120, 1/2

Erick hovered in the middle of the sky, seeming like an imitation of a sun, surrounded by light and made of light himself. Nine Ophiel hovered around him, some in replicas of Erick’s own sunform, others running other spells, like [Hunter’s Instincts], or one of the Sight spells Erick had recently unlocked and bought. He was as prepared as he could have been, and yet, he wondered at what else he could have done. Tried to make [True Sight]? That would have been useful. What did he need to get that one? Maybe he could have had each of his Ophiel grab a rock, and then each of them could put a weak [Prismatic Ward] on them, and then each Ophiel could each run [Pure Reflection Ward] in their sunforms, while keeping the [Prismatic Ward] at their center so they could remain high-mana.

Ah. He should have done that.

He also only had nine Ophiel around him. The last one had been watching Hollowsaur, but it was time for him to come back.

Erick had that one grab some supplies on the way, and then light step it back here as fast as he could. Shit was about to hit the fan. And yet… Erick just wanted to enjoy the view for at least a moment.

The Dead City really was quite beautiful from this angle. Erick and his Ophiel were a good 15 kilometers up, above Ar’Kendrithyst. They could see the entirety of this once-great wrought city. From horizon to horizon, where the black solid-lace Feast Barrier cut them off from the rest of the world, the crystal city glowed with radiant reds and puissant purples, almost looking like some modern city, while the space below was an arena of light, with depths far too deep to see, and sides a good 50 kilometers from edge to edge.

And then there was the Edge of the Script, up above. The barrier that held the mana of the Old Cosmology to Veird, that enabled Veird to function as a planet, hovered a scant several kilometers higher. Maybe less.

Lapis was already up there, hoping for the start of a new life. Farix had joined her, and surrounded himself with blood magic of the highest order; dark red orbs, just waiting for a target. Goldie was somewhere in that dark sky, too, but none of Erick’s various Sights revealed her location. But none of that mattered, for a part of the fight had already started.

Right in front of Erick.

Fallopolis One looked much the same as Fallopolis Two. Both of them wore tattered black dresses; the same one from the last time Erick had seen the woman. Both had a broken kendrithyst staff in their hands. Both had frazzled, burned hair, and burned flesh.

Fallopolis stared at Fallopolis, as the crystal city in the distance exploded with varicolored lights and fires, hinting at fights far out of sight.

“This bitch!” Fallopolis One yelled, “I knew we shoulda killed you first! What the fuck you doing with my face!”

Fallopolis two almost responded, but—

Erick threw a pair of [Luminous Traps] at both of them, catching both of them in the effect. Fallopolis One and Fallopolis Two swirled into utter darkness. Erick dismissed the spells right afterward.

Fallopolis Two tumbled out of the broken black void with a disjointed, “ARGglee gabble! Fuck! That HURTS!” And then she laughed, for she saw who had tumbled out of the first [Luminous Trap]. “AH HA! Fuck you, Perri!”

The grey orcol woman tumbled out of the first trap. Barely a moment later, a splash of shadows, the triggered [Dispel] that the Witch had used before to escape Erick’s [Luminous Trap], struck the Witch’s back. It did nothing.

And then she vanished into another [Luminous Trap], cast from a second Ophiel. The very second she fell back into the void, another Ophiel threw all of himself into counterspelling Blood Ooze which he then flung into the black void, while a third Ophiel, currently in sunform and running [Pure Reflection Ward], surrounded Perri’s new prison. Some of that Ophiel slipped into the black void it protected, but another Ophiel cast a [Perfect Mirror] on the black void, turning the lightless sphere into the world’s shiniest, 4-meter wide ball bearing. The reflective Ophiel settled down around the mirrored space, perfectly molding himself to the surface. Erick was barely fast enough. Three more dark splashes of [Dispel] magic struck that Ophiel’s reflective coating, soaking in, but accomplishing nothing. The blood ooze poked out from the bottom of the silver sphere, but otherwise remained inside, trapping the Witch under a great many various spells.

