Chương 107: Seal

Vera had a rough idea of how dangerous the White Maw was. She wouldn't have pushed things this far if she didn't. That said, she did have to wonder whether there might have been a way of dealing with it without dragging the whole thing into the world and letting it thrash around like this. Mostly because she had no idea how much of the Thryne Passes would still be standing once she was done, or whether anyone was going to hold her responsible for the damage. They probably wouldn't, right?

It wasn't as if anybody lived here. As long as she left behind something that could still generously be called a path through the mountains, she figured she was safe. Though there was a very stupid part of her that didn't entirely mind the idea, she could do without Elaria giving her a lecture about collateral damage when she got back to Caer Virell. Not that Vera was assuming the woman would. But, well… You never knew.

The White Maw interrupted that thought as the vertical chasm at the center of its body peeled wider, teeth dragging apart with a sound like glaciers spitting down to the very bedrock. Then it exhaled, and a compressed squall of white annihilation burst toward Vera, packed with jagged ice, grinding snow, and dense Resonance that stripped the color from the air around it. At the same time, the whole mountain range seemed to come alive.

Cliffs vanished beneath the branching sweeps of the White Maw's vast, interconnected body, and whole fields of stone erupted upward as one of its many lengths came crashing toward her. Mark of the Mourning Tithe. A curved barrier of Hollow Resonance unfolded around Vera just as the breath struck. The impact turned the world white. A shield of Hollow did not shriek or shake even under pressure, but fissures spread through its surface as ice crowded against it from every angle.

For a moment, she could see nothing beyond the storm slamming into her ward. Then a shadow darker than the rest of the blizzard rose through the white. Vera kicked off the ground. Breakstep. The air burst beneath her boot, launching her up and backward as one of the Maw's branching limbs descended as a barreling mass and obliterated the space she'd occupied. Stone and ice sprayed upward in a plume large enough to bury a castle, shattering against her barrier.

Vera took three more steps through open air, each one cracking the sky beneath her as she climbed above the collapsing debris. Another length of the creature snapped toward her from the side. It moved far too quickly for something that large. One moment it was wound around a distant ridge. The next, a wall of darkened frost and opening teeth was sweeping through the air, carrying half a mountainside in its wake. Riftwheel Ascent. A spiral of Hollow force snapped into being around Vera's body.

She twisted with it, pivoting sharply in midair and shooting upward as another mouth opened along the passing section of the Maw. It spat a torrent of needle-thin ice after her. Stillwake offered her response. The halberd came around in a gleaming arc and struck the length of the White Maw as it thundered past. Its blade bit through frost-armored hide with a shattering sound. Fractures flashed outward from the wound, spreading far beyond the point of impact as Mark of Gray Reliquary's curse also settled in.

For half a second, that portion of the creature's body slowed ever-so-slightly. Mark of Hollow Reach. A tear opened beside Vera. She shot through it and emerged beneath one of the creature's descending coils, where enough mass to flatten a city block was about to crush the broken valley floor. Breakstep. She blasted forward. Mark of Hollowspike Cascade. From below the Maw, erupting in rows, lances pierced through stone, ice, and flesh alike, impaling deep into the creature's underside and creating a canyon of bone.

Screams surged through several mouths across its body at once, so loud that they shook the ground. Hollow Veins. Stillwake carved across the nearest wound, and the power flooding through the White Maw ripped loose in a violent current. Stolen Resonance poured into Vera's weapon, then through her body, so brutally cold that her nerves screamed before her own power stilled and repurposed it. One of the creature's mouths appeared directly beneath her feet. Mark of the Mourning Tithe.

Teeth slammed shut around the new barrier hard enough to launch Vera through the air. She let her ward break apart as she twisted to face another of the Maw's limbs rushing toward her. Severed Grace. Stillwake flashed. A pale line appeared across the section of the White Maw that had moved toward her. A second passed where it was completely still.

