READ WEBNOVEL Chapter 356 - All hands turned against us.
For one precious moment, Eric’s stunned disbelief was so overwhelming that he forgot the soul pain throbbing through every inch of his flesh.
Of course that was the moment that the air took on a fierce, bone-deep chill and the light drizzle turned to a sprinkle of snow that soon became a howling maelstrom.
Eric shivered despite the fact that the sensation was now only skin deep, having somehow, by some bloody miracle he couldn’t even fathom, used the earliest skill he had ever learned to save his own life. Had he not taken the time to master that ability so thoroughly, to use his blood as a tool to both heighten to extremes and carefully regulate the temperature of so many catalysts and explosives...
He knew damn well he should be dead.
Multiple times over.
Even when he had been running for the gate, desperate to get there before his ES Space ruptured under the hideous pressure, he had been radiating so much energy that the enemy soldiers around him had dropped like flies and, in at least in a few cases, burst into flame. Yet his own blood somehow kept his heart, lungs, and brain mostly intact at a perfect 98.6 degrees, no matter that he has still been radiating the energy of a slowly decaying quark bomb.
“I shouldn’t even be alive,” Eric wheezed.
“True,” his mother said, her eyes seeming to pierce his still blazing soul. “But you are. And I think you understand the real reason why.”
It was a nightmare trying to think through his pain, only in that moment noting that his mother, far from wearing a frilly gown of silk and lace that allowed her to both charm and disarm so many admirers and competitors... was now wearing a sleek body-fitting suit of what looked to be liquid mithril that perfectly encased her entire body. Her head alone was bare, save for a thin, silver tiara radiating so much potency it was as if all the majesty of the grand canyon, the rockies, and every other landmark had somehow been crammed into an exquisitely caligraphied headband of diamonds and silver. But what threw Eric off the most was the nodachi she wore so casually strapped to her hip, clearly not encumbered by its size or the shocking amount of raw killing power Eric could now sense radiating off of it.
She was dressed for war, yet, as always, moved with the grace and majesty of a queen.
There were a thousand questions he was desperate to ask, as he gazed at the majestic beauty whose brilliant gold tresses didn’t move an iota with the alternating hot and cold winds in the middle of what was now a snowstorm. Yet the pitiless ice-blue eyes peering so intently into his own, demanded an answer to her question, and he had no choice but to yield to it.
“My essence of Flame. It allowed me to control the starship core even after it tore apart my Extradimensional Storage Space!” He sobbed the last with a cry, daring only in that moment to gaze into the vast chamber of his soul.
He was horrified to find it still glowing with unspeakable energy. Yet all his prizes, all his minotaur cadavers, giant axes made of magical blacksteel that would be worth an absolute fortune or perfect for making weapons and armor, even that sweet, sweet artifact he had claimed from Calvin the Destroyer, and every other food ration, healing potion, magical brew, piece of furniture he had ever claimed for comfortable living in his travels, even his original bed from the compound and his Lee Clancy novels, clothes, and everything else, was gone.
“Oh fuck, no!” He sobbed, eyes desperate for any sign of hope that his prizes were someplace secure, hadn’t all been utterly obliterated, some separate warded container... anything!
But there was nothing.
Nothing save a single pair of pulsating crimson blotches and several dozen eagles of Silver and bronze gently orbiting a pair of glowing rings.
“Everything was destroyed, mom. Everything save for some eagle talismans.”
His mother snorted. “You held a Valorium Core in your soul, darling. Were you truly oblivous to the System messages screaming about saving versus oblivion as you force-leveled yet another one of your skills to the point you could actually survive even a few seconds of your glorious madness?”
Her melodious chuckle washed over a cringing Eric as he took a moment to scroll his far too dense combat log, specifically NOT wanting to eyeball messages saying wonderful things like:
You have fatally irradiated Private Vrun Dralop.
Vrun Dralop bursts into flames!
Vrun Dralop screams to the heavens for mercy.
You give him none!
Private Vrun Dralop is the thousanth person that you’ve successfully obliterated with hyperion radiation!
You’ve gained the Adept title: Hyperion Blazer! You now enjoy +5 to Vitality (You really shouldn’t even be alive at this point), +5 to Mana, +5 to Willpower (No, seriously, you shouldn’t even be alive right now AT ALL!) and +5 to Soul Reserves!
