Hope

Irwyn burst into Flame, enveloping both himself and Elizabeth in the inferno. He was trying to not burn her, though some damage was inevitable. That was still better than letting the monsters have their way for even an instant longer. The invisible wisp vanished with a screech much like a strong breeze, burned away to less than ash.

Still, Elizabeth remained unconscious, breath weak. Unsure of what to do or how drastic the action needed to be, Irwyn first tried waking her up. And the fastest way he could think of was pain - even more so than mere mild burns. Elizabeth was resistant to Flames after all. He needed her shocked awake. The obvious option was Light, a thin anathemic beam striking into her palm and hopefully avoiding the blood vessels there.

She gasped, eyes shooting wide, her breathing instantly returning with force. For a moment, she stared wildly, eyes flickering from side to side, magic surging throughout the body. Then Irwyn caught her with a platform, which only made the surprise worse. A surge of Void engulfed her body for half a second, before she realized that the danger had passed and calmed.

"Are you alright?" Irwyn worriedly questioned, already looking around for more such ambushes.

"Mostly," she said, but her voice was a bit more gruff than usual. She immediately grabbed for her throat. "I think you singed my vocal cords."

"Sorry."

"No, it's my fault. What even happened?"

"Invisible monsters, made of air it seemed."

"Of course… Damn it. I am embarrassed I did not think about it. If the monsters can take up the earth, why not air and water as well? Those are all within the purview of Realm, as seems to be the theme."

"I was worried," Irwyn admitted. "Not like you to fall unconscious with no sign of even struggle."

"I presume they replaced the oxygen I was breathing with carbon monoxide or something close enough. That way there was no sign of suffocation even as I drifted off from lack of air."

"Devious," Irwyn nodded. He was not sure about the exact chemical she mentioned, but it made enough sense.

"Liches have used it in the past. I was taught how to look out for the signs. And still fell for it," she bit her lip in irritation. "Underestimated the monsters. Just because they cannot be smart doesn't mean they couldn't have been made in a way that makes advanced tactics their instinct."

"Will you be fine?"

"Yes, already mostly recovered. Thanks to you. I don't know how quickly I would have died with the creature latched onto my defenseless body, but all things considered, there are far worse poisons than what was dosed to me. I will not fall for that again."

"Then take over the platform. I have to test this," Irwyn said, motioning towards his still inert needle. The spell had not dissipated in the chaos as he had explicitly built it to exist independently of him, but neither was it active yet.

With that said, Elizabeth did as asked and then kept them in place at his request as Irwyn looked for a good target. Something with a Concept, ideally close enough to something else with another to test the propagation. It was not hard, given the entirety of the ground beneath was made wholly of inert monsters. After a brief glance around he already had a perfect group picked.

Irwyn could not quite tell the real shape of his target, but that mattered little. He sent the needle towards a few relatively strong monsters, one of them even in possession of two Concepts if he was reading things correctly. Then let go fully. It was a test, after all. He needed to see if his idea was even feasible.

The spell pierced into the ground, and, in doing so, into the outer shell of its target. He had not guided it there, so Irwyn was happy to see it had targeted the most powerful of the monsters by itself. Therein, there were several seconds of nothing visual happening, but Irwyn could feel that inside the monster an inferno brewed. From a pinprick, it expanded into an unstoppable surge within moments, devouring the victim from within.

Irwyn could not feel exactly when the core was reached, but he definitely felt the surge of power as it fueled his spell. Just as intended. A moment later, two needles surged out of the monster, leaving just a smidgen of their Flames behind. The creature was already dead or at least at a point when such was inevitable, the remaining fires would burn what remained of the body and anything lesser in the surroundings before it went out.

Irwyn was pleased to note that while the two new projectiles both briefly aimed for the same monster, they quickly diverged from one another. His solution to the targeting issues was a degree of inherent repulsion between the spells. They wanted to be apart from each other, which would pull them towards different monsters. On the other hand, if one of the creatures happened to be exceptionally powerful, the pull towards its core would be proportionally greater and thus let several instances of the spell hit them. Hopefully.

It was far from an exact science, but Irwyn was reasonably confident that there was enough margin for error. Aiming for perfection was not realistic at the scale he was attempting. 99.9% would be good enough. Once their numbers were culled to a fraction of a fraction, dealing with the leftover monsters would be much more feasible.

