Random travelers gained access to the Fringe while things that had been sealed by the Yggdrasill bloodline for millennia escaped.
***
"There!" Lith pinned Ra'ntar to the ground like an insect after impaling him on Ragnar?k, sealing his movements. "I can finally see Solus. Assemble everyone while I oversee the final details."
Tezka Warped out of the room with the Yggdrasill staff in hand to mobilize the troops and have them ready for departure.
"Jirni, I'll leave Ragnar?k here until I reach the Fringe. You have until then to study his life force and find a way to keep inflicting pain without killing him. After that, I'll recall Ragnar?k and you'll be on your own."
"Don't worry. It will be more than enough. Skywarp." The stiffeners of her dress came out of their sockets and shapeshifted into metal needles that assembled into a glaive.
"Protect." Skywarp hummed with power, orbiting around Jirni while displacing itself through space to make its trajectory unpredictable.
"Help me figure out what your brother is doing. I need you to do the same." Jirni touched the elf and flooded his body with her breathing technique.
She focused on what parts transmitted more pain and how the presence of the Ygdrasill wood inside the Chronicler's body affected his physiology.
Skywarp split itself back into needles and pierced the elf's skin. It studied both the flow of Ragnar?k's mana and the disposition of the pain receptors, rearranging the needles so as to imitate the former and overwhelm the latter.
The glaive had no Counterflow ability, but Jirni's needles were born as a tool of coercion. With enough time and the right placement, they could turn a body inside out. And that back when they were just pieces of metal in Jirni's hands.
Now the needles had a quasi-sentience willing to assist its master in fine-tuning the multiple enchantments that Orion had imbued into the weapon.
"And she's not on her own." Friya activated her Dimensional Ruler spell, filling the cell with golden sparkles of light that bent space to her whims.
Her multi-colored hair whipped through the air as she flooded them with mana, ready to Dominate any spell the moment the elf weaved them.
Quylla said nothing and just kneeled beside the Chronicler. With Lith gone, she would have to replace the Immortal Body array. It was a duty she would have gladly avoided, but her loyalty to Lith forced her to put aside her moral and ethical doubts.
'I'm a hypocrite. If it were Mom, Dad, or Friya instead of Solus, I wouldn't hesitate one second.' She thought while using her tier five Body Sculpting spell, Silver Hand, to hijack the elf's metabolism.
The moment the three women took each their position, Lith Warped right after Tezka.
Dragons, Phoenixes, and Griffons were waiting for him in the main plaza where the Warp Gates for civilians, nobles, and diplomatic missions had already been activated.
There was no point flying, not when one could have access to the Gate Network of the three great countries to cross dozens of thousands of kilometers in one step.
Milea Genys, the Magic Empress of the Gorgon Empire had readily accepted. She was Leegaain's disciple and even though the Guardian wouldn't interfere directly, she knew how much Menadion's Desperation meant to her mentor.
Convincing the Royals, instead, had been more difficult. They demanded an explanation for Lith's sudden madness, his disappearance after his rescue, and why he needed a Royal Override to move hundreds of people no questions asked.
Lith was the Supreme Magus of the Kingdom and the Royals owed him much, but after the disaster of Zeska, their patience ran thin. He had gotten what he wanted, but at a price.
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