Ch. 2.36 | Emergence
PoV: Barakat, a fisherman (Rushd), Aisha
Barakat stood by the western edge of Hope Academy's campus, Aeolian staff in hand.
At the city's edge, some large monster had emerged from a portal Barakat hadn't seen before and laid waste to the edge of Hope.
Mages had run towards it while citizens had run away, screaming in terror.
The events of three months ago had flashed across his eyes.
Nur had opened the portal to the Abyss, the realm dedicated to Spatial magic. So many monsters had emerged from it, not only killing the fool, but too many of their own students.
Nur's legacy continued to haunt Barakat, and by extension, the world.
Then, a figure he had never hoped to lay his eyes on again appeared in the air, floating like some master of Aeolian magic.
. . . She had repelled the entity and chased it off before much more damage had befallen Hope. Esmat has been there too. Why the both of them? When had they gotten so strong?
Barakat had watched that thing level buildings and move at impossible speeds, while screeching like mad. He had watched as his fellow mages peppered it with attacks but failed to do any real damage.
Both Esmat and Sanya had looked ephemeral and gray. And having held their own against that . . . that demon . . . just what flavor of monster were Sanya and Esmat?
Barakat had known! He had known that the vile wretch was a monster. Only eighteen years old and yet a cold and evil thing, murdering one of his students and bewitching another—Mai.
Ah well. He could have some relief knowing that the monster was gone. Order could return to Hope and—
Crack. Split. Shatter.
Barakat gaped, frozen and watching in horror as another thing emerged from where the first had. His heart beat, slamming like thunder strikes except at an unprecedented speed.
Not another . . . Please come back and defeat that thing.
Crack.
That sounded much closer.
Wh-where?
Barakat looked up.
H-hey! This was where the Abyss portal had been, three months ago.
It seemed history really did repeat itself.
The sky shattered, and a second—third in total, now—entity emerged from among an endless field of blue, maybe a couple dozen meters up.
Barakat's stomach dropped. Sweat dripped down his brow.
He turned and ran.
☆ ☆ ☆
Rushd moved his tiny boat along the lake, an oar in either hand. Wood was getting ever so cheaper and more common. This tiny vessel had cost him a small fortune, though.
Still, it was useful!
There were fish and things to catch in Glorestra now—or, well, the lake above what used to be Glorestra a mere three months ago. Now it was a vast reservoir of water with stone structures poking out from the gentle waves. The high walls surrounded the lake in a circle, tents and other temporary structures had been placed atop the wide ramparts for the more ill fortune among Glorestra. Everyone else lived in new structures outside the walls.
Well, the top level of the old palace was still habitable, as was the top level of the legislature. Nobody had found a use for the cathedrals towers yet. Rushd doubted anyone ever would, unless they wanted to install floors in that thing. It would be easier just to build a new house outside the walls.
And so Rushd rowed his boat. With him was a net, a fishing pole, and a spear. It all depended on how he felt like catching his fish that day. Sometimes he switched it up in one day, just to keep it fresh. He would never get tired of this—of tranquil days on the water, so new and neat. The entirety of Glorestra would have dreamed of as much water as was now here. It was like a wish come true, sent down by Heliux itself. He could sell fish to make ends meet and to feed himself—
His boat suddenly shook.
Rushd jumped in his seat, glancing around his small wooden structure. There was no reason for that! He has not shifted his weight prior or anything.
The water rippled, the waves got a bit more aggressive.
That was unusual. Very unusual. Small Abyss portals did not open in the waters. The largest things in these waters would be Rushd and the other fishermen if they fell in. The fish were small things.
Rushd's boat rocked again, threatening to capsize.
He peered over the side of his boat, into the dark waters below.
All he saw were the skeletons of old, tan buildings, green sea weeds and other plants growing, and the occasional school of fish, silvery-gray to fleshy reds.