Then the entire section split apart, spilling a torrent of frost, dark shadows, and glistening strands of what looked like muscle, slick with ichor that sluiced across the blasted landscape. The creature recoiled and continued its attack in full force. Vera reciprocated. Thunder rolled through the Thryne Passes as she met the White Maw blow for blow. On the ground, she darted beneath falling lengths of its body and upward through ice-hardened sheets.

In the sky, she ran across empty air, Breaksteps cracking behind her while jaws large enough to swallow towers and more snapped closed on the space she abandoned. In the ravines its movements opened, she appeared between avalanches and came out swinging, severing cords of ancient flesh before the mountains had finished collapsing around her. The White Maw had essentially become the landscape, and fighting it felt less like battling a creature and more like trying to murder the world as it fought back.

A ridgeline folded inward as the creature's body tore through it. Vera crossed the falling stone in three bounding steps while Stillwake carved destruction through the white sky. A hook of frozen flesh rose from beneath her and snapped sideways with enough force to scatter what remained of the collapsing slope. She struck it head-on. The collision burst out in a wave of pressure. For a brief instant, her boots found purchase somewhere against the creature's hide.

Then the force of the impact hurled her away through spinning snow and shattered rock. A laugh escaped her before she could stop it. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she registered that this probably wasn't a reassuring sign. But she kept going. Her Resonance burned through her veins in streams of cinder and ash, hotter with every Form and Mark she forced into motion. The sigil-marks glared across her arms like brands.

The pressure of her power had grown so dense that her Resonance leaked and distorted the space around her. Brief pockets formed wherever she moved, where flying debris halted for an instant, where roaring wind fell entirely silent, where falling snow simply stopped as if it had found its peace. The longer the battle progressed, the more deeply Vera felt that she was touching something just beyond herself. Something that encouraged her to stop holding back. The White Maw was not restrained.

It was an obscene quantity of hunger and violence crammed into one impossible body. So why should she be restraining herself? Vera was defending against two sections of the Maw in front of her when a shape slammed down from above before she could fully evade. Mark of the Mourning Tithe flared into place, but the blow still hammered into her and sent her plunging into the mountainside below. The impact drove her so far into the earth that the light disappeared.

The world became nothing but the crushing of rock and the grinding pressure of the mountain trying to bury her. Vera's fingers tightened around Stillwake.

"Okay," she muttered.

"That one actually hurt." The halberd's blade burned bright. Dreadwake Ascension. The buried depths of the mountain came apart around her. An unstoppable force launched Vera upward, blasting through layer after layer of stone until she burst from the ruined mountainside with smoke and gray Resonance streaming from her armor. Her ascent carried her above the White Maw's immense body, high enough that, for one brief moment, she could see all of its lengths stretching throughout the devastated pass below.

Then she let herself fall. Stillwake descended with her. The moment its blade struck, Dreadwake Ascension released its full force. The attack ripped through the enormous length of the Maw that had buried her, tearing away nearly a third of it at once. The severed mass crashed into a neighboring valley with enough weight to send a tremor through the entire range. Another length of the White Maw swept toward her through the debris. Crushing Wake.

Vera met it with a swing powerful enough to shear the top from a distant peak along with another portion of the creature's body. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The White Maw answered by spewing forth a blizzard so dense and violent that it ground down an entire mountain to its base. She wasn't sure how many exchanges followed like that, how much damage she took, or how much Resonance she spent.

The world simply shifted between the White Maw's all-consuming storm, great swaths of Hollow stillness that swallowed sound and motion wherever Vera struck, and pure annihilation as stone and ice buckled beneath forces that had no place in the world of mortals. And through it all, Vera felt that fierce, almost breathless exhilaration, sharpened by the faint thread of unease that came from knowing exactly how much she was enjoying herself.

She was still keeping enough of her awareness on the wider battlefield to ensure the fight stayed within the Thryne Passes. For now. But if it kept going, if she let herself become just a little too immersed in the rhythm of it, would she notice if that changed? Would she catch the White Maw before one of its attacks reached the edge of the passes, where the Covenant's forces were stationed? Would she catch herself before one of her own attacks did?

