The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 392

Chapter 392

Chapter 390: Apathy and Ecstasy

The scene around me seemed frozen in time.

Richmal’s face was slack, his focus on the magic coming undone as he watched with awe. At his side, Ulrike blazed with internal light, more and more mana pouring out of her, the web of electricity growing brighter in coordination with her efforts. Her crimson eyes avoided me as she focused on her spell, the muscles of her jaw working as she ground her teeth.

Behind them, Ifiok sagged, sweat pouring down his face, the ruins of his arm hanging limply at his side, his channeled mana trickling away to nothing.

Blaise and Valeska had retreated down the tunnel toward Vildorial, and Blaise was fumbling with a tempus warp. The familiar anvil-shaped device hummed as it collected and condensed mana.

I was still reeling from my discovery of the interplay between aether and mana. Even though I still didn’t fully understand yet what Realmheart was capable of, I had no time to question what I was doing. It took a tremendous effort just to lift one foot and place it in front of the other. There were still five half-Vritra Wraiths to deal with, and I could feel Regis’s life force weaken by the moment.

The orbiting field of spikes and blue-black lightning shifted as I moved, rotating away as I passed, my aether containing and redirecting the mana making up the various spells. The force of my will was matched against that of the three opposing mages. I had to maintain a more forceful hold over the aether than they could enforce on their mana, but there was also something else, some resistance from the aether I didn’t yet understand.

Moving the short distance to Regis sapped even my asuran physique of its inhuman stamina and strength, and by the time I reached the cage of lightning, my legs were trembling. I released the pool of acidic sludge, which splashed back together and then sank between the cracks in the granite tiles and vanished.

Richmal gasped and sucked in a deep, desperate breath, as if he’d been holding it the entire time. “Valeska! Go, now!” he barked, his voice raw.

Releasing aether from my core, I manipulated it around Ulrike’s spell, looking once again for the metaphorical curtain separating the two powers. It was just like in the keystone, when I’d practiced with Ellie. I had to let my mind refocus, shift my perspective. Three Steps had once told me something very similar as well, and even Kordri’s lessons had required that I experience the motion and interplay of our bodies differently.

Perhaps that’s what all knowledge boiled down to: new experiences that shifted one’s perspective slightly, revealing more of a world that was already there, but which we couldn’t see.

My breath caught and my mind stuttered, and I wrenched myself back into the moment. Dozens of poisonous slime-darts were hissing through the air at me.

My hand raised, too slowly, my mental fortitude drained and exhausted. The darts parted, their path shifting as they swarmed around me to either side, and I let out a breath simultaneously full of wonder and fatigue. I could feel where each particle of mana and aether interacted, how the aether took hold of the mana and redirected it to create a momentary sympathetic binding of the two forces.

But I was also shouldering the combined force of all that mana, trying to hold each of the individual spells separately in my mind, and, as the darts curved to avoid me, I was forced to release my hold over the spikes and lightning web the other Wraiths had used to pin me down.

The field of black spikes fired away wildly, nearly impaling Ifiok and crashing against Ulrike’s shield. The lightning, which she had continued to pour mana into until it burned to look at, condensed into a single bolt and struck the ground, exploding in a blinding flash.

The chamber quaked.

Turning my attention swiftly to the small cage of lightning, I looked for the place where the two forces moved to allow each other’s presence, and tugged, peeling control of the small cell away from Ulrike. It snapped and seared the air as I pulled it away from Regis. The wisp bobbed drunkenly as it drifted up around my ankles. Reaching out, I closed my fist around it. It sank into my flesh and drifted toward my core.

Regis offered no response to my sudden presence, but I could sense his consciousness, distant and unaware but alive. I could only hope he would recover if we survived this battle.

Mana flared from the hallway as the tempus warp began to activate.

The bright mana was clear, as was the rim of atmospheric aether that moved to encircle it. Valeska trembled as she leaned toward the mana, her hand stretched out, her fingertips brushing the surface of the portal as it manifested.

