Chapter 206: A Promise Renewed
No matter how many times my eyes tried to tell me, I fought them. It just wasn’t possible. But the truth remained clear before me, as undeniable as the sun. The city was gone.
Not just destroyed, or razed to the ground, but gone. Our little bubble bobbed up and down in the air, floating above a massive caldera-like crater. The last remnants of the Starfall flitted through the air like the shimmer of a hot day. The bottom of the crater was a mass of glowing rock, melted and glassy from the absurd levels of energy released upon the impact. Deep chasms fractured out of the epicenter, running through the crater in jagged, dendritic patterns.
It was the scale of it all was beyond comprehension. The crater itself devoured the entire topography where the town stood, with a radius well over a mile. The sizzling bottom was hundreds of feet below us, a hazy bowl of dust and flickering magical residue. The river that flowed through the town was nothing more than a distant memory, with even the evaporated clouds of steam consumed in the blast. The impact created a shockwave so powerful it leveled anything taller than an ant for dozens of miles in all directions. Trees coated the nearby mountains, lying flat on the mountain like slicked-back hair. The entire sky was clear of clouds, and countless white fires blazed across the shattered landscape.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" The woman asked, leaning on her staff and peering at the devastation with shining eyes. "I never tire of the sight."
I nodded wordlessly, still struggling to wrap my head around it all. Mana laced the air, a lasting residue that would linger for years to come. The gap between ninth-circle magic and even the most powerful eight-circle spell was wider than that between the heaven and the earth. If a sixth-circle spell affected a town, then a ninth changed the world. Even the Divine Throne, with all of its protections, walls, and priests, would vanish and fade into memory if it were struck by such a spell.
"You’re not supposed to be here," I finally managed to whisper.
She nodded, lips curved in the faintest of smiles. "Yeah, Enusia wasn’t meant to bear something like that. But sometimes," she said, casting a sidelong glance at my staff, "Fate has a strange way of betraying itself. There is no "supposed to" in the weave of time, only what is. No force in existence can change fate, save it was part of the calculation before it began."
"You sound just like her," I murmured, running a hand over my horn. Hearing she wasn’t permanently gone brought some comfort, but did little to assuage the loss gnawing in my heart.
"Perhaps. But regardless, it is time you depart. They will be coming soon."
She didn’t have to specify who. A spell this powerful toyed with reality itself, something every ninth-level presence would feel. The balance between such powers was delicate, and they worked diligently to keep each other in check. If one spell could do so much damage, I shuddered to think of what a rogue caster could do. They would undoubtedly be here to investigate, and that was likely a scenario I would fail to survive.
"I wonder if I can take a few down before my time ends," she mused, idly stroking her horn. "I have about five minutes before her divinity dries up, so I should be able to kill at least that Bearkin. " She shook herself, breaking free of her reverie. "But let’s worry about that later. First, I’ll send you on your way."