There was a new weight around his torso, cold and wet. It sent a shiver through his body, which did not move, constrained by the weight.
What—?
Rushd looked down.
A thick ephemeral gray appendage had affixed itself to his body. It continued over the boat and into the waters below and behind him.
Rushd's heart beat quicker. Yet, mostly, he was curious.
What strange sea creature was this? Why had he never encountered anything like it before?
Um. He should probably sever the limb before the creature got any ideas. Was it violent? It was probably violent. He did not want to be this thing's next meal, no-o!
Rushd reached for his spear.
And then—
—the appendage yanked on him, sending his boat flipping over and plunging him into the cold Glorestran waters.
Where it drained him of all his life.
☆ ☆ ☆
The eldritch entity crushed another pair of homes. Long, spindly limbs instantly killed those they touched, draining them of life and leaving their bodies sprawled on the street. One and even two-story buildings crumbled like baked goods.
“[Necrosis],” Aisha cast at the entity. “Where is Sanya when you need her?”
“Always here! Maybe she's caught up in something!” Fazl yelled back, through the noise of spells and falling rubble and screams.
Aisha and Fazl stood nearby a dozen mages. There were two Spatials, some Elementals, and Temporal mages like Fajr.
The southeast end of Calderae had transformed into rubble and corpses. Maybe thirty buildings lay smushed in a half-circle biting into the city, before a more-or-less straight path of destruction carving inward, towards the caldera.
Twenty-four mages outside of Aisha's group were currently surrounding the entity in a loose perimeter, throwing everything they could at it. Further back, groups of soldiers waited. Not nearly enough mages or soldiers were currently here. They probably needed every single individual they could get.
The few Temporal mages that had rushed in were among the casualties—shriveled bodies consumed by the eldritch entity. Even time bubbles could not have saved them from the entity. Each individual was entirely outclassed by this otherworlder.
Why were these things like this? They sought out life and indiscriminately feasted upon them, crushing everything in their wake.
They were so unlike predators hunting their prey, yet eerily familiar. It was like the entity had turned the natural cycle of life into something extra terrifying and wrong. How could it just intrude upon their world and make them shrivel up and suffer? How much did it need to feast to be sated. Would it ever be enough?
Aisha did not really know how to explain how she felt about it properly. She just knew the thing made her burn with rage and that she wanted it gone. Wiped off this world. Make it scared off. Whatever. Anything that got rid of it.
A nagging thought at the back of her mind told her that Zulfaqar and the librarian had been right. Sanya and Esmat should have died to prevent this from happening.
It was Calderae's darkest hour, and yet, where were they? . . .
Nadiyya was back at the guild hall, relaying messages with her birds. One—or more—of those should be looking for Sanya and Esmat to get them back.
They had known when something had shown up in Hope. Maybe they were still fighting that one, or caught up somewhere else.
Mai was also safe in the hall. She was not much of a fighter.
And, well, those two were safe for as long as no eldritch entity encroached onto the guild hall. Lania was probably there too. Calinichia was . . . somewhere—probably anywhere.
Perhaps it was selfish—it definitely was—but Aisha wanted those Sanya and Esmat here, rather than anywhere else. Actually, why couldn't they split up, assuming they hadn't already?
The entity blinked out of existence and reappeared beyond the perimeter of mages.
A vigilant cluster of a hundred soldiers died in an instant as the entity reappeared, limbs thrashing about as it drew in a green aura.
“Back!” Aisha shouted. “I want all of our soldiers back! It's evident that they won't be able to contribute!”
Aisha glanced around. Only the few closest groups had heard her.
“Spatial mages, send out those orders! I want those troops to get all our citizens as far away from this thing as possible!”
The nearest couple of Spatial mages nodded and then disappeared to [Organic Displacement] incantations.
Aisha cast [Necrosis] on the entity again. Evidently, it was barely doing damage, if any at all.
