Vol. 3 Chap. 63 A Rightious Cause

Vol. 3 Chap. 63 A Rightious Cause

Truth didn’t look back a second longer. He knew what was behind him. All that mattered was forward. Or more to the point, away. There was enough magical force coming his way to level a small country. Give them a few minutes for the equipment to catch up, and it would be a large country. If they caught him, he wouldn’t have the luxury of death.

He was already running flat out. He tried to go faster. He didn’t dare use Abner’s Amble, not a single extra scrap of energy beyond what was needed to hide. His body could move fast enough. It would have to be fast enough.

Truth raced along his escape route. Most of the obstacles had been demolished by the explosion or the strange aftermath. Dead animals, long dead, littered the ground. No true animal would eat them. Not with everything done to the corpses. It was an open question if anything would grow where they fell. Truth couldn’t pay attention to it. He was just grateful there was less of a draw on the Blessing of the Silent Forest.

The woods were awake after the blast. How could the animals and insects not be awake? They were screaming, shouting, demanding answers, and making threats. The smarter animals had long since run. Nothing good was coming after all that. Truth was right there with them. The wave of powerhouses coming up the valley were like the sun rising at midnight. The unnatural heat of them burning away the comforting dark.

They were close now. Close enough that he had to slow down and focus on stealth over speed. They would seal the area, he knew. Lock down everything around the village and work outwards until they find something. Search and Rescue wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Sifting through the rubble would take considerably longer, but that was work for juniors. These were seniors- officers, department heads, regional managers of this or that, and they were here to investigate and avenge an atrocity. A village was massacred, and a genuine wonder was destroyed. Their cause was just, and no half-measures would be accepted.

Truth had an almost hallucinatory memory- the silent night before the SAT. All the parents roaming the streets, ropes in hand, to strangle the noisy. His own parents, abusive and monstrous as they were, participated. They loved every minute of it. They might be monsters, but that night, they got to be monster heroes. Or so they told themselves. He shook the thought from his head and kept moving. Up the mountain ridge, towards a notch he had scouted. Silent as could be.

In a few days or weeks, he would circle back and pick up Thrush and the micro-spellbird. He left his scarf, the Freedom of the Terraces, there too. It wouldn’t have survived the assault. Bird wouldn’t survive either. Not a good day to be in the air anywhere near here.

The rescue party had reached the village now. He could hear the crying birds circling. Some would be racing outwards to create a perimeter. Truth threw himself into the shadow of a tree and tried very hard not to exist. Letting the forest wrap itself around him.

A fiery bird roared overhead, sharp eyes piercing the canopy as the hard surveillance of the powerhouses above scraped the earth. There was intense pressure, a strong draw on his rapidly dwindling energy, then they were past. This was just the first sweep. The real hunt hadn’t yet begun. Truth forced himself back into motion. Every step forward was a victory. A meter further is a meter safer. That had to be his mentality now. The bigger the area they had to search, the harder he would be to find.

More cries went up, light talismans were launched into the air in their dozens. The village was exposed, raw and bleeding, under the harsh illumination. He could feel spells going off, big, wide area magics. He had no idea what they were doing down there and didn’t intend to find out.

People run downhill when they are fleeing. It’s easier. Faster. The instinct is to work with gravity and run, run, run, down and away from the hunters. It’s why Tuth made sure his route went up. They would search upslope, of course, but they would look for streams. They would look for routes to nearby towns or a road. Maybe they would use ground-sensing spells to hunt for caves. The initial instance of this chapter being available happened at N0v3l.Bin.

Truth was absolutely certain that if he caught even a glancing hit from that, there wouldn’t be enough left of him to cremate. He wouldn’t even have ashes- just rapidly spreading gas. He lay very flat on the ground, not even daring to look at the senior, lest they detect his gaze.

While he was clinging to the ground, wishing he could burrow through rock and vanish, it occurred to him that he was a disgruntled former employee. Those guys got blamed for everything. Any time something went wrong, companies blamed “disgruntled former employees.” And look- for once, it really was.

A wave of black, twirling, sickly, viscus, the black of rotten meat, visible thanks to the fire and explosions across the mountain, flew towards the senior on the firebird. The bird flew up, vomiting liquid fire on the black mass as it went. The flames were sticky, somehow, clinging to the putrescence but failing to destroy it.

The senor snorted loud enough to hurt Truth’s ears sixty meters below and struck again with his fetish. The blinding white beam burned through the wave and struck something. Whatever it was lived long enough to scream, first with outrage, then pain, then fear. Then went silent. The beam lasted a second longer and then stopped. Truth could hear the heavy panting of the senior and could feel the rush of energy as he drew the cosmic rays towards him, needing to recharge. Then he was on to the next monster to kill.

Truth kept his head down for exactly sixty seconds longer and got back to moving. He wasn’t clear yet. But he was getting closer to the edge of the surveillance zone the village had set up. Soon, he would be in the real woods. Fewer distractions for his hunters, but it didn’t seem like that was a problem. They looked plenty distracted. He could pick up the pace.

The giant spell shuddered into life. Something vast and terrible formed- a summoning. Something angelic? But that would be insane, wouldn’t it? Even if you had to put down a load of demons, you wouldn’t...

Oh. Wait. You didn’t necessarily have to summon the whole angel. He’d done this trick once before. Truth broke out of cover, running flat out as hard as he could away from the summoning circle. Everyone else was doing the same thing, except they had firebirds and wards.

An obliterating light fell on the village. Not even white- it was beyond white, as it was beyond the very concept of color. It was LIGHT, the essence, the primordial meaning before the word. The concept of illumination falling raw and angry on the world. A world that couldn’t endure its weight.

Whatever came below the light was simply... evaporated. All that was God was returned to God. All that was not was cleaned away. Truth knew they would be switching off the spell any second. Job done, demons banished. Whatever they were worried about, removed. But these were seniors. Powerful old monsters. Most were over a century old. Not quite caught up with the times.

IMPUDENT

Truth lost track of things after that.