Chapter 434: Chapter 434 - A Ritual That Bends Reality To Break Perspectives Of It
Down below the residence floor, the celebration continued unaware of figures in dark clothing scaling the outer walls. Some of the Saltfire remnants had watched and waited for weeks, studying the patterns of the household and learning when the child they intended to kidnap would be most vulnerable.
Perimeter defenses on the grounds were formidable enough to deter Voidlings that could spiritually sense there was no major ’targets’ hiding inside. But that classic design, barely touched by Elua er Goltbred, was no help against infiltrators who well understood that people were now ’home’.
A roomful of powerful cultivators was an obstacle they hadn’t planned for, but one they felt invincible enough to work through thanks to one of the items they’d taken from the acid rain drenched region. An artifact they felt would drastically turn the tides if anything went sideways.
They moved with the coordinated silence of those accustomed to operating stealth missions in hostile territory. And they were - for their crimes had not started only with the destruction of Guild premises during this Descent. Recruits underneath the rogue faction had been burglarizing for over a decade... well before the Saltfire Storm Alliance had actually begun their ’old crone’ ritual-assisted push for the great treasures.
For this ’mission’, their goal was a single target. One that would provide the maximum leverage to ransom and gain access to what they really wanted without all of the danger of looking through every nook and cranny. Get in, secure the child, and extract before anyone realized what was happening.
But like most overconfident plans that were based on incomplete information, they had not accounted for a number of quite important things they had no way of accounting for. The first Saltfire cultivator reached the window with the clearest path to the nursery as Qatrand leaned back in her chair, feeling relaxed for the first time in months.
Ondua was refilling wine glasses and asking about vintage preferences with the other heroes. Even Corde seemed to be warming to the company some, engaged in what appeared to be a productive discussion with Navuill of all people. The Empath had showed some interest in sword techniques that incorporated Element use, and that was plenty enough to ’hook’ her in.
But she stopped talking mid sentence when something felt off about her Shield Astralism - something that was not coming from the emotionally nosy young man, as all of their kind were.
At about the same time that she did, the blonde surged to her feet when an unknown person stepped across one of the tendrils of spirit lazily patrolling in waving arcs. A habit formed from camping on the battlefield... a minimal sentry net that had caught more than one Voidling that may have caused someone under her protection trouble.
Neither of them looked to the other for assurance or permission even though everyone else looked to them to figure out what had switched them on. Both swordswomen simply started moving, taking only the brief moment to reach toward where they had left their blades.
And when Yatrel saw them in haste, she too turned on her feet to bolt toward her child even though she wasn’t sure where or what the danger was. The other cultivators were not far behind in calling out a plan for securing the servants in the area for whatever was now happening.
But while the infiltrators had underestimated how easily they’d be found out, things may still have been ’fine’ if they had a chance to use the artifact. Yet, the moment the leader’s fingers began to reach down toward Onya laying in the crib... something long carved into Onya stirred with purpose.
Symbols so small they may well have been microscopic against her skull. A ritual that had been built without telling her parents what she’d done. One that had waited patiently for over a year to be of use suddenly blazed in an awakened Avatar’s spirit fragment with it’s parameters met.
Reality violently twisted.
The dining hall, the estate, the very ground beneath everyone’s feet. A sense of up and down, the feeling of temperature and wind, and the background sounds of the world that dulled the recognition of your own heartbeat. All of it simply vanished.
Replaced first by a simple ’image’ that stretched on and on. The vast cosmos, stars burning in brilliant clusters against the velvety darkness of space. Nebulae that sat frozen in their swirl of dusty colors while the stellar bodies of distant galaxies would wheel slowly through the void.
Everyone - the heroes, the family members, the servants, and the attackers - found themselves floating weightless among the stars, stripped of everything they’d had on their person and suspended in a universal painting that stretched beyond comprehension in every direction. Alone, with no sign of the others.
And then... it all began to move.
The Avatar had judged threats, malicious intentions toward its host, the fear responses to what was happening. All sufficiently enough that it could tailor the needed impact on all parties affected. Including the napping child, who found her early lucid state while rolling on top of her giant Dream Ogre had gained a new but rather pretty skybox all around herself.
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Fusand floated there in stunned silence, his scholarly mind racing to comprehend what surrounded him as his Plant Physique was fully bared. Vibrant green pesudo-veins curled around his wrist, neck, ankles, and waistline like strange tattoos. And dots of the chlorophyll across all his body brightened under the suddenly intense starlight.
The Projection - for it had to be some sort, he was sure, with only visual stimuli enabled in him - defied every principle he’d learned about the limits of Astralism. In the first place, he had not known it was actually possible to be so overwhelmed with one sense that all the others zeroed to nothing.
