Serpentlord (Rise To Omniscience Book 9), page 19
28
Burning pain enveloped his entire body as Morgan threw himself backward, his world flooded with green. Choking acidic smoke entered his lungs as he breathed in, feeling as though it were trying to melt him from the inside out. He burst from the cloud of corrosive fire, his clothes smoldering and his skin red and blistered.
Starforged armor flowed over his body, and the massive shield that he’d instinctively thrown up in front of himself cracked and started falling apart.
Morgan blinked several times, wheezing for air he didn’t need as he looked at the section of wall where he’d been standing. It was gone. Covered in a blazing inferno of green fire, the forty-foot section of wall had been blasted away, almost down to the foundation. He whirled, seeing more explosions going off all around the city and green-tinged portals opening up as the suicidal cultist-bombs emerged.
Morgan vanished, using his Rift skill and appearing where Sarah had been fighting. Another section of the wall was gone, and acidic smoke billowed into the sky.
“Sarah!” Morgan yelled, his voice sounding raspy and choked as he desperately cast about for her with his senses.
For several brief moments, Morgan felt like he couldn’t breathe, and that Sarah was once again gone, this time for good. If that attack had been enough to damage him even after he’d thrown up a shield, it would undoubtedly have enough force to kill her.
Thankfully, his senses flared as he swept them over a massive pile of rubble. The stones exploded in all directions as Morgan used his Earth Mastery, shifting thousands of tons of stone off her and revealing her prone form.
Sarah looked horrible. Her body was covered in burns, her hair was gone, and her skin was blackened. One of her arms was missing, and there was a gaping hole in her stomach. Her lower body actually seemed to have taken a bit less damage, but overall, she looked horrific.
Morgan was at her side in an instant, ignoring the massive explosions going off behind him.
“Sarah. Sarah, wake up!” he yelled, not wanting to touch her for fear of what it might do.
Her chest was rising and falling, though it was very shallow, and her core still thrummed within her chest. One of her eyes, the red one, cracked open, looking a bit dazed. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“Don’t talk,” Morgan said, feeling completely helpless as he wanted to try and help but knew there was nothing he could do.
“Help… people,” Sarah croaked as another explosion went off, sending a pillar of emerald fire into the sky.
“But what about you?” Morgan asked.
He was trembling all over with a mix of rage and fear. There was very little that still scared him. He’d faced death down so many times that the idea of being killed didn’t scare him in the slightest. What did frighten him was the thought that Sarah might die. That she might leave him as she had two years ago.
“I’ll… be… okay,” she croaked. “They… won’t.”
Morgan ground his teeth together, then nodded. The slab of stone beneath her rose slowly, lifting her body along with it. Morgan placed his hand on the slab, using his Rift skill and vanishing back to their main force.
There were several alarmed shouts as he appeared right where he thought the healers might be.
“Take care of her,” he said, glaring at the healers. “And someone tell Elyssa that there are crazy cultists coming through portals and blowing themselves up!”
He made sure to wait for one of the healers to go running off before turning to Sarah.
“I promise I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he said, placing a hand next to where her still-intact arm lay.
Sarah’s burned lips pulled up in a small smile, then she closed her eye and laid back, allowing the healers to swarm around her. They wouldn’t be able to do much for her, but even if they could dull the excruciating pain she was in, that would be good enough. Her Divine Essence would make her as good as new, but since she hadn’t been injured this badly before, he had no idea of knowing how long it would take.
Fists tightening, Morgan used Rift, appearing back in the burning city. He streaked upward until he was hovering at six-hundred feet. From his viewpoint, he could get a perfect idea of what was going on and the devastation these insane cultists were wreaking. Ignoring his pain, he started scanning the city, looking for one specific person.
The entire outer section seemed to be on fire, hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble and thousands upon thousands already dead. He could see people running through the streets, bodies covered in burns or still on fire. The inner sections of the city were, as of yet, untouched, but Morgan had a feeling that wouldn’t last for long.
Even as he watched, another dozen or so portals opened, revealing more of the cultists as they fell, dropping from a height of over two hundred feet.
Morgan could see what would happen when they hit and picture the mass devastation. However, these cultists had made one crucial error – they hadn’t come out on the ground. Perhaps they wanted to leave some sort of impression, or maybe they wanted to savor the fear on their enemy’s faces before they blew themselves up. Regardless, it was a mistake that Morgan would take full advantage of.
Extending both arms, Morgan reached deep into the earth, into the ground far below the city. To where he could feel deposits of metal, long since forgotten.
The earth all around them exploded in clouds of dust, likely killing many trolls, but Morgan had to make a choice; either kill a few hundred civilians or let tens of thousands die. To him, the choice was an easy one to make. The cultists had only fallen about halfway when the metal hit them, morphing into spheres and encasing their bodies in solid metal.
