‘Can you redirect our Primordial Flames like you just did for Thundercrash’s bullet?’ Lith asked.
‘Depends. Can you guys control them well enough to not eat at my spell?’ Friya replied.
The Hekate and the Tiamat exchanged an embarrassed look that answered louder than any word could.
‘Then no.’ Friya said. ‘If Scope collapses and your Primordial Flames go awry, we’ll be dead in a second.’
‘Let’s play this safe, then.’ Tista said. ‘I’m going in close quarter combat. Please, deflect with Dimensional Magic any attack strong enough to shoot me down. I will take care of the rest.’
‘I can do that. There’s not much I can do while I wait for Thundercrash to recharge anyw… What?’ Solus emerged from the ground with a full set of spells at the ready.
Mjolnir erupted from the Fury, conjuring bolts of lightning that the now magnetite-enriched soil absorbed and amplified. The monsters that survived or avoided the spell were impaled by rock spikes that acted like lightning rods.
The magnetite drew the collected electricity upon them so that not a single thunderbolt missed its target. The tier four Light Mastery spell, Blightburn generated scorching pillars of solid light from the fingertips of her free hands, cutting through the enemy ranks and keeping them at bay.
Eight more Furies carved their path, their heads white from the heat conjured by the red elemental crystals. Once they reached their respective destination, the eight hammers exploded into countless flaming shards.
Burning Rain turned them into white-hot Davross shards that pierced through the hide and flesh of the monsters, making the blood of its victims boil.
At the same time, the runes carved on the Sage Staff conjured Warping Arrays that allowed her to jump through the battlefield and avoid being surrounded by the mutated monsters.
From his hiding spot, Orpal hated Lith for having grown so much in power while his own stagnated. He hated every kind of mystical flame the Tiamat generated because it was something majestic that he knew deep inside he would never possess.
He also hated Tista’s new form for resembling so much a Tiamat and none at all a Vurdalak, proving that Orpal’s bloodline had been cast away from the Verhen family as much as its bearer.
Last, but not least, he hated Night because even though the Horseman couldn’t even think about the fight they were witnessing, he could almost hear her laughing at him.
‘Curse you all! Millions of carefully bred monsters and not one that can put a dent on Leech’s scaled face. Yet I’ll be the one to have the last laugh!’ As if waiting for Orpal’s cue, something brought Friya’s thoughts and the whole battlefield to a halt as Solus’ spell wore off.
A red flow of life force and a blue stream of mana were coalescing from the monsters she had just slain along with those coming from the hundreds of corpses that each member of the assault unit had claimed.
Even the ashes and ice crystals produced by the monsters consumed by the Cursed Cores of the elementals swirled in the air. The resulting energy mass that accumulated in the middle of the Black Tide was so intense that it was visible to the naked eye.
The air crackled with power as the energy shaped itself into a perfect circle that spun faster and faster until the area it encompassed started to deform. It was like reality was being muddled, stirred, and then pulled from the other side by an invisible hand.
A phenomenon that every mage worthy of their name knew like the back of their hand.
‘Friya, is that a Warp Gate?’ The question was redundant but Lith refused to believe his seven eyes.
Not only was the size of the dimensional tunnel enormous but it also emitted such an ill aura of unbridled might that it made the scales all over his body stand up.
‘Yes.’ She wanted to express how wrong the spell felt, how such a monstrosity was undeserving to be associated with Dimensional Magic.
Yet even with the mind link allowing her to express her thoughts and feelings, she failed to find a way to describe what was happening properly.
Friya would have never expected to witness someone resorting to forbidden magic to conjure a spell as mundane as Warp Steps, yet it was happening right in front of her eyes and it made her stomach churn.
The life force of the monsters was sacrificed to amplify the poor mana of their defective cores and accumulate the necessary elemental energy to conjure a stable spell.
Only Lith could feel the desperate howls of the souls that were still attached to the life forces as they consumed, just like only Friya could feel the world energy twisting itself in the attempt to resist the call of the foul spell.
‘They are crying. The elements are crying.’ She said as the forbidden magic took the elemental energies from Mogar with violence.
‘Whatever is opening that portal must be stopped.’ Lith ignored Friya’s apparently senseless remark. ‘You are the Master of Space. Can’t you shut it down or make it explode with one of your spells?’
‘I’m trying and failing as we speak.’ Friya grimaced as she put her focus and mana against the colossal Gate, but to no avail. ‘You guys are fucking Divine Beasts with Domination. Pull your weight!’
‘What do you think I’m doing? Glaring?’ Lith and Tista pointed at their seven eyes which were all burning with mana of a different elemental color.
‘So am I!’ Friya’s hair shone with inner light and her body was enveloped by the golden aura of her Dimensional Ruler spell, but the Forbidden Gate kept forming like they were just spacing out.
Activating Domination required to overpower the will of the original caster and replace their energy signature with the Dominator’s to work. Yet the dimensional corridor held more mana than a bright violet core and it was comprised of too many willpowers to subdue them all.
Dimensional Ruler, instead, overrode the dimensional coordinates of a spell to hijack it or exploited the natural instability of the bent space to make it collapse based on Friya’s wishes.
This time, however, the dimensional coordinates were restored the moment she altered them and there was no instability in the Steps. Whoever he was, the caster was conjuring the spell over and over, rewriting the runes and correcting his mistakes faster than she could spot one.
Lith and Tista hurled Origin Flames at the Gate, but they were little things compared to the swirling energy mass and were extinguished like candle flames.
Raagu was left out of the conversation due to the distance separating her from her allies but she had the wherewithal to know that whatever was happening had to be stopped.
She combined true magic with body casting and the runes woven in her robe to conjure several dimensional sealing arrays faster than any other mage could. The swirling portal deformed for an instant before effortlessly fixing itself.
The forbidden magic had compensated for Raagu’s interference by altering the elemental balance in the area and neutralizing her arrays. Incapable of drawing the correct proportions of world energy and split it into its components, the magical formations were reduced to a bunch of glowing runes.
