Serpentlord (Rise To Omniscience Book 9), page 6
“I already figured as much,” Lumia said. “Luckily, I found someone who was more than willing.”
As though on cue, a red-tinged portal opened next to her, and Shul walked through, followed by Le’vine and a moment after by Ragnar. The portal looked to be one of Katherine’s, but the Queen of the North didn’t follow them.
“You’re still here,” Morgan said, a bit surprised.
“We were getting ready to leave when the attack happened,” Le’vine said, her lips pursed. “I can’t believe we allowed those bastards to take Grace from right under our noses.”
“Wait… don’t tell me that you’re planning on going,” Morgan said, but Le’vine shook her head.
“As much as I’d like to, I’m needed back home. Shul will be going in my place.”
“Grace is the future of our Kingdom,” Shul said in answer. “Hilda knew it. I won’t allow these bastards to take her away from us as well.”
Morgan looked between Lumia and Shul, wanting nothing more than to go along with them, but he knew Sarah was right. He could go tearing off to the Arcane Kingdom and threaten to level the place to the ground, but Shedra, their commander, was cunning. He would claim that they were holding Grace and that if he destroyed the Kingdom, he would kill her along with everyone else.
Without a way to sense her, Morgan could attack one city after the next and never find her. Besides, with the cultists able to infiltrate the palace grounds so easily, Elyssa would begin mobilizing her forces. It made no sense to stay here if their walls would do them no good. Better to take the fight to them and preserve their home.
“Fine,” Morgan said, forcing himself to relax. “I’ll trust the two of you to get her back.”
He wasn’t happy about it, but Lumia and Shul were strong. She was a great tracker, and having fought Shul personally, Morgan knew he was a powerful Super.
Lumia nodded her head even as her body began to expand to its full size. Shul grabbed onto one of her spines, riding up into the air as Lumia’s body grew.
“We’ll be back before you know it!” he called.
Lumia spread her wings and, with a powerful downward sweep, took to the skies. Morgan watched her angle eastward as she ascended, her wings propelling her forward at incredible speeds.
“I know how hard this is for you,” Sarah said, still keeping a grip on his arm. “Remember, you have me to lean on. You don’t need to carry your burdens alone anymore.”
Morgan gave her a grateful nod, his feet finally touching back to the ground again.
“I guess I’ll be going then,” Le’vine said, pulling a portal scroll from her pack.
“You’re leaving now?” Morgan asked. “Just like that?”
The Queen of the East sighed but nodded all the same.
“I see no point in going back to the castle. I’ve already seen enough death for one night. Hilda is gone, and Shul is off on a dangerous mission from which he may not return. My people need me now, more than ever, and delaying will only make things more difficult.”
“Can I ask you for a favor then?” Morgan asked.
“What is it?” Le’vine asked, sounding wearier than Morgan had ever heard her sound before.
“You have ships, correct?”
“About a thousand,” Le’vine replied. “Why?”
“As soon as you get back home, I want you to get them all ready and sail them to Faeland,” Morgan said.
Le’vine raised an eyebrow in question.
“I have a feeling that by the time this is all over, we’re going to need a way off this continent,” Morgan replied. “One that won’t rely on the creation of thousands of portal scrolls we don’t have.”
“And where exactly do you want me to sail them?” Le’vine asked. “Faeland is a large place, after all.”
“The Arcane Kingdom,” Morgan replied. “Don’t ask me why. It’s just a hunch but one that I can’t ignore.”
Le’vine hesitated for a moment, then gave her assent. This all came down to trust, and it seemed like the Queen of the East trusted him enough to embark on this seemingly insane venture.
“Is there a way I can contact you if we need to speak?” Le’vine asked as she unfurled the portal scroll.
“Tell Katherine, and I’ll either come see you in person or use her as an intermediary,” Morgan said.
