Chapter 400: Volume 6 - Epilogue
Beneath the sundering of Heaven, a second sky appeared over the shadowed desert lands of Armedon - grey against the black of an ashfall that turned the sun into a red disc, despite the midday hour. A second sky that began to stretch across the world, snaking to the grand and invisible winds of mana over every continent, every ocean.
At first, the phenomenon was regarded as merely a Perdition writ large. Unusual, but many had already seen the natural portals between the Triune Worlds during this Heavenswar.
Then the lights began to fall.
A drifting haze of sparkles - like those that accompanied the opening and closing of Perditions - only everywhere. A blue-green haze like sparks that moved unnaturally in the wind and even through buildings as they seemed to seek the ground. As if not entirely real... and yet their effects certainly were.
Across the continent, devices wrought with magic began to spark. The weakest of them simply flickered and failed, before returning to function as the motes passed through them. The strongest failed spectacularly.
In Aaru, the massive outdoor teleportation circle on the northern edge of the oasis exploded, taking the oldest of Ayther’s adventuring guilds with it as the Tower Lord watched from the safety of his shielded home.
Though Aaru was an ancient city, not lacking for protective magics, no planner had ever thought to the scale of what was to come.
Other explosions occurred throughout the city, and were it not for the small mages, the fires might have spread uncontrollably along the wooden rooftops. These fires came almost exclusively from mages. Those who had been in the process of reifying themselves when the wavefront of mana passed invisibly from the void to Ayther. Those who had been handling artifacts of immense complexity.
And those who were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when swarms of floating lights passed through them.
Then the wind came.
A massive, concussive gust rocked even the mighty heights of the Tower from the west, before a second, weaker gale forced its way back east, filling in the void caused by the first. Yet the damage was done.