READ WEBNOVEL Chapter 364 - Upon the ashes of our foes, we WILL ascend.
“Mommy, I’m scared!” Sobbed the little girl trembling in Rica’s powerful arms as the world shook around them, the air alive with the shriek and boom of hellfire bombardments and the despairing screams and wails of countless thousands.
Rica couldn’t help but squeeze her precious child close, so gently yet so tightly against her increasingly sore chest as her light brown eyes flickered from eyes of jade green, soft purple, and sapphire blue. The jeweled eyes of countless Sylvan professionals not one of whom was over level 15, with stats far closer to mortal than not, all of them taking shelter in the massive marble-faced office building that Rica had darted to when the beautiful blue skies had begun to burn and the monstrous screams of munitions and people made it clear that the nightmare existence she had endured for the past two years would never end.
But at least the trembling elves around her had been gracious enough to open the sealed entrance upon which elves were banging even now. And for all that the office workers were gazing at the entrance with expressions torn between desperation and fear, the sudden roar, flash of light, and silence, made it clear that the harder choice had been the better choice as a hellfire missile ripped through Arcadia’s financial district, obliterating hundreds, perhaps thousands in the blink of an eye.
Even if the magnificent palatial structures of marble and dream endured, for now, the air filters keeping the caustic smoke that her lungs alone were immune to from poisoning everyone inside, the peaceful gardens, parks, and Renaissance fair-like markets had been transformed to ash and flame.
Of course that was the moment that all the electromana screens in the office building simultaneously came to life once more, just seconds after the emergency broadcast message uttered by some ancient descendant of Aurelia’s, Arcadia’s former caretaker and Queen, had broken off when the transmitting tower had been hit with a direct strike.
Ria screamed and trembled in her mother’s arms, and Rica wished she could hide in the arms of the only man who had made her feel safe ever... because the sneering countenance glaring back at them from a twisted demonic face donning a commanders cap and a star-pinned uniform a shade of dried blood, laughed down at them all.
“This is Commander Snivel of the Bloodtear Consortium! I just wanted to inform all of you sniveling disgusting abominations that there is no need for you to surrender. Our lord and master Malice himself has made it clear that we have no need of your collard necks for our mining worlds or soul forges.”
Rica felt an awful chill as the sneering goblin chortled with laughter. “Oh no, you Sylvan abominations. You can expect NO such mercy for us!” His eyes lit up with wild hellish glee as his lips stretched wide, revealing ugly yellow teeth. “This armada that’s been so many delicious years in the planning isn’t about Conquest, but GENOCIDE!”
Rica suddenly couldn’t hear the foul creature’s words over the despairing shrieks and wails of the elves she had thought such peaceful gentle souls... back when she had thought she had made the wiser choice, the better choice, fleeing Earth for a world that no longer had any part in any ascension. A place where she didn’t have to worry about being caged and slaughtered. A civilized safe place where she could grow as an academic, embrace peaceful controlled hunts on the weekends with her new group of friends, and most importantly, care for her daughter as she thrived with the cybernetic implants restoring so much of her fragile brain that had been damaged, not to mention assure the best care for the fragile treasure blossoming within her womb.
She had even had the silly dream of attending the Sylvan Academy here on Arcadia, achieving the elven equivalent of a master’s in business, and impressing the man who had done so much for her when she was finally in a position to run his growing financial empire, as his own mother had calmly informed her would be the case, years from now, when it was safe, Earth stable, and calm professionals would be needed once more. And maybe she had dreamed in her heart of hearts of a joyful reunion between Eric and his daughter-to-be.
Yet all her dreams of domestic bliss, a wonderful profession, and a happy family had been popped like an ephemeral soap bubble tossed in fire when the bombardments had begun and she realized, as the psychotic goblin commander gloating at them all from the bridge of his battleship, that there was no safe place at all.
“That’s right, elven scum! Scream to the heavens as we pound your cities to melted glass and turn your forests into fuel for our forges! Your corpses will be used as coal for our steel and your dying screams will be treasures we share for all time!” The creature chortled like a maniac, monologuing with a supervillain’s manic glee that would have been comical if it hadn’t been so hideous... if the abomination hadn’t meant every word he said.
