I had killed Narghul Sorcerers before, but most of the time, I had been fighting them one on one, usually because I fled to the edge of the eruption and did not push deep into the madness.
Above me, there were multiple Narghul Sorcerers, and I could not even give an exact number because their skin merged with the red sky, and only the glow from their eyes gave them away.
A smile touched my lips; my primary prey had arrived.
It is hard to describe what a Narghul Sorcerer does to a battlefield without making it sound like reverence, and I refuse to be reverent about them, so I’ll put it plainly... the lesser demons go quiet, as they went still. It was a disquieting thing to see, tens of thousands of these creatures who were suddenly in motion before going quiet.
One of the Narghul Sorcerers descended, his horns cutting through the air, and his shadow construct, a massive claw of darkness, seemed to be lagging behind. The smile on my face widened. Was this not the first Sorcerer I killed? Ah, fond memories... he was one of the most familiar faces I know.
The demon did not touch the ground, perhaps it saw the smile on my face and the hungry way my eyes looked at his body. He took a deep breath and called out, and there was no translation delay in my head,
"Broken Celestial... Serve Silithra, the Pale Matron, or perish to her endless horde."
"No," I said, then I raised up my right hand and pointed to the hovering demon, a golden glow beginning to rise in between my fingers, "But if you can just hold still a little bit, I would give you an answer you would want to hear."
He did not hold still; the Sorcerer was young, not stupid. He threw a lance of Flame Essence across the gap, red-orange and fast; I had seen faster casting. With three channels’ worth of Anima, I caught the flame on a woven shield; the Loom of Lightning could create defensive configurations as easily as it could create offensive ones.
The golden bolt of light left my hand, as thin as a thread, and it pierced through the Abyssal shield of the Sorcerer and bored into its soul.
I could immediately sense the size of his soul, fat and filled with malevolence, many times bigger than Orath’s. The size did not seem to help the demon; it just gave my lightning more fuel to burn.
The Sorcerer screamed, and I reached across with a single thread and wrapped it around his neck before I pulled the screaming demon towards me, who was beginning to come apart.
Do you know what happens to a demon when his soul explodes from the inside? Well, their bodies tend to come apart in a rather... interesting manner.
And as the demon’s body crumbled, I reached into the remains with Soul-Forge, which was now many times stronger than when I first acquired it, and I scooped out his crystal, the shadow cube, and the remnants of the flame essence. I pulled them from the dissolving corpse and pressed them into my chest.
Soul Forge went into overdrive as the core in my heart rotated, even before the materials touched my skin, they had been broken down into the purest essence I needed for Cor Telluris, and this essence dissolved into my skin, flowing through tissue and bone, converging on the dense channel network with Cor Telluris embedded in their center and from there, a furious wave of reforging swept through my channels.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,450 → 1,480 / 10,008]
I blinked and nodded in satisfaction. Unlike before, where I had to wait for Cor Telluris to slowly digest and disperse the material for my channel growth, I could cut this process by a large amount by using Soul Forge.
[Stored Essence: 450 → 2,100]
No wave of death erupted from the dying Narghul Sorcerer. I had destroyed his soul completely, and nothing remained but ash that would be trampled into the earth.
The dying screams of the Narghul Sorcerer had not faded away when I pointed to the sky with my fist and made a thumb-down gesture, and to make sure they knew what I meant, I shouted, "You want me to serve you? I am not impressed."
The first wave of Narghul hit the ground around me like thunder. Six of them, two-horned, their Abyssal shields flaring. They landed in a circle, raised their hands in unison, and cast. Six flame lances, converging on me from six directions.
Oh, I think they got my message clearly.
Lightning Incarnate, for half a second, and I was not where the lances struck. My body appeared behind the nearest Narghul, with my hand on the back of his skull, golden light already pouring into its brain.
The demon’s soul evaporated, and I reached into its chest with Soul-Forge before the body hit the ground.
Crystal. Cube. Flame.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,480 → 1,510]
[Stored Essence: 2,100 → 3,600]
The second Narghul turned and saw my grinning face. He swung his arm, and the shadow construct followed a beat later, but he was too slow. I caught his wrist, broke it, and drove my other hand, covered by Tribulation Lightning, through his chest. The demon’s Abyssal shield collapsed, and its body crumbled around my fist, and I pulled the materials from the wreckage.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,510 → 1,540]
[Stored Essence: 3,600 → 5,100]
Narghul Sorcerers were problematic at a distance, but up close, they were weaker, at least the two horns were physically weaker in comparison to me.
They knew this, and they tried to flee, and the Loom caught them before they could rise, threads of lightning wrapping around their legs, before continuing to wrap around their bodies. I pulled, and they came apart in mid-air. I harvested their remains as they fell.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,540 → 1,600]
[Stored Essence: 5,100 → 8,100]
The last two glanced at each other, and then they charged me together. I stepped between them with a burst of Lightning Incarnate, caught one by the throat and the other by the horn, and released the Tribunal’s echo through both hands at once. The golden lightning burned through both Narghul in the same heartbeat, and I harvested both.
[Cor Telluris — Channels Grown: 1,600 → 1,660]
[Stored Essence: 8,100 → 11,100]
The core in my heart was spinning now, hungry, demanding more. The channels in my bones were growing faster than they had since the tribulation. I could feel them spreading into my ribs, my spine, my skull.
Raising my head to the sky, I howled like a wolf,
"MORE!"
The sky rumbled with thunder, echoing my voice.