Chapter 77 77: Divine Wrath
Malenia fell into an exceptionally long, deep dream.
At the absolute opening of the dream, she seemed to return to the untamed days of her earliest childhood, back when her small body could still move entirely free of pain. She was running across a carpet of soft green grass beneath a bright, un-clouded sunshine, the soft voices of her parents calling out from behind to warn her not to trip. Her brother Miquella and Lucia stayed close by her flanks, keeping a watchful eye out for any stray grass roots or loose stones that might catch her footing. Shirley was bounding through the clover nearby, darting back and forth as if demanding a race. She laughed and played without a single care, sprinting toward a distant forest filled with the sweet chorus of birdsong and fragrant wild blossoms.
She seemed to command a vastly grander volume of energy than usual that day, running for a long, un-measured watch through the woods before her limbs finally registered a minor fraction of fatigue.
Malenia bent over, resting her hands against her knees to catch her breath, before calling out to Lucia, who was carrying three water flasks slung across his back. However, despite calling his name several times, zero answers returned through the trees. Turning her face to scan the perimeter, her parents and her brother were nowhere to be found, and Shirley had vanished into the deep brush at some un-mapped watch of the run.
"How strange... did my boots sprint entirely too fast, leaving everyone trailing behind in the mud?" Malenia muttered to herself, a small, proud childhood smile formatting her lips.
She looked around the quiet grove, resolving to sit down and rest her spine against the roots of a massive oak tree while the rest of the column slowly closed the distance to her coordinates.
She held her station for a vast watch, but when the shadows lengthened and still no one cleared the path, Malenia began softly humming a familiar nursery rhyme, her small face resting against her hand. Just as her patience was hitting its absolute baseline and she was preparing to stand straight to track her boots backward to find them, her vision caught the flash of a white silhouette darting out from the dark wood.
"Shirley!" she called out in joyful surprise.
The snow-white little beast paused for a microsecond upon hearing her voice, before dropping its center to execute a rapid sprint toward her knees.
But as the creature closed the distance, Malenia suddenly realized this was not her small fox at all, but a massive white hound that out-registered Shirley's dimensions by an entire statistical tier.
Just as a wave of childhood disappointment wove across her features, the white hound came to a gentle halt before her slippers, affectionately nuzzling its large head against her palm. The little girl was initial startled, but the friendly touch quickly chased away her fear; she let out a bright laugh, reaching out her small fingers to gently stroke the thick coat of fur.
However, the exact microsecond her fingers made contact with the hound's spine, a catastrophic mutation violently shattered the dream—the warm, fluffy white fur began to slough off its body like melting snowflakes, exposing a dark red, shriveled, and rotting hide underneath. A moment later, the beast's flesh began to peel away in heavy, bloody patches, laying bare a sequence of jagged, incomplete bone spurs cutting through its chassis!
Malenia stared blankly at the white hound, which had transmuted within seconds into a wretched, walking skeleton of pure decay. A torrent of terrified tears burst from her eyes, her small frame shrinking back against the oak tree as her limbs shivered with an intense trauma.
Right at that cross of data, the decaying hound violently snapped its skull upward, its battered visage contorting into an expression of absolute, feral malice. It let out a guttural, wet growl and lunged across the grass, un-clamping its bloody, tooth-filled maw to sink its fangs deep into Malenia's calf!
The precise watch that excruciating, bone-chilling pain struck her nervous system, the idyllic summer forest vanished from her vision in an instant, looking exactly like a fragile sandcastle violently submerged and erased by a rising sea!
The once lush, verdant giant trees transformed within a heartbeat into charred, decaying monuments of ash, their trunks buckling as deep fissures resembling twisted, weeping human faces split the bark. The small birds that had been perched across the branches rapidly swelled to a monstrous, bloated density, transmuting into avian nightmares that matched the physical scale of the northern trolls, venting a series of freezing, blood-curdling roars into the dark!
The skeletal hound still maintained its vice-like grip, its teeth grinding against the bone of her leg. Paralyzed by pure panic, Malenia unleashed a desperate kick with her free boot—with a sickening explosion, the vicious beast detonated the exact watch her heel met its ribs, scattering into a chaotic cloud of splintered bone fragments and a dense crimson blood mist!
Scalding, burning blood splattered directly across her pale cheeks. The little girl stood frozen for a watch, before registering a sharp, maddening itch and a burning pain radiating from the puncture wounds. Looking down, her eyes logged the horrific sight of her own flesh and blood bubbling and churning like boiling water, instantly smoothing over the jagged wound to lay bare a layer of delicate, un-marked skin.