For striving to master, even for a few seconds, a weapon that is, for all intense and purposes, a higher order manifestation of Fire, Fire Essence has gone up one full rank!
Bonus boon: As you channeled those hyperion rays THROUGH YOURSELF (like a complete madman) you are now EXTREMELY RESILIENT to all forms of radiation!
Revelations into the true nature of flame in all its forms means that you will learn all spells or skills or powers with any element of Fire (or its higher order components) 20% faster than you otherwise would!
“Wait, what the hell is hyperion radiation? And water... mother, do you have a flask of—”
His words were cut off by his mother jerking him to his feet. He bit off a cry as she glared right into his eyes, fist curling a handful of white-hot mithril links that might have been near indestructible but definitely bit into Eric’s still regenerating ravaged skin, eliciting a groan.
“Eric, listen to me very closely. Stop your whining and LISTEN TO MOTHER! You mentioned Bronze Eagle talismans.. Are these three inches wide, glowing with a prismatic sheen?”
Eric jerked a painful nod. “Yes,” he whispered, drinking gratefully when his mother pulled a stein of Sylvan meed from nowhere that Eric greedily gulped down, shuddering with relief as the tangy drink caressed his lips before flowing down his throat like blessed mana... yet for all that he felt so much better, the soulfire still cooking him from within blazed up again within seconds.
“Mother it hurts. It still hurts!”
Yet his mother was giving him the strangest look.
A fierce grin of approval.
“Those aren’t eagles, my son. They are phoenix talisman.”
Eric blinked at this. “Phoenix Talisman?”
She nodded. “An artifact of incomparable power that allows its user to embrace acts both infinitely dark and impossibly grand. And when next he wakes, when the night passes to dawn, when the world’s burden is finally too much for that champion to endure... he wakes renewed, his deeds both fair and foul writ deep into the mantel of our world, and it is as if it has always been.”
Eric blinked, feeling a cold shiver tremble through him. IF one of those bronze contenders had held that prize... and two rings? Was this what Minos the minotaur had possessed?
Eric’s eyes widened as the true significance of his mother’s words echoed through him.
“Wait, so... whatever you did during the night you used that bronze talisman would have been the way it always was? So, what, if those Bronze tier assholes had actually managed to wipe us out while even a single talisman was in play, then there would be no penalty or censure... just them having been here all along, their faction grandfathered into Earth’s system and everyone treating their existence as a given when they finally woke up?”
Aurelia smiled wide in approval. Then wider still, showing off teeth that made Eric think of both sharks and vampires. A horrific contrast to her otherwise exquisite beauty. Not that Eric could talk, because he knew damn well that when he was feeling the wrath or HUNGER, he could open his mouth so wide and clamp down so fiercely that it would even give his vampiric friend Morlekai pause, he was damned sure. Hell, he had once torn out the throat of an over-sized veliraptor with his TEETH!
And humans just didn’t do that to dinosaurs. That wasn’t how things worked.
Because when all the masks were torn off, he was as much a dark fae nightmare as his mother was. And he knew damn well there was an entire world that probably thought that way.
Assuming anyone had survived what he had done at all.
It would have been all too easy to sink in a sea of horrified dismay, yet he was so numb mentally and hurting so badly physically that he could scarce register what he had done.
Yet his mother refused to let him brood. “Yes, yes my son. That is EXACTLY what it means!” Her triumphant smile turned fierce and bitter. “So many bastards arrayed against us, thinking that transgressions embraced this night will be FORGOTTEN or FORGIVEN with dawn’s first light. No matter that they picked the solstice, no matter that their own smuggled Bronze champions will stretch this night out for as many hours as they can to grab as much territory as they can to destroy us all! So many treacherous SERPRENTS who would DARE break covenant with the Winter Court, would DARE to cross it QUEEN!”
Eric tumbled back as the shout of her words echoed endlessly through the arcane ether, the gale-force wintry winds shrieking and blowing countless trees flat, and the last of the monstrous hyperion-generated heat was finally whisked away. Yet Eric’s agony was so great that all he felt was relief when the bitter winter flurry that would have frozen a mortal within seconds, caressed his battered skin. For he was now naked of anything save his mithril mail that still glowed with arcane radiation.
Aurelia gazed at him for long seconds as he struggled against his agony to think through the implications of everything she had said, realizing it all made a sort of horrific sense.