I reached out, my gloved hand curling into a claw as I attempted to seize the portal. The aether jumped at my command, contracting around the portal and compressing the mana. The tempus warp’s magic seized, leaving the half-formed portal wavering tenuously in the air.

“I can’t get through,” Valeska screamed as she scratched at the portal’s surface.

“Take him down!” Richmal’s deep voice cracked as he roared, and spells rained down on me from every direction.

Iron and fire broke against my armor and aetheric cladding. Lightning and acid glanced aside, bursting or burning into the ground, shattering the stone with the fury and hellfire of my enemies.

But with most of my focus on forcefully distorting the tempus warp portal, it was all I could do to deflect even half their attacks. Acid and lightning burns scarred my face and metal spikes ripped through both armor and flesh. My face and skull burned where the metal spike had punched through it earlier.

Too much aether was being focused through Realmheart to defend against the Wraiths’ spells and the portal.

But I knew I couldn’t let the Wraiths retreat. Not even one.

In Agrona’s hands, information was a weapon. I couldn’t give him that. I couldn’t let them escape to report on my abilities.

They all had to die.

Ulrike was repositioning to stand between me and the half-formed portal. Her leg, sheathed in a cast of pure mana that sparked and jumped at every subtle movement, dragged limply behind her. Richmal’s arm was pressed down over a huge open wound in his side where armor, flesh, bone, and organs alike had been cleanly removed to reveal sharp bits of rib poking through a fleshy red mess, a wound caused by Regis’s last desperate burst of Destruction.

Destruction.

I hesitated even as spell after spell pummeled me, deflecting what I could, absorbing the rest, the pain at once all-encompassing and nothing at all as I focused past it to the thing waiting dormant in Regis’s meager form.

I hadn’t attempted to use the godrune on my own since the mirror zone, but even then Regis had been conscious, flying to my hand to help me concentrate all of my aether in one specific direction. I knew all too well the risks of using it now, without Regis to help me focus and control it. With the abundance of aether in my dual-layer core, I could burn through all of Vildorial.

The spells were becoming more random and madcap, their movements jerky and difficult to follow, and I realized Ulrike was imbuing her lightning-attribute mana into the others’ spells. The resulting fusion of magic was faster, wilder, and much more difficult to counter.

As lightning infused bolts of burning brine struck me like cannonfire, and my pain-wracked mind fought to maintain concentration, I understood that there was no other choice. I couldn’t defend against the bombardment and keep control over the portal and fight the rest of them.

Eventually my focus would slip, the portal would open, and one or more of the Wraiths would escape.

Even then, I would still have to defeat the others. But what would keep them fighting? If they withdrew to the city, made me fight in the great cavern…

I imagined the power of these Vritra half-bloods unleashed on the defenseless people of Vildorial. If that happened, nothing else would matter.

I clenched my fists. The godrune contained within Regis’s essence came alive with hunger and power, and the violet flames burst to life in my hands, giving off a bright, jagged, deadly aura.

A spasm of pain came from my back where the Realmheart rune burned with golden light, and my vision and sense of mana jolted. I found myself caught off guard by the difficulty of maintaining both godrunes, but couldn’t release Realmheart. Not yet.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I considered that the hungry, eager power of Destruction was all I needed.

I lifted my hand.

Destruction lurched forward, wild, uncontrolled flames expanding and devouring as they shed their rageful light across the chamber.

Ifiok’s iron spikes thrust forward to meet it. Purple flames raced across black metal, unmaking his magic as it leapt from spike to spike, chasing them back to their source. Unshackled from Regis’s more compatible insight, Destruction rushed wildly, like a stampede of stallions on fire, and Ifiok began to scream. It raced up his arm and across his chest, converting his flesh and blood and mana to purple light and then to nothing at all.

I spun with a poorly suppressed sense of giddiness, spreading the wave of Destruction haphazardly in every direction.

Richmal dragged himself and Ulrike out of Destruction’s path with his watery tentacles while sending out a flood of green sludge to douse my fire, but Destruction only ate that as well.

“Agrona thinks these lessurans are going to kill asuras for him?” I asked the flames, my voice undercut by the force of Destruction vibrating within it. “Pathetic.”

