Chapter 136: Dance Of The Anomalies

Some time later, the three of them stood at the edge of the Venerable’s territory, staring at the dead earth ahead.

They’d gone over the plan three times, argued about it twice, almost came to blows once... mainly Huda. But now, standing at the threshold, there was nothing left to say.

So they didn’t say anything.

They just looked at each other and nodded in unison.

Huda snapped her fingers, and the wind caught them, lifting them into the air, carrying them forward in a controlled arc.

The compass sat in her palm, needle locked dead ahead.

She didn’t need to check it, feeling the pull of the exit.

A string tied around her heart.

Malik kept his eyes closed, trying to listen.

His Soul was reaching out, brushing against the Rukh around them, searching for the presence that had nearly killed them earlier.

Before long, he found it.

A void in the fabric of the world, where light and sound simply stopped existing.

That had to be the Venerable!

"Now."

Huda sent them down at his command, and they landed smoothly on the cracked ground, their knees bending to calm the weight of their fall.

Immediately, Safira began to hum as she and Malik dragged their feet across the earth the way they’d done in the yellow desert all those years ago.

Heel to toe, their weight even throughout.

Huda matched beside them, and the two fell into rhythm with Safira’s humming, no rehearsal or practice, just three people who understood that hesitation meant death.

Their hearts were beating loud enough to deafen them.

’Is it working?’

’Is it watching?’

"..."

But the silence of the land told them everything they needed.

There was no massive shape rising to swallow them whole.

It couldn’t feel them.

Thus, it didn’t see them.

They were safe... at least from it.

Now they only needed to get through the Anomalies standing in their way.

And damn, what Anomalies they were.

The first one swallowed them whole before they could react.

They couldn’t afford to break the rhythm, so they walked straight into it.

Around them, the realm folded in on itself as if crushed by an invisible hand.

Colors that weren’t supposed to exist bled across surfaces that couldn’t have been there, and somewhere close, a whistling cry of Rukh rang out, alive, angry, and hungry.

That was their timer.

They needed out before it hit its peak.

But how, when the cohort was standing inside a... cube?

Yes, a cube.

Perfectly smooth, its walls already closing in.

Malik reached out a hand towards Huda without breaking stride.

Immediately understanding what he wanted, she drew her sword and placed the hilt in his palm.

She didn’t ask a single question.

Trust was there, buried deep under all that anger and cursing, but there all the same.

Malik took a stance, activated Ember’s Touch, and focused the flame onto the tip of the blade until it burned white-hot, compressed tight enough to cut through most things.

Safira, understanding what he meant to do before he moved, threw up a shimmering cocoon of light around all three of them.

Malik stabbed the cube.

WHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIINEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Rukh poured out the second it broke through, a flood, and the whole thing exploded with a sound loud enough to hurt.

Safira’s cocoon cracked but held... barely.

Malik threw the sword back to Huda.

She caught it without looking.

The cohort kept walking, never once breaking stride.

They were a well-oiled machine, each experienced enough not to lose focus.

The second Anomaly stretched them thin, their bodies pulled toward a horizon that kept sliding further away, no matter how far they reached.

Safira kept humming.

Huda kept walking.

Malik kept them in his sights.

Then, just as suddenly as the anomaly began, it let go, and they were back on dead earth, none the worse for it.

The third was a mirror, a perfect reflection flipped left to right, up to down.

Their own reflections walked towards them, step for step, until Malik’s reached out and tried to grab him.

Without flinching, he walked straight through the glass, and it shattered around them.

The fourth was a song of forming Rukh, both beautiful and haunting. It pulled at their minds, trying to make them stop and listen.

It was enough to falter Safira’s humming.

But Malik reached out before it could affect them and gripped her shoulder.

He didn’t say anything; his grip said it for him.

They kept moving.

The fifth was a storm of pure light, bolts of Rukh raining down with no pattern to any of it, each one leaving a crater in the earth. But the cohort had its own rhythm, and they wove between the craters—one step, two steps, three—never once stopping.

The sixth was time itself.

The moment they stepped into it, everything felt wrong.

Movements too fast, breaths too slow, hearts beating in reverse.

Malik saw himself take a step before he took it. Heard Safira’s humming stop, repeat, and rewind. Felt Huda’s hand on his shoulder while she still walked three paces ahead of him.

’This is bad.’

They kept walking anyway.

Safira’s humming, despite being twisted, maintained the same rhythm.

They held on to it, to the certainty that there was an exit and that they would reach it.

None had said a word, too focused on only that.

And sure enough, they succeeded.

By the seventh, Malik was starting to think they might actually make it without waking the Venerable up.

But of course...

CRACK!

Of course, it could never be so easy.

A bolt of lightning tore through the sky.

It was beyond any natural one, aimed straight at Huda’s heart.

She never saw it coming, too locked onto the rhythm of her own feet.

Malik broke the dance before he’d even finished the thought and threw himself at her, shoving her clear as the bolt slammed into the ground where she’d been standing a heartbeat earlier.

The earth exploded!

Shrapnel cut across his arms and back.

He didn’t feel any of it, focusing on protecting his little sister.

The moment they crashed into the ground, he already began looking for the next threat.

Another bolt came.

Safira’s cocoon snapped back into place around all three of them, and the lightning shattered it on impact, but the strike dissipated with it.

After a moment, blood began to run from Safira’s nose.

Her eyes slowly went wide.

Even then, she didn’t fall.

None of them stopped.

Still without a word between them, all three broke into a sprint.

Safira threw up shields on either side of her, carrying Huda and Malik at full speed.

Her legs shattered with every footfall, the bones cracking under the strain, then knitting themselves back together, then shattering all over again.

Huda’s wind pushed them from behind, and Malik’s fire joined it, the two elements spinning together into something that blasted them forward faster than either could have managed alone.

Behind them, the Venerable rose.

It came up from the earth far beyond any mountain, its body blotting out the sky once more, its limbs casting shadows that swallowed the land whole, making the ground shake and the air scream.

They ran through its limbs, huge armored things slamming into the earth around them, each impact sending shockwaves that should have knocked them flat.

Huda’s wind kept them steady.

They ran through tornadoes; the Venerable’s own passage had stirred into being, cyclones ripping boulders straight out of the ground... cyclones that Huda bent to her Will instead, turning them into another push forward.

They ran through lightning, bolt after bolt after bolt, deflected by Safira’s shields or dodged by the width of a breath.

Near misses came every second.

A limb that nearly crushed them.

A tornado that nearly caught them.

A bolt that grazed so close to Malik’s head that his hair stood on end.

But they didn’t stop.

Then, finally, they saw it.

A perfect circle in the earth, leading straight down into darkness.

Safira and Huda fell in without pausing, their momentum carrying them straight over the edge.

Malik took one last glance behind him.

The Venerable was close... at least its limbs were.

Its maw, so very high up in the sky, was open wide.

A Devil’s Maw.

Beautiful, in a terrible sort of way.

He stepped forward and fell into the hole.

His body vanished, devoured by darkness.

A limb fell where he once stood.

They did it.