Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 148: Horizon's Edge

Toren Daen

As I hurtled toward Fiachra far below, my thoughts raced with how to slow my descent. I was already falling with the speed of a diving phoenix, the earth eager to reclaim her child.

I focused on my fire, twisting myself so that my palms–one still holding Oath–faced downward. White plumes of mana-charged flames erupted from my hands, the force of their expulsion beginning to slow my descent. The wind ripped past my face, stinging my skin and burning everywhere it touched.

But I wasn't afforded the time to halt my fall. A deluge of sludge from behind nearly impacted my back. I twisted just in time, putting my plasma blade in between me and the deadly beam.

The stream bisected around me evenly, but the force of the impact still continued to push me downward. A continuous hissing sound of evaporating acid blanketed my ears as the wind pressed against my back.

I was speeding up again. The stream of constant sludge was causing me to accelerate even further, Mardeth's cackles echoing above me like acid rain. I hurtled downward faster and faster, Fiachra growing closer by the second.

I need to get away from this stream, I thought, feeling a note of desperation. I need to switch our positions!

My arm burned from the effort of keeping my saber in front of my body as I thrust another hand to the side. A jet of twirling white fire as thick as my torso snaked out from my arm, threading around the stream of acid in a spiraling vortex. It slowly ascended along the steady barrage of acid, rising like the threads of a screw. Finally, it splashed against the vicar far above.

For the barest instant, the beam of acid weakened.

There, I thought, my millennia of experience catching the sudden faltering. I rolled to the side, wrenching myself out from under the constant deluge, before using my telekinesis on the stream to pull myself upward. My body groaned in protest, the sudden change in momentum causing my joints to ache and my stomach to heave, but I pushed through it with a will of iron. I accelerated as a glowing white streak, using Mardeth's own spell as telekinetic leverage to haul myself forward.

I surged toward Mardeth, twisting midair once more to generate the pent-up torque of a whipping tornado. I locked eyes with the Vicar of Plague for the barest moment as the night sky stretched around us. My foot snapped upward, then thrust down with the condensed force of a typhoon. Mardeth hastily crossed his hands over his horn as my attack descended with the force of a nascent asura, a rictus grimace crossing his face. A gale of wind followed in the wake of my axe kick, my heel smashing against Mardeth's forearms.

I followed through, snapping my leg downward. Mardeth catapulted toward Fiachra not far below, a crack of thunder following in his wake as he obliterated the sound barrier. He became a dark green blur as he shot through a building, before smashing into the ground.

Yet instead of flesh, he burst into a puddle of slime. Green acid splattered onto the walls and buildings all around, corroding everything it touched around a cratered epicenter.

I fell toward the wide Sehz River, throwing out wide-area telekinetic pushes to slow my fall. I exhaled a breath of steam as my feet settled evenly over the flow, a single ripple spreading over the still water as I did so. The absolute control of my telekinetic pushes allowed me to hover near-perfectly over the river.

I allowed my summoned saber to dissipate as I locked my hands behind my back, observing as Mardeth pulled himself together from what was practically nothing, sludge slowly seeping back toward a humanoid form.

When I was done with this lessuran, I'd need to return to my Hearth. To report the High Sovereign's horrible plans. That was my purpose, wasn't it? I tilted my head, my brow furrowing as I noticed the discrepancy in my mind. I... I couldn't remember why I was here, exactly. I knew I needed to destroy this monster in front of me, but... everything before was a blank. I felt there was something else, but–