Eric’s eyes widened in alarmed fury almost the equal of his pain, now that his mother’s winter storm had cooled him down enough so he could think!
“So that means that any treaties, the goblin pacts they signed with us... that’s why all the races declared war on us at once! On this night! That’s why ten thousand fucking assholes crossed their gate to try to utterly obliterate us!”
He shook his head in
“So this is what Greed planned all along? Failsafes wrapped in contingencies? IF him trying to harvest all the elves I suffered so much to save didn’t insight the rest of us to fall to Morlekai’s blasters, he’d then use a talisman and try to take all of our territory by force? And the next day, what, it didn’t count?”
His mother flashed a bitter smile. “Yes, but it means so much more.” Her gaze hardened. “All factions have turned against our own, Eric. Do you understand? It’s not Terra. Earth is the LEAST of it! Over fifty humanoid factions and clans have DARED to declare war against the Sylvan Alliance on all her worlds! Worlds where I put the mothers of your children to keep them SAFE! Because it wasn’t a Bronze talisman that’s in play, Eric. But SILVER! When this night is over, no one but talisman-holders and the Gold-tier Emperor himself will know what tragedies and nightmares rocked his empire between dusk and dawn, before rewriting the political landscape as if it had ALWAYS been that way!”
His mother glared into his stunned eyes. “Do you understand, Eric? We’re no longer fighting for just Earth here, but a genuine battle against our race’s EXTINCTION!”
Yet as horrifying and earth-shattering as his mother’s words were, one phrase didn’t escape his exquisite Perception, sending such a surge of anxiety, wonder, and despair through him.
“Wait, wait! You said the mother of my children?”
Aurelia nodded. “Yes, dear. Both the Native American girl you fancied and the girl you seduced in Junk Town, who’s faction recently joined our own, by the way.”
“They’re names are Rica and Susan... and why the hell didn’t anyone say anything?”
“Because they both thought you were dead,” his mother casually said. “And poor Rica was desperate to save her daughter who was beyond even your Milk Maids, I’m sorry to say. Being as she was a mortal child with no nodes at all, and beyond the help of any Terran or Sylvan Classers, as so many of our higher arts and healing spells have no affinity for mortals...” She sighed, shaking her head. “Fortunately, the capital of Arcadia, the jewel of my empire, has technomancer marvels the likes of which would send even your most hopeless cyberpunk fanboys quivering with wonder at its sheer majesty and glory.”
Eric’s eyes widened, suddenly recalling glorious reels of some of the most magnificent high-tech cityscapes he had ever imagined from his mother’s science fiction Nova Wars series, and now he suddenly had to wonder if it had all been based on the real thing. Then he was struck with sudden sharp sense of guilt, recalling Rica’s desperate, hopeful gaze.
“Eric, we need to talk. There’s something you should know.”
He flushed in memory, lowering his head. She’d been a passionate lover he had known for only a handful of days, for all that he had been trying to save her for months. For a girl to look at a former lover with such hope, with unexpected news... of course it could have only been one thing. How could he have not understood?
Desperately, knowing he was running out of time before a fresh wave of agony hit him, he shot a message Caliban’s way. Before his eyes lit up with alarm. “Mom, I’m trying to message Caliban but I can’t! Something’s stopping me from mentioning...” His vision doubled and he stumbled over.
“That’s because none may speak of the phoenix who are not themselves bound to it, Eric,” his mother said with an oddly pitying smile. “And now you too are a part of the grandest and darkest games of all those that play out in the emperor’s court.”
Eric shook his head as alarm bells rung all the louder. “Caliban, we have to warn him, somehow!”
He sent a quick message.
E. - Caliban! Be CAREFUL! Have your men on FULL ALERT! Use my own personal funds if you need to! HIRE as many men as you CAN! The asshole factions trying to wipe my kin off the map WILL ALSO COME FOR YOU! TRUST ME!
For a heartbeat he felt relief, sensing that the message had been immediately acknowledged and read by a very much alive Caliban.
Before relief turned to dismay, as the fiery agony in his soul flared up, eating him alive once more.
C. - Blue Quarter is under attack! Blue Palace has been captured! Multiple bombs have been detonated! Over half of my men have been poisoned and our blasters stolen! Multiple enemy regiments are headed for our bank! We need to retreat!
