Chapter 1242: Undead Queen and Consort

Phei shook his head and gave the restored landscape one final glance. His gaze passed over the ancient Titan, the burial-white mountains and glaciers bearing no evidence that eleven World Transcendents had nearly ripped the region apart... he nodded to Consort and then he disappeared.

There was no spatial ripple spread through the storm of his famous signature portals, and not even the smallest hollow within reality betrayed the passage of True Void Steps.

Consort watched the empty space where he’d been for several breaths.

She had finally pieced together enough of what happened to stop regarding reality as though it had personally offended her.

When the Void opened, it had refused to let her enter:

The absolute darkness had swallowed Anactica, reached her position and then quietly separated her from the battlefield. Before she could draw her katana, a protective pocket had closed around her and carried her beyond the Void’s reach. She retained enough awareness to know that the outside world continued existing, yet every attempt to perceive or enter what unfolded there met an inviolable barrier.

Whatever had awakened through Phei had decided that Consort required protection rather than participation.

That irritated her more than she cared to admit.

Consort was accustomed to being the one who placed others behind safety. She had lived long enough that most barriers eventually discovered who had made the mistake of standing in her way, yet this particular power had dismissed her resistance, shut her somewhere secure and continued rearranging Anactica without consulting her.

She still had not decided whether to feel insulted.

Now the Void had withdrawn, Phei had vanished, five World Transcendents lay dead and several others had disappeared entirely. The Coffer was gone. Anactica looked pristine and Consort remained standing upon a continent that behaved as though the entire catastrophe had been an unsightly rumor.

She looked toward the empty sky.

Then toward Japan.

Her lips tightened: "Tsk. I have to fly back."

Consort could tear through reality and shorten the journey considerably under ordinary circumstances. The spatial fabric surrounding Anactica, however, remained unnervingly delicate after being swallowed by the Void, erased and restored. Forcing another passage through it so soon would be needlessly reckless.

Which left flight.

Fast flight, certainly. Consort could cross distances that would make ordinary cultivators reconsider whether geography served any useful purpose, but flight remained flight, and Japan was no closer merely because she disliked the inconvenience.

She sighed.

"Oh, I travel rather quickly. Wait for me, we can go together." The cheerful offer came from behind her.

Consort turned.

The Undead Queen was already raising Cassian.

Death gathered around the fallen Vampire in elegant black currents, sliding beneath his clothes and through pale flesh with almost affectionate precision. The power entered dead meridians one after another, replacing the blood essence that had once circulated through them with something colder and infinitely more obedient.

Cassian’s fingers twitched.

His shoulders followed, then his neck; the undead Vampire inhaled despite no longer requiring breath, and crimson-black eyes opened beneath the falling snow.

Death looked through them.

The magnificent body that once belonged to an ancient Vampire rose from the glacier and stood beside its new Queen. No Maxton chains crossed his wrists, throat or soul, yet his freedom had become even less relevant than before. Every fragment of his dead existence now answered the pale woman smiling beside him.

She appeared perfectly pleased with the arrangement.

Her funeral regalia began dissolving as Cassian rose. Bone plates broke into clouds of dark motes, while the heavy Death Monarch robes peeled from her body and vanished into the blizzard. Black-violet essence gathered beneath them, flowing across pale skin like living ink before weaving itself into a new garment.

The darkness fitted itself closely around her torso, leaving her shoulders and the elegant upper line of her chest exposed beneath irregular edges of smoke. It narrowed around her waist before descending in layered strips of black-violet energy.

Flecks of darkness continually broke from its edges and dissolved into the storm. The clothing seemed alive, continuously unraveling and remaking itself from Death.

Now without the enormous regalia, bone crown and invisible kingdom overwhelming everything around her, Consort finally saw the Undead Queen properly.

Annoyingly pretty did not begin to cover it.

The woman was outrageously attractive.

Her figure possessed an opulent fullness without losing the predatory grace of her race. The living garment embraced a narrow waist before following the generous curves above and below it, while long hair spilled freely behind her and softened a pale face that had looked far more corpse-like beneath the old funeral armor.

Even her completely black eyes became strangely beautiful when paired with the faint smile she wore while resurrecting dead World Transcendents like someone arranging luggage for an unexpectedly pleasant journey.

(IMAGE)

Consort stared for perhaps a second too long.

The Undead Queen noticed.

Naturally.

Her smile acquired a subtle, knowing curve.

Consort looked away.

’Troublesome woman.’

The offer remained useful.

Consort had never considered herself sociable. She could be reserved to the point of severity, and she possessed little interest in collecting acquaintances merely to decorate her life with them and had spent enough of her existence among dangerous beings to understand that friendship frequently became the polite word used before betrayal grew inconvenient.

But she was not foolishly unapproachable, either.

There was no reason to burn a bridge merely because it had been built less than an hour ago, especially now that Phei’s path had become impossible even for Consort to fathom. Her Mistress’s designs around him remained immense, the Dragon continued attracting beings who should never have occupied the same world, and whatever awakened inside the Void had rearranged half the board without asking whether anyone approved.

Consort had no idea where her own journey beside Phei and the One Above would eventually lead.

Perhaps the Queen currently raising Bromgar’s corpse and others would become an ally of her’s. Perhaps she would remain an acquaintance of Consort, who happened to command an empire of corpses and possessed an alarming enthusiasm for strong dead bodies.

Perhaps, absurdly enough, she might become a friend.

She also wanted a friend snd this woman looked carefree and friendly; it was also absurd that Consort was looking for friend but stranger things had happened tonight.

Consort glanced back.

The Undead Queen now stood beside the resurrected Cassian while black-violet Death streamed toward Bromgar’s mountainous corpse. The glacier beneath the Behemoth-Dwarf had already darkened, and the first vast pulse of necromantic authority entered his body with enough force to make one enormous hand clench against the ice.

Consort sighed.

"Fine."

The Queen’s face brightened with disconcertingly genuine pleasure.

"Wonderful."

Consort narrowed her eyes as Bromgar’s dead body began rising behind her.

Regret had arrived remarkably quickly.

Still, it was not enough to make her fly back alone.