It was almost delightful hearing the surprise in the Vaunted’s voice. Of course I wasn’t going to keep bashing my head against an obstacle I couldn’t bypass in ti. Of course I was going to bypass whatever bullshit she was doing to enhance herself.
Starburst exploded out of my hands. Burning, blistering energy rocketed outwards, shooting straight up like the exhaust of a rocket’s engine, a stream of molten heat and burning light, tied together with an avalanche of mass. The blast ca out with so much force, compounded by the boost from my Burst Mana Augntation, that the recoil slamd backwards.
Targeting the manifestation of a god was going to go even worse than trying to hit the Vaunted herself with Starburst. That was why I wasn’t hitting the liquid rain of gold, but the eye it ca from.
Which wasn’t just an eye any longer anyway. Pure energy was resolving into mass, manifesting into the form of a skull around that enormous, slit-pupiled eyeball, a second one slowly appearing in its other orbit. Not that I really saw any of it when Starburst flared out and turned night into day with how much power it was outputting.
It wasn’t just shaking. At first, I thought it was from the sheer power that I had unleashed. There had been so much energy compressed into Starburst, of course I should have been quaking and trembling just from releasing it all.
But no, there was a separate fallout from Starburst. Everything was shaking, cracking, breaking apart under the stress of the energy I had unleashed.
“You Pits-screwing moron!”
The Vaunted’s scream was accompanied by a vicious punch, which only managed to graze my shoulder because she was shaking in mid-air too. That said, even that little graze was too strong. I was sent careening backwards, arms sailing ineffectually as I slowly ca to a stop on my own.
Then I saw what had the Vaunted consternated beyond just the fact that I had severed her connection with the god she was trying to call forth.
The Beyond was cracking. This other realm that I had needed a Path Interaction to enter in the first place was more fragile than I had expected. Because whatever I had struck alongside the golden waterfall seed to have been so sort of anchor for the world itself, which was causing everything around to fracture.
Rips ran through the cosmic sky, stars dimd and disappeared, the god that had been struck by Starburst had half burned away.
I could only shake my head. That was impossible. I knew I was strong, that my power level was magnified thanks to the boosts I was able to command, that Starburst was an incredibly powerful blast of energy in and of itself. But still. To think I was lting off the face of a summoned god was unthinkable. It made no sense.
Unless this god that the Vaunted was summoning forth wasn’t the real deal. Hadn’t been to begin with, for all I knew.
There was no way for to know for sure, but I was certain about one thing.
Things were not as they appeared.
“You—you Pits-cursed—” The Vaunted was so mad that she was having trouble speaking. I wasn’t even close enough for her to wring my neck.
“I don’t know what you were planning,” I said. “But you went wrong in so many places. I’m actually ashad I let you get this far in the first place.”
“Shut up!” she roared. “I care not what agre accomplishnt you’ve managed to eke out, but you will die.”
She threw herself at . Golden, burning, icy, and powerful, the Vaunted from Claderov streaked at like a cot. I just barely managed to dodge with Reflexive Mana, though I was still struck by her trail. Raging fire and absolute-zero ice lashed with overwhelming sensory loads, and I had to force myself to concentrate past that.
We collided again and again. Or rather, she attacked with all the furious power she had accumulated from her mad ritual and summoning.
I wasn’t ashad of admitting that I was no match for her. My real armour was already broken, Reverence Everlife was taking a beating, my bones were fracturing at every other impact. Every swing of my mace missed widely while I started bleeding from a dozen wounds.
“How does it feel?” she asked when she was suddenly able to grab . “How does it feel to be so weak?”
Her hand was clutching the upper arm of the limb that held the mace. Basically, I couldn’t fight back so easily.
Fire and ice. Burning and freezing. That was what I felt. But obviously, I didn’t say that.
“Does it matter?” I said. My voice was chittering, which wasn’t great, but who gave a shit just then. “You failed. This little summoning of the Beyond, this fake god you called up, it’s all crashing down around you. Literally. How does it feel for it to break apart when you’ve been stopped by soone weak?”
Her icy fire raged brighter. Clearly not the smartest thing to say in my current situation.
“You’re cocky for soone about to die,” she said.
“That’s why I can be cocky,” I spat back. “Because I know I’ve done enough. Because I know that even if you manage to kill —which you haven’t yet, by the way—then you’re just going to face more opposition outside that you definitely won’t be able to just kill your way through. This I know for a fact. You’re alone. I’m not.”
