Chapter 274: The Radiant One’s Descent

The declaration rang out and the dome sealed.

Inside it, the shockwaves died. The displaced air, the scattered earth, the rolling vibrations still coming from the fight behind her — all of it smoothed into stillness the moment her Order encompassed it. She rose from the ground slowly, Ailin secured on her back, sword in hand.

She observed the catastrophic results of the clash between Finn and the Sun God’s beam… a clash that was still currently ongoing above the treeline — a thick pillar of weaponized sunlight held against a torrent of glitching chaos, neither giving way, the light coming off the collision so blinding that she had to avert her gaze and look toward the ground, where the God of Secrets should’ve been…

But he was nowhere to be seen.

He had used Finn’s redirected attention exactly as she had expected him to. The moment the Sun God’s beam had pulled Finn’s focus upward, he had dissolved from the fight cleanly and moved through the forest at full pace, putting distance between himself and Finn and leaving him and the Sun God to contend with each other.

It was a logically sound plan. One that she might’ve done if she were also in his shoes. Get clear, let the Sun God handle the Errant, then deal with the remaining loose end while they are occupied.

In this case she was the loose end.

She felt him enter the dome the moment he crossed its edge, his movement registering against her Order field immediately. He slowed inside it, the authority she had declared pressing back against his speed, and she tracked his position as he pushed through toward her…

Except, the position she was tracking and the body she could see through the trees were not at the same point.

He had layered a deception over himself as he ran, likely an implementation of his Secrets authority, masking his true location and steering her perception toward a physical form moving in one direction while her Order magic found his actual body disguised as a rock in the undergrowth thirty meters to the decoy’s left. Any ordinary being, or even most Transcendents, would have locked onto the obvious moving shape and sent their attack there.

Althea raised her sword calmly and swung it toward the rock.

She felt the God of Secrets register the trajectory of her strike, and felt his immense shock that she had locked onto his true form.

Rapidly the rock morphed and the God of Secrets resolved out of it fully, eyes wide and jaw clenched hard. He looked at her strike closing in on him and then looked at her directly, and in that split second with no room to evade, she saw a look in his eyes that made her danger senses go wild immediately. An unwilling look. Like he was about to unleash something even he didn’t want to, but had been pushed to use…

But just before he could make a move, something appeared directly in front of him and stopped her strike dead in the air just inches away from his face.

Althea’s eyes widened in shock at the abrupt development, and she locked onto the figure that had just appeared. A golden glowing figure, standing between her strike and the God of Secrets, five hundred meters away across the dome.

The moment she gazed upon his figure, her eyes averted to the ground on instinct. An involuntary feeling of deference overwhelmed her entirely. Simultaneously, the pressure of His presence hit her Order field from every direction and won continuously, her laws bending and giving way around Him like laws didn’t apply to Him at all.

This was a true God. Physically descended. In the flesh.

The Radiant One… She realized without needing to be told.

He was the Sun God that descended.

Just as the realization dawned on her, the backlash from her dome trying to enforce order on His presence hit her like a blow, sending her entire body into turmoil, causing blood to force its way up and spill from seven orifices.

She staggered, barely catching herself before she fell to the ground with Ailin still on her back. She spat out a mouthful of blood, clearing her airways and breathing in deeply as she also blinked to clear blood from her eyes.

Even after clearing them, she dared not raise her head a second time, keeping her gaze down and tracking what she could from her peripheral vision.

The Radiant One had His attention on the clash in the sky. He observed the Errant’s sword cleave through His sun beam attack, devouring it rapidly now that He no longer powered it. His eyes lingered on the sword, recognizing it for what it once was, but He looked away after a few beats. Whatever it once was to Him was no longer there. It was now a different weapon entirely. Remade and repurposed to a new identity and authority.

Althea felt the Radiant One’s gaze lock onto her briefly, before turning away just as He spoke, addressing the God of Secrets in a tone thick with contempt:

“Even if you are but a vessel… Having to save you from a being powered by an inferior source…?” He sneered. “You were even about to use ’that…’”

His words were sharp with ridicule, and He watched the God of Secrets’ vessel struggle to mask the fury and hot embarrassment he clearly felt.

The Radiant One snorted, before waving a hand dismissively. “I guess all that hiding and scheming with no action has dulled you into obsolescence.”

The God of Secrets said nothing, his jaw tightened once, and then he was gone, withdrawn so completely that even the residual impression of his presence in the space vanished with him.

Above the treeline, with the Sun God no longer sustaining His beam from overhead, the clash in the sky dissolved, entirely devoured by the Errant Sword. And with its objective achieved, Finn grabbed it and hurled it violently at the new target: The Radiant One Himself.

The sword came screaming downward through the clearing, dragging the air apart in glitching tears along its path with its groan filling the whole forest around them.

But the Radiant One barely reacted. He simply raised His hand and caught it by the blade, holding it in place with a curious expression on His face while it vibrated madly against His palm, thrumming with erratic energy.

However, His curious expression was soon replaced by slight surprise as pixel distortions began at the point of contact. Small fractures spread outward from where His hand met the blade and ate into the golden glow around His grip despite the heavy weight of His divine presence.

Not just that. The hand that held the sword started to lower slowly, as if the full weight of the sword was bearing down on Him. As if Him holding the weapon was an incongruity that reality was correcting as the seconds passed. The impossibility of holding something that was an error itself.

Within the span of a few seconds, He had no choice but to open His hand and let it go.

It dropped to the ground with a heavy thud, sending a network of cracks through the earth as though an incomprehensibly heavy mass had just been dropped. It then rose into the air on its own, before shooting backwards through the clearing towards Finn.

All the while, the Radiant One stared at His palm with a slight tilt to His golden brows, studying the pixel distortions fading slowly from His skin, turning the surprise of it over.

But He didn’t have the time to ponder for long, as immediately the sword arrived in Finn’s grasp like returning home, he hurled it forward yet again, this time charging straight after it, heading directly for the Radiant One with a calm cold in his green glowing eyes.

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