The Chronicles of a Scalebound Sage

WM [97] Push As Far As You Can

The door opened with a hiss as alien lights filled the stairwell. Bjorn had ascended alone in case the storm had already grown to the point that it would alter the minds of those caught in it. He could already feel the corruption reaching into him but finding no purchase as his primana defended him against the onslaught. 

Bjorn took his first step out of the Extraction Site. He could feel corrupted mana biting at his presence like sandpaper against his scales. The air was dry and the tempest that was the mana hurricane was screaming as if in pain. The sky above was no longer intact, it was shattered like a broken mirror reflecting incomprehensible realities. Gone was the aurora of shifting mana and its chaotic discharges that had warped the landscape into an ever-mutable puddy. In its place loomed a cosmos undone: lightning frozen mid-strike, suspended in the jagged shards of a sky fractured by forces beyond mortal understanding.

Bjorn knew what this sight would do to a mortal mind. To witness such things would unspool their thoughts, unraveling sanity until nothing but incoherent madness remained. However, Bjorn was a True and where the frailty of mortality would have ripped his mind apart, his Higher Plane nature was an anchor against the chaos. He could see between the shards where horrors lingered. There were nightmarish figures of impossible shape and unknowable intent swam in the pools of Creation undone. The entities twisted and folded upon themselves, shapes that defied Euclidean sanity, existing in a paradox where reality and the nonentity collided. 

Stars spun in the cosmic soup and burned with the light of alien suns, their glow casting shadows that writhed as if alive. Infinite voids yawned wide, darker than the deepest abyss, yet alive with whispers. Bjorn felt the thousand gazes pressing down upon him. He was now where the realm was weakening; he could feel the presence of the Trues beyond. He could feel the malevolence of the Devils in the Infernal waiting for their time to burn another world.

Bjorn had to force himself to look away from the scar that made up the sky above and instead his eyes traced the massive serpent that curled around the warp. It’s mouth ajar as the warp fed it the energy of untold stars. It had not moved since it was sent there. Its purpose was singular and so far had gone uninterrupted. Bjorn had no intention of finding out what the Avatar of the Great Serpent would do if it was antagonized.

“I think it is fair to say that I don’t like it here.” Failsafe said in Bjorn’s head. “I think we should get moving quickly.”

“Agreed.” Bjorn said as he shook the image of the sky from his thoughts. “We will use the warp as our main landmark because the landscape will change. Let's go the opposite direction from all of that power.” 

Bjorn turned and ran. The landscape around him was baron and rocky. It was hard to see through all of the sand kicked up by the storm above. At this point Bjorn didn’t have a destination; he just needed to search for any signs of the material he needed. Getting to higher ground would be the best bet only after he gave himself more distance from the warp and he could think without having his mind invaded by the mana in the air.

***

It took a few days of travel to finally find a pass through the mountains. He decided he would not climb a mountain again mainly for safety. The terrain was unsteady and more than once had he seen a mountain crumble like a stone falling into water. He didn’t want to be on one if that happened.

Monsters had been drawn to the warp and most would all but ignore Bjorn in their desperate attempts to claim the power of the warp itself. Not all monsters ran to what would be their inevitable death. Bjorn would catch glances at hunters prowling for prey amongst the chaos. He decided that he would use his Shadow concealment more liberally once he saw a few eyeing him. 

“Look, the sky is relatively normal here.” Failsafe said.

Bjorn saw that the sky was covered in the aurora of a mana storm. The sight was far better than the broken hellscape of a sky around the warp. It wasn’t safe but it was definitely safer than the eye of the storm.

“Huh, guess we are finally out of the main formation of the mana hurricane.” Bjorn said as carried on forward. “Judging by the bond Tanisha is asleep. Hope things are going well on their end.”

“I am sure they are fine.” Failsafe said. “Well, where too first.”

“Still just looks like barren land here.” Bjorn said. “So, I'll just keep going straight until we see something of interest.”

***

Deep into the flat lands he decided to slow his pace. He needed to conserve energy in case he was attacked. The shifting lights of the aurora were still dim enough for his Shadow Concealment to work but not to the same effect as true shadows would grant him. He could see anything approaching long before it reached him. 

“We have company,” Failsafe said, his head bobbed up and down. “I will give you back control of this head.”

