The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 456

Chapter 456

Chapter 454: Amongst the Fallen III

39 minutes ago

The asura strode past me, and I couldn’t help but take a step back as my stomach churned and my strength wilted from her aura. Despite my best efforts, I’d been trying to avoid turning my thoughts inward to examine my many wounds, but the crushing force of the asura’s presence made my own pains inescapable.

Every inch of my body was battered and bruised, my ears rang, and there was a consistent, angry throbbing coming from the back of my head. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at my hand, much of the flesh of which had sloughed off to reveal the discolored meat beneath.

Ahead of me, the dragon looked up, but her gaze was aimed away from the stalled battle above the mountain.

To the south, a small cluster of dark shapes was approaching rapidly over the mountain peaks. They weren’t bothering to hide their mana signatures, and there was no mistaking them for anything other than what they were.

Every nerve in my body began to unravel at the sight, and I felt truly hopeless for the first time since the dragons arrived. “Was it all really for nothing?” I asked, the words a whisper on my lips.

The weight of the dragon’s mana swelled, the air thick with it, her pressure palpable on my skin. Pain wracked me as I fell to my knees and stared up at the inhuman entity, sure that her mere presence would destroy me utterly.

The asura sighed.

Tears streamed from my eyes, and I involuntarily turned away, unable to bear the sight of the asura’s raw power, only to see a streak like a black star bearing down on us. Unable to even utter a cry of alarm, I felt my body go rigid, then the dragon’s aura manifested as a silver shield, capturing me within it by nature of my proximity.

A seething morass of black metal spikes churned around us, chewing at the barrier like a thousand grinding teeth. With a grunt, the asura shoved outward with her shield. Beams of silver light pierced the cold metal, and the spikes all burst at once, the dust of their remains drifting out over the valley below.

I had a second of pure terror to watch as the ground cracked open beneath me before I slid backwards, being swallowed by an enormous, earthen maw. Broken stone, rock, half a carriage, and several tons of dirt collapsed all around me.

Reaching out, I clawed the air and watched as the one-armed asuran woman floated into the air and sped toward Perhata, then everything but the falling mountain was gone and darkness closed in above me.

Desperately, I struggled to conjure a protective barrier of water around myself. The mana sputtered and stalled as my broken concentration flailed, then swelled into existence, embracing me in a cold but buffering sphere. I bounced around as gravel, stone, and soil battered me from every direction, only intermittent flashes of light visible through the cascading rubble, then, with a suddenness that made my head spin, I came to a jerking halt.

The noise of the mountain’s collapse continued everywhere at once, the rumbling inside my head, my chest, my guts. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. My barrier was collapsing, being crushed inward toward me by the weight of the mountain. I was trapped by my own spell, pinned, paralyzed, my concentration fractured.

The spell burst. I wrapped my arms around my head, and the dirt and rocks settled on top of me. Something heavy crushed down on my leg.

I screamed, but the soil swallowed the noise. My heart was beating fast, so fast I felt like it would run up my throat.

This was it. Everything I had done—learning magic, rebelling against the Alacryans, surviving the war—had brought me here, to my literal grave. Buried alive. Better to have died alongside Jarrod, I thought wildly, bitterly. At least it would have been quick.

Then, though, I remembered the man climbing down the mountain with his family. I remembered the couple with the baby. And the boy.

They had struggled to survive, not giving up during the war or after, even continuing to fight for their lives as deities rained death and destruction down all around them.

Regular folks—farmers, herdsmen, crafters—went through all that and chose to keep trying to live…

I wriggled my arms, careful to protect my head, and made just a little bit of room for myself. Then my shoulders and hips, and made just a little more. The protective spell had prevented the soil and small stones from compacting around me, but something both hard and heavy was pressing down on my leg.

I closed my eyes, even though it made no difference to what I could see. Taking a deep breath of the thin, musty air, I listened and searched with every sense available to me.

My breath caught.

