Athung bought them precious seconds by enveloping Vareen with six different elemental sealing arrays, sending the Eldritch crashing against the ground below. Chaos was just corrupted darkness and it could be sealed the same way.
“Nice trick, kid. Too bad that they already tried to destroy me with arrays the size of a city and failed nonetheless!” He said while shapeshifting his body so as to reach the runes that comprised the magical formations and destroy them.
The sealing arrays kept him from using any kind of magic, but they also kept others from attacking him with spells. On top of that, an Eldritch’s body was comprised of pure Chaos and their shape depended solely on their will.
Arrays could do nothing against the magic flowing inside of him, they could only block what he manifested on the outside.
“We’ll see about that!” Athung and Aalejah unleashed the tier five Spirit Magic spell, Confined Space.
It conjured two concentric cubes of pure mana around Vareen that sealed him while also stopping his tendrils in their tracks before they could take down the arrays. In theory, they were the perfect tool to restrict an opponent incapable of using Spirit Magic whose magical powers had been sealed.
Alas, the power of their combined bright blue cores was nothing compared to Vareen’s black core. The Chaos that flowed inside his body destroyed the cubes in a matter of seconds before moving onto the arrays.
Casting so many arrays at the same time along with such a powerful Spirit Magic spell had completely exhausted Athung’s strength. She would be a sitting duck until she replenished her strength with Invigoration.
Aalejah fared even worse. She had poured all of her mana into the Confined Space and helping Lith required so much of her focus that she was incapable of using her breathing technique.
“Goodbye and good riddance.” Vareen pointed his index and medium fingers at the two women’s forehead, making them extend at breakneck speed.
Yet the elongated fingers never reached their target due to a flash of Adamant cutting them asunder.
“We meet again, old friend.” The voice came out of the lesser Abomination, but it didn’t belong to Lith.
The mass of shadows didn’t even look like Derek McCoy anymore but as someone much taller and older, with a luscious beard that almost reached his waist.
“Renkar? This is impossible! I killed you myself. How can you still be alive?” Vareen blurted out in surprise.
He was so shocked that he almost didn’t notice his severed fingers floating in circles over the old mage’s left hand while he held War with the right.
Almost.
“You died as well when you failed to achieve the violet core. If death didn’t stop you, why should I be any different?” Renkar had a huge smile while spouting the bullshit listed in Lith’s script.
“This is bullshit!” Vareen said. “It doesn’t work like that. Either you become an Abomination at the moment of your death, while you are still full of energy or you don’t. This is just a trick!”
Yet Lith’s body language had become completely different. His footwork and technique belonged to someone who had practiced the sword for centuries, not just a few years.
Vareen made new limbs emerge from his humanoid body, attacking at Renkar from every side. Yet the old Awakened dodged most of them and cut down with War those that appeared out of the ground or from his allegedly blind spots.
“Did you really think that I could forget the technique that you used to kill me?”
“It’s really you! How?” Vareen feared very few things, but the unknown was among them.
“Fuck you, that’s how!” Renkar threw the fingers back at their rightful owner who didn’t even bother dodging them.
At least until they suddenly grew in size, becoming as thick as a small tree and faster than a bullet. Each one of the two fingers had just turned into a tier four Chaos spell, Howling Void.
“What the fuck?” For the first time in millennia, pain overwhelmed even Vareen’s hunger.
“You should have listened. I’ve learned a lot from the last time we faced!” Renkar dashed forward with a straight face, hoping that the Eldritch would buy such nonsense.
The Howling Voids were just Vareen’s Chaos energy that Lith had controlled and amplified with Domination. He had no idea how to safely generate Chaos, but using that of another Abomination as a base made things much easier.
It was akin to using an already ablaze torch to spread the fire. Lith didn’t need to know how to make or lit a torch, only to touch something to set it ablaze.
As for Renkar, he came from Lith’s bloodline ability, Possession. It had taken him a while to find among the souls around him one that didn’t actually follow Lith but the Eldritch.
After that, they had fused akin to how he usually did with Solus, yet to make sure to be the dominant personality Lith needed both Aalejah’s help and the Yggdrasill staff. Without the former, he wouldn’t have had control over the wandering soul while without the latter his body would have already started to turn into Chaos.
His lesser Abomination form was too unstable to even withstand a single living being, let alone two.
It was a move that Lith had learned how to perform during his experiments with Aalejah but that he had discarded, deeming it too dangerous. Yet, now he had no other option left.
The Tiamat’s unknown nature coupled with the presence of a lost mage would allow him to freely use abilities like Domination and pin them on the soul that had merged with his body.
Renkar didn’t like being a puppet at first, but after learning from the mind fusion that he would get his revenge on his murderer and go down in history books as a mage of untold power instead of just be a footnote, he had gladly accepted.
War, instead, was greatly annoyed by the presence of the intruder. The foreign energy signature that now controlled its enchantments angered the blade, forcing Lith to spend focus and energy to reassure War.
Vareen snarled in outrage as Renkar dodged his attacks and War cut deep wounds in the Chaos that comprised his body, taking small bits of Chaos away with every slash. The Eldritch wasn’t used to fight someone who knew his attack patterns and was capable of anticipating each of his tactics.
Tired of that game of tag, the Plaguespreader conjured his tier five Chaos Spell, Concussive Blast.
Several small spheres of Chaos capable of chasing their target left Vareen’s hand and moved toward Lith. Yet the spheres ignored their mark who charged forward and crashed against a hard-light construct that Lith had left behind akin to a residual image.
Concussing Blast destroyed conjured puppet before exploding with so much violence that the tunnel quaked all the way up to the surface.
“What?” Vareen was flabbergasted and so was everyone but Solus and the World Tree that was following the fight from the staff, studying Lith’s every move.
‘How ingenious.’ They thought in unison.
‘Lith’s current form has so little light element that Chaos has trouble identifying him. He managed to fool the homing spell simply by leaving behind enough light magic to lure those spheres with a much stronger energy signature.’
