The foghorn’s note lingered in the air longer than it should have, the frequency settling into my chest where my core seemed to pulse in response.
Strange, but again, if I did not understand that this massive structure was related to power beyond our Magus Civilization, I would be a fool.
There were theories that these pyramids were built by powerful gods and Sovereigns in the past, but that was clearly a lie.
The Hollow Avatar had not communicated everything he knew of Caelith Mourne, but he seemed to be very familiar with it, and since I could not access his mind, I would just have to watch out for the times when his thoughts showed me some of the truth.
The red light bled across the sky, and the ground beneath the bowl began to tremble.
I stood, and my staff came into my hand without me reaching for it, the bond still intact despite the weapon’s incomplete transformation.
My Staff and my clothes were falling behind, and I don’t know when they would no longer break, but they still served, and this was the greatest aid they could give me.
Five minutes, I estimated. The first cracks would appear near the camp’s eastern edge, but the bowl was a thousand metres west. The Khaaz would need time to cross the distance.
However, I did not wait at the bowl’s centre this time, although the fused state with the Hollow Avatar was not active. I was Elric. But the hollow place was there, scarred and waiting, and the cold clarity it offered was available without full deployment. I reached for it carefully, pulling only a thread of its perception.
The world sharpened, and I could see everything in more detail. The wind carried the smell of smoke, and even though the Khaaz were not yet visible, I could feel them.
I began to walk toward the eastern ridge of the bowl, as the Lightning Dominion field would cover fifteen metres at its base radius. If I stood at the bowl’s centre, the field would not reach the ridge. The Khaaz would crest, enter the field, and die. But the field would drain Anima continuously, and the Khaaz were thousands.
If I stood at the ridge itself, the field would cover the slope and the lip. The demons would emerge directly into the discharge, with no travel time or space to dodge, and the Anima cost would be the same regardless of where I stood.
The logic was simple, and a dull rumble in my chest I took for the Hollow Avatar’s approval.
I climbed the eastern slope of the bowl, the charred grass from previous loops long since restored by the reset, and stopped at the ridge’s crest. Below me, the ground sloped down toward the camp.
With my sharp senses, I could now see that the ground exploded.
It split everywhere at once, forty-seven separate fault-lines in half a second, the kind of synchronisation that suggested an intelligence design that was waiting for a sign.
Claws emerged, followed by the Khaaz in a stream of iron-dark chitin and pale tendrils. Dozens. Then hundreds.
The swarm’s coordination was intact, and if I followed the mind of the Hollow Avatar well in the last loop, the Khaaz were a swarm, and they even had a queen, the Khazarahn, and she must be directing them from somewhere deeper.
Before long, the screams began in the camp, and I could not help but flinch. Soon... soon, I told myself.
I could not fight to my full potential when I was in the camp, nor could I run. This was the best position to fight and gain the best result in the loop.
Since I was not deeper in the bowl of the earth, I was quickly seen, or most likely, someone had watched me leave the camp; it could either be Rex or Commander Rel.
The chittering of their mandibles reached me across the open ground, as they began to pour towards my position.
Finally, the sounds from the camp filled my heart with pain that only the dying screams of the demons could heal.
I raised my staff, allowed Storm Sense to rise inside me, and I cast Lightning Dominion... and the world changed.
I want to take a moment here to describe what casting a field spell felt like, because I had read about field spells and the texts had been wrong about everything.
The texts said field spells were projections. I am sorry to say this, but they were not.
What came out from my body bloomed outward in a way that meant the field, and I were the same shape, the field was a fifteen-metre extension of where I ended, and I was the centre of a sphere of voltage that included me inside it.
My hair stood up, my skin tightened, and the air around me, fifteen metres of air, in every direction, sphere-shaped, became so saturated with power that I could taste it.
The field was visible, and for a moment, everything inside the field was illuminated from within, as the grass beneath my feet glowed, and the air was ionised.
I had never made anything like this before, and some part of me registered that I made this. This is a thing my body now does.
The first wave crossed the fifteen-metre threshold, and Lightning Dominion responded. Storm Sense gave me every Khaaz position within the sphere. Twelve directed arcs picked their targets without my having to choose.
The field recognised the Khaaz as conductive bodies, therefore they became targets, and the lightning that suffused the air found them.
I also want to point out that I had not yet appreciated how fast twelve simultaneous Adept-tier arcs were, as they had moved before I could register the choice, which freaked me out a bit.
Storm Sense told me the twelve nearest Khaaz had just died, and my eyes were still travelling to where the Khaaz had been when the arcs caught up to my visual cortex, and I saw what the field had already done.
Twelve Khaaz dropped dead, their chitin sheared down the middle the way an axe shears wood, the inner cavity venting steam. The smell that came up off them was the smell of cooking metal.
Then, Conductive Leash activated.
Now this, folks, I had not been ready for the Leash. Sure, I had read the description of the spell that said temporary conduit, and I had assumed that meant the lightning would jump from the dead Khaaz to maybe two or three behind it.
The lightning jumped to forty.