Chapter Four Hundred And Thirteen – 413
"Atar." Alister took an involuntarily step backward, clutching the boy-child to his chest. The swaddled toddler squirmed and shook. "Atar, what's going on?"
The pillar of the Highest Flame, thirty stride wide and more than fifty strides tall, was now filled with a storm of whirling sand and dust. Fire flashed through it, but it was in striated bursts that glassed sections of the wheeling cyclone, and those vanished into the impenetrable surface. Yet it didn't expand past the edge of the Altar basin.
Fiammetta gasped. "The Paladins! Look!"
All at once the golden light around the Paladins dimmed to a bare fraction of its power. Alister ran his eyes around the zealots, most of whom were pulling backward nervously, shields raised. He looked up, at the Manaships...but the relay fins were still glimmering with power. What happened? He glanced at the Urge behind him. The Highest Flame? No, that doesn't make any sense
Fiammetta gasped again, but this time it was accompanied by a wretched wail. She fell to her knees, heaving and tearing at her own breastplate. "I-I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"
Alister reached for her, but pulled back with a curse as fire undulated across her limbs. It ran outward from a point in her chest, like it was fleeing...or being pulled from her.
Similar noises filled the strangely silent air, as Disciples and Knights all toppled and were subsumed in rising flames. A Matron in his line of sight threw her head back and screamed bloody murder as her body became a pillar of incandescent flame. The force of her sudden immolation threw back everyone within ten feet of her position, Knights and a few Disciples tumbling end over end. The battle had been driven to a horrified pause as everyone else turned to view the Altar.
"The Flame!" a voice from the sky cried out. The Grandmaster's face was even more ashen than usual as stared at the dust-infested Altar. "The Primordial is free!"
A jagged wave of aquamarine light slammed into him, and this time, the Grandmaster was almost caught unaware. He dropped from the sky, just barely able to cut through the wave with a burning blade of pure fire Mana. Steam erupted in all directions, and it was like someone had restarted time.
Battlelord Ari and his giants were recovering from the flames that had blanketed them. The Knights and Matrons they had faced were still writhing on the ground or in pillars of flickering orange power, unable to fight back. Alister saw Evie land among them, and her spiked chain did its bloody work, whipping among the Knights with imposing weight. Golden armor crushed and battlerobes were pierced, before she flowed toward the nearest flame pillar, retracting her weapon and spinning it forward in a complex series of loops. The spiralling formation wrapped tight around the flames before sinking in and catching.
Evie screamed, activating some sort of Skill and sent herself spinning backward...yanking her chain all the while. The chain pulled free, emerging from the fire in a dark, steaming spray of pulped flesh. The pillar winked out, and the mangled remains of its occupant fell bonelessly to the ground.
At the other side, Harn and Darius led the Claw, cutting into the downed defenders without mercy. Knights died by the dozen. The Paladins faced them on the edges, but all of them held up their shields and were now steadily retreating toward the southernmost wall of the sanctum. It was clear that their protection had been weakened.
"Fall back!" Captain Boldt ordered. He had backed away from the Grandmaster who was now facing Zara directly."To the ships!"
The Paladins had barely any time to move before the Altar gave a tremendous, groaning shriek. It rattled beneath Alister's feet, and saw the flames surge within it, and he stepped up next to Fiammetta. "Kinetic Embrace!"
Flickering plates of force Mana formed across Faun, mage, and child just as a wave of obliterating dust ripped free from the Highest Flame's confines.
"AHHHH!" Alister screamed into the wind, his shields grinding down just as fast as he could replenish them. He drank three Mana Potions, one after the other, but it proved too little. He blunted the initial gale, but the sheer immensity of the outburst tore the shields to shreds and hurled the three of them off of the Altar's lip.