A second later, millions of dark scarlet veins violently erupted from beneath the surface, rapidly racing across her entire body like a network of parasitic vines. Large, weeping patches of corrosive scars simultaneously bloomed at the interfaces of her hands and feet, coiling around her limbs like an alluring, toxic heraldry.
Malenia could no longer suppress the absolute terror choking her throat. She scrambled to her feet, turning her chassis to sprint back toward the horizon with every ounce of strength her fading vitals could muster.
As her boots fled across the ash, packs of decaying, skinless wild dogs seemed to continuously surge outward from the cracked earth, howling as they tracked her slipstream. The mutated avian nightmares flapped their heavy wings, maintaining a tight aerial orbit around her path. Strangely, these wretched creatures of decay desisted from launching a secondary physical assault against her flesh; instead, they trailed her boots with a fanatical, intense devotion, tracking her stride like a cohort of zealots escorting their sovereign.
Malenia dared not turn her face to check the rear guard; she simply gritted her teeth, forcing her increasingly weak, numb legs to press forward. Gradually, the edge of this ghostly, corrupted forest materialized through the gloom. If her spirit could simply hold its line for a final handful of paces, her body would clear the boundary—her brother Miquella and Lucia were undeniably holding a watch for her mantle just beyond the wood!
Her heart was pounding with a terrifying, irregular velocity, and every breath drawn into her throat felt as if the ambient air was being violently sucked out of her lungs. Every muscle strand and venous channel inside her frame felt as if it were being systematically torn apart by red-hot hooks. Malenia refused to even direct her eyes toward the legs moving beneath her skirt; her intuition explicitly warned her that the scarlet lines had already claimed the baseline of her chassis, and that a few more watches would transmute her identity into one of those mindless, walking corpses patrolling the dark.
Finally, she lunged her torso forward, completely losing her balance in her absolute haste to clear the tree line. Her frame executed several violent, chaotic tumbles across the soil, but her momentum successfully carried her body entirely out of the nightmare forest!
Malenia opened her eyes wide, staring at the soft green grass beneath her fingers as she felt the warm, un-filtered sunlight washing over her skin. The heavy thud of the pursuing hounds and the screeching of the avian monsters had vanished into absolute silence. She had successfully escaped the perimeter; the balance had finally returned to its default alignment.
She struggled to lift her chin, her blurry, tear-stained vision mapping the distant silhouettes of several familiar figures sprinting across the plain to intercept her mantle.
BONG—
A heavy, monumental, and profoundly solemn cathedral bell suddenly echoed through the heavens, its deep resonance violently vibrating within the absolute center of Malenia's consciousness. Every solitary thread of the beautiful childhood illusion receded from her mind like a swift, low tide.
She rubbed her eyes, directing her gaze back down to audit the "grass" supporting her fingers. She slowly, fearfully lifted her eyelids to survey her surroundings, her entire physical form freezing dead-still across the stones.
This comprised an immense, breathtakingly magnificent underground metropolis, commanding a architectural majesty that easily matched the scale of the royal capital. Towering over a hundred meters into the subterranean rafters were monolithic stone walls deeply carved with the colossal statues of long-bearded, ancient elders—though these monuments had clearly sustained a thousand winters of environmental erosion, their countenances rendered completely blurred and smooth by time. At the absolute apex of thousands of towering columns, gargantuan bronze cauldrons burned with high-voltage, crimson flames, while a scalding, boiling red river roared nearby, emptying its contents into a vast, blood-red sea that stretched toward the horizon.
A thick, ceremonial carpet spanning a width of more than ten paces was spread flat beneath her slippers, cutting a straight line toward the absolute grandest, most terrifyingly massive temple anchoring the center of the dead city. She strained her ears against the silence, and it appeared a sequence of distant, echoing calls were emanating from deep within the inner sanctuary of the temple.
As the silhouettes tracking the edges of the boulevard drew closer, Malenia's vision finally mapped their structural parameters with absolute clarity: this comprised a massive legion of grotesque, nightmare creatures that resembled gargantuan shrimp, their hands clutching pale, hyper-sharp spears carved from human bone, their narrow, insectoid eye sockets gleaming with a faint, fanatical red luminescence.
Within minutes, more and more duplicate entities poured out from the shadows of the surrounding ashlar coliseums. They swarmed across the paving stones like a plague of locusts, halting their vanguard exactly one hundred paces removed from Malenia's slippers, before dropping their masses to kneel in absolute unison!
