MAGUS INFINITE

The storm had now covered the entire sky that I could see, and its spread was now beginning to accelerate as I seemed to have broken an unknown threshold, and the chains of blood extended into the sky like the roots of a dead tree, each one carrying a soul that had been added to my weight.

Below me, the earth began to crack as the rain of blood fell in sheets, and the skull-fields spread across the earth like a plague. I looked down at all of this, and I felt... nothing.

The Arcanist in the city was still alive. I could feel his presence, trying to hold back the storm with a barrier of crystallized will and folded space. He was good at manipulating this barrier, and I watched him for a moment, learning from him, but I soon grew bored, not because he was not skilled, but because the operation of his Anima was too slow.

It was at this brilliant moment that I fully understood how I was quickly growing my skills and spells when I watched an Arcanist manipulate his barrier. Although they were many times more durable than an Adept, since they did not fully depend on their bodies any longer and could survive injuries that would kill an Adept ten times over, such as decapitation and the loss of their heart, one thing that would not change that much was their channels.

They had more channels than an Adept, and their channels were more durable, but comparing their channels to mine that had been tempered by Cor Telluris was comparing the strings of a spider’s web to a metallic wire.

The Arcanist was forced to work below the boundaries that his physique had set for him, and his barrier, while innovative, seemed to be moving in slow motion, and there were too many spaces for me to take advantage of, if I wanted.

However, being a Death Titan meant that my grip was too large, and I had sacrificed subtlety for power. I reached down for him and crushed his barrier, although the unique understanding he had of his barrier made its nature be like that of a tide; as soon as I crushed one, another rose up in its place... so fascinating.

Instead of defending his life with all of his might, the Arcanist came up out of the centre of the dying city to face me, and I smiled at his bravery, because it would be an easy thing to run, but to stand against overwhelming odds... I remembered how difficult something like this was.

He came up through his own falling city wreathed in the greenish light of his Anima. The second thing that I noticed about Arcanist was that their Anima was slowly gaining an Aspect; I wonder what mine would be.

Words of power that cracked the sky emerged from his mouth, as he gathered a profound spell in front of him that took the appearance of a stag covered by green flame. The stag stamped its hoof in the air, causing ripples across space, and with a cry, the Arcanist nearly emptied his Anima into the spell before releasing it towards me.

The beast vanished, but I could still track the spell moving through space, and I could have attacked, but I held back, wishing to check my resilience against an Arcanist that was going all out.

The flaming stag pierced through the storm, and I could see that its fur was being stripped away by the bloody clouds, and even though I could multiply the resistance from the sky, I held back.

Like a green meteor, the stag that was bigger than the Arcanist that cast it resembled a small fawn when it reached me, and slammed into my laughing robes. In an instant the spell detonated, creating a green sun that could be seen for miles, and sending shockwaves that rippled across the city.

In the center of the green sun, I waited for the green flame to touch me, but it was held an inch from my skin. The laughing robes I wore drank the flames, and below me, a field of screaming skulls combusted, but the rain of blood was not ending any time soon, and a new field of skulls arose from the burnt earth.

In a few seconds, my scarlet robes drank all the green sun that would have injured me, maybe even killed the me of before, if I had not defended myself. Now the passive defenses of my robes alone kept me safe from this spell, and I was no longer interested in this Arcanist.

Then I reached out one hand, and the chains reached with it, and I took him. He was tired, and like all feeble mages, he could not push his spells to the limits for fear of harming his soul.

I remembered when I suffered this limitation, but it was irritating that even facing death, most mages would still run from the idea of burning the core of who they were in order to fight. I wonder how much damage this Arcanist would be able to do to me if he could burn his soul.

I did not kill him with lightning, since I had other tools I needed to test. I reached into him with the chains of the dead, and I pulled his soul up out of his body, as if I was drawing out a splinter from a wound, and he came up shrieking to join the host.

His body stood empty for a moment on nothing and then fell into the wheat, and I felt his soul settle onto my back with all the others and weigh exactly as much as a baker.

An Arcanist, the thing that had once been a ceiling that I crushed myself against, weighed the same as a baker, or a child. I sincerely could not tell the difference, and perhaps it was the influence of my scarlet robes that I found this so funny that a smile touched the edge of my lips.

At this moment I felt a cry of anger and pain inside me, and I suddenly felt hollow. At the edge of my vision, I saw a silvery figure disappear into the distance, trailing the light of the moon.

A profound feeling of loss filled me for a moment, but then the coldness of death took those away from me.

My body grew further, and my mind focused on finding the next city, the next spot filled with the light of life that needed to be extinguished, however, a part of me was aware that a silvery figure was at the edge of my storm, following me, I should hunt it down, particularly because its light shone so bright... but my storm was spreading, and soon, I would not need to move since the entire world would be covered by it.