He hated to put this on her, but he didn’t have any other way to communicate at the moment. Traveling back to the Five Kingdoms would be relatively easy as far as he was concerned. Unfortunately, the ability for long-distance communication wasn’t something he’d gotten when he’d advanced.
Le’vine nodded in agreement, then stepped through the portal, leaving Morgan alone with Sarah. Well, her, and the dozen or so guards still hovering within earshot.
The ground shook again, a massive tremor running through the earth. Morgan felt a wave of power wash over him and looked in the direction of the battling World Beasts. As he’d suspected, they were indeed drawing closer. By his estimate, they would reach this area within a couple of weeks, and if their battle continued, the entire continent could fall apart.
That was the main reason he’d asked Le’vine for her ships. With only a thousand of them, he doubted he’d be able to save everyone in Faeland, but he’d be damned if he didn’t save as many as he could.
“Come on,” he said to Sarah as the tremors finally stopped. “Let’s head back to the palace. I’m sure they’re all yelling and screaming their heads off inside that war room, and if we’re not going after Grace, we may as well go see if we can join in the fun.”
As he drifted into the air, Morgan pulled up his status – he wanted to check something.
Name: Morgan
Title: King of Eternity
Pinnacle Supermage: Rank - 80
Energy to next rank - 1,244,021/750,000,000
Ability - Downfall
RP - 16,500/16,500 (Regen - 156.0 per second)
Strength - 1,750
Agility - 2,100
Constitution - 1,710
Intelligence - 1,650
Wisdom - 1,560
Traits - Eternal Soul, Perfect Aura Control, Devourer, King’s Might
Skills - Gravity Release, Bestial Might, Starforge, Earth Mastery, Expanse, Rift
Superior - Infernal Star, Light Star, Meteoric Downfall, Continental Collapse, Soulstream
Ultimate - Eternity Beam, Sunscorch
It seemed his suspicions about his Devourer trait had been correct. When he didn’t actively work to store the energy, it would automatically be added toward his next rank. Killing beasts was no longer necessary to grow stronger, though it hadn’t been for a while. However, this was the first time he saw such an influx of energy from butchering those weaker than him.
The cultists might have been considered strong by the standards of the rest of the world, but he could have crushed them all with his bare hands. They had thrown everything they had at him, and it hadn’t done much more than ruin his outfit. If gaining energy was that laughably easy, then what lengths would he go to?
If he used his Eternity Beam on a city, wiping out everyone caught in the blast, would all that energy be added to his own?
The thought alone was terrifying.
8
Lightning crackled in the sky above, lancing down from green-black clouds and striking the scorched earth. The smell of ozone was thick in the air, yet that was the most natural thing about the weather. The ground was split wide open in dozens of places, the remains of buildings littering the area. Steel and stone lay in puddles of half-melted slag, and the remains of a forest smoldered in the distance.
Gold stepped into this hellscape just as a fountain of ash exploded up into the sky.
“Yeep!” he yelled, throwing both hands out and projecting a shield in its path.
A gray funnel temporarily blocked out his view of the world, but it soon returned as gravity reasserted itself and pulled the ash back to the ground.
“Phew, that was close,” Gold said, looking down at himself. “Almost ruined the jacket.”
Had someone been standing in this hellscape, they might have thought the man had been worried about being burned to death or smothered by the fountain of ash, but Gold’s concerns were a lot more materialistic. He just hadn’t wanted to ruin his clothes.
A loud crash sounded from below, and Gold looked down just in time to see a massive, glittering gold form go streaking past. It slammed into a still-standing manor, reducing it to a pile of scorching rubble in an instant.
His eyes flicked to the right, where a gigantic golden-striped badger was charging after the creature it had just thrown through a building. A roar echoed from the rubble, and a moment later, a massive golden dragon burst from the wreckage, the steel and stone turning a bright yellow before melting to slag.
In the distance, Gold could see another distortion in the sky, as two more World Beasts fought — Ripper, the chimera, and Strangler, the serpent. If one didn’t know the capabilities of a World Beast, they might have thought that these were two separate fights, but when creatures like this fought, they needed a continent as a battlefield.
