12-86. In the Palm of His Hand
Ethereal viscera splattered across the silver disc, staining it deep indigo. Before the blood had a chance to pool, it coalesced into an arm that latched onto the ground. Like it was pulling itself from a well, the reforming djinn crawled out of the ground, only to use its newfound existence to rejoin the attack.
Elijah had seen it play out hundreds of times over the past few minutes as he wreaked havoc on the summoned creatures. To his senses, they felt both like independent creatures and something akin to detached limbs. However, those limbs were still attached to Etkatiran through a series of woven tendrils of pure energy.
Or mostly pure.
There was corruption there as well, creeping through the entire structure of the djinn’s being. The result was that each time they reformed, they were a little darker. A little more unnatural. Maybe with a couple of extra limbs or a stray tentacle. And they were far more vicious.
The same could be said of their host.
Etkatiran floated above it all, like a magical spirit crossed with a mutated octopus made of ethera. He directed the battle like a composer, maintaining a half dozen spells while managing the djinn attackers he’d created. But just like the living manifestations of his will, the djinn himself was obviously corrupted.
His tentacles had split into dozens of misshapen offshoots, some of which were tipped by wicked barbs. Others sported nascent eyes. Or three-eyed faces screaming for freedom. Or maybe just a release from their seemingly endless torment. There were even tiny hands sprouting from the blue tendrils.
In short, it looked like Etkatiran’s meddling with the abyss had put him on the path to becoming an abomination. Not unlike the creature Elijah had fought on the chain bridge what felt like a lifetime ago. Only with a lot more tentacles and a brain to direct all that power.
Elijah had tried to reach the djinn, but he’d found every attempt stymied by one spell or another. Whether it was increased gravity that kept him glued to the surface of the disc, another skipping time loop, or space that stretched for miles when it should’ve only covered a couple of feet, the spells were both creative and varied.
The others had tried similar strategies, but it was clear that, despite their attempts to study djinn spellcraft, they were far inferior to a true master.
But there was hope.
Over the course of his last few attempts to reach the djinn, Elijah had discovered that he got a little closer with each iteration. The message was clear – kill the conjured djinn to weaken their summoner. Perhaps if they destroyed enough of them, they’d finally get a shot at Etkatiran.
Nearby, Hu Shui teleported so quickly that Elijah had difficulty tracking his companion. Everywhere he went, flesh flew, and monsters fell. The same was true of Benedict, who used the entirely different tactic of summoning one gleefully suicidal imp after another. They bounded ahead like demonic bunnies, cackling all the while. Until they exploded in a conflagration of fire and pure destruction that tore through the summoned creatures with ease.
But they just reconstituted themselves and kept coming.
Or it was probably more accurate to refer to them as new creations that used the remains of the slain to grow into different individuals. Perhaps if they’d been allowed to live for more than a few moments at a time, they might have become truly separate.
Such questions plagued Elijah as he sank into the trance-like state he tended to employ while slaughtering droves of enemies. Maintaining complete focus in that kind of situation was completely impossible, especially when none of his adversaries could truly harm him.
It was a grind, and he treated it as such.
Long minutes passed with more of the same until, at last, something changed. Etkatiran shouted something about freedom and tyranny, but Elijah was too wrapped up in the new complication that he didn’t parse the words.
Because a series of tiny, gold armillary spheres had manifested all around him. The same was true of his companions, and the effect was immediate. Small tendrils of ethera erupted from those rotating and evolving creations, wrapping themselves around his limbs until he could hardly move.
Elijah pushed as much ethera into his Mantle of Authority as he could manage, but to his horror, the spheres simply absorbed the branches of his soul. Then, they pushed back. His mantle retreated, bit by bit, until it remained inside his body.
That was when the true purpose of those spheres was made manifest.
He dropped to his knees as a powerful force drained the ethera right out of him. Gasping – both in terms of his breath as well as the apertures of his mind – he struggled to move. Meanwhile, corruption, dense and disgusting, flowed into him. It crept forward with agonizing slowness, like sludge through a corroded pipe, threatening to overwhelm the very essence of who he was.
Raised black veins spread across his forehead, then down his arms to branch towards his torso.
Elijah pushed back.
Screaming even as the conjured djinn ripped into him, he channeled every ounce of will he possessed into fighting the corruption to a stalemate. And then, he shoved it back the way it had come.
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It did not go easily. Nor did it go quickly. But inch by inch, he managed to gain some measure of control. Finally, black ooze seeped from his pores as his Mantle of Authority erupted into being. The branches spread, further and faster than ever before. But they were also more complex.
It wasn’t a step forward in cultivation, but rather, the full expression of the power he’d developed within the Elemental Maelstrom. Since then, he’d used the Mantle of Authority hundreds of times, and for various purposes. Mostly, he’d employed it to nullify foreign ethera, but it was also used to heal and cleanse.
The last one had become the focus, and the corruption could not exist beneath the branches of his soul. The spheres flashed with darkness bound by white light, doubling the density of the abyssal energy. And yet, Elijah’s soul was indomitable. It held firm, pushing back and obliterating the foul power.
It all happened in the space of a few moments, but while he struggled against the corruption, time seemed to stop. Perhaps it did, considering the setting. Either way, when it finally broke before his will, so too did time return to normal. It did so with a snap that sent cracks through the very fabric of reality.
The djinn at the center of it all reeled.
