– Era of the Wastes, Cycle 219, Season of the Setting Moon, Day 63 –

  Terry observed the otherrealm serpent warily from a distance. He was sure he had seen something soul-related slip from the dying avatar to the snake creature.

  One sacrificed its life to summon that snake. Guess it got a hold of another soul?

  Terry felt weird. On the one hand, he had confidence in his Immovable Object spell. There was no gap in the ice around their two remaining enemies. No gap for the elven avatar or summoned snake to escape. They would have to break out the hard way, which the elven avatars had not been able to.

  On the other hand, the strange slip in souls couldn’t possibly be anything good. Terry had kept several layers of immovable ice active just in case one was overcome. He should feel confident, but something was off.

  More than one thing. Terry couldn’t say why, but he felt strange. He felt something that didn’t entirely belong to himself. Something within his awareness, but outside his sense of self.

  A sense of deep irritation.

  A sense of indignation at something wrong.

  A sense of compulsion to make it right.

  A ravenous hunger to quench the outrage.

  It wasn’t invading Terry's mind. It was hovering somewhere at the edge of his own self-reflection. Perceptible, but separate.

  Terry might have assigned the thoughts to Oz if he had believed the shadowy blob to be capable of such complex emotions. However, except for the hunger part, the rest didn’t seem like his companion slime.

  Terry felt the otherrealm serpent shift under the influence of its freshly absorbed soul. Its eyes glowed with orange flames that didn’t burn. Its body pulsed, but finding its growth constricted by immovable ice, it transformed into something denser.

  Terry could feel the diamond-like scales transform into something resembling crystalline tree bark. The scales’ shade transformed from black to absolute darkness. Three pointy horns grew at the snake’s head. At their tips a haze resembling the cloud of death ability from earlier manifested passively.

  The more Terry saw, the more he felt the irritation rise. It felt strange. It wasn’t inside his mind, but he could still feel it. The feelings weren’t his, but they were linked to him.

  The transformed invader hissed loudly while exhaling a draining fog similar to a combination of the draining and corrosive abilities demonstrated earlier. There was also something new on top.

  Something darker.

  Terry felt the innermost layer of his immovable ice prison disrupted. His spells shaped up rapidly to replace what was lost, but the snake’s evolution had turned the prison intended to let the others prepare a devastating strike into a race against the false god.

  Even a perfect activation of the Immovable Object spell still left the instant the spell was disrupted for the snake’s ability to strip away the ice. This ability wasn’t like a disruption discharge. It didn’t just attack the mana realm, but the physical as well.

  Terry’s orders washed over the battlefield. For every layer of ice stripped away from the inside, ten more would be added on top. If the only thing they would achieve was to waste the creature’s mana, then so be it. None of them could stand against a false god individually, but combined, they could at least leave a dent in its mana pool.

  Indignant hunger rose from deep in Terry’s soul. He allowed his gaze to be pulled to catch the shift in his soulsight.

  Another slip in souls.

  The last elven avatar had calmly done something to end its own life.

  To sacrifice its soul to the otherrealm snake.

  A cold sweat gathered at Terry’s nape. It wasn’t the intensity of the soul, although that played a part. Of the three elven avatars they had to face after the cursed tree had been destroyed, this had been the only one not petering at the edge of death already. The Ungodly Angel’s Wrath had debilitated it just the same, but not to the same extent as the others.

  It wasn’t the fact that whatever the elf had done, it had transformed its entire being – mana, mind, and body – to include in its soul as an offering.

  No, it was the cold calmness of it all.

  The elf had simply snuffed out its own life to feed whatever this snake creature represented.

  Terry involuntarily thought back to the first-ranked rookie of Tiv’s named rookies list. Carlos the Sudden Death, an almost ego-less being blindly following rules irrespective of morality. A faithful worshipper from a cult known as the Serenity of Pax.

  Terry had heard his aunt Sigille caution against channelers, no matter how ‘benevolent’ the cult’s target of worship may claim to be.

  Something about what happened in his soulsight had felt wrong, and not just to the strange feeling tugging at his periphery. Seeing a folk walk out of this life with not so much as a defiant shout was wrong in Terry’s own view as well.

  Terry didn’t have time to dwell on his thoughts, because he could feel another change coming over the otherrealm snake. A mark appeared at the center of its three horns. A vortex of power that rushed into the creature all at once.

  Crap.

  Terry felt his spells drained of power. He reflexively retracted his mana bubble, but most of his mana surrounding the creature had been sucked away.

