Chapter 508: The Dance of Titans

My status screen was coming up, and in that hundredth of a second that it took for it to appear, my body felt a pressure changing, and my soul had already interpreted what it meant before I could, and I suddenly blurred to the left a thousand metres away, and the space where I had been standing was shattered to pieces as a tentacle swiped through the area, sending a line of force that extended for miles and nearly tore the plain in two.

The screen was gone before I could read a word of it, and the second tentacle was already falling on the place my own speed was carrying me towards.

I blurred again. It was not even because I was consciously choosing to move, my body was just moving and I went with it.

’What the hell was that?’

It was an extremely odd sensation as if my mind was still catching up to what my body was doing. I found myself eight hundred metres further out with my robes snapping closed around me and white fire burning in a long line where the air had not had time to get out of my way.

This was not mere friction, my body was interacting with space in an odd manner.

The tentacle came down on the place I had left, and smashed through four hundred feet of rock, creating a shockwave that chased me across the plain until it reached the edge of my Stillness and stopped dead, as though it had hit a wall nobody could see.

I had not commanded my domain to appear, but it seemed as if my body was passively creating a domain around me that was filtering the world away from me. It must be the reason why I was avoiding all these blows before my mind could catch up with what was happening.

A scream burst out from the Pale Matron and it was like a wall of force that flattened everything for miles. The pressure hit me like a physical blow, and I felt my body react, my body twisted, and I was suddenly on the ground, the pressure wave passing through the space where I had been.

The moment I touched the ground, a tentacle burst out of it. My consciousness must have merged more closely to my body and soul as I was able to observe the white fleshy tentacle heading towards me in slow motion, and I knew there was nowhere left to go that it would not reach.

In only three moves, the Pale Matron had manoeuvred me to this position.

So I put both forearms against the rising tentacle and set my shoulders, bracing myself for impact that may just leave me at the edge of death.

I was wrong.

"Boom!"

This impact should have turned my bones to dust, but when it hit, I felt my body absorb it, and redistribute the force in a way that was not natural.

My arms held, but nothing else around me did, as the earth around me moved like water in the ocean for nine miles as the shockwave from the impact and the force that had burst out of my body swept the surroundings.

The collision made my mind fuzzy for a moment, I may have redistributed the force, but a part of it must have scrambled my perception as I fell to the earth, and I was buried under hundreds of feet of rock and debris.

I came to in less than a second surrounded by crushing pressure in the darkness. My body was contorted at a funny angle, and there was nothing for me to push against... I pushed anyway, instinctively knowing that I did not need leverage.

The ground above me broke open in a column a mile wide and I burst out of it like lightning, my eyes widened at the impossible strength that I just unleashed. However, there was no time to observe the changes in my body as I was surrounded by vast pale white tentacles and two massive hands that covered the heavens above, and all of them were reaching down for me.

I needed space. I instinctively activated Stormstep, but nothing happened, and for a moment I felt like a kid reaching into a pocket for the third time looking for something that was no longer there.

"Shit!"

The Pale Matron was not going to wait for me to figure out my abilities, as I was surrounded by titanic pale flesh moving at speeds that left sound far, far behind.

With my soul still synchronising with my body, I knew that I needed to push everything aside and focus for the next few moments, else I would be torn apart.

I stopped reaching for my magic and allowed my soul to do its thing in the background and I pushed every distraction away. To quicken my understanding of my body, I had to move it!

A tentacle came high and I went under it, and it broke the sky apart above me. One came low and fast and I moved to the side, the wind from its passage causing my domain to vibrate. The tentacle plunged into the ground and flicked away a portion of it into the horizon.

Her right hand swept at me, and all I could see was half a mile of grey fingers. I placed both forearms into its heel and slid backwards through the air for a mile with my boots cutting a line in nothing, as the air between us lit white and burned. The left hand closed where I had been, but I was no longer there, I reappeared above it as if I had teleported, and a tentacle was waiting for me.

However, I was expecting something like this, and I turned so that my legs slammed against it. The pressure caused me to crouch, and when I straightened my legs it went back a mile, as a shockwave burst from our brief contact that caused the ground beneath to drop forty feet and split.

We had devastated the earth so much that flaming red rocks burst out of it and rose in the air like scarlet curtains. My enhanced perception would ensure that I would keep seeing this for a while before it crashed back to the earth.

A pulse went through my body and I shuddered. There was light moving under the skin. Thin blue lines, turning and branching, writing themselves, climbing past my elbows and going up inside my sleeves, and I felt more in control of myself as the lights were slowly brightening.

A hand came for me and I braced for it, but it reached up over my head, past me, slow and enormous, and took hold of the Caelith where it hung above me.

Thirty kilometres of celestial stone ground against the palm, and white fire erupted from the places of contact, and the Pale Matron screamed in pain, but she did not let go of it.

With a shove she pushed the Caelith aside, and it carved a deep trench for miles, and there was nothing between us anymore, and the Pale Matron made sure I felt that difference as she descended upon me like a storm.

I dodged and I blocked and I dodged again. I was faster than I have ever been in any life I have lived, but I was losing ground, and then it happened.

I became overwhelmed, and did not see the left arm blasting towards me, my soul’s warning came but it was too late, and I was hit harder than anything had ever hit me up till this moment.

I have been hit by a lot of things, but this one... this one was different.