The fiends quieted.
The Great Souls could only stare.
All of hell seemed to hold its collective breath.
Without warning, the air shuddered violently, the atmosphere and the ground spasming without moving as all the mana reoriented itself, aligning around the Blood Ox as if he were the new fulcrum of existence. Scorio gasped, his chest aching as if the air had been violently sucked from his lungs, and his knees went weak. His Heart rippled as the mana contained within his reservoir shivered and pressed against its confines.
Plassus let out a hoarse cry, a wretched sound in which hopeless fury and pain were mingled.
Scorio blinked, dazed, and with his Heart’s senses he saw that all the Bronze mana in the sky had shifted to form interlocking spirals around the Blood Ox. Spirals of glowing brass around which slender threads of Copper were twisted, around which spokes of Iron extended, stretching from the Blood Ox toward the horizon.
All of it, all the mana, every drop, had reconfigured itself around the True Fiend.
Who finally opened one eye, and smiled. “Hello, Plassus. I have dominion.”
“You bastard.” The Charnel Duke’s voice shook with emotion. He raised his Ferula and flew toward the Blood Ox, loosing bolt after bolt of Copper light.
The Blood Ox made no move, simply watched the Charnel Duke approach, and then, the corner of his lips still curved up, closed his eye.
The Ferula bolts simply faded from existence before hitting the Blood Ox. They weren’t blocked by a Shroud, weren’t batted aside, nor even did Scorio sense the Blood Ox drink their power.
They simply… vanished.
Charoth sprang from some hidden defile. His tiger form was wickedly fast, his claws extended, his malevolent intent souring the air. Hunched with muscle, burning with intent, he flew at the True Fiend’s back.
For a brief second Scorio allowed himself to feel hope.
But the Blood Ox turned and slipped under the Blood Baron’s slashing claws to embrace him. Charoth slammed to a halt as if he’d flown full tilt into a column of steel, and the Blood Ox wrapped his arms around his furred body, pulling him close.
Charoth’s roar changed.
Where before it had been one of defiance and challenge, now it became panicked, agonized.
He raked at the True Fiend, again and again, but failed to even tear the Blood Ox’s robes. He writhed, fought, struggled to escape, but the Blood Ox held him gently without difficulty, and pressed his cheek to the tiger’s chest.
“Release him!” Aezryna flew forth, her cerulean armor resplendent, her own blue Ferula raised, and loosed a stream of ice from its tip even as a great vortex of azure slammed into the Blood Ox.
The True Fiend paid her no mind.
Charoth’s roars became mewls as his body began to sag, his skin to develop folds.
Blood streamed from his eyes, his ears, his nostrils, his maw. Streams that arched up and curved back around to diffuse into a thick pink mist that sank into the Blood Ox.
Plassus was bellowing as he struggled to draw closer. An invisible barrier had blocked his approach, so that he seemed to wade through hip-deep mud, even thirty yards up as he was. Straining, tendons standing out in his neck, he struggled mightily to draw closer, still loosing great bronze bolts from his Ferula to no effect.
A storm of rocks tore themselves free from the ground beneath the Blood Ox and streamed up to blast him, only to turn to dust a yard below his feet.
Aezryna took a deep breath and hurled another great slashing spiral of ice at the Blood Ox’s back, a concentrated funnel that Scorio had seen slash Symmetrons and Nethercoils apart with ease.
They, too, faded away before hitting the True Fiend.
Charoth’s struggles had almost ceased. His great tiger form had shrunken as if aged a century, his fur gray and falling out, his musculature wasted, his last blows batting at the Blood Ox with no power.
It was horrifying to watch. Wrong on a primal level.
And all the while the Blood Ox remained still, holding the Blood Baron tight, until at last the tiger’s head lolled back at an unnatural angle and Charoth fell quiet.
The Blood Ox opened his arms as the last streams of blood faded into his body. Charoth tumbled down through the air to hit the rocks, and the sound of brittle bones snapping echoed across the badlands.
“Now,” said the Blood Ox, opening one eye and turning slowly to regard Plassus, Aezryna, and the remaining score of Great Souls. “We can begin.”
Chapter 45
Scorio released the Nightmare Lady’s hand and raced toward the True Fiend. He had no idea what he might do. Knew it was futile to even try. If Charoth could be so easily destroyed, then he couldn’t even hope to even get the Blood Ox’s attention.
But still he ran.
The Blood Ox extended his arms out to the sides, palms up, and pain erupted from Scorio’s Heart.
For this time his Bronze mana not only swelled against his reservoir, but it burst forth, streaming violently back out into the sky.
From all around Scorio heard screams and grunts and hoarse cries of pain as others staggered or fell to their knees.
The violation was terrible, and brought back a dim and distant memory, of Praximar leering as he tore Scorio’s power from his chest, mere moments after he’d been reborn. Mana burst free of his Heart, leaping up into the sky, and Scorio’s charge turned into a haphazard stumble and then he crashed to his knees.
Blinking away tears, Scorio glanced around as the others screamed. Rivulets of blood were pouring forth from their orifices and rising into the air like crimson snakes to stream toward the Blood Ox. Scorio saw Aezryna collapse to the ground, hands pressed to her face as blood burst forth from between her fingers. Jova, who’d fallen from the sky when her power was stolen, seemed to wrestle against the power, turning and twisting violently as if seeking to free herself from invisible wrestlers.
Taron, Fyrona, Himiko, everyone bled up into the sky, helpless before the Blood Ox’s power.
“Naomi!” Scorio twisted about and saw her fighting to stand, her eyes wide as her blood poured forth, gouted from her mouth, her ears, her nostrils. She slashed her hands through the streams to no avail.
Everybody was being bled, but himself.
Scorio turned back, horrified and stunned, to meet the Blood Ox’s gaze.
The True Fiend was watching him, expression mocking, amused, terrifying.
“There you are.” The Blood Ox drifted a little closer. “The one who broke his toy. I was asked to do something especially nasty to you.”
“What?” Scorio wanted to turn back to Naomi who screamed as she finally collapsed.
The Blood Ox extended his hand and a small speck of colorless light appeared in his palm. It felt like a sun being birthed. Scorio, already buffeted by exhaustion, the delirious come-down from the graxil larvae, and then the tearing of his mana from his reservoir, simply couldn’t face that speck of power.
It washed over his mind like a tidal wave, taking with it his every thought. His body felt like a filament of wire that was heated to incandescence. The world had faded behind the Blood Ox, but now the True Fiend faded away behind this colorless mote.
“Do you know what this is?” The Blood Ox’s tone was gentle, almost pitying. “It is Noumenon. The most precious mana in existence, and that which now drowns your Pit in farcical amounts. He asked that I ruin you, and I shalclass="underline" with this I will tear your soul from the cycle of rebirth, and grant you final freedom.”
Scorio could only stare, slack-jawed, at that hole in reality. A fragment of such power that it spoke testaments to the Blood Ox’s ability to simply hold it.
“Goodbye, little soul.” The Blood Ox raised his palm to his lips. “Your journey ends here.”
And then he blew.
The Noumenon swelled as it rushed forward, becoming a cloud of nothingness that enveloped Scorio. The world attempted to reflect every color at once, so that all was momentarily every hue Scorio had ever seen, and thus, through some strange art of negation, none.