Chapter 447: The Eyes of A Man (Bonus Gifts 1/5)

The serpent screamed from the torture of the heavens pouring down on its flesh and I wrote over the scream.

Silence.

I did not expect it to take, and I did this mostly because of the warband, since if they had survived the impact of our fight, then the loud cry of pain from the god would be enough to rip their minds to pieces.

The Inscription burned itself into the air around the head of the serpent and the noise from it simply stopped. The god’s jaws kept working and nothing came out of them.

A small laugh came from me, as I looked at a god who could not be heard. It was grim, I know, but my life is blood and death, and I keep my sanity in ways that are no longer considered normal.

The serpent noticed that its voice was gone, and its eyes shone red a moment before the space around its head rippled and a red fog exploded from its jaws and shattered the Scripts I had used to chain down sound.

The serpent did not rush to attack me, and I saw its eyes shift from my hands to the storm above that was still gathering. Its eyes brightened and I nearly smiled, if it thought that my power came from the heavens alone, it did not yet understand the meaning of Inscriptions.

Its massive body pushed for the clouds and I used the opportunity to attack.

Bind. Its lower coils locked to the bedrock and it tore its own scales off getting free. Each scale was massive, and they shot out from its flesh like missiles from the force that Raktanāgeya had used to tear itself away from the ground.

My sight went blank, and I cursed a bit when Eldritch Perception connected to the mind of Tam.

∞

Tam held on.

The Drakespawn beneath him was fleeing as if its tail were on fire, and Tam wished he could lend the beast his own legs so it could move faster, even though the beast had never moved like this before, not even when they had fled Serrath pursued by an army.

Its claws tore through the earth, its scaled body low to the ground, and Tam could feel its terror through the way its muscles bunched and released with every leap, and he could not help but scream for the beast to move faster.

He did not know where they were going. He did not know if Ines was beside him or behind him or if she had fallen somewhere in the chaos. He only knew that the world was ending, and he had to keep holding on.

"Oh dear gods... forgive my sins as..."

The ground shook beneath them, deep, wrenching spasms as if the entire continent was being torn apart. His Drakespawn stumbled, caught itself, and kept running.

Behind him, something roared, and Tam nearly went insane, as the sound touched parts of his mind that he did not know he had and made his blood feel like it was boiling inside his body.

"What the fuck... what the fuck... he was supposed to die to delay this god from taking us... what the fuck!!!"

He glanced back. He could not help it, and he wished he had not.

The sky was wrong. The clouds had turned black and blue and white all at once, and lightning fell from them in sheets, striking something massive that moved through the storm. Symbols burned in the air alongside it, symbols that made his head ache just to look at them. He could only catch glimpses, a hand raised, a symbol burning, a flash of blue light that made his eyes water, and a shape so large that his mind could not hold it.

And there, in the middle of it all, was a man?

Tam squinted, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The man was huge... mountain-huge. He stood amid the lightning and the destruction, and lightning seemed to be pouring out from him, and as he blinked the figure vanished.

Elric.

Tam had wanted to believe that this man was mad, or perhaps that he was one of the last demigods of the human race who were hiding in the shadows, too ashamed to emerge and defend the mortals who called to them. But this... this was something else. This was not the power of a demigod. Their warband chief was a freaking demigod. This was godhood.

A shockwave hit them, and his Drakespawn screamed, and Tam screamed with it, and somewhere in all of it he thought he could hear that mad dwarf laughing, calling for the halls of his ancestors, and Tam tried to find Ines and...

∞

I tore myself from the hold of my vision. It had barely been a second, and for a battle like this, a second was too long to be distracted.

The god had been on the ground a second ago, and when I tore my eyes open, it was barely a hundred feet below me, its maw spread wide open, and in a tenth of a second the serpent would devour me whole.

Inside its throat I could see barbs the size of spears, and I realized that if I was swallowed by this god, I would be shredded to pieces long before I reached its stomach.

It was a good thing for me that although my perception had been pulled away from my body into Tam, my soul was powerful enough that my body never stopped writing Inscriptions, and I only had to make the final adjustment with my ring finger to complete the one I had been carving.

Bind.

Chains of lightning erupted from the ground, wrapping around the serpent’s coils. They were not physical chains, but rules I had written into the world, and they held the god in place... for a moment.

Raktanāgeya shattered them with a flex of its body, and because I was so close to it, the backlash sent me staggering. I felt the Inscription unravel, the essence that powered it burning away, and I realized that I had reached the limit of what I could carve with lightning alone.

I needed more than this to fight, as the god seemed to be adjusting to the flow of combat.

My senses reached deep into the earth and a line of lightning connected to my blade, and I drew it to me in the blink of an eye.

I had been drawing Inscriptions with my fingers... when I had a blade, no, a pen, with me.

If I could not wield a blade like a warrior, then I should be able to wield it like a mage.

I had barely pushed the limits of this weapon, and I knew I was not using it to its full capabilities, but there were many ways to skin a cat. Inside this blade was the law of sharpness, and Inscriptions were all about etching into materials.

My fingers and lightning were powerful enough to touch the materials of the heavens itself, but was I really etching into it?

On my palm, the blade grew until it was the length of an oak tree, and I shook my head, and imposed my will upon it... I want a pen.