Chapter 694 (1/2)

Randidly woke to the omnipresent feeling of danger. It felt like the world was crashing down around him. The pounding of his own heart in his ears did nothing to distract from the impending doom.

Sharpening his senses, Randidly immediately sensed the source: a figure was floating above Hastam. His heart dropped out of his stomach. Someone was here? And they were going to-

A searing pain in his chest silenced him, and Randidly hissed in annoyance. It was on something of a whim that Randidly had laid down to rest for a few hours, and now he deeply regretted it.

What was the most surprising was that no one else seemed to notice it. The Hall of Stances was quiet around him. Dozens of participants slept soundly or trained without noticing the vortex of rage hanging above them. The vicious and murderous Aether seemed to seeth around the figure like nothing Randidly had ever seen.

Who-

“Endless Heat Style…” The figure said. Randidly couldn’t hear, but he could feel the speaker’s lips by feeling through the thick and knotted Aether around him. “Bonefire.”

The spear fell like the ticking of a clock, moving exactly 45 degrees.

Then the hairs on the back of Randidly’s neck stood straight up as he realized he could hear the roar of flames from inside his room, inside the Hall of Stances, inside of Hastam. Instantly, his Perception spread outward. Paling, he pushed further, riding on the Aether heartbeat in the air. That heartbeat seemed to be even louder, despite the noise of the fire. It seemed in some way, Tellus was coming alive before Randidly’s eyes.

And the South was burning. All of it. Everything that Randidly could sense.

*****

“That,” Azriel said shortly, staring out from the walls of Hastam at the charred and destroyed fields south of the city. The ground wasn’t completely burned, but it seemed in an area spreading outward from Hastam like it was the tip of a triangle, everything was gone. “Was Aylwind Sky, the head of the Spearman School.”

Randidly just looked mutely out at the ground. Something inside of him shivered. Is this what awaited him in his own future…?

But Randidly pressed that thought down. He knew his ashes functioned as an excellent fertilizer. Meanwhile, this…

“Apparently an army of Wights was sneaking up on the city at night. Almost a million. Gone, just like that. Afterward, he walked straight South through the night, attacking when he found anything. They say the Southern Domain is… basically no longer there.” Azriel continued grimly.

She turned and gave Randidly a look. “We are powerful. But this… this is beyond us.”

“The ability to turn the tide of the war,” Randidly said softly. The Styles of Hastam seemed to have finally moved. And the final result was far beyond what he had expected.

The early reports did indicate that Aylwind was careful with his strikes, to avoid hitting the remaining areas of resistance or destroying too much farmland. But when the cleaver he held was so large, there was only so much damage control that could be done. Still, moral in the capitol and on the front lines was up. Randidly had received a message from Platton that they were retaking the entirety of the South on the back of Aylwind.

Lifting his gaze, Randidly looked at the soft clouds and the heartbeat of Tellus’ spirit that was within them. Another tier higher on the power scale, huh…? Was this a normal thing? Would he need to reach this level of strength in order to face down the Calamity…?

Or perhaps was this a result of Tellus stalling out as it had?

Over the past few days, Randidly had managed to convince Trentyon he had meant no harm with his common, and the two of them had spent a few hours each day researching into the history of Tellus. Although Trentyon had access to his own scrolls he had collected, they were relatively limited in scope.

But when Randidly had told him that he could grant Trentyon access to the Hall of Stances, and their records, the thin man was delighted. The caretakers of the Hall of Stances were decidedly against it, but Randidly pointed out that they allowed him to view the images held there.

How could scrolls be more valuable than that?

Randidly needed to hold Trentyon’s mouth practically to keep him from fighting against Randidly’s argument, but it had worked against the caretakers. Even now, Trentyon was chuckling to himself and unrolling and rerolling scrolls in a mad search for more details.

It made Randidly concerned that he might be wasting his time here. Even more so than he had previously. He was, however, now waiting for Shal’s return, so at least that gave him some direction…