Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

The aura of a malevolent entity poured from the rift, a wave of malice blanketing the battlefield and halting the advance of the animals.

Following the aura, Gohlmer himself emerged, the Thol'Morrak on his heels.

The Wight lowered himself to the ground, though he still hovered over it, as he surveyed his surroundings with mild annoyance—as though the obliteration of the Nashiin army was merely an inconvenience.

Julia couldn't make out great detail from this distance, but he appeared to…click his tongue? He made a gesture of annoyance before glancing up at the rift with a reverent gaze. He spoke as though in prayer, and the most peculiar thing happened: everything stopped.

Julia glanced around—or tried to—but found that she couldn't move. The battle below had stopped, Nashiin halting mid-swing, animals mid-lunge. Legs were raised as though to move, but they never fell, nor were there any battle cries or roars. There was only an eerie, dead silence, the wind itself appearing to hold its breath.

Julia was confused, but she also felt a nagging—almost an itch—in her body. She couldn't place it, but an uncomfortable sensation poked at her brain, demanding attention.

Time.

That's what the feeling was. Her ability to shift her subjective time was warning her: time had stopped—no, slowed dramatically, not stopped.

Julia fought down the fear pounding in her chest—what kind of entity could stop time? It wasn't Gohlmer, nor was it the Thol'Morrak, she was sure. They would have used that tactic to capture her long ago if they were capable. It must be that rift—something about it.

Right, Gohlmer had spoken to it reverently before time was frozen. Was…was Gohlmer not the actual leader of the Nashiin? Was he just a sort of field general? Was the true leader someone that had complete control over time? Was it going to emerge through the rift? How could she fight something that had mastery over time?!

Julia forced herself to calm, focusing on her breathing—for she was breathing. she didn't need to, but it helped.

Somehow, despite all of time around her being frozen, she could still breathe—that was strange. How did air molecules even—no, never mind. It wasn't the moment to ponder the physics of the situation. Considering these were beings from a different reality entirely, looking for the logic of this reality was probably folly anyway.

She shifted her subjective time to Gohlmer's, locking on to his flow even from this distance. It was surprisingly easy, the frozen time around her making his still-flowing time stand out like a beacon. She found she could move normally, but she opted to remain frozen and observe for now. Surely there was a goal—

Gohlmer's eyes locked onto hers. She couldn't tell if he knew she was awake, or if he simply spotted her and recognized her, but his attention was now drawn.

He raised his arms, and his malevolent aura somehow went even more wild. It surged into the air, covering the space between him and the wall with a layer of intense bloodlust. It didn't feel like the excitement Julia felt before the defenders' first volley. This felt like the surety of a predator that knew it would catch its prey.

The air around Gohlmer burst into noxious purple flames, as though he'd seeded the bloodlust, intending to ignite it.

Julia's mind worked quickly—what could she do?

Gohlmer raised his hands, pointing open palms in Julia's direction.

How could she get out of this situation? He was going to kill everyone on the wall!

The purple flames boiled and collected into a towering inferno behind Gohlmer before surging along his two outstretched arms, following their paths.

How could she undo the time-stop—would that even help if everyone was roasted alive by those flames?

The purple flames seared the air as they passed, even the Nashiin below—still frozen in place—reduced to ash just by proximity to their roiling wrath.

She needed to stop the flames—no! Redirect them! No more time to think!

Julia moved.

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She launched into the air, heading directly for the flames. When she was so close that her face began to burn from the heat leading the actual flames themselves, she mustered all the mana she could and bent space.

She didn't do anything overly dramatic—aware that blowing all her mana mitigating a single attack wouldn't amount to much.

She simply grabbed space—spacetime—and angled it upward.

The flames seemed to simply divert 45 degrees, blasting over Julia's head. They ripped through the air, several climbs above the wall by the time they reached it, and sheared through the Woven vines that formed the anti-air defenses. Wherever the flames went, the vines simply vanished as if they never were.

