Vastor conjured a red sphere the size of an apple on his left hand and an orange one on his right. The heat generated by the former drained the humidity from the air, raising the temperature by several dozens of degrees per second.
The latter, instead, broke down the solid ground below him until it turned into fine sand, each grain of which was no bigger than a speck of dust.
Vastor brought the two spheres together, and the tier five War Mage spell, Red Storm, revealed its true form.
It was a mix of fire and earth that Kigan had researched ever since he was still a Phoenix, in the attempt to safely conjure a destructive power on par with Cinder without having to deal with its counterpart, Zero.
Aside from Decay, cursed elements were dangerous even for Eldritchs. Red Storm was the result of Kigan’s studies and he had taught it to Vastor to make sure that if anything happened to him, someone would live on and continue his legacy.
A blood-colored sandstorm flooded the area surrounding Vastor, sparing only the people at its center. The mercenaries conjured several kinds of protections against the unknown threat but all of them failed.
The red color of the spell was caused by the intense heat that coated each grain of sand while the storm was generated by the earth magic that made the spell spin around its caster.
Together they formed an incandescent whirlwind that could not be dodged or blocked.
Shields made of ice disappeared as soon as Red Storm dried the air. Walls made of earth and air domes could stop the fine particles, but not the heat that they released as more and more of them piled up on the surface of the conjured protections.
All those who failed to understand the true aim of Kigan’s spells died without understanding what they had missed. Red Storm didn’t target the people inside its area of effect directly, it killed them of dehydration.
The heat made the mercenaries sweat bullets but the dry air made the sweat evaporate as soon as it formed so that it was impossible to notice the phenomenon until it was too late. First, their vision blurred, then they had difficulty breathing, and lastly, they turned into mummified corpses.
Once Red Storm disappeared, only the backlines and those who had managed to Blink to safety were still alive. At least until Vastor unleashed more spells that the Abomination hybrids of his Organization had taught him.
Zinya couldn’t avert her eyes from the horror taking place in front of her. People exploded, burned, or simply disappeared in flashes of darkness, spattering blood and entrails everywhere while the stench of shit made the air almost unbreathable.
From time to time, she lowered her gaze to make sure that Filia and Frey were alright, yet the sound of the carnage kept drawing her attention like a siren whose song she was unable to resist.
She cried, puked, and even peed herself as she witnessed the death of countless people.
The mercenaries didn’t fare any better and they didn’t stand behind the safety of Vastor’s back but faced his unbridled fury. Those who surrendered died and so did everyone who offered him their backs in the attempt to escape.
Panic started to spread and even the backlines started to fall back. Orderly at first and then in a chaotic, desperate run for their lives. They trampled everyone that moved too slowly or that simply stood in their path.
The Master never ceased his attack but he didn’t give chase either. No matter how many of those human-faced monsters he killed, there were plenty more on Mogar ready to take their place whereas there was only one Zinya.
He didn’t care how the rest of Mogar saw her. To him, she was more important than the Queen.
Ever since he had lost any hope to become the god of healing and the Royals had started to consider him as an expendable asset, Vastor had wasted years in the foolish attempt to bring back the glorious days of his youth.
The more effort he had put into overcoming the skill gap between him and Manohar the more frustrated he had become. For each step forward he made, the god of healing advanced ten, if not a hundred times that much.
After over a decade of failures, Vastor had inwardly given up. He still chased Manohar’s back only because he didn’t know what else to do with his life.
Zinya had been the first person to make him feel special again.
She treated him as if he was the successful man that he had always dreamed of becoming instead of a middle-aged loser. She didn’t care for how old and short he was, always looking at him as if she could see something dazzling.
When she smiled at him, Vastor felt the disappointment and self-loathing that had haunted him during his adult life disappear.
He had used the black core on himself, turning into the first artificial Abomination-human hybrid, not because he cared about immortality, but because he wanted to protect her. Even if that meant scaring Zinya and losing her forever.
Once only corpses lay in front of him and the still alive mercenaries were out of the reach of his spells, Vastor turned around. He noticed Zinya’s sorry state and knew that she hadn’t listened to his warnings.
She sat in a pool of her own urine and puke, trembling from head to toe. Her face was as pale as a ghost and part of her hair had turned white. She had been biting her lips to not scream and clenching her hands with so much strength that both were bleeding.
The Master didn’t dare to come close to her, knowing that nothing he could say would make her forget what she had just witnessed. He just released a pulse of darkness to cleanse the air from the stench of shit and to clean her, yet Zinya held her children tighter, yelping in fear at the sight of his magic.
“Thanks for your help. Now you can go.” Vastor said to the Spirit Tail after a roaring thunder broke the silence.
Tezka and the blue-robed man were too far for Live Vision to pick up their energy signatures, but the noise and the flashes of light produced by the conflicting spells meant that their fight was far from over.
‘If I step in against an opponent that can go toe to toe against the oldest Eldritch of my Organization, I would only be a hindrance. Most of Tezka’s best spells have a huge area of effect and they don’t discriminate between enemies and allies.’ Vastor thought.
Zinya raised her face to look into his eyes one last time, stuttering gibberish for a few seconds before fainting. The Master used Invigoration to make sure that both she and the kids were fine as the Spirit Tail darted away, eager to return to the main body along with their equipment.
Meanwhile, away from the ruins of Zinya’s house, Tezka and the blue-robed man were still fighting. The Davross dagger had given the fake Fallmug a significant edge over the unarmed Eldritch.
