Orpal had moved Raaz from the chair to a table now that the chains were no longer necessary. Not after he had torn his father’s arms and legs to shreds to suck the lifeblood from them.
“Otherwise, he would already be here.” The Dead King smiled while looking into Raaz’s eyes.
They were veiled with tears, without any trace of his earlier defiance. He looked like an animal begging to be put out of its misery.
“Don’t get me wrong, this is great news to me, Dad. It means that when I take the next member of the family and make them my plaything, Leech will have no clue where to find them.
“The problem is who do I start from? I would say Tista, but I’m not much into scales-” Suddenly, the room went dark.
The sun disappeared, the lights in the room turned off, and every one of his attempts at conjuring a mystical light failed, even when using Spirit Magic.
“What the heck is this? I have yet to entrust you with my-” White eyes and fangs lit the darkness, filling the air with the inhuman screams of countless souls.
For decades, if not centuries, they had remained silent and helpless. Now, however, they had been given flesh and they could hold their fury no longer.
Claws dug into Orpal’s flesh, teeth bit him to the bones, other limbs that he couldn’t see pierced his body, and all of them sucked his essence with the deadly Abomination Touch.
“Get off me!” A simple burst of mana killed the Demons and healed his wounds.
Yet the blackness was still there and the whiteness instantly returned, attacking without care for its life.
“Night, help me!” The Dead King’s plea fell on deaf ears since the Horseman was paralyzed.
She couldn’t harm Raaz and thanks to her affinity with the darkness element, she could see through the blackness, but she wished she couldn’t. Night recognized the faces of the Demons because they belonged to the people of Lutia.
Baba Yaga’s slave spell still held and Night discovered that even Demons were covered by the restrictions that her mother had imposed on her.
She couldn’t move, talk, or even think. She was one of the most powerful beings on Mogar, yet she was reduced to a little girl scared of the dark, helpless to defend herself from the things that crawled out of the blackness.
Then, a deafening noise broke the silence of the Void as the walls and the floor of the mansion trembled. It wasn’t a weak quake like in Lutia. Chandeliers swung back and forth, dust fell from the ceiling, and paintings tilted.
Yet no one could see it in the blinding darkness.
The sun still shone in the sky, the noise wasn’t due to the rumbling of thunder from a storm, but from the hail of powerful spells that rained from the sky upon the Hogum mansion.
During the short travel, Tista had prepared her strongest arrays. After spotting the focus points of the magical formations that protected the noble household, she had placed her spells so that they would put a strain on the key areas of the enemy’s runes.
Hogum’s arrays were now focused on stopping her tier five magical formations while the barriers surrounding the rest of the area became thinner and weaker. Lith took careful notice of the position of Tista’s arrays, aiming his attacks so as to not disturb them.
The giant sword Double Edge was already in his hand, War into place to coordinate the abilities of the two blades with those of its master. The tier five Spirit Spell Primordial Roar covered the entire house, making it shake akin to a grade 6 quake on the Richter scale.
With the size of a Tiamat, the shockwaves infused with the power of the elements could have spread even wider, but it would have meant losing destructive power and hindering Tista’s work.
At the same time, the tier four Spirit Spell, Piercing Explosion, attacked the mansion from every side. A storm of black flames created by Lith and his Demons casting Final Sunset had turned the ground surrounding the household into molten lava.
Last, but not least, the army of Demons hurled together Void Flames along with their master while the only Red Demon on Mogar unleashed both Frozen and True Flames, respectively imbued with the power of Zero and Cinder.
“Help! Send Help!” Hogum said in his communication amulet while invisible hands pinned him to the ground, being careful to inflict him lots of pain but no wound. “Cenia, help me! This is all your fault!”
The request for help had immediately reached the army and the Association, but no answer came. The Hogum Household was too insignificant to have its own Gate so the troops had to mobilize and arrive with Warp Steps.
The problem was that the Call of the Void covered a wide space around the mansion, making it impossible to pinpoint an exit point at its inside.
To make matters worse, the upper echelons of the two most important armed forces of the Kingdom were busy with much more important matters than the survival of a small-time noble.
Meron was currently arguing with Morn, and Jirni had just made her entrance. With the balance of power shifting, no one dared make a move. The fate of the Kingdom was at stake and someone was about to be charged with treason.
Choosing the wrong side also meant following their fate so both Generals and Archmages took careful notes of Hogum’s request and of the sighting of the Tiamat. They even mobilized their respective troops, but gave no further orders until the new ruler of the Kingdom became clear.
Cenia screamed louder than her husband, but she called for the name of her lover. The powerful and strong man that was supposed to protect her and ensure her a bright future.
‘Run, you fool!’ Night thought, but only to herself.
Baba Yaga’s seal kept her from interfering or helping Orpal in any way. She could only hope that his survival instinct kicked in, or at least that for once his cowardice overpowered his immense pride.
The Dead King had no idea of what was happening and his blindness quickly turned fear into horror. He Spirit Warped away with Moonlight, using the power of the steed to put hundreds of kilometers of distance between him and the invisible monsters.
Even from there, he could see the swarm of black clouds moving toward the Hogum mansion like sharks following a blood trail. They moved as fast as the wind, yet there was none.
“What is happening?” He asked while Warping further and farther away until Night was free from the restrictions of the slave spell.
“A world tribulation waiting to happen. Yet something is wrong with it. I’ve never seen a tribulation like that. It reminds me of what happened in Lutia, but if it really was one, Lith should be dead now.” Such knowledge couldn’t help Orpal, only strike more fear into him as he ran for his life.
The Horseman was right. She had never witnessed a tribulation like that because the final trial before a Guardian was born was a rare event and it followed its own rules.