Erick was down to 8 Ophiel, so he summoned another, bringing him back up to 9, just in time for the tenth Ophiel to step into the space, carrying some rocks for Erick’s [Prismatic Ward] plan. He had his currently unoccupied Ophiel give out the stones to the rest, as they began enacting his will, all on their own.

Fallopolis had barely yelled her dislike of Perri by the time Erick had solved the problem. She had been about to tell Erick to do something; he could see it in her wide eyes. But now she just kinda stood there, in the air, growing more gleeful with every passing second. She laughed, then asked, “What was that red thing I saw?”

“Counterspelling ooze.”

Fallopolis gasped, then cut her gasp off. “Ah. She’s probably already out of that. Good spell, but I doubt it works well against her. I’m going to kill her now.”

A black beam ripped out of Fallopolis’s chest, to impact the reflective Ophiel surrounding Perri’s prison like a protective shell of glowing water. That part of Ophiel scattered like so much radiant rain, though the rest of him remained attached to the ball bearing. Erick almost said something —he wasn’t really sure what he was going to say, either— but Fallopolis had acted too fast, and now he just wanted to see if she could actually get through his spells. He had little hope for his [Familiar] holding up against Fallopolis, since Ophiel wasn’t exactly a real boy; not yet anyway. He had less hopes for the [Perfect Mirror].

But then the [Perfect Mirror] proved better than the [Familiar]. Fallopolis’s black beam scattered wide. She frowned. She kept her beam going for a good five seconds, before she stopped, in a huff.

All this while, Erick had been watching Fallopolis, from every angle, and with every sense he had going.

She was the real one.

Erick said to her, “Let me, Fallopolis.”

With a thought, Erick had the sunform Ophiel surrounding Perri’s prison turn real again, and stick a feathered wing through the edge of the silver sphere, and into the black void beneath. From that wingtip Erick cast a spell of pure light that bounced around inside that protected space, becoming a laser without beginning or end as it crashed through the trapped Shade.

Erick didn’t see it as it happened, for all the power of [Luminous Beam] was trapped as solidly as Perri, but he got the notification of the kill.

 

That certainly was a lot of experience. Erick glanced at his Status.

“Huh.” Erick said, “I’m level 90, now. Shit. She was pretty big, wasn’t she?”

“Fuck your illusions, bitch!” Fallopolis cackled at the space where Perri had been, adding, “With her dead, this’ll make killing the rest of them so much easier!” She smirked, adding, “You know, if we don’t die in the process!”

“… What?” Erick imagined he would have felt his stomach drop, if he had had a stomach, at that moment. Everything was happening too fast. “What did I do?”

Fallopolis pointed north. “Do you see the Swamp from here? Well. Theoretically. You can certainly see the part that matters.”

The Swamp did lay to the far north. But from this angle, it was more a void in the kendrithyst landscape, than able to be seen. That part of the Dead City was most firmly on in the Middle Reaches. One part of it did stick up into the air, though; River Tower Gloom. It was a spike of green and black kendrithyst rising up near the middle of the Swamp.

… It was green? And glowing. Brightly. Ahhhhh.

No no no. Erick was sure that he would have noticed such a unique architectural feature of Ar’Kendrithyst. There were no green towers anywhere in the city, and certainly none that glowed so brightly.

“She’s been threatening some shit like this since before I was here. Her tower went off once, you know? That was an annoying set of circumstances. Some adventurers managed to—”

Erick rapidly demanded, “What is it?!”

“Poison, probably. But not just poison. We could solve that fast enough. We might not have [Cleanse], but Void works fine for getting rid of most airy issues.” Fallopolis called out, “Give us your worst, you dead hag!”

As though her words were meant to summon the dead, the green tower glowed even brighter. An image of a woman projected into the sky. It was the grey orcol. Her illusion was as large as one of the fake planets hanging around in the rest of the sky. She spoke, carrying a recorded message across the whole of the Dead City. “To those who finally managed to take my life: Congratulations. Have some poison, some mutative monsters, and my undying curse. Rot on this damned cursed world for the rest of your miserable, short life.”

There was a sinking feeling inside Erick’s center.

