The chaos around me was absolute. Demons of every tier swarmed the ascending structure, some clinging to its surface in their thousands, others spiraling around it like moths around a flame. The bat-like creatures, and those translucent shapes that had been hovering at the edge of my awareness, were descending now, their attention fixed on the pyramid, or perhaps on the thing that was lifting it.
The space around me was filled with demons, asd more were being literally born from the surrounding space, even though a lot of them were torn to pieces in the chaos, from either the rising pyramid or the vast tentacles in the distance.
Body parts and blood were falling like rain, and I could imagine this devastation spreading all around the world, and my heart grew cold with fear.
I tore through the swarm, my body a blur of lightning and motion. Stormstep carried me past the two-horned, through the three-horned, around the pale translucent things that watched me with eyeless interest. I did not stop to fight them, as a single delay would place me inside the blender of flesh where hundreds of thousands of demons were dying every second.
The pyramid was rising faster now, and if I did not reach the top before it breached the clouds, I would lose it entirely.
The wind was savage as the air was being forcefully compressed and blasted out with enough force to shred metal and shatter mountains; it was ten thousand hurricanes of displaced air that screamed past me as the pyramid tore free of the earth, and I fought through the chaos, rising with the pyramid, because I knew that it was the safest place to be.
The tentacles of the Pale Matron were still rising, and there seemed to be a voice at the edge of my perception, reaching for everything, but I could not focus on that, not while I struggled to survive through this storm.
I pushed through hundreds of bodies and reached the I reached the pyramid’s eastern face, and I could immediately see the turbulence decrease by half, as the black surface of the pyramid seemed to be drinking the chaos.
Grinning in spite of myself, I began to climb the pyramid. Even though it was smooth, my fingers found purchase anyway, and I was strong enough to muscle my way against the force of the ascent; this was far easier than fighting the wind and the demons.
I climbed faster, as I became increasingly familiar with the motion, using Stormsteps to move ahead for thousands of meters.
The pyramid was rising through the clouds now, the red sky giving way to a deeper, darker blue. The air was growing thin, and the temperature was dropping.
Finally, I reached the top of the pyramid and pulled myself onto its surface, my chest heaving, my body aching as I landed on the top of the world. The wind was fierce, and I had to anchor myself with threads of lightning to keep from being swept away.
The top of the pyramid was flat, a vast black platform that stretched for miles in every direction, and for a moment, it was almost as if I had stepped onto a new land, and I slowly got to my feet. The surface was smooth, seamless, but I could see the faint outlines of carvings that seemed to have been worn smooth by something.
Something about the patterns of these carvings was familiar, and I devoted a part of my mind to figure out the reason for this, as I tried to focus on everything at the same time.
∞
From this apex I could see all of it. I saw one arm of the Pale Matron, still massive even from here, tearing through the earth, but it was not connected to anything; it was as if what the Caelith had sealed were two arms, and the nine tentacles that were receding beneath me now as I rose past them.
The world was being broken as a flood of demons erupted around the arm that was pushing into the horizon, and above, since we were still rising, the sky was going from blue to a deep bruised violet to something darker, as the second arm of the Pale Matron was pushing it into space.
I thought about this for a moment, and I figured out what I thought should be the truth.
The Jade Oracle had told me that three Caelith fell to this world, each holding three Transcedental Stage demons, and somehow, the three Caelith were shattered into thirty-one pieces; so too were their prisoners.
I don’t know the method of that shattering, because the pyramid below me did not seem broken, but I guessed I must be dealing with a wound that I could not yet observe with my current understanding of reality; what I could do was to hypothesise with the evidence I was gathering over the loops.
If the Pale Matron pushed this Caelith into space, then I figured that this might disrupt the balance with the other pieces of itself scattered across the world, setting off a chain reaction that would free the rest of the Pale Matron from her prison.
I recalled that the Jade Oracle had told me that it would take months or even years for the other pyramids to be breached; I did not think she realized that the Pale Matron would simply fling one part of the pyramid into godammned space.
A deep vibration passed through my feet; I felt weight land behind me, and I turned to see two massive bat demons.
I guess that my Demonology must have been growing with everything that I was witnessing as my mind flashed with recognition as I saw these demons; they were called Thul, and they were the heralds of the ending of worlds.
∞
Two of them had peeled off the frenzy and followed me up, and they landed on the apex on either side of me, folding wings the size of ships, and their eyes were not mad like the others; they were focused on me.
They sniffed the practically nonexistent air, and I could feel a tug in my soul that touched my connection with the Moon Fox, and I knew why these two had followed me... they wanted the Moon Fox.
"Fallen Achon, give us the fragments of the heavens, and you shall be made to serve by the Queen’s Court." One of the Thul spoke with a wheezing sound, and I could imagine this was what corruption would sound like.
I set my feet on the black stone, and I flexed my hands, waking the lightning inside my channels.
"You are not having her," I growled.
"Then be rendered," the Thul laughed, and they came at me from both sides at once.