All across the realm of Bloodspill, the Bloodscorned had a resurgence like no other. New members joined in the tens of thousands, realizing that they might now have a chance.
Jonathan’s presence in Bloodspill was known to almost everyone in the realm by now, more out of simple logic than anything else. A good portion of the Greater Circle of Sloth was now gone, leaving Bloodspill as the next possible target.
It had been a week since meeting the Bloodscorned, and during that time, Jonathan learned everything that he needed to know about the circle he was in. Of the different factions, and the key battlefields of the realm. Where concentrations of Death elemental energy grew to such heights that the world was altered, creating nightmare landscapes that instilled madness in those who saw them. Bloodspill was a grim realm, filled with mud, blood and grime. It was also immense. Despite the dreary pallor that hung over it, there were some truly incredible places.
One such place was a vast mining operation built into the side of a titanic golem, made completely out of metal. It wandered Bloodspill, and had done so for millenia. The monster, referred to by most as the Ore Titan, was so large that thousands of years of constant mining had barely made a dent in it. The Ore Titan was almost thirty miles long, and shaped like a tortoise. The metal was so tightly compressed that a single cubic inch weighed hundreds of pounds. That meant that the total mass of metal continued in the monster was far more than it looked at a casual glance.
The only reason every step didn’t cause earthquakes was a dampening array built around the monster’s vast feet. It redirected the force back into the Ore Titan, also serving to weaken the metal that made it up for easier drilling.
It was the main source for armor and weapons to resupply the frequently diminished armies of Bloodspill. That was why the Bloodscorned had been trying to kill it for years, and destroy the facility that mined the metal.
Jonathan stood on one of the most eclectic vehicles he had ever encountered. If it could ever be called a vehicle. It was a magic carpet, straight out of Earth’s fables. Only, it was much larger, able to carry hundreds of people. In the center was a command post, where the device could be piloted.
On the carpet was a crack team of elites, with Jonathan and his allies being the cream on the top. Not that they overshadowed the others, though. Even though the Bloodscorned might have been a secret society, but they had some real powerhouses amongst them.
Every single person present, other than Jonathan and his friends, were Tier 8s. Many were near the peak of the Tier, with one even being at it. She was a member of the Bloodscorned High Council, and the strongest member.
Elraka Dorvund was a half orc, and quite a noticeable figure. Her martial path, a dagger based spellsword class, led her to fight without much armor, opting for looser cloth coverings. As a result, she was covered in silvery scars. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was a striking one. Elraka had defended the interests of the Bloodscorned for decades, taking up the mantle from her deceased mother.
She was the pilot of the flying carpet, and her eyes remained locked on the horizon as Jonathan glanced at her. The shape of the Ore Titan took up the sky in front of them like a moving mountain range. Its silvery shell was covered in dark iron foundries and ore extraction facilities. Pockmarks covered the entire monster, each of which looked small in comparison, but were easily hundreds of feet wide, if not thousands.
The flying carpet was about a hundred miles away from the Ore Titan, giving its occupants a good amount of time to take in the monster in front of them.
It was a perfect replica of a tortoise, like a statue made by a master sculptor out of the purest of silver. Each detail was rendered in gigantic form, from the patterns of its scales to its eyes. Jonathan’s senses were able to make all of this out, despite the fact that it was night.
While the monster seemed to move slowly, each plodding step taking dozens of seconds to land, it was eating up the ground at a rate that few could have matched.
“Ready?” Elraka asked, her eyes still fixed on the Ore Titan.
In response, the massed warriors and mages summoned their various powers, preparing for a ranged assault on the Ore Titan. A dozen archers drew their bows, pouring their elemental energy into the arrows.
Jonathan raised his hand and gathered the Void. A spear of purple light formed in his palm. With a single flick of his wrist, he threw it. As it flew, the spear drew more energy from him with a thin tether of violet light connecting it to his fingertips.
While initially weaker than many of the other projectiles, Jonathan’s arrow of light grew and grew in power until it was like a shooting star streaking across the night sky.
At this point, alarms started to sound out across the Ore Titan as guards posted on the foundries noticed the swarm of lights heading across the sky. At that point, though, there wasn’t much they could do.
Mere seconds later, the projectiles hit home. While they looked like flies next to the bulk of the titanic metal tortoise, the impact was anything but.