“Ha! Poison! Weak!” Fallopolis looked to Erick, “Did you get a curse?”

Erick had been on high alert this whole time, and saw nothing. He reevaluated, and decided, “… No? What would it have looked like?”

“A rainbow splash to your mana sense.”

“No.” Erick said, “Definitely not.”

“Then probably don’t worry about it. Or it might be contained into that silver sphere.” Fallopolis said, “That poison coming out of the Swamp is very real, though. Like I was going to say: we had to clear out of the city and spend a year cleaning up her messes. She was there to throw her potions around to help clean it up, but we obviously won’t be getting that help this time.” As Fallopolis spoke, the green river tower’s waters turned bright green, as a fog rolled out and into the air, like a volcano exploding. The fog spread into the air, but it was much heavier than air. It all fell back to the ground, back out of sight. Erick imagined it layering the land beyond, killing everything it touched. Fallopolis said, “Let’s murder Tania and the rest of them and then we can go save some stupid adventurers in the center lane before the poison reaches them.” She pointed upward, “And those three need to die, too.”

Fallopolis was talking too fast. Mentally, Erick could keep up. But emotionally, he was lagging behind.

Erick said, “Can’t we just [Cleanse] it? Wait. You said we can—”

“Won’t work too well. There’s… What’d you call it? Radiation?” Fallopolis shook her head, then said, “There’s Extreme Light inside there. A lot of it.”

“Fine. Fine.” Erick already knew of a few lightmasks that could block most high energy radiation; they had worked against the Toxic Hydra months ago, too. His lightmasks even seemed to work on particle decay. That was probably a result of [Ward]s ability to negate Particle Magic, more than a lightmask’s ability to block harmful light. Whatever! Erick tossed that thought aside, only to realize that he had actually created a [Lightmask] spell that specifically blocked all forms of harmful light. He moved on, anyway. He said, “I made a [Blessing of Empathy]. Hollowsaur got this Quest.” Erick threw the blue box at her. “Those three above are going after my Blessing, after this is ov—”

Fallopolis glared, saying, “What the fuck, Erick! You’re not going to kill them? I knew you were a pushover but—” She finally glanced at the Quest, and her anger drifted away. “… Hollowsaur got this?”

“Yes.” Erick said, “And he turned the minotaurs into real people— And where the fuck is Tania?”

Fallopolis deeply considered something, as she offhandedly flicked her hand to the north, where she and Tania had been fighting. “Back down there, fending off Caizoa—”

Having gotten enough answers to his most pressing questions, Erick instantly demanded, “And what the fuck was that attack this morning?! Did you throw those black beams at me while I was running away from Queen? Where’s Queen? What the fuck happened with Caizoa! How many Shades are left?— Shit. I’m panicking. And I can’t take a deep breath, because I’m not flesh and blood right now. Wow. New form of torture.”

“Oh yeah,” Fallopolis agreed. “Processing emotions when you’re in an Elemental Body is tough. I don’t recommend prolonged usage, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.” She rattled off, “Anywho! Tania is likely cleaning up some stragglers before she comes my way. You put a map up down there, yeah? She’s using it, you know. We all are.” Fallopolis glanced down, and behind Erick, at the map below. “She’s murdering Shades as fast as she can. Faster than I ever could, too.” She scrutinized Erick, asking, “Are you not getting Participation for those kills? She’s only finding them because of you.”

Erick was suddenly torn between canceling the spell and letting Tania’s murdering continue. Too many things were happening all at once.

Fallopolis continued, “And the Caizoa-thing was a true mercenary brawl. No one knew who was doing what or how or any of that.” She breathed deep, then said, “I think we got a bit of time, so this? This feels good to talk. Relax a little! Shake out the bones and circulate the blood!” She shivered a bit, and her wounds closed, though her dress remained in tatters. “Anywho: Quilatalap was doing the memory altering, just how it had to be done, and simultaneously, Tania called the meeting and killed a bunch of bastards while I helped on my side. We actually had the upper hand! A little. Tania ran like a rookie, rushing to her next toy, rushing to Caizoa and those other three. But Quilatalap wasn’t done with the memory shit! Tania finished the memory mods herself while I tried to kill her, so it got a bit fucky… I think I accidentally killed the Cook.” She smiled wide. “Tania definitely fucked up with the memory mods somewhere along the way. When we were fighting just now, Caizoa just showed up down there, swinging her butter knife around! Actually managed to clip a few people on Tania’s side! Ah ha! It was wonderful!” She pointed upward, to where Farix, Lapis, and Goldie were. “Those three gotta die, tho. They’re not good people. They don’t deserve a second chance.”

