Chapter 73: A Flower Smashes Into Stone III
Won in armor that glead with tal rather than bone, their weapons catching the lightning’s glow as they moved into defensive positions. An old woman whose presence radiated power that made his newly awakened senses ache with the strain of perceiving it. A young woman being protected at the center of everything, her features partially obscured but her eyes...
Her eyes held pupils shaped like white wings!
And floating in the air beyond the temple, suspended on clouds of Mana...
One wore white garnts of impossible quality, his dark burning eyes fixed on the temple with an expression of pleasant nace that promised violence beneath its civilized surface. Damian’s enhanced hearing caught the words that carried across the distance on currents of Mana.
"...Saint of Stone..."
"...Imperator Luddya..."
"...does the Hallowed Voice know you are here?"
He heard these words and understood their implications imdiately. These were beings from the Covenant of the First Stone and if the titles were any indication, powers so far above anything in these territories that their presence here was like finding an Anointed One working in a farr’s field.
And then his gaze shifted to the second floating figure, and everything else ceased to matter.
The man wore armor of crimson tal that pulsed with runes and malevolent energy. His hair was wild and red as fresh blood. His face held a bloodthirsty smile that revealed teeth too sharp for humanity.
And Damian’s eyes instantly blazed with recognition.
DUM!
He felt his heart beating heavily and loudly, the letter inscribed upon it seeming to pulse with sympathetic fury. His very blood felt like it was crying out, screaming with a voice that had been silent for eight years but had never forgotten, could never forget, would never forget!
He rembered that bloodthirsty face!
Oh, he rembered it from the night everything burned!
That face was one of the swords of the Murderous Saint, one of the Imperators who had led the assault on the Vakochev palace when Damian was ten sumrs old. He had killed many who protected the imperial family that night, had cut through guards and servants alike with the sa casual cruelty that his smile promised even now.
And he had killed Imperator Lianna.
Imperator Lianna, the woman who had been tasked with protecting Damian when the rebellion began. The woman who had gathered him and Uncle Adam and a handful of survivors and tried to flee through passages that should have been secret but weren’t. The woman who had turned to face the Crimson Imperator when he caught up to them, who had told Uncle Adam to take the Young Lugal and run, who had sacrificed herself so that they might have a chance to escape.
Damian had looked back as Uncle Adam carried him away.
He had seen Lianna falling gradually.
He had seen that bloodthirsty smile as the Crimson Imperator laughed and raged madly.
Only he and Uncle Adam had survived from that group.
And now, eight sumrs later, that sa face floated in the sky above him, allied with an Imperator from an entirely different empire, hunting a young woman whose winged pupils marked her as soone with a terrifying Land and Sky Physique.
The Crimson Imperator was moving with the Imperator of the Covenant of the First Stone.
Damian watched with eyes that burned as the terrifying attacks of the two Imperators were unleashed against the floating landmass of stone. He saw the massive heart of Mana manifest in the sky above, saw the rain of crystallized blood that fell like judgnt from the heavens. He saw the crimson crescents that tore through air and stone and flesh with equal ease.
He saw the devastation.
He saw the power.
He saw Warriors who had trained their entire lives cut down in monts by forces they couldn’t hope to resist, their bodies tumbling from the sky like leaves shaken from a tree by a storm that cared nothing for what it destroyed.
The Saint of Stone shot out in another direction, a cluster of survivors holding onto her as she fled toward a horizon that might offer safety. The two Imperators pursued, their attention fixed entirely on what they believed to be their prize.
And as Damian concentrated on the chaos, as his Mana-enhanced senses remained locked on the scene playing out miles above him, he felt sothing that made his perception spike with alarm.
His vision could still see imnse concentrations of unstable Mana in one of the falling bodies.
A supposed guard who had almost been split in half by one of those crimson crescents, her body tumbling toward the Lands of Stone with a trajectory that would end in impact and death.
But when he focused on this guard, when he truly looked at the Mana signature that pulsed within that mangled form, he realized the truth.
It wasn’t a guard.
It was the young woman with the winged pupils.
The one the Saint of Stone was supposed to be protecting.
The one everyone else seed to think was still holding the Saint’s hand as she fled.
The impact she had received from the Crimson Imperator had smashed her with force that would have killed most beings instantly. Her trajectory toward the stones below curved and twisted with the montum of that terrible blow, carrying her across miles of open air.
Carrying her toward his direction!
She would land a mile or two from where he stood, if landing was even the right word for what would happen. She wouldn’t land as much as she would smash into stone and beco paste, her body already grievously wounded being finished by an impact that would scatter what remained of her across rocks that wouldn’t even rember she had existed!
"..."
Damian looked at this unfolding tragedy with eyes that held too many emotions to na.
He stood frozen for a short mont, his mind racing through calculations and consequences of survival in the Lands of Stone.
In a land without honor, should he involve himself right now when the enemies were so dangerous?
If he made a move here and potentially revealed his presence, if he drew their attention later on when they ca back by interfering with whatever was happening here, what chance did he have?
His Vakochev’s Doctrines of Stone had given him power that exceeded normal Bone Tempering, true. He had just slaughtered an entire force of enemies with thrown logs and Mana-enhanced jumps.
But that was nothing compared to what he had just witnessed.
Nothing.
Even if those he swore revenge against were involved, even if the Crimson Imperator’s face made his blood boil with hatred that had been banked for eight sumrs, should he put his safety and life on the line right now?
Was one strange girl, a supposed Holy Daughter of the Covenant of the First Stone worth risking all of that?
"..."
Was honor worth dying for when there was still so much ti and vengeance left?
There were many thoughts buzzing in his mind, a storm of practical considerations and emotional impulses that pulled him in contradictory directions. The smart thing to do was to turn away. The safe thing to do was to let the falling woman et her fate and pretend he had never seen any of this.
Ultimately, he heard his mother’s voice.
It rose from mory with the clarity of sothing that had been inscribed upon his soul long before the Primordial Tongue inscribed anything upon his heart. It was her voice as she had spoken to him in the gardens of the palace, in the quiet monts between lessons, in the privacy of chambers that no longer existed.
"In lands without honor, you have to be honorable, my son."
Her voice was gentle but certain.
"Be honorable."
...!
BOOM!
He closed his eyes for a single heartbeat.
And before he even knew it, his body was moving!
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