While Irwyn had been thinking, the needles killed the two monsters and burst out in the search of another. Irwyn noted that one had split again while the other remained as one. Instead of letting them rampage, Irwyn reasserted direct control over the magic and brought them closer for inspection. Therein, he discovered a point of failure.

The split had been uneven. He had made the needle modular from a thousand parts so that it could easily duplicate just as many times. Except that mechanism was visibly flawed. Of the three needles, one carried 70 percent of these parts while the remaining two, those split twice, only had about 50 and 250 respectively. That would make their coverage very uneven.

The mechanisms by which the division happened was very simplistic, and Irwyn had just assumed it would work out fine. Clearly, he had been wrong. Yet adding more layers of inner decision-making to the already complex spell would be more counterproductive than actually helpful. Thus, he had to get more creative with the solution.

It took some fiddling with the design, but he made it so that any splitting would be much more likely in the exact middle by slightly weakening how tightly together the modular pieces were bound there. It would only make a difference for the first four duplications, but Irwyn figured that beyond that the difference of chance would be lessened into irrelevance.

He also repaired the three needles he already had instead of remaking each, making sure that all of them were identical and in accordance with the design in his mind. At some point, Elizabeth started moving them towards a corner again - and away from the cascade of slowly awakening monsters caused by his previous test. Irwyn trusted her not to fall for another ambush and thus fully focused on manufacturing.

It took him roughly five seconds to manifest one needle from naught. With practice, he got closer to four, though by that point he had lost count. Irwyn got into a routine. Construct the thousand-piece feat of magic, store it to the side, repeat. Over and over. It should have been mind-numbing… but Irwyn found a certain simple joy in the novelty of it. It was his idea, his design, his skill manifesting it. Yet he had never before gotten a chance to examine his magic so intimately and repeatedly. Recast one spell until he could spot the smallest imperfections as if by instinct. Which admittedly made it fun, at least for the moment.

He only stopped when Elizabeth lightly shook his shoulder. When he turned around with a raised eyebrow, he realized that they were maybe a few minutes of flight away from the promised corner… and no longer moving.

"We have arrived then?" Irwyn said the obvious, not sure how else to start.

"A while ago," she chuckled. "I left you to it. But now there is escalating movement in the distance, so we might be running out of time. Best if you don't have to cut it too close."

Irwyn looked to the side where he had made a makeshift sack of Flame to hold all his needles. There were a lot. A lot. With a sweep of his senses, he was counting about five thousand, surprising even himself. Counting 4.5 seconds average for each…

"How long is a while ago?" Irwyn turned towards Elizabeth.

"Well over five hours," she shrugged sheepishly. "So about six since you started making the needles. I can't wait for the spectacle."

"Then I have to deliver," Irwyn nodded, turning towards the… distance, because there was still no real horizon. But he could see the monsters treading in their vague direction. It seemed almost like the creatures were not actually sure why or where they were headed, though that would change once they got closer. If they got closer. Irwyn intended to not give them that chance.

He began putting the needles in place, a hundred at a time. A bag was far from an optimal way of launching them. Instead, Irwyn spread them into a levitating ranks and files, spread tightly but somewhat evenly in every direction. Then he added four more such formations facing the front where he needed the most of them to go, getting into a fifth before he finally ran out. That much was easy. He had charged each to the limit of not splitting and a few minutes of levitation was negligible. Next was the hard part.

Something Irwyn had been chipping at in the back of his head the whole while and was just finalizing with all the spare thought he had. There was a reason Irwyn had arranged the needles as such. He could have just released them as they were and that likely would have worked. But Irwyn wasn't sure that would have been enough for the scale he needed.

No, what they required was that last push. Something to transcend what Irwyn could manage with just skill and affinity, letting the whole creation reach that extra step further. Because that could make all the difference. What was needed was a proper chant and name for the spell, applied to each of the needles as one whole.

Irwyn simultaneously connected to each and every one of them. At face value, 5000 was no longer such a large number when it came to sheer magic. That level of multitasking would have been trivial… for intentionless spells. Yet Irwyn was dealing with complex constructs, each bearing two Concepts and deep complexity.

