Universe's End

To say the rest of the battle against M’wana was stupendously exciting would have been a lie.

With Allison’s attributes boosted to her effective max and Rory no longer distracted by studying the strange chalk wolves, it became a matter of understanding their opponent and containing them at every and any opportunity.

And that was something Rory was exceptionally good at. While he had a few special moves in his arsenal for massive or wide-range damage, his strong suit was his variety and ability to shut down so many different things.

M’wana experienced it firsthand, constantly harried by heavenly lightning that, while not quite the perfect counter to solar or radiant dawnfire, was also being delivered by an even more powerful opponent.

Every time the ink-black monster attempted to maneuver through the darkness, the same sort of move as the Rogue’s shadow step, the blue lightning would crash down, interrupting the attempt, and any attempt at chasing after Rory left it open to attacks from the Spear.

Eventually, unable to see a possibility to win by overwhelming the two Founders the traditional way, the man-monster vanished, reappearing as a black star began to form between his hands.

“Oh, that’s some kick,” Rory said as he flickered next to Allison.

“I concur,” Allison said. While she wasn’t a mage like Rory, or even practiced with magic due to fusing her pneuma capabilities into a single attribute alongside several others, that didn’t mean she was unable to feel the pressure radiating out from the attack the territory alpha was preparing. “What are you thinking?”

“Typically, this is where there would be some epic beam clash of magic,” Rory said, completely unaware of just how true that had turned out to be with the last group to encounter M’wana.

“But that’s not the plan, is it?” Allison said, familiar enough with Rory now to catch the hitch in his voice that meant he was speaking just for the sake of speaking.

“Nope,” Rory chuckled. “I’m going to blow it up in his face.”

Magic was not ‘owned’ in that one could take control of another's attempts at wielding magic. The issue was that, typically, hijacking another’s magic was quite a difficult challenge, as casting magic was typically covered by one’s mantle, which protected from external interruptions. The more powerful one was compared to their target, the easier it was; tier advantages made it significantly easier.

Which was also redundant, as a tier advantage typically meant there was no danger in the first place, but that was ultimately semantics.

M’wana was not a case where Rory was the stronger party involved; in fact, it was the opposite. But the power that M’wana was channeling was not power derived from itself.

It was derived from the realm of Oscuro, channeling it into one fuck off sized magic attack.

And that meant it wasn’t protected by the monster’s mantle to nearly the same level. If one were exceptionally well practiced at magic and also well versed at handling large amounts of pneuma, disrupting the casting was theoretically possible.

Thankfully, Rory was both.

Letting the magic build up to its maximum, Rory noticed Allison fidget ever so slightly next to him.

Well, she’s not wrong. That IS a lot of magic.

Eating the attack it was about to throw out probably could significantly hurt them, to the point of being unable to continue fighting. And they were just standing there, twiddling their thumbs.

Or at least it seemed that way.

Look at how far we’ve come, trusting me like this. Gosh, I could almost blush.

“Rory?” Allison asked, a hint of apprehension in her voice.

The hands of the ink-black man-monster began to move, moving toward one another as M’wana was a moment from unleashing the magic.

“Bingo,” Rory said. At the same time that M’wana began to bring his hands together, Rory reached out, latched onto what he’d been searching for, and twisted his hand as if flicking a valve closed.

The effect was instant, as an explosion of all-consuming darkness radiated outward…. With M’wana as the epicenter.

“See, no issue,” Rory said, totally hiding that it had been closer than he’d anticipated.

“And how’d you do that?” Allison questioned, eyebrows arched.

“Trade secret,” Rory said, pressing a finger against his helmet where his lips would have been.

“I can’t use magic anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Rory chuckled. “I just snapped a cascade point. Since M’wana wasn’t the complete source of the magic, there was wiggle room to crack through the mantle protecting the magic from outside influence. Finding the point wasn’t too hard. Coordinate affinity tends to help with that.”

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“I’ll just nod along,” Allison said with a slight shake of her head.

“After that, as I said, I just needed to break through what mantle did protect that point, and bob’s your uncle, I managed to send the entire thing up in flames. It’s why channeling magic that isn’t purely self-sourced isn’t the best idea; it opens you up to interruption the longer you take.”

As the all-consuming darkness faded, what remained was a single dark wisp that floated in front of them.

“Worth, Transcendent. Access to Oscuro-Noctis, Granted.”

With that, the dark wisp shot away toward the temple the monster had guarded.

“Fun,” Rory huffed before turning to face Allison. “Shall we? I have a feeling that the others will be right on our heels.”

“Assuming they aren’t already ahead of us,” Allison pointed out.

“I prefer to be an optimist,” Rory said, something that wasn’t at all true.

“Whatever you say,” Allison said, and while he couldn’t see her face, he could feel the eye roll.

“Then, onwards to Oscuro-Noctis!”

Passing the temple, a rather unexciting building that seemed to exist purely for aesthetic purposes rather than serve any real function aside from being the respawn point of M’wana, the passage through the massive split in the mountain proved far more interesting. With every step, the scraggy, granular ground beneath their feet changed, as did the sides of the ravine.