  Ice splintered and the snake soared into the sky. Its glowing eyes towering over the battlefield. The bark of darkness serving as its outer protective layer loomed even darker than the shadow it cast upon the allied forces. Its every exhalation was an ominous haze promising a corroding death.

  Gazing upon the gigantic snake, only a single thought intruded into Terry’s numbed mind.

  I’ve seen bigger.

  Terry involuntarily snorted. This might be the densest mana he had seen in a while, but size-wise, this otherrealm creature paled in comparison to the wyvern he had to face in the Elusive Fog of Frost.

  Terry wasn’t the only one left unimpressed. Already, the empowered spells of Mia and the others were raining havoc on the channeling beast invading this realm. It wasn’t exactly how they planned this to go, but Terry’s immovable ice had still bought them time to empower their spells beyond anything they had been able to earlier.

  Terry clenched his fists.

  We can do this.

  He sensed the spores carrying the Wrath that were seeking out the only remaining target of the cursed faith. Wherever the funghouls died, the spores exploded and rushed toward the invader.

  Just a little more.

  Originally, Terry had hoped to trap their enemies in immovable ice to let the allies empower their spells, similar to how he had approached his aunt’s anti-magic doll constructs in the past. Trapping them with immovable metal and allowing Rafael to take them out with a heavenly wolf slash.

  With the serpent sacrificing the last elven cultist in exchange for getting new abilities including one that allowed it to escape the Immovable Object more quickly, Terry needed to rethink his approach.

  “No matter.”

  Terry’s finger runes washed over the battlefield once more.

  We can do this.

  ***

  [Wind northeast!]

  The noxious plume exhaled by the otherrealm invader was blown right back at it.

  Funghouls were raining down from the sky, dropped by dimensional gates.

  [Fire!]

  Fire spells flew forward and joined the air blasts to combine into an inferno of flames. The sheer force of the blast managed to move even the gigantic snake while spatial blades were charging it from behind.

  The killed funghouls exploded in spores that flew towards the snake as soon as they appeared.

  [More oil!]

  The earth split apart and oil sprang forth while canisters of flammable materials were hurled by giants to add to the pile.

  Thousands of giants. Moving steel-like muscles.

  Tens of thousands of elves. Circulating mana and shaping spells.

  Fighting as one.

  The snake’s horns sizzled and a cloud of deafening fog quenched the fires.

  [Ropes and roots!]

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  Entangling roots surfaced from the earth and clung around the enormous invader. They dragged thicker ropes with them. Ropes whose other ends were quickly clasped by armies of giant hands that forced the snake into a specific direction just a little.

  [Ice wall!]

  Before the otherrealm invader had any chance to unleash a ray of debilitating darkness, the water drenching everything rose up to be frozen and turned immovable.

  [Boulders!]

  Boulders were hurled by giants and propelled by earth-aspected spells. They weren’t hurled at the creature directly, but instead found their way to dimensional gates connected to the acceleration field Mia and Yorgos had set up in the sky.

  The boulders fell between looped dimensional gates until they reached terminal velocity and were ready to be redirected into the damnable snake.

  The creature didn’t come out unscathed from all the attacks, but it simply refused to die. Its otherrealm connection showed no sign of drying up in mana. In contrast to the elven avatars, the serpent didn’t even appear to show any limits in its channeling.

  Far enough from the snake to stay outside its attack range, but still close enough for his own casting, Terry frowned. He had hoped the lesson on channelers he remembered from Cadence would apply to this summoned snake as well, but so far, he had seen no limit to the creature’s channeling.

  A normal channeler still had to control the mana, and guide it through their own mana channels, which naturally strained them with use.

  This summon, or whatever it was, was something else.

  Terry took solace in the fact that the darkness bark surrounding the creature’s body seemed to have lost some of its luster, but it didn’t make up for the fact he could feel the mana on their side diminishing while the creature was showing no sign of letting up.

  The three-horned serpent broke through the immovable ice with another channeled drain ability that left the ice broken and melted.

  [Lightning!]

  Terry continued coordinating the allied mages while waiting for the right time. If the snake avatar followed its previous patterns, then—

  [Let go!]

  The serpent coiled itself. Its bark-like shell stood up in scales to display a diamond-like sharpness. It uncoiled and tore through rope and root alike.

  Terry held his breath.

  The serpent only intended to tear through the rope, but the force of its body uncoiling was enough to make it jump above the earth.

  Just a little.

  Enough for the spell Mia had prepared to ignite.

