Chapter 505: Echoes of the Fallen. (2/2)

Sylv, I need tih our connection, I felt Sylvie reach for the aevu fronificant—but she pushed into the fatigue, drawing insight and inspiration fro that feeling into the aether, which shi+vered and bucked as it clabeats suddenly sluggish A bright spear of light was forrains of sand through an hourglass that had been tipped al, fiery birds of prey went fro swiftly toward the beast to a lackadaisical cruise through the air

But Regis winged across the battlefield at speed, transfor as he approached, and the aether continued to swarlobe solidified just as Regis, now little h my flesh and into my core

The rest of the world vanished

Inside the pocket dimension, it was only round floated in a sea of colorless and lightless energy and an open sky reflected across the inside of a plain steel sphere

The ainst the border ofit The flames of Destruction spilled across the steel surface, but there was no physical matter to devour It was simply an end, and that here Destruction itself stopped The beast clawed its way across the interior, frantic One head lashed out, biting at nothing The other turned toward ainst the interior of the pocket dimension, the beast roared and unleashed a jet of purple fire

Violet fire erupted across is connected the Destruction Godrune to hforces devoured each other

I flashed across the small pocket dimension a second later as the beast crashed down onat the charged air I left behind

“It’s just you and lo echoing froclaws, it hesitated, the necks swiveling to look for azed up at it froround Its heads hovered over sixty feet above h Sylvie’s eyes, I saw the outside of the pocket dioing dark Theparty stared around in wonder Sylvie was my tether beyond the pocket di, heard my needs inside my mind

“Let’s finish this hunt”

The creature hissed, its wings flapping as it drove itself forward Then, as suddenly as closing a book, the light inside the pocket di of the monsters in its belly went blessedly silent

‘It’s…easier, a bit,’ Sylvie thought through her concentration ‘The space is so much smaller, and it’s just the three of you I can hold this…for a , but I knew she was doing everything she could

I turned ’s Gaht

The previous evening, when sitting before the fire after everyone else bedded down for the evening, I’didea With God Step, I’d opened one of the points through which I could step to travel the aetheric pathways, leaving it open Aether had trickled through, turning our campfire purple

I had, effectively, poked a hole directly through froly, I’d been using the aetheric pathways to travel through the aether real about this connection, I’d theorized I could open ht had been o much farther

With tian

Theoretically, so these new incarnations Out of its death, an even stronger version of itself was born With each rebirth, it not only grow stronger but seemed to take ona mastery of Destruction when I used the aspect to kill it

Even after everything I’d learned, I didn’t understand how this was possible, but I hadn’t dedicatedit out More important than how it happened, was how I could stop it

Returning to the night before, I reached for that feeling I’d had in front of the fire, before Sylvie’s drea me the individual points connected by the aetheric pathways, I iined a hole between the aetheric realm and my pocket dimension This time, I searched for a point of connection within the distended guts of the horrid, frozen beast I probed for the point, feeling and listening as Three Steps had taughtout

Faint and distant, barely sensible through Sylvie’s aevu time and the motionless flames of Destruction, a hole opened Before, aether leaked into Epheotus fro like a cork, so else tried to h yet, and so I pulled harder, forcing it wider

The fabric between realities resisted

A dark a twitched A pair of eyes refocused on me

Outside the sphere, Sylvie tre to fracture

So hts operating parallel to my primary focus I rened the branching layers of ht except absolute focus on the hole punctured between real forward, fighting against Sylvie’s control

Cold realization hitI was focused on, and I lacked the power to do both Taking a deep breath, I released my hold over the pocket di us burst, and we slammed back into the real world Sylvie’s hold over her spell shattered, and the beast clawed across the ground, its twin heads descending toward me

It lurched to a stop as suddenly as it had started ain

Both of its heads craned back and doard its bulging torso Suddenly, it slu at its own belly

Inside it, the baying continued, but it was dowsed, dull Distant

I held the point open inside its body I couldn’t see as happening inside the beast, but I could feel it clearly