Eric blinked back bitter tears, trying to formulate some miracle reply that would fix the horror unfolding... but he had no clever answers to give. He couldn’t even say he’d be there in time for a glorious rescue when sensed the furious fires still searing through him to flare up once more.
“The pain!” He shrieked.
His mother’s formerly gentle voice turned cold as the winter gale. “Your friend’s holding here on Earth have been lost. Your bank that you fought so hard for will soon be a goblin asset, Eric, for a SILVER Phoenix is in play, which means that even your Galactic Account will soon be in possession of the goblins. Only the emperor himself will know, and by long treaty, he will not interfere in any Silver’s Attempted ascension.”
Eric’s eyes bulged. “Wait, how? Who? Greed’s just...” He had no words then, only screams as a fresh burst of agony flared up within his soul.
You have taken significant Soul Damage as you are unable to contain a higher order manifestation of FIRE!
Aurelia gave a sad shake of her heard. “In the end, all your efforts were for naught. Your foes have turned your dreams to ashes and they would laugh at your screams, if only they knew how you suffered. And they will soon, Eric. For a unified force of gnoll raiders, orc shock troops and cannoneers, goblin assassins and human mercenaries are making their way here as we speak. And if you think any of the mercenaries are less than Bronze tier monsters, then you truly are a fool.”
Cold, pitiless eyes bore into his own as he screamed.
“It is up to you, Eric. I have twelve other worlds I am pouring my essence to, trying to keep them whole, maintaining the links of oathbindings and broken vows that will assure our REVENGE in the end! But that means it’s up to you, Eric.”
Eric froze in horror at those words.
“Me? I barely have the strength to move!”
“And yet move you must. Caliban can do nothing. Greed’s masterful stroke has already broken him and his entire faction here on Terra. And Earth is not the only arena in the cosmos where Blue is suffering crushing defeats!”
His mother glared into his exhausted features. “NO, Eric. Your sister is in a coma and is absolutely powerless against our foes, and I must put the final pieces in place for our grand finale. So it is up to YOU, Eric, to avert this crises, accept your burden, and save our faction!”
“How?” Eric sobbed under the unbearable weight of his mother’s expectations.
“Think, boy. What element has allowed you to endure even this long? And what element is it that you fear above all others?”
The last was said with a knowing smile that made Eric sick to his agonized stomach. His mother knew. Of course she did.
“Cold,” He whispered.
“That’s right,” she said with a nod. “I know the crooked path you walk, the friends you’ve made, the power you seek even now to claim for your own. I have no doubt that you wish blood to be your fourth essence... but we both know it’s not.”
“But it could be,” he whispered with a thrill of wonder, realizing in that singular perilous moment as he locked eyes with Aurelia who suddenly looked more alarmed than Eric would have thought possible... that it was true.
He felt chills racing up and down his spine that soon turned to horror at the look of cold fury in his mother’s features. Gone, an eyeblink later, replaced with a mocking smile. “Sure, Eric. Let the pain build. Let your screams resonate till the night sky shudders like the quark bomb you already unleashed.” Her sneer turned cold. “Let you sister continue to wane as her organs suffer a catastrophic cascade of failures and her death, the death of the only one you’ve ever truly loved or cared for, will be on your head. And we will lose the only one who can save this territory from the thousands of enemy troops who were led to believe that she is powerless and crippled. A girl now on the cusp of unleashing glorious elemental storms that would fill even you with awe. But only if her brother has the courage to step up and save her!”
Eric froze as the cold weight of those words, that truth, filled him.
As much as he wanted to deny her words, as much as he was eager to walk a badass path of perfect gamestyle synergism, using feats he had obtained by his own efforts to master an element that would allow him to rejuvenate himself even as he took out his foes... He knew that real life was the farthest thing from a game.
You couldn’t force an essence.
It wasn’t a box you checked off on a game sheet.
It was a facet of one’s very soul.
He scrunched his eyes shut, holding back bitter tears, all too aware of what his affinity was. The affinity that could save his sister’s life.
The affinity that could save them all, if his sister could summon forth her storms.
“Cold,” Eric whispered past his clenched jaw. “Because Free Agent status changes nothing. I am still your get, and your blood flows through my veins.”