A mushroom cloud rose from the Ore Titan’s back, multicolored light spreading across the sky. At the very center was a pillar of purple energy, drilling straight into the tortoise. With a groaning rumble, the monster slowed, coming to a stop a few seconds later. The inertia overloaded the kinetic dampeners, and the ground rumbled. Fault lines spread across the land, and an earthquake stronger than anything Earth had ever seen tore up the bedrock for dozens of miles in every direction. It seemed too devastating, even considering how large the Ore Titan really was. Jonathan remembered then that the monster looked like it was made of steel, but was thousands of times denser. Had it actually been made from mundane materials, it would be hundreds of miles in length.
As the Titan stopped, the buildings and processing facilities attached to its back rippled as the force was transferred into them. Some of them were shorn entirely off the monster’s back, spilling down onto the muddy ground below. Of those that remained, many were cracked and torn, chunks of metal falling like rain.
“Now!” Elraka barked as the carpet neared the Titan. It was only about thirty miles away at this point, close enough for those with flight abilities to reach the Titan more quickly than the carpet could.
Jonathan ascended into the sky on wings of the Void, sparks of purple light sparkling behind him in the darkness of the night. Then he exploded into motion, the world whipping by beneath him as he sped towards the Ore Titan.
Flashes of light and thunderous bangs exploded from the remaining foundries and extractors still hanging onto the Ore Titan’s back. A barrage of magically charged cannonballs whistled through the air, lined in glowing glyphs.
Three of them locked onto Jonathan, the glyphs glowing brighter as some sort of homing enchantment came online. The cannonballs detonated, and clouds of shrapnel hissed towards Jonathan at supersonic speeds, still on a direct course as if magnetized.
Jonathan raised his palms and a wave of Void energy expanded outwards, burning the shrapnel out of existence. He streaked through the center of a rapidly spreading cloud of metal dust. Another few cannonballs came his way, hissing like angry ghosts as they sped through the night. Jonathan dealt with them in the same way. Every few seconds he crossed miles of ground, coming ever closer to the Ore Titan.
At this point the enormous metal tortoise was starting to realize what was going on. Whereas its abrupt halt earlier was a result of confusion, the torrent of metallic flame pouring out of the Ore Titan’s mouth was not. Clouds of superheated metal roiled across the sky, glowing brightly as the light of the moon shone off it.
Wherever it touched, the clouds of flame ate through the world. The ground melted away under the assault, tearing great scars into the ground. The flame spread unreasonably quickly, reaching Jonathan and the Bloodscorned in a few seconds. It was a truly immense expression of elemental power, one that Jonathan had never seen matched up until this point.
As shells of stalwart Earth and Order elemental energy closed around small units of the rebel forces, Jonathan was already preparing to strike back. In the second that it took for the flame to reach him, Jonathan used Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy. Supercharging it with his Lesser God status, Jonathan enclosed all of his allies in a shimmering purple sphere. The argent flames struck a moment later, but they bent around the Void shield, disappearing as they touched it.
The flames petered out a few seconds later, and Jonathan dropped the shield. He pointed at the Ore Titan and a beam of all consuming light burst from his fingertip. It pierced the center of the Ore Titan’s left cheek, tearing out the other side. A string of explosions followed it through the monster’s head, blasting chunks of metal to the ground. The Ore Titan let out a screeching cry of pain that sounded like a battleship being crushed underneath a mountain.
At this point, the defenders of the Ore Titan had entered the fray. Many of them flew up from the barracks and foundries on wings of burnished steel, some sort of standardized artifact handed to each of the soldiers. Others used their own flight powers to do the same.
There were thousands of them, all Tier 8. Most were towards the lower end of the Tier, but a few were in the 790 level range. There were only five of those, luckily.
As the battlefield shrunk, the auras of the individual fighters started to clash in a sort of preliminary conflict. It was a quick and easy way to establish a pecking order and raise morale. Luckily for the heavily outnumbered Bloodscorned, they had higher quality fighters overall. Jonathan and Elraka especially. Their auras served as the spearhead of a much larger array of auric power.
With the force of a few hundred Tier 8 elites behind them, Jonathan and Elraka sent the wave of aura pressure like a battering ram into the center of the enemy formations. A tidal wave of nebulous light, colored every shade of the rainbow and some beyond, struck with an almost physical force.