  Instead of landing back on the ground, the serpent fell into a dimensional gate. It wasn’t the first time they had tried this, but they had learned from their previous mistakes.

  This time, they had not given the otherrealm snake the time to destroy the gate. It was just enough to place the gate. Only an instant for it to sink into it.

  The snake reappeared high up in the sky. As high as the skilled dimensional mage could transport the creature.

  Then it fell.

  Again, it wasn’t the first time they had tried this. By now, the territory of the sun was riddled with craters from the dropping serpent. Even the creature’s terminal velocity had not been enough to kill it on impact.

  Fortunately, it had been enough to squash the army of funghouls underneath, at least, which added that much more spores of Wrath attacking the creature’s channeling.

  Terry had hopes for something more impactful this time. His eyes were fixed on the dropping colossus. He could only be grateful that the creature couldn’t fly, because otherwise, this would have been a lot more difficult.

  Difficult enough as it is.

  The three-horned serpent might not be able to fly, but it was still thrashing around madly during its descent, which didn’t make Terry’s job any easier.

  The invader was able to survive spatial blades.

  A reaction of mana.

  The invader was able to outmatch the unstoppable plane shift of the Immovable Object spell.

  A reaction of mana. One that requires time.

  Time.

  Time that Terry didn’t plan to allow. He knew the invader had intelligence, which was why he didn’t want to draw attention now.

  His mind was absorbed with the flailing felt through his mana touch. Following the creature’s trajectory and every movement.

  Now!

  In an instant, many transparent marbles of ice dropped from the sky while a single marble remained immovable.

  Immovable only until the next second when the marble drifted ever so slightly to let a foaming jaw envelop it at a specific angle.

  Terry felt lucky that this avatar had chosen to take such an enormous form. It played to his strength. If terminal velocity wasn’t enough to kill the creature, then perhaps focusing the entire force onto the surface of a single immovable marble would.

  It was a trick he had used before.

  It was a trick he could only use now thanks to the help of others.

  The serpent’s own massive weight forced the immovable marble right into and through its brain.

  Terry felt the serpent’s mana retreat inside while its thrashing slowed down. The monster crashed into the earth. Its darkness bark splintered and corrosive blood oozed out of its dying body.

  Terry’s eyes shot open when he sensed a pulse from the serpent’s channeling anchor. His mana sight showed a rush of mana through the vortex. His soulsight showed a soul-based infusion that did not bode well.

  Irritation tugged on the edge of Terry’s mind and morphed into outright fury.

  The Indignation inside of him intensified into righteous rage.

  Wrath welled up from deep inside his soul.

  Soul.

  On a rational level, Terry knew there was no reason to panic. They had killed the creature once. With all the allied forces, they would manage again. As often as necessary.

  Even so, there was a restlessness that tugged at his consciousness.

  A sense of deep defiance.

  A refusal to allow what he was sensing any chance to continue.

  Terry didn’t know how, but he felt what he needed to do. While he wanted to merely kill the cursed creature to save this cursed realm, his soul had an exceedingly stronger reaction. The soul inside of him craved to eradicate the magic under his senses without allowing a single further second to suffer its existence.

  [Exterminate!]

  Whatever was going on with the creature’s channeling anchor was offending his soul to its deepest core. A grave transgression against its most fundamental essence that could not be tolerated and had to be eradicated.

  Simply killing the serpent avatar wasn’t enough.

  [Get me there! NOW!] His finger runes shaped up in front of the dimensional mages. His words echoed in the minds of Mia and Yorgos via communication talisman. [THERE!] His mana flared at the spot he wanted to arrive at.

  Terry would have liked to rely on Bugsby, but for all the utility of the void-touched teleportation’s usefulness, accuracy was really not among its strengths, and he didn’t have time to waste on retries.

  While Yorgos was about to protest the Guardian’s tone and reckless demands, Mia showed no such hesitation.

  Terry allowed the teleportation to take hold and arrived right on top of the channeling anchor. His disruption field was already raging around the anchor, but it did little to stop the energy pushed into the creature that was visible only in soulsight.

  Terry felt foolish when facing what he knew he couldn’t stop. Why had he even come here?

  His feeling of helplessness only increased when the serpent suddenly became flooded with mana and slowly began to move, much to the horror of the allied forces.

  The creature had been dead to everyone’s eyes. Drained entirely of life energy. How could it revive?

  Terry wondered what he could do, when he sensed another purple soul-infusion pumping into the snake avatar. Up close, he could make out the structure inside the channeling anchor. He could see it wasn’t just mana, but a connection of soul.

