NOVEL NEXT Chapter 86 - TMI
Fin's heart hammered against his ribs as Taranis, materialized fully in the cave. The creature was magnificent and terrifying in equal measure.
The kitten circled Fin twice with deliberate, predatory grace, each step leaving tiny scorch marks on the stone floor. Its eyes fixed on him with an expression that somehow managed to convey the feline equivalent of a deeply disappointed tsk.
Before Fin could even begin to formulate a response, Taranis vanished in a brilliant flash of lightning that left purple afterimages dancing across his retinas and the sharp, ozone-heavy scent of a lightning strike lingering in the cave air.
"What the actual hell was that?" Fin blurted, his voice cracking slightly as the puppy at his feet began yipping in alarm, its hackles raised and tail tucked between its legs. The poor creature was clearly having the worst day of its young life, what with temporal freezes and divine lightning cats appearing out of nowhere.
Theron, who had somehow managed to maintain his casual lean against the boulder throughout the entire supernatural visitation, slowly set his cup of mysterious brew down on a convenient stone ledge. His electric blue eyes were wider than usual, and for once, his perpetual smirk had been replaced by something approaching genuine surprise. "Boy," he said carefully, his voice unusually measured, "was that what I think it was?"
Fin shrugged, trying to project a nonchalance he definitely didn't feel while reaching down to scratch the puppy's ears in an attempt to calm the trembling creature. "Well, if you think it was the Lightning Prime making a house call, then yeah, you'd be right on the money. If you were thinking it was just a really dramatic stray cat with delusions of grandeur, then..." He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at the lingering scorch marks on the cave floor.
Theron's shoulders sagged slightly, his usual demeanor deflating like a punctured balloon. For the first time since Fin had known him, the old man looked almost... diminished. "And here I thought I was the powerful, mysterious one in this little family dynamic," he muttered, running a weathered hand through his hair. "All I ever managed to imprint was a grouchy hawk with anger management issues and a tendency to steal shiny objects."
Fin shot him an incredulous look, the weight of Kailos's earlier revelation burning in his mind like a brand. Now seemed as good a time as any to address the elephant in the room, or rather, the Tier Seven cultivator pretending to be a harmless old grandfather. "So," he said with studied casualness, "Tier Seven, huh? That's quite the little detail to leave out of our family bonding sessions."
Theron's eyes narrowed instantly, the lazy amusement vanishing from his expression as his gaze sharpened to laser focus. The temperature in the cave seemed to drop several degrees, and Fin felt an uncomfortable prickle against his soul, as if invisible fingers were probing at the edges of his consciousness. The sensation was deeply unsettling, like having someone rifle through his most private thoughts. "How exactly do you know my Tier, boy?" Theron asked, his voice carrying a dangerous edge that Fin had never heard before.
Fin froze, caught like a deer in headlights, his mind racing to come up with a plausible explanation that didn't involve divine intervention. The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken questions and the weight of revealed secrets.
Then, without warning, Theron threw back his head and laughed, a rich, booming sound that echoed off the cave walls and sent small stalactites raining dust from the ceiling. "Well, I'll be damned," he said, wiping tears from his eyes. "That's genuinely fascinating, grandson. I can't see hide nor hair of your new skill it's completely invisible to my senses, but congratulations on fixing that shattered mess of yours. Must be incredibly powerful to hide from me..." His grin turned sly, predatory. "Or perhaps someone, or more intriguingly, something, with considerable power is doing the cloaking for you."
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Fin's stomach twisted into knots. Kailos's divine camouflage was apparently holding strong, but Theron's intuition was razor-sharp and cutting uncomfortably close to the truth. For a brief moment, Fin considered coming clean about everything, the deity, the Tier Eight Sovereigns who'd nearly descended on them like vultures, the frozen time and divine intervention. But the thought of trying to explain Kailos, with all his cryptic responses and mischievous interventions, made his head ache preemptively.
"Yeah, well," Fin said, deflecting with all the grace of a brick through a window, "it's fixed now, and that's what matters. Can we please go to that border town you mentioned? I'm getting really tired of caves and I could use some actual civilization."
Theron's grin returned full force, but there was a new wariness lurking behind his eyes, a careful calculation that hadn't been there before. "Absolutely, my mysterious grandson. But there's one tiny little detail we should probably discuss before we make our grand entrance."
Fin raised an eyebrow, unconsciously mimicking Theron's expression as the puppy continued to nudge anxiously at his leg. "Such as?"
"Well, there's a... minor complication we might encounter," Theron said, suddenly finding the cave ceiling fascinating. "You see, the person who runs that particular town is a Tier Six cultivator, and they might have developed just the tiniest bit of animosity toward me over the years."
Fin stared at his great-grandfather in disbelief. "You're calling someone who could probably flatten my entire hometown with a sneeze a minor complication? But that's beside the point… what did you do to piss off a Tier Six?"
Theron scratched the back of his neck, looking for all the world like a teenager caught sneaking back into the house after curfew. "Well, you see, about a century ago, give or take a decade, I might have engaged in certain... intimate relations with them in order to gather intelligence about a particularly valuable sacred treasure they were pursuing at the time."
Fin's jaw dropped so fast he was surprised it didn't bounce off the cave floor. The man standing before him, his legendary great-grandfather, a terrifyingly powerful Tier Seven cultivator who could bend the world to his will, was apparently still just a man underneath it all. A catastrophically stupid man with questionable decision-making skills.
"Fuck," Fin said with feeling.
Theron nodded gravely, his expression uncharacteristically solemn. "Fuck, indeed."
"So we're not going then?" Fin asked, half-hoping the answer would be no. The prospect of dealing with a righteously furious Tier Six sounded about as appealing as gargling broken glass.
"Oh, we're absolutely going," Theron said, his trademark grin making a triumphant return. "I just thought I should give you fair warning that we might need to dodge some rather impressive projectiles when we arrive. Possibly castle-sized ones."
"What kind of projectiles are we talking about here?"
"Don't worry about it," Theron said with studied casualness, which somehow made Fin worry about it even more.
Before Fin could demand a proper explanation, Theron clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder with enough force to rattle his teeth. Lightning erupted around them. The puppy's terrified yip was lost in the thunder as the world became a blur of electric fury and displaced air.
When Fin's feet hit solid ground again, his enhanced senses immediately began screaming danger warnings, not from any single source, but from the entire sky above them. The very air felt thick with barely restrained power, like standing in the eye of a hurricane and knowing the walls could collapse at any moment.
He looked up, his breath catching in his throat. A colossal wooden hand, vast as a mountain and gnarled like ancient timber, hung suspended directly above them. Each finger was the size of a castle tower, carved with intricate patterns. The sheer scale of it was enough to pin Fin in place with a mixture of awe and primal terror.
"Hello, darling," a voice purred from everywhere and nowhere at once, chillingly sweet and sharp enough to cut glass.
Fin slumped to the ground as only one thought went through his head. I want to go home.