The Kindred of Rot lay completely prostrate along both flanks of the grand ceremonial carpet, keeping a silent, reverent vigil as they waited for Malenia's boots to advance toward the temple at the heart of the capital—looking exactly like a congregation of fanatical, devout believers worshipping the absolute incarnation of their God!
A faint, deep crimson light ignited within the depths of Malenia's pupils. An unknown, law-overriding cosmic force violently seized control of her nervous system, lifting her weight from the stone to force her boots to march forward, step by steady step, down the center of the avenue. Enforced by the un-blinking watch of millions of zealous, burning eyes, she ascended the monumental stairs fronting the temple, climbing the steps one by single one.
Reaching the absolute summit of the grand staircase, right as the colossal palace doors were beginning to creak open to receive her mantle, her movements suddenly froze, a flash of profound, childlike confusion cutting through her features.
What specific coordinate does this architecture represent? Why have my boots tracked a line into this dead city? And... who am I?
Right at that watch of resistance, the crimson luminescence inside her pupils violently burst into a blinding flare. Standing a mere, single step removed from crossing the threshold, the hidden Outer God who had spent un-measured eons silently monitoring her bloodline appeared to have finally exhausted its divine patience, unleashing its full volume to forcefully drive her small hand to complete the terminal ascension ritual!
Malenia's countenance wove into an expression of fierce, agonizing internal struggle. She strained every nerve to arrest her outstretched fingers, yet her trembling hand was still systematically forced to advance inch by painful inch toward the gargantuan brass door—a gate etched with millions of weeping, decaying patterns. With a solitary, gentle push against the bronze, this grand cosmic sacrifice, engineered across thousands of winters of meticulous manipulation, would achieve its absolute, most perfect and glorious consummation under the stars!
BOOM—!!!!!
Suddenly, millions of dazzling, solar-bright golden rays violently tore open the gloomy, chaotic sky of the dream, followed a microsecond later by a dense cascade of dark blue, ice-forged starlight chains that wrapped around Malenia's chassis to forcefully anchor her boots to the stone step!
The infinite ocean of the Kindred of Rot let out a furious, collective roar, surging up the staircase like a tidal wave, only to collide head-on against a towering, monumental wall of pure Carian ice and snow. Regardless of how fanatically they threw their chitinous masses against the barrier, they lacked the kinetic power to close the gap to touch the girl anchoring the summit!
They swung their sharp bone spears in an un-mitigated fury, carving jagged craters into the face of the ice wall, before discharging millions of high-velocity bone shards from their carapaces, blasting dense clouds of white snowflakes off the structural line!
If this static attrition war sustained its current parameters—whether the calendar required ten winters, a hundred winters, or a full millennium of continuous friction—their legions would eventually, legally chew through every solitary barrier to welcome the descent of the Goddess they had awaited across endless ages!
Right as this colossal subterranean war was hitting its absolute peak velocity, a thunderous, sky-shattering Ancient Dragon Roar violently resounded through the entirety of the heavens and the earth!
ROOOOOAAAR—!!!!!
The deep crimson light formatting Malenia's eyes instantaneously dimmed its indicators. She lifted her face toward the rafters, watching a colossal, world-spanning Silver Dragon whose four massive wings completely blotted out the atmosphere roar down from the high horizon. Its majestic, mountain-sized draconic chassis cut through the sky like a cataclysmic meteor, violently tearing through the blood-red cloud banks blocking its trajectory to crash directly down upon the temple roof in a furious, earth-shaking storm of lightning and stone!
The titanic, bone-armored dragon claws swept across the outer architecture of the grand sanctuary, obliterating the columns. Malenia monitored the descent of millions of tons of collapsing ashlar masonry, chunks of stone about to crush her small frame completely, when the sky above her head suddenly went pitch-black—the dragon had aggressively flapped its massive wings to drop its center of gravity directly fronting the temple gates, spreading its four gold-etched wings to protect her petite form entirely beneath the safety of its chest and abdomen plates.
An incredibly familiar, warm draconic aura rushed across her senses, throwing her chaotic thoughts into a state of sudden stillness. A terrifying, alien outer will was still desperately trying to drive her muscles to lunge forward to push the door, commanding her fingers to un-sheathe the short sword dripping with toxic scarlet venom from the altar within. However, across this watch, an even grander, more immediate storm of pure draconic presence systematically shattered the alien programming, continuously awakening every single beautiful memory her soul cherished deep within her heart.
In the quiet of the shelter, she seemed to return to that brilliantly lit palace night, where the sharp, handsome profile of the silver-haired Ancient Dragon youth was cleanly reflected within her clear pupils.