Bjorn didn’t see anything, he didn’t smell anything and the ambient magic was too chaotic for his mana sensitive tongue to pick up any changes. He slowed to a crawl each of his heads swiveling around looking for any movement.

“I don’t see anything,” Bjorn said. “Wait.”

He didn’t doubt Failsafe, and his own instincts told him that something was watching him. His eyes swept across the landscape, searching for what had triggered his sense of danger. Then, he saw a flicker of movement in the distance, barely more than a shifting shadow against the dim light of the mana storm.

Something else is using the shadow magic like me, Bjorn thought.

A second shape slithered into view. Then a third followed by many-many more. Bjorn’s heart pounded as he was reminded of his past as Isin running from a stampede of monsters. This wasn’t a lone hunter coming to attack him. It was a pack and they were closing fast.

“Do you know what they are,” Bjorn asked. “We did have Tanisha show us that monster book before we left.” 

“Uh-uh, shadow concealed, hunts in large pacts in planes, really fast,” Failsafe said in a panic. “We should start running too, by the way. I don’t know until they get closer but nothing good can use shadow magic.”

Bjorn turned and bolted, his muscles coiling like loaded springs. As he ran, he noticed the pack members pivoting in his direction. 

They can see me? 

Even cloaked in Shadow Concealment, their eyes or whatever sensory organs they possessed tracked his every movement.

No point in hiding then.

He relinquished the spell, his body flickering back into full view. His magic shifted from stealth to his Chaos Scales Armor. His scales shimmered momentarily as protective energy pulsed through him. At the same time, he prepared his breath attacks, each head instinctively channeling raw elemental power. If they got too close, he’d incinerate them.

Bjorn tensed, ready to pivot and fight, when the world betrayed him. Without warning, the ground beneath his feet twisted violently. A deep, guttural rumble echoed across the landscape, like the roar of some slumbering titan awakening beneath the surface. Gravity itself shuddered.

Then, the world lurched. The land fractured, stone and rock splitting apart with an ear splitting crack. Thunder boomed, not from the sky, but from the deep beneath the surface as the terrain shattered. Bjorn’s stomach flipped, a sensation akin to free-fall overtaking him as he was yanked into the air along with the pack of monsters chasing him.

“What in the Infernal Planes is this?” Bjorn roared as his body was hurled skyward.

Hundreds of feet above the ground, he twisted in the air, glimpsing the chaos below. The land had split. Massive chunks of earth, entire sections of the landscape, had been torn free and now hovered in the sky like weightless debris. Some were the size of fields, others barely large enough to stand on. The storm above flickered, the aurora dancing in the sky, casting eerie shadows over the floating battlefield.

Bjorn crashed onto one of the islands, his claws sinking into the unstable rock as he skidded to a halt. He barely had time to shake off the impact before his eyes darted across his surroundings. The pack had been scattered, their agile bodies twisting midair to land on different islands. Some, however, had landed with him.

Bjorn caught glimpses and saw that other monsters were also scattered across the floating islands. They had been caught in the phenomenon as he had. He spotted shimmers of shadows still gliding towards him despite the now uneven terrain. The entire landscape had shifted into something unrecognizable.

Failsafe’s voice cut into his thoughts. “I saw one! Those things are Spinefang Striders. Pack hunters. Weird spiky tentacle faces. They’re ridiculously fast, and-and the spikes are venomous. Alone, the book said they were a moderate threat. In a pack, High threat.”

Bjorn exhaled sharply, his breath curling into mist. “Great. How do I kill them? Because I’ve got some company up here.”

The Spinefang Striders remained unperturbed by the shifting terrain. If anything, they hardly seemed to notice that the world had just torn itself apart. The only real advantage Bjorn had was that their numbers had been thinned, where once there had been a horde, only a couple dozen remained on his island. The rest were scattered across the other floating landmasses or, if he was lucky, had been smashed into paste on the ground far below.

Failsafe spoke quickly. “Uh, water. As much as you can. They suck at maneuvering on anything but solid ground. Otherwise they will be too fast for us. Other than that we haven’t used our abilities in a while let's go crazy. We are all by ourselves and don’t have to worry about attracting anything since we are who knows how far in the sky right now.”

“You're right, let’s see how far I can really push this body.”