But as everything all around him was rendered in such improbable detail, precision that would have taken him months to achieve for a single point of twinkling light... his awe warred with excitement that was slowly taking over. Elua had constantly advised and shown him new things that increased his understanding of ’limits’.
He tried to catalog the techniques involved. The manipulation of spatial orientations in parallax that created a sense of depth in the movement. Spiritual pressure calibrated so precisely that he felt no discomfort in his head.
If this wasn’t his master’s work, which he didn’t exactly doubt... then whatever artifact created it was operating on an ancient level that made his own abilities seem like a child’s sketches. And that only made him yearn to improve as much as possible!
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A small sphere of mint-colored plasma danced in helical motions around Qatrand as she drifted among the starscape. The blonde sighed, then smiled as she reached out and caught it in her hand. She had been told about the ritual. Knew it would protect Onya... but also knew how indiscriminate it was going to be.
"If I’d noticed sooner, maybe I could have kept it secret for her for a while longer..."
Touching the ’hot’ gaseous light source brought no pain. Instead, it simply transmitted information in the same sort of disconnected, unemotive way as the one in the Fox had. Reiterating what would happen to those inside. Even trapped in another realm, even through a second Avatar construct, Elua had found a way to be caring.
To let her know she was recognized, cherished, and protected. And valued so much, that she had been given the ability to command what it was doing on or off if she was ever caught inside it. Which was something her mint-drop had in fact never mentioned!
"She planned for this possibility. Giving me control over the defense of her sister..."
She whispered to the vibrant glow and somehow wasn’t surprised when the cosmic vista twisted once again. Suddenly she wasn’t alone... and the space was somehow different and even more alive.
Onya floated nearby, giggling with delight as her Dream Ogre companion rolled playfully through stardust clouds that burst into highly unlikely puffs. The toddler reached out chubby hands toward passing comets, grabbing shaking, and throwing them in new directions. Completely unafraid and treating the whole experience like just another play session with her sister.
Qat understood that for them, this wasn’t punishment, containment, or really an offer to just take a moment and learn. This was pure sanctuary. A safe space where the people her El loved most could wait in wonder while threats were... handled by the ritual.
But she wondered to herself if it might not be better to ask, again, just how her wife came up with this kind of unequivocal torture.
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Terror should have consumed her. Klaytei knew she was only mortal and knew she had no defenses against whatever force had stolen the reality away around her. But instead of panic, a profound calm settled over her as the Avatar manipulated her responses while providing a voice that seemed to whisper directly into her mind.
*/ Be at peace. This is temporary. The wicked are being dealt with. /*
The words carried supreme certainty as stars pulsed in soothing hypnotic rhythms around her. Something was protecting them all. It was sorting friend from foe. It would be over soon and she was in safety.
Thinking of Dima, the personal servant hoped the cultivator was experiencing the same peace and was not ’wicked’ by some definition. And thanks to the monitoring control of the active ritual... she even knew without doubt that she was fine. The assurance whispered to her in that same, unemotive not-voice.
What intelligence guided this phenomena understood the difference between those who meant malice and those who the heiress personally didn’t have a great deal of ’affinity’ for. Because like the Fox, it was not truly her personality... just a subset of her ethics imprinted on a spirit fragment and given highly specific commands.
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Orders which mostly amounted to ruining whoever dared to lay a finger on her sibling. As evidenced by the illusory copy of the mint ball of plasma in every infiltrator’s spiritual domain. Letting them experience what this sort of environment was really like for a cultivator at their level of strength.
Some of those enduring the ’nice’, limited side of this illusion still felt some small sense of dread, due to the feeling of being one small part of a ineffably giant canvas. Yet it was not just some pretty painting to those who were tagged ’bad’. Their apprehension and powerlessness was on an entirely different scale related to the fear of death itself.
It was a place that lacked atmosphere to take a breath each time they tried. A place that lacked the magnetic protections of a planetary body to prevent the highly energetic particles, that were flush with essence, from ripping through their forms and destabilizing their essence fields. Leaving them further defenseless against the cutting grains of cosmic dust sanding against their skin at high speeds.
Being cultivators didn’t make the experience more bearable. It made it intolerably worse.
Because their senses were heightened from mortals, they could feel all of it and pain did not cause them to pass out.
Because it was an illusion and their spirits could handle great mental acceleration, seconds of real time could be condensed into convincing that hours of it had been endured.
Because the torment was ruthless, not a single one of them would be released from their private hells as a threat that would ever raise a hand against her creator and host’s family ever again.