There wasn't a single person there who could survive even a graze from this battle. Vera had already known after fighting Veyrith that she was no longer operating entirely within the limits of what a mortal should be able to do. Today only made that divide harder to ignore. This was so far beyond anything the rest of the Covenant brought to bear that comparing them almost felt absurd.

Actually feeling the full scale of what Veralyth's body could do when letting loose was as intoxicating as ever, and it only made her blood burn hotter. That hunger hadn't really bothered her much before. She'd known for a while that there was a part of her that enjoyed wielding this kind of power, enjoyed the certainty that there was almost nothing in front of her she could not cut through if she put enough force behind Stillwake.

Thinking too deeply about what that might do to a person, when that kind of strength was always sitting at her fingertips, had been surprisingly low on her list of concerns. It was slightly funny that she started considering it more seriously now, in the middle of what might have been the greatest fight of her life. But as with most things, it would eventually have to come to an end. Vera stood near what had once been the center of the Thryne Passes.

Now it was a ruin of rimebound frost and pulverized stone, riddled with craters and fissures that dropped so far into the earth that even Ember Sight struggled to find their bottoms. Broken lengths of the White Maw lay across the devastation and shaped the new landscape, some still twitching, while others had dissolved into slurries of ice, snow, and fading Resonance. Before her, the creature's core mouth opened wide, a vertical chasm that had tried to devour her dozens of times already.

Vera forced a measure of calm as she watched the creature. She had Mark of Hollow Mercy. As long as she had the Resonance to sustain it, she could continue this fight essentially forever. And Resonance wasn't something she lacked. She had used far more of it here than she had against Veyrith, but even that had burned through no more than two-thirds of her reserves. If she needed to, she could endure the strain of Echophials long enough to refill those reserves several times over.

With its body strewn across the ruined pass, the White Maw was in considerably worse shape. Vera's rough estimate was that she had destroyed at least a quarter of its body by now. The creature had shown a limited ability to replace what she destroyed, drawing together frost, storm, and its own Resonance to shape new mass, but it couldn't truly heal the way she could. The thing was an apex predator from an era when gods walked the earth.

It had evolved to be the thing that hunted prey, not the thing that got trapped in a fight against an enemy it couldn't put down. Otherwise, it wouldn't still be around today. And if Vera had to guess, that meant it probably wasn't stupid. It had to know where this was going. As if to confirm that thought, the White Maw reared its 'head' back and unleashed a surging blizzard that swallowed everything in white once again.

Vera invoked Mark of the Mourning Tithe as she braced herself for another attack, only to feel the ground buckling beneath the movement of the creature's vast body as it began pulling away from her. Just then, a voice sounded in her mind. Vera, it's trying to leave the passes. Come to me. She paused for half a second, then let her Resonance flow through Stillwake as the halberd carved a rift in the air. Mark of Hollow Reach.

Vera stepped through toward the point Cin's Resonance had reached her from and emerged in front of him on a broad shelf of molten stone. Its surface had cooled into black crust in places, but red-orange light still shone through the cracks beneath their feet. Cin stood with his eyes fixed on the wall of white in the distance, where the White Maw's body was dragging itself through the mountains toward the far end of the passes.

Vera looked around, noting that she somehow hadn't noticed this place, before turning her attention to Cin.

"Fancy seeing you again," she said.

"Did you have a good time while I was busy fighting Mr. Mountain Hydra over there?" Cin glanced at her briefly before returning his attention to the Maw.

"You were handling it yourself," he replied.

"And you did not actually want me to help, did you?" Vera fell silent.

"I thought so." His voice was dry.

"You are as concerning as Mireya." He shook his head, then raised one hand and pointed toward the White Maw.

"We will not be able to keep it within the passes if it truly commits to leaving. We need to slay it before that happens, but at your current pace, you're damaging it too slowly."

"Um, I don't really want to hear that from you. I'm trying my hardest here, you know. If you didn't notice, that thing is big."

"You were not giving it your all."

"No, I was—""You were not." Cin turned his dark eyes toward her, their depths lit faintly by the fire burning through the stone beneath them. Vera held his gaze.

