Chapter 512: Celestial Flame

Caldus Thorne did not give up, but I would be surprised if he did with the amount of devastation that had been wrought on Aelmar.

He came after me, and he was fast, I would not have been able to escape from him with my previous abilities, twice his domain arrived in the place I had just vacated, and once the flaming hand of his domain closed so close behind me that I felt the heat of it on the back of my neck, even though I was made of lightning and extremely resistant against heat.

But he had to cross the distance between us, while I was technically not moving at all, as I was just cutting across the distance a hundred miles apiece, and by the fourth flicker his domain was a warm glow somewhere behind my shoulder and by the sixth it was gone.

’Sorry, Sovereign, but I have to stop this thing from becoming worse.’

I flickered again. The distance between us doubled, then tripled, then grew past counting.

I could not hide from him. The trail I was leaving was a line of torn sky visible from the ground for hundreds of miles, and he would follow it, and he would be perhaps four minutes behind me.

With my speed I thought that I would reach the Caelith first, but I was already late.

∞

I appeared a mile from my target, and at first I was a bit confused when all I could see was a mountain, then I moved a bit closer and saw what was hidden on the other side of it.

The mountain was a big grey thing, bare above the treeline, with old snow in the gullies on the northern face, and it would have been the largest thing in the landscape if something had not been buried in it.

The second Caelith was in the mountain. A spire of grey celestial stone driven into the rock at an angle, with perhaps a third of its length out in the open air and the rest of it inside, and the mountain had grown up around the wound over ten thousand years the way flesh grows around a nail.

The stone was glowing like metal placed in a forge, because she was already there.

Two massive grey arms were braced against the mountainside, half a mile each, her fingers dug into the rock, while four tentacles coiled up and around the exposed length of the spire, and out of every point that palm or tentacle touched the Caelith came white fire.

I recognised this flame as the same celestial fire that my new body was forged from, and the Caelith was fighting back against the demon with this fire.

I hung there and I watched for about a second and a half, as I watched the silent battle between the Caelith and the Pale Matron.

Unlike Caelith Mourne that had been poisoned by the Sovereign of the Stars over millennia by the blood of countless people, this Caelith had not been tampered with, but it would not be long before that no longer mattered.

Before the Caeliths were damaged and split apart, I knew they would have been able to contend against the Pale Matron, especially as this was just her arms and a few tentacles, but the pillar of Celestial Essence in their core had been taken away, leaving seven bare disks behind with hardly any Celestial Essence left.

The Celestial Essence left was barely enough to suppress the pieces of the Pale Matron, and this attack would bleed away this power, and before long I would not be facing two arms and four tentacles, but maybe a leg and a head... I could not take that chance.

∞

Screams suddenly drew my attention, and as I looked over I saw a city at the foot of the mountain... how could I have missed that?

The city was built into the lower slopes on the southern side, and I had missed it under the cover of smoke and the chunks of rock that were flying from the mountain vibrating under the attack of the Pale Matron.

However the smoke and screams were now so great I could hear it even from the sky. The presence of the Pale Matron shredded through the fabrics of reality, and from these tears demons poured out in the thousands. If she remained in a single place long enough, demons would be continually birthed.

There were not as many demons as before, I must have hurt something inside her when I destroyed the titans she made from her flesh, but they were enough to tear through this city like wildfire.

Khaaz. Thousands of them, moving across the city like a tide, ahead of them were people screaming running towards the other side of the city towards the main gate, but I could see that this was a mistake, there were several two horned Narghul Sorcerers and Khaazim waiting for them.

The Khaaz were being used to herd these poor people towards their doom, and I knew that it would be a hundred times better for these people to die at the claws of the Khaaz than to fall into the hands of those sorcerers.

I growled in anger, and raised my hand, there were barely eleven thousand demons down there, and a single spell would wipe them all out, it would cost me nothing.

A strange sensation swept through me, and I cocked my head to the side, it was as if a new sense was informing me about something, but I did not know what I was feeling.

The world suddenly warped and I found myself inside a city set on fire. I looked around in confusion. The air was burning and even the stone under my feet was red.

"Got you, slippery bastard. Let me see you run now."

∞

Sovereign Caldus Thorne.

I looked away from the burning world and looked up in the air where he stood over a burning castle. All the flames in this place were leaning towards him, and his red hair burned like the flames under his control.

Gritting my teeth in anger, I looked away from him to see if I could spot a way out of this domain, trying to push down the anger rising in my chest.

I had ignored the Sovereign, knowing that it would take more time to explain to him what was happening, even though I knew that he must have an idea what the Conclave and the Sovereign of the Stars were doing. I had hoped that when he saw the Pale Matron and the demons she was unleashing, he would know the true face of the enemy.

"You," I said. My voice was low. "You are stopping me."

The Sovereign cocked his head to the side and his body was consumed by flame, in a moment flames appeared in front of me and the Sovereign stepped out of it. He was looking at me as if he had just discovered something interesting.

"Your spell is fascinating. I have never seen the likes, and you are not even a Sovereign. I could tell from the intensity of the magic you left behind, but how can you pierce through reality in this manner?"

I looked at the fiery eyes of this man, and I recalled everything he told me the last time we met. The Sovereign did not care that the continent was being destroyed, or that countless people died, to him they were nothing before the might of magic and the constant advancement of his power.

There was a reason this man was a Sovereign, and at the moment I could see the same hunger in his eyes that was in my heart when I wanted to see the deeper boundaries of magic.

And at this moment, the countless images in my head from the endless suffering I had seen flashed past my head, and my rage became pure.