“Alone?” She laughed. Her fire was burning with a mad light in her eyes now, even as a good chunk of it climbed up my body, encasing my flesh and armour and clothes in ice. I was starting to lose feeling in half my body. “You really think you’ve stopped this ritual? That you’ve stopped the birth of a god?”
“That’s no real god. You think the Ascendants would be so stupid as to let just anyone co in and create a ritual to free the beings they tore the world to banish?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” She shook hard to emphasize the point. “This is years of research, an endless amount of effort, all culminating to this very mont. Do you have any idea how much energy this has taken?”
“I know. I know perfectly well.”
She and whoever else was behind this had raised up a Scarseeker from their downtrodden slums just to serve their ultimate goal. They had bribed and bullied Great Houses of an opposing city to sow chaos and take over the Sun Cult’s temple. They had started a fucking war just to draw away most of the opposition so they’d have a clearer opportunity to carry out their madness.
The Vaunted slamd my body back onto the ground. I hardly felt the pain, thanks in part because of my Augntations but more so because of just how numb my body had gone.
“You’ve stopped nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” I managed to grind out despite the pain and the shaking. “It’s not going to make you feel any better in the end.”
“Then—”
A new crack tore through the Beyond like lightning. We both froze. I wasn’t even struggling since I had practically been overpowered without a great deal of effort from the Vaunted, but seeing her freeze like that drove ho the seriousness of the new developnt.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringent.
Especially when I followed her gaze and looked to my left, only to see space itself tearing apart. There was a literal tear in the Beyond, through which a horror erged onto the scene.
A familiar horror.
“Ugh, you again,” the Paragon said. What the Pits was his na? Shell seeker or sothing? “I knew I shouldn’t have spared you back then. Here you are, causing all this trouble for again.”
He was looking at . I was sure of it. Even from this distance, from where he looked like nothing more than a blue-tinged speck, I was a hundred percent certain that he was completely ignoring the Vaunted just to stare at disdainfully.
Thankfully, his sudden appearance had the benefit of making the Vaunted forget about too. She pulled her hands off , now completely ignoring my body lying on the remainder of the rocky, icy spar she had been standing on to receive those golden tears of the now-molten golden eye.
“What business does a Paragon have here?” the Vaunted asked.
“Really?” The Paragon—Shik’shikan, that was his na—turned his derisive expression to the Vaunted. “You can’t think of any reason why a Paragon would appear in this crackpot ritual of yours that’s supposed to summon so forgotten god or sothing along those lines?”
The Vaunted sneered. “You’re awfully worked up for sothing that’s so crackpot.”
Wrong thing to say. A blue tendril appeared out of nowhere, slamming into the Vaunted and sending her flying backwards.
“Of course I am!” he said with a heavy scowl. “Because I have to co over here and fix up the sses you’ve been causing, only to find out it’s nothing more than a fake showing. A bunch of smoke coming from nothing more than tiny embers. Hardly worth the attention of a Paragon like myself.”
With the pesky Vaunted taken care of, I could focus on setting myself afla with Immolation. At this point, I couldn’t even begin to identify all the pain rocking my body. There was just too much. Biting down on my tongue to Sacrifice the sting for Pain Sense Control was all that let keep focusing on the important parts of my current situation.
“And as for you…”
The Paragon’s blue tendrils surrounded , though they didn’t strike just yet. How blessed was I.
“Our goal is the sa here, Paragon,” I said as I got to my feet. Maybe I should have added an honorific or sothing. Did they call them Honoured Paragons just like it was Honoured Councillor? Wait, no. Hadn’t Master Kostis called them Great Paragon? “You want to stop this ritual. I want to stop this ritual. We’re on the sa side.”
Slowly, the Paragon smiled. The blue tattoos on his half-naked torso seed to writhe in amusent. “I like how you’re so fast to make sure I don’t obliterate you like I did the other—”
“Obliterate who, now?”
Both the Paragon and I turned our raised eyebrows to where the Vaunted was rising into the air again, wings of icy gold frosting at her back.
“Ah, you survived.” The Paragon frowned at his tendrils, drawing them closer with a critical eye on them like he was trying to find a fault. “I was sure I hit you hard enough to collapse your diaphragm at the very least, perhaps break a few ribs for added asure. But maybe I was wrong to hold back. I should have just consud you.”
I shuddered, recalling how he had acted when I had first t him. Back then, he had attacked and “eaten” everything and everyone indiscriminately. I recalled just how he had consud Se-Vigilance too.
