Call of the Abyss [Book 2 Complete]

Seyatha grimaced as white flames shot out of both her hands in an arc around the portal. Ithshar was across from her, the same flames flaring out and joining Seyatha's to fully encircle the portal.

A crack of white lightning struck the flame barrier, eliciting a grunt from both Seyatha and Ithshar. They couldn't disrupt the portal or close it even if they wanted to—which they didn't, as Seyatha was positive that Julia was within. It was too powerful—supported by an unbelievably potent mana.

Etherium—Seyatha recognized its traces.

Julia seemed to have disrupted and destabilized it so that its connection was severed, but it had so much energy supporting it still that it would take a couple minutes to fully close—a couple violent minutes as it burned its energy out.

Seyatha was baffled how Julia had managed to do so much damage to the portal in such a short time. It was as though she had blinked and chaos had been unleashed.

She and Ithshar had spread out and advanced on the portal, slowly using their flame barrier to corral the portal-storm into a small area. This had the effect of limiting its destruction, but it also meant that the energy within the barrier became even more violent due to the compression.

Crack!

A fissure appeared in the ground below, which Seyatha only knew from the sound and the sudden rush of water downward. She and Ithshar were standing on the marsh water, the ice having long melted or been vaporized by the rampant, unleashed portal energy.

That was another problem: they were constantly having to extend the barrier. First they had to wrap it under the remaining ice and encapsulate the portal through the water. Now, they would have to extend the barrier underground, beneath the marsh water, lest any stray bolts of energy make it past.

The ground began to shake, and Seyatha looked across the water, making eye contact with Ithshar—this was going to be bad.

They strengthened the barrier as much as they possibly could just before the portal exploded outward.

The barrier held for just a moment before it shattered, blasting Seyatha back across the water. She skipped across the surface for a jog or two before she managed to catch herself and stand.

The portal was gone somehow, but in its place was a swirling maelstrom of energy.

The unmistakable energy of Julia was half the tornado, looking like a bloody plasma that swirled and twisted, sending arcs of crimson lightning shooting off at anything that got too close.

The other half was a sickly purple mana that nearly made Seyatha physically ill. It slid across her senses like an oil, making her feel uncomfortable simply for having perceived it. She thought she could make out pained faces in its swirl, which only heightened its aura of wrongness.

Such a thing could not be allowed to exist, she knew. She lifted her hands, reigniting the white flames with what little strength she had left, most having left her after the barrier shattered.

A voice passed through her mind, gentle as the wind, but sharp, like it went straight to her brain.

"If you care for her, do not deny her the opportunity to grow," it whispered, accompanied by flashes of purple eyes and sharp fangs.

Seyatha's eyes widened as she extinguished her flames, nodding to no one in particular, for the voice's owner was gone—or, had she ever even been there?

"Quit your damn fussin', I've had much worse than this," Ravina groused, raising her hand to try and move Gala away.

Gala swatted her hand and continued fussing, not even acknowledging what Ravina had said.

"You 'fixed' the break, though it's pretty sloppy. Decent enough work for the field, but now that you're here, I'll fix it up right," she said sternly, as though Ravina had the time to stop and perfectly align the damn thing when it happened.

"Haa, I'm tellin' ya it's a waste of time. It's already stopped bleed—" she sighed, but a tremor interrupted her.

Ravina shot to her feet and gazed toward the battlefield—where else would a sudden tremor originate?

Clearing the wall and erupting high into the sky was a twisting column of mana, two sources of mana seeming to rage against each other. One was a sickly, disgusting purple that made her feel gross just looking at it, while another was a deep crimson and crackled with bloody lightning.

As she watched, the vortex of mana shifted, each mana source breaking off from the clash and forming a distance away in the sky.

The purple mana formed into a hulking behemoth, a vaguely humanoid shape emerging. Its head was just a large skull, with purple flames burning in its eye sockets and large horns angling upward shooting out both sides of its cranium. Its chest was huge and blocky, sort of golem-like in its shape.

Two arms ending in large hands with sharp claws on each finger occupied the top of its torso, while below the belt, there was only a hanging skirt of mana, as though the construct had no legs.

And all along its surface were roiling, undulating faces. Even from this distance, Ravina could make out the pained and enraged visages bubbling up to the surface before vanishing again. It made her deeply uncomfortable, like its wrongness was so extreme that details that shouldn't be apparent at this distance somehow were. Her mind instinctively knew it shouldn't be.

The other mana formed into a long eel-like shape, the head of a predator emerging at the front. It had two large eyes with slit pupils, one of a sharp blue, and the other of a bright yellow. The face was shaped like a predatory cat, with large fangs and sharp teeth, as well as two long whiskers extending off the snout, which was itself elongated beyond what a cat's would be.

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The body grew shiny, crimson scales all along its length, and its tail had a tuft of hair that shimmered between blue and white, as though its color constantly changed. Its neck also burst into fur of the same color as the tail, seemingly ignoring the scales beneath. The mane was regal and majestic, contrasting sharply with the sense of wrong the other exuded.

The body sprouted arms and legs that matched the predatory cat aesthetic of its head, though scaled rather than furred. They were rippled with muscle, visible even underneath the strong, crimson scales. The four fingers and toes were long and reptilian and had sharp, talon-like claws jutting from the tips that dripped with a crimson plasma, the drops dispersing into arcs of lightning in the air.

The two creatures roared at each other, the sound nearly deafening, even this far back from the battlefield. They launched at each other, and another tremor rocked the ground when they clashed.

"What…the fuck is this?" Ravina whispered, speaking more to herself than anyone else.