"…What are you asking me to do?" Cin extended his arm, and his sword appeared in his hand. Its blackened tip touched the ground beneath them. Lines of fire raced outward from the blade in intricate patterns, spreading across the black crust underfoot until the entire area burned with the shape of an enormous interlocking sigil. Vera's brows rose.

"What's that?"

"Change your loadout," Cin said.

"Equip only soulrend affinities." Vera eyed him at first, but then complied. Her Grave-Wolf Mantle vanished first, followed by the Gravemark Treads, Circlet of Quiet Flame, Chalice Wrathbinds, and the rest of the gear she had equipped for the fight. One by one, they were replaced by items focused almost entirely on amplifying soulrend effects. Even Stillwake disappeared. In its place came a slender scepter of cold gray metal, its head shaped into two pale hands cradling an inverted crown. The Hollow Hymnal.

It was one of three other Legacy-tier weapons she possessed, though she barely used anything besides Stillwake.

"For your information, I've already tried Mark of Withering Hollow against that thing," she said.

"Didn't really work." It would have been nice if a one-hit-kill ability worked against the White Maw, but expecting that while it was still in anything close to fighting condition would have been too much. Even with an entire loadout built around amplifying soulrend effects, Vera doubted the Mark would be enough on its own. A deafening crush rolled across the space as the White Maw dragged its lengths over the remains of a distant mountain, reducing more of the broken slope to rubble beneath its weight.

"Restore your Resonance and drink these." Cin tossed several phials toward her. Vera caught them against her chest, quickly assessing their effects. There were some Resonance buffs, House Hollow enhancers, and even one that was specifically made to empower soulrend effects. She didn't actually own one of those last ones. They were a pain in the ass to make.

"The White Maw is not a god, correct?" Cin asked as Vera got started on downing the phials.

"That's right."

"Then it will work. You simply need to push past the Fifth Seal." Vera's hand stopped with one of the emptied phials still near her mouth. She looked at him. Cin met her stare calmly.

"It's possible. You've felt it, haven't you?"

"…Maybe."

"Then do it."

"Not sure if that's a good idea." Mark of Withering Hollow was a single-target Mark, but the White Maw was massive. Vera would have to widen its reach enormously just to encompass the creature properly, and if she was also forcing the Mark that far… She couldn't guarantee it wouldn't affect the rest of the Thryne Passes, or what lay beyond. She couldn't guarantee that the Covenant forces would make it.

"That is why I prepared this." Cin motioned toward the burning sigil beneath.

"You didn't actually think I was doing nothing while you fought, did you?" Vera studied the lines spreading under her feet. She couldn't tell what the sigil did at all.

"It's the Aegis of the Last Flame Unyielding," Cin said.

"Never heard of it."

"It's what we need." His eyes stayed on hers.

"Place your trust in me." Vera looked back toward the retreating White Maw, then down at the sigil. After a moment, she nodded.

"Alright. Sure. You've got it." Cin turned his attention to the sigil as Vera exhaled and raised Hollow Hymnal. Her Resonance began moving through the same familiar pattern as every other time she had used Mark of Withering Hollow. The first time she had invoked it in this world, even a normal use had drained a decent chunk of Resonance. That had changed since then.

Whether it was because she had grown more acclimated to Veralyth's body or because her understanding of the Mark itself had deepened, she could control the amount she put into it far more precisely now. If she wanted to, she could probably invoke a version weak enough to struggle against a fly. But going in the opposite direction was different. She spun the Hollow Hymnal once in her hand. The inverted crown at its head spread a pale gray light. Ahead, the White Maw moved like a drifting mountain range.

Storms moved with it as it retreated, dragging sheets of frost through the devastation in its wake. If the Mark could reach all of that at once, if it could pierce whatever defenses protected the creature's core, there wouldn't need to be any more destruction. Vera cut with her scepter. The first stroke curved gray light into the air. Then the second. The scepter trembled in her grip as the third stroke drew out more Resonance than the last several Marks she had used combined.

