Chapter 39 #3
Whose pale eyes widened. A purple sphere appeared around her, but the Rune passed through it.
She made a symbol with one hand and hissed out an unintelligible word of power that caused the very ground to shake and roar.
Cracks and fissures shot through the surrounding cliffs as everybody was shaken to their knees, and one entire escarpment slid slowly with a sloughing reverberation to the ground, hundreds of tons of rock falling and exploding and shattering and causing the bronze sea to momentarily flatten.
Eclavistra’s defiance mattered not.
Thurak passed through Eclavistra, who made a small sound of dismay, confusion.
The reversal in Harald’s Cosmos ceased, and with vicious hunger, the Well resumed draining the demon queen, sending a torrent to Sam, and then inhaling even more power than before.
“Unexpected,” snapped Eclavistra, staring at where Kársek had sunk to his knees. “The puppet severs its own strings. And how typical of your thark?n that he doesn’t even appreciate what you’re doing.”
“It matters not,” Harald heard the dwarf say, but he couldn’t be sure.
Brianna let out another cry, a fierce battle-yell, and flew faster than ever before at Eclavistra, moving as if hurled, to swing Wyrmfall even as the air burst before a bow-wave of force that swamped the demon and caused her robes and hair to stream.
Wyrmfall blazed brightly as it clanged down upon the demon’s upraised club, but this time a great disc of complex golden light appeared around them both, living runes burning along its radius, with fangs pointing inward where both parties fought.
It glittered like mica in the air, huge and potent and radiating its own terrible power, and began to slowly spin, the duel at its very center.
Harald could only stare in awe.
And over everything burned Sam’s Starfire Bastion.
Radiant and beautiful, it loosed a faint, shimmering rain of silver upon all encompassed by its dome, that fell like a dream of snow through the air.
Eclavistra’s light was dimmed, her power mitigated, and Harald knew, could sense in his bones, that were it not for this protective power, they would all be already dead.
And still the Well drank deep.
His own Abyssal Imperium darkened the air, and against its shadowed atmosphere, Sam’s silver rain was all the more beautiful. But shards of void glass floated ever more thickly around them, and Harald saw, for the first time, one jagged shard open a razor-thin line upon Eclavistra’s cheek.
“Panic!” Vic’s voice pierced the air, his Sovereign Demand targeted at Eclavistra, and even though the demon queen didn’t so much as frown, his power hit home with just enough strength to cause her to still.
Only for a new awareness to blossom in his mind.
It was alien, imposed, yet infinitely welcome: without warning, Harald understood Eclavistra’s interlocking spheres of power and defenses, sensed how she was surrounded both by veils of protection and misdirection, how she was actually orbiting her projected image from a half-dozen places simultaneously, like a fragmented reflection in a broken mirror.
And behind her, falling back, The Point retracting, Vic, his blond mop of hair in disarray, blood pouring from his nostrils, his lunging attack having failed to hit him physically, even as it pierced her defenses with Intimate Dissection and then spread to the rest of them with Clarity of the Cut.
Brianna laughed again, raised her giant blade, and caused it to flare blindingly bright as Eclavistra darted back toward her burning purple portal.
The huge disc of rotating runes tightened, and the Starfire Bastion empowered it so that it blazed like molten gold, and Eclavistra snarled as she was prevented from reaching her portal.
“You cannot escape, Demon,” called Brianna. “Not while I—”
But her words were lost as she flung herself forward again, Wyrmfall hammering down upon the upraised club, and a second pulse of power flooded out.
Her huge blade seemed to hit harder, and then again, building up an unstoppable cadence that only displayed ever more might with each blow, Eclavistra’s parries and blocks degrading, becoming slower.
Eclavistra blurred and somehow appeared above Brianna, so that Wyrmfall cut ruinously through the void even as the demon raised her hand, a pinprick of purple light filling it, her expression becoming one of glee.
Sam raised her palm and unleashed Light of Censure.
Where before the attack had been a thick beam, now it was akin to a rushing river: faster as light, it filled the air like a great avenue carved by the sun, only to burst out in every direction where it impacted Eclavistra’s barrier of purple.
The radiant attack drove the demon up into the air, until she blurred again and appeared a dozen yards away, her tabard and skirt singed.
But without letting up for a second, Brianna fell upon her, drawn by her powers again to catapult directly into the fray, but this time, however, her movements changed.
Nessa’s Grand Orchestration filled the air, and guided her blade so that it instead cut at seams of power, bindings of magic, and instead of striking at Eclavistra’s image, she hewed at the ethereal defenses that Vic had revealed.