Chapter 86

The Sea of Fire (I)

“One day, the earth will burn the sky, and all of us shall turn to ash. Just as it once was, so shall it be again.”

Fragments

Countless eyes looked at him, distorted and weeping, wails burning through every wall of the world and boring directly into his mind. He was like a beaten child, shaking in the corner of the darkened realm, his head pressed against his knees, arms covering the top. The wails were loud and silent, high and low, vicious and soft, impossible to adjust to. As for how many of them there were, it was impossible to count. Numbers lost their meaning in the face of such apathy.

The earth suddenly quaked and rippled, and a gash the size of the world itself ripped straight through the darkness. The wails crumbled beneath the invisible pressure, the figure in the corner screaming madly like a child.

Noah’s eyes jolted open as he fell to the side, rolling over the shaking earth for a few moments. The rattling forced him to immediately awaken, using his arms to push and prop himself up. His expression darkened as he bolted out. The earth beneath his feet was cracked, lines like spiderwebs extending at random. Screams and shouts quickly caught up as others came to, realizing what was happening.

He looked into the horizon where he saw the clouds of pure fire billow out into the sky like serpents and phytons. Just then, a roar that seemingly came from the depths of the abyss blew out into the world, the quaking intensifying by at least three times. Even he found it difficult to maintain his posture, to say nothing of others who came crawling out of their tents.

The roar persisted for nearly ten seconds, and Noah realized that his ears were bleeding, a rattling headache shaking his vision. Lumps of Dark inside of him instinctively roared, rushing into his brain and clearing it up. Others, however, weren't as lucky, many fainting on the spot. Those were actually lucky amongst the unlucky, as the others screamed in pain, grabbing their heads, seeming ready to rip their skulls out.

Noah rushed forward, shocked to see Asandra also ripping through the masses, unaffected. She nodded toward him as the two reached the front of the ramparts quickly, climbing up the walls. Looking into the horizon, everything was clouded in a haze; Noah knew that it was due to the sheer heat that distorted light, but it was still an incomparably insane scene. Even detonating an atomic bomb wouldn’t have produced results on this scale. Virtually all of the horizon was hidden behind that haze, but he knew – or, rather, the lumps in him knew, that there those giants were.

“They’re coming,” he said with a dark tone, Asandra nodding. “You stay here and try to stabilize the situation. Have Olivia crawl if she has to on top of these ramparts. Once the giants become visible, she’ll have to stand there. If she can’t, support her.”

“What about you?” Asandra asked.

“I’ll go ahead and test out the waters,” Noah sighed, going against his instincts, which he knew was never a smart idea. “Don’t worry, I won’t idiotically risk my life.”

“Tsk, who ever gave a shit about your life?”

“Now that’s just hurtful…”

“… stay safe.” She said, hiding her expression as she jumped off and raced back, wildly waking up those who fainted.

Noah took a deep breath and cloaked himself in the dark; according to Jovyer, it should be enough to conceal him without him getting too close. He naturally couldn’t trust it overtly, as one mistake would end his life. His goal wasn’t to test their strength per se, as he could roughly imagine it, but their intelligence. He felt their fate depended on how smart those giants were.

He blended into the scorched plains; where once the grass and wildflowers strut like kings and queens, only withered forms remained, barely concealing taut earth beneath them. It was so hard that Noah kicked up dust with the first few steps, forcing him to control his movement better as to hide himself further. The world around him turned to a deeper haze and blur, superimposing his speed over the heat. He felt it; it was truly hateful. He’d barely raced a couple of miles before sweat began pouring out of his pores.

He endured it to the best of his abilities, mostly ignoring it as he pressed forward. After around half an hour, the haze upfront cleared somewhat. Rather than cleared up, it was better to say that he pierced through it. Though his vision was still wobbly, he could see them now – they stretched for tens of miles on each side, cradling the world. Giants of fire, burning, blazing, roaring. Their advancing speed was slow, but they would still only take at most four hours to reach the ramparts.

Reaching into his robes, he took out a random dagger and coated it in the dark. When he was around a quarter of a mile away from them, he came to an abrupt halt and heaved his arm back, his muscles flexing as he threw the dagger. He was shocked to realize that the speed of the dagger was even faster than a bullet – as the matter of fact, halfway between him and the giants it imploded, reaching the speed of sound and causing a sonic boom. This alerted the giants, but before they could see what was happening, the dagger arrived.

By that point, Noah had already retreated further four hundred feet, his eyes glued to the dagger; the blade, he suspected, had already been completely destroyed, but even still, what happened shocked the soul out of him.