Some of the enemy fighters fell out of the sky, seizing up as they were confronted with the utter futility of their existence as Jonathan’s aura washed over them. Others went into a homicidal frenzy as Elraka’s own aura took effect. For the most part, though, the Ore Titan’s guards were up to the challenge and deflected the aura assault with, if not ease, a respectable amount of determination. Then the front lines crashed into one another and all hell broke loose.
Jonathan made a beeline for the leaders, his entire body glowing gold as he pumped Divinity into Wrath of the Void. His Void wings swelled, growing elaborate feathers of wrought purple light. They propelled him like a missile, right at the enemy leader. Jonathan used his newly upgraded analysis skill a few times, getting names and levels.
The strongest was a woman named Eleander, nearly at the peak of Tier 8. She was dressed in shining white armor that seemed to radiate a rich internal light. Her features were striking, strangely soft and demure for someone of her level. Her hair was a nest of black curls, cut short. In one hand was a hammer, just as eye catching as the rest of her ensemble. What Jonathan was most concerned about was the note in Eleander’s status next to her name.
(Chosen Captain of Avarana)
As Jonathan ogled her status, Eleander attacked, moving as swift as a bolt of lightning. She zigzagged across the sky, so quickly that everyone present lost track of her movements. Everyone, that was, except for Jonathan. Using his Third Eye of Exal’drin, Jonathan pinpointed Eleander’s movements. When she came crashing down from above, a frenzied grin on her face that seemed at odds with her pure attire, Jonathan was ready.
With a sharp crack, hammer met gauntleted palm, spraying sparks in every direction. Jonathan held back Eleander, struggling enough to realize how strong his foe really was. Eleander, if the myths about Avarana and her chosen was true, had lived far longer than almost anyone else at her Tier. Only like Jonathan had a hope of taking her on at such a level difference.
“So you’re him, then?” Eleander asked, her voice light, but with an undercurrent of ferocity. “The Hell-“
“I’m starting to get tired of everyone saying that as soon as they see me,” Jonathan snapped, a note of exasperation in his tone. “I have a scanning skill as well, you know? I just don’t broadcast it everywhere I go by spouting off people’s names.”
“You misunderstand me, apostate. I can recognize you by sight. You’re the only person who fits the descriptions that I’ve encountered. Tier 7, yet as strong as any Tier 8. I should-“ Eleander broke off as she suddenly withdrew her hammer, pivoting into a kick aimed at Jonathan’s chin.
He, already prepared by his Blessing, caught the blow. Reaching out, a handhold of Voidlight grew out of the empty air, and he dragged Eleander down, using the handle to leverage his strength midair. Jonathan’s fist snapped into Eleander’s sternum, fracturing her armor and bones. To her credit, Eleander resisted, managing to slip free before Jonathan could snap her ribcage.
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She retaliated with a meteoric swing of her hammer that seemed to teleport through space. Even Jonathan couldn’t react in time, his Blessing coming up against a critical weakness. His own ability to perceive motion past certain speeds. The strike hit as he was actively viewing the ghostly projection hurtle towards his face, rendering his foresight ability useless.
The hammer drove into the side of his jaw, crushing his teeth into splinters. The right side of his face caved in, blood spurting over his ruined mouth. Jonathan hissed in pain. The next strike came slower, and within his ability to react to. Eleander had clearly thought him to be disoriented by her earlier strike, as most people would be. Jonathan was made of sterner stuff, however, and had been tempered in pain beyond what most could imagine. Every Threshold, which most people rode out with anesthetic herbs, honed his will to the point where he welcomed their searing agony as a sign of getting stronger. In the face of that, a little chiropractic action from a hammer didn’t mean much anymore.
Jonathan let the force of the blow carry him away from Eleander, giving him time to formulate a response. Realizing that he had been carried away from the main battle by Eleander, Jonathan decided to cut loose. Without allies to worry about, he could use some of his more impressive abilities.
Jonathan had a truly massive repertoire of skills at this point, though he usually relied on his elemental manipulation and physical strength in battle. For a fight like this, he needed to stop holding back. It was time to break out the big guns. Void’s Hunger.
Layer after layer of the hungry Void compressed above his right hand, turning into a tiny black hole spinning so rapidly that it hummed as it tore at the air. Jonathan let it loose, while still keeping his will tightly meshed around it.
The unleashed black hole sped towards Eleander. The woman snorted a laugh and flickered out of the way with a flare of light, avoiding Jonathan’s strike entirely. The black hole fell, Jonathan pretending to have lost control of it. Instead he propelled himself at Eleander, engaging her with a powerful punch.
