MAGUS INFINITE

I don’t know if I could live for long. The Sovereign had placed me within a layer of protection, but that protection only remained if I obviously kept my head down and tried to glimpse as little as possible.

Not even the Sovereign could have imagined that my appetites could not be held back by something as small as death any longer.

He wanted me to learn, and learn I would, but my lessons would not just be coming from him alone, but from the Pale Matron too. Even if it kills me, I was determined to see everything.

Within the blinding white flames, the flesh of the Pale Matron began to fight back, and she stopped growing outward and started growing up. My brain felt as if it was breaking, but I held it in, watching the mass folded upward into... towers?

By all the lights in heaven, this was fereaking architecture growing from meat. I could see pale wet columns a mile thick rising out of the flesh in rows, and between them, arches, then galleries, then a facade, ten miles of it, and windows were appearing in the facade, and in every window was an eye, and behind every eye, more of the same building going back and back into a depth that should not have fit on a planet.

It was as if an infinite castle of flesh was appearing before my eyes, and it was draining my soul the longer I watched it form. The Pale Matron was growing a cathedral of herself out of her flesh, and out of every window and door and gallery of this infinite flesh castle, hands came out and hung down and began making various demonic gestures that injured my soul to watch.

I was beginning to bleed through my eyes, and maybe half of my soul had vanished as I watched, but I kept watching, and I would, until my soul was no more.

If the Sovereign was not so focused on the fight, he might have detected what was happening to me and stopped me, and I was glad for it. From this battle, I knew that I was nowhere strong enough to fully challenge a Sovereign yet, but completing all seven Earth Gates and becoming a full celestial would change everything, and remaining for much longer in this time was a risk... I had already gained enough that needed to be digested, but before I go, I should watch how those at the top battled... Soon it would be me here.

A shriek burst out of the flesh castle, as mouths in the millions began to grow out of its structure, and they all went silent at the same time, and the calm voice of the Pale Matron echoed for miles,

”You cannot read my endless library, little flame.”

”Burn one memory, and I will lend it another.”

”I have epochs of remembering, of many civilizations greater than yours. How many do you have?”

”You will find out...” Sovereign Caldus growled, ”That I have enough.”

And my soul almost screamed as I felt him open his Grimoire all the way.

∞

The Sovereign had told me that the space inside his Grimoire was as big as a small city. I fully understood what he meant when an army began to emerge from the space surrounding him, emerging from the depths of the opened book.

The army was made from Flame Essence, but it was not like any that I recognized, despite the fact that I had Fire Resonance. Essence was just the raw magical medium suffusing reality, but this army appearing in front of me was obviously made from Flame Essence. I could feel it, but they had shapes, and I could feel that they had a strange form of life flowing through their burning bodies.

Burning knights on winged horses made entirely from flames. They poured out in massive ranks, and they did not stop coming. Tens of thousands, then more.

The knights were all shaped like men, long-limbed and faceless but for the suggestion of eyes, each one wearing armor of living flame.

”Spirits of the Unconsumed,” Caldus called out, and even at the verge of soul death, I could hear the pride in his voice. ”Foul demon, this is three thousand years of teaching essence to remember what it was. They cannot be quenched or smothered. If they are reduced to ash, the ash reignites. It does not matter how much you grow, all of you will burn!”

With a gesture, the ever-growing ranks of his Spirits charged towards the flesh castle in a line a hundred miles long. ”And what they burn, forgets.”

At this point, my soul could barely follow the entire actions any longer; all I knew was that these Spirits were soldiers, and they went into the castles, carrying fire, and they hacked and burned anything they could touch. The castle was fighting back, swallowing the Spirits, but for any one that fell, more rose.

I don’t know how long the battle was going on. I was still on my feet, with Adamantium flesh; even in death, my body would not fall, and I should be long dead. My soul was gone, but Mortal Shell and my rugged flesh anchored the last of my soul to my body, and I endured far longer than I should as I watched gods fight.

∞

There was a point when I did not even think I was alive, but the roar of anger from the Pale Matron dragged the last of my consciousness awake.

”Enough!”

The roar pushed my consciousness outward, and I looked at my surroundings, but it was my appearance that drew a gasp of surprise from me. My body had partially melted. I still had the rough features of a man, but I had become droopy like a burning candle.

The fight must have grown beyond what the Sovereign could control, because the circle around me had been broken. It was a small break, but when it happened, the last of my soul struggling to watch the fight had been extinguished so fast that I was not even aware that I had died.

Still, my flesh was so powerful that it had kept something small behind, and I knew that these were my last moments, but I did not regret throwing my soul into the furnace to see how this fight would happen.

”You have four rules, and I have forgotten most of mine, but there is one that remains in my flesh... Would you like to hear it?”

I could no longer see the outside world, and the last of my perception that had been given life began to slowly extinguish.

The last thing I heard was the Law of the Pale Matron.

”Ah... listen close, little Magus, here the Law that has swallowed a thousand worlds... There is more of me than there is of you.”

My Soul fell into oblivion for a brief moment before I heard the sound of the engine that began to draw me towards the loop. I had a faint sense of two doors, two temporal points where I could move across, and I spent a moment deliberating on which door I should choose before I made my choice and stepped through the second door.