"Isn't it beautiful?!" Gala said with starry eyes. "Revelation and Truth truly are world-shaking concepts."

Ravina glanced at her in confusion, but she didn't seem interested in replying, Ravina herself too concerned with the clash of titans before her to inquire further.

This felt like something grand—something mortals shouldn't be witnessing.

All across the wall, across all of Veshari, elves and Nashiin stopped their fighting to stare at the titans. It was like all people—alive and undead—knew instinctively that this clash of giants would decide the outcome of the battle, of the entire war.

Recognition came slowly to those that had seen the crimson mana before, but before long, whispers of "Dahm'Zahra" began to spread throughout Veshari. These whispers gradually morphed into a moniker more fitting for the titan before them: "Galûn'Thahm Dahm'Zahra."

The crimson dragon roared defiantly in the face of the purple golem's bellow. It charged the golem head-on, smashing into its chest with a vicious headbutt.

The golem flew back through the air from the force of the blow, but it caught itself and grabbed the dragon on its long body, sharp claws attempting to dig into its flesh.

The dragon roared in pain. The scales held, but they couldn't negate the crushing force of the grip. Its roar shifted from paint to a deep, guttural timbre, as though the roar originated from deep within its body. Crimson plasma burst from its mouth, covering the torso of the golem with lightning that arced across it, digging into its shell, and fire that consumed its shell like it was made of paper.

The golem bellowed, a moan of pain that contained a thousand souls and a thousand lifetimes of torment echoing through the air. It released the dragon and smashed its face with a right hook before pulling back and frantically scrubbing the flames from its shell.

Though the flames and lightning were extinguished and fizzled, the shell was slightly more transparent, the difference between the two creatures becoming apparent: one was a construct formed of malevolent mana, the other was a living, breathing creature of Truth and Revelation.

The dragon shook the daze from its mind, the blow having struck it straight to the chin. It soared up into the clouds, climbing higher and higher, as though intending to leave the world entirely.

When it reached a point above the clouds, it began to glow, crimson lightning arcing across its length. It ceased its climb, wreathed in the bloody lightning, and roared louder than the crash of thunder. Louder than the groans of an earthquake. Louder than the crash of a tsunami against the shore.

Soldiers on the walls covered their ears, the sound—despite originating high above the clouds—unintelligible and oppressive to their ears.

But the World understood.

Clouds gathered faster than the quickest of summer storms, shifting from white to dark gray to crimson red. They began to swirl around the dragon, as though answering its summons.

On the ground, the purple colossus braced, throwing both arms in front of it, knowing there would be no escaping the coming storm—feeling that Truth in its core.

Bolts of bloody lightning tore through the sky, dying it a deep crimson, as though the World itself were bleeding. Dozens of bolts crashed to the ground where they merged into a giant bolt of divine fury, like the lightning strikes during a volcanic eruption.

The huge bolt seared through the braced golem, plunging into the ground beneath it and throwing up destruction unseen before in the marsh. Huge shards of debris flew in all directions, rocks the size of buildings launched over the trees, accompanied by a hail of dirt and water.

A wave so large it exposed the marsh bed beneath as it passed crashed against the Veshari wall, rocking the defenders atop it and dragging several Nashiin and animals beneath, the already-shattered sheet of ice heaving and overturning.

The silence following the blast was deafening, the whole world taking cover from the destructive fury.

As the smoke and debris cleared, a shattered golem appeared, its shape like an egg that was smashed against the ground. The dread aura roiled, moving like a wave as it attempted to recollect itself and stitch the construct back together. A small purple gem, no larger than a person's hand, floated in the exact center of the construct, seeming the core of the malevolence.

The golem's Truth was Revealed.

The clouds suddenly burst apart, the crimson dragon rocketing toward the ground like a meteor set to obliterate the marsh. It opened its jaws and roared that guttural sound before belching plasmic flames, searing the air in front of it and creating a fiery shell that further solidified the meteoric image.

The dragon slammed into the remaining shell of the colossus, shattering the bits that had regenerated and piercing the shell's interior.

Chomp!

The dragon caught the purple gemstone in its great maw, where it shattered and was consumed in an instant.

The air around the two titans grew hot, igniting into crimson and yellow flames, blasting out in all directions.

The defenders on the wall shouted in fear, cries of "Run!" and "Brace!" just audible over the whoosh of approaching flames. However, before the flames hit the wall, they slowed to a stop and rebounded back to their origin. The implosion sucked up water, chunks of ice, and even Nashiin as it rushed back toward the titans, where it vanished in a blinding light.

As the light disappeared, and the soldiers atop the wall began to open their eyes and emerge from cover. No trace of the titans remained. There was only water rushing to fill a huge hole in the marsh floor.

"Look!" a soldier shouted, pointing toward the remaining Nashiin army below. They ambled there aimlessly, some barely moving at all, and others shambling about, unsure what to do or where to go. They were behaving like ordinary undead—not the organized army they had once been.

Animals surged through their ranks, chopping and biting and charging. They knocked the Nashiin army down like a farmer reaping wheat.

A great cheer arose from the wall, the soldiers all joining their voices in raucous joy, for the Battle of Life had ended.

Seyatha stood atop the wall, the voices of the nearby celebrating soldiers unheard. She saw what no one else did.

She saw a small girl's body fall to the marsh, a long, furry animal just beside her.

She saw a tall woman of shining, obsidian skin, bright purple eyes, and a pointed tail catch them, throwing the girl over one shoulder and the animal over another.

She saw the woman sashay into the treeline, disappearing as though entering a fog—despite the fact that the fog had cleared long ago.

However, she didn't worry. She knew Julia and Trixy were in good hands.