She took the strike with crossed arms, letting out a grunt as Jonathan hammered her up into the sky. All the while, Void’s Hunger was hard at work, scooping up the dirt beneath to feed itself. The black hole was no longer as small as before, quickly growing to the size of a person. Channeling Divinity into the Rune of Hunger that made up the core of the skill, Jonathan watched as the black hole distended like a mouth, a wave of darkness washing out. When it retracted, there was nothing left behind it.
Eleander was oblivious to all of this, still flying away from Jonathan. She was too far away for her senses to pick it out, with only sight being potent enough to detect something so far away. With her eyes directed away, she couldn’t tell that anything was happening so far below.
She righted herself, and flipped midair. A cloak of light formed behind her, and she plummeted towards Jonathan so quickly that the air before her burned. Her hammer burned like a bonfire, surrounded by a mantle of crackling white flames.
Jonathan drew back his fist, as if preparing to strike back, and then unleashed his true weapon. As his fist shot up, a black hole as large as a cottage streaked by, aimed right at Eleander. With her momentum, the servant of Avarana was unable to get out of the way in time. Instead, she plunged directly into the center of the black hole.
When Eleander came out the other side, she was a stark contrast to her previous appearance. Her armor was torn and pitted, the flesh below not much better. Her face looked like that of a corpse, muscle visible underneath glaring eyes. Her nose was gone, and her hair was eaten away.
Eleander was a mess, her ruinous descent halted, the very impetus behind her fall consumed by the Void.
Jonathan gathered his might, and surged towards his foe, driving his fist into the center of her chest. It was like a bomb had gone off, shards of bone and clouds of blood jetting off into the still night.
Eleander still did not die, some sort of revival skill triggering as her health was brought close to zero. Waves of cleansing light coursed up and down her body, restoring the damage dealt like it had never happened. One hand, still stripped clean of flesh, reached out and grabbed at Jonathan’s neck.
“Really?” was all he said as Eleander tried to rip his throat out. As her fingers blazed with heat and seared through his armor, they stopped at the implacable wall that was his throat. Burns spread, but far more slowly than they should have.
Jonathan reached up and ripped Eleander’s hand away so savagely that her wrist cracked. Then he breathed out a flaming lance of Void energy that pierced through the center of her chest and out the other side.
Eleander drove her hammer into Jonathan’s side over and over, flailing violently. She broke bones with every strike, but they were too weak to deter Jonathan. He continued to manifest the Void, burning away Eleander’s flesh as she struck. She was incredibly strong, at least compared to most others he had fought. Much more durable as well. Still, she was only a human, and he was a god. Had she even been a monster, the ascension of the Circle Lords would have drawn her up with them. As it was, her connection to Avarana meant nothing.
Jonathan finished her off with a sharp strike to the base of her jaw. Weakened as she was, and with most of her regeneration engaged elsewhere, Eleander’s head exploded. Lifeless, her corpse fell from Jonathan’s grip, plummeting to the ground far below. As it went, he erased it from existence with the Void. Perhaps he could stave off Avarana’s ability to bring Eleander back. If any element could do something like that, it was the Void.
You have killed Eleander, Chosen of Avarana!
You have leveled up!(x13)
Jonathan scanned the battlefield, looking for something to do. Everyone else was engaged in battle, but for the most part, it seemed quite evenly matched. His friends were holding their own, especially Arkanon and Eliza. Together, they held off dozens of the enemy, slowly whittling down their numbers.
Then Jonathan spotted Elraka, dealing with three of the Peak Tier 8s. She was on the back foot, fighting a retreating battle. While she was able to fend off incoming attacks with a dizzying display of speed and finesse with her daggers, she wasn’t able to land any of her own either. Eventually she would falter, and in a three against one battle involving fighters at her level, that would spell the end.
Jonathan came hurtling in from the left, bowling over two of the enemy warriors with his momentum. Jonathan reached out, gripping onto them. Kharon flexed, warping as the weapon dug into flesh.
Jonathan’s free hand flashed out, grabbing the other one as he went. The Void burned at his fingertips, spreading as purple fire across the armor and skin of his foes.
All three broke free eventually,
The three elites battling Elraka were all melee combatants, but they did have different focuses. Two of them were classic sword and shield fighters, while the other used a long, bladed metal whip.
