[Severed Divinity] 82. Void Lightning

Isen was lightheaded as he walked down the final twist of corridor. What had the queen been thinking, making her palace like this? Allezin mentioned a magic experiment as the reason, but Isen couldn’t fathom what experiment would take up so much space. The palace must have cut deep into the rock of the basin, extending who knows how far.

Unless she didn’t make the labyrinth at all. What if she found it like this, before she founded the city?

He wondered if there were other defenses within the palace, ones that he and the tier threes hadn’t activated. Not because they’d been too stealthy...

But because they were too weak to trigger them.

Lumina Eldrassin was never worried about tier threes stealing into her palace. She feared others of her own tier.

Isen clenched the dagger’s hilt like a lifeline as the door grew closer and closer. Earlier, he’d held out hope that Allezin might be able to use the divine blade to save them. But even after he’d handed it over, the sense of overwhelming dread remained.

He didn’t know if handing over the dagger even had an effect on what he sensed; maybe the sense of danger would only change if Allezin expressed the intent to wield the weapon.

He simply didn’t understand his ability well enough. He thought he’d learned lots about it over the year with Ros, but clearly, not enough. It was a bitter reminder that he still had so much more to discover—both with regards to cultivation, and himself.

He reached the massive double doors and stood in the ajar door’s shadow. He took one last sip of air and ran through the gap.

The second he passed through, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. A bone-breaking force slammed into his side and he careened through the air.

He choked as something grabbed him, arresting his momentum and worsening the damage, dislocating his fractured collarbone. He gasped, tasting iron.

An arm wrapped in dark bandages snagged his tunic with fingers tipped by metal claws. The figure’s body was fully obscured by black cloth, except for small slits for the eyes.

Bright violet.

Reflective.

Elven.

“You shouldn’t be here, little mouse,” she purred, like he was a naughty child. It was disturbingly reminiscent of Lady Jin.

Isen struggled to fight through the pain wracking his body and the horrifying pressure the woman exuded. It was like killing intent, but all around her, suffusing the air. It prickled at his skin, tasting him, feeding on him.

Isen knew without an ounce of doubt that the woman could kill him with a thought. She was the most oppressive presence he’d ever felt.

Tier four.

The only thing that could save him at this juncture was outthinking her. High tiered people had time to learn and accumulate wisdom, and could temper their bodies and minds to operate at a higher level... But everything Isen had seen suggested that they didn’t become more intelligent. Maybe that changed at the fourth tier, but he didn’t think so.

His mind raced to understand why the woman was here. Maybe she couldn’t enter the palace herself due to the queen’s defenses, and was waiting for tier threes to exit with the prototypes. Isen assumed the tier four knew the situation at hand—why else would she skulk in the queen’s palace?

Moreover, why was she here now? Had she always been here and they hadn’t sensed her? Perhaps she’d set some trap that would trigger when people entered the palace, and had come running to wait for them to emerge.

Whatever her motives, he needed to say something to keep her attention. She held him up by his shirt, which cut into his neck and pushed against his broken bone, but didn’t restrict his airway.

“Did you already absorb it?” Isen asked.

“Absorb what?”

Isen smiled. “You did, didn’t you. Did it hurt?”

The woman looked at him like he was an insect, her clawed fingers flexing around his collar.

“Mine was agonizing,” Isen continued. “It felt like my head—”

“Stop spouting nonsense,” she said, interrupting him.

Isen decided to conduct a proper test. Assuming the tier four knew what the prototypes were, did she know how to absorb them?

“It barely fit down my throat,” he said.

Suddenly, the sense of danger heightened.

“Kidding,” Isen backpedaled. “I properly absorbed it the way I was told to.”

The woman drew him up so his face was a scant inch from hers. Her aura was even stronger up close, like sandpaper rubbing over his skin.

“Unless you have anything else to say—”

Isen smiled through ruined lips. She still wasn’t questioning him. She didn’t seem to know about Welco and Allezin. That was potentially good for them—maybe she’d leave after dealing with Isen. That wouldn’t save him, unfortunately.

He almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. He wasn’t sure how he’d get out of the tier four’s clutches alive. He could only hold on to the glimmering thread of opportunity, bobbing like sunlight on the water. He needed to put her off kilter.

“You’re never going to catch him, you know.”

“Him?” she replied, exuding boredom.

“Don’t believe me?” Isen’s smile widened. “Check my ears. Go on, look.”

The black bandages hid the woman’s expression; Isen had no idea what she was thinking. It took nearly all his focus to keep from trembling.