“Correct,” his mother said matter-of-factly. “But what matters is not who you call sire or damn, for all that countless spoiled young lords who know nothing but pampered privilege and a path to a middling Bronze at best all preen like fools over their parentage. All that is meaningless! What matters, all that truly matters, are the essences that call out to your body. And your soul.” Her voice grew husky with intensity as she stroked his cheek. “Can’t you feel it, Eric? The icy flame that beats within you? That which allows your fires to burn so bright, so intimately tied as they are to the eternal chill that you understand just as well?”
Eric fell to his knees, leaking tears that sizzled and froze as he glared at his clenched fists, his mother’s soothing whispers blowing through his ears like a winter gale.
“Can you feel it, Eric? The difference between fire and ice? Cold and heat? One tied to Wrath. The other, Dominion. One gives, the other takes. And in the end... what binds them in the end?”
Eric had no words to give his mother. All he felt was awful, searing pain that burned without end. Then his eyes abruptly widened, leaking tears of blood when it clicked. “All that energy from the Valorium core... poured through me. It was a gift!”
His mother gave him a strange look as he cackled like a madman, gazing at his own hand beginning to glow as the catalyst continued unabated, feeling his pocket dimension scream as it began to combust. To burn.
“A gift of catalyzation. A gift that grows and grows, consuming all, radiating all, until nothing’s left.”
His eyes widened in memory of the mystical artifact he had held. As well as Zofira’s shield, that had tried to drain him dry. Even as he opened his mouth, wheezing out brilliant white light that instantly set the grass by his feet ablaze, the revelations flooded his mind.
Zofira’s shield didn’t give, it took. Taking his heat, absorbing his strength, claiming it as its own.
For that was cold’s nature. It took energy, slowing everything down, wielding dominion over it all even as the hot flames of wrath obliterated everything within reach. Yet cold was the opposite. It was bitter control, freezing in the depths of its theft for light, heat, movement, then life itself. Everything, eventually, until entire systems crumpled as electrons collapsed into protons right before energy was completely drained from the forces and fields holding reality itself together. Then all that was left was arcane ash, all mortal objects having broken down until nothing but ash remained.
The exact opposite of Fire, which correlated so well with the fires of passion, the hot flames of Wrath, the inverse of bitter cold focus
One was a raging inferno that consumed all in grand displays of heat and flame, leaving only arcane ash behind.
The other was bitter lightless cold. Absolute darkness, that also consumed by directly draining one’s foe until nothing but arcane ash remained.
One gave, embracing the wild blaze of freedom, roaring Wrathful rebellion against all that would stand between the blazing hot inferno of the stars themselves.
The other took. Showing the power of Dominion, of freezing all opposition solid until only rigid conformity remained. Conformity so stifling that few could endure before being frozen to oblivion.
In both cases, transformation and consumption, though their methodologies couldn’t be more different. Yet from a higher order perspective they were intimately tied together, all the more so when factoring in his own understanding and affinity for the Essences of both Wrath and Dominion.
He gazed down at his own painfully pale right hand, now blazing with a different form of heat. One that froze the grass he dared to touch as a chilly blue fire seemed to drain all its heat and warmth and claim it for Eric... who immediately howled and released that flame, and so much more, incinerating all the foliage with dozens of yards.
And not matter the pain he felt with that, the notification dancing across his mind’s eye filled him with a sweet joy that was almost worth the pain.
You have had a breakthrough! You now have basic fundamental understanding of the Element of Cold! This affinity affects all things of cold, ice, and snow!
Cold – Flickering – Is now Rank 1!
You have successfully harnessed your long neglected Fourth Affinity! You have successfully forged a spiritual pyramid! Ascension limitations have been removed!
Eric sank to his knees, wanting so badly to laugh for joy for his exquisite accomplishment. The limitations he had feared would forever limit his potential had just been countered.
Yet none of that stopped the fresh wave of fiery screams wracking his body and the certain knowledge that if he couldn’t find a way to control these transcendent flames NOW, then he’d never have to worry about advancing another level ever again, let alone any mad dreams about what happened after Silver tier.
Desperate eyes looked toward his mother, praying he had done enough, after finally forcing himself to face the frigid art so closely tied to her... and clearly his sister as well.
Yet whatever mercy or clemency he was hoping for, all he saw was the Winter Queen’s iron hard expression, her trembling hand, leaking blood that hissed and sizzled on the grass, forming a puddle as she squeezed her fists so tightly that her nails actually bit into Silver tier flesh.