“No one who has done what the Shades have done deserves a second chance, Fallopolis.” Erick said, “But I give them one anyway, in hopes that they will know how best to fight the evils that will rise in their place, and because Hollowsaur cried like a baby when someone mentioned that ‘he couldn’t hurt a cow’.”

“Hmm… Glad to see you draw the line somewhere.” Fallopolis pointed to the ball bearing, saying, “Perri would have been too much to handle.”

“… Yes. Well.” Erick had no idea why he killed Perri so quickly, compared to the rest, and now that he had done it, he felt a twinge of remorse. But then [Hunter’s Instincts] told that part of his brain to quiet-down-now, and Erick said, “She tortured Teressa. I couldn’t live with myself if I let the Witch live, especially after she tried to trick me twice.”

“She likely tried to trick you much more than that. You remember when Tania told you to stay away from her, way back when you killed Dorofiend? Tania probably had Perri looking over you this whole time.” Fallopolis asked, “What was the other time she tried to trick you? Besides just now?”

Erick almost answered, but then he asked, “When was the first time we met, today?”

“When I woke you up with the fight with Queen over your room. I didn’t throw any beams at you, though. Not on purpose.” Fallopolis looked Erick over again, saying, “You don’t sound so good.” She nodded, then said, “Tell you what: Why not hand over a few of those [Luminous Traps] attached to rocks, or something, and let me use them to trap some bad guys? I can clip them with a telekinetic push, and that seems to be all that’s necessary to trap a Shade, so when I capture them, you can do whatever you did to Perri! You can get all that experience! Simple! Effective!”

Erick answered reflexively, “No.”

Down below on the map of Ar’Kendrithyst, blue dots winked out, one by one. Tania and her posse had been mowing through the central corridor of the Dead City, killing Shades, headed generally north. By the time Perri broadcast her poison-volcano announcement, Tania had shifted west, hard. She was headed straight for the Aerie, where four moving blue dots stood their final ground.

Erick could not really see the actual action happening over there, but he was high enough in the sky to see the Aerie. It was a bright red place, a craggy mountain that stuck up from the rest of Ar’Kendrithyst like a crooked thorn. It had to be over sixty kilometers away, from the lower wall of Ar’Kendrithyst all the way into the upper sky.

Fallopolis asked, “Why not?”

Erick laid it out there. “Are you going to take on my Blessing? Are you someone who should survive this culling?”

For a long moment Fallopolis said nothing. She just watched Erick. And then she turned away, and gazed out at the Aerie, far, far in the distance. She said, “I don’t need a chain around my soul to make me do right by the people of this world.”

“Get a Quest from the gods, then.”

“I cannot do that. I will not work with them. Not now, not ever.” Fallopolis said, “A lot of people come to the Clergy to gain power over others. These are the people who need your Blessing and that Quest. These shackles will make them better people, and allow them to better serve Melemizargo’s ultimate goals of rejoining the Relevant Entities. For my own role as the Culler of Melemizargo, I can tell that what you’re doing is the proper course.” After a moment, she said, “But I came here to never be powerless again, and to especially not be powerless against the gods. They took my Wizard mother from me in a Forgotten Campaign. That was not a lie. I will never willingly go to those who took my world from me. I will never allow myself to be a part of their power.” She looked to Erick, declaring, “If I need to kill Tania alone, I will do this alone. I will likely die, but if that is my fate then so be it.”

Erick looked to Fallopolis. Then slightly left, at the kendrithyst staff floating next to her. It had broken in half, and yet she kept it. Erick inclined his head at it, saying, “Got an extra staff?”