Alister rolled, protecting the kid in his arms, while Fiammetta's body hit the tiles hard. Above them, a cyclone of razor sand and blazing heat formed within the sanctum, quickly filling the space. Knights, Paladins, Claw warriors, all of them buckled under the power of the storm. Brilliant, yellow lightning formed and discharged, smashing into walls and architecture with wrathful abandon, while sheets of glass formed and shattered among the sands. They were ground to nothing by the churning winds before reheating again and again. And then the true horror showed itself.
A phantom face formed from the wind and sand, glass and lightning. A thousand skeletal hands solidified, until a monstrous, many-eyed abomination congealed. It bellowed, releasing a buzzing dissonance that drove a spike of primal fear into Alister's brain and belly. He gaped, eyes watering.
Atar...Atar what have you done?
The undead were everywhere.
Wights and Wraiths poured from the walls, filling up the huge chamber and clashing directly with the now-weakened Paladins. They maintained a piece of their strange strength and shielding, but Felix could tell it was far less. A dozen Wights pulled down a red-clad warrior as he watched, tearing into his exposed face with blunt teeth and jagged claws. But they didn't need to kill the Paladins to be effective, because the flesh curse was running rampant. Scratched and bitten flesh withered, dried of its vital fluids as the Primordial's dark Will overcame their own...and Paladin turned on Paladin.
It was an ideal scenario, had Felix not been in the thick of it.
"You did this!" Haim shouted at him, sword flashing. "Heretic!"
Felix parried the blow, driving the man's blade into the tiled floor. He was stronger than Haim, but the High Justiciar was a lot better at sword fighting and Felix was still dazed. The Paladin's blade came back up, catching Felix in the chest and slicing him open before a burst of radiant Mana shot into him. Felix was hurled backward, again.
He kept his feet, but that was the only good news. His chest was a mess of blood and exposed muscle, and his Health had dropped below fifty percent. His Sovereign of Flesh was working to heal him, Felix was devastatingly low on Essence. And his Hunger was still revolting, refusing to pull in more. "Work, god damn it!"
Felix's head swam, still not quite healed, but he lifted his two blades. Greatsword in his left hand, hooked khopesh in his right, he set his feet as Haim raced at him, lit from within with Divine power.
"Heretic! The Pathless has spoken to me!" Haim screamed, his eyes wide as if in rapturous understanding. "You cannot be afforded to live."
The High Justiciar arrived, sword descending, just as a wave of dust-fueled force ripped downward, hitting them all.
Felix flared Stone Shaping, hoping to blunt or catch the sandy power that fell atop them, but all he could manage was to not get knocked aside...unlike literally everyone else. Paladins and undead, even the Golems were thrown from their feet. He looked up, to the distant roof of the chamber just as a dusty cyclone erupted from above. It crackled with yellow lightning and eroding bursts of sand and shattered glass that tore the crystalline walls to pieces.
And it was slowly dropping lower.
"Beef!" Felix shouted, spotting his friend. He sheathed his weapons and jogged to his side, Agility letting him speed across the battlefield faster than a damn car. The Minotaur was sprawled on the ground, bleeding heavily from...everywhere. "You're hurt."
Beef accepted Felix's hand and climbed to his feet. "This? I got lots of blood. I'll be fine! Iaargh!"
The Minotaur tripped, going back down to a knee and raising his thick hands up to his head. Sparks of blackened green Mana rippled around his temples, flashing outward along thin pathways toward his Risen warriors. They too had fallen, and Hallow had only gotten a few up. Now they were all shaking as if being electrocuted, their backs arching and jaws clenching so hard a few even cracked teeth.
"Michael!" Hallow shouted from the nearest Risen. Its eyes strobed, waxing and waning in strength. "Michael!"
Beef forced himself to stand, his muscles and fur quivering from the effort. "I know! Ah! That bag of bones is trying to take over my undead! That's bullshit!"
Damn it, he thought, scanning the crowd. The other undead were getting back to their feet, and so were the Paladins. The roaring storm kept slowly descending, and now it glittered with the shattered remnants of thousands of Mana crystals. Damn it what do we do?