Below, not far, I could sense mana—a large collection of atmospheric water-attribute mana.

Shaking with nerves, I carefully—very carefully—began using what little mana I still had to spray jets of high-pressure water into the ground, carving out a little space.

The ground that was pressing in all around me gave way little by little. Afraid to be careless and yet knowing there was no time to collect myself, I used small bursts of water to carve down toward the atmospheric mana I could sense, trying to make enough room to crawl forward in my little cave. But the boulder on my leg was holding it fast; I couldn’t move an inch.

Closing my eyes, I stopped moving and casting for a moment, focusing on my breath. My head was foggy, my body had dissolved into one connected agony, and my core was nearly empty.

Pushing up onto my elbows, I gathered my strength and cast a jet of water at the stone, trying to shift it. Some chunks of rock flaked away, but the boulder didn’t move. I gathered my strength, then struck it again and again, each jet in the same spot, until, with a muffled crack, the boulder split. The halves slid just a little, and suppressing a scream of sheer agony, I yanked myself free.

Dirt rained down on me, then small pebbles, as the ground all around me shifted as well.

Gathering what felt like the last of my strength, I blasted downward with a powerful jet, and the floor of my little hole gave way.

I plunged into open air, there was a brief sensation of light against my eyes, then I hit solid rock with a jarring impact that knocked the breath from my lungs and all sense from my skull. My senses flitted in and out as I struggled against the impulse to go to sleep, then something jolted me back to awareness.

I stared up at the ceiling, which had partially crumbled where I’d blasted my way through.

What had that been? Something experienced on the outer edges of my failing senses…

Turning my neck was pure torture, but I had to find whatever had jarred my senses back to life. Next to me, only a couple feet away, a spike of black metal protruded from the floor and up into the ceiling, with a network of filaments extending from it to keep the ceiling lodged in place. As I looked farther, I saw another, and then a third black spike.

Then it happened again, and I realized what it was: a voice.

Despite the bone-deep pain, I turned in the other direction, rolling onto my side and propping myself up on one elbow.

In a dim, sourceless light, I could just make out the shape of a man curled into a fetal position next to the glassy black of an underground body of water. Red eyes stared back at me, glowing in the gloom.

I sucked in a breath, and my ribs gave a stab of pain. Squinting, I realized he had long, corkscrew horns that poked up from his head, and there was a sharpness and definition to his features that made him look inhuman.

“The Sovereign,” I muttered weakly.

“Ah, you know me, good, that’s good…” He tried to give me what he must have thought was a disarming smile, but it only made him look even more predatory. _{freewebnøvel.com}

Except…something was wrong. He has no mana signature. Looking more closely, I realized that he was tightly bound with heavy chains and cuffs.

“You’re a Dicathian lesser, yes? But a mage, at least.” A dark tongue flicked across his pale lips. “I’m in need of your assistance immediately, as you can see. Release me at once, and I’ll—”

“What?” I yelped, unable to help myself.

Irritation flashed across the man’s face. “Do not be stupid. I am no longer an enemy of your nation. If the noise out there is any indication, your dragon allies are currently fighting against the soldiers who abducted me. Release me, and I’ll turn myself into whichever lizard is in charge, and you’ll be a hero.”

I blinked, unable to process what was happening through the pain and exhaustion pressing on me like the fallen mountain above.

“Excellent,” he huffed. “After all this, a breathing magic user falls into my lap, so to speak, and she is an imbecile. Or concussed.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Lesser. You do speak this language, yes?”

I swallowed and eased myself into a sitting position. My wounded hand jumped to my ribs, which I thought must be broken. “Yes, of course,” I said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t think I can help you. You’re a—”

“A coward,” a new voice said, a voice that had been ringing across the mountainside all throughout the battle.

I froze, unable to turn around, but then, I didn’t need to.