Fallopolis scrunched her eyebrows together, then glanced at the staff next to her. “This is just an affectation. Nothing special about it. I was never one for artifacts or trinkets.”

Erick shook his head. “For the [Luminous Trap]. I need an item to bind to the trap.” He thought for a second, and added, “And for the counterspelling ooze to hold.”

“Oh!” Fallopolis hovered the staff his way, saying, “Just use this one! How long does the ooze last? Eh. No. Don’t bother with that part.”

Erick grabbed the staff with a tendril of light and held it for a moment, thinking. He had an Ophiel cast a [Mend] upon the red-purple crystal. The staff flexed out to two meters long, looking perfectly fine. Erick stopped. He turned to Fallopolis, suddenly worried, and probably for no good reason. He said, “Some rules, just so that you can’t claim that I didn’t ask you not to, later.”

Fallopolis winced, breathing out through clenched teeth. “Shit— Fine! What do you want?”

“A non-binding oath that you won’t be like the Shades everyone thinks of when they think of ‘Shade’.”

“Easy!” Fallopolis said, “I agree.”

Erick nodded, slowly, then said, “And you can’t scoop up every Shade and then run away with them under your control. I want them either dead or Blessed into accepting the new world order, where Shades are a part of a good and helpful society.”

“Also easily agreed!”

“And now, the binding one.”

Fallopolis flinched. Her voice matched Erick’s for power, as she began to speak in cadence.

“A demand you have, of me I see. I cans’t not guess what it could be!”

“A little thing I tell you true, the only thing I want from you.”

“I am intrigued. What could this be? What binding doest thou string round me?”

“I want the truth for now and ever. Deception: No. No sense how clever.”

The manasphere tumbled around Erick and Fallopolis, like churning waters, hinting at movement far below. Erick’s voice had turned hard. Fallopolis matched him power for power.

“You wish for us a bond of truth? You surely do now show your youth. Lies can also love and lift! They are not always harmful grift.”

“A point well made yet and here now, I will not be your slaughtered cow. Lies from you cannot not harm… though I will settle for alarm.”

“A binding then, between us two. Alarms for both, for me and you. Upon the timing of a lie, we shall now know each other by.”

“The bond is struck, a light-touch thing. A working barely deep as fling. But here and now and evermore, it is a part of both our cores.”

“Accepted with the grace of God! I will not ever be a fraud.”

“Then here’s a blessing struck forsooth. This working sounds ‘gainst honest truth.”

The world pulsed around Erick as it pulsed around Fallopolis. Something tiny slipped around him, as the same thing slipped around her. And then it was gone, or rather, invisible. Fallopolis smiled, as she breathed hard like she had just run around a city block.

Erick briefly returned to his human body and breathed hard, too. He briefly noticed his mana dipped down, maybe only a hundred points. Maybe less. Not much, in the grand scheme of things. He recovered faster than Fallopolis.

A blue box appeared.

Erick returned to his sunform. Fallopolis did the same. And then she flinched away from the air in front of her like a surprised goat.

“What the shit!” She said, “I got a box! I haven’t had a box in 400 years!” She flapped her hand through the air, wide-eyed, dismissing the box. She tapped the air a few times, and suddenly went from happy to annoyed. “Oh.” Fallopolis looked to Erick. “Not connected to the Script again. Just the one box. Damn. Thought I’d get [Cleanse] again.” She looked to Erick. “Could you…?”

Erick inundated her with a [Cleanse]. Thick air blasted away from her, while Erick asked, “What benefit does that give you?”

Fallopolis smirked. “Let’s test out this alarm.” She smacked her lips, then said, “It makes me clean—”

A soundless buzz sounded in Erick’s soul, like a buzzing bee had somehow gotten inside his chest and decided to do the mamba. Fallopolis must have noticed his reaction, because she stopped talking.

Erick said, “So that was a lie.”

