Chapter 48 | PoV: Sanya
Sanya killed a particularly large tentacle monster in her way. A massive fiery orb crashed down and incinerated it.
She panted, looking forward now that her pathway was open.
Barakat stood a couple dozen paces away, blasting aeolian spells at the monsters, cutting them up. He protected a small group of students and staff members. Of-Salama supported him with fireballs and similar scorching spells.
Sanya's smile went flat. She couldn't believe Barakat was still alive.
Sanya and the librarian approached their group as the librarian shot spells at monsters that got too close.
Maybe they were all just really good at killing the monsters, or they were thinning.
“Sanya. Librarian,” Barakat nodded, acknowledging them with narrowed eyes.
Sanya snorted—almost breaking out into a fit of laughter, in fact. Even Barakat didn't know the librarian's name. Did anyone?
Barakat raised an eyebrow at Sanya. Oops.
“Where's everyone else? What . . . What do we do to stop this?” Sanya asked.
“We should head back into the academy and evacuate—get everybody out. We need to get far away from this place,” Barakat said. “I don't know how to close it or to stop the flow.”
The librarian shifted her weight. She looked guilty. Did she steal that grimoire from Nur too? . . . “If we can find the spatial grimoire, maybe we can close it.”
“So, we go back in?” Sanya groaned. “Where is everyone else? Where is Mai?”
“I don't know. A lot of students have run away. We have the freedom to do that now with the tempest gone.”
“We traded one apocalypse for another. Great,” Sanya said flatly. “I'm staying above. I'll fight these things until I drop from exhaustion. Mai should have come to me if she went down, so she's up here somewhere.
“Let's trade. You take these students somewhere safe with Of-Salama, run ahead to Glorestra if you need to. I'll take the librarian and head back inside. She can look for that elusive tome.”
Sanya nodded. “Fine.”
On her dead body would she take them to Glorestra! It was probably a day’s walk away. Time bubbles did not make one’s own perception of time go quicker, so even with temporal mages it would still be miserable.
“[Meteor Bombardment].” Another group of purple monsters got pulverized.
Sanya stepped up to Of-Salama, between the students and unarmed staff and the monster horde. Sanya counted seven students and three staff members. Two of them were chefs. Sanya did not recognize the third.
Barakat broke off from the group, offering soothing words to the students.
“It will be okay,” and “I will be back,” and “Trust me, Sanya will protect you.”
The complaints about her existence died down when she bathed the ground in purple soup turning interdimensional nightmares into lasting trauma.
Barakat and the librarian disappeared into the swarm of monsters.
Now, did Sanya try to get the group to move, or continue to stay? She needed to find Mai . . . Yeah—toss it, Mai was more important than this group.
Sanya began carving a path back towards the academy cave. She took steps away from the group she was supposed to protect, leaving them behind.
“What are you doing?” Of-Salama chastised.
“Follow me. Or don't,” Sanya didn't look back. She continued to disintegrate the monsters in front of and around her.
Of-Salama let out a nasty sigh, then communicated to the group. “We're moving.”
“I'll get everything in front,” Sanya said. “Keep them safe from the back.”
“Sure.”
“[Meteor Bombardment]. [Starfall]. [Meteor Bombardment].”
“Sanya?” a student asked. “What are those spells? Can we learn them?”
Sanya shook her head without looking back. “This is a different type of mana you would need to attune yourself to. It took me an hour. We don't have time for it.”
“Oh . . .”
Mai had been working for multiple hours and still hadn't attuned herself to Fleshweave mana . . . These students would probably take that long to learn Celestial Summoning—just the mana. Not even to start on getting the spells correctly and strengthening them. Sanya's first dozen [Starshots] were pathetic.
Sanya went behind the cavern, through the ruins of the cathedral's chancel. Here, the monsters were more thin.
Sanya rained down a meteor shower on the incline down to the academy doors, standing on the overhang above it. It was a drop of half a dozen paces.
Sanya led the group to the intact wall of the cathedral, opposite the cavern entrance from where they were. With a safe side, Sanya continued along it, going westward.
☆ ☆ ☆
With the portal now somewhere behind them, Sanya found monster leftovers that she had not caused. Her shoes splashed and slumped against the goo beneath her.
An oncoming wolf monster took something hard to the head, and it collapsed. The monster corpse remained, as did multiple others. A blur continued to move, dropping monsters—two blurs. One to Sanya's left, and another to the right.
Sanya blasted multiple monsters around them. Had temporal mages dropped bubbles and were fighting the monsters with their staves?
Further back, where the monsters were very thin, Sanya saw another group of students.
Sanya gasped. She ran towards them. Some were sitting on the ground, like this was just a sundown picnic. They rested in a goo-free patch of grass.