And within that slick puddle of blood was a face he recognized, gazing up at his mother... their mother, with wide, desperate eyes.
“Please, mother, you have to help us! The abominations are at the gates. The goblins just bombed the walls guarding our one remaining city of Aerie!” Eric’s eyes widened with horror greater even than his pain when he took in the desperate countenance of his once regal sister that he had met weeks ago in the depths of a delve. How focused and deadly she had looked then, yet even then Eric had sensed the terrible pressure of too many burdens and not enough time. Worse, there was no longer even a semblance of majesty or control. Just a desperate girl that was his half-sister and so easily could have been his twin, looking into Aurelia’s solemn countenance with a desperate plea.
“Please, mother! Those things! They’ve already gotten Johan! My boy, my oldest was so desperate to defend his wife and child when their palace wing was lost and now...” She broke down into sobs, crashing to her knees upon an abandoned throne room filled with smoke as screams and shouts and distant explosions could be heard throughout the palace. Only she wasn’t alone, Eric saw to his horror, seeing at her side the girl who had gazed at him so intently in that delve arena who was holding two tiny children close, the girl’s eyes... his niece’s eyes, were no longer filled with cool reserve, only desperate panic.
“Grandmother! Please help us!”
Then, much to Eric’s horror, the young woman caught sight of Eric, flinching only once before falling to her knees. “Please, cousin. Help us! I can see the skein of destiny about you! You alone could walk the bridge between worlds right now!” Her face crumpled in regret. “I know we didn’t make a good impression on you, Eric. I pray you can forgive us! The goblins, they... they threatened to do to us exactly what happened tonight! They destroyed the great wall! The force fields! The palace!” Her eyes locked with his own, as the little girl and boy she held sobbed in panic and terror. “I have children, Eric. I don’t want them to die. Please!”
“Mother!” Eric cried, though he made no sound, his words were the hot wrath of fury and the bitter cold of regret.
Eric’s mother turned to him, shocking Eric even through his agony with how vulnerable she looked. A queen? Perhaps. And a mother about to lose even more of her offspring. “Our enemies strike at us, relentlessly and without mercy! All past covenants have been broken! Upon our ashes our foes wish to ascend!”
Aurelia’s eyes crackled with something transcending mere fury, before her glaze turned hard and cold, a judge passing sentence. “It’s within you to save them, Eric. Elonia, Dawn, Hope, ALL of them!”
“How!?” Eric screamed as the doomed ruler and her daughter and grandchildren screamed as the ivory walls behind them cracked, the air filling with a horrific roar. And Eric’s sister had time to give Eric one last desperate look before the shimmering silver portal his mother had struggled to hold abruptly went out.
Aurelia screamed.
Tree shattered in a roaring cacophony of exploding runks as every last leaf turned to ice, shattering in a million million tiny fragments. Truths Eric registered slowly, the ringing in his ears and his fuzzy disorientation lasting only a split second before monstrous Vitality and a fearsome Will had Eric stumbling back to his feat, despite his agony.
“How!?” Eric screamed, Heart breaking for the horrific doom he feared he had just witnessed. The death of his centuries-old sister, who looked every bit as much like Aurelia as Elonia did. His niece’s desperate eyes as she held her children close. The empty hopeless despair when Dawn revealed that her son had already perished trying to save his own family.
“JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” He screamed, as frozen trunks nearby exploded into flame with the bitter howling fury, the white-hot WRATH he ached to give Greed and all the fowl abominations who dared to march under his banner.
Aurelia’s eyes blazed like the sun as she loomed close, grabbing the glowing mithril shirt that somehow had the nerve to still be indestructible when everything else, Eric’s entire world, was crumbling to ashes and despair.
“We must avenge them, Eric. WE MUST AVENGE THEM ALL!”
“I KNOW!” Eric shrieked, an inferno of pain, heat, and fury, searing all the dirt and leaves away from his mother’s furious, desperate form.
“Then embrace your gifts to their fullest, my lastborn son! The fury of fire, the bitterness of ice! Take your gifts and make those abominations pay!”
The words resonated through Eric’s trembling form. Now filled with a desperate fury the equal of his pain. A tiny part of his mind wanted to ask how forging connections between the paths of Fire and Ice would help his doomed sister a world away, before all thoughts were replaced by a furious need for REVENGE! When his interface blinked with not dozens but hundreds of marching reds, heading their way.