The trail caused by the sonic boom blew the first giant up as though it was a bomb waiting to be detonated and then continued for nearly another two hundred feet, blowing up continuously. One explosion after another shook the sky, almost like a chain reaction. Just as he thought that would be the end, his expression changed; a massive hand composed entirely of fire, spanning well over a mile, manifested up above them. The haziness intensified, and he could even see cracks expanding across spacetime. Fuck, are you kidding me?! Do you want to create a spatial storm, you idiots?!

However, despite the cracks, space didn’t fracture. The hand, whoever it belonged to, suffocated oxygen directly from below. According to logic, that should have also killed the Kindled, but it only suffocated the fires caused by the continuous explosions, and nothing else. Are they not relying on oxygen to keep their fire burning? Noah frowned. He knew too little, and what little he figured out couldn’t even count as a drop in the ocean.

The hand vanished after a few breaths, restoring the previous haziness. Noah noticed the mending of the crack, causing him to sigh in relief. He knew how terrifying spatial cracks can be; after all, the entire Earth was nearly completely destroyed thanks to just one the size of a baby's hand.

He maintained a safe distance at around two miles, realizing they weren’t able to spot him despite the flatland between them. They paused for a moment and then continued, seemingly unaware of what had just happened. Are they really dumb? He frowned. Based on their actions, they really were just brutes – no, they were even worse than brutes. Brutes, at the very least, had instincts to rely on and escape the danger; these giants, however, seemed to have a short-term memory that would have every other species prostrate in awe.

That hand, however, gave Noah some apprehensions. It was not a move that people who couldn’t even instinctively absorb the nature of danger could do. Are they like a hivemind? If that was the case, then perhaps it would be the best-case scenario. His eyes repeatedly darted throughout the army, looking for a figure that stood out in any magnified way. Realizing they all looked the same, at least through the haze, he had no other option than to risk it again.

Taking out another dagger, he sprinkled his feet in the Dark and bolted forward, quickly accelerating to nearly his max speed; stretching his arm back, it looked like he was ready to toss a javelin rather than a dagger. Even though a lot of his movements was wasted, as the dagger was too small to properly use all the force in his throw, he didn't hold anything back and tossed it again. Just like the last time, it accelerated quickly to the point of breaking the barrier of sound, stirring the dust from the dried earth into concentric circles around it.

Just as it was about to reach the giants, however, Noah’s expression changed as the lumps of Dark inside of him forcibly tossed him back against his will. An apparition akin to a blade spun from nowhere and struck at the dagger; though the explosion did occur, and though he did see a few giants falling, it didn’t create a chain reaction. What startled him more, however, was that the blade continued past the point of collision, extending nearly two miles ahead and striking at the earth. Though it missed his position by good few hundred feet to the side, it still caused him a shock.

It bore into the scorched earth and caused a gash the size of a small stream, just one lacking any water. Noah did, however, see something – there was one peculiar giant behind the first line. Just before the blade of fire appeared, that giant raised its hand and did what Noah perceived as clenching its fist.

He hastily retreated to three miles of distance, and it was only then that the giants began advancing. His heart was cold, terribly, terribly cold, and his expression ugly beyond belief. Forget stalling for time, those tens of thousands will just be fuel for their flame, he realized. Just that single strike of the blade would have undoubtedly crushed the fort itself, let alone their makeshift, wooden rampart. Unless he had hundreds of hoses repeatedly shooting water like cannons, it would be impossible to contend against it.

It really looks like it’s at least a hivemind-like strata, Noah took a deep breath to calm himself down, maintaining his distance. Other giants did not react whatsoever toward the second toss, and just that one moved. However, it is entirely possible that it is a multi-layered hivemind and it's entirely independent of its head. Or it could be that there are several heads, and just one of them reacted at that time. Tossing all our eggs into a single basket and banking on killing that one might just completely wipe our chances.

He really was out of ideas – no matter what he thought of, it was irrelevant in the face of such strength. He suspected that even if he’d equipped all those men with guns, they’d still fall short of being able to contend against the army of the Kindled. After Olivia poses a bit, I’ll have Asandra leave with her. I’ll stay behind and inspect the situation further. We can’t defend the fort… aaah, Noah was far from a saint. As a matter of fact, he stood in the opposite realm of things. However, even he didn't feel good over the losses they would incur. The casualties alone might reach million within a day. He had never come even remotely close to experiencing anything like that, even through all the wars that broke out during the Eve. The closest one was the Massacre of the Desert where forty thousand people were killed in a day.

A million, he sucked in a cold breath, turning around and speeding away. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think they all schemed against me and purposefully held back, letting us all die. What use are the commoners if they’re all dead? He knew, however, that be it the Nobles or the Royals, only the top of the top knew some things – the rest were as in dark as he was until a couple of weeks ago. Though it started as acting, Olivia’s put too much emotional weight behind this; if all of these people truly die, she might completely implode. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t run off to die with them…