“Mai?” Sanya asked.
Sanya saw a bunch of students she did not recognize. Yet, there was also Aaliyah and Sakhr, on top of one of Aaliyah's shadow retinue.
One of the students shrugged. “I haven't seen her, sorry.”
No Zahira either. Maybe they were around somewhere.
Sanya's shoulders slumped.
Maybe she could leave the group here and continue to look.
That sounded like a decent plan. Definitely go alone into a sea of dangerous monsters!
She could handle it.
Sanya turned, casting [Meteor Bombardment] and turning another half-dozen creatures into goop and crystal.
“Of-Salama, can you stay here and integrate with the group?”
“Sure. Where are you going? You should stay too.”
Sanya shook her head. “I have people to find.”
“Fool, they're probably dead,” She muttered.
Sanya frowned. She headed back towards the monsters.
“Okay, fine. I won't be able to get you to stay. Just—don't die.”
Sanya waved a hand. “Not part of my plan.”
Of-Salama sighed.
☆ ☆ ☆
Sanya made her way back to the incline down to the academy cavern. Where would Mai be? The monsters had thinned somewhat. They still constantly trickled out, but not an oppressive tide.
Sanya went to the chancel area, then sat down a pace away from the overhang above the academy door.
Footsteps sloshed against goop. As they progressed up the incline, they became visible to Sanya.
The librarian and Barakat led the way, a few dozen students and much fewer staff followed behind. Some of the staff and the bigger students carried packs on their backs or satchels by their hips.
The librarian glanced around. In one hand, she held her staff, in another, a book. She said something to Barakat. Then they started arguing.
“Over here!” Sanya called. She stood up and walked around the hole in the ground, towards the group.
The librarian saw her and waved, beckoning her close.
Sanya killed a couple monsters on the way.
“Where on Heliux's forsaken hellscape did your group go?” The librarian demanded.
“Oh. They're off that way,” Sanya pointed northwest, speaking flatly, ignoring the librarian's anger and grief. So much for being omniscient or whatever, one theory down, maybe? “We met up with another group and they're together. They're fine.”
“You abandoned them?”
Sanya winced. “They had temporal mages and Of-Salama. They're fine.”
“Why?”
“I want to find Mai . . .”
The librarian opened her mouth, then closed. Concern creased her face.
“Is that the book?” Sanya asked.
The librarian nodded. “Can you close it?”
Close what? The book? Oh, the portal. Sanya shrugged.
The librarian dropped her staff into the purple juice below her, then flipped through the book to a page. She held it out for Sanya.
Sanya scrunched her face. “That looks complex. Do I even have enough energy for that? I might pass out. I've already used everything.”
The librarian sighed. “It has to work. You're our strongest.”
“Nur isn't?”
The librarian looked down, averting Sanya’s gaze. That and the silence told her everything.
“Oh.”
Sanya took the book with her free hand. The librarian retrieved her now very goopy staff. She and Barakat murdered the monsters while Sanya read.
Sanya began to create the spell.
It took, like, ten minutes. Far too long to create any one spell. It took hundreds of mana orbs in a complex three-dimensional shape. The book had drawings in multiple perspectives, and every time Sanya looked there was an orb she was missing.
She began sweating, limbs shaking.
Cast this, then you can continue looking for Mai.
. . . Cast this, and you'll pass out.
Finally, the mana stopped vibrating, locking into shape.
“[Terminate Portal],” Sanya cast, pointing her staff at the portal.
Her mana flew towards the portal, it rippled.
Cracks formed in the portal, like a pane of glass. It created the appropriate noises too. Sanya wanted to put her hands to her ears and block out all the sound.
Sanya and the librarian held their breath. Sanya was sure the others did too.
The cracks went longer and branched out more, like snakes searching for food, until they hit the edge of the portal. The snapping continued, like breaking ice.
The whole world seemed to groan, reverberating into Sanya's soul. She could not tell if the shake was her body or the ground beneath her feet.
The librarian and the others felt it too, glancing around with fear and uncertainty.
“Not again,” a student whined.
“Not again?” Sanya asked.
She nodded. “It was like this when it ope—”
A screech, like an insane vulture in far too much pain. It cut off the student's voice.
The portal shattered into thousands of orbs of spatial mana. A purple mist rushed out from it, enveloping everything around it, including Sanya and the group.
The world shuddered again.
Sanya couldn't see anything in the mist, not even the librarian. Sanya's own hands were but faint impressions.
The mist receded.
The librarian sighed. Not one with relief.
Sanya looked.
The portal was still there, smaller, but there. It thrummed with a strange energy.
Monsters continued to trickle out, but far fewer.
“Well,” the librarian sighed. “That will have to work.”