Chapter 107

Always the Same (IV)

She always got what she wanted -- that was the creed by which Seribum lived her entire life. If there was something she desired, then no matter the obstacles, she would get her hands on it. The same didn’t go the other way around, however; if somebody wanted something that was already hers, she would kill all those who fancied themselves thieves. Yet, ever so often, there were rats idiotic enough to dip their fingers into a jar that did not belong to them.

Today was one such case -- one of her most important aides and confidants... has gone missing. And, if the etched carvings were anything to go by, he wasn’t merely missing -- he had been taken. Her already sour mood due to the new group of morons called ‘The Greedy Seven’ plummeted even further, so much so that not even the sounds of breathing could be heard inside Rikur’s home despite the fact that there were over ten souls there.

She stood right by the door’s frame, her twilight-colored eyes staring intensely at the carvings, a desire waking in her soul to immediately march over to the two groups and obliterate them from existence. However, she had to hold back -- that much she knew.

One could almost see the strands of her dark-green hair dance wildly like flames, her scrunched-up expression erasing all the efforts she went to to appear young.

Her tail, one that usually remained wound around her waist and hidden beneath the clothing, was wildly whipping behind her, and it was clear she wasn’t even aware of it. Even the crystal in her forehead, the calling card of the Innul Race, had switched its hue from the normal silver to dark-gray, almost jet-black. Everyone standing around her had never seen her this angry before, and that spoke volumes as she was hardly the one to tame her tempest-like temper.

“... summon our forces.” Seribum mumbled in a low and dragged-out hiss.

“L-Lady?”

“We are going to war.”

Her declaration boomed out like thunder, first engulfing her own forces and then the city as a whole. The world turned both silent and loud at the same time, the air above it bleeding tension. It wasn't a threat or a show of force -- Seribum quickly summoned virtually everyone she could within the City's span, six hundred in total, and declared war on both the Creepers and Yosels.

The latter two were shocked far more than anyone else as they had no idea why Seribum chose to declare war. They hastily began gathering their forces and combining them, but even still only managing to scrounge up a few hundred altogether.

The drums of war sang a deep and dark song, and the streets of Initiate Strata cleared up of the strays. Nobody wanted to be flung into the crossfire of rage and damnation, stuck to forever burn in the troves.

Two armies mobilized within three hours of Seribum having found out Rikur was taken, with hers marching over to the nearest ‘fort’ of sorts, though the name was fairly generous as the building didn’t even have proper fortification. The army of six hundred lined the outsides, staring coldly at the thrifty three hundred, nearly all of whom took a step back in fear of the behemoth standing in front of them.

Two leaders, Sjeer and Yamel stepped out from the rest, clad in resplendent armor of silver and cyan, respectively, their expressions hardened as they took off their helmets, facing Seribum.

“What is the meaning of this?” Sjeer asked.

"If you need to ask what the meaning of war is, kid," Seribum replied emotionlessly. "I must question how you rose up as far as you did."

“Do you truly intend to do this?” Yamel quickly stepped in. “There is no coming back from this, Seribum.”

"I've always wondered why we allowed the morons to live with such high self-importance," she replied as she slowly began raising her arm. "It's high time we cleaned this place up. It's been too long."

“...”

“...” palpable tension emerged as hundreds of pairs of eyes veered over to Seribum’s arm, watching it slowly rise and extend forward, waiting for the thunder to boom.

“CHARGE!!”

“ROOAAAAR!!”

The ground shook under the mighty roar of hundreds of souls ripping at the sky in unison, hardening their expressions and brandishing their weapons. Seribum’s army quickly whipped itself into a formation, shield-bearing behemoths charging to the front while the more nimble lot moved to the flanks, long-range bombardments sticking behind her.

Her gaze never left Sjeer and Yamel who similarly tried to break their army’s tension with their voices, but were unfortunately drowned out in the unrelenting rampage that was approaching them. Their only bet, they knew, was to charge at Seribum and kill her before their forces were defeated.

Sjeer whipped out a massive, eight-feet-long claymore while Yamel took out two shimmering orbs and heaved them over to his shoulders where they remained, levitating. The two charged through the ranks and out of the courtyard, headed toward Seribum who also slowly began preparing for a battle.

Mana around her churned and rippled like bolts of thunder, her eyes beginning to shine in a blinding luster, a faint, cyan sheen decorating the frames of her body. The ground underneath her feet caved in as she slammed her arms together, summoning a beyond-massive hammer into her hands that towered over the world at nearly thirty feet, slamming it down with all her might as veins began to bulge.