"Lucia... does your throat command the biological capacity to breathe a true fire?" the little girl had asked, mustering the absolute baseline of her childhood courage.
The boy had offered a mischievous smirk, narrowing his silver eyes to project a mock ferocity as his voice dropped into a low rumble. "An absolute certainty, little one! My jaws can not only breathe the flame, but my teeth also possess the capacity to eat people whole—specifically targeting small, pouting princesses of your exact tier!"
Malenia extended her hand, her skin still mapped with the traces of the scarlet veins, to gently touch her cheek. Suddenly, her palm registered a wet, liquid sensation—un-checked tears had completely filled the corners of her eyes, soaking through her silk collar.
She lifted her face, her eyes locking onto the massive white dragon looking down at her form, its brilliant icy-blue pupils broadcasting a gentle, protective warmth that stood in absolute contrast to its world-shattering draconic majesty.
The massive beast playfully winked its eye at her, as if hand-delivering a silent, personal message: "Banish the fear; my vanguard has cleared the gates to escort your mantle home."
The very next instant, a blinding, solar-bright torrent of incandescent dragon flames completely illuminated the entirety of the dead metropolis. Within the girl's blurry, tear-filled eyes, the magnificent crimson firestorm looked exactly like a display of brilliant festival fireworks blooming across the canvas of a dark winter night!
The thunderous column of dragon breath swept relentlessly across the incessantly roaring legions of the Kindred of Rot, leaving massive, clean blank spaces across the limestone steps in its wake—looking exactly like a beautiful ink painting being smoothly cleared by an absolute eraser. The monsters roared, howled, and groaned in agony, their chitinous carapaces systematically turning into scattered gray ash that drifted downward to dissolve into the red river, before being swallowed completely by the blood-red lake below.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing, and unimaginably high-pitched shriek of pure cosmic fury erupted from the innermost chambers of the sealed temple—a shriek that compressed all the ancient resentment, thwarted malice, and celestial anger logged across the history of the outer cosmos!
A grand, multi-generational scheme meticulously laid out by a supreme deity across countless eons was on the literal precipice of reaping its ultimate dividend, when its lines were violently, illegally broken by the joint intervention of three newly born demigod lives. Even separated by the endless gulf of space and time, the raw vibration of that Divine Wrath—which seemed to harbor the capacity to destroy everything drawing breath under the stars—still dropped a freezing weight of terror into the air!
However, across this specific watch of the clock, the young gods had securely locked an absolute, temporary victory into their ledger. The deep crimson light filling Malenia's pupils systematically receded back into the darkest basements of her soul, and the toxic veins and corrosive marks mapping her limbs dissolved into nothingness.
A moment later, the magnificent, ancient city before her eyes began to crumble and vaporize, inch by single inch, across the void. Then, a warm, soft, and liquid darkness gently surged over her consciousness, burying this long, disillusioned dream deep within the quiet protective custody of the night.
Malenia's respirations smoothed into a soft, gentle rhythm, exactly as if a vast season of time had drifted off the calendar, until the initial golden rays of the winter dawn cut through the cathedral windowpanes to spill a warm light across her coverlet.
She registered a warm, soft, and slightly wet sensation repeatedly brushing against her cheek—she hummed softly beneath her breath, her sleepy eyelids flickering open. The moment the double vision of sleep dissipated from her sight, her clear eyes logged the image of Shirley staring down at her face with wide, un-blinking intensity.
The little snow-white fox remained frozen for a handful of seconds, before its small brain fully processed the data point proving its mistress had cleared her coma. It immediately executed an excited lunge to bury its fluffy mass straight into her arms, nuzzling her chin with its small snout while its massive, cloud-like tail danced through the air like a blooming flower.
She let out a soft childhood chuckle, her fingers teasing the white fur in her embrace. Within minutes, a flurry of rapid, undisciplined footsteps violently echoed from the corridor outside. In the blink of an eye, Lucia aggressively shoved the heavy bedroom door open to burst into the room, a thoroughly disheveled Prince Miquella—whose pale complexion had barely managed to reclaim its default color—hastily tucked sideways under his left arm plate like a sack of grain. Tracking right behind their heels was the exceptionally beautiful Princess Ranni.
The exact watch Miquella's eyes verified that Malenia had returned to the conscious world, he broke completely free from Lucia's arm lock, scrambling across the rugs to clasp her small hands, his tongue launching a frantic sequence of inquiries regarding her physical stability. Lucia closed the gap from the parallel flank, and the two boys began aggressively bombarding her station with a non-stop barrage of anxious questions.