“Technically, that was not a lie. It was—” Fallopolis paused when she saw Erick experience another buzz. It was smaller than the one before, but Erick still felt the Shade’s lie, and he purposefully let Fallopolis know he knew her lie by the expression on his face. Fallopolis hummed, then continued, “[Cleanse] does make me cleaner—” Buzz. “But the truth! The truth is that [Cleanse] also balances the mana in my soul and body, and enables easier manual magic.” She paused, staring at Erick; waiting. Erick was waiting, too, but nothing buzzed. Fallopolis said, “And that’s what I used your [Cleanse] for.”

No buzz.

Erick said, “Well. Okay then.”

Fallopolis looked to the side for a moment. Then she looked to Erick. “Tell me a lie.”

“Tania wants to fight for the humans.”

Fallopolis did a little involuntary dance. “Ohohohoh. That’s a lot!” She looked away. She looked back, saying, “Gimmie another lie.”

“If you destroyed the Script, Veird would be fine.”

Fallopolis frowned at him, then said, “Again.”

“I appreciate those who play games with my life and my people.”

“Getting a bit deep there, Erick.” She added, “Anyway! No buzz on that last one. Good. Turned mine down to nothing.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. I’m not walking over dragon eggs around you, but you’re free to do whatever.” Fallopolis said, “Minor Blessing, and you even called it ‘a working deep as fling’. Here, try to adjust yours: The sun is blue.”

Buzz.

Erick said, “I don’t want to adjust mine right now.”

“Fair enough.”

Fallopolis nodded, and turned toward the north. Over the last few minutes, the fireworks had multiplied. Giant plumes of brilliant light. A sudden tempest of crawling blue. A smashing cacophony of sound that pulsed the sky, sending a visible shockwave across Ar’Kendrithyst.

All the while, the grey mist seeping from the Swamp kept going.

Erick turned away from the ongoing battle, and worked on the staff, taking his mind off the upcoming fight until it got here. Fixing up the staff took a lot less time than he would have liked. He just cast a black sphere a meter across into the air directly above the top of the 2-meter long staff, locking the spell to its position. It was done. With a twist of some tendrils of light, Erick experimented with handling the staff.

Fallopolis eyed him and the giant lollipop of dark doom. She smiled.

While he played around with the staff, Erick asked Fallopolis the same questions he had asked her before, and in much the same way, but a lot more specific. Did she promise to be a ‘good Shade’? Did she promise to either kill or convert the Shades she captured with the mobile black sphere? Did she promise not to screw Erick over when this was all over? Fallopolis answered truthfully and quickly until that last one. For that one, she paused before answering.

She looked at him, and said, “I won’t intentionally harm you or yours.” She added, “And I’ll do you one better! I also won’t, through inaction, allow bad things to happen to you without at least warning in advance, as much as I can.”

There was no buzz.

… Erick handed her the lollipop of dark doom. She took it, gleefully, careful to keep the dark end well away from herself. She cackled, just a little, and then spun the staff around like she was leading a parade.

Erick asked, “What does it feel like to get sucked into one of those?”

“Oh~ You know~ Pain beyond imagining. Doesn’t stop being painful, either, because the spell sucks in and traps all ambient light and thus you’re inundated with waaaay too much light.” Fallopolis said, “Can’t think. Can’t cast. Very painful. Worst pain I’ve ever felt, actually, because it’s not a killing pain. It’s just pain.”

“… Sorry to hear that,” Erick said, feeling a hole where his heart usually was.

“Huh.” Fallopolis looked at him. “Truth.”

“You turned it back on?”

“On and off as I want.” She waved the staff around, asking, “Have you been trapped in one of these yet?”

“Parts of me.” Erick said, “I don’t get sucked in all the way like you do.”

“I doubt you’d experience the pain, anyway. You’re not shadow-aligned.”

Moments passed.

Erick pointed at the staff, saying, “It’s vulnerable to [Dispel]. Best watch out for that.”

With a wide smile, Fallopolis said, “I’ve already fixed that.”

“… Truth?” Erick startled for a moment. “How?”

“An application of my own abilities.”

Erick willed the [Luminous Trap] to cancel. It burst.

