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 the 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.

Following an instinctive hunch, she banished her armor, feeling like it would be a hindrance if anything was able to somehow impose its authority over the material, as unlikely as that would be.

-A bit paranoid, but I suppose it is better to be safe than sorry.-

And then, the authority finally reared up and imposed itself upon them all, even if not as Tala had thought might happen.

Everyone and everything froze for an instant and then, like a flash of lightning, all magic was gone, stripped away from the superficial.

-Oh, rust—- Alat’s presence vanished. Her mind was still, obviously, maintained within their soul, but her ability to act and think, her very consciousness was disabled without magic at Tala’s disposal.

Natural magic was utterly suppressed, inscriptions were just expensive tattoos, and Tala felt her gate stuttering, her very soul kept from drawing forth more power.

The authority didn’t grip her, per se, and while it wouldn’t have grabbed her armor, her armor would have been a prison all the same if she were unable to provide power to the white steel so that it could move with her.

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She had no idea if the iron woven through would have offered some protection from the effect, but she felt like it wouldn’t have been enough either way.

Across the battlefield, every corpse became simply mundane carnage, losing all traces of power that might have otherwise lingered to be harvested.

If she’d had a moment to actually consider the wealth lost in that one moment, that fact might have been overwhelming in and of itself.

But she didn’t have any such time, especially with her mental enhancements gone.

The timing was such that the effect was likely intended to be something that hit when Meallain was in the thick of things, clashing against the creatures coming to deal with her. Assuming Reality is ‘acting’—as if an intelligence—at all.

The magical creatures, while affected, were still powerful beings even in a basic, ‘mundane’ state.

The humans that didn’t have many magical augmentations didn’t stagger, but their motions no longer heralded the magical effects that they’d expected—that had become truly instinctive for them to expect. Terry screeched in horrified annoyance as he could no longer flicker, but he didn’t let that slow him as he dove in to redirect an attack moving toward a disoriented Talon, which Tala barely saw at the edge of her peripheral vision.

She felt blind, but she was hardly the worst off.