Which brought the question of why he was acting with so much more restraint here? I looked around. Could it be there was sothing about the Beyond that had him acting more carefully? Was there so integral truth or power to this god-summoning ritual that I didn’t know about that had the Paragon acting with a bit more care?
Although, Shik’shikan himself had stated that this was fake. The Paragon had acted a lot more decisively against the Blight Swarm but wasn’t doing so here. That ant the threat was far less severe, right?
I looked behind , trying to look past the temple walls and the Beyond. It was hard to make anything out. It was only then that I realized I hadn’t spotted anything about the wraiths outside once I had entered this otherworldly realm. I hadn’t seen any of those monstrous souls contorting and twisting their bodies.
So what in the world was going on outside?
“Reconsider, Paragon,” the Vaunted said. “I know that you and your kind prefer to keep the old order. To keep the world stagnant and ensure true power remains beyond most. But this ritual… this can change the world. After all this ti, don’t you think the world deserves more than the agre hollowness you’ve kept it caged in for so long?”
“Shut your silly little mouth, Vaunted.” Shik’shikan scoffed. “The only thing vaunted about you is the way you are all glowing and icy and everything. You certainly know how to show off.”
She remained undeterred, floating closer despite the fact that she had been flung away not that long ago. “I am deadly serious, Paragon. Regardless of what you think of and my station, my dream is one worth fighting for. My hopes and wishes are ones I’d give my life to bring to fruition.” She thumped her chest. “I already have! I’ve set my old life afire for all this.”
“For all this uselessness.” The Paragon shook his head. “I am going to kill you now, and that will be the end of it all.” He shot a glare before he got down to his business. “You. Destroy the rest of the Beyond and this sham of a god this hopeless fool thought to bring. Now.”
There was a strong part of that wanted to spit at his feet and just say no out of sheer, stupid rebelliousness. But our goals were aligned here. Letting his petty need to be the one in charge shouldn’t detract from it.
I didn’t hear one bit of what sort of protests or fightback that the Vaunted was presenting to the Paragon. Well, I did, but it was rely a peripheral thing.
My focus was on the remnant of the god and its power burning through this realm.
Regardless of what the Paragon said or did, I had to stop it before it broke through and affected Ring Four. So I quickly got up to the deford, half-molten, half-ford piece of a god.
“I wonder what you felt about all this,” I murmured as I reached out my hand, white tendrils of Sacrifice erging from my palm and fingers to latch onto the misshapen skull with one of its eyes turned to goop and other one simply staring listlessly. “Or were you never here to begin with, just as I thought, and this is rely a bastardization?”
That couldn’t be fully right, because the Paragon was clearly intent on stopping this.
Which ant it had so power.
It didn’t matter. Threads of Sacrifice latched onto the golden, tank-sized amalgamation. I was focusing on Overclaim. The Weave might not fully recognize the carcass of this half-ford god’s head as mine, technically, but Overclaim had to be enough to counter that. It seed to be working too. The whole mass was turning white, readying to dissolve.
Then ti froze. Everything froze. Colours leached out to a monochro hue, every mote of energy and swirl of air petrified, and the world beca utterly still.
So did I. Apart from my consciousness, I had turned into a statue. No blinking, no breathing, no feeling my heart thump in panic inside my chest. Nothing. I was a part of the world too, after all.
My body was, at least. My awareness—my soul—seed to have been spared… whatever this was.
It seems fate has brought you to strange places, my disbelieving devotee.
The voice ca in from everywhere and nowhere. It slithered in from every corner of my surroundings while also burgeoning out of like I was talking, even though I obviously couldn’t even begin to move my mouth.
And yet, just as the voice was doing, I could project my thoughts. I could communicate.
Who are you? I asked. Since I couldn’t move, my eyes were stuck focusing on the malformation in front of . Are you…
Indeed, replied the voice. I couldn’t place its gender or age or anything really identifiable about it. It was just smooth, powerful, sure of itself in a way that nothing else could ever emulate. You have it true already. You questioned what I thought of this… agre endeavour at calling upon , and so, sought to answer. And finish one little process…
Finish?
[ Sacrifice
You have Sacrificed 1 [Monuntal] Divine Essence [1] / 1 [Major] Ritual Reward [2]. Windfall bonus activated.
Reward [1]: Divine Essence has crossed threshold for manifestation. Completed Divine Essence now manifests in completion of Path Evolution.
Reward [2]: Ritual summoning leaves lingering Divine Essence, transfused into new Aspect’s rank. ]
[ Path Evolution
Your Path of the Auric Hierophant has finished evolving.
New Path: Path of Divine Incarnation [Opal I] ]
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