Serpentlord (Rise To Omniscience Book 9), page 32
Tagar gestured to one of the engineers, a wiry gnome who was just staggering to his feet.
“Excellent,” Sarah said, strolling over to the gnome and seizing him by the back of his collar. “I guess I’ll meet you back by the ships whenever.”
“Not gonna stay and watch?” Morgan asked as a pair of icy wings burst from her back.
“And keep smelling this? No thanks,” she replied, still pinching her nose.
The gnome clutched in her grip groaned as she heaved him into the air, her wings beating powerfully as she drifted off the ground and began flying for the exit.
“Aren’t you going to stop her?” Tagar asked as they watched Sarah streak away.
“Why would I do that?” Morgan asked. “Someone needs to get the civilians moving, and she wasn’t going to be of much use just standing around. Now come on, we need the portal operational. I don’t think the World Beasts are going to take a break just because you’ve all got a little motion sickness.”
Tagar clenched his teeth, but didn’t otherwise argue, moving to get the engineers to their feet and moving deeper into the building. Morgan followed, taking in the grandeur of the place. It was richly decorated, the walls heavy with ornamentation in the form of colorful tapestries woven with precious metals, diamond-encrusted sconces, and more soaring marble columns.
“You guys sure seem to love pomp and grandeur,” Morgan noted as they headed into a smaller room.
A large portal was visible on the other end, though it was dark and clearly inactive.
“This was the Chamber of Five,” Tagar said again, as though that explained everything.
Morgan shrugged, going to lean against one of the walls as he watched the engineers totter over to the portal to begin working on it. The ground trembled and shook, though not as badly as it had been back on the battlefield.
After making sure the engineers were working, Tagar began to head for the exit. When Morgan raised an eyebrow, the gnome said, “If this place is going to be destroyed, there are some things I need to save.”
Morgan didn’t try and stop him as he left, turning his gaze back on the engineers. He was about to walk over and try to observe what they were going, when a voice, loud and panicked, sounded in his mind.
It was Katherine, and it sounded like they were in real trouble. Seeing as the enemy were all dead, it could only be one thing.
Cursing silently, Morgan shouted to the engineers as he prepared to leave.
“Get that thing working now! The World Beasts have reached the battlefield. If Tagar asks, I’ve gone to try and hold them off!”
He waited until he had gotten some sort of confirmation before leaving. He briefly debated going to grab Sarah but decided her help was more needed here than on the battlefield. The world around him warped, and when Morgan appeared back where the armies had been, it was to find the landscape completely transformed.
The skies were dark, lightning forking across its surface and funnel clouds slamming down into the ground from above. The ground itself was splitting and uneven, great chunks of stone rising or falling as the continent fell apart.
Just a mile or so away, Morgan could see the World Beasts battling with one another, the massive Elder Dragon Breaker tangled with some monstrous badger. The entire world seemed to be shaking. He whirled in the air, looking down to see their forces all gathered, crowded around the still-dark portal, while several small figures fought to stop the ground collapsing underfoot and the wash of power projected by the World Beasts from destroying them all.
Without hesitation, Morgan dove, streaking toward the ground and landing lightly between Elyssa, Katherine, and a small host of earth Mages.
“I got your message,” he said, whirling around and reaching for his Earth Mastery.
The ground, which had been trembling and shaking, threatening to fall apart, stopped as he exerted his will. His RP began to fall as the strain of holding an entire continent – or at least their immediate surroundings – fell squarely on him.
“Holy shit,” Elyssa muttered as he spread his arms wide, forcing the washing waves of molten stone back, freezing them in place and building up a wall.
The ground trembled and shook, but Morgan forced the fault lines closed as they split open, keeping their surroundings stable. However, it took a massive amount of effort on his part. Honestly, it was shocking that he could stop the collapse of a continent on his own in the first place, but the fact that the World Beasts’ battle was growing closer was making this task more difficult by the moment.
“Get that unruly mob organized,” Morgan said between gritted teeth. “The portal should be open any second, and I won’t have them slowing us down because they panic.”
Katherine, who would be the least helpful here, nodded, grabbing a scorched Beatrice off the ground and opening a portal.
“We’ll get them organized. Just keep holding us steady and we can all make it,” she said, already stepping through.
“Think I’ll go as well,” Ragnar said. “I won’t do any good here, but I can start knocking heads together if the people don’t listen.”
He followed, leaving the portal to close behind him. Elyssa stayed, and Morgan felt her extending her will after a few moments of recovery, reaching for the earth to try and steady it. Her skill was powerful but too specific to take a significant portion of the load off his shoulders.
“Damn it all,” Morgan muttered, feeling his head twinge in pain as one of the World Beasts slammed into the ground, sending a blast of stone and rubble washing over the landscape and threatening to tear the ground wide open.
His will extended, forcing the stones to halt in their path, slowing their advance until they simply fell out of the air, dropping to the ground below. There was a low thrum as lightning flashed, crackling down and slamming into the ground to his right. Morgan might have thought that it was the lightning that had made the noise, but he recognized that distinct sound from the last time.
