OathBlade (Wattys2015)

74. Crumbling World*

Samina scanned the city from her position atop a stone-walled home. Her breathing was ragged, not from effort but rage. "You have the power to ascend these beings to an even higher existence yet you choose instead to doom them to death!"

Elery wove her aura through the cracks in the stone and pushing beyond the stubbornness of the rock. They began to rumble. The masonry crumbled and Samina leaped from the roof before it could close in around her.

She drew the hood further over her head and turned to run down the eastern street.

"You will not run from me!" Elery yelled as she rushed forward. She cut through man, woman, and child alike in pursuit of the necrocaster as her path took her to where Isandel could not follow in his dragon form.

Narrow streets lined with homes and businesses pressed around her. Behind her raged a cluttered battle that grew in volume despite the distance put between her and her allies. Roars rattled windows and shook straw from under the eaves of homes. Creatures that nested within were disturbed and a bird flew past, feathers falling from its near-bare body. The deep puncture in its side left no question as to its state of being.

The city was not an abyss.

It was a graveyard.

Samina turned her head and scowled as she continued to run. She leaped fallen fruit carts long-since made useless. Not even rotten fruit remained, though the cart was by no means clean. Deep black stains covered the inside. Dried scraps of whatever it had once held stuck to the wood.

It was visible in great detail as Samina fractured the rock underfoot and pressed it upward to propel the old wooden cart toward her.

Elery reacted with a quick burst of fire that swept over and through the dry wood grain. It erupted quickly and weakened, shattering over her raised arms as she protected her face. "Stand and fight!"

Samina's silence was unnerving and as Elery looked back she realized how far she'd gone. The sounds of violence grew more distant. Their weakened echoes reached her, but both enemy and ally were far behind her.

The cramped buildings offered repetitious sights as she ran. Like Ortuna, many of the buildings were identical. The streets branched off endlessly. The longer she followed Samina, the deeper she plunged into the unknown.

A loud, deep howl brought both Samina and Elery to stumbling halt.

Jesset's hulking form appeared over lip of the mountain range surrounding the city. She opened her mouth and groaned, then turned her head to snap at a flicker of light buzzing round her head. The aurels continued to fight her, though their numbers were fewer than when they had arrived. Elery hoped it was because many fought within the city, but seeing so many willing to overcast to aid the effort...

The runes along Jesset's body shimmered bright white as foreboding energy palpitated through the area in ebbs and flows. The waves were like the first small ripples before a catastrophic tidal surge.

The foreign energy, like none Elery had ever felt before, burst from Jesset and swept through the city with force enough to shatter the stone on which she stood.

The mountain lip crumbled down in a rumbling boom and brought Jesset with it. The stone and rune beast fell toward the buildings below.

For a moment both Elery and Samina stood watching in shock, separated by a distance of only a few dozen paces with the remnants of a weather-ruined cart strewn between them.

Jesset was the unknown to both Celestine's group and Elery's, and a boon to neither.

"To think you are so desperate to avoid your fate you would send one of those beasts against us," Samina spat.