Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.39 - Amarque 2

Amarque's progress through the Vault was fast. Almost effortless.

Every few minutes, Seraphina's voice came through, sharp and efficient. She guided him from artery to artery—pinpointing energy fluctuations, tracing intruder signatures, stabilizing the lattice when his warping twisted it too far. He disliked taking orders, but she was doing most of the work, so he tolerated it. It also helped that she was effective, unlike so many others that reach pinnacles of their stature. So he let her handle the technicalities while he handled the erasure.

When Amarque arrived in a new corridor, he didn't bother to take in the details. The air shimmered faintly, then stilled. What passed for enemies—those magical constructs or whatever Seraphina called them—vanished before they could react. Amarque didn't incinerate them or crush them; he simply decided they weren't there anymore, and so they weren't. Reality adjusted obligingly, folding like paper.

He exhaled slowly, brushing imaginary dust off his sleeve. "Too easy."

The only sound that followed was the echo of his own voice and the faint hum of the Vault's containment field, already healing the space he'd erased.

With the next step, Amarque slipped free of the Vault's walls and out into the space between the demiplane and the real world. The world there was translucent and quiet. Threads of light stretched in every direction. Hundreds or thousands of passageways, each pulsing rhythmically like veins in some immense body—

Was it just him, or was the Vault getting brighter?

Seraphina's voice broke through the stillness. "I found the intruders. They're at the bottom of the Vault. Tampering with the magma pool. Redistributing power."

Amarque glanced around, raising an eyebrow. The threads had grown subtly brighter, pulsing with an uneven rhythm, like veins under fevered skin.

"I thought it looked brighter in here," he replied dryly.

An edge of urgency cut through her usual calm. "We're warping there—together."

Amarque gave a small sigh, and reached for the nearest thread, waiting for Seraphina's touch. "Together, then."

But before they could warp—

The Vault shifted.

At first, Amarque thought it was an earthquake, but he'd felt earthquakes before. The space between realities rippled, as if someone had run a hand through still water. The threads of power around him vibrated with energy until they began to glow hot like the filament in a bulb. Amarque could even feel the change seeping into his own sphere of power.

That part gave him pause. Amarque had no idea what kind of magic this was. He only knew that it was incredibly powerful for him to feel it in such a way.

"Did you feel that?" he asked, voice low.

Static hissed across the channel. Seraphina's voice barely made it through.

"Teleporting now—"

And then nothing.

Seraphina was gone. Not even a trace of her influence was left. Amarque froze, extending his senses, but all he felt was absence.

Off to his left, an entire sector of the Vault went dark—branches upon branches of threads. Amarque couldn't feel any trace of them. For a long moment, Amarque simply stared at the emptiness while a strange, gnawing feeling of unease crept up his spine.

He called out, "Seraphina?"

No response. Not even a vibration.

Irritation pushed aside his unease. If Seraphina couldn't keep up her part of the fight, then it was time for him to cut loose.