  It itched to his mana touch.

  It irked him.

  Terry realized calling the purple leakage soul-infusion might be the most accurate term for it. Whatever was going on was just like the sacrifices of the elven avatars.

  He had sensed something similar when Vicious’s final ability had activated.

  He had sensed it again when Vicious was killed by the dungeon constructs… only it had been somewhat different again.

  “What…?”

  Terry felt strange. His vision flashed purple. Not just like when he activated soulsight. This was something radiating from inside of him.

  Radiating from his soul.

  Not radiating. Stretching!

  His stretched soul tore viciously into the creature’s channeling anchor. It ripped into the serpent’s soul-infusion and left nothing but freely dispersing mana.

  Terry watched with awe as the soul inside of him erupted in a domain not unlike his own disruption domain.

  Only this domain shredded souls into their purest form. Clawed them back from the creature claiming them from another realm. Transformed them to join their final resting place. To join the ambient mana of this realm.

  Terry watched the mana recede from the serpent’s body. Watched the channeling anchor shrivel up in fright and frantically abandoning the souls it had already lost to nothingness before it could lose even more.

  Terry felt the irritation and indignation simmer down.

  The offending mind subjugating the souls had fled.

  The souls were dispersed and free.

  Eternal rest had come for them.

  ‘Soul eater.’

  Terry gulped when he recalled how Siling’s sister had called him. Both Siyu and Chalita, the soul-talented martialist, had pointed out how his strange soul felt dangerous to them.

  They had been right.

  They had been wrong, too.

  Terry realized it after what he had seen. Seen moments ago. Seen when Vicious had died. Seen years ago when his uncle Samuel had demonstrated it. After all, whatever was going on with his soul had started with a dungeon.

  The dungeon didn’t eat souls.

  The dungeon allowed them to disperse into nothingness.

  That was exactly what he had sensed. The infused souls hadn’t been ‘eaten’. They had been forced to disperse into mana like they would normally during death.

  Terry thought back to the monster that had escaped him because of a damned phylactery rescuing the monster’s soul.

  Why couldn’t this have happened then, too? Why did Anand’s soul escape when this creature triggered… Whatever this was?

  Terry pushed the thought aside. He suppressed the urge to take out his notebook and scribble down all the interaction of souls and dungeons he knew.

  Why were Siling’s soul captures permitted by a dungeon?

  What if a necromancer had died in a dungeon? Would the phylactery work or not?

  His core-summoning obviously had something to do with souls, but what? Where did the souls that spontaneously manifested in monster cores came from? What made dungeon constructs different? Why were slime cores different yet again?

  Why did Vicious, as a follower of the Shapeless Pond, trigger the dungeon? Why only at the end? Why didn’t Cadence, as a follower of the Bright Lady, trigger the same reaction?

  Why did the funghouls directed by the Sun’s hidden cult trigger the dungeon reaction when death aura creatures did not?

  What was the difference?

  Terry had countless questions, but he knew this wasn’t the time. The pseudo-avatars were slain, but what would happen now?

  If he had been right, then there should be a reaction of the Wrath? But when? How soon could they hope for a sign of the realm’s recovery? Thuzar had been a talented curse mage, but how quickly could an off-switch be transmitted via mana?

  What if he had been wrong?

  Focus.

  Terry retrieved his king spear. No matter if he had been wrong or right. As long as there were still hostile funghouls in sight, his day wasn’t over. He would see soon enough how his theories about the realm would pan out.

  [Is it over?] Bugsby’s finger runes shaped up in front of him.

  Terry could see the exhaustion in the little beetlefolk. It had been a long day. More than once, his friend’s teleportation had saved him and others. It was a powerful ability, but it was clear that Bugsby wasn’t a warrior.

  Nor would Terry want him to be. The beetlefolk had the voracious hunger for knowledge of a true scholar, and Terry hoped this would be the last battle Bugsby would have to see in his life.

  Hopefully, Jorg can find him a nice druid tree to settle down in. I wonder what Emily is up to nowadays. It would be nice if she could visit Matteo in the Lands of the Four Towers.

  “We’ll see,” said Terry. “If you can get me to the center of the remaining funghouls, you can feel free to join the shroomans and take a break from fighting. We’ll manage the cleanup from here.”

  [No, I’ll help,] signed Bugsby firmly. [Help friend. I like helping.]

  “Alright, but don’t force yourself…”

  ***