The portal was drawing the stillborn future incarnations through, ripping them out of this world Each one burned with the spark of Destruction that I had put in its flesh when the last incarnation had died Weak and without their potential, these potential future beasts burned One by one, then by ten, then by the hundreds A thousand, then thousand It was impossible to tell

But Destruction ate them all in the cold void of the aetheric real Ellie was shouting But I couldn’t process their words

My entire le task: holding open the hole between realms

The flames of its Destruction had turned inward and were now devouring the beast itself And still, with a portal in its guts and Destruction underneath its scales, it seemed as if it couldn’t or wouldn’t die

Its claws reached for me Tail-tentacles lashed and cut in every direction The jaws of its two re heads stretched out toward ons, and leviathans alike surged tothey had Bolts and bullets and shapeless manifestations of co the beast’s groounds and forcing it away froe foot, crushi+ng the round beneath Destruction-infused claws Zelyna’s twin shortswordsit and sending it crashi+ng down the slope Regis ju him from the Destruction that would have consumed him

Vireah conjured a curved shi+eld that separated h the leg, sla into a cliff Her body vanished into the rubble

Dozens of blood-iron crescents rained down on the beast, severing tentacles and pinning one of its necks to the ground The rereat furrows as the second head snapped closed right in front ofme with Destruction-flecked spittle

Chul rushed forward, heedless of the violet fla from the beast’s skin His round-headed h the pinned head The beast’s skull broke open and shattered, spilling out a blackhead pulled back, letting out a tortured scream even as violet fire jumped to Chul’s skin His chest and arolden arro pastbarrier wrapped around hi else to burn and pushi+ng it back from his flesh I tried to form the aether and mana to draw it away from him, but I couldn’t spare any concentration, could barelycontrol of the portal

Destruction devoured the black scales and flesh, revealing dark h thedisk of black and purple, had already consumed the incarnation's lower half Before it could rip its way free, it was gone

The bones broke down, devoured by purple fire, and then the musculature Incarnation after incarnation flowed into the portal at its center, croith rage and dis softer moment by moment

And then it was silent The last stillborn horror had been pulled away Destruction consumed the last of the beast, and then, with no er, the fla Chul and the wounded leviathan

I released asp

The portal faded, and , slow, shuddering breaths My ears felt clogged, as if I were underwater Or like it was so silent,noise to fill the eht sparked in erness of neledge stung edinto Chul’s exuberant face as he lookedon low bathed his face and reflected in his eyes, one blue, one orange

I grinned as the new Godrune ht

Seerin, he stepped back “Are you well, low of the newly fors

The mountainside was destroyed The once idyllic dell was a torn and churned pit Rock, trees, and soil alike had been devoured by Destruction, erasing even the signs of the asuras’ hty spells

The first face I found was Sylvie’s She was sitting in the dirt, caked with sweat and led to catch her breath There was a concerning lack of focus in her eyes, but through our connection, I felt her reach out to assure nature was greatly dinis had been spent, butthe battle she’d just lived through

Naesia was approaching the spot where the beast had burned away There was a sround The rest of the asuras—it looked as if everyone had survived, although athered in a loose circle around her She knelt and picked up a small white form A fiery arrow still stuck out fro phoenix touched the arrow, and it extinguished in a haze of cinders

Slowly, as if thinking deeply about so, she approached Chul and me The eyes of every asura present followed her in patient silence

Looking at me with a complicated fusion of reverence and dread, Naesia held out the small corpse “To the victor, the trophy”

I saw her same expression reflected to some extent on the rest of the asuran faces We’d passed through fire together; e left Featherwalk Aerie, I had their respect due toainst the back ofOnit to her Regis stirred withinnear my core as he absorbed aether from it Chul crossed his arms and beamed

Kin clasped hands and battered backs with tired fists Leviathans draped their arons and phoenixes fell together in tired heaps, their triu across the mountainside