“For Lord Malice our ruler has assured us that this night, among all nights, is the night we may safely SEAL all your souls in torment for all time! No need for lengthy torture sessions. No need to cart all you squiggling squealing, disobedient worms with the care we would livestock. OH NO!” The goblin chortled, rubbing his hands. “With the talisman assuring your doom this endless night, your souls will be trapped in the burning remains of your bodies and serve as PERFECT FUEL for the soul forges on a DOZEN planets that will forge a thousand starships with which we will rule the skies and bring the entire sector under our eternal control! Our eternal dominion! And in the end, all your souls will be ours!”
Rica gazed in wide-eyed horror at the absolute monstrous madman who actually seemed to glow before her eyes, before his twisted smile became a gloating laugh, and the point of his villain-like monologuing suddenly became horrifically clear.
Almost as clear as the rift of ice and fire which had just formed on the bridge of his ship right behind him, Rica’s Huntress eyes perhaps the only one out of the now shrieking elves all around her who had spotted it.
“Ah, how WONDERFUL! A world’s terror has just raised me three Levels! Thank you, foo—”
The monitor flared with a brilliant crackle of energy that wasn’t flame... so much as a twisted AI version of pulsating chaos and destruction... a chaotic acid trip of higher order concepts screaming in her mind, reminding her of her one bad trip she had had with the professor who had been so eager to seduce his sixteen year old honor student before utterly fleeing her life like the asshole he truly was.
An eyeblink later, Commander Snivel was gazing at them all with eyes of frozen terror, before he exploded in ice and flame.
Rica shivered in awe and fear as the monitor rang with haunting laughter she recognized, while the entire assembly of terrified elves immediately began kneeling and weeping, supplicating the heavens.
“Aurelia has come! Our glorious queen has come to save us! All hail the Winter Queen!”
Yet Rica, heart pounding as she continued to comfort her sobbing daughter, had eyes only for the wild-eyed youth beside Aurela, holding that sword of frozen fire that had just flashed through that psychopath’s skull. Wielded by a man who’s exquisite features she knew so very well.
Eric Silver. Her Eric Silver. Somehow on the ship of their enemies, covered in golden flames, radiating a shockingly transcendent beauty that left her heart screaming that she had been an absolute fool to heed Aurelia’s counsel and jump through the gate... yet the terrified and very much restored girl in her arms soothed her momentary pang of regret.
Ria was restored. She and her daughter were still alive, and it appeared, by some miracle, that the Sylvan faction’s queen had just teleported onto the bridge of the enemy flagship, her son by her side.
Eric Silver. Her Eric. Prince of an entire faction.
Yet all she saw when she caught sight of his glittering gaze was a primal monstrous fury that sent her heart skipping a beat. And somehow his roar, the roar of a lion, froze every goblin on the bridge of that ship... and every sobbing, worshiping elf in the world below.
“Very good, Eric. Embrace your wrath and strike out WITH ALL YOUR HATE! DESTROY THESE ABOMINATIONS WHICH WOULD DOOM THE WOMAN YOU LOVE!”
With a furious howl, Eric swung his sword once more, and by some miracle his blow hadn’t affected the monitor at all. Instead, it went to a split view as the bridge became an inferno of impossibly hot flames, screaming goblins exploding in a superheated flash, before everything froze to ice and exploded.
The other screen showed the massive triangular battleship, looking so much like the deadly armadas of Nova Wars, began out massive gouts of brilliant flame as the entire vessel began to tear itself apart.
Aurelia’s melodic laughter seemed to caress the ears of an entire city of sobbing elves. “Very good, my lastborn son, my chosen heir! You have fused your WRATH to your mastery of DOMINION! Now strike out once more with Ice Fire’s caress! Show our enemies the folly of betrayal, and together, we will ascend!”
“She ascends! The Winter Queen will soon fly free!” Sobbed the former manager of the building Rica had fled to, eyes limpid pools of awe and wonder.
“All hail the Winter Queen!” Sobbed a child who couldn’t have been more than six, held in her mother’s arms, much like Rica was holding her own little one.
The child’s mother and the entire party of survivors immediately did just that.
“All hail the Winter Queen!”
“All hail the Winter Queen!”
Yet still their desperate chant was broken up by the sporadic release and explosions of yet more oxygen destroying hellfire bombs. For only one ship of the fleet, miraculous as it was to see, had been split by a single swing of her former lover’s blade.
Which was absolute absurdity all in itself. How many months back had it been that she had first caught sight of that beautiful blue-eyed boy, so struck by an ache in her chest despite his scars that she had held off on a throw that would have changed absolutely everything? Praying he’d be smart and flee before the man beside her had registered his presence. And then the psychopath she had forced herself to tolerate for so many weeks had fallen to Eric’s arrow? Way back when she had been stronger than him.