Elijah recognized the opening, and he shot forward, the last vestiges of Herald of Regrowth lending him enough power to break through the obstacles in his path. He blistered across time and space, then leaped. His hands, wreathed in flame, pulsed with power as he collided with the massive djinn.
Etkatiran burned.
The smell of melting rubber assaulted Elijah’s senses, but he paid it no mind. Instead, he ripped and clawed, tearing through the blue flesh with reckless abandon. At the same time, his renewed Mantle of Authority branched out, slamming into Etkatiran’s soul.
But just as Elijah’s branches were unassailable, so too was Etkatiran’s own Mantle of Authority. The two forces fought to a standstill, but with the last vestiges of Herald of Regrowth burning through him, the corrupted djinn’s body was like brittle rock. Elijah burrowed through it until he reached something much harder.
Like the automatons, Etkatiran possessed a physical core where his power was centered. In reality, it was no more than an extremely dense concentration of ethera, so thick that it become a solid, crystalline structure.
Elijah ripped it away.
His hands burned down to the bone, but even without muscles or ligaments, they were still capable of articulation. That allowed him to maintain his grip. The second the crystal came free, Etkatiran’s body melted.
But his presence remained.
The second Elijah’s ability ran its course, the crystal exploded. Elijah ragdolled across the space, hitting the ground and rolling all the way to the edge of disc. When he tried to rise, he felt that shards of crystal had embedded themselves into his own body. In doing so, they played havoc with his ethereal channels, which flowed in starts and stops until Elijah overwhelmed them with the power of his Mantle of Authority.
They disintegrated into motes of ethera that drifted up into the sky.
The silver rings surrounding the disc abruptly stopped. The air stood still, the only movement coming from the labored breathing of Elijah and his companions as well as the drifting motes of energy from suddenly evaporated magical minions. It had left a coat of black slime on the silver surface of the disc.
It sizzled with foul power.
“Is it…is it finished?” asked Benedict, his shoulders slumped. Elijah’s Mantle of Authority had dispersed the corruption trying to overwhelm his allies, but they clearly still felt the aftermath in the exhaustion of their souls.
“I did not receive a notification,” said Hu Shui, who’d teleported directly next to Elijah. He held one of the fallen armillary spheres, which disappeared a second later. Presumably, he’d stored it away for later study.
Before Elijah could respond, something stirred in the center of the silver platform.
Energy roiled, and he braced himself for a devastating continuation of the battle. Heat bloomed as ethera coalesced into a ball. Even from so far away, Elijah could feel the pressure it exerted upon the atmosphere. What’s more, every flavor of energy was present. Ice and water, fire and earth. Shadows. Air. Death. Nature. All tied together to blend into the ethera he associated with his native plane of existence.
Through it all was a thread of corruption that turned his stomach, coating his thoughts in disgusting slime.
It spun.
At first, Elijah felt it as a gentle pull. The corrupted ooze covering the ground inched toward the ball as if it had a gravitational pull all its own.
Hu Shui came to that same realization, saying, “This is bad. Very, very bad.”
The ball grew in diameter until it was nearly twenty feet across. However, the majority of its development came from sheer density. What’s more, the strength of its gravitational pull increased exponentially with every passing second.
Shifting into his dragon form, he engaged Absolute Grasp and shouted for the others to grab hold of his wings. They managed it just in time, because as the orb further condensed, its pull became so powerful that even Elijah began to slide across the now-slick surface of the disc.
He hunkered down, but that did no good. His wings creaked under the pressure imposed by the two men clinging to them. Then, a branch snapped.
Elijah grunted in pain as Hu Shui moved to the thicker, main branch of his wing. All the while, he slid closer to the ball of roiling energy. It did not happen quickly, but the pull was inexorable. Undeniable. It was going to win.
At the same time, it became more volatile. The thread of corruption wove itself throughout the entire structure, tainting everything. Then, finally, it exploded into a cloud of multicolored gasses that suffused the entire atmosphere.
The resultant shockwave overwhelmed Absolute Grasp, and Elijah was torn free of his position, only to go tumbling through the air.
But before he could right himself, the entire process restarted. The cloud of disparate ethera, inextricably intertwined with corruption, rushed back into a ball. And Elijah and his companions went with it.
His mind worked overtime, pulling in dense flows of ethera. His Mantle of Authority, still pushed to its limits, acted as a filter, purifying the tainted energy. Meanwhile, he dual-cast Blessing of the Grove and Nature’s Bloom. Once Blessing of the Grove took effect, he added Wild Resurgence – on himself and his two companions – in an effort to heal the injuries caused by the violent explosion.
His wing snapped back into place, allowing him to guide his flight. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t resist the ever-increasing strength of the pull. Not unless he did something drastic.
He shouted for the other two to hold on, but he knew they couldn’t hear it over the rushing sound of the ongoing implosion. Then, Elijah shifted into the Shape of the Sky.
He regretted it immediately, because in the much weaker form, he felt the pull even more keenly. The Shape of the Sky had never been about overwhelming power. It was almost useless in most fights. But one thing it did very well was speed.
Elijah reoriented himself and pushed the form to its limits.
The problem was instantly obvious. He could outpace the power of the pull, if only barely. What he could not do was endure the damage that being yanked in two separate directions did to his body.
With the other two clinging to him, he did something else he knew he would soon regret. But in the back of his mind, he realized that there was no choice in the matter.
So, he clenched, body and mind, before activating Lightning Rush.