A Journey Unwanted Chapter 535 - 523: Abyssal power

[Realm: Uhorus]

[Location: Verdantis]

[Western Outskirts]

"This clearing should suffice." Aerinon’s quiet voice carried easily across the snow despite never rising above a conversational tone.

Both spawns of Octavia heard him imdiately as their footsteps gradually ca to a halt.

Alyssia took a slow look around the area before them.

It was an open stretch of snow-covered land, wide enough that nothing obstructed one’s view for quite so distance. Rolling white hills surrounded the clearing in waves, broken only occasionally by outcroppings of dark stone jutting through the snow. Beyond them, the mountains of Verdantis lood beneath the skies, while the black tears continued to bleed slowly.

The place felt isolated.

If sothing went wrong there would be little for the ensuing destruction to reach besides snow and stone.

Alyssia eventually looked back toward Aerinon.

"I understand choosing an open space," she began, still surveying the landscape, "but how exactly are you planning to draw Abyssal Creatures here? From everything I’ve seen, they usually erge from those dreadful tears in the sky."

Aerinon’s lone eye drifted upward toward those sa tears.

"They do." His answer ca without hesitation. "But Abyssal Creatures do not function as ordinary wildlife does."

Lucinda and Alyssia both watched him quietly.

"They are unlike Astrothians." He spoke carefully, choosing his wording. "They operate according to sothing much closer to a program than genuine thought." His gaze remained fixed upon the dark heavens. "The lesser variants instinctively—or perhaps more accurately, chanically—gravitate toward stronger concentrations of Abyssal influence."

He paused briefly.

"I would hesitate to call it instinct." His expression remained unreadable. "Nor is it self-preservation. They simply move toward greater sources because doing so produces greater destruction. That is their purpose. The mindless ones, at least."

Lucinda slowly nodded as understanding settled across her expression.

"So that’s what you ant." She looked thoughtfully toward the distant horizon. "I’m guessing that if an Abyssal Warden remains manifested for long enough..." Her eyes returned to Aerinon. "...the surrounding lesser creatures eventually begin gathering around it."

She rembered the catastrophe that had nearly consud Verdantis.

"It would explain why the Warden here had so many around it." A small pause followed. "You’re planning to beco that source yourself, aren’t you?"

Aerinon gave a short nod. "Yes." Nothing more, but after a brief mont he continued speaking. "I’ll attract the rogue Abyssal Creatures scattered throughout the surrounding region."

Alyssia frowned thoughtfully.

"And..." She tilted her head. "...roughly how many should we expect?"

There wasn’t even the slightest hint of concern in Aerinon’s voice.

"A hundred." Another brief pause followed. "Perhaps several tens of thousands." He gave the smallest shrug imaginable. As though both estimates belonged comfortably within the sa category.

Alyssia stared.

"...Excuse ?" Now it was her turn to give another pause as her red eyes widened. "What sort of absurd leap in numbers is that?" She threw one hand into the air. "You went from one hundred to several tens of thousands as though those figures were remotely comparable!"

Aerinon regarded her with complete calm.

"It is an unpredictable process." His answer remained entirely straightforward. "There are too many variables to narrow the estimate further."

Lucinda quietly considered his explanation. "I suppose that’s fair." She looked across the vast clearing. "If the number truly climbs that high..." Her voice remained surprisingly composed. "...then I doubt we’ll have much choice but to increase our output accordingly."

She glanced sideways toward Alyssia; a small smile slowly appeared.

"Though..." Her tone beca noticeably lighter. "...if things beco truly overwhelming..." She folded her hands together. "...I imagine another enormous explosion would solve the imdiate problem." Her smile grew ever so slightly. "You seed particularly talented at those." She looked directly at Alyssia.

Alyssia slowly turned toward her; the expression she gave Lucinda was wonderfully dry.

"You’re enjoying this far more than you ought to."

Lucinda’s smile refused to disappear. "I might be."

"So you are teasing ," Alyssia sighed. There was no real annoyance behind her voice anymore. Only reluctant acceptance, and Lucinda gave the tiniest shrug.

"Maybe." The answer ca with just enough innocence to make it obvious she was doing exactly that.

Before Alyssia could respond, Lucinda turned her attention back toward Aerinon as her expression beca thoughtful once again.

"I’ll admit..." she spoke honestly. "...I still have reservations about making use of anything related to the Abyss." Her gaze lingered on him. "It isn’t exactly comforting. But you don’t strike as soone who would willingly rely upon power you couldn’t fully control." She t his lone eye. "So I trust you’ve already accounted for the risks."

For the first ti since arriving, Aerinon’s expression changed. Only slightly, one eyebrow lifted by the smallest fraction.

So subtly that neither Lucinda nor Alyssia noticed.

("What exactly is this?") The thought crossed his mind almost absentmindedly. ("Blind trust?") He dismissed the possibility almost imdiately. ("No.") His gaze remained on Lucinda. ("That doesn’t suit her.") He quietly examined the confidence with which she had spoken. ("Lucinda has never been careless. She’s cautious and far too thoughtful to simply place faith in soone’s character without reason.")

His thoughts lingered there.

("But despite that...") He frowned inwardly. ("She’s different from usual.") There was sothing difficult to define about it. ("Idealistic?") He considered the word. ("Heroic?") Perhaps, he wasn’t entirely certain. ("Whatever the proper description may be...") His gaze drifted away. ("She genuinely believes people should use their strength responsibly.")

A realization followed.

("I had assud she’d remain fixed in that way of thinking forever.") Another mont passed. ("So where does this confidence co from?")