The Primordial was undulating again, throbbing almost. The bones made a huge racket as they clacked and clattered, pulling and pushing at one another, the gruesome ligaments of the creature creaking as they tightened. It held no shape, and it clung to the edges of the massive bronze sword thrust through it, but it was getting more and more lively by the second. It had asked to die, but it did not seem in a hurry to do so.
Felix blinked. Along the edge of that massive blade, pulses and odd, looping glyphs formed. From them, half-invisible lines of sigaldry had speared into the Primordial's mass like harpoons. They were flickering, tattered things, terribly damaged by the destruction Felix had wrought...but he could still see the small crystal vessel holding the Regalia. He cursed. The Paladins' array had been all but obliterated, but power was still being sucked from the Primordials not-quite-corpse. Those same lines were funneling it up, through the storm...and outward into Haim and his cronies.
I have to stop the Primordial. Kill it, like it asked. To Beef, he asked, "Can you hold out?" Before the words were fully out of his mouth, however, he felt a sharp, blazing pain in his chest. Words flitted across his Companion bond, but Felix clamped down on his Spirit, refusing to let Pit out. No, you'll be safer in there.
Pit seethed and pushed against him, but he couldn't overcome Felix's Willpower. I can protect you!
No! You're hurt already, Felix sent back. "Beef!" The Minotaur was staring upward, just now noticing the annihilating storm dropping onto their heads. Felix grabbed him by his chitin breastplate and puled him close. "Beef! Can you hold out?"
Beef shook himself, and Felix let him go. The teen-turned-musclebound warrior wet his lips and attempted a casual grin, but it came out wan and sickly. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. These pally's do light and fire damage and I'm sturdy against that shit. And the undead aren't much, except those big ones." His eyes flicked upward, nervously. "That doesn't look good though."
"It's not, and if it reaches us we're all dead." The Paladins were regrouping and scribbling out furious lines of sigaldry, Haim at their head. "That thing is fueling that storm, and fueling the Paladin's too. I'm not gonna let that continue."
"Wait, what're you doing?" Beef asked. Hallow stood next to him, most of her Risen still quivering.
"What I do best," Felix took a breath. "Something stupid."
Cloudstep!
Felix formed a series of Mana platforms and accelerated up them, each one lasting no more than a second before shattering under the weight of his momentum.
"Holy shit that's cool!" Beef said behind him. Felix let a burst of pride warm him, just for a second, because then he hit the shifting wall of the Primordial itself.
Divine sigils flared around him, bursting upward from those half-invisible tethers into the Primordial's bones. They filled with light, forming into a cage to keep Felix from moving forward...but he didn't stop. He slammed against the sigaldry, but his Body chose that moment to spasm and fail. Wounds that he'd patched shut sprung open under the divine sigils might, his left shoulder burst and dislocated while his collarbone snapped right in half. Felix suppressed a scream of pain and frustration, and fell back onto a hastily summoned Cloudstep.
Haim levitated into view, buoyed by cords of golden Mana. "You cannot stop this any longer, Mr. Veil. Or should I call you Autarch?"
Felix flared his nostrils and tamped down on his pain, pushing his Song of Absolution as hard as he could. He needed focus. The arrays blocking him were vulnerable, but they weren't Divine...merely powered by a Master of the craft. He could thwart Divine Will, at least a portion of it, but against a mortal agent? It wasn't the same. The High Justiciar was strong, a warrior that Felix could maybe have bested on his best days, fully rested and healed. But, as his spasming Body reminded him, that was not this day.
He gripped his Blade of the Fang and pulled it from his back. The baldric and sheath that held it dissolved back into his shirt and jacket, now flapping in the intensifying winds. Lightning crashed above them, and Haim leveled his own glowing blade at Felix's throat.
"Let us end this, Felix Nevarre."
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