He didn’t feel it—couldn’t even perceive it—when her hand tore away his cowl, revealing his human ears.

She was silent for a moment, but Isen could tell something had changed based on the woman’s aura. It rippled around him.

“You’re only a boy,” she murmured. “Why would Aran bring you to Eldrassin?”

Isen decided that this was the time to be silent. Let her come to whatever conclusions she wanted for this beyond-strange scenario.

He nearly lost his composure when Lumina’s mind made contact.

“Isen, I’m just outside the palace. I cannot see within.”

“There’s a tier four elf with violet eyes waiting at the doors,” he replied back. If anyone could save him, it was Lumina Eldrassin. “Wasn’t here when we entered. She has me in her grasp and is questioning me. The others are still free on the other side, waiting for an opportunity to escape.”

Isen felt an intense sensation of bloodlust. “Keep her occupied for me, in any way you can. Just a few more seconds.”

“He’d never let you learn elvish,” the violet-eyed woman said, oblivious to Isen’s second conversation.

“My common is much better,” Isen replied, switching languages. He didn’t actually know if the Aran Empire spoke common, but he thought it likely, given the language’s general association with humanity.

“Your accent is odd,” she remarked, narrowing her eyes. “Possibly eastern Empire, but I’d almost guess the outer kingdoms...”

“How much longer?” Isen asked the queen.

Her response was chilling. “Now. Be very still.”

Isen suddenly noticed the main doors of the palace crack open. He only noticed because a pale sliver of moonlight extended forth. Only Isen could see it—the tier four was facing away.

That was when a lance of blinding white light tore through the air, piercing straight through the tier four’s skull, searing nearly half her face off. It was clearly a killing blow—at least for anyone mortal.

The woman’s grip tore through Isen’s clothes as she was knocked back, releasing him.

As though their entrance was choreographed, Allezin and Welco slipped through the gap in the door to the inner palace. Isen didn’t think they had a way to communicate with Lumina—they must’ve been waiting outside.

Allezin ran toward Isen, while Welco was a dark shadow slipping away on the periphery. Before Isen hit the ground, Allezin grabbed him.

The tier four turned, her face visibly contorting into a scream beneath the strips of cloth. A savage killing intent—far stronger than the passive aura Isen had felt—burst forth, but it flickered, unstable. Even that was enough to send what felt like a barrage of knives into Isen’s back.

“It can’t be you,” the violet-eyed woman heaved, her head panning the room, her words slurred. The left side of her face was just... gone, her teeth exposed. Crimson blood seeped from the woman’s head, already coagulating. Unlike Erasmus’s blood, which had been a uniform milky white, hers sparkled as though filled with crystals.

“Just another... one of your defenses,” the woman continued. Then, she swiveled, crossing the room in a single bound as she pounced toward Allezin, as though the gruesome head injury was little more than a flesh wound. Purple-black lightning crackled across her body, jumping between her bared teeth.

It felt like death itself was coming for them. Isen’s heart stopped.

Another lance of light tore through the palace, striking the woman’s hip and throwing her toward the ceiling before she could get close enough to unleash her lethal payload.

As she flew away, she sent a dark discharge of lightning toward the set of massive double doors leading outside. Welco’s shadowy form was torn apart by the energy and the mage stifled a scream as he disappeared from view.

Allezin darted through the doors a beat later. Just to the side of the threshold, Lumina Eldrassin stood, her eyes narrowed in rage and concentration. At her feet was the collapsed form of Welco, his torso bloodied and blackened.

“Fucking Femera,” Allezin hissed as he tossed Welco onto his back, evidently relying on Isen to keep the mage from falling off. He scooped up Lumina and tore into the night.

From her position cradled in Allezin’s off arm, the queen left a final parting gift. The violet-eyed woman threw herself through the towering double doors. At a distance, Isen could more clearly see the horrifying killing intent around her, extending out for fifty feet. It was a death zone.

Before the tier four could move a step further, a brilliant pillar of starfire bored into her chest, flesh and bandages burning.

But the woman resisted the blistering starfire. Purple energy arced all around her in a cyclone.

Then, she thrust out with both arms.

Dark lightning exploded and coalesced into a massive set of jaws that blotted out the sky. They radiated a debilitating, all-consuming pressure. Like a storm that would raze the world until existence was worn down to nothing but the empty void.

A burst of white fire filled Isen’s vision.

Then, nothing.

[ This was the last chapter for this little sequence, ending the daily updates (for now). I will try my best to keep writing more chapters and keep posting <3 Hope you're enjoying the story! ]