Chapter 519: The Vanishing City

He came up out of the tumble with both hands open and the rings reversed their spin, he was graceful like a dancer, it was a shame that only rage and desperation were on his face... still it was always a bad thing to be on the other end of the anger and desperation of one of the most powerful beings in the world, but I was built to be in a place like this.

I felt the air change before I saw anything. Every ring around him turned the other way at once and the heat went out of them, and what blasted off them instead was a cold white pressure that flattened the dust for a mile in every direction, and then the Sovereign clapped his hands together.

I felt that weird sensation again, and I realized that this was my Eldritch Perception, I had switched off all notifications when the battle became heated, but recognizing what that sensation was would aid me in the future, but it was obviously too late for what happened next.

The space between us folded, and it was not in the way I bend it. He took the distance between his palms and the distance between us and made them the same thing, and I was simply there, inside his guard, with his hands closing on either side of my head.

I could feel his hot breath on my face, and he roared and one of his rings flashed and the pressure and heat against my skull multiplied. I let him have my skull trusting it would hold long enough and summoned Heaven’s Tribunal into his elbow.

My judgement erupted from my fingers and my domain at the same time, and I poured the golden lightning through the joint and out through his forearm.

His entire arm lit up for a moment before the arm came off above the wrist. Caldus screamed in pain and drove his remaining hand into my chest, triggering a flaming rune, and the ring that had been hanging behind him rotated above our heads and slammed into my back at the same moment.

My domain defended against the ring. I felt both laws strain at once and my spine began to creak at the ungodly pressure being exerted upon it, my skin gave way with a rip, and immediately Caldus’s hand found the wound and pushed into it, reaching for my spine.

Turning my head, I bit down on his wrist, as darkness poured out of my mouth, with a force of will I forced the darkness to clamp down on the limb, and travel into his body like I was a snake pumping venom into his veins.

The Sovereign screamed and stopped reaching for my spine, and he tore himself loose at the shoulder rather than let my darkness travel any further.

He left the arm in my teeth, and I spat it out a moment later... at the end of the day, their blood still tasted the same.

∞

Caldus retreated into the air, his body flickering between flesh and fire, as a new arm appeared out of his hand, but even that arm became corrupted by my darkness and with a growl he pulled it out.

The rings of flame around him spun faster, each one a different death waiting to be unleashed, but I could see something that the Sovereign may have missed... he was getting tired!

The nature of my soul and my abilities meant that I was created to fight armies and win, and then go fight another, and even now, despite all the power that I had been pouring out of my body, my soul was still stable and I could fight like this for years.

Caldus on the other hand could not tear into his soul as much as I could without paying a price for it. Obviously he regenerated his Anima extremely quickly, but even he had a limit, and I had begun to creep at the edge of that limit.

He raised his only hand as he kept rising higher in the air.

"Rule of the Hearth. In my house, weight is mine to give."

The weight of the city returned, and all of it was sent down upon me. I could barely brace against it before I dropped through the shattered flaming ground that was floating half a mile above the earth.

My body plunged down like a meteor, until I hit the fragments of the ground that were at the core of the Grimoire. If this was the world, I had just landed at the crust.

The impact carved a crater into this crust, a hundred metres deep, as the shockwave cracked and split the crust for a mile.

I landed on my feet and my back was bent, but I did not go on my knees. The more I fight, the faster and stronger I was becoming, and I would be damned if the weight of this place would put me on my knees.

"ELRIC VOSS." Caldus screamed at me as he descended at the edge of the crater. How interesting, I just noticed that this was the first time he had used both my names.

"OUT."

He was bleeding white fire from the stump on his shoulders, and he was using his free hand to write a script in the air with his flaming blood, faster than I could read with the pressure upon my body.

"You are not welcome in this place. OUT!"

The ground opened under me, beyond even the crust of this place, a seam two hundred metres wide, and through it I could see the mountain, and the burning city at the foot of the mountain, and the pale shape of the demon burning against the Caelith.

I noticed that the world was seemingly frozen in place, and realized that I was still experiencing time in a much accelerated manner inside this place, and a part of the load on my chest vanished.

The weight of the world was creeping up on my body, the Sovereign had decided to do the smartest thing he should have done from the start and push me out of his Grimoire.

’Elric.’

"I know."

’If you leave before the collapse, you leave with nothing. These nascent dimensions cannot exist without your presence.’

"Well, I guess I have to push back harder. What sort of man would I be if I can be thrown out of the mansion before the feast."

’I have channelled the other dimensions out of you, I can now lend you my darkness.’

"Ah, I could kiss you Hollow."

’I do not need a kiss.’

"Sure you do," I said as darkness poured out of my feet and gave me a platform, "Everyone needs one."

∞

With the platform of darkness below me, I barely had to brace before it launched me towards the Sovereign.

He saw me and the rings around him expanded heading towards me. Calling upon the full strength of my Celestial Body, I hit the first ring at nine thousand metres and went through it. I hit the second one and it took the skin off my left side and I went through that too. The third one caught me across the chest and stopped me dead in the air.

Caldus shocked me when instead of running, he blasted towards me and he was on me before I had finished stopping. Covered by flames that made him look like a meteor, he slammed into me with the whole weight of a Sovereign’s rage behind it, and we went up together through nine floating districts and out the top of his own burning city.

And while we rose, the Grimoire began to come apart in earnest, and the sight was both haunting and eerily beautiful.

Whole sections of the city began to cease to exist, and a cry of pain echoed all over the city. Maybe Caldus was screaming in pain but I could not really tell in the center of the chaos.

As the city began to vanish, what was left behind, hanging in the gaps, were the things too dense to unmake. They were like white seeds floating through the vanishing city.

[ Active Law Shard detected. ]

[ Active Law Shard detected. ]

[ Active Law Shard detected. ]

’Begin,’ Hollow said.

Wrapped in the Sovereign’s embrace as we tore through the city, I began to laugh.