As though on cue, a bright flash of red and orange streaked from the place where the beasts were fighting and caught the enraged Breaker in the side, hurling him away before he could clash with Quaker, the massive badger.
The badger burrowed down immediately, causing the ground to tremble and shake for hundreds of miles around, neatly avoiding another streak of power. The blast tore a furrow through the city, burning buildings to the ground and blasting a hole straight through the half-destroyed castle that had once been the home of King Ragnar.
How had an underground city ended up on the surface? Well, a few thousand feet of stone wasn’t exactly an obstacle for creatures like this, and with Quaker constantly shifting the landscape, it was no wonder that it felt like the continent was falling apart.
“We don’t even have to do anything.”
Gold didn’t bother turning as Katherine appeared, her arms crossed beneath her chest as she watched the beasts ripping the city to pieces.
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Gold replied as he watched the destruction unfold.
“This continent will soon fall, and then Chaos will reign.”
“You’re so melodramatic,” Gold said with a snort. “You’re forgetting that there’s still another continent that the World Beasts won’t reach.”
“Who’s to say?” Katherine replied.
“They have no interest in the Five Kingdoms,” Gold said. “What they seek can only be found here.”
Katherine let out a huff, watching as Strangler came zipping through the sky, a wide gash opened in her side. A cloud of green acid clung to her body, destroying the very air around her.
She fell back down to the ground, just in time for Breaker to explode from the second building that had been dropped on him. The massive Elder Dragon looked pissed, and Gold could well understand why. An explosion of black fire went off around the beast as he cracked his jaws wide.
Even as Strangler unleashed a cloud of poison, Breaker released a plume of black fire. The two collided, blowing ever outward. Gold quickly ascended as the dome spread wider and wider, burning and destroying everything in its path. Within seconds, the city was gone, leaving a smoking crater some two-hundred feet deep in its wake.
But the beasts who’d unleashed those attacks were still very much alive and seemingly unharmed. Now that there was a clear and open space to fight, free of any obstacles, one might have thought that the beasts would be happy. Instead, they turned, halting their fight as they moved on to the next settlement in their path.
They were beasts of destruction, after all, and if their colossal struggle didn’t destroy anything, what would be the point?
“What do you want, Katherine?” Gold finally asked, turning to face the woman he’d once loved.
She looked the same as he remembered, with shoulder-length straight blonde hair, a narrow face with high cheekbones, and bright eyes enhanced by dark eyebrows.
“We know you had a hand in Sarah’s death,” Katherine said, the anger clearly sounding in her voice, though she kept her face impassive.
“Oh, and what proof do you have of that?”
“Loquin,” Katherine said. “She’s finally awake and has a lot to say about you. Especially about your tactics and the way in which you’ve conducted yourself in the time we’ve been gone.”
“Has she now?” Gold asked, not allowing anything to show in his expression.
He’d already known Loquin would wake eventually and figured they would find him partially responsible for Sarah’s demise. Still, he was reasonably sure his plans would still work out, and Sarah didn’t factor into any of them.
“You’re going to pay for what you did,” Katherine said, her expression finally slipping. “We were nice to you. We extended a hand in friendship, hoping that things could be as they were before all this started. And what did you do? Kill my best friend. None of us will forgive you for this, not even Morgan. You’d best watch your back because when we come for you, you won’t know what hit you.”
With that threat out of the way, Katherine vanished, stepping through space and back to their little warehouse hideout.
Gold watched the area patch itself up before turning his attention back to the battle below. It seemed the beasts had reached their next destination and were gearing up to keep fighting. He could worry about the supposed attack when it happened. For now, he needed to grab some popcorn. It was rare that he got to see chaos and destruction on such a wide scale, and he was going to enjoy the show while it lasted.