Despite his best attempts to shield his thoughts from the strain of his creations that needed no additional direction, some of that weight still reflected onto his mind. And with the scale of numbers, that pressure was tremendous. Buckling. But Irwyn held on. Resisted the mountain on his neck so that he might just barely speak the few words he had prepared and then silently repeated until they were imprinted on his tongue exactly for that moment.

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"
I have long known
grime, strife and mettle
down to the bone.
One cannot settle
fury through drought
only by dousing, or
yet more fire spout.
Past the very core
path yet untrot,
through twisting turns.
Still, I dread not,
A world that burns
"

Then Irwyn shed the mountain on his back and let it loose.

The overwhelming exhaustion caused by his feat meant that it took him a full second to note the carnage unleashed, and another to process it. He was not disappointed. As far as the eye could see, there was only fire and flashes of light as the needles zigzagged across the slumbering legion and proved themselves the more ravenous between the two.

There was no real tracking of what was happening. An unexpected side effect of the sheer scale was that the ambient mana fully combusted, unlike in the test, where no such thing had occurred. Even his senses were overwhelmed in a world set ablaze in all directions through an expanding cascade.

"Are you conscious?" Elizabeth broke him out of the reverie. Irwyn also realized that it was the heiress' Flame barrier keeping… well, her safe. Irwyn did not burn, much less from his own magic. Still, he wordlessly summoned a second defense beneath hers, and she let him take over a moment after.

"Mostly," he nodded. "I feel… dull and tired. But not on the brink of collapse."

"Even more amazing given this," she looked away into the inferno with awe.

"Not like we can see much," Irwyn tried to peer through the sheer extent of combusting air and failed, at least for the moment. Too much noise no matter how he tried to filter it.

"Not yet. But the heat is intense enough to puncture its way into the localized Void, I feel it. The boundary here is weaker than outside, but that is still mindboggling to have as a side effect at early Conception."

"Well, I had hours to prepare," Irwyn said, then took a breath to continue, only for it to be stolen by their vision clearing. The burning air dissipated, all ambient mana spent as fuel, which allowed them to look far further away. Revealing before them beautiful mayhem.

The skies set ablaze, every few moments a new epicenter exploding across the heavens as the needles found the invisible monsters within, then a tidal wave of Flame would sweep from therein, colliding with a dozen others on the same course, mixing and swirling into abstract ever-changing images.

And on the ground, great monuments of stone were bubbling like sentient lava. Whole cliffs stood up and struggled to rise against the incessant pinpricks of a million needles engineered to slaughter them without recourse. Hills began to roil, then turned to ash before taking the first step. Every time Irwyn blinked, a thousand creatures screeched in anger, then vanished with a hiss too quiet to hear from so afar.

He could finally see the floor down beneath, several meters under where the topmost layer of monsters used to dwell. It was almost identical to the walls, the red of Flames, yet distinct from the proliferating mayhem. In less than a minute, the tide of annihilation was far enough away Irwyn would struggle to see it properly with mortal eyes. All that was left visible were the flashes of light, all-consuming fire, and the boundaries of the chamber.

"I suppose we won't be needing the corner," Irwyn jested with a smile, still filled with the thrill and wonder of the magic. He had done that, all by himself.

"It was a precaution," she pouted, but her eyes remained acutely sharp. "And who knows? I think one of the mountains just twitched."

Irwyn looked and saw that too, an expanding gap in the inferno revealed the sight. Seemingly, the one closest to them, though it was a bit difficult to distinguish where each of them ended and the next began. Either way, it was a mass of rock, orders of magnitude greater than anything else in the entire region wide area. And it too was burning alive.

There was no real tremor as the monster stood, for that couldn't happen without ground. Irwyn still gaped as the creature rose to twice its already colossal size, taking on the image of a great deer, or perhaps a moose, with horns probably the length of cities and gargantuan eyes that could fit a lake each.

Then the colossus cracked in half. Flame spilled from its torso as if from hemorrhaging wounds, within moments spreading across much of the titan's surface area. It took only a bit longer for the two approximate halves to cave in on each other, the damage rendering the body structure untenable.