The entity continued to blink around, not bothering with walking or any sort of movement like that. It crushed a few mages and then leveled more buildings.
Aisha cursed.
Fazl flew closer to the entity and attacked with various spells, now out of her range of hearing.
Thankfully, the ranks of mundane soldiers had started retreating. Aisha would really have to up the distribution of grimoires and make sure all her soldiers picked up on at least one mage type.
Not that she had time for that with the advent of the end of the world.
Mundane soldiers used to be enough as every-day guards, when cities did not go to war with each other and when magic was thought to only be innate.
Then the academy happened and word got out that it could be taught. The books were found and distributed. Society has learned so much in those three months.
And also, the tempest gone made it easier to move around, and that included armies.
It allowed for people like Zulfaqar to go on a conquest.
People like Sanya existed, rendering armies useless—and the eldritch entities arrived.
Mundane armies weren't the only useless things, couldn't Aisha and everyone else just kill this thing already? How much could it take?
With Sanya and everything else now happening, Aisha could not help but feel useless.
Although, Sanya, Esmat, and the eldritch entities were a special case, leagues above everyone else in terms of power.
It still made Aisha feel small, like an ant among giants. An ant with a whole colony that could still do nothing except watch the giants fight each other and hope they don't step on her mound.
Which, this entity was doing.
Magic attacks continued to blast against the entity, being little more than pinpricks of light and heat against the raging behemoth.
Another building was crushed.
Then another.
A couple more mages were slapped away by appendages as the entity teleported.
Fazl was doing a decent job at keeping out of range from the entity's appendages. His Aeolian spells didn't seem to be doing anything at all, though.
Aisha did not know what call to make.
Retreat?
Would they just be chased down and hunted? Could they escape?
Should they continue to press the attack in hope that something finally takes it down?
Stall for time until Sanya and Esmat arrived to defeat this thing?
A raven fluttered down in front of Aisha. She put out her left hand and the bird dropped a note into it.
Sanya and Esmat are still at Hope. Fighting two of the otherworldly monsters.
Aisha sighed.
Did Nadiyya tell Sanya and Esmat to come back to Calderae to fight this entity? Would they come?
Aisha's thinking was cut off as the entity teleported in front of her.
It was an ugly mass of gray, ephemeral flesh. Appendages protruded out from it without any sort of pattern. There were spindly, skeletal arms with joints and fingers, long tentacles that could curve and move anywhere and however it wanted, and serrated claws.
The thing had no eyes nor mouth nor ears or anything that a human face would have. It was a hairless thing, as well. No legs supported it and yet it could move with far more grace and speed than a slug or snail.
Aisha cursed again.
And then her world blurred as a limb knocked her over and onto the ground. At least she wasn't dead yet. If she needed to breathe, all the air would have been knocked out of her lungs. Instead, her torso throbbed and ached.
Notably, she felt something, instead of the nothingness of a loss of consciousness or even of the finality of death.
Oh, did she even have life force that could be drained, since she was already dead? Maybe that was it.
Aisha’s head pounded and her brain could not get ahold of anything she saw.
She thought she had heard Fazl call her name out, but her ears just rang like a swarm of angry bees and a few reverberating gongs because why not?
The sky cracked again, from behind Aisha, in the distance. She had tilted her head to look. Although she had to close her eyes and bring a hand to her head—uh, except she couldn't.
There might have been rubble or other corpses on top of her or maybe she had just lost her arms.
Anyway, perhaps that was Sanya or Esmat portaling to Calderae with an eldritch ability? . . . Finally come to save the day?
No. Of course not.
A second entity emerged over Calderae, this time to the northwest.
Closer to the guild hall.
Aisha's mind filled up with panic and more fear and a bit more panic because she couldn't have enough.
Zulfaqar had said a week at most before the eldritch entities arrived, yet still, a mere two days after that? . . . They really got the low roll of the dice.
Sanya, Esmat, please finish in Hope and come back . . .