Chapter 295: Bloodlust

Just seconds ago, he was looking at her with cold eyes like she was a criminal he intended to take into custody, yet he had risked his own safety to keep her alive…? Though now that she could see the result of the attack, she doubted he’d really been in danger anyway. He had somehow survived such a close-range hit without any visible shields.

Somatic Transmutation, maybe? she thought.

Back in the Soul Sanctum, she had read that Transcendent fragment bearers could weave their concepts into their own bodies for permanent enhancement effects. The theory was that the smaller the body part, the more focused and powerful the effect became. She had been looking to learn this technique herself.

It was possible that Elias had weaved some version of his restriction magic into his own flesh and bones. Which meant that he hadn’t really risked anything at all — not to say that took anything away from the fact that he had saved her decisively.

So the Ossuary wants me alive… she mused, just as a sudden roar jarred her out of her thoughts.

By her side, Malakor was staring at her with wide eyes, his hair whipping wildly in the wind as he held onto the mane of his tamed beast.

She hadn’t caught what he roared the first time, but he repeated it again, yelling over the screaming wind:

“Did you not see what I saw?! How are you so calm right now?! What kind of magic was that?! First, there was that grey-skinned creature using a power that literally tears space apart, and now a human from our own world is casting some weird magic that locks the air in place!”

He steered the beast further away, but his eyes never left Althea as he continued to ramble. “And that Preceptor Odette too! How did she drop so rapidly? She just ignored gravity entirely! You can’t tell me that was achieved by a soul mass!”

His eyes were wild as he searched Althea’s face for an answer. He began to draw correlations and make assumptions out loud, his wit as a Feraxian Lord showing through his panic.

“It makes sense now,” he chuckled in a crazed manner. “It now makes complete sense why Preceptors are never seen, why the Ossuary always keeps them hidden away. They’ve been hiding a completely separate class of power from the rest of the world!” His eyes sharpened. “And this world tear…That’s why you all blocked it off so aggressively when it first opened! Because you all knew what was inside! The Ossuary knew there were creatures like the Husk here — creatures that would reveal things they wanted hidden!”

Althea almost corrected him. To her knowledge, not even Preceptor-ranked Ossuarists knew about the Husks before entering the tear. However, she caught herself before she instinctively spoke. If Malakor thought she knew the whole truth, it might keep him from doing anything rash.

“The fact that you’re silent means I’m right,” Malakor said, his voice shaking. He veered the beast towards the Arcanist camps, which were mostly just pillars of smoke now. “I’ve had enough. I am returning to the real world. I’m leaving this world tear and heading back to Feraxia immediately. I am not going to die as a pawn in a game I don’t understa—!”

He had barely finished his rant when a heavy chill spread from behind them. It was so intense that even the tamed beast faltered in the air, dropping several dozen feet before it could stabilize its flight. Malakor’s face went white as a sheet as both he and Althea turned sharply to the source of that terrible feeling.

It came from the fight in the distance. The Husk was firing orbs and slashes of pure black spatial destruction outward in every direction, however, it was being met head-on by the combined efforts of Elias and Odette.

Odette had come back up from her drop and was fully in the thick of it, moving like a battle maniac at a speed that was nearly imperceptible, pounding the Husk with blows that deformed its spatial orbs through sheer force.

A Fragment of Gravity? Althea thought. Odette was using gravity to deform the spatial attacks before they could spread, while Elias supported from the side, landing decisive lightning-coated blows at crucial moments.

But surprisingly, the Husk seemed to have adapted. It had learned from the previous exchange. Every time Elias’s blows landed, a strange spatial distortion occurred at the point of contact that stripped the voltage down to almost nothing before it reached the creature’s body. The blows that had sent it spasming across the sky earlier were landing and being shrugged off.

But that wasn’t what froze Malakor and Althea in the first place… rather, it was Elias himself.

The old Ossuarist had come to a halt mid-air. His robes were torn, and his white hair was a chaotic mess around his face. He looked at the Husk with a profound, weary hatred, seeming to have had enough of the stalemate.

Slowly, he stretched forth his single arm, and out of the depths of his soul, a rusty, mottled-looking sword emerged. Obsidian black, chipped at the edges as if it was a harmless, blunted weapon…

But the thick bloodlust that emanated from it and permeated the surroundings the moment it materialized told a different story. It was suffocating. The air felt heavy with the weight of the many lives it had reaped. Every slight movement it made in the air was followed by a groan that sounded like the cry of the tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of souls it had felled…

Althea’s pupils constricted tightly as she saw the familiar soul mass again… She knew this sword all too well…

The Cruor Mortis.

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A/N: Sorry for the late Chapter today. I’ve been really busy with irl matters for the past few days now. In fact, Chapter releases would slow down to about 7-10 a week. I can push that higher by splitting the Chapters though, but I don’t know which you guys prefer — One long Chapter? Or two shorter ones, like the same length as this and the previous Chapter?

Let me know in the comments.

Cheers 🍻

Astrl

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