Chương 131: Chapter 117 - Cataclysm

++Sakhent was perhaps the most powerful lich I had ever encountered, apart from myself. Sometimes I wonder whether he would have invented necromancy if I had not. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. I felt the Demigod tearing around Orapathaqi like a meteor that had gotten confused about directions as it fell from the sky. Even if I had totally lacked magical senses, I would have heard and felt the vast impacts rumbling around me. Nu'chista had gotten stronger.

At this point, I essentially had confirmation that Bagran was dead. And a natural disaster hunting for me specifically. That was fine. I had existed with natural disasters hunting for me across most of my existence, and if this one was a bit closer, and a lot angrier, that still did not mean I was going to lose my nerve now of all times. Because I was close to victory as well.

Sethira and I had both gotten better at manipulating the mana of our ritual than we had been when we first did it, with the learning curve being all the sharper thanks to its novelty. In fact, I had improved far more than her. I caught a few wayward, suspicious glances from Sethira as we worked that told me she had noticed this fact as well. I almost felt sorry for her.

Sakhent had never seen verifiable evidence of Lord Dread in his life, which meant Sethira had likely lived out most of her existence not knowing that there was such a thing as a magical prodigy superior to her. Now she was finding out that the gap between my talent and her own was even wider than she had thought. Sethira was too practical to complain about that at the moment though, she just took advantage of the surely-unexpected resources and worked with me to build the ritual back up to its previous intensity.

We were getting closer fast, and now the fear was starting to bubble as we were left with a critical question: would there be another mana-surge? We soon had more issues than just that, because as we grew to the end of the ritual, right when we should have been tearing the Depths wide open and glutting ourselves on the arcane might lurking within, we hit a solid wall.

"What is going on?" I snapped, as annoyed to be defied by some rule of the universe as I was by anything else.

"I don't know!" Sethira snapped back, apparently just as lost.

"There shouldn't be this much resistance, there wasn't last time we…something's happened, I think our previous ritual has disturbed the Depths, made it harder to open."

"What!?" I snapped.

"And you did not mention this?"

"I didn't know it would happen," she screeched.

"We can still open it, I can feel that much." I concurred with that, the veil was parting. It was simply parting slowly and reluctantly, fighting us more for every inch than it had for each foot before. Had we not both improved through practice I suspected it would be entirely impossible for us to pry open at all.

"This will be our last chance," I noted.

"It is Zameka's power doing this." I knew I was right even as I said it, feeling the press of magic against the veil from the other side, working in opposition to the both of us. Something about the ancient death God was resisting our efforts to conjure her. Perhaps she knew what would happen next. Perhaps she had her own plans for freedom, that would not involve being brought forth bound and powerless to stand before two voracious liches.

"But we still have the chance," Sethira countered.

"We can still do this." I realised then that she was not certain about it, speaking fearfully and desperately more to convince herself than me. But I knew she was right, with my mana-sight I could see the creases in reality and just precisely how they were widening. We were making progress and we would succeed. And if Sethira did not know that… perhaps that was for the best.

There was a Demigod at our backs after all, if he drew close before we finished the ritual, Sakhent would be needed to hold him off while the rest of Sethira's followers evacuated and preserved her other work and texts. That would be my chance to steal the power of Zameka for myself.

Aryqatan jumped up against the winds to bring herself close to Nu'chista. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. The air had already been split by ambient mana to match the flood from before, so thick and dense that she could practically taste it. Nu'chista was on the brink. Only she could talk him down from it. She couldn't fly like he could, but she still had the inhuman reflexes that any Demigod possessed to some extent.

From her perspective, the moment she spent slowing to a stop and then sluggishly accelerating back downwards lasted many seconds. Enough for speech.

"You need to calm yourself!" she called out.

"You—""IT HAS ALREADY STARTED!" Nu'chista roared, smashing a wall of air into Aryqatan. It didn't hurt her, but caught in the skies as she was and with no hard ground to anchor herself, she was flung back like a stone skipped across a lake to hit the ground hard. She'd barely even leapt from the resulting crater before Nu'chista was tearing along the skies above Orapathaqi. He was on a warpath.

I felt the mana surge forth, and knew we did not have long. Nu'chista was approaching, his divine power was just barely perceptible to my inhuman senses over the magical noise around us. We had seconds at best.

"The Demigod is coming," I warned Sethira. She cursed.

"We can't finish in time, we—""I can complete the ritual by myself," I cut in.

