The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 379

Chapter 379

ELDER RINIA

The ancient bedrock trembled beneath my feet. I felt how the atmospheric mana quivered at the release of such enormous power. It wouldn’t be long now.

Someone laid a hand on my shoulder. “Do we have enough time?” It was Albold’s voice. “Should we set up an ambush somewhere, slow the asura further?” _{freēwebnovel.com}

I scoffed. “Our hope now is in haste and good luck, not by force of arms. Do not be so ready to die a meaningless death, any of you.”

Another voice, from farther back in the line. “You could join me on the beast.” It was Madam Astera, who Eleanor Leywin had allowed to ride her bond, seeing as though she was missing a leg. It was a kind offer coming from someone who hated my guts.

“I know the way by foot and feel, not by bear. I’ll walk.” I squeezed Virion’s arm as he guided me along. “We need to go faster.”

I felt his concerned look, despite not being able to see it, but he did as I asked., and I pushed my old body to keep up.

This was the point where paths of potential diverged, and my ability to influence a specific potential future was limited. Our group was sixty, perhaps seventy people: some council members, the adventurers known as the Twin Horns, the artificer Gideon and his assistant, and those among the refugees who had shown the most faith in me.

They would need it.

Smaller groups had broken off to head down dozens of different tunnels, led by the Glayders, Earthborns, or other strong mages. If the Lances fell too quickly, or fought too long, preventing the asura from reaching us at the right time, we would all die. If Taci hunted us down too quickly or spent too much time prowling the tunnels, again, we would all die. The timing was crucial.

My right foot brushed a sharp outcropping of stone. “Take the next branch right and downward,” I told Virion, and after another fifty steps he guided me to the right, and the path sloped under my feet.

An explosion from somewhere far behind and above us shook loose dust from the tunnel ceiling. Someone muffled a scream.

At the bottom of the decline, the tunnel curved sharply left. “You’re all going to feel a strong disinclination to continue onward. This is a trick of the ancient mages to prevent this place from being discovered. You must push past it.”

We wound along through another handful of turns before the creeping sensation of unease set in. It was mild at first, just a twinge in the back of our minds that said, “Something is wrong here. Be wary.” The sensationhis increased rapidly as we pressed forward, becoming a near-overwhelming sense of dread.

Those we guided began to whimper and complain, and our pace slowed despite my encouragement and the thudding of spells breaking stone in the distance. Even the bear was panting, each breath sharp and desperate.

“Albold, take all the guards to the rear. Keep these people moving forward. Don’t let anyone turn around,” I said.

“Y-you can’t force us on!” someone choked out. “You’re leading us to our deaths!”

Several sets of footsteps ceased, and I heard people pushing and shoving. Guards moved to intervene, but there was a sharp pulse of intent from right beside me, and everyone grew still.

“You can all sense the danger behind us. It is very real, while this magic works against only your imagination. If Rinia says that salvation lies ahead, then we will press on.”

Virion’s confidence and command settled the riled crowd, at least for a moment. When he turned and began marching again, his body stiff at my side, everyone else followed.

Thrum, the mana responded to the distant battle. Thrum. Thrum.

It was almost enough to keep even the most frightened of the refugees moving forward against the magical dread that sought to push us away.

But not entirely.

After only fifty more steps, some were halting again. After a hundred, I heard weeping. After five hundred, the guards in the rear were dragging the weakest forward. After a thousand, the guards lacked the strength, and the first of those too weak to face the fear broke away, sprinting back along the tunnel, their cries echoing throughout the dark depths.

“Let them go,” I demanded, hearing Albold’s light steps start to follow. “Anyone who turns back now isare doomed, including you.”

Our pace slowed to a crawl. Each step felt like moving deeper into a tar pit, waiting for the blackness to close over my head and choke the life out of me.

I had known we would have to cross this barrier. I thought I was ready.

I was wrong.

My feet stopped moving. Virion tugged at me, his frown audible. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear through the roaring of my own blood in my ears.

It had all been for naught. I’d pushed my body too far, and now it didn’t have the strength to continue on.

The earth seemed to tremble, then go silent. The mana stilled. The asura’s battle against the Lances was over. Our last line of defense had fallen. There was no time. Not for doubt, not for fear.

A thin arm wrapped through mine, and Virion released my other arm, stepping away. Someone else, shorter and even thinner more thin than the first, replaced him.

Cool, soothing mana flowed through me. Most of my body had become one interconnected ache, so ever-present that I had almost forgotten it was there, but at the mana’s touch, this pain faded. My breath came easier. I stood straighter.

From the other side, a golden light was moving through me, warming my core and pushing away the darkness and despair.

“Thank you, Leywins...” I muttered once I was capable of speech. “Now, get moving. We’re wasting valuable time.”

Alice chuckled to my right, but Ellie only held on more firmly. “We’re going to make it. Right place, right time?”

I cleared my throat as it suddenly constricted with an upwell of emotion. “We’re nearly there.”

The two held my arms and helped me forward, Virion walking just ahead of us. The zone of dread seemed to go on and on, pushing against our bodies and wills with a mounting desperation to break us. Then, like plunging through an icy waterfall, we were free of it, every nerve in my body coming to life as the repelling aura vanished. My mind cleared, immediately calculating the approximate amount of time we’d lost.

