Chapter 509: The Fist That Crossed A Continent

I had not felt the true power of a Transcendental being, and I realised that when I had been avoiding the Pale Matron before, she must have been studying me as well, and this hit was the first true statement in this battle.

To me, it felt like the impact drove the air out of my lungs, the blood out of my veins, my soul out of my body, and then it drove my body forward, and I was thrown across the damned continent.

Strangely there was not pain, and that was most likely because I was still synchronising my soul to my flesh, and there was a delay where my senses had not caught up.

I tumbled through the air, spinning, and the world became a blur. I saw mountains pass beneath me, rivers, forests, even cities.

The wind screamed past me, and the air burned. My body, which had been forged by the Hollow Titan to withstand the forces of a Transcendental entity, was pushed to its absolute limit. I knew I was being injured, but I was healing extremely fast and the lines within my body were glowing brighter as they worked overtime to repair the damage that was being inflicted by the sheer velocity of my passage.

I tried not to see the trail of destruction I was leaving behind as I swept past the earth. I was moving so fast that the shockwave from my passage was far behind me, so I would have crossed a city, and those below would just see something bright and fast flash past them, and then thirty seconds to a minute would pass before the rumbling of the shockwaves could be heard, but by then I feared it was over.

I tried to cry out in anger, not at the Pale Matron, but at myself. I knew how devastating a battle at the Sovereign level was for the land, I should have tried to take our confrontation to the sky to avoid situations like this.

But then a cold wave of reality washed through my guilt. Caelith Mourne was simply the first. The Pale Matron wanted to awaken, and to do that she would have to break the other Caeliths all across the continent.

So she would not fight me in the heavens, no the parts of her that were free would cross the continent and tear open her prisons. This force pushing me back was not natural, I could feel that it would not let go of me, and if I did not know better, I would never have guessed that what the demon wanted was to push me as far away as possible so she could awaken the rest of her self.

Surrounded by a corona of flames that was almost white, the glow inside my body was growing, and then, in the middle of the flight, the integration finished.

I felt that weird click as the last fragment of my consciousness merged with my new body, and suddenly, I was not a passenger anymore.

The world snapped into focus with such intensity that it actually hurt. I could feel everything.

I could feel the ten thousand and eight channels running through my bones, and the slow turning weight of my own soul... I could feel the world.

After all this time, I could still feel horror. I saw the devastation my passage had caused across the world. Forests were burning, rivers had been broken and I could smell blood and burning flesh.

Before the integration finished I had only been able to see it. Now I could feel it, and it had my name on it.

’Later,’ I told myself. ’Grieve later. Move now.’

I could also feel a force driving into my left side, a wedge of the Pale Matron’s will hammered through my ribs and pushing. It was a weird sensation to be feeling the will of anything touching you, and it did not help that what I was feeling felt so... malevolent.

It was like she was still beside me, and her cold hands were closed around my body like a vice.

I thought of stopping, and my body responded, as it twisted in the air, fighting against the will that was pushing me, and when my shoulders came round and I faced back the way I had come, the shell of fire around me tore open and the air behind me detonated.

The sound of that detonation travelled for miles, moving faster than your average sound wave, and for a few moments, despite the speed that I was moving, I was flying with my own thunder.

It was such a weird and cool moment that I regretted that I was not in a better place or moment to enjoy it.

Crying out in anger, I braced myself against the air, pushing away from the force of the Pale Matron’s will, and gradually, I began to slow down.

I was not stopping fast enough, and I disregarded the feeling of the Pale Matron’s will on my body, and pushed everything I had against it. My channels lit from the marrow outward and I felt the Elemental Resonance take hold of the air itself, and the air pushed back against me.

The sky over the eastern hills of Aelmar simply came apart from the force I was exerting against the air, and white fire bloomed out of nothing a mile above the ground and spread until it was thirty miles across.

Carrying all of that flame and power, I slammed into a massive storm, and it was as if I had just dropped cold water into a cauldron of boiling oil as lightning erupted out of the storm clouds for miles, striking the valley below.

The hills underneath were pressed down, and every tree on them bowed away from the sky in the same instant and stayed bowed, as I swept past.

However, I had been able to break the will of the Pale Matron as I felt the last of it linger in the storm behind me. I was still moving, but finally I could feel gravity and the air resistance slowing me down.

∞

The ground came up much quicker than I had anticipated. I looked down and I knew the shape of the hills, and my eyes widened in shock when I realised where I just found myself.

Four towers with green copper roofs. Long grey halls between them. A little walled square in the middle where they make first-years run in the rain.

’No,’ I growled, and I did not like the sound of unease in my voice.

There was no time left. I pulled every last thread of my own speed out of my body and threw it upward, and the last of the pressure came off me in a ring that cracked the air, but it did not touch the slates of a single roof.

I hung in the air, a bit tired as if I had just run a race like a mortal, and then I was only falling.

It was almost as if I only blinked my eyes twice before my body slammed into the ground.

"Ughh... that hurts."

I lay on my back in a bowl of broken stone with grey dust coming down slowly onto my face and a high clean ringing in my ears that was not coming from anywhere outside me.

There was a crack running away from me across the courtyard in four directions, and all the windows in the halls surrounding me had been broken, I hoped no one was injured.

A bell was ringing somewhere above me and under the sound of the bell there was screaming. Young voices, filled with shock and fear.

I could hear a man’s voice shouting at somebody to get back, get back, get away from it.

It?

’Are you calling me an it?’