Chapter 215: Book 4: Lost Civilization
My Trial has changed my relationship with death time and time again. For once, though, I feel like I'm finally in control of those deaths.
Not that I'm under any illusions. I'm well aware that as much time as I've spent training—as much as I should be above any new problem the Fracture might throw at me—I'm not invincible. Neither are any of my friends, even if they're quite possibly three of the strongest Firmament practitioners on the planet.
The difference now is that I'm not afraid. Even if it happens, I know exactly what to do and where to go. The Integrators made a mistake when they gave me the power to come back from death.
Call it a Premonition.
We stand at the edge of the Fracture. It's enormous—larger than I remember it being, in fact, and I can't tell if that's because of all the ways my senses have grown or if it's actually gotten bigger. It's a chasm rent into the planet on a continental scale, stretched out over the horizon farther than I can see and so deep that even with the sun directly above, the bottom is nothing but a featureless black.
Then there's the sheer volume of Firmament practically gushing out of it, so much that it threatens to match the quantity found in the Intermediary. The only difference is that there's so much more space here that all that power is diluted. If it were any more concentrated, I can only imagine the kind of impact it would have on anything and anyone that lived nearby.
Like the Cliffside Crows. I grimace at the thought. I suppose that explains, in part, the artifact they were able to give me. As far as I can tell, it contains a truly baffling amount of information—far more than it should, given what Tarin and the others have told me about how they created it.
I suspect it's going to be critical to navigating the Fracture, once we get a little deeper.
"Uh," Ahkelios says. He gestures awkwardly at the flow of Firmament pouring out in front of us. "Was it always this... powerful?"