More mountains rose, more fell. From rock serpents and monkeys to abstract geometrical shapes, Irwyn watched in awe as they burned. Fast at first, then slower and slower. There may have as many as five million needles at some point due to the splitting, but Irwyn knew some must have been destroyed along the way. Shattered or whittled down unto exhaustion. Whatever number remained was barely enough to slay the giants, the last of his spells flickering with a distant glare as they sank into the dying colossal bodies.

Until only one was left. The biggest of them all by far, Irwyn now realized. As mountains, the differences had not seemed too large, but comparing their risen forms made those clear. The final creature was the behemoth of all behemoths. Shaped almost like a human, yet faceless and so unbelievably tall that it had to hunch just to fit beneath the firmamental boundary of their box. Which was well into the sky. Even from a whole region away, Irwyn had to lean his head back a bit to see.

Motes of flame were still glimmering upon its geodic hide, but they had been doused. There was no telling how severe the internal damage might have been, yet it was clearly in the realm of non-lethal. Or at least, not immediately deadly. The titan locked onto the distant pair, leaned down, then sprinted. There was no roar nor tremor still. Just the rustling of a living landslide as it rushed at them.

"This one is mine," Elizabeth said, brooking no argument. "Be careful of any survivors and keep them from interfering, if you can."

Then she vanished into the Void before Irwyn had a chance to protest. Not that he would have. His tiredness was getting to him. Fighting a creature with… however many Concept the colossus surely held to be the last one standing would be spreading himself dangerously thin.

Then he noticed Elizabeth already in battle. She too was not restrained by Finity. He did not see her so much as noticed the sudden darkening as a proportionally titanic slash of Void's absence cut into the creature's thigh in the middle of a step.

Of course, its features were not so defined as to have individual muscles nor the weaknesses associated with them, but the faux anatomy was very roughly there. The blow was also perfectly timed to hit the monster just as it was about to lay its full weight on the leg, which buckled under the weakness. That left the colossus crumbling to the ground headfirst at a tremendous velocity.

There was still no tremor as it impacted, for the floor was immovable and indestructible. That just meant the totality of the damage was inflicted on the monster's head. Undoubtedly, said head was a thousand times harder than reinforced steel, yet the sheer forces involved still left a resounding crack to travel through the air. And across the featureless 'face'. Though Irwyn wasn't sure if its human-esque anatomy shared the same weaknesses or served as mere mockery.

From there, Elizabeth began the lengthy process of manually dismantling a living mountain. As she had asked, Irwyn did not intervene. Instead, he focused on taking out the few monsters which had survived the cataclysm yet did not have the good sense to stay as far away as possible. Which he found still strained him. Maintaining his sight magic again and rapidly moving in a wide berth while sniping at faraway monsters took a toll on his already exhausted mind.

That was not helped by his worry. The living mountain was fast. Blindingly so. To the point Irwyn did not even see it move a few times despite the distance. He was estimating it to hold at least five Concepts from a distant examination, possibly six. It was no wonder it had been barely wounded by his needles. The monster had clearly been built as the greatest hurdle within the horde.

Yet Elizabeth was winning, at least on the surface. The creature's technique was mere stunted instinct, while Elizabeth danced across reality and in between. Several times Irwyn thought he noticed her vanish into the Void, though telling from such a distance was difficult. Rather than any massive or imposing spells, her battle plan was slow, methodical.

Chunk by chunk, cutting out the shell and then into the flesh beneath. Striking one area over and over until something vulnerable could be touched. A thousand cuts inflicted on limbs, aiming to make them useless. She also used the creature's own savagery against itself, great blows baited to plunge into its own head or torso. Slowly whittling the creature down.

For some reason, the monster was not using any sort of external magic, just punching or smashing with its body. Perhaps that was its restriction to make the challenge feasible even for them. It was already impossibly sturdy. Irwyn could not imagine how more difficult the battle would be if it could also cast like a mage with equivalent Concepts would.

Or perhaps its powers were all internal. Irwyn noticed that the damage inflicted upon it was slowly healing. But on such a scale, that might still be faster than what Elizabeth was inflicting. She clearly realized it too, though, because after the first twenty minutes, she changed tactics. Rather than trying to inflict massive damage, she began moving quicker, running across its torso and no longer even baiting the colossus to hit itself. Whatever she was doing, it was no longer visible, yet clearly there would be a purpose.

