Chapter 64—Yes, He Was |
As Seena’s eyes widened and lips mouthed What are you doing?, Hiral let go of her hand, left the others standing on planes of pink butterflies, and floated almost five hundred feet away. With how much solar energy he was about to use, it would be best if they weren’t too close.
Then, instead of explaining what he meant, he showed them.
Solar energy exploded off him as he stopped simply containing his S-Rank power. The air around him rippled outward in a wave that stretched miles in every direction. Even though the average Maker and Grower on the flying islands wouldn’t know what was happening, there was no way they wouldn’t know something was going on. And that wasn’t even his flex, just the simple existence of his power.
No, the first sign of a flex came with the sun high above Fallen Reach dimming at the same time the runes ran across his Seeker’sRegalia. The Rune of Eclipse formed on the left side of his chest, while a true eclipse crossed in front of the sun, leaving a burning halo in its place.
At Hiral’s back, the Edicts—the Avatars—thrummed with power. They were the only ones who really knew what he was doing, and they approved.
Taking a deep breath, Hiral lifted his hands out to his sides, more solar energy flooding out of his Black Hole Solar Heart until he glowed like a four-pointed star hanging in the air. Wind swirled around him, and an ominous creaking echoed across the sky. As casual strands of Sealing mended the tears caused by his unleashed power before they could do any damage, the Seeker’s Crown formed on his head.
Eyes glowing like small eclipses themselves, Hiral looked at the broken islands floating beneath Fallen Reach. Ever since he’d really met and gotten to know the Growers—his friends—he’d resented how they were forced to follow in the shadow of the Makers’ island. How they lived on broken islands, barely held together by a web of roots that only bought them time and didn’t solve the problem. How they always looked up at what Fallen Reach had, and were treated like something less because of the elevation.
After the Rise of Fallen Reach dungeon, Hiral had understood why things were the way they were. How the original plan was supposed to work, with the Grower and Maker islands at equal height. Working together for shared survival. That hadn’t gone to plan, and while the Growers were lucky their island hadn’t crashed like the Builders’ and Bonders’, it was never fair.
And it never would’ve been, unless somebody had the power and will to change things.
So he did.
When another beat of solar energy rippled outward from his Solar Heart, dozens of runic circles flared to life across, around, and below the collection of Grower islands. Moving his hands from his sides to directly in front of him, tethers of Connection spun outward like a spider’s web. Just like that, he held the islands.
Then he put them where they were supposed to be: out of the shadows of Fallen Reach, on the same level.
More than that, while he could’ve followed the original plan and left them floating behind Fallen Reach, he instead moved them up to fly side by side with the Makers’ island. Neither would ever hold a claim of being in front of, or higher than, the other. They would truly be equal.
Equal, but different, with Hiral leaving the Growers’ islands as a collection of smaller masses instead of a single island. It was part of their culture. Part of their identity. Connection reinforced those roots, making sure no further pieces of the island would crash to the surface, but that still left the Growers’ landmass noticeably smaller than the Makers’… which was exactly where the second part of his plan came in.
Looking down to the churning ocean below, Hiral reached out with his power. In a line between him and the dozens of smaller landmasses, the air seemed to fracture and bend. Rolling his hand over so his fingers pointed down, Hiral grabbed hold of those islands. As more runic circles and equations burst to life, titanic waves crashed away from the landmasses and earth-shaking cracks echoed up.
Energy flared around Hiral, ropes of it lashing out from him as he lifted the islands from the ocean below him. Water poured from the rising stone, their space reclaimed by the ocean, as Hiral continued to raise his arm. With it came the land fragments, racing upward through the air until they floated level with the rest of the Growers’ islands.
From there, he’d planned to use Connection to lock them in place—he still did—but a better alternative had recently been presented to him.
“Seena,” Hiral said into the party chat.
She didn’t need any direction beyond that, her own power exploding outward as her Eternal SunEmbodiment form burned into existence. In a heartbeat, she floated above the Growers’ islands, the light radiating from her body bathing the newly flying islands in the power of rebirth and growth. Roots thick enough to act as bridges burst free from the stone and grew rapidly to connect the additions. Thanks to her own S-Rank power, the process didn’t even take seconds, and just like that, the Growers’ islands were now thirty miles of fertile, beautiful land.
Birds that’d been caught in the sudden move from sea to sky tore free from the forest canopy, only to seemingly look around in confusion. There, they circled, now suddenly nine miles higher in the sky than ever before, but relishing the warm light from Seena’s Aspect. Whether the animals stayed or returned to the surface would be up to them, but Hiral put them out of his mind.
Stolen novel; please report.
The Grower islands were just the opening act. Now, it was time for the main show, and understanding began to spread across the faces of his nearby friends. Was he going to…?
Yes. Yes, he was.
Another step put him above and in front of the paired islands of Fallen Reach, so that he could look down on the wide ocean still churning below. Huge shapes moved beneath the waves—the giants that gave the ocean its name—and Hiral gently Rejected them to make sure they wouldn’t get hurt by what he was about to do.
