Mirian sheathed her wand of levitation and looked up at the transformed Apophagorga. There would be no running. In one hand, she held Eclipse like a conductor's baton, in the other, Archmage Luspire's spellbook. She looked around again. Most of her little army was decimated.
She had one more trick to deploy. She also had a reserve force: her.
Mirian telekinetically opened Luspire's book and cast an enhanced prismatic shield.
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Apophagorga raised one of its new, huge scythe arms and swung it at Mirian. There was a screeching sound, like steel being shredded and the arm—stopped.
Luspire had thought of everything: every energy type was accounted for, and the spell was even inertially anchored. The titan's scythe smashed into the shield, but all it did was crack the bone-blade of the limb.
Mirian continued to pour mana into the shield as she flipped to the next spell: sunfire conflagration. She stepped forward, drawing from both her soul repository and aura to unleash a blinding torrent of fire. Apophagorga roared again as the flames seared it, but she weathered the withering winds. Pieces of her outer aura were stripped away, but it drained the beast's soul faster.
Another scythe arm came down on her shield. As the blade hit, it sent up sparks and a flash, but again, the shield held. Mirian continued her attack, sending cascading inferno spells at the beast—fireballs that exploded into more fireballs. The titan's flesh bubbled and blackened.
Apophagorga slammed its body back down, elephantine legs sending fissures through the earth as it impacted. Mirian stepped to the side to avoid a fissure forming beneath her, while prismatic shield kept the tremors from unsteadying her. That brought its mouth close enough to Mirian she could smell its breath. It reeked of sulfur and—strangely enough—garlic. She could also smell its burned flesh. The titan's eyes glowed with wild desperation. The spined tendrils around its mouth all lashed out at her at once, gripping her shield like an egg it wished to crack.
Mirian poured mana into the shield. "Torres! Second package!" she said through her remote speech spell.
"But it's right on top of you!" she sent back.
"Now!" Mirian shouted. She downed a mana elixir, then another. She stopped casting offensive spells and directed all her mana to the shield, reinforcing it with soul energy. With Eclipse, she swung at the tendrils holding her fast, the adamantium edge tearing great rents into the appendages. The titan hissed and spit, ichor from its wounds covering the shield until Mirian could hardly see in front of her. She drank a third mana elixir, then grit her teeth.
Just need to hold on a little longer…
The remaining Praetorians and hunters were giving the titan everything they had, but Mirian had prepared one last surprise for the beast. Her 'seeds of chaos' weren't particularly powerful individually. Each one had only a tiny charge, and while it burned hot, it didn't burn for very long. When Apophagorga's aura was at maximum capacity, it was doubtful they would have done anything at all.
However, they were easy enough to make that even an apprentice artificer could churn them out. The limiting factor was the antigravity glyph, but once she'd gotten Voran's permission, it was the only thing left to add.
One seed of chaos wouldn't do much.
Several thousand seeds, though—that would do something.
Her aura waned. She drank a fourth mana elixir, but cracks appeared in the prismatic shield. She fed more soul energy into the spell to add resistance to it. At the edge of the barrier, she could see her cast soul energy eroding at the edges of the titan's like so much acid. But the beast's eyes were locked on her. It took another step forward, then another, its mouth feet away.
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Then, the tendrils released her. Apophagorga let out a scream as the air filled with popping and cracking noises.
Yes! Mirian thought triumphantly.
The seeds came in waves from every direction, like the sheets of rain from a desert thunderstorm. The beast reared up again in pain, towering above Mirian. All along its splayed wings, fire burst forth, until its wings were in smoldering tatters. The titan's flesh melted as the seeds continued to ram themselves into it. It collapsed as the seeds smashed apart its four rearmost legs. Part of its shell rematerialized, held above its head. The beast continued to writhe and scream.
Mirian cast sustained gust and arcane gust to keep the toxic mana left over from the seeds away from her. She maintained her shield, but lessened the intensity of the spell. Her auric mana was nearly depleted.
The sound of the seeds crashing and burning continued, coming like endless thunder. Then, finally, there was silence.
Mirian dropped the gust spells, breathing heavily.
Apophagorga's eyes were closed. Had she done it? Had she actually done it?
Then the titan's eyes snapped open again.
Several of its eyes were blinded and covered in its foul, tarry blood. Its legs were mostly ruined, and its back looked more like a charnel pit than anything that should still be alive. Both its scythe arms had shattered so that only two stubs of bone poked out.
The damn thing was relentless.