No answer arrived, nor did he particularly care to search for one. The thought simply lost whatever interest it briefly possessed.

He discarded it.

"Very well." His voice quietly broke the silence. "I’ll begin." He looked between the two spawns of Octavia. "You should establish a barrier around yourselves. Abyssal power is exceptionally foul."

Alyssia folded her arms.

"I believe I gathered as much." She looked toward the sky with obvious distaste. "It has spent the last several days making the skies resemble sothing thoroughly putrid." Her sarcasm was impossible to miss, and as the words left her lips, a circular red glyph unfolded beneath her feet.

Its lines rotated slowly as a translucent barrier of red mana rose smoothly around her, forming a protective do. Lucinda followed suit monts later. A similar red glyph blossod beneath her boots before another barrier enveloped her.

Nothing about his posture suggested he was preparing for anything extraordinary. His hands remained at his sides and his breathing stayed slow. Even his lone visible eye remained half-lidded, carrying that sa expression that seed permanently etched into his face.

The snowy clearing fell quiet.

The wind gradually eased until only drifting flakes crossed the open landscape. For several long monts nothing happened. Lucinda and Alyssia waited in silence, each watching him from behind their red barriers.

Then it happened.

It was neither dramatic nor forceful as the world seed to quake. An imnse wave of black power erupted from him without warning. There was no gradual rise or build-up. One instant he stood motionless; the next, darkness exploded outward.

The sound arrived a heartbeat after the eruption. A towering pillar of pitch-black Abyssal energy burst toward the skies, swallowing Aerinon’s figure almost imdiately. The column widened as it climbed, twisting upon itself like countless streams of black smoke compressed into sothing denser and far heavier than ordinary mana could ever beco.

The pressure hit first; Lucinda instinctively planted one foot behind the other as her barrier rippled violently. Alyssia’s red do distorted with waves as though an invisible ocean had slamd into it. The air seed to scream as a deafening roar followed as the expanding pressure wave raced across the clearing.

Snow erupted in every direction, entire sheets of white were peeled from the earth and hurled skyward. The surrounding hills trembled as the ground lurched. Large fractures ripped across the frozen earth; great cracks spread away from Aerinon in branching paths, splitting stone beneath the snow as the entire clearing shook beneath them.

Boulders tumbled from nearby slopes as loose rocks collapsed from the surrounding hillsides. Even distant mountain faces released thin white avalanches that spilled down their frozen slopes.

Neither Lucinda nor Alyssia moved, it was because they chose not to. Because for a brief mont their bodies simply refused to. Lucinda’s eyes widened; the red barrier around her continued trembling as violent currents battered its surface, yet her attention had already left the clearing entirely.

She looked upward, toward the skies, toward the Abyssal tears.

Her breath caught.

"..."

The black streams pouring from the tears had changed, they were bending. Every single one, the rivers of darkness that endlessly dripped from the sky no longer fell straight downward. Instead, they curved, twisting almost imperceptibly toward the imnse pillar rising from Aerinon.

Lucinda stared, completely unable to look away.

("...What...") The thought barely ford. ("They’re reacting...") Not like when a spawn of Octavia revealed overwhelming mana. This was different; the tears almost seed drawn toward it, pulled by sothing impossible to ignore.

Her heart beat noticeably faster.

("I’ve...") Her eyes followed the pillar climbing into the skies. ("...I’ve never seen anything like this before.") Not during battles and not during the appearance of Abyssal Wardens.

Mana she understood; divinity she could comprehend. Even the overwhelming presence of an Abyssal Warden possessed a recognizable nature. This felt fundantally different; the pressure alone carried a suffocating weight that seed to press against her skin.

It was not powerful alone; it felt wrong. As though the world reluctantly tolerated its existence.

Beside her, Alyssia remained utterly silent; her red eyes never left the pillar. The violent black currents continued spiraling upward, each rotation sending another tremor through the surrounding landscape.

The aura possessed astonishing density as it swallowed light. Snowflakes that drifted too close simply disappeared within the darkness before erging elsewhere, torn apart into drifting black particles.

Alyssia slowly tightened her folded arms.

("...What is this?") She had witnessed overwhelming power before; she had wielded overwhelming power before.

Yet this unsettled her, and not because it was stronger than anything she had seen. But because of what it resembled. The sensation and the pressure and that malevolence lingering beneath it.

It reminded her of sothing, sothing buried far back within mories she wished remained buried.

Eyes, too many eyes and jagged mouths.

She refused to give the thought shape, refused to na it. Even within her own mind, instead, she rely continued watching.

("How unpleasant.") The words sounded remarkably composed; the feeling beneath them was not ("Whatever this power truly is..."). Her gaze narrowed. ("...it should never feel familiar.")

The pillar continued roaring into the skies for several more seconds. Then it began to recede; the black currents lost their violence first, and the spiraling slowed. The imnse column gradually narrowed, shrinking inward instead of dispersing outward; it collapsed into itself.

Layer after layer folded inward until the enormous pillar beca little more than a single stream of darkness rising from Aerinon. That too diminished; the final traces of black energy dissolved into the cold air.

Silence returned almost imdiately; the earthquake ceased, and snow once again drifted peacefully across the clearing. Even the oppressive pressure vanished as though it had never existed. Only the imnse cracks carved across the landscape remained to prove it had.

Aerinon stood exactly where he had been before. His coat shifted gently in the winter breeze. The red barriers surrounding Lucinda and Alyssia shimred before dissolving into countless particles of red light that scattered into the snowfall.

Neither spoke; for several long monts, they simply stared at him.