The hammer was translucent and burned in sea-blue, tearing open the fabric of space on its way down.

Sjeer stepped out in front of Yamel and similarly charged Mana, converting it into Corrupted Starlight; tendrils of ghastly-gray smoke erupted from within his fingers and coiled around the massive claymore and he heaved it over his shoulders and spun at an angle, shooting the blade up and meeting the hammer squarely.

The explosion echoed out immediately, ripping out huge chunks of earth from beneath the point of collision and barreling them out in a ring-like fashion. Sjeer was forced to take a few steps back as his fingers began to bleed, his organs rattled. In the meantime, Yamel took to the sky and stopped at roughly forty feet up, summoning out nearly fifty circular halos that glowed in a vibrant range of colors. Right after, each began to spit out elemental combustion, bolts, and spheres intermingling into a shower of destruction that fell upon Seribum.

She scoffed silently and heaved back, taking a deep breath; Mana around her began to seep into reality due to the sheer quantity she was charging, misty-silver shimmers beginning to rise from beneath her feet, cradling her like the gentle arms of a parent. She roared from the bottom of her lungs and swung both her arms to the side before flinging them forth; midway through the ‘swing’, an apparition in the shape of a trident appeared, fifty-feet-long, glowing sublimely.

The strike swiped at the world and summoned violent and wild winds that burned against the elemental rain, ripping spacetime further; by now, the two armies had also clashed, yet their battle, however spectacular, was drowned both in the sound and the colors of the one that occurred just a hundred feet off.

Seribum stepped back and avoided the few elemental bolts that managed to push past her defenses, still appearing entirely undaunted. On the other hand, both Yamel and Sjeer frowned, though it was brief; the latter immediately charged forward with a roar, the ghastly tendrils of smoke shaping into arms that dug out of the earth as though they were the dead reaching from the beyond, seemingly pushing him forward and giving him winds. He held the claymore to the side and dragged it against the tattered and torn ground representing the ruin of what once was, leaving behind a thin trail wherever the blade passed.

Yamel maintained the height but closed some distance as well, repeatedly summoning out elemental halos and tossing showers of colorful death downward.

Seribum didn't panic, taking yet another deep breath to calm down as she whipped her tail out a few times. Extending her right arm, she summoned a half-dome in front of her, a thin sheen of light that easily seemed to absorb the elemental rain. In the meantime, she opened her left hand's palm up to the sky as the kindle of white fire burned into existence above it; it was barely a flicker, seemingly an inch away from dying, yet... it didn't.

Appearing entirely inconspicuous within the elemental shower of colors that blinded the otherwise drab-gray world, nobody noticed as she brought it up to her lips and gently blew it out. The white fire fizzled out without seemingly doing anything, yet, a mere second later, her dark-green hair, short enough that it barely reached her neck, expanded and turned into sharp, lime-green. It rapidly reached to her knees and wound out in braids like ropes, thirteen in total.

The individual braids rose up in half a circle behind her, their tips curving up to above her head and pointing forward like spears. She suddenly relaxed her right arm as the shielding dome that was protecting her vanished; thinking they had broken through, Sjeer’s and Yamel’s expressions lit up as they both charged forward through the dust and smoke. As soon as they stepped out of it, however, both came to an abrupt halt as the expressions of horror emerged on their faces; they turned back and scrambled to run away as quickly as possible. It was too late, however.

The thirteen 'braids' each summoned a tiny sphere at their tips which then further extended into a circular halo in front of Seribum, one that burned with an impossibly white hue. It shimmered and shuddered, as though barely existing, as her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth began to trickle blood, a clear sign she was overexerting herself. Yet, she didn't stop.

With a dull shout, she rang the circle with her right arm by punching it dead-center, destroying it into shards. Yet, just before they were to vanish into the ether, a burst of light shimmered and shook the world as it coalesced into a massive beam of light that flashed for less than a second, covering the world and alighting the entire Initiate Strata, turning the eternal night the city lived in into a temporary day.

The aftermath, however, was darker than even the darkest of nights, as the beam left behind a massive trail, good eighty feet wide, that led all the way from where she stood to the very end of the city, digging out a hundred-feet-wide hole in it and exposing it to the outer world. Suffice to say, nothing in its path remained alive, forever buried as tiny particles of dust and ash, meant to be forever forgotten.