‘Our chances of victory would be none. Yet if we manage to fuse and trigger the tower’s combat form, we might escape by the skin of our teeth. Maybe.’ Solus replied.
“You are amazing, but let’s see how you do without silly tricks!” Salaark bolted forward, her wings curled near her body as she accelerated to unbelievable speed.
The white flames burned the Chaos Dimension, getting rid of the spatial distortion and allowing her to reach her mark in an instant. Her wounds were also healed, making her children sigh in relief.
‘Brilliant move!’ Solus thought while analyzing Salaark’s strategy. ‘Whatever Tezka did to fool the willpower in her spells, it can’t work on physical attacks. Once the Primordial Flames get rid of the Chaos Dimension, the match is hers!’
Or so she thought until, with the same delicate movements of his hands, Tezka also deflected Salaark’s wings, tails, and beak. The power of the white flames overwhelmed Chaos Dimension but she still couldn’t touch him.
The Suneater, instead, only needed a flick of his wrists to uproot her in a defenseless position and then strike at her with a boom of thunder. His fists came in and out of Cinder Warps that appeared near her body, limiting the interaction with the Primordial Flames and amplifying the kinetic energy of the blows one hundredfold.
Salaark was utterly confused, with gravity changing its direction so quickly that she couldn’t orient herself. Tezka moved from one point in space to another non-stop, making it seem there were one hundred of him instead of one.
“How is this possible? My Primordial Flames are supposed to burn the runes of your spells yet they are still unscathed.” Soul Vision revealed that none of her attacks had put a single dent in the integrity of the Chaos Dimension’s matrix. “What power is this?”
“Science, little sparrow.” Tezka weaved his index finger in front of his snout without ever stopping his attacks. “Gravity is actually the curvature of space and time. You, I, and everyone else on Mogar are simply moving on the curvature of that fabric.
“Matter tells space how to curve while space tells matter how to move. I have understood their duality and now I can control matter with Gravity Magic and space with Dimensional Magic.
“This isn’t your turf anymore but my playground!”
Gravity altered the trajectory of Salaark’s attacks while space twisted and turned around the Suneater, making him untouchable and his attacks unavoidable.
‘I understand now!’ Friya said, making everyone turn toward her. ‘Primordial Flames still use world energy but now that’s at Tezka’s back and call. He achieved absolute mastery over everything around him by circulating the mana from his body through his tails.
‘He needed to fuse back into one body because to attain this level of control, you need a perfect understanding of all elements and how they interact with each other as you alter their individual output at any given time. He is-‘
As Friya tried to find a metaphor that could express the complexity of Tezka’s genius, something clicked inside of her.
‘That’s it! That’s what Mogar’s answer about my hair meant! I’m no Lith, I don’t have a bloodline ability that gives me Domination, I have a natural affinity towards all of them.
‘To achieve the violet, I must do like Morok and let the elemental energies flow through me. Yet since I don’t have his eyes, I need to split the world energy in its components by myself before harmonizing them with my life force.
‘He was right, I really can learn from his experience.’
The others drowned her in questions but she cut them off, using Lifestream to circulate the world energy inside her body. She split it into its basic components, using her hair to draw them apart and making them a part of herself.
Friya wasn’t just a mass of life force and mana anymore, the six elemental energies now resided in her body as well, balancing the other two forces out. The elemental streaks in her hair lit up like suns of different colors and the blue of her aura turned violet.
Yet she was no beast. There was no pillar accompanying her evolution and her body started to crack down to rearrange itself in the most perfect and painful way possible.
“Surtr! Deal with the kid. I don’t care what happens to me, Friya mustn’t miss a single second of this fight. Did I make myself clear?” Salaark ordered.
“Yes, mother.” The Dragon of Light put his hands on Friya’s head, taking control of her breakthrough.
He guided matter and energy on the path of least resistance so that the young woman could still focus on the exchange between the Suneater and the Lord of War.
Friya’s body shivered, black tar-like impurities gushed out of her mouth, eyes, and ears yet she barely noticed it while she tried to unveil the secrets of Chaos Dimension.
Every fold in space was a symphony of genius and every twist in gravity was a masterpiece of magic.
‘Fuck me sideways I remember an Einstein quote saying Tezka’s exact same words!’ Lith said this solely to Kamila and Solus. ‘What if Tezka is as smart as him? What if he’s even smarter?’
The two women had a hard time understanding the implications of the existence of someone who could match the intellectual prowess of the father of modern physics and also had the magical power of an Eldritch.
“Fuck, I really didn’t want to do this because it feels like a cheap blow, but as you said, victory requires no explanation!” Salaark released countless elemental sealing arrays, knowing that someone without Spirit Magic or Domination would become helpless once deprived of the power of the elements.
Yet Tezka kept grinning and unleashed the spells stored inside six of his tails. The Cursed Elements drained their counterpart from her arrays, turning one of the elemental components of the magical formations into Cursed Magic as well.
Mirror Magic was much faster than Warden Magic so Tezka’s spells reached their targets while the arrays were still forming and before they could take effect.
The final result was the arrays imploding and Salaark getting pummelled for losing her focus in surprise.
“I told you, I’ve prepared for this fight for a long while. You would have beaten me ten times over if I were still an Eldritch but now I’m also a Warg!” Tezka’s Spirit Tail had detached earlier from the main body.
The atrophied limb was useless in a fight, but it could still form a body of its own. The Spirit Tail had been casting with true and fake magic, passing the spells to the main Tezka.
It gave him the equivalent of body casting and an endless reserve of spells for his tails.
“Magnificent!” Salaark’s voice expressed the admiration she felt. “I did the right thing challenging you. A weaker Guardian might have been defeated by your newfound powers.”
“A weaker Guardian?” Tezka echoed before being blasted away in a pillar of emerald fire.
“Indeed.” Salaark was still a White Phoenix but her body was now engulfed in Immortal Flames.
They came out of her body and were sparked by her very core. The emerald flames obeyed solely the Overlord and ignored even Mogar’s will.