The battle followed in that way for two full hours. Irwyn was feeling himself grow progressively more tired as he maintained overwatch. He would have loved to drop his guard and rest, but every few minutes monsters would still arrive from somewhere. Just one at a time and never particularly strong, but he would not let them disturb the greater battle. Yet he was not sure how much longer he could actually keep up with it.

Which was why he was overjoyed when there was finally a change. It was a chant, though Irwyn did not catch most of it, as tired as he was and as far away as Elizabeth stood. Still, the final word resounded so loudly that a deaf man could hear it. She screamed "Offering" and Irwyn finally saw what she had been doing.

Rather than trying to damage the regenerating monster directly, she had been drawing on its shell. With the spell activating, Irwyn finally saw that. Person-sized symbols or runes, in a dozen layers stacked on top of one another as they formed a long line from the titan's shoulder to its hip. So absolutely tiny in comparison to the colossal figure. Invisible even, right before they began to swallow Light like hungry beasts. The absolute blackness that came with Elizabeth's spell activating contrasted heavily with the shell, allowing the sheer extent of her efforts to be seen.

An absolutely tremendous amount of mana coursed through them. Then more and more, until the Void's influence grew strong enough that the symbols stopped being visible - all light reflecting around them also devoured. Irwyn did not have the best estimation for Void, but he guessed Elizabeth had poured in literally everything her two Concept bearing Soul had to give over the course of that battle, etching into the creature one symbol at a time, all with a clear goal in mind. There was a final surge as the spell at last activated.

The entire section of the torso with symbols vanished, together with everything behind them. Irwyn felt a slight pull of wind as air rushed in to fill the sudden nothingness between the two pieces of a suddenly bisected giant. And within, through all the rock and dirt, Irwyn saw a remaining fifth or sixth of a skyscraper-tall amethyst gem. The core, most of it vanquished alongside that chunk of the torso.

Elizabeth fell out of the Void 20 meters away, collapsed. Irwyn was a bit slow to react as he rushed to catch her, but thankfully, gravity was not that fast anymore. Within a few moments, they were together on the platform again.

"Is it… dead?" she gasped, wet with sweat and strain, the kinds of which Irwyn had never seen her under. One of her eyes was filling with black blood from a ruptured vessel, and both he arms seemed limp, full of puncture holes. Like so much magic had been channeled it had to physically burst out of the skin.

"Yes," he confirmed. Because if that had not been enough, they were doomed anyway. Irwyn thought they would be lucky if he could even cull whatever few stragglers might still be left. Their great foe was collapsing in the distance. Deafening rumbling was audible as the titan's halves crumbled. Then, after a moment, utter silence.

||You have succeeded. Rest safely now.||

Blessedly, that alien voice sounded. Irwyn brought them down to ground, then each of them collapsed. Beaten, exhausted beyond words... Victorious.

|| Do you still underestimate what waits ahead? || the golem asked. It had appeared above their exhausted and prone bodies at some point, looking down.

"No…" Irwyn grimly answered, the tiredness making him unwilling to even nod.

He could not deny that. They had stridden in foolishly. Overconfident. Without making every possible preparation. Irwyn even knew why: He had assumed it would be a trial based on their grade of power. Meant for a normal or even prodigious mages who had carved two Concepts. That just because the trial did not anticipate their unusual way of access, it would also be rigid in difficulty. But that had been wrong.

The trial was tailored for them. It had to be. Accounting for all their inhuman, unfair advantages. Willing to ignore any hint of common sense, just the same way the two of them did. Pushing limits with expert precision, willing to leave them for dead if they couldn't rise up to the challenge. It was a trial, not a glorified pedestal for birthrights. And Irwyn was suspecting that the golem was more than a guide. It was also a judge and an architect. How else could things have been adjusted so precisely?

|| Good. The next chamber will be far worse. ||

"This was already our limit. No, beyond it. We would need to grow stronger, but that will take weeks or months," Elizabeth gasped an argument, also on her back and barely conscious.

|| Salvation is not earned in days. Only built by bloodied hands, one brick at a time. Worry not, tools and clay shall be provided. ||

As that was said, Irwyn finally reached his limit. He closed his eyes and slumbered.