"There is no time to explain how, but if you can tie the Demigod up in combat for a few more minutes, it will be finished." I saw her face turn into a mask of rage and bitterness at that. She was probably wondering how I had learned so much about her ritual when she had deliberately restricted my knowledge, how she had let herself be tricked, how she had gotten into the position of being forced to fight so that her ally could acquire divine power instead of herself.

But she did not voice any of these questions, just headed out with a curse left to linger in her wake. As soon as she was gone I felt the strain increase with our—my—ritual. Sethira had been doing roughly half of the heavy lifting, and now I was left to bear the full extent of it myself. I was managing. It was not beyond my estimates, and I was as motivated as it was possible for any person to be, but I knew it would be slow and difficult going. The ritual demanded my unbroken attention now, that much was clear.

A single lapse and it would tear itself apart, and destroy our chance at Zameka's power in so doing. For the first time since my kidnapping, I was relying on another to fight for me. I did not like the feeling anymore now than I had back then.

Nu'chista was alight with power. He could feel it roiling inside him, more than he'd ever felt before. The air was flooded with excess mana the likes of which might tear apart the world, but he didn't feel the fear he had before. He didn't feel anything at all except exultation. This would be his ascension. This would be the beginning of Nglaru's supremacy.

Devouring Voret, crushing that precious talent, had infused Nu'chista with more strength than before, and that boy was only the third or fourth of Orapathaqi's geniuses. Nu'chista would find the Vornholts next. Those blazing stars of arcane talent. He would devour Agrian, and gain more than he did from Voret, and then he would devour Isabel Vornholt and gain more than any Demigod ever had from a feast. Isabel Vornholt.

A girl born with the magical power of a Demigod, destined to stand above all the great magicians of Garamon. She may never have equaled a stronger divine being like Nu'chista in her finite lifespan, but it was all but certain she would be superior to lesser beings like Aryqatan. And yet she had turned traitor, begun practicing the dark arts, betrayed Garamon to associate with foreign savages trying to upend order and kill good, loyal men for nothing more than some old ruins in a damned desert.

Nu'chista's blood boiled as much with anger as with power, but only for a moment. All that power, and it had been born into the body of a human. An uplifted ape. Well no more, after today it would go to better use. Nu'chista suspected he was already among the ten most powerful Demigods in existence, perhaps in the top twelve even if one counted the casualties from the Lich Wars of millennia long gone. And after today, he intended to be the mightiest among his kind.

No necromancer would stand against Garamon soon, because Nglaru made flesh would be at the head of Garamon, driving it into the future. He flitted around the city, feeling out for the flow of mana through air and carefully paying attention to its intensity. Nu'chista felt as though his senses were sharper now than they had been before, perhaps not the equal of an elite magician, maybe they never would be, but certainly a cut above what they were.

That, and his speed in tearing around Orapathaqi, was just enough to pinpoint the patch of mana most strongly concentrated. That was where the ritual was, he would have bet his life on it. The mana was vast but uncontrolled, flowing out in all directions like an ongoing explosion.

Nu'chista headed right for its epicenter and flew into the ground, feeling stone slide around his body like he were diving through water, heating the earth around him to hiss and sizzle with popping steam, punching ever deeper into the ground as he continued his search for blood. By the time Nu'chista found actual resistance, he'd gouged deep enough into the tunnels beneath Orapathaqi that the area around him was reduced to a vast, open pit. Then something unexpected happened: he was struck, and he felt it.

Green mist coiled for a moment before solidifying, smashing him with the force of a dozen cannons and flinging him back up out of the tunnels to spiral and coil in the air. He regained his orientation just in time for a second blow to land, this one flinging him back down into the street below and breaking it. Nu'chista came up to see a new figure hovering high above him, and his guts coiled with disgust.

It was skeletal, taller than was human—taller even than himself—and wreathed in the very same, sickly green energies Nu'chista had just been struck by. Its empty sockets glowed, then filled with ethereal fire, and a repulsive rattling rang out from it. It took him a few moments to realise it was laughter.

"YOU HAVE LIVED LONG, LITTLE DEMIGOD." Its voice reached him slowly, sound dragging as his reflexes quickened for battle.

"BUT NOW YOU SHALL LIVE NO MORE."

"Better than you, if so," Nu'chista spat.

"You stopped living millennia ago." He charged up into the air as the lich's power built, and for the first time in millennia a Demigod clashed with an equal.