Chapter 91

When the Light Descends

“It was three feet long, bent in a crescent shape, holed evenly across its surface, and would hum a lullaby if put in salted water. That song would suck the life of all those who heard it. It was a terrifying thing, a remnant of the Ages long gone by…”

Strange Artefacts, Vol. I

Noah tumbled rapidly and barely managed to stabilize himself, reeling onto his feet. His eyes quickly wandered off to the front where he saw a burning blaze akin to a star smash once again into the giant of fire. She was quickly repelled, yet came back twice as quickly, crashing into the Kindled once more. One boom after another began blowing out, the earth beneath them giving in and forming a ginormous crater that rapidly spread out to nearly two miles in diameter.

He found it difficult to breathe under the pressure, let alone approach once again. He'd also realized that the lumps inside of him had grown sluggish, and no matter how much he urged them, they moved about at a snail's pace.

On the other hand, despite losing its arm, the Kindled giant remained as explosive as before, urging flames around it into a tsunami that washed over Asandra. She, on the other hand, swept her sword in a full circle as she somersaulted forward, splicing the tsunami into the two portions. Ghastly, the fire parted and, defying any notion of logic, behaved almost like water, splashing down and bouncing, forming a river that rapidly turned into magma.

Noah panted, breathing heavily as he drew back, evading the billowing lava that looked just about ready to consume the world. The two in the distance continued clashing, each of their collisions widening and deepening the crater and causing massive shockwaves that produced and rolled boulders as though they were leaves. He watched with a shocked expression, still reeling from the backlash.

Just then, his expression darkened as his eyes veered to the side and up toward the sky. For seemingly no reason, he suddenly felt a sense of disgust toward something in the sky, disgust akin to nothing he ever felt before. It was as though it has seeped into his bones, something primordial that traced past his own mind. It reached to the point he nearly vomited in revulsion, barely holding himself back. He also saw that something was off with Asandra, as her speed slowed down and her aggression ceased.

Noah didn’t care what it was, but he knew that they needed to leave. His intuition told him that whoever was coming would not be meeting them with a friendly disposition, and he was keen on trusting that innate sense.

Taking a deep breath, he used what few lumps he had managed to stir to coat himself in the Dark and lurched himself toward Asandra. She still didn't look ready to stop battling and was repeatedly thrashing herself against the Kindled giant, though the strength of the explosions caused by their collisions had subsided considerably.

Though his approach was slow, it was deliberate; he was looking for the right moment and found it right after Asandra was once again pelted back and formed another crevice, nearly two miles long. Before she could reel back and jump in, he approached her and, risking setting himself on fire, clasped her by the throat, putting her in a chokehold. She struggled for a moment, but the fire surrounding her body that had slowly started breaking Dark around Noah fizzled out, and she grappled with a few more breaths before passing out.

Sighing in relief, Noah tossed her over his shoulder, glanced toward the Kindled giant once before sprinting toward the river and jumping in once again, swimming over. He was using the last dregs of Dark inside of him to sustain his injuries and the ever-dwindling strength. He barely made it to the other end and cradled underneath the rubble of the destroyed wall, coating both of them with the last speck of Dark he could muster, when the sky flashed in the resplendent gold.

Several figures suddenly appeared levitating over six hundred feet in the air, one amongst them standing out like a piece of gold on a floor of coal. It appeared to be a woman, though her features were indiscernible due to the duality of distance and the fact that she was bathed in the golden light. The only thing Noah was able to discern about her was the golden hair that danced in the invisible wind.

The most shocking thing about her, however, had to be the pair of ethereal wings that were burning golden, reaching out of her back. Each wing was at least twenty feet long, seemingly made out of translucent feathers of gold, too holy to behold. Yet, it was precisely these wings that Noah instinctively felt loathing toward, as though they were the most corrupt and lowly thing in the world, unworthy of existence.