With its front two legs and its mouth tendrils, it dragged itself forward, the ground shaking as it did. Mirian leapt back and cast levitation, but the beast's soul was still burning hot. It lashed out, first with a nullifying ray that grounded her, then with its tendrils.
Mirian again found herself again inside her prismatic shield, trapped. She slashed at the tentacles again, sending bits of spine and flesh flying, but the myrvite titan's grip was ferocious. It snarled at her and redoubled its efforts.
She reached for another mana elixir, but there were none left at her belt. She reinforced her shield from her soul repository, then realized the last one was as depleted as her aura.
She couldn't fail, not now. The beast was nearly dead. Could she outlast it?
Through her focus, she looked at it. It's still regenerating somehow. Even though its soul had been ravaged beyond belief and body burned, it was healing. She could see thin tendrils of soul energy going into it. It was pulling from everything it could—blades of grass, shrubs, little rodents hiding in their burrows.
Even if she had dealt it a fatal blow, it was far too tenacious to die before she did. She wouldn't even last another minute; her aura was nearly gone, the prismatic shield full of glowing cracks.
Mirian's mind raced. The beast's soul was still far too large to bind entirely. But did she need to bind it entirely? I just need to weaken it and strengthen myself. But soul energy isn't enough. I need mana.
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Soul energy would eventually bring more auric mana, but she couldn't wait for it to regenerate. She needed it now.
The Last Fires of the Phoenix form could burn foreign soul energy for strength, but not mana. If it can be transformed into one type of energy, it can be transformed into another. There has to be a way.
More cracks formed around her shield. She was out of time.
She began casting the celestial bindings Lecne and Arenthia had taught her so many years ago, bindings that were now rote to her. Instead of trying to bind the entire soul, though, she used the celestial chains to bind a piece of it. She started with one of the tendrils that was trying to break her shield. The titan burning its own soul had made it easier to grasp pieces of it, since it was leaping about like a flame, rather than staying together like a ball of yarn.
Normally, only the death of the creature could sever the soul entirely and let the energy be used or stored. But that's not what Apophagorga was doing. It was siphoning souls, and the organisms were dying as a result. What necromancers can do, she realized.
Xipuatl was right about his unified theory, she had no doubt. The arcane force was just a step down in energy intensity, much like visible light was a step down from ultraviolet light.
More cracks appeared in her shield. There was shouting coming from somewhere, but she ignored it.
When she'd soulbound the amulet, it had required her to first crystalize the relicarium, then re-excite it with her own soul energy. If the glyphs I used for that can be used on relicarium, why not soul energy directly? It would merely require changing a single flux glyph and using a tri-bound sequence to target the soul instead of the material. She had those glyphs and runes already scribed in preparation for her artifact.
The resulting mana would be volatile, she guessed. B-class mana that would be harmful to keep as part of her aura—but if she expended it immediately, the damage to herself would be minimal.
Mirian flipped through Luspire's book as quickly as she could, searching for the sigils she needed. She was down to the last dregs of her auric mana, scouring the remnants so that she could feel her soul being abraded.
She found the last one and channeled, using what little soul energy she had left as a sheath to pull Apophagorga's soul energy through the bindings and into the spell framework.
A trickle of mana came out. The transformation sequence worked! With her catalyst, she grabbed it immediately, feeding into the shield.
Apophagorga hissed at her like a hundred furious snakes.
Mirian redoubled her efforts, continuing to use the souls in her repository like a glove to protect herself from the clashing of energies. More mana spilled through her new mana siphon spell. The cracks in her shield began to mend.
Now, the balance had changed. It was Apophagorga that needed to act. With her shield reinforced and the beast weakening, she thought through the implications of her discovery. Soul energy could be pulled directly from a living creature, it just took a flaw in the soul that could be exploited, and an initial injection of soul energy to get it started. She could siphon pieces of the titan's soul into her repositories with one sequence, and use another sequence to siphon it for mana.
Mirian's head ached as she started a third spell, this one almost purely celestial. The mental strain from holding three spells of such complexity pushed her to her limit, but she had no other choice. She was winning. Apophagorga let out a wailing cry as more of its soul was lassoed and drained, but it was too far gone to do anything except keep using the Last Fires-like soul-form; without that strength, it would collapse entirely.
She continued to mana siphon and soul siphon. Apophagorga gave one last heave to try to crush her shield, but it was far too late. Its tendrils collapsed to the ground. The titan blinked at her, the burning light in its eyes at last starting to die.