With all the combatants present able to fight in the air as if they were on ground, a bloody melee soon ensued with Jonathan and Elraka fighting side by side to repel their enemies.
“You should have waited on killing Eleander,” Elraka rebuked. “Avarana will know something is up by now.”
“Shit,” Jonathan said, not having realized the ramifications of his actions. “How much time do we have?”
Elraka leaned back, letting a sword pass over her face. “Maybe ten minutes? She’ll have to come all the way from her citadel, on the other side of the Circle.”
“We can kill this thing in ten minutes,” Jonathan declared. “Or at least set back the harvesting.”
“You’ll both be dead,” the whip wielder spat, her face twisted in rage. A palm print of red muscle was visible where Jonathan’s palm had laid, burning away flesh with the Void. “Either at our hands, or when Avarana arrives.”
“If the latter happens,” Elraka shot back, “you’ll also be dead.”
Rather than reply, the whip wielder snapped her wrist, her weapon slashing across the air. A crescent of energy formed in front of it, lengthening the weapon until it was almost a hundred feet long.
Jonathan raised his palms, using Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy. Void energy poured into the skill, and as the whip struck home, the shield shuddered. It ultimately held, though, and Jonathan retaliated with a spear of elemental power.
Elraka burst through Jonathan’s shield, as he let it fade away. Her daggers burned with bright white light, which shot out from the ends of the weapons as she attacked. Laser beams tore into both of the sword users, cutting through their shields and armor.
Jonathan flew towards the whip user, scanning her as he went. Her name was Elinda. She was level 792 and seemingly focused on Dexterity, as all of her resource pools were quite low compared to her level. Her motions were like greased lightning, however, and the only reason Jonathan had been able to grab her earlier was because she hadn’t known he was there.
Elinda’s whip snaked out, wrapping around Jonathan’s wrists. She pulled back, expecting to drag him with her. Instead, Jonathan rooted himself in the center of a massive array of Void energy, pulling back against Elinda. She came rocketing towards him, her strength no match for his own.
Wisely, Elinda let go of her whip, seeing that Jonathan was getting ready to pull her into a devastating punch. He pulled the whip all the way back, and threaded it around Kharon. The sentient weapon grew around the whip, sealing it off for the rest of the battle.
Needless to say, the fight quickly tipped in Jonathan’s favor. Elinda had another whip tucked away in a storage space, but it wasn’t as high quality as her previous armament. Jonathan broke it within a few strikes, leaving Elinda helpless. With a few well timed blows, she died, and Jonathan gained another seven levels.
The fight continued in a similar vein to before. Jonathan and Elraka quickly took out the remaining elites, before heading off to support the wider battle. As one might expect, their combined strength was enough to tip the tide, despite the massive numerical disadvantage.
Had the Ore Titan still been moving, and the defenses still online, taking out the guards would have been a far more difficult task. Without supporting fire, though, it was trivially easy to deal with the much weaker soldiers.
Jonathan had transitioned to directly taking on the Ore Titan, trying to destroy as much of the monster as he could. The Void was the only thing in his army’s arsenal that could achieve the desired effect.
He stood on the nape of its neck, right where its head met the shell on its back. While the entire monster was made out of metal, the areas that would have corresponded to flesh on a living creature were still less durable than the shell. Punch after punch rained down on the golem, deforming the metal enough to let the Void in to wreak havoc on the Ore Titan’s internals. While the outside of the monster was barely scratched, cubic miles of its interior were gone, scooped out by the Void.
As the last of the Titan’s guardians fell, Jonathan felt the world pulse. On the northern horizon, black clouds spread, shot through with red lightning. In the middle, a gargantuan shadow tore its way across the sky. It was the shadow of a dragon, one miles in wingspan. Jonathan doubted that Avarana was actually that size, but it still meant that she was immense.
Footfalls sounded out behind him as Elraka landed, carefully avoiding the edges of Jonathan’s Void enhanced strikes. “We need to get out of here,” she warned. “Avarana will blow both of us out of the water if she gets here.”
“Not before we kill the Ore Titan,” Jonathan fired back. “I’m getting close.”
“Are you? The thing’s still taking the hits. It might be standing still, but that doesn’t mean anything.” Elraka cast a worried glance at the rapidly darkening horizon. “We only have a few minutes to make our getaway before its too late.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jonathan said. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.” As he said that, a sudden spark of inspiration struck him. Could I?