***
Breaker, the Elder Dragon of Greed, cracked his jaws wide and unleashed a fiery storm of blackness, bathing the side of the accursed chimera and driving him to the ground. Ripper might have the greatest physical strength of all the World Beasts, but when it came to combat in the air, he was unsurpassed.
The two-headed chimera slammed into the ground, the earth bubbling and splitting as Breaker’s black fire burned through it.
The buildings around Ripper melted, turning to slag with little resistance. It gave Breaker great pleasure to see the puny city falling to pieces, especially since his fire showed him where all of their gold had been hidden.
Dwarves were greedy bastards and hoarded their wealth, so when they abandoned their cities, they couldn’t bring it with them. Breaker ignored the irony of his way of thinking, as there wasn’t a single creature on this continent who signified greed as well as he did. He went out of his way to collect and stash wealth, but no one was going to call him out on it.
A loud hiss to his left signaled an attack from Strangler, the massive serpent streaking in, her mouth open wide and fangs primed with venom. At that moment, Ripper exploded from the molten pit, his front paws swiping and unleashing eight streaks of burning red light.
Breaker chuckled to himself, then flapped quickly back, giving the unsuspecting Strangler the chance to slither headlong into Ripper’s attack. The massive serpent hissed in pain as several gashes were opened in her hide. She twisted in the air, streaking down toward Ripper instead. After all, why go after the one who hadn’t just attacked you when the one who did was conveniently below you?
As though taking the chance to gang up on him, Quaker exploded from the ground, liquid stone flowing up around Ripper and trapping him in place. The chimera roared and bleated, its bestial and goat-like heads sounding their displeasure. Strangler struck as diamond spikes shot from the earth and slammed into the chimera’s body.
Ripper roared even louder as the massive fangs sank into his shoulder at the same time as the glittering spines pierced his left side. The rest of Strangler’s body caught up to her then, the force of gravity and her momentum driving Ripper into the ground and creating yet another crater.
Quaker pulled herself fully from the ground, her oversized claws ripping into Strangler’s body and leaving long hissing lines in its wake. Ripper attacked Quaker, one of his oversized and mottled paws tearing into the side of the badger’s head. Strangler’s body hit the ground then, and she began coiling it around them both, trying to squeeze Ripper and Quaker together so that she could unleash a corrosive cloud of poison.
Above, Breaker beat his powerful wings, feeling a sense of smugness welling up inside. There they all were, conveniently tangled up in one spot. It was almost as though they wanted him to attack.
Breaker opened his jaws wide, a small dot of black fire appearing there. It spun quickly, growing in size and intensity until it was larger than his head. Dark red streaks covered its surface, spinning like the blades of a saw. At the same time, small colorful lights burst into life, circling the spinning ball of fire as though it were a miniature sun.
Breaker allowed the skill to continue building until he felt like he might lose control, then he launched it, the ball of roiling flame flashing toward the ground and impacting without so much as a sound. For an instant, nothing happened. Then, with a massive displacement of air, the ball of fire expanded.
It burst skyward, spreading out in a dome that covered hundreds of miles in an instant. The dark red saw blades attacked anything and everything within, tearing trees, houses, and manors to pieces before the scorching fire burned them to ash.
The few stubborn and unlucky dwarves who’d remained in the vicinity didn’t even have a chance to run before the flames engulfed them, killing them all instantly. The fire spread wider and wider, finally halting its progress near the borders of the Glimmerlands.
Dozens of small settlements had been destroyed in that single attack, and several larger cities had been reduced to molten rubble.
When the smoke cleared, all three World Beasts were still very much alive. They were covered in masses of burns, so Breaker’s attack hadn’t been completely ineffective.
“You’re dead!” Strangler hissed, her mouth opening wider than his entire body and lunging upward.
Breaker used the opportunity to blast a stream of fire straight down her throat, driving the serpent back into the molten sea below. His single attack had turned hundreds of square miles into a sea of lava. When it finally cooled, the earth would be barren and unlivable for years to come, not that Breaker cared one way or the other.
