Millennial Mage

Chapter 536: The Hammer Stroke

Tala—having finally dealt with the scorpion who had been assigned as her target—took a moment to check in on everyone.

Meallain was doing her task, keeping the large hunting cat contained by forcing it to focus on her. Its odd coloration made it very easy to spot, as Tala had never seen another creature with quite the same blue and yellow stripes.

The elf had put numerous cuts through the creature’s hair and hide—assuming the uneven fur and lines of still-wet blood were a true indication—but none of the wounds remained.

Still, Meallain was no worse for wear, at least not from this fight. She still only had one arm, but she was moving with as much fluid grace as ever. She was not using magic, and Alat reported that the woman hadn’t even flexed her concept a single time—that they could detect—in the fight.

So, she’s still damaged, then. That makes sense, I suppose. It would have been... unexpected if the senior Eskau could have recovered from such soul-rending damage so quickly.

The arcane hunters had done a better job than Tala at containing their targets, but that was fine with her. She was more suited for destruction than containment if she were being honest.

Remind me to ask Master Grediv how to repair cells. I think there could be a lot of insights to be gathered from that process.

-Consider it noted.-

Thank you. She was glad to be able to put that out of her head and focus on the present dangers.

The Talons were methodically whittling down the creatures that they were responsible for, assisted by Masters Clevnis and Limmestare and Mistress Cerna and overseen and safeguarded by Terry. Most of the creatures were heavily wounded to the point that if all things continued as they seemed to be, there would be no Paragon level creatures on the field in less than a handful of minutes.

Master Girt and Rane were bleeding the large cyclops with careful, methodical cuts. The fire-based Paragon was filling those cuts with heat, working to do damage rather than cauterize the wounds.

She did find it interesting that she could see Master Girt more easily now that she was a Paragon, despite his concealing magics, especially whenever he interacted with Rane’s aura.

It wasn’t that she’d had trouble seeing through his invisibility in the past with her threefold sight, but that had been at a much closer range. Moreover, now, he stood out more for being sheathed in magic.

In truth, it was a subtle thing, but it was still noticeable to her in the momentary lull, during which she was deciding where she could best be of help—assuming Masters Meridius and Clevnis didn’t give her a task before she chose one for herself.

Master Meridius would likely give her a new assignment shortly—Alat had already let the man know that they were available for redeployment at need, but if she could find a need in the meantime? She’d gladly move before given explicit instruction to do so.

Things were going their way across the whole battlefield, which was likely one of the reasons why Tala felt so inexplicably nervous.

True, if Meallain had been alone before this horde, she’d likely have been overwhelmed eventually by the myriad creatures that had come, but given that a Sovereign level creature was never going to show up in such a scenario...

-Yeah, this feels... too easy. It’s hardly a punishment at all. In fact, if handled correctly, it could be a windfall of riches, given all the potential harvests.-

You said it, not me... Tala winced. Well, rust it. It was said regardless.

-By us.-

She sighed. Sometimes I would very much like to disassociate with you.

-Wouldn’t that be something?- Alat had a playful tone before returning to the matter at hand. -So? Where’s the catch? These Reforged—or Revered—level threats, while much more powerful than the Reality Drake that attacked us back near Croi in the House Lands, seem... much easier? I mean we struggled with the drake back then, but these are more overcomable, individually, and the target was meant to be Eskau Meallain, whose combat prowess is even higher. I suppose that there are quite a few more of them now... Does that balance it, then? Or is the response just less because it was only magical resonance, not a gate abrading Reality? Is it because the zeme is less magically dense here?-

Maybe? But somehow, Tala didn’t think they were that lucky. Besides, if this is it...? She shook her head. Something about it just felt unsatisfying.

Speaking of the zeme, there was definitely a continued lowering of the density in the region, as if all the power were still being pushed—or pulled—out and away by what Meallain had done, the remnants of her reckless resonance was still quite evident as far as Tala could sense.

To be fair, though, it had been less than a minute since she’d engaged with the scorpion.

If her reckoning were right, it had been less than ten minutes since she first used her dissolution breath, and so it had been less than half an hour since Meallain had arrived at the hilltop, giving her resonance a final centralized point upon which all the consequences could fall.

-Ominous way of putting it.-

Well, yeah... but it’s also rather true, right?

-Yeah... Though the reality of that situation seems a bit lacking thus far.-

As Tala truly examined their surroundings with all her methods of perception, she finally noted something that had been pressing on edges of her awareness for a while. She felt a rising authority that was so fundamental that it was more like bedrock when compared to the artificial foundations created by any other authority that she’d ever been subjected to—even including those within the Lunar Hunt. Though Vidarra’s authority was honestly the closest in kind.

And that comparison helped the truth of what she was feeling click into place.

It was an authority over the basic structures of existence around them. It was the authority of Reality itself.