On the fourth, sigils formed like wounds upon existence. Mark of Withering Hollow. The Mark spread toward the White Maw. There was nothing visible to trace its path, but Vera felt it stretch across the passes and attempt to settle over the whole of the creature. She felt it catch against the Maw's Resonance, reaching but failing to close around whatever passed for its soul. It wasn't enough. She knew the boundary she had reached. Fifth Seal. That was where the Mark was supposed to end.

No matter how much Resonance she forced through it, there were limits built into what it could do. There had never been a Sixth Seal in Ashen Legacy. Not as an ability tier, not as anything yet revealed for a future update or expansion, and not as something anyone in this world had ever mentioned. But she had felt something beyond the limits of her Marks before.

In the middle of combat, when her Resonance burned hot enough and she pushed hard enough, there had been moments where the structure of a Mark had felt less like a wall and more like a door she simply hadn't managed to open. A place her power could go, if she gave it enough. Vera clenched her teeth and shoved every scrap of Resonance she had into the sigils. The Hollow Hymnal released a shriek without sound, a vibration that drove straight through her bones. The Mark buckled. Its shape twisted.

For one terrible moment, Vera felt it starting to collapse under the force she was pouring into it. Then it widened. Her reserves vanished in a single, impossible rush. Empty pain ripped through her a heartbeat later, and still the Mark demanded more. Vera reached for that more, dragging at whatever remained past the bottom of herself, forcing power through pathways that burned like they were about to split apart. And she found something. Just then, Cin's sigil ignited.

From beside her, a wellspring of Emberward Resonance erupted through the Aegis in a flood only a few levels weaker than Vera's own. Fire surged out across the Thryne Passes in towering walls, cutting through storm and darkness as it sealed every route out of the mountains. For one brief moment, the ruined pass became a closed world of broken stone, raging white frost, and red-gold flame. Then Vera felt Withering Hollow close. The White Maw stopped moving.

A silent distortion passed through its entire shape, from the central maw to the farthest lengths of its body. The storms surrounding it collapsed all at once, as though the will sustaining them had simply been severed from the world. A sound like glass fracturing rolled from one end of the Thryne Passes to the other. The creature's countless mouths opened soundlessly as its entire body convulsed. And then… it just splintered. Its frost-armored lengths cracked apart. What remained of its hide hardened.

The countless mouths and vast central maw remained open for one final second before they, too, fractured into shards of ice and unraveling Resonance. Vera's Mark didn't stop there, though. She felt it carry on through the space the White Maw had occupied, spreading past the remains of its body as if it no longer cared what it had been invoked to kill. It kept reaching, seeking anything else it could touch. Then it struck the walls of flame Cin had formed through his own Resonance. The fire shuddered.

For several long seconds, Withering Hollow pushed outward while the Aegis forced it back, the two powers grinding against each other on an invisible battlefield. Eventually, the Mark weakened. The walls of flame faded with it. When both were gone, all that remained in the ruined pass was the wreckage of the White Maw and a silence so complete that it felt part of the very land.

"Holy—" Vera started. Her legs gave out. She tried to move her arms to catch herself, only to realize they didn't want to bother. The Hollow Hymnal slipped from her grip as she struck the cooling black crust face-first, a dull burst of pain shooting through her nose and cheek.

"…Ouch," was all she managed.

"It will take several weeks for you to recover fully." Cin's voice came from somewhere beside her. A moment later, he lifted her from the stone and turned her onto her back. He looked down at her, sweat clinging to his brow and exhaustion drawn tight over his face.

"You are dangerous, Vera," he said quietly. She glared up at him as exhaustion flooded through her body in a crushing wave. It took an absurd amount of effort just to open her mouth.

"You knew I'd end up like this?"

"Yes." Darkness had started gathering at the edges of her vision.

"I'll kill you," she mumbled.

"If you say so."

"I've got… places… I need to be…"

"I will protect you while you recover," Cin said.

"Rest."

"Asshole…" Her eyelids sank lower despite her efforts to keep them open.

"Can't wait… need to… get back to… Serel…" The last thing she registered before the darkness claimed her was a trace of confusion appearing on Cin's expression. Then it went black.