I grabbed a spear of black iron out of the air and watched as Destruction pulled the spell apart and unmade it.

Noxious fumes were pouring out of Richmal’s skin, staining the air with a greenish murk and filling what little remained of the chamber with the smell of death and rot in a feeble attempt to cut me off from the portal.

Above me, the same static guillotine that had destroyed Regis’s physical body was forming again.

I slammed my will into it, and the mana trembled, caught between my force and Ulrike’s. Wherever Realmheart conjured the purple runes, I began to burn and sweat, but I only pushed harder, Destruction consuming my pain and fear, until Ulrike’s spell broke.

A bone-crushing shockwave of pure force, created by the static distortion’s failure, hurled both the Wraiths backwards into the wall. I leaned into the force of the explosion and Destruction jumped to wreath my body in a jagged aura of flame, the violet flames curling between the scales of my relic armor, eating it from the inside.

Instinctively and without consideration, I dismissed the armor, and it dematerialized. I didn’t need it anyway. Destruction was better armor than any old djinn relic.

Ulrike hunkered behind her shield as Destruction caught up with her, but it accomplished nothing. Destruction ate away the runes, then shield, then Ulrike, her armor, flesh, and then bones vanishing layer by layer.

Richmal stumbled back, but he didn’t try to run. Instead, he threw himself in front of the exits, and a wall of steaming, stinking liquid rose up to block the way.

“Valeska, Blaise, go!” he shouted, and I was surprised to hear something akin to genuine care in his voice.

“Weak,” I snarled, the word burning like a chant, the force of it sending a tremor through my enemy.

Through the semi-transparent wall, I could see Blaise and Valeska both fighting with the tempus warp, pouring magic into it in an attempt to rest control of the portal’s mana away from me.

The misshapen glowing oval shook and striations of distortion ran across its surface, but I held it entirely, the apathy of Destruction shielding me from the growing pain of focusing on both godrunes.

Valeska turned and met my eye. Now, there was something akin to real terror in them. These creatures had been trained to wage a quiet, shadowy war against deities. But they were children playing at being gods. They understood nothing. They were nothing.

Still holding her gaze, I sent Destruction to roll across Richmal. Mana poured out of him in the form of a thick, greasy steam, momentarily holding the purple flames back as they consumed his power instead.

With Realmheart, I looked for the curtain separating the light and shadow, and ripped it aside. His spell was snuffed out like a candle flame, and then his flesh lit up like much the same, and then he was gone.

Somewhere deep within me, something cracked.

My vision and sense of mana blinked out, and I had to squeeze my eyes closed against sudden vertigo and nausea. When I opened them again, the glowing oval of a portal appeared over the tempus warp device. Blaise was shouting and shoving Valeska toward it, but she was still staring at the place Richmal had been only seconds before.

I stumbled. Looking down, I realized that violent flames were burning along the backs of my hands and forearms, and my skin was unraveling beneath the fire. I was losing control.

“Go!” Blaise screeched, shoving Valeska hard.

Her arms flailed, and her hand, arm, and then face vanished through the portal.

A groan escaped my lips as I forced aether back into the Realmheart godrune and it sputtered to life with a wave of sickening agony. I wrenched hard on the aether around the portal, crushing it.

The portal shivered, rippling violently. The mana particles compressed, and the force binding them shattered. The portal died out with a grotesque squelching noise, and what remained of Valeska on this side of the portal collapsed wetly to the ground.

I trembled as the Realmheart godrune cut out again, severing my connection to the mana for the second time. I spit out a mouthful of blood and bile.

Blaise howled. An enormous serpent of soulfire filled the tunnel, racing toward me. Violet fire subsumed the black, and then flowed into Blaise’s eyes and nose and mouth before burning him away from the inside out.

Grinning and burning, I laughed. A single long, mirthful, insane laugh as the last of the Wraiths, Agrona’s supposed “asura killers,” fell before me, the entire essence of their beings wiped away by my power, not even the stain of their corrupted mana remaining.