“Bah!” Fallopolis sighed at him, then handed him back the staff. “Make it smaller this time, please. Contrary to every warrior out there, stupid-giant weapons are just giant acts of stupidity.”

Erick cast another [Luminous Trap] upon the top of the staff, shaping it to look almost like a natural extension of the crystal, but with a gap between the crystal and the magic. “Better?”

“Perfect!” Fallopolis cackled again.

Erick asked, “So what are you doing, exactly? To make it [Dispel] proof?”

Fallopolis gazed at the dark blot at the end of the crystal, and said, “I’m wrapping my personal Domain around the area. I’m glad you can’t tell, but, here: I’ll make it visible for a moment.”

Erick had been looking at the staff and seeing nothing special, but at Fallopolis’s direction, the mana around the staff and the spell at the top lit up like a bonfire made of intent. It was like glimpsing the tendrils around Poi’s head, but times a thousand. It completely occluded the [Luminous Trap] at the top of the staff. Between moments, the display vanished; returned to invisibility.

Fallopolis said, “A more esoteric use of a Domain, but one of the most useful.”

“Oh. Aura Domain magic.” Erick said, “Not one of the Elemental Domain magics. Ugh. So many things in that book that the Librarian gave me that I haven’t had a chance to try.”

“This one is easy enough.” Fallopolis said, “You’ve already been doing this with your ball-of-light form and those spells that bounced off of it. The Elemental version is a little less strong than the Aura version, but not by much. The actual trick I’m employing is not getting sucked into the void myself. I think all the ball has to do is touch a Shade’s aura and it sucks… them… in…” Her voice trailed off.

The entire Aerie glowed white, shining like a lighthouse for all of Ar’Kendrithyst.

And then a detonation shook the top of that glowing mountain, shifting the glow from white to darker, and the entire mountain suddenly became a bright, cherry-red brilliance.

Erick felt the worst sort of panic. Maybe it was part of his enhanced Perception. Maybe it was something more primal, as though he saw his life flashing before his eyes. Whatever the case, his first instincts were for other people; those too close to the Aerie to escape unharmed.

He made six Ophiel rush forward, fast as they could possibly go, to three locations. One pair went to Hollowsaur and the minotaurs, still on the beach of Lake Leviathan. Another pair went to Hollowsaur’s plateau, to protect his little green people as much as Erick could. The last two went to those who he rescued from Dorofiend, at the Bend in the North River. Those six Ophiel barely made it in time for Erick to megaphone panicked, loud warnings of what was coming. Three Ophiel cast giant [Stillness]s, changing all sound above a whisper to bright light, causing the mouths of the people in those spaces to blink with glowing bubbles as they yelled in response to Erick’s sudden warning. The secondary Ophiel in those three spaces turned themselves into full powered [Prismatic Ward]s, like deflector shields, outside of the main area where the people were, and heavily sloped in the direction of the Aerie. Hopefully they could deflect the blast up and out, and they weren’t just blown away by an explosion that looked large enough to break the entire Dead City.

With a final touch, Erick had the surviving Ophiel in those three spaces, still in their sunforms, cast themselves as wide as they could go, stretching into the light, turning it solid, expanding themselves as they protectively wrapped around everyone they could reach.

Meanwhile an Ophiel near Erick and Fallopolis cast a [Stillness] all around the two of them, while another created himself into a [Prismatic Ward] deflector that faced the Aerie.

Five seconds had passed. Fallopolis had not been motionless, either. She had cast her own deflector, far ahead, in front of Erick’s [Prismatic Ward], as the two of them stared at the glowing Aerie. The mountain was now a structure of bright-orange iron, like it was fresh out of the forge and ready to be hammered into shape.

Erick barely had time to yell at the sky above, telling the other Shades to come into his protection, before the Aerie exploded. Goldie, Farix, and Lapis stepped up behind Erick, behind the shield he had created, while Fallopolis cast more dark magics forward, and Lapis let loose with some sort of tiny trinket that crumbled into dust and erected a massive bubble all around the five of them.

Clinically, Erick compared what he saw now to what he had seen in a documentary about Krakatoa.