Morgan flexed his power, sending the balls of metal hurling back up into the sky. He couldn’t use portals on objects so large, but it didn’t matter. The first cultist exploded nearly three hundred feet off the ground, shattering the metal casing around his body with little effort but causing no damage to the city.
The rest went off in short order, detonating in massive clouds of green fire and spreading toxic smoke in a pall over the city. Even as they were going off, Morgan concentrated on the parts of the city that were already burning. Reaching into the rubble and turning it to sand, he began to quell the fires even as he continued his search.
Small spheres of condensed air formed in the smoke as he used his Expanse skill, expanding outward and blowing it away from the city. They might be the enemy, but Morgan was going to make sure to save as many of these people as he could. These were innocent civilians hiding in their basements, not hardened soldiers fighting them on the front lines.
His senses spread wider, finally reaching the first of his men, those who’d managed to get past the initial line of explosions and were running for the center of the city. However, he still couldn’t find Katherine, even as he reached the first group, which was nearing the massive compound at the city’s heart.
He cursed silently to himself as he pulled his senses back in, trying to limit his search to Katherine’s aura. It wasn’t easy finding a single person in a city this large, especially with all the chaotic power swirling in the air. He’d only just gotten the last of the fires out when he saw more portals opening, these much closer to the ground.
Morgan had prepared, and even as cultists began appearing, spheres of metal flowed up and around them, layering themselves to try and dampen the power of the explosions. His senses finally flashed as this was happening, and Morgan turned in midair, spotting Katherine’s small form about a half-mile from where he flew.
As he turned, he saw several more portals opening, cultists falling from the sky and glowing. This time, they were staggered, some falling from three hundred feet while others appeared right above the ground.
Katherine was in a spot directly below a falling cultist. Morgan had less than a second to act. He vanished, appearing right next to Katherine and snagging her before teleporting away. Pain burned in his legs as the cultist blew himself up, the fires burning through the armor on his legs in an instant.
He appeared back in the sky just as the cultists he’d entrapped went off. Pillars of green fire blasted into the air, burning a few buildings in their immediate surroundings. Realizing that the metal casings weren’t likely to hold no matter how strong he made them, Morgan had specifically weakened the tops of the domes so the blasts would be directed upward when they escaped.
If he had had more than a few seconds, he might have managed to move them high enough to stop any damage, but he was limited to what he could do in the little time he had. He was working to mitigate as much damage as he could, knowing that there was no way he was going to save everyone.
“Thanks,” Katherine said, looking a bit pale as they reappeared above the city.
“Don’t mention it,” Morgan said, shedding the still-burning constructs around his legs and summoning new ones.
Katherine caught a brief glimpse of his skin as he shed the armor, seeing the lines of burned skin and bloody tissue beneath.
“No, really,” Katherine said. “Thank you.”
Morgan grunted as he looked down, seeing the pillars of fire radiating into the sky. He used slabs of stone as more appeared, smacking into them and tossing them as high as he could manage before they went off. The stone was far less effective at blocking the blasts, and sections of wall were torn off as the explosions radiated outward.
Still, the city below was protected, and that was what mattered.
“Sarah?” Katherine asked, looking down as Morgan worked to quell the new series of fires.
“She’s-” Morgan was cut off as four portals opened around him, cultist hands reaching out as they prepared to explode.
He growled, tossing Katherine at the ground as hard as he could and teleporting higher. Unfortunately, they’d managed to get a grip on him, and the four cultists clung on, coming along for the ride.
Starforged armor encased their bodies, flowing from Morgan as he fought to give himself as much protection as he could. The cultists exploded, shattering the armor in a flash of burning green fire. Morgan screamed as he burned, his armor melting away under the extreme, corrosive force of four simultaneous explosions.
Small pockets of air appeared around him, trying to force the flames back as small Rifts opened, sucking the flames away. Teleporting would do him no good, as the flames weren’t inanimate objects, but the living matter of the cultists who’d attacked. Just like last time, he streaked downward, finally bursting free of the cloud of explosions, his body literally on fire.
He slammed into the ground, the earth turning to sand and dousing the flames, but even as Morgan lie in the crater of sand, he could feel his consciousness slipping away. They’d gotten him good with that attack. He’d been so focused on keeping the city safe that he hadn’t even considered that they would go for him personally.
Morgan could feel his body working to heal his injuries. If he were left alone, he might make it, but as he watched, more portals opened, and five more cultists came out.
He’d fallen right into a destroyed section of city, so at least no one else would be hurt by this. But in his current condition, there was no way he could survive. Morgan wracked his brain, trying to force his addled mind into action, to try and find some way out of his predicament, but as the cultists began to glow, he knew there was nothing he could do.
This was the end.
29
In all honesty, it rankled Morgan’s pride that after all he’d been through, he was about to die at the hands of fanatics so crazy that they were willing to rupture their own cores to kill him. It wasn’t only their cores they were rupturing; something else had been done to them. Something that allowed for the massive expulsion of power that had damaged him so badly.