Wordlessly, I set the pace, my body refreshed by Alice’s healing magic and feeling light as a feather without the ancient mage’s wards pulling me down.

A virulent intent entered the tunnels somewhere behind us, moving faster than I could imagine.

We began to run.

The rough stone floor grew smooth, and relieved exclamations from behind me echoed along a finished hall. I knew what they were seeing: gem-studded carvings, telling the story of a place called the Relictombs, made by the ancient mages before their fall.

But there was no time. Not to explain them, not even to spare the breath I needed to run, and so I pushed the others onward.

Virion’s light steps halted ahead of us, but I shooed him on. “Go, we must get everyone inside.”

The oncoming aura was like a red haze on the mana now, agitating it.

Though my blind eyes couldn’t see the room, I knew well from my visions. An arched door frame opened into a large hexagonal-shaped space a hundred feet wide. Steep stone benches led like steps down to a dais in the middle, where a rectangular stone frame stood.

“Take me down to the center,” I said, desperately focusing on the carved stone frame. There wasn’t long now. If it didn’t happen soon...

When we reached the dais, I pulled free of them and rested my hand on the stone frame, my fingers tracing intricate carvings.

It was cold. No mana or aether hummed within it.

“What is this?” Madam Astera asked as she was helped down off Ellie’s bond. “You’ve led us into a dead end!”

Others joined her, pleading for there to be more to this place, something else, anything that could save them. Someone knocked against the frame as if it were a door, hoping someone might let them through. Most rushed to the back of the chamber, getting as far from the approaching aura as possible.

“I have led you to where you need to be in order to survive,” I said, letting my tiredness and frustration bleed into the words. “If I planned on allowing you all to die, it would have been much easier to simply stay where we were.”

“Move away from the door,” Virion was ordering elsewhere. “Everyone to the back of the room!”

I nodded in his direction. “These people will need capable leaders when this is over. Do as he said, Astera. Survive this.”

A scream scythed through the cold air, and I heard flesh tear and bones break.

A figure so rich with mana that the outline of him glowed in my senses stepped into the archway above. His killing intent was like a murderous fist around my heart, squeezing the life from me.

The world seemed to jerk to a halt, the only sound a half-muffled cry of abject terror, the only movement the slow turning of the figure’s head as he scanned the room.

“People of Dicathen, followers of Commander Virion Eralith, I am Taci of the Thyestes Clan.” His voice was lilting and arrogant, the words echoing out of him and through the chamber stained with his disgust for us. “For your failure to see the way forward, your inability to understand the necessary evils of this war, Lord Indrath has proclaimed that you all must die to make way for a more sensible future.”

Virion stepped forward. Brave fool, I thought, though I didn’t try to stop him. We needed every last second now.

Mana surged from Virion as he activated his beast will. His voice was a low growl as he said, “False allies and betrayers. The Indraths are no better than the Vritra.”

He dashed forward, his movement lightning quick. I heard his sword slide from its sheath and cut the air, watched the radiant outline of Taci move to defend, then the chamber lit up with magic as a dozen other mages hurled whatever spells they could to support Virion.

I held my breath.

The asura moved with the liquid grace of a lifetime of dedication and practice. Against it, Virion’s animalistic speed and ferocity were as impotent. Taci blocked several rapid strikes and shrugged off a dozen other spells. Virion lunged from side to side, always moving and slashing, a dark whirlwind, but his blows never pierced the asura’s mana.

Then Virion lurched to a stop. Several people screamed or shouted. His body slammed against the stone benches with a painful crunch.

Boo gave a mighty roar that cracked, becoming a tortured yelp, and a heavy weight crashed down the stairs. Behind me, Ellie shouted out in despair.

The asura flashed across the room, his mana signature melding into the atmosphere for the blink of an eye, and when he reappeared there was the sharp, wet sound of a blade cutting flesh. Then he flashed again, and again, and everywhere he went, a mana signature winked out.

But the portal frame stayed cold and lifeless, empty of magic.

“Stop!” I shouted over the screaming. I stepped forward, yanking myself free of grasping arms that attempted to hold me back. “Taci of the Thyestes Clan, I, Elder Rinia Darcassan of Elenoir, command you to stop!”

The asura stopped, and I had to listen as his blade slid out of a body, which then crumpled to the floor.

“Would you willingly, eagerly let them make a weapon of you?” I asked, taking another step forward. “You would be no more important to your lord than we are. A tool, to be sharpened, used, and replaced as necessary.”

He laughed. A simple, disbelieving, cruel sound. “I have been trained since I was a child, spending decades in the aether orb, to be my lord’s weapon. It is my purpose, seer.”

Throughout the chamber, people were whimpering, crying. Someone was choking on their own blood. You can’t save them all, I told myself for the hundredth time.

“I’ve never understood why we bothered with you lessers at all,” Taci went on, his aura focusing around the room, taking in the terrified, helpless people he was about to murder. “Epheotus doesn’t, has never needed anything from you. So why—why?—was one of your own, a boy, a stupid child, trained among us?”