Spreading his perception behind him, Morgan could feel the first of the soldiers vanish through the portal, meaning that their escape route was open. Getting some forty thousand soldiers through it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, meaning that he was going to be stuck holding the weight of the world until they were all safely in Arcane City.
“Oh, crap.”
Morgan looked up as the words slipped from Elyssa’s lips, and he could well understand why. A massive, looming shadow hung over them, spinning end over end through the clouds. It grew larger for several seconds before a gigantic two-headed creature came falling through, threatening to crush thousands beneath its massive form.
With a shout, Morgan pulled his attention away from the continent and forged a massive, black shield, glittering with spots of white, in the sky above their forces. He’d never made a construct quite this large before, but seeing as his skill didn’t give him any limitations, it was possible. The ground bucked beneath his feet, a sheet of earth rising nearly a hundred feet in the few seconds he’d pulled his attention away from it.
Growling, Morgan turned his attention back to the ground, even as Elyssa fought to keep them both steady. The oversized beast crashed down on the shield, buckling the construct and threatening to shatter it. Thankfully, it held, if just for the few seconds it took for the beast to right itself and take off back toward the fight.
Now balanced on the edge of an earthen plate over a hundred feet in the air, Morgan fought to bring the quaking ground back under control. He threw a look over his shoulder and saw forces quickly streaming into the portal, though not nearly fast enough for his liking.
Another of the World Beasts crashed to the ground not half a mile away, and Morgan ground his teeth as the world shook again. His muscles began to twinge as he felt the skill slip away from him. But he knew that if he gave in, even for a moment, thousands would die.
While every single one of the other earth Mages had fallen, Elyssa still stood with him, her Liquid Stone moving to cover up gaps and try to keep the ground from splitting further. A bolt of lightning came arcing down from above, and a wall of stone hardened right as it struck. Morgan felt the reverberation through his feet as the lightning cracked the stone but didn’t make it through to them.
“That wouldn’t have hurt me, you know,” he said as Elyssa pulled the crumbling barrier of stone away.
“You’re literally stopping us all from dying,” the elf replied. “The least I could do was make sure you had no distractions.”
There was a loud crack as another fault appeared in the ground before them. Even as Morgan tried to close it, the oversized badger came rushing out, dragging a river of molten stone behind it. From his vantage, there was no longer anything blocking his view of the battling World Beasts, and it was only once he saw the badger, dragon, and two-headed monster collide that he realized someone was missing.
Morgan felt his heart skip a beat as he cast his senses over the battlefield, confirming his worst fears. Strangler wasn’t here.
“Morgan!”
Morgan whirled, looking down to the bottom of the sloped shelf of stone, where Katherine stood, clutching the pendant around her neck, her eyes wide. Morgan already knew what she was going to say before the words even left her mouth.
“I just got a communication from Shul!” Katherine yelled. “A massive serpent has appeared in the sea near Aster! He thinks…He thinks it might be one of the World Beasts! What do you want me to tell him?”
Morgan ground his teeth together, looking between the forces on the ground, only half of which had made it into the portal. Then, he cast his senses toward Aster. He felt it almost immediately — the sinister, burning presence of the World Beast Strangler.
If he left now, all of the remaining soldiers would surely die, crushed under the destructive might of the approaching World Beasts. But if he stayed, everyone in Aster, Grace included, could be killed. Katherine couldn’t go to help, as she had never been there, not that he would think about sending anyone to take on a World Beast.
Morgan clenched his jaw, indecision making his job all the more difficult as Katherine waited for an answer. He remembered facing an oddly similar situation with Octagon, watching helplessly from the sidelines as his friends and allies were killed. Internally, he raged at his inability to do anything, despite all his power.
He knew that the longer he dawdled, the worse off they might be, so despite how much it tore at him from the inside, Morgan gave his response.
“Tell him that they’re gonna have to hold out on their own for a little while,” he yelled down, even as he felt the world begin to tremble again.
The earthquake was so massive that even with his Earth Mastery, it could be felt. The world was falling apart and a monster that even he might not be able to beat had appeared in the worst possible place, and there was nothing he could do to help. All he could do was hope that Lumia and Shul might be able to hold Strangler long enough for him to appear.
Sweat beaded his brow as the earth shifted and trembled, forcing his full attention back to the matter at hand. The World Beasts could be on them in the next second or hour. Right now, all he could do was hold the ground in place and give those below a chance to make it to safety.
49
“That is not good,” Shul muttered as he, Grace, and Lumia all looked to the sky.
A massive, green-edged portal opened above the sea, the gigantic head of a silvery-green serpent appearing from within. The sky began to immediately darken, taking on a distinctive greenish tinge as the clouds overhead grew denser.
The ocean began to churn as the serpent slithered from the sky, landing headfirst in the water. Their ships began to rock, and people screamed as they ran from the docks. Three-quarters of the ships were already in the water and heading back toward the Five Kingdoms. There was no way for them to turn back, especially now as the serpent continued sliding from the portal, more and more of its massive body falling into the ocean.
Grace felt her heart skip a beat as Strangler’s gigantic head rose from the ocean, her gleaming eyes fixing those on the shore with its petrifying gaze.