These weren’t enemies he could fight. Throw a World Beast at him, and at least he had something to hit. These were like hitting a bomb, a bomb that was made of organic material and would teleport with him, bringing along all the power and fire of the detonation.
Hands reached out to him, the skin on their fingers covered in glowing, green lines. The sand shifted around him as he tried a last-ditch effort to dampen the force of the explosion. His RP reserves were sad and depleted. Even with all his bonuses, the number of constructs, skills, and teleportation he’d used had thoroughly drained him, and in the second or so he had left, he wasn’t going to regenerate enough to put up much of a fight.
“Oh no, you don’t!”
Five portals appeared at once, the cultist’s hands sinking into them. Morgan groaned as a body landed on top of him, a massive, red-tinged black dome spreading over them.
Morgan could see nothing, but he heard them. The series of explosions that went off shook the ground, but oddly enough, none of the blasts actually reached him. He tried to shift in the darkness to see who was on top of him, though judging by the color and type of the skills, he could already guess.
“Stop moving,” Katherine’s voice said, sounding strained. “You’re injured enough as it is. And don’t you dare go dying on me!”
Morgan let out a wince as the explosions died down. The black dome sitting over them cracked then shattered, light spilling in from the outside once more and revealing a world covered in crimson.
Oddly enough, though the fires raged all around them, their small area – the crater he’d made upon landing – was free of any fire.
“What was that?” Morgan asked as Katherine got off of him.
There was a long line of red crossing from her temple and down over her left eye. The cut swerved hard to the right as it traced down, slicing over her lips and down to her chin. The eye was open, and Morgan could see it was undamaged.
“A new skill,” Katherine replied, staggering to her feet. “I can transport myself and anyone I’m touching to a separate dimension. The portals you saw open redirected the blasts back at them, causing the wave of power to leave us mostly alone.”
“Did I do that?” Morgan asked, pointing to the line of blood on her face.
He idly noticed that he could see the dark gray gleam of his bones in several places on his forearm as he did. It seemed the earlier explosions had damaged him worse than even he had realized. He hadn’t really been able to get a good look at himself, so that was hardly a surprise.
“You saved my life and took the brunt of the blast in the process,” Katherine said. “A small cut is nothing compared to that.”
Morgan let out a light snort, then winced as his chest burned with pain.
“You know, you’re making it very hard for me to get over you when you pull shit like that,” Katherine said idly.
“You returned the favor,” Morgan said. “I think we’re even.”
Smoke began wafting over from the burning green fires, and Morgan felt his pain intensify as the acidic substance began drifting over his damaged body. Thankfully, he’d recovered some RP and used his Earth Mastery to shift some sand over the nearby fires.
“We need to get to the center of the city,” Morgan said as he worked. “There may be more attackers coming.”
“There’s no way you can move in your condition,” Katherine said.
“No, but I can move myself,” he replied, reaching down into the earth and cutting a slab out for himself just as he’d done for Sarah.
“I’m gonna need you to push me, though,” he said apologetically.
“You’re crazy if you think I’m taking you into the center of the city where more explosions like these might go off,” Katherine replied, opening a portal.
“Katherine, what are you doing?” Morgan asked, only for the Queen of the North to give his stone slab – already conveniently floating in the air – a good shove.
He was enveloped by darkness for a second or two, then crashed to the ground right where he’d brought Sarah back just a few minutes before.
“Damn,” he muttered as the portal slammed shut, leaving him back in their main camp.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been sidelined like this, but the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it spoke volumes about his current condition. Several healers ran over to him, and Morgan felt the ground shaking.
“What’s going on out there?” he asked.
Still unable to move his head, he could do nothing but stare up at the surrounding trees.
“We’re being attacked,” a healer he didn’t recognize said as he leaned down next to him.
“By whom?” Morgan asked as the man began working on him, trying to soothe the pain of his many wounds.
“By insane cultists,” the man replied.
“Why insane?” Morgan asked, already knowing the answer.
“Because,” the healer said, placing a cool cloth over his eyes and cutting off his vision completely. “They’re blowing themselves up.”
***
Elyssa stood near the mouth of Silica Gorge, a sizable chunk of her forces arrayed behind her. What she was about to do was extremely risky, but if it paid off, they could thwart the enemy’s ambush and perhaps even turn it back against them.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gilderon asked for about the hundredth time.
“As good as we’re going to get,” Elyssa replied, watching as the first of the soldiers began to march into the gorge. “Wars aren’t won without taking any risks. The gorge is our fastest way to the other side. A detour would cost us ten days at the very least, and right now, we can’t afford any detours.”
Gilderon sighed as he watched their forces heading in.
“I really hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered as the two of them began to walk.
Elyssa looked up as the walls of the gorge closed in around them, the cliffs growing taller and taller until all they could see was a strip of sky through the opening above. At its narrowest point, the gorge would only be about twenty yards across, causing congestion as their large army marched through.