The flames twisted, churned, and roiled, as if they were angry. They twisted around through the air and plummeted back toward Julia—they were magical, after all. Diverting their course wouldn't stop them. However, this was fine. Her goal was simply to move them away from her comrades and soldiers.

She released the altered space and blasted toward Gohlmer, as if to ram him. That wasn't her plan, however. She'd formed a hypothesis based on the feelings that had grown stronger the closer she came to the rift.

Etherium.

The Nashiin leader was using Etherium to create and stabilize this rift—probably all the rifts she'd seen them use up to this point, actually. It shouldn't have surprised her, considering she'd collected the stuff herself after the skirmish on the outskirts. They somehow had access to a tremendous amount of it.

This was simultaneously a relief and a concern for Julia. It was a relief to know that the leader wasn't likely someone strong enough to overwrite the fabric of the universe itself, but it was concerning that they had enough Etherium to do something like this casually, for Gohlmer still looked only mildly annoyed.

This was not some last, desperate plan of theirs. They had enough Etherium to waste it on annoyances.

The Thol'Morrak on the ground raised its giant hand, undoubtedly preparing that same clutching magic the Barrowlords so loved, but Julia was prepared this time.

As the magic closed in around her, it slipped—like a hand trying to grasp an object slick with oil.

Julia had stumbled upon a Skill synergy she should have been using since she arrived in the marsh, solidified after she bent space to alter the flames' course.

One downside of rising so quickly was that she'd never had time to truly learn her Skills—or how they intertwined. She was constantly going from battle to battle, from one life or death situation to the next.

She had precious little opportunity to practice, and she had to fall back on her tried-and-true: the crimson lightning, her swordwork, runes, and anything she had used in combat before successfully.

Now, though, was a moment for desperate gambits—and this one had paid off.

Julia rammed straight into Gohlmer and the aura that tried to consume her, but she simply passed straight through them. Or, through wasn't really the best descriptor. She went around them—without ever having to move. She was cloaked in warped space, so things moved around her, following space's curvature.

It was a wild fusion of her Domain, Mana Disruption Skill, and Gravity Magic. There was a small amount of her Rhythm of Time Skill involved as well, as she wasn't creating full spacetime warps that displaced matter—only bending the paths things followed. She was creating small warps around her that made for confusing, unintuitive trajectories.

An arrow flying straight toward her might pass right beside her, but it might also do a loop around her body before sailing off behind her. Unless one had a specific attunement to both space and time, they would have difficulty following the hidden trajectories woven into the space around her.

This level of control was only possible with the minor revelations the Blade of Eternity Subclass had provided her. For the first time in her life, she felt she had a more intuitive understanding of how space and time intertwined.

She now moved through it like an expert swimmer rather than the novice she once was, using magic like arms and legs to shape the currents of liquid spacetime around her. Why bother with the creatures in the water when she could simply move the water itself?

Time seemed to slow, her already-active perception kicking into overdrive. She turned her head to make eye contact with Gohlmer, smiling a wicked smile that was all teeth.

"Release," she said, speaking not to him, but the world.

A shockwave ripped through the space, threads of white light pulsing through the air and into the rift, as though the space itself had cracked like glass. The pulses raced along the threads like lightning before cascading into the rift, taking all sound with them.

A silence lingered for little more than a heartbeat. Gohlmer, still watching Julia, shifted—from annoyance to bewilderment, then disbelief, and finally, fear. This was the first time she'd ever seen fear in his face, but she had no time to savor it.

The rift slammed a second shockwave outward, sound returning with a deafening crack. The force of the shockwave latched onto those nearby: Gohlmer, the Thol'Morrak, and Julia. It pushed them slightly before shifting direction and pulling them backward toward the rift.

The Thol'Morrak slammed its twinblade into the frozen marsh, bearing down to weather the force as the ice beneath it heaved and shattered, fissures erupting like geysers, wide enough to swallow a person whole.

Julia and Gohlmer, with no ground to anchor them, were drawn into the vortex whipping up around the rift. They flew into the swirling white light, spinning around the rift like the accretion disk of a black hole, and disappeared.