Chapter 392 (2/2)

I tre my connection to the mana for the second time I spit out a mouthful of blood and bile

Blaise howled An enor toward me Violet fire subsumed the black, and then flowed into Blaise’s eyes and nose andhi, I laughed A single long, rona’s supposed “asura killers,” fell before s wiped away by

The laugh cut out, and I sank down to one knee

The fingers of rate There was so much aether in ht I could just picture it burning and burning and burning and—

In the distance, I vaguely sensed the flaring of powerful hout the cavern of Vildorial

I could burn the city All of Darv, if I wanted to Dicathen and Alacrya and Epheotus…

I felt rin just as the flesh of an to crack and bleed under the force of Destruction

I thought of Valeska’s face and arh a portal soe than she intended to give Agrona, I i with fire

With some amusement, I realized my arms had burned away up toaway the cha for the city where there was so is’s voice, distant, hollow

‘Art!’

More insistent, a note of panic bleeding through the apathy and glory of Destruction

It was a voice that would grow silent soon enough All would be Destruction in the end Everyone, everything

I thrust my ruined arms outward Destruction boiled forth to consu and floor beneath e piercedit there, projecting into th Ellie and Mo in fear where they huddled with a round beneath theht a

Abovecollapsed, and elsewhere I di of stones as part of the cavern fell in on itself, but everything within sight was only violet fire

Everything Everyone

No, that’s wrong, I thought, the effort of holding even a silass Mo I’ve done…

But this is victory, a voice uncomfortably like my own replied This is finality This is the end of our ene my teeth, I leaned forward and frantically sh stone of the crater I was sinking into, trying to jar loose Destruction’s hold over ates that controlled the flow of aether out of my core and cut off the flow of aether to the Destruction Godrune, but I couldn’t

I pushed at Regis, intent on forcing hi my connection to the rune, but the feeble wisp for hione up to my biceps Destruction burned in their place Soon, it would replaceonly the void

The void…

I thought of the ain, the void beyond it, how I had exhausted allto save Caera Except I wasn’t in the Relicto away allto burn, so to consume

A sharp spike of adrenaline partially cleared my mind as an ideaor what it would uilt stayas quickly asform could, I clawed my way free of the crater, then stu against one smooth, Destruction-scoured wall, was the tempus warp

I collapsed in front of the anvil-shaped device It was half in ruins

Closing my eyes, I focused on the Godrune for Aroa’s Requiem It was distant, and even when aether flowed into it, no rush of power announced the rune’s activation Destruction clouded everything else, and , but I pushed harder That power couldn’t be erased, even if my body failed

Waran to shi+ver uncontrollably

Destruction was juer for an to trickle away fro Destruction away, sending it everywhere but the tempus warp, but I only half succeeded

Destruction and Aroa’s Requie in places while being rebuilt in others

Dragging in a deep breath, I pulled Destruction intothe pockmarked metallic surface of the tempus warp, and the artifact reconstituted beforeback in, the runes reappearing

My breath turned ragged as the fire reachedaroundis hunkered in close, huddling incoherently within the core’s shell

Aroa’s Requieratefully releasedAbove the teray-blue-purple-white oval through which I could just see the ghost of whatever was on the other side

Aroa’s Requiem had returned the device to the same state it was in just before Destruction reached it

So hot and elled up from my eyes and ran down s into the portal

The world wrenched nauseatingly around h a blurred nothingscape With no other matter to turn on, Destruction feasted on my aether and my body

Then I was…soround beneath like peaks in the distance

There were people all aroundaway, swirls of color as shi+elds were cast fro—questions, coround was part of Valeska’s face, diseed tongues of violet flame tumbled out ofelse to feast on

“Th-that’s hies, soldiers, Alacryan soldiers—surged backward

“Retreat! Retreat!”

A few spells flew at me, but Destruction pulled them out of the air and devoured theuely familiar voice snarled

The feverish confusion I felt cooled, and my mind seemed to shi+ft back into focus I was in an enclosed courtyard surrounded by heavy gray buildings In the distance, the faded blue outlines of the Basilisk Fang mountains clawed at the sky I was in some kind of e of Vechor based on the position of theof the encaes in the courtyard were all wearing the red and black uniforms and armor of Alacryans A h the line and was staring at rin

“What are you all so afraid of?” he crowed, his bright jade eyes glea from a cleanly shaven face framed by carefully styled brown hair “Look at hian to spill away fro across the hard black stone of the courtyard floor and toward the lines of Alacryan soldiers

A soldier grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to pull him back behind the line of shi+elds “Professor Graeme sir, it isn’t—”

Janusz Graeme’s victorious sneer shattered as realization dawned across his face

Destruction caught up with hi hi man down They both went up like so hed A ht, empty of empathy or care The sound of it sobered me instantly

More shi+elds flashed into existence as dozens of voices crashed together in a concentration of fear and confusion I pushed, and pushed, and pushed, allback into myself as I tried to force out every particle of aether inthe wild, uncontained Destruction as I did

Tears or blood—I couldn’t tell which—welled up behind my eyes as I watched line after line of Alacryan soldiers vanish within with violet fire Then the blazethe courtyard, and everything and everyone within them, and still there was ht, but I could feel it gleefully leap fro no tile or brick or ti utterly and without consideration

But I’d regained er felt the apathy and ecstasy of the ruination I was causing I felt hollow, like the fla, like I was shedding a piece ofmoment as the violet inferno spread and massacred all within the base

I pictured Ellie and Moain and steeled myself There was no choice, not this time Not when it was between ht to murder the of force speeding through the forests of Elenoir and leaving nothing but devastation in its wake

My core gave a last, final, painful squeeze, and the flauttered out with sudden finality My reservoir of aether was exhausted There was nothing left And with no aether to fuel it, the Destruction Godrune dimmed and went quiet

I turned in a slow circle, staring around at what I had wrought

The base was a large complex at the center of an entire town A circle of ashen nothing spread for half a mile in every direction The devastation ended suddenly with sis, many of which were partially collapsed or destroyed A three-story co up a tall pluhosts of screams, dozens of the oval of the portal re to project

Turning away fro hard turn underneath my boot and alle re horn had escaped the worst of Destruction Tiredly, I bent down to retrieve it, then stepped through the portal

The sickening rush of long-range teleportation, and then I was stu back into Dicathen I kicked the te its connection with the conjured portal, which shi+vered, cracked, and blinked out of existence

My body and ave out, and I slumped to ripping me, and without any aether in my core, I couldn’t heal

Deep insideth to give

I returned the siesture, then sank into unconsciousness