How much had changed since that day.
Rica couldn’t help but shake her head. “Just how strong are you, Eric?” She whispered under her breath, kissing the brow of her child. Yet she couldn’t help but smile at the fervent hope she saw alive in so many pairs of desperate eyes, even if she knew that, as incredible as her beautiful boy’s monstrous feat of strength had been, channeling powers Rica couldn’t even pretend to understand, there was an armada of nearly a hundred ships out there.
The very sight of it as the monitor pulled back impossibly far, sent chills down her spine, Rica forced to wonder to what extent even a Silver could take out such a monstrous threat.
Even if Aurelia had the strength to jump from one ship to another, with Eric at her side, would he even have the strength for not just one or two, but a full hundred of what Rica knew had to be hyper-focused node powers? Even she could only handle a handful of node-enhanced Piercing Strikes with her javelin before she was throwing them with only basic class enhancements.
She swallowed the lump in her throat, wiping away her tears.
Yet what truly broke her heart was the way her baby Ria was looking up at the split screen, her expression one of awe and a child’s painful hope. “Is that daddy?” she asked, and Rica immediately burst into tears, realizing there was no way she could answer that question, so complicated on so many levels. Instead she kissed her daughter’s brow and rested her head against her breast. “Rest, my child. Close your eyes and sleep and when you wake up, everything will be alright again.”
Rica knew it was a lie, but it was a loving lie, and her child dutifully did just that. One advantage of the implants being that her daughter had so much more self-control than any human child normally would, and could make herself instantly fall asleep.
Rica then allowed herself to cry in earnest as the bombs continued to drop, fearing that once more her fiercely heroic, naive, foolish, and utterly adorable midnight flame had once again come too late to save them all.
And that was when the heavens above flashed with sapphire blue flame that sparkled with transcendent Gold, superimposed by the brilliant beam the zoomed out camera showed TEARING THROUGH THE ENTIRE FLEET!
Rica froze in awed disbelief.
The desperate chanting stopped, as did the bombing.
Only fireworks exploding in the heavens above as the monitors showed scores of ships crumpling as countless explosions filled the night sky. And what an awesome sight it was to see battleships that Rica knew damn well must have been the size of small cities slowly break apart, split cleanly in half by a plasma beam, an impossibly brilliant sword blade, that must have stretched, for just a moment, hundreds of miles.
“How?”
She shook her head in awe. For the only thing more shocking than scores of ships split in twain with a single swing of a giant magical energy sword was how those ships began to visibly freeze to crystalline ice with a cold she suspected was far, far more intense than the near absolute zero of deep space. All of them froze to blue crystal before exploding with countless brilliant fiery explosions, as if every piece of every ship was being obliterated to oblivion like a billion fireworks now filling the night sky.
A part of her couldn’t help but fear that the entire fleet crashing down upon Arcadia’s capital city would doom them more assuredly than the original bombardment, before finally registering, much to her awe, that when the explosions had ended after a brilliantly shocking pyrotechnical minute... that there was nothing left at all.
Nothing but ashes that shimmered like pearls, gently falling to the planet below as the monitor... and how the hell was it still displaying the action in the first place, let alone managing to do so zoomed out hundreds of miles, when the capital ship had been destroyed?”
She then shook her head with a soft smile. “Of course. This is Aurelia Silver, the most famous actress, and producer, in all of North America. She always had a knack for epic battle scenes.”
The air then rang with a chant so loud and all-encompassing that Rica nearly lost her balance, dizzy with profundity that seemed to affect every adult elf present. Yet the children, thankfully, it touched not at all.
“Upon bitter blood and sorrow we will ascend.
Upon the blazing pyre of betrayal we will ascend.
Upon the ashes of our foes, we WILL ascend!”
An eye-blink later, there was nothing, just the retina flash of a brilliant fiery phoenix of blue and gold before fading to the quiet and empty depths of space on the monitor screen that went blank seconds later, an awed Rica coming back to herself as not just the office building she had fled into but the entire city began to celebrate and cheer, as the poisoned miasma cleared to fresh spring air in a mere handful of seconds, a gentle breeze blowing the hair of countless elves looking so transcendentally beautiful as they gazed up at the heavens with tears in their eyes, filled with adulation for their queen, who had, apparently, just ascended to Gold.