An oddly familiar—but dissonant—feeling began to surge at the edges of her perception. Something was coming, and she felt like she should know what it was going to be.

Terry’s continued battle screeches lifted her spirits as she ran, especially knowing that he was vocalizing specifically to let those around him know that all was not lost, that a beast still fought for them.

Less than a minute had passed, and magic was just beginning to trickle through her gate once more when she arrived, slashing Flow—blessedly in sword form—down on the hunting cat.

It let out a hissing shriek, pulling back from the cutting slash, even as Tala continued the attack sequence with a powerful thrust forward.

In that moment, her power felt like it burst through a dam. Her inscriptions blazed to life; her body felt like it swelled with ready power; and she lunged with all her strength, skewering the surprised cat through one eye, its own power still somewhat suppressed. Unfortunately, she didn’t breach into the feline’s brain, so it was wounded but not slain.

Some iron within the beast came under her authority, but not as much as should have. It seemed that the beast’s heavier ties to reality than usual were resisting her reflexive claim on the iron in the blood.

Terry let out an exuberant cry which was long enough that Tala heard it coming from all over the hilltop as he flickered around like a mad-bird, working to save as many Talons as he could from disaster.

Her threefold sight slammed back into place, Alat instantly cursing within Tala’s mind. The alternate interface then immediately pulled all injured Talons into Kit, lightening Terry’s load in one sense, while taking away many of those who had been helping him engage the beasts assigned to them.

Magic was flowing back in from the edges of Tala’s perception, but it would take time to get to them. Terry likely only had power because he was drawing it from Tala directly, where all the other magical creatures would have to wait for the zeme to refill with power, at least a bit, before they could have anything to draw upon.

Across the battlefield, the Paragons got their power back at almost exactly the same time, their gates unleashed.

Tala’s threefold sight instantly focused on her husband, verifying that he was okay.

Rane, for his part, had been mid-stumble, Master Girt seemingly having pushed him.

Rane reversed direction, throwing Force with all the added might his power granted him and embedding the renewed weapon in the cyclops’s chest, piercing its heart and part of its brain just as a column of fire enveloped its head to obliterate the massive eye, and its sword-like club came down on Master Girt, where he was stumbling, having just body-checked Rane out of the way.

Tala’s eyes widened, unable to do anything from so far around the hill.

Master Girt’s magic hadn’t returned yet, and the rock that was still clinging to him seemed more a detriment than any sort of true defense.

The cyclops’ power hadn't returned either, of course, but its tremendous power rendered that a less consequential inconvenience in that moment.

Tala was in utter shock, her mind not truly wanting to process what she was seeing. Because of that, she fell back on a clinical assessment, even though she knew that such was her subconscious trying to protect her from the emotional blow of what had happened.

To say the club sheared the large man in half would be to imply a far cleaner result than what actually occurred.

Instead, it was more like the middle third of his body was obliterated, leaving the outer thirds to fall away to each side even as they were distorted by the force that had separated them so swiftly.

Tala felt herself staring in disbelief at where the man had been.

Mistress Vanga screamed even as she leapt from the walls, landing heavily before sprinting toward the falling pieces, but Tala knew it was too late.

She could see his gate—his soul—in the center of where his chest had been, free of any physical bonds.

It hovered there, almost seeming to her soulsight as surprised as Tala was at what had occurred, but then, as Tala found her focus utterly riveted on the happenings—though they took only a minute fraction of a second—his reality node vanished, the various pieces of him no longer part of a whole, instead becoming simply that, various pieces.

Can we grab him? Pull him into the sanctum? Heal him there? She was trying, but it felt like trying to pick up a card from a flat surface. She might be able to force it, but it felt like she’d cause more damage by doing so. The very fact that she felt like she could grab the body—even if only with a portal—while the soul was so illusive was not a promising sign either.

-I’m trying as well, but he seems to be rejecting the pull. I’m trying to overpower him, but something about the naked soul seems to be able to resist our authority more easily than he could have with a physical form.-

At that same time, Tala thought she saw all the soulbonds that the man had—three, it seemed—sever, and yet... One stub of what seemed to have been a broken bond seemed to reach out in a direction that Tala had trouble comprehending. As it did so, it blazed with light and power. As Master Girt reached out in his final moments in Zeme, there was suddenly a renewal of a connection long lost.

Seemingly, something in the next world had reached out in turn, and there was a reuniting, a renewing of a bond broken by the barrier between worlds.

Tala felt a blazing, unmatched pulse of joy and rightness, and she would have sworn that she saw Master Girt laughing in glee, tears of happiness and relief flowing down his face.

Then, the impression was simply gone along with the soul.

A man was irrevocably dead.

A Defender of humanity had fallen.

Master Girt had passed on.

Her friend was with his soulmate once more.