Solar energy continued to pour off him, and while he could use Eloquently Enraged, his gut told him he didn’t need to. He was strong enough to do this on his own. Much like he’d done with the collection of smaller islands, Hiral reached out to the two distant landmasses Sera had talked about. He’d absolutely done a bit of landscaping, but it wasn’t so the Undead or Eidolons could have homes out in the middle of the ocean.
As soon as his hands lined up with the two thirty-mile-wide landmasses, more threads of Connection lashed out. Separation smoothly parted the stone holding the islands in place, while Breakingfollowed behind, completing the disconnect. Then, relying on runic constructs of Gravity that were similar to, yet better than, what kept Fallen Reach afloat, Hiral pulled two new islands into the sky.
His arms shook with the effort of lifting that much weight, even with his runic equations easing things, but he didn’t slow. And he certainly didn’t stop. Cracks threatened to split the islands as they rose, their own weight testing the limits of the dense stone. More Connection and Restoration held it all together, while a cocktail of Gravity, Attraction, and Dreaming altered the rules trying to bring the islands back down to where they’d been. Within seconds, the islands were meant to be in the sky, their own gravity supporting them.
Mile after mile, he lifted the two landmasses higher and higher. Much like the smaller islands, as water poured from the bottom of these tracts of land, new runic circles burned to life across their bases.
Within seconds, the falling water became rising water, with the column connecting Fallen Reach to the surface splitting to feed the other three islands as well, including those of the Growers. Hiral held the two new islands up in a line with the others, a few quick alterations ensuring enough water would reach each location.
Now, all four stretched across the sky in a horizontal line that would carry them around Genesis, nearly one hundred and thirty miles wide. Each possessed their own magic to keep them airborne instead of relying on the system Dr. Benza had set up, in which each island needed the others. No, in Hiral’s version, each of the islands still had systems that would support the others, but not in exclusion.
They all had the ability to keep the others aloft. They all had the ability to pull water up from the EnSath River. They could all grow food and support thriving populations. There would be no more inequality just because of where somebody lived. Of course, it wouldn’t be perfect, and it would require the work of the people who lived on the islands, but it was a good start.
And he still wasn’t finished.
With the islands floating and moving at the same, constant three miles per hour, there was one major challenge that remained: power. Fallen Reach drew its energy from the Fallen trapped within its towers. Most of the energy went down to the PIMP, but there was no way it would be able to support all four islands. Especially not with the PIMP’s… expanded responsibilities. That was something Hiral needed to address before the islands fell right back out of the sky.
Solar energy poured off him as dozens, then hundreds of clones sprinted in all directions. With their speed, it didn’t take long for them to reach their destination and form a new set of vertical runic circles. Circles that were thirty-five miles wide.
Stretching out like a tunnel to contain the line of islands, the circles slowly began to rotate. Like wheels spinning in alternating directions, the nine massive sets of complicated equations sent lightning and thunder careening off into the otherwise clear sky. Where they touched the ocean, not a drop of water was disturbed, and not a grain of the earth was churned. There, the runic circles seemed to almost not exist, like ghostly echoes of power without destruction.
Under the darkness of the eclipse, surface, sky, and heavens illuminated as more and more bolts stretched straight up. Like they were reaching for the sun hidden behind Hiral’s power, the intensity and frequency of the bolts increased with the speed of the rotating rings.
It took fifteen seconds for the first full rotation. Ten seconds for the next. Five seconds for the third. By the seventh rotation, each of the runic circles was little more than a constant blur spitting a stream of lightning bolts toward the distant sun. After a full minute of that, Hiral began to close the fingers of his outstretched hand.
Eight of the nine runic circles creaked as the thunder boomed louder than ever before, then shrank, their distant edges practically touching the edges of the islands. Another squeeze of Hiral’s hands condensed the circles a second time, and this time, where the equations touched the islands, they spread.
Like greased lightning, a web of dense runic equations—two per island—traced their way across the surface, expanding into stone, along buildings, around people. Makers and Growers watched in wonder as the lines zipped past them, leaving faintly glowing characters that slowly faded like an afterimage burned into their retinas.
That just left a single runic circle—the central one—spinning like a runaway wagon wheel. Set around the space between the Maker and Grower islands, it continued with its stream of lightning toward the sky. It was the final piece of Hiral’s plan. Slapping his hands together in front of himself, he reached out with new strands of Connection to the inside of the ring. As he pulled his hands apart, the ring did not shrink. It grew.
Bigger and bigger. Wider and wider. Thirty-five miles became fifty. Then seventy-five. One hundred. One hundred thirty.
Sweat ran down Hiral’s face and back, his arms once again stretched out to his sides. One more step. Right hand arcing up, left hand arcing down, Hiral twisted the spinning ring on its axis. Oscillating now on two different axes, the ring became a sphere surrounding the four islands, and the lightning and thunder abruptly ceased.
Instead of leaking from the runic rules, the raw power was now pulled into the sphere. Solar power and runic power both fed the magic that lit up the lines along the four islands.
Attracted, Increased, and Absorbed, as long as the sun graced the sky, its energy would empower the new Fallen Reach. All four islands of it.
Once more slapping his hands together in front of himself, Hiral dissipated the glowing sphere of energy surrounding the floating islands between blinks. High above, the eclipse finished passing across the sky, leaving the sun free to once again shine down on Genesis.
“It’s done.”