Jonathan nodded, and watched as the woman strode forwards, drawing her sword. Golden fire flickered along its edge as she imbued her Divinity into it, and with one slash, the air before her tore into two, and a crescent moon of consuming flame washed forth.
The undead howled, unearthly moans escaping their lips. Then the flame washed over them, and their forms unraveled, tendrils of fire turning their flesh and bone to dust. The bodies shriveled up, and then burst into an explosion of ash, coating the ground below.
Eliza smiled as essence coursed from the undead into her. For the nascent Tier 3, it must have been a heady rush of levels indeed. The woman lowered her blade, and smiled at the others. It seemed that Cessation would be a great source of levels for everyone present.
The rest of the small village was cleared out easily enough. There were no other sapient undead there, just a few dozen Tier 3s and 2s. They were dealt with easily enough by those present, and Jonathan didn’t have to intervene. Arkanon, the other Uthraki, and Edgar waited with him, watching as the others fought. Out of the remaining fighters, Kendal and Eva were the most powerful, although Eliza would quickly catch up at this rate.
Every time Jonathan found himself smiling at his allies’ strength, he found his happiness faltering as he kept playing the odd conversation with Eliza over and over again in his head. He desperately wanted some sort of connection with someone from Earth, but the niggling feeling that it was too good to be true continued to assail him. He had no idea what specifically was wrong, only that something was.
Once the undead had been reduced to piles of twisted flesh, plumes of ash, or in one cast, a pillar of warped crystal, the battle was over, and the village was eerily quiet. Jonathan found himself searching for more foes with his advanced perception, but there was nothing nearby. It was completely silent, save for the breaths of those around him.
“Form up!” He bellowed, prompting the others to run back towards him for a check up. After seeing the strange viridian energy that Alkard had used, penetrating even his own defences with ease, Jonathan needed to make sure that it wasn’t a threat to anyone else.
Luckily, nobody had been harmed by the battle, let alone perforated by a spear of deathly power. In hindsight, that would have been evident during the fight, but it was better to be careful in a world where Tier 4s roamed.
“Alright. We need to get out bearings, first and foremost,” Jonathan began. Then he paused, spotting something on the horizon. He wasn’t the only one.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“What the hell is that?” Eliza exclaimed, pointing at a gargantuan cloud of dark purple and toxic green energy gathering to the north. At the distance that it was, the thing must have been dozens, if not hundreds of miles wide. It stretched up into the atmosphere like a mountain, and for all Jonathan knew, it could have extended over the entirety of the realm behind it.
“So that’s how the Hegemon did it…” Edgar whispered.
‘“What?” Jonathan almost shouted, whipping his head towards Edgar. “How he did what?”
“That’s an elemental storm,” the mage replied, a look of worry on his face. “By the looks of it, that one is heavily infused with elemental Death. It must sweep across the land every now and again, bringing its conceptual power with it.”
“So if that thing catches us, we’ll all become undead?” Jonathan said, catching on.
“Yes, and we will be servants of the Stillborn Hegemon, just like that poor man you had to kill before.”
“We need to get out of here,” Jonathan said, his face hardening. Before he could summon the portal, a thought struck him. One that he didn’t particularly like. How would he ever be able to defeat the ruler of the circle if he couldn’t even get past something that seemed to be a fixture of life in Cessation. The fact that a storm had appeared mere minutes after their arrival meant one of two things: either they were quite common, or they were under the control of the Stillborn Hegemon, and it had come in response to their arrival. Either way, it was bad news.
“The rest of you need to return to the Ash Heaps… Mire… whatever the hell it’s called now!” Jonathan shouted, summoning the portal. “I need to check out this storm.”
The others nodded, and as the purple portal sliced through reality, they jumped through, and left Cessation. Jonathan remained, staring down the storm, a glint of purple fire in his eyes. The towering thundercloud of rampant energies swept across the plains ahead of him like a tidal wave, eclipsing everything in its path.
Jonathan girded his body in a cloak of the Void, and strode forwards, feeling the wind around him pick up. “Right. Let’s see what this bastard’s got.”
The storm approached, and soon, it was barely ten miles away. The winds were hurricane force now, but strangely, they only tugged at Jonathan. The clods of earth on the ground, far lighter than he was, and the sticks surrounding them should have been lifted by the gale, but they stood resolutely there, unmoved by the storm. It clearly only affected the living. Jonathan bent his knees slightly, and faced the storm. Before it came too close, he formed his portal behind him once more, ready to retreat if he felt any sort of dire threat.
He thrust one gauntleted fist forwards, a beam of purple fire lancing out and into the heart of the storm. A small sphere, well, small in comparison to the mountainous maelstrom, of nothingness expanded, eating away the surrounding elemental energy. Jonathan smiled as he saw the promising sign, and with a sudden whump, his cloak of consumption expanded out for a hundred feet in every direction, surrounding the portal, and himself. The winds died down noticeably, and Jonathan planted his feet more securely. Then he crossed his arms, waiting for the storm to hit.