At first, it was only a splotch here and there, but the further they continued, the more their feet splashed up puddles of what looked like a clear silver liquid, like water reflecting moonlight. The sides of the ravine began to be dominated by a weird fusion of coral and vines that also seemed to drip silver specks of light that twinkled and vanished before ever reaching the ground.

By the time they left the passageway, they had been walking through ankle-deep liquid the entire time, which seemed to swirl around them without resistance, almost like a low-hanging gas.

“Whoa,” Rory said as he looked up.

Dominating the sky above was darker than anything he’d ever seen, which only made the massive moons, six of them, overhead appear that much more brilliant. Silver, aquamarine, a light sea green, red so soft it was nearly pink, lilac, and finally a hollow moon that appeared more like a black orb circled by an outlining band of rose-gold.

And then there were the galaxies, like time-lapse pictures from Earth that managed to reveal the arms of the Milky Way through the night sky. Except far more distinct and thinner, like there were hundreds of nearby but much smaller galaxies beyond the sky.

“Look at that,” Allison said, drawing his attention back to eye level. Doing as he was told, Rory took in the scenic change. No longer were they in a badland pulled from some dystopian western film; rather, it was as if they were visiting an alien world, an endless expanse of tidal flats filled with clear, silver liquid. Where the liquid didn’t pool were ‘trees,’ though Rory wasn’t sure ‘tree’ was the correct term, that sprouted up, made of spongy-looking coral and something that looked like some sort of shiny black mineral. From their branches grew bioluminescent purple leaves, and from the leaves emanated a faint glow that would twinkle and fade, only to be replaced by more of the faerie lights.

“Don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Rory huffed.

“We never were?”

“N-never mind,” Rory huffed.

“So, this is Oscuro-Noctis, the next ring of Oscuro, of who knows how many,” Allison said. “Prettier than I expected.”

“Wasn’t this based on your thoughts? Shouldn’t you have more of an idea of how deep it goes?”

“Probably three at minimum,” Allison said. “Three feels right. No more than ten. That feels wrong.”

“I would question your logic, but I, of all people, understand how things work out that way,” Rory chuckled. “That said, we probably want our guards up.”

“Agreed,” Allison said.

Having had enough simple sightseeing, the duo carefully made their way into the second ring of Oscuro.

For some time, nothing truly interesting happened; they simply waded through the strange liquid pooling around their feet and took in the beautiful scenery. It wasn’t until nearly an hour later that Rory raised his fist, signaling a halt.

“You feel that?” Rory questioned quietly.

“No,” Allison said, though it was clear from her tone of voice that she wasn’t taking him lightly. “Monster?”

“No,” Rory shook his head before his eyes widened inside his helmet. “Up!”

Grabbing her arm without thinking, a single flicker later, the two were suspended in the air.

And just in time, as the strange liquid that had almost seemed more like a gas reacted.

Instantly, it had ‘frozen,’ but Rory’s familiarity with spatial concepts came into play, as to him, it was excruciatingly obvious it wasn’t that simple.

The liquid had hardened into a single silver plane that outright severed space and time. And not lightly either; even flaring his mantle to the utmost, Rory was confident it would have cut him through from the ankles without a single iota of resistance. It was so… certain that Rory had reasonable certainty that even were he tier nine, it would have cut through the defense of his mantle.

“The hell is that?” Allison asked, helmet looking up at Rory as she hung beneath him from where he had hastily grabbed her arm.

“No idea,” Rory admitted. “Or, I know what happened, but I don’t understand the how or why.”

“Is it safe?” Allison asked.

“Now? Yeah, now it’s just basically silver mirror,” Rory said, and to prove his point, he flickered once more, the two of them standing atop the hardened surface. “Maybe something like a high tide/low tide situation? Except instead of retreating or advancing, it asserts itself into reality and then cedes from reality.”

“And how did you know that was about to happen anyway?” Allison questioned.

“The shift in the natural concepts.”

“Uh huh,” Allison said, far less experienced in naturally perceiving such phenomena than Rory. “Will the others notice?”

“Oh, I’m certain Eric will sense it. He’s probably got this place down to a science; in fact, I’d bet his Primal Night affinity trumps the natural affinities of this place, aside from the differing type of pneuma state.”

“Righhhht,” Allison said before beginning to walk once more. “So, killer high tide. But no monsters.”

“And you spoke too soon. These are what we call flags in the movie trope community.”

“Not all of us were cinephiles,” Allison scowled from inside her helmet as she sensed the same approaching wave of monsters that Rory had. She raised her spear, preparing for combat, before lowering it a moment later as she got a better sense of what was coming.

“Hmm…. Yeah, I think we should run,” Rory said.

“My thoughts as well,” Allison agreed.

Because cresting the horizon was a sea of monsters, tier eight.

And not base tier eight. Not low tier eight. Hell, not even mid-tier eight.

“Level eighty-fucking-seven,” Rory huffed. “And not even the worst part about them.”

No, the worst part about the monsters that had appeared after the reality tide had set in was that they were the utter enemy of all life. The antithesis of goodness. The very bringer of sin and depravity, the unmaker of man, the corruption of creation.

“Fucking slugs,” Rory groaned.