“Sovereign Oludari Vritra of the Dominion of Truacia.” Perhata’s feet crunched across the sediment dusting the bare stone of the floor. “Sworn in service to the High Sovereign, Agrona Vritra, father of our nation and our people. Betrayer, traitor…failure.” Perhata materialized out of the darkness. “Have I missed any of your titles, Sovereign?”

He seemed to deflate as he released a deep sigh.

Perhata kneeled beside me, took my chin in her hand, and pulled me around to face her, examining me closely. “If it isn’t the girl I promised to let live. Have you been a good little girl?”

I suddenly felt like I was back in the lightless hole, trapped and waiting to die, blind and suffocating. A cold chill trembled through my body, offset only by the wet warmth spreading through my stained and ruined pants.

Perhata regarded me with disdain. “You have survived, which I suppose should be worth something. And yet…”

Her brows pinched together, and she pursed her lips thoughtfully, then stood and moved to Oludari. There was a spark of mana, and she set a device down on the ground next to him. “Sorry for the delay, Sovereign. We were waiting on this, which Khalaen’s battle group was kind enough to bring for us. With five more Wraiths on our side, the battle above should be about over, don’t you imagine?”

She sucked in a deep breath and released it with almost giddy energy. “If there has been one good thing about your fruitless attempt to defect, it was that my purpose was fulfilled this day. Dragon blood spilled…” One elongated canine bit down on her lower lip as she suddenly closed her eyes and turned her face toward the ceiling, visibly tensing.

Then her smile faded, her eyes snapped open, and Perhata spun around, staring up through the mountain as if she could see the sky beyond. Even in the colorless light, I could see her face turning pale.

It took a moment longer before I sensed the approaching intent.

A seething, furious anger seemed to harden the air. Three more mana signatures—even more powerful than the dragons already there—and among them, something else. Something cold and rageful and…dangerous.

Perhata spun, diving for the device. Oludari squirmed in his chains, lashing out with a knee and knocking the anvil-shaped artifact sideways. It slid in the dirt, rocking toward the water, and Perhata scrambled to get hold of it, mana building up as she tried to activate it.

“Lesser, the tempus warp!” Oludari urged. “Disable it—”

Perhata, who had for a moment seemed to forget my existence, flicked out her hand in irritation. A dark streak sped toward me, so fast I didn’t even have time to close my eyes.

There was a bright purple flash in front of me, and then someone was standing between us, a figure wreathed in violet arcs of lightning. In the figure's hand, little sparks of the purple current jumping around it, was the spike that had been aimed for my throat. Violet flames licked between his fingers, and the black spike burned away to nothing.

The burning silhouette of a wolf burst from him, launching itself at Perhata, while his head turned slightly, mid-length blond hair waving like a curtain, and a single gold eye meeting mine as his profile was revealed. “Go,” Arthur said, his voice, like his expression, dark and solemn, but beneath that, frosted over with such a bitter, cold fury that it sent a shiver down my spine.

Even as Perhata struggled against the creature in the background, spells starting to flash and fly all through the cavern, I reached out and clutched his arm. “The dragons, they…they didn’t care, they let us—”

That boiling, wrathful intent I had felt flared, and Arthur’s eyes blazed. “I know.”

Before I could say or do anything else, Arthur blinked away, his arm melting from my grasp as he reappeared on the other side of Perhata, cutting her off from the Sovereign and the artifact. A bright beam of amethyst light swept across the dark cave, and the Wraith threw herself back, dragging the lupine mana beast with her.

A spray of black metal spikes filled the cave, launching outward from the Wraith. My senses weren’t quick enough to follow them all, but at the same time, several swords molded from violet energy appeared in the air, slashing in several directions at once, each one deflecting or destroying a spike.

One speared the ground beside me, barely missing my leg after one of the swords parried it aside.

Shaking loose of my paralysis, I tried to stand only to realize that my crushed leg wouldn’t hold my weight. The pain of it was a distant echo that only manifested as I began to move, but it contained no strength. Instead, I rolled over and crawled desperately toward the underground body of water.