Ranni paused near the foot of the bed to observe the chaotic display, her silver eyelashes narrowing until her patience finally hit its absolute baseline. She strode forward, her right hand executing two sharp, heavy raps directly against the backs of their respective skulls, her voice emerging in a sharp, academic snap.
"Do your processing centers lack the elementary tracking required to decode the reality that her system is still maintaining an exceptionally high layer of physical fatigue? What specific urgency is driving the mouths of you two fools to crowd her perimeter!"
Confronted by her fierce authoritative glare, the two princes—who had been completely flustered by their own raw protectiveness—could only offer a pair of awkward courtly coughs, stepping back to cede the bedside line to Ranni's mantle. After posing a handful of soft, highly precise analytical questions to verify her vitals, Ranni commanded Malenia to preserve her rest, stating that her servants had already prepared a heavily padded carriage to escort her back to the Sacred Tree Palace the moment her dress was secured.
A short watch down the line, having verified that Malenia had indeed reclaimed a stable footing, her spirits and facial color scoring vastly superior to the metrics logged the previous night, Ranni finally permitted the two boys to un-roll the directory of trivial events that had transpired across the capital since the setting of the sun.
Following the successful calibration of the seal, omitting the exhausted Miquella who had collapsed immediately, both Lucia and Ranni had held a non-stop watch throughout the entire night. Lucia had even dispatched two elite Storm Knights to gallop back to the main estate strictly to harvest Shirley from the salon, ensuring the little fox could be present to soothe the girl's baseline stress metrics the moment her eyelids cleared.
Following a long, disjointed stream of casual conversation, the padded carriage finalized its readiness outside the cathedral courtyard gates. The three royal youths finally resolved to transition Malenia's frame back to her private bedchambers within the inner palace ring to allow her system to slowly absorb the recovery.
Early winter was already hovering on the literal precipice of the calendar, and the morning sun wove a faint, crisp chill through the avenues. Yet, every single operator anchoring the caravan heading toward the Sacred Tree Palace—ranging from the three demigod sovereigns leading the vanguard down to the heavy knights representing three entirely un-aligned imperial dynasties—broadcasted a deep, unmistakable aura of genuine ease and un-fused joy.
Amidst the rhythmic, echoing thud of horse hooves against the masonry, the column rapidly cleared the central checkpoints to drop anchor before the grand courtyard of the Sacred Tree Palace. Having safely escorted Miquella and Malenia past their inner arches, Ranni wove her mount around, her blue eyes tracking the massive limestone architecture of the adjoining estate before turning her riding crop to point at the gates. "Does that specific infrastructure define the coordinates of your private sleeping quarters, Prince?"
Lucia nodded his silver head. "Affirmative. That is Valeria Hall."
He paused, his eyes scanning the surrounding residential ring. "Where have the ministries assigned the quarters for your own retinue? Her Majesty Queen Marika and the Lord Consort have yet to return to the capital ring; has the High Court steward properly allocated an estate to manage your comfort?"
"Cast your vision toward that quadrant—my station administers the line over there!" Ranni indicated a magnificent, white-marble palace rising directly parallel to Lucia's own residence with her crop. "The old administrative files cataloged the structure under the title of Rosalier Palace, but my own authority has already issued a non-negotiable executive order to re-write the brass plates to read as the Dark Moon Palace. Concurrently, my twin brothers have securely locked their registries into the adjoining structures—Ludia Palace and Triumph Hall—both of which score less than a brief ten-minute march from your own front door."
Lucia checked the surrounding palace gates, his eyes capturing the data point proving that the standard capital sentinel guards had been completely stripped from the checkpoints, replaced instead by the heavy shields and silver-and-blue plate of the Carian Royal Knights. Turning the variable over inside his thoughts, he deduced the layout—this comprised a calculated piece of strategic chess left behind by Queen Marika's own hand before her carriage had cleared the outer walls.
He allowed a long, deep breath to escape his lungs, his shoulders dropping into a relaxed alignment. Although his vanguard had been conformed to navigate an infinite directory of terrifying twists and high-fatality turns across the past single day and night watch... his boots had finally successfully crossed the terminal finish line of the crisis.
Following the closure of this sun, his name had officially locked a permanent, un-assailable foothold inside the absolute heart of the imperial capital. Dozens of high-yield strategic initiatives and underground networks that had spent winters idling within the preparation stages could finally begin their slow, calculated deployment to get fully on track.
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