Apophagorga's soul energy was magnitudes more powerful than a glaciavore or even a frost wyrm. The amount of mana it output was immense. All of a sudden, she had more high-potency mana than she knew what to do with—and she needed to use it, lest it degrade her own soul.
Mirian fell back on a classic, efficient spell: greater lightning. She flipped to the page and cast.
Blinding lightning crackled from her raised hand, crawling over the entirety of Apophagorga. Deafening thunder roared out, echoing off the hills. The lightning burrowed into the beast, leaving glowing holes and ravaged flesh.
At last, the titan collapsed. Its glowing eyes turned glassy and dark. What remained of its shattered soul began to dissipate. With her soul repositories already refilled, she watched it fade.
Mirian stood, triumphant.
She turned.
The survivors of the assault looked back at her, in awe, in reverence, in horror, in disbelief. First Praetorian Voran's aura was nearly depleted, as were the rest of the battered Praetorians. He had a strange look on his face. "You didn't tell me you were an Archmage, Prophet," he finally said, and knelt. The Praetorians knelt with him.
Lecne emerged from the forest leading a few of the hunters who hadn't routed. He knelt next, then moved to heal those in need. All across the unlikely battlefield, the ground smoldered with fires. Fallen trees and corpses were scattered about like puddles after a storm, along with the fragments of countless magical devices.
Mirian breathed out. "Rise, faithful," she said. "Help me dissect this beast. The catalyst it uses may be the key to stopping the apocalypse."
Those who had mana left began slicing apart the beast with large force spells. Many wanted a trophy from the titan, like a bone fragment or tooth. Others just wanted to rest or talk. Mirian did little talking herself, but by the end of the hour, word had spread that she was a new Prophet.
Behind Apophagorga's skull, they at last unearthed a nacreous, glass-like substance near the brain-stem of the beast. Or at least, what passed for a brain. It was hard to say if the strange tangles of flesh were neural tissue or something else entirely. But the glass-like stuff tangled around the base of the skull glowed faintly, and gave the impression of reflecting colors that their brains couldn't quite parse. When light bounced off it, it was like indigo, but deeper. It was like orange, but more luminous and more ethereal. Other parts of the shone like a rainbow that had been inverted. Calisto and Grandpa Ennecus had been right.
Gingerly, Mirian touched it. She could tell immediately. Like many myrvite catalysts, it couldn't be used in its current form, but there was no doubt in her mind this was the catalyst precursor.
Mirian took the object, slicing apart the soft tissue connected to it. It was roughly the size of her arm. She'd need to refine it, but she had excellent alchemists lined up in Normarg for the task.
Then, she saw someone running toward them. Torres, she realized. With Nicolus and Nurea right behind them.
"Mirian! Mirian!" Torres was shouting.
She looked puzzled. The cataclysm beast, the Elder titan, Apophagorga, was dead. What was the rush?
"The divination detector!" Torres said, stopping to catch her breath. "It just caught a major event. Northwest of here. If it wasn't in Torrviol, it was damn close."
Mirian blinked. At first, she couldn't figure out what Torres was talking about. The divination detector was with me on the airship. Oh, except she had the other devices. I was taking leyline data in case the titan… leyline data. Leyline. "Oh shit," she said, which was not very Prophet-like. The Divine Monument. He knew he couldn't stop me, so he blew it. And we're right on top of a leyline.
"Who has a mana elixir? Toss it to me." One of the Praetorians did and she drank it, then pulled out her levitation wand. "Evacuate everyone as far south as you can. If it just happened, we have maybe an hour before this section destabilizes. Spread the word if you can—run for Normarg. I'll see you there. I need to make sure this wasn't all for nothing."
Mirian flew over the hill, then started running, once again relying on the dervish stances to give her speed and stamina. She didn't dare take from the soul repositories, though. It contained the soul-stuff of Apophagorga, and she needed it. It wasn't like there was another one lying around.
She alternated between flying and running. The entire reason the titan unburrowed on the 28th was because in most cycles, the leyline under them went haywire right after. The exact hour that the Divine Monument detonated had a large effect on the resulting collapse. It could just result in eruptions. It could also result in a full-on breach. She hated leaving her allies behind like that, but she couldn't risk staying close. The north leyline here was directly connected to Torrviol, and they'd feel the effects within an hour or two.
The other problem was the cycle would end two days sooner than if the Monument hadn't been destroyed. Refining the catalyst would take at least two days as the alchemical processes worked, and that would be if everything went right. The titanium lace around her template book was ready, but the tungsten-iridium alloy for the adamantium would take time to get right.
She was almost there, but she couldn't rest yet. Mirian kept running.