powerful. I felt him before he crossed into this world.

He came through with a crown already blazing, his shadow construct unfolding around him like the petals of a black flower. His six eyes found me instantly, since I was a blue sun hanging in the air, and his mouth opened to speak words of power that would have torn the sky.

My web closed on him before he finished the first syllable.

A hundred threads, each one carrying the Script of Sever, wrapped around his body and pulled in a hundred different directions. The three-horned Sorcerers are ancient, their bodies dense with millennia of accumulated power, their Abyssal shields fused to their flesh, and none of that mattered to me anymore.

But Vrakth surprised me. What would have killed any other three-horned did not kill him.

He screamed as his shadow crown shattered into pieces that rained down on the ash below. His left arm came off at the shoulder, and his right leg was severed at the knee, and the threads kept cutting, kept pulling, kept tearing him apart piece by piece.

There was a will behind this demon that pushed back against death. I could see why he had been able to hold a fragment of a Moon Fox inside his soul.

His remaining hand rose, and despite the threads still sawing through his body, he cast. A lance of flame essence, compressed to the width of a needle, shot towards me at a speed that would have been invisible to my Adept self, and that even an Arcanist would have struggled to track.

I let the spell travel through my threads, opening a path for it, and when it touched me, the kinetic force was absorbed and dispersed through my body, and the heat washed over my Adamantium skin like a summer breeze.

I needed to push my Resonances higher one way or another, and if there was a demon who could force his way through my power and reach me, then he deserved his shot.

But Vrakth was done. I gestured, and my threads brought him to me, and I rested my right hand against his head. "Oh, Vrakth. You never fail to surprise me."

I spoke in the harsh demonic tongue, and his eyes widened in shock. "Archon... your kind is forbidden from this sky. You shall be hunted by the Great Abyss for this travesty."

I shrugged. "Oh, let them come. You have something of mine."

And I unleashed a bolt of golden lightning from my hand that fried his soul to ash and shattered the bonds holding the Moon Fox fragment to it. Soul-Forge purified the essence and drew it into my body.

I closed my eyes and felt it travel into the room where Aurora slept, and drift into her. I watched her body shiver, and at first I thought there would be no change, and then I saw a new tail slowly emerge from her back, and I smiled.

"As much as you need, Aurora... that and more."

I opened my eyes and tossed Vrakth’s body aside, and it was torn to shreds and ash before it reached the ground.

[ Stored Essence: 918,847 → 921,004 ]

[ Warning... Fourth Seal Loosened. ]