He was unable to describe the feeling, as he had never experienced anything like this before. It was wholly surreal and overbearing, disallowing his mind from rousing a rejection. He even developed an urge to suddenly burst out of their hiding spot and try and kill the woman, a feeling he immediately buried in the depths of his soul from the fear of it overtaking him. Forget killing her, he prayed the two of them aren't even spotted.

Meanwhile, in the sky, Tymelea’s amber eyes observed the solitary Kindled amidst the raging flames with a curious eye. Her expression was similar to those who accompanied her, three of which were Lightbearers, just one rank beneath her. They'd come here ready to use everything at their disposal, even Artefacts, in hopes of defeating the Kindled army… yet… there was no army. As a matter of fact, there was only a single Kindled, and even it looked haggard and beaten, one of its arms wholly gone, and its flames lacking certain splendor.

“… what’s… going on?” Tymelea asked, her eyes scouring the Kindled’s surroundings. “There are traces of a battle.”

“… more than traces,” one of the men next to her, a man appearing to be in his early thirties, clad in resplendent golden armor, replied. He was one of the three Lightbearers that accompanied her, Yeow. “The fort is demolished, as are its surroundings. The fire is still raging, which means that the Kindled army had made its way over the river. However…”

“They were defeated.” Tymelea said, this time her expression hardening. “I do sense traces of something, yet it seems cloaked and hidden, impossible to pry.”

“… it almost feels as though a powerful Subvert wiped most of the traces,” a singular woman by her side, perennially beautiful and graceful-looking, spoke out in a mellow tone. She was another one of the Lightbearers, Eyna. “Even I wouldn’t be able to do this…”

“… have we missed someone sneaking into the Kingdom? Impossible. The Mirror would have warned me if any hostiles have reached us.” Tymelea said, frowning. “I sense roughly eighty thousand survivors, within and without the fort. After dealing with the Kindled, we’ll have to Scry all of them.”

“… no.” Yeow said with a hardened expression.

“… are you defying me?” Tymelea glanced at him with a piercing gaze.

“I am,” the man replied without drawing back. “You want to Scry eighty thousand souls. Do you even comprehend the ramifications of that?”

“I do.”

“You don’t. Half of them will end up mules, and at least a quarter will die.”

“… so? Most of them are ordinary commoners,” Tymelea shrugged. “We’ll leave the blues alone.”

“He’s right, Mother,” Eyna joined in. “With the state the Capital is about to enter, we cannot afford the diverging eyes. We need to clean this up quickly and return, otherwise even we might be unable to weather the storm untouched.”

“… what do you think, Ayon?” she turned to the last of the Lightbearers, the oldest-looking amongst the bunch. He was a gray-haired and bearded man with milky-white eyes, as though blind. Even Tymelea’s voice held some reservations as she talked to him.

"… we are in danger," the man sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Even I can't peer past the veneer. As a matter of fact, if I forced it, I'd have received a backlash and died on the spot."

“What?!” not just Tymelea, but everyone else exclaimed in shock at his words. One had to know that Lightbearer Ayon was one of the rarest types of Illuminated -- a Variant. He didn't belong in any of the established categories, and instead had one of his own – a Clairvoyant. Though the name was slightly misleading, when he was a boy kneeling beneath the Wheel, it had taken his eyes and instead gave him a shred of its own abilities, the power to look at the fragments of shattered reality and reconstruct them in reverse, to be able to look into the past, and sometimes even into the future.

“Whoever, or whatever, had participated in this battle,” the man said. “Is more than a Subvert. I’d never experienced anything like this; the fragments aren’t like shards, but more like daggers ready to stab me in my soul if I were to touch them. Furthermore, the residual energy is… too volatile. Pay heed not to absorb any of it, unless you want to be burned inside out. Quickly deal with the Kindled, and return to Elucido. I need to visit the Wheel… as I feel dangers are mounting. Our plans might need to accelerate considerably."

“… we’re already pushing them too much,” Tymelea frowned after taking a deep breath. “Any further, and we might expose ourselves overtly.”

“Then we’ll deal with that,” Ayon said, turning around. “I have a feeling it will be much easier than this.”