MAGUS INFINITE

I should have realized from the start that there was no way that the Pale Matron would have allowed her body to be imprisoned in this manner, but I was distracted by the arrival of the Sovereign.

Even though I was becoming used to seeing things that were larger than life, damn, in many ways, even I have become far larger than life, but you see, my size had form and functionality, and there was no way that these things that had burst out of the earth, hurling a mountain of dirt into the burning sky, were natural.

Each of the shapes kept rising higher as more of its length pulled free, a mile thick at the base, pale and glistening with the earth it had swum through. When the ninth came up, the horizon in three directions belonged to them... these freaking things were just so massive.

To his credit, Sovereign Caldus only appeared shocked for a moment before he glanced back at me. "I would assume that these demons are coming for that..." he gestured at the Caelith.

I nodded. "We cannot let them get to it; else the barrier holding the rest of the demons’ flesh would be released."

The Sovereign drew in a deep breath. "We really need to scrape through everything you know about this demonic catastrophe; it would be the core if this continent survives this war, no, the world itself. Hmm, these things look like intestines... interesting."

He flicked his finger, and a circle of golden fire about fifty meters in radius surrounded me. "Do not leave this circle, or you would turn to ash. You are now a Proto-Sovereign, and you have taken the path of flesh, commendable but reckless... such a powerful flesh would choke your channels, and it would be harder for your soul to understand the deeper laws of the elements."

My mouth opened and closed, but I ultimately kept quiet. The Sovereign had been wrong on his assumptions of my present capabilities, but I saw no reason to tell him the truth at the moment. Even at this moment, I did not fully trust him, and it was important to keep some of my secrets if there were any unexpected changes.

"I have never seen a demon like this. Its body reminds me of when a demon took over the flesh of a fallen god a thousand years ago. Remember, do not leave this circle, and if you can, see if you can glimpse the path of fire when I cleanse the earth of this malignancy... I have need of a new disciple, and your path of lightning should be skewed without a proper teacher."

Saying this, he vanished under a burst of golden flames and reappeared hundreds of feet in the air.

∞

The voice of the Sovereign entered my ears, "You are at the cusp of the Sovereign level, but this step is a chasm, and it has held a lot of mages back from reaching this step. Let me show you this chasm, and you will understand why there are only three Sovereigns born on this continent in the last ten thousand years."

The words had barely entered my ears when I flinched as the Sovereign proclaimed to the world.

"Law of the Unconsumed Flame."

How do I describe the sound of his voice or his words? Well, I could not describe the sound of his voice, because it arrived directly at my soul, and even calling it sound was a mistake; it was just the closest word I could find to describe what had just branded itself into my soul.

I felt the words go into the world and stay there. It was not a spell, I mean, I know spells; I have thousands of hours of experience wielding spells. I have built them, broken them, evolved them. A spell asks the world for a shape. What Caldus Thorne did was tell the world a rule and make it true.

He had only said five words, and somehow my soul was able to know the meaning - no, the rules that this word had commanded reality to become- and I wondered if I could know this only because he allowed me to understand it.

The rule that he gave the world was this:

Fire does not go out here.

Fire is not spent.

What burns is not consumed by burning.

And the world... agreed.

I gasped in shock as I felt the changes suddenly take shape. Every flame in his domain, hundreds of miles of burning sky, stopped losing heat, and they no longer guttered or needed fuel. In this moment, the flames stopped obeying the laws of nature that say a fire must eat something to live.

The sky over the southern reach of the continent would burn forever under this rule, and the temperature started rising dramatically once the natural order of things that were supposed to restrict the heat of a fire was abolished, and I wonder how long I would last in this place if I stepped outside this circle.

Without any dramatic gesture, I watched the Sovereign begin to cook all nine gigantic tentacles, as they began to wriggle and scream, even though they had no mouths.

Massive volumes of steam erupted from their bodies that instantly vanished, and the heat was only growing higher, and yet, all of this was not the beginning, the Sovereign had not even cast his first spell, and my gaze was fixed on him as I watched him do it, wondering how the greatest mages in the world wielded their power, and he did not make any grand gesture.

He raised his right hand, and his domain above began to knot in a hundred points; each knot was gathering heat and becoming small stars. I watched the knots compress and then ignite, before they were compressed again and ignited.

They did it twelve times, and each time they compressed, they grew hotter. Seemingly satisfied with his spell, he let down his hand, and they fell towards the twitching tentacles and ignited for the last time, but this time, the Sovereign no longer held back the explosion, and a hundred suns exploded in the midst of the Pale Matron’s tentacles.

The shockfront of this explosion flattened the horizon and turned the crust to glass and lit the underside of the clouds from the far side of the continent.

The entirety of the nine tentacles went to vapor, their remnants unmade into a pale ash that hung in the burning air like snow.

I stood with my mouth open, and for one moment... one, I believed we were going to win, but hope was a fickle mistress.

The ash came back down, drawn together in an unnatural way, and they thickened, and pale meat began to grow from the ash.

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