Chapter 278: A Quiet Farewell

Their fight escalated and the world registered each exchange fully. The sky warped at every point of impact. Light bent wrong around each collision. The eclipse above flickered with every one of the Moon Mother’s attacks, like she was drawing power from the Moon directly.

Each of their strikes sent shockwaves that cascaded downward across the devastated terrain in visible waves. This was two Rank I Gods fighting without inhibitions and the difference between it and everything else that had happened in this space was immediately and completely apparent.

Eventually, it became apparent to everyone watching that the Radiant One would likely not come away from the battle with His life. He also knew it, and it showed in the way His attacks changed. He began to attack wholly, throwing away every thought of defense. He was attacking like a suicide-crazed God, intent to bring the Moon Mother down with Him if He would fall.

His entire demeanor clearly showed that he was adamant on making sure neither the sun’s authority nor the moon’s would belong to anyone.

The Moon Mother, on the other hand, still attacked with the same intensity She had started with. She met His strikes head-on, defending against His suicide barrage, but also attacking ruthlessly when a chance was created.

She engaged Him relentlessly and their fight carried sideways across the sky, moving away from everything else, growing more distant with each exchange until they were a point of gold and azure blue clashing at the far horizon.

Althea looked at Finn.

His hands had slowed. The first sequence of gestures he’d been weaving was now clearly finishing — she could tell from the way the green in his eyes had reached a stable intensity rather than continuing to build, burning at a depth that made her look slightly to the side. He held the final gesture for a moment and then released it, and his eyes remained at that burning depth as he moved into a second sequence without pause.

Different hand symbols entirely.

She watched them for a moment trying to understand what they were building toward, and then the air in front of him shifted and she understood immediately and instinctively in the way that someone who had lived through the last war between Transcendents understood it.

A chaos breach.

But that made no sense. This was a world of Gods. They were not even in their own world. Chaos breaches opened between planes of existence — they were a consequence of Transcendent development, a byproduct of souls that had accumulated enough density to disturb the boundary between worlds.

They did not get opened deliberately, especially since, to her knowledge, Finn was not yet an Ossuarist, not in this body of Arros at least…

…Or is he?

Do those terms even apply to him at all?

She had seen him assimilate soul masses repeatedly, but the manner in which he’d done it didn’t conform to any Ossuarist method at all. She’d always just felt it was only possible because of his superior use of Error. That he’d found a hack in reality to bypass the restrictions…

Her thoughts trailed, and she realized her shock was unfounded. An instinctive response to seeing someone do the impossible. No matter her theories as to how Finn was able to do Ossuarist things without having an Ossuarist body, the fact remained he was able to do them.

She went silent, watching as Finn stretched his hand forward.

Very slowly, a hole opened in the air in front of him. It expanded outward from a single point, growing steadily, the space inside it showing something that was not the warped terrain around them and not the dark eclipse sky above them — a passageway, opening wide enough to fit a person and then stopping there, holding at that size.

Finn looked at Althea.

She looked at him.

And she understood without him saying it. He had opened it for her. It was the only reason the size made sense, the only reason he had turned to look at her the moment it finished forming. He was ready to leave this world. He was ready to go back to his own time. But he wasn’t going to leave her stranded here.

Home…

The thought arrived quietly in the middle of everything that was happening around them — the Gods fighting, the tiny dots of clashing golden and azure lights in the far distance that was the Radiant One and the Moon Mother, the warped and broken terrain of the island spreading in every direction — she thought of home despite the chaos all around.

“I won’t be following you through,” Finn said. His voice was the same flat calm it had been since the chamber. “But you’ll be fine. Casmir won’t be able to sense this breach. It isn’t spatial.” He paused. “It was formed from congregated consciousnesses. The kind that only Ossuarists can sense and stabilize. He won’t know you have re-entered our world… none of them will.”

It was a conclusion that even she had come to. But she remained silent, the solemnity of the situation making her simply watch.

She looked on quietly as Finn reached to his side and held the Errant Sword out toward her, hilt first.

She stared at it.

Then she stared at him.

“You’re not serious,” she said.

He waited.

“Finn.” She looked at the sword and then back at him. “It’s an incongruity. It is simultaneously a soul mass and not a soul mass. It is real and not real. It exists in a physical state and a non-physical state at the same time. And beyond all of that… I am a Transcendent. I cannot grasp a soul mass as though it were an object. The body I have right now has no mechanism for—”

“You won’t know until you try,” Finn said, cutting her off.

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she looked at the sword.

Then she firmed her gaze and reached out and grasped the hilt.

It dropped immediately, the full weight of it slamming downward against her grip as she struggled to hold on to it. Her arm shook with the effort of keeping it from pulling her to the ground entirely.

The sword shifted erratically between states in her hand — real and then not, solid and then incorporeal before solidifying again, a soul mass and then an object and then neither and then both simultaneously. And every single shift… all of the rapid minute changes were happening all at once, sending a wrongness up through her arm that made her teeth clench.

But she held it.

“Hold it for me,” Finn said. “I’ll collect it when we meet again. When my vengeance begins.”

She looked at him with everything she wanted to say sitting fully formed and unsaid behind her eyes. About the sword and what it meant that she was holding it. About Arros. About what he was planning to do after the passage closed. About all of it.

But she swallowed all of it.

Without looking back at the chaos above, she tightened the straps securing Ailin against her back with her free hand, checking each one firmly, she raised the Errant Sword slowly with both hands until it was level in the air.

A trace of a smile flickered at the edges of Finn’s lips as he watched her instinctively use her Order magic to stabilize the hilt of the sword where her hands met it.

The erratic shifting steadied, not fully, but enough, the sword holding its form there where she gripped it even as the blade continued its restless oscillation between states.

She looked at Finn one final time.

Then without a word she walked through the passage and it closed behind her immediately, contracting to a point and disappearing as though it had never been there.

Finn looked at the point where it had been.

He stood there in the silence of the ruined terrain, the seas lapping at the edges of the field around him, the moon still covering the sun above, the sounds of the battles above now finally stopped.

He sighed quietly.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten our deal.”

A voice suddenly spoke from above.

The Moon Mother.

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A/N: I hope you’re enjoying my book so far. We’ll be heading back to the future soon, so stay tuned for that…

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Cheers.

Astrl.

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