“Don’t look in her eyes!” she found herself yelling.
Grace was shocked that she was able to speak at all, let alone give orders. She’d faced down this terrifying monster before, and the last time had been too scared to even speak. Last time, she hadn’t seen much of the beast, but seeing Strangler in all her glory made her wish to only see a single eye or just hear her voice in her head.
“Bad news,” Shul said as Lumia began growing to her full size. “Morgan is busy trying to get our forces through a portal and won’t be able to make it right away. So, for the time being, I’m afraid we’re on our own.”
Then, Grace began to sweat. Strong as she’d become, there was no way in hell she could take on a World Beast. The only reason she’d been so calm in the first place was because she’d thought Morgan would come as soon as he got the news.
More screams sounded as Strangler’s tail finally slid from the portal, whipping down and shattering several ships.
“She’s going to kill us all,” Grace said, her voice sounding hollow. “We need to do something.”
She felt a hand clamp down on her shoulder and turned to see Shul, looking up to the massive World Beast with grim determination.
“No,” he said, his voice hard. “Lumia and I will do something. You keep working on getting those ships loaded and out of here. Do you understand?”
“But…” Grace began, only to have Lumia cut her off.
“Now is not the time to argue,” the drake said, her voice echoing in her mind. “Do your duty; save these people. Morgan will be here soon. In the meantime, we will hold the beast off.”
Grace bit her bottom lip as Shul released her shoulder and took a running leap onto Lumia’s back, even as the drake spread her wings wide and took off toward the massive serpent. Strangler had turned her attention on the fleet in the docks, her mouth opening wide and an ominous green light bubbling there, when Lumia and Shul unleashed their attacks.
A bolt of crackling, yellow lightning streaked from Shul’s arms, lancing into Strangler’s open mouth. At the same time, a roiling sphere of black fire blasted from Lumia’s jaws, engulfing the serpent’s snout. Grace watched as Strangler reeled back, her body causing massive waves to churn up, capsizing more than one ship and running several into the sharp stones near the shoreline.
Giving herself a shake, Grace began running to the ships by the docks, grabbing panicking civilians as they tried to run. It was difficult, ignoring the battle in the sky and staying focused on rescue, but knowing that she was their only hope helped her stay on track.
“How many still need to be loaded?” Grace asked as she came to a skidding halt near one of the ships.
“We’re finishing up with this fleet and need to get one more to land, load, and leave after that,” one of the soldiers replied as he shoved as many people as could fit, overloading the ships as much as possible.
They could always transfer people once they were of the docks and away from the monster trying to end them all.
A massive explosion sounded from up above, and everyone, Grace included, turned to see what was going on. Lumia was fluttering around the oversized serpent’s head, unleashing blast after blast of Crimsonfire. Shul was holding a staff made of pure electricity and thrusting wherever he found an opening, slamming into the monster’s tough scales and driving her back.
They were doing a good job of keeping her distracted, forcing the massive monster farther out to sea. However, Grace could see the difference in power as clear as day, even if she couldn’t sense it. Strangler’s head was so massive that Lumia’s entire body looked almost like a toy as she soared around the creature, peppering her with attacks.
Strangler was slower to act, her attacks consisting of swift strikes as she tried to swallow the pair whole. However, their smaller size seemed to be giving them the advantage – for now at least.
Grace, realizing that the passengers had stopped to gawk, began yelling at them to move, spurring them into action. Shul and Lumia wouldn’t be able to hold that monster for long, and with the sea thrashing and churning the way it was, just getting passengers on board was hard enough.
“We can’t fit any more!”
The shout echoed down the line of ships as they tried to stuff yet more passengers onto the ships.
“Get them out then,” Grace yelled. “And hurry!”
She ground her teeth as the ships pulled in their boarding ramps, then slowly, very slowly, began shoving out into the ocean. She stood there, taught as a bowstring, as she looked between the slow-moving ships inching out to sea and the last batch moving onto shore. Not all of them landed, and Grace felt a sense of pure disgust as some of the captains fled, rowing away from the docs for all they were worth.
Only a hundred and seventeen ships landed, while the rest rowed away, moving far faster due to the fact that they weren’t overloaded with passengers.
“Will we be able to fit everyone?” Grace asked in an undertone as people began the slow process of boarding.
“I don’t know,” the soldier replied, watching as the ships began to fill quickly.
At this rate, even with the overloading, nearly four thousand people would be left on shore. Grace silently cursed the cowardice of the fleeing captains. They came this far just to run away at the last moment, abandoning thousands to their fates.
Grace was still glaring at the fleet of fleeing cowards when a lance of green energy punched into the ocean, demolishing the eighty-odd ships in an instant and leaving a burning mess of flickering green on the ocean’s surface.
She jumped, whirling to see Strangler reel back as a sphere of burning purple slammed into the spot below her open jaws, one of Lumia’s most powerful techniques blasting from the drake’s open mouth as she soared around the World Beast’s head. Lumia dove as Strangler tried to strike, and Grace saw the small form of Shul detach itself from the drake’s back.