Jonathan started to summon one of his realm portals. The purple gate popped into existence in front of him. With an effort of will, Jonathan brought it down towards the Ore Titan. It touched the metallic skin of the golem, but other than a faint sizzling noise, nothing happened.
Jonathan was about to close the portal, before another through struck him. He opened his hands wide, and the portal grew and grew. Jonathan felt his muscles clench as a metaphysical weight dropped onto him. The portal kept expanding regardless, until it was over two hundred feet wide.
Coming up against the limits of his ability, Jonathan made an important discovery. He had never given much thought to the mechanisms of his portal ability, but as he categorized the physical fatigue he felt, he realized that the portal was sapping his stamina. It logically followed that he could power it with his other resources.
A smile grew on Jonathan’s face as he drew upon his mastery of the Void, bringing it into his own body. He pointed at the portal and a tentacle of purple light reached out and touched it. The portal expanded in an instant, growing exponentially as it tapped into Jonathan’s limitless Void energy reserves.
“What in the name of the gods is that?” Elraka whispered as the portal grew to the size of a small city. “The power coming off it…”
Jonathan couldn’t speak, his entire body a conduit to the realm of destruction that was the Void. His flesh was merged with the stuff on a conceptual level. At that moment, he was no more a mortal man than a hurricane, or a tsunami. He was like a living natural disaster, more a force of nature than anything else.
The portal continued to grow until it was big enough to fit a mountain into with room to spare. Jonathan forced it in front of the Ore Titan, and with a surge of power that nearly blasted Elraka off her feet, he swept it over the length of the metallic tortoise. He leaped off at the last moment, and Elraka followed. The portal closed behind the monster, leaving no trace of its existence.
A savage roar shook the air as Avarana expressed her displeasure, though she was still thousands of miles off. A bolt of crimson lightning forked across the sky, headed straight for Jonathan.
As the flickering lance of electricity arced towards him, Jonathan mustered his power, wanting to see how he stacked up against Avarana.
Layer after layer of mana, Divinity and Void attuned elemental energy gathered around Jonathan’s right fist. More filled his body, mind and soul, bringing his strength to new heights. As he felt the concentrated power of Avarana’s assault, however, he felt a sudden pang of weakness.
Jonathan struck, meeting the lightning with his fist. The stream passed around his hand, trying to sink into his body. The air heated up until it turned to plasma, scorching Jonathan until his skin blackened and flaked off. His muscles seized as tiny bolts of lightning broke off the main technique, piercing straight through his armor and into his flesh.
Jonathan gritted his teeth and pushed back, a half dome of purple light fighting against the lightning as it expanded out from his fist. The dome flickered and warped, turning from a featureless hemisphere of light into a vast violet fist, practically burning with might.
The lightning kept on coming despite Jonathan’s best efforts, though. Rather than waste itself against his near limitless Void reserves, the electricity arced around his body, targeting his blind spots. Using Aegis of the Void’s Dichotomy, Jonathan finally was able to secure himself from the onslaught. A few seconds later, it finished, leaving him with burns all across his body, in some cases all the way to the bone.
Elraka had wisely retreated in the meantime, positioning herself with the bulk of her forces, about two miles away. Jonathan cursed and flew back towards the army. Snapping his fingers, he summoned another Void portal in front of his allies. Without bidding they headed in, with Jonathan waiting until the very end.
Turning, he caught a glimpse of Avarana, breaking through the clouds twenty miles away. The dragon was vast, almost a thousand feet in length. She had four wings and carmine scales, across which the same red lightning crackled. A roar of rage erupted from her mouth, shaking the world. Jonathan shook his head, and entered the portal. He wasn’t ready to tangle with the Circle Lord of Bloodspill quite yet.
The portal closed behind him with a dull snap, leaving Avarana to rage futilely with nothing to take her anger out on.
The Ore Titan had come out in the midst of the Great Farm, crushing miles of farmland underneath itself. Seeing as the farms had gone mostly unused after the slave empire of the Great Farmer was broken, nobody was close enough to be harmed. Still, the Ore Titan was embedded in the loamy ground, its legs buried miles into the soil. Its kinetic dampeners had been damaged by the battle in Bloodspill, but what remained was just enough to prevent the monster from crushing its way deep into the realm’s crust.
Far in the distance, Jonathan spotted a single, very confused monster crouching in fear.
