The ground violently shook, as if an earthquake were sundering it apart, and the atmospheric aether in the air trembled, collapsing into a chaotic frenzy that sparked a gigantic storm over the entire forest.
The skies darkened, the wind grew violent and the rain harsh, and it seemed as though the world itself would end at any moment.
It was so sudden that even the so-called hardened survivors of the settlement began to panic, screaming and running for safety, their gazes snapping toward the Inhumans for help.
But even they were just as fear-stricken.
SHAH!
In the skies, a gigantic screen appeared.
…
Enoch turned back, staring at the confused Uriel amidst the chaos erupting across the world.
His gaze was calm, almost soft and fragile, yet in its depths burned a flame so bright and fierce that Uriel almost felt his heart turn to ashes from merely meeting his eyes.
"The timeline is messed up, and all my plans are naught," he admitted, his voice carrying traces of amusement.
Their bodies blurred and vanished, teleported elsewhere, but this time it felt different, almost like when Uriel had been in the dark space, facing the lady of fire.
"Things will change. I came up with a new plan. One you unfortunately helped me come up with, and one we hoped would never be used."
Uriel's gaze trembled.
"Wh—what?! What are you talking about?" He looked around wildly, panic seeping into his voice. "What the hell is going—"
Enoch shook his head.
"Survive, brother."
SHAH!
"Survive."
They both vanished.
…
Uriel blinked, and he was elsewhere.
He stood within a dimensional space much like his own, only vastly grander. Instead of dull grey, it was nothing but endless azure.
The air was cold, and a constant static buzz echoed through the space, unsettling and loud, as if reality itself were vibrating.
Uriel scowled and cursed, his jaw clenching and fists tightening.
'Why the hell would he—'
His body seized.
Suddenly, he began to cough violently, his head gripped by a soul-splitting headache and his chest feeling as though it contained an exploding sun.
It hurt, far more than usual.
Blood and spit spilled from his mouth, his eyes reddening as his lungs seemed to refuse air altogether. He gasped again and again, but it simply didn't work.
And as if things couldn't get worse…
[First Wave!]
In the distance, a woman began to materialise, weaving herself together from strings of light.
She was short, her skin a dark blue and her eyes a bright yellow. She wore a body-wide dark silver tunic garment with a gold collar.
A rather typical witch's hat sat atop her head, and in her hand she wielded a staff longer than herself, almost as tall as Uriel.
Through his coughing and wheezing, Uriel laid eyes on her, his pupils narrowing.
'…'
Aether.
He could sense the aether within her body, and it was, for lack of a better term, perfect.
Perfect to the point of absurdity.
Over the last few days and hours, he had observed aether in others, and while it was usually docile and fluid, it was sloppy, lacking structure and riddled with deficiencies.
It was almost as if their bodies simply weren't suited for aether yet. Even Enoch seemed to suffer from this issue. Uriel himself certainly did.
But she was beyond that.
"Oh?"
She tapped the butt of her staff against the ground once.
A wave of aether rippled outward from her, twisting and coiling as it transformed into archaic letters—runes, golden runes.
Rune after rune bloomed into existence, and in the span of a blink, dozens had appeared. With a casual wave of her hand, they arranged themselves into a complex circular formation.
Then, overlaid atop the golden runes, an elaborate white circle manifested, binding them together and stabilising the formation.
She looked directly at Uriel.
"Did you watch?" Her voice was far deeper than her petite frame would suggest, velour and authoritative.
"That's the only gift I'll give you."
Uriel blinked.
WHOOOOSH!
Thousands of spell circles formed behind her, so rapidly and fluidly that there was no ripple of aether, he didn't sense anything at all.
He blinked again.
Another thousand.
'…'
"Let's begin."
The thousands of spell circles filling the air behind her shattered, then rapidly reassembled into a single, gigantic one that blotted out the space behind her entirely.
She gently pushed a palm forward.
From the spell circle, a massive mound of earth emerged, igniting as it was hurled toward Uriel.
In an instant, the temperature of the dimensional space skyrocketed, and Uriel found himself drenched in his own sweat.
The little witch, however, seemed completely unfazed.
'MOVE!'
Uriel screamed internally, desperately trying to dodge, but his body wouldn't stop coughing. His legs refused to respond, and tears blurred his vision.
'MOVE!'
His natal aether surged, tearing through his veins as his core erupted in a tidal wave that joined the cycling flow.
Power flooded his limbs.
He forced himself upright and pushed off the ground, stumbling as he ran with everything he had, fleeing the falling meteor.
BOOOOM!
The meteor struck where he had just been.
The shockwave lifted him off his feet, slamming into his body and sending him skidding violently across the ground.
A wave of heat followed close behind.
PAH!
"ARGH!"
Uriel landed hard, the wind knocked from his lungs as pain wracked his entire body.
The little witch tilted her head. "Eh. Decent."
She snapped her fingers.
Right above Uriel, a spell circle formed. From it, a high-speed water bullet shot downward.
He tried to roll away, but he was too slow.
It slammed into his back, the aether within the projectile surging through him and freezing his body in place.
She snapped again.
A fireball followed.
SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!
Each snap dragged him closer to death—fast, merciless, giving him barely any time to recover or think. Worse still, every attack seemed to aggravate his coughing further.
He wasn't familiar with his spark at all.
His body was too weak for any martial technique or weapon use, and his aether control was far too crude to retaliate.
He was defenceless. Thrown here to die.
'DO SOMETHING!'