80 kilometers away, the visible kilometers of the mountain known as the Aerie became fire and expanded faster than the speed of sound. The interior blast was short lived, and maybe only reached a good fifteen kilometers away from every part of the Aerie, from the peak to the base all the way down in the Lower Reaches.

The shockwave was larger.

Nearby crystal towers, themselves maybe 40 kilometers tall, broke. The smaller fragments rode the white shockwave like they were surfers. Only a few of the larger ones remained visible, as the pressure wave expanded.

A dozen illusionary planets vanished from the sky.

The shockwave grew; a white bubble of air and pressure imposing its will upon the world. Towers crashed into other towers. Crystal blasted into the sky. Erick had the Ophiel near the three locations solidify as much as possible, but he knew it would not be enough.

Erick had one spell he could cast himself, though, through those Ophiel, but to choose one area was to damn the other two. That didn’t matter. He still had to save one. The Ophiel near Hollowsaur rushed forward, into the blast, while Erick cast a [Stillness] into the shockwave. The spell slipped into the air, shaped like a plow, but not before the shockwave hit the sunform Ophiel, popping him like he was an old soap bubble.

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Erick watched, from his own perch, a good distance away, as the shockwave rolled over that first [Stillness], turning some of that power into light which flashed across the entirety of Ar’Kendrithyst, like a lightbulb giving its last. The shockwave continued on as though it had hit a very small rock.

Three more lightbulbs burst, deep down inside the kendrithyst towers.

More towers crashed away from the explosion.

The shockwave continued. It crawled across the Swamp, sending up massive plumes of grey smoke, and cracking the green tower.

The edge reached Erick like an oncoming wall of force. The world turned white. The shockwave was too much. If Erick had ears, they would have burst. If he had eyes, he would have been blinded. He had none of those things, and so he merely felt as though someone fired a cannon next to his non-corporeal head. His own [Personal Ward] flashed white, but it was hard to tell that when everything else was also as bright as the sun.

The Shades did not appreciate the light. The four of them instantly went down, almost falling out of the sky. With four tendrils of light and the help of his Ophiel, he caught Lapis, Goldie, Farix, and Fallopolis, before they fell too far.

The shockwave passed. Seconds later, it struck the edge of the Shadow’s Feast Barrier and rebounded, coming back for a second showing. Instead of a cannon blast, it was merely the sound of a shotgun fired right next to his head. Lapis and Farix both screamed in pain as the world turned white again, thanks to Erick’s Stillness. Erick hadn’t heard them do that the first time. Goldie merely flinched upon Erick’s sunform platform, as she turned darker while the light turned brighter; an eclipse-like form that Erick had already seen Bulgan do when he had fought the Shade over Candlepoint. Fallopolis gritted her teeth as she similarly withstood the blast.

The entirety of Ar’Kendrithyst became a sounding bowl as sound bounced on the Feast Barrier and tore across the sky, from every direction, hitting from the left and the right, from the top and the bottom. Erick’s [Stillness] popped on the second passage.

Time passed, and eventually, the resounding shockwave had lost its power.

Erick re-summoned his Ophiel, as he was able. Every single one he had set forward was gone. He sent more forward as he could, to check on what had become of the people out there.

Hollowsaur’s plateau was gone. Simply… not there anymore; replaced by a hole in the ground where the crystal had likely broken below, and the top had fallen through. Much of the Jungle was either on fire or knocked down to the ground, or uprooted. Erick doubted that anyone on that plateau had survived. His deflector [Prismatic Ward] was not there; it had taken too much damage and broke.

Back on the beach, Hollowsaur huddled against the ground with the minotaurs and a few small green people, inside a structured assortment of bubbles, one on top of the other, while black flames grew on the sands all around them. They had layered themselves in overlapping [Ward]s, which was understandable, and some of Hollowsaur’s flames, for whatever reason. It was enough for some, but not for all. Many people were bleeding, and in pain. Some who had been outside of the center [Ward]s were dead. Erick’s [Prismatic Ward], shaped like a slope, had managed to throw much of the debris up and over the party. It might have saved their lives.