Chapter 429: Chapter 413 – Glass Lake

Nothing happened.

The wall of lightning simply split around Serenity, as if it weren’t even there in the area he was passing through. There was a minor change in the charge levels in the air, but not enough to require adjusting the spell. He’d expected more.

Now that he was in it, Serenity could tell that it wasn’t as solid as he’d thought. That was … well, he couldn’t exactly call it an optical illusion since it was affecting Eyeless Sight, could he?

In any case, it was an artifact of the air’s ionization as lightning went through it; it stayed “available” as a path for lightning for a short period of time, and Serenity could see those. It seemed like the reason it was simply going around him was that he was less attractive as a path to ground than all of the air that was already ionized.

That was good, wasn’t it?

Yeah, that was good.

Serenity slipped forward. The inside of the spell was different. The level of negative charge didn’t fall off as he approached the center; instead, it stayed about the same. There wasn’t much actual lightning in the air, but Serenity was glad he had the spell insulating him from the outside; this area would be horribly dangerous without it.

It meant that the bright idea of using his spell to collapse the ritual wouldn’t work. At least, not without modification; there wouldn’t be a discharge at all, and he needed to maintain the spell to stay safe in the inner area.

How was the lightning mage managing to be safe?

Serenity floated towards the center of the spell and was surprised even more: the mage was trotting. Or perhaps something a little slower than a trot? Either way, he was smoothly moving his legs in diagonal pairs, but always had at least two feet on the ground. Serenity could clearly see the moment every step where all four of his feet were down.

It didn’t look like a particularly natural gait.

Which meant it probably had something to do with the spell. Did he have to maintain contact with the ground for some reason?

Serenity drifted closer to the mage. As he drew closer, the charge map became more and more obvious. There was a “hot” stream heading up from the mage; when it hit the top of the spell, it spilled outwards creating the curtain of lightning. The mage himself was “cold”, and seemed to be growing “colder”.

Was the radius of the spell increasing or shrinking? Serenity was certain it was doing one or the other, but he didn’t have a way to check from here; he was without any outside-

He was being an idiot again. He had an easy way to contact outside; he didn’t need his cellphone. Rissa could use hers. :Rissa? Can you find out if the radius of the lightning storm is getting bigger or smaller?:

Rissa’s answer was nearly immediate. :Bigger. It’s slow, but the news is charting it on radar.:

Serenity nodded internally; that was the answer that seemed more likely. The problem wasn’t going to go away on its own. :Okay, good. Well, not good, but it gives me an idea. Have everyone gather together and have Ita get ready to cast her teleport; it’s not safe right now but I think it might be soon.:

Serenity tried to figure out what the best position would be; the centaur was faster than he was. He’d never be able to chase down the centaur mage. On the other hand, he couldn’t possibly see well in this lightning-filled environment; Serenity would probably not be visible as anything other than shadowy afterimages.

Serenity dropped down lower and set himself up in the centaur shaman’s direct path as he keyed the spell to discharge. He hoped he had a strong enough Liminality to hold the Nihility in place; if he had, his spell would bridge through whatever the centaur was using to keep the potentials separate. If he hadn’t, his spell would still bridge the potentials, but would do it by passing the energy through the space his body occupied, with whatever results that meant for a Sovereign of the Origin.

Serenity wasn’t interested in finding out what those results were. He’d just have to be ready in case it didn’t work out as he hoped.

Serenity waited for the mage; the timing had to be right. It seemed to take longer than it should for the centaur to reach him. When the centaur finally reached the edge of Serenity’s spell, Serenity triggered the discharge.

This was what he’d designed it for, even if he’d added it at the last minute: to use the power of the spell against itself by making it hit its own weak point. He simply hadn’t expected the mage to be the weak point.

The world dissolved in a sea of light; Serenity felt some of the light push through him, splitting his bubble in two and shunting him to both sides before it was past.

Both parts of Serenity tried to figure out what was going on, but all either of him could see was light. Surely he could rejoin himself if he could find himself, but he had no idea which direction was which. Sound filled the air, the continual snap and boom of repeated lightning strikes. Serenity didn’t feel anything; even split in two, his Liminal Nihility was somehow holding.

It was minutes before anything changed, and the first change was Rissa’s voice. :Serenity? Are you safe? Should we come join you?:

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:I’m fine? I think?: Serenity wasn’t sure “fine” was quite the right word, but he certainly didn’t feel hurt by being split in two. It was strange to think of, but that had to be because he was used to being a singular being. :It’s definitely not safe here. Can’t you hear the thunder and see the continual light?:

:Is that what the noise is?: Rissa seemed to think for a moment. :Does that mean you destroyed the spell?:

:It’s destroying itself right now, or at least shortening its lifespan and consuming its power. At least, I think it is. I don’t know how much damage it’s doing or what condition the mage is in. I can’t make anything out, even with Eyeless Sight.: Serenity was actually getting a bit worried about what he’d find when he could see again, so he started drifting up, hoping he had the direction of “up” correct. It would be all too easy to be turned around when he couldn’t see.

All he knew for sure was that after a minute, he hadn’t run into the ground. So at the worst, he was going sideways.

It took more than an hour for the lightning discharges to stop. When they did, Serenity was able to see that he’d drifted off at an angle, partly up and partly to the side - and both of his selves had picked slightly different directions.

He drifted back towards the mage; he was obvious, since he was the only thing other than Serenity moving in the area. He seemed to be trying to free his paws from … was that water? It looked solid, but as the mage moved, it splashed. He wasn’t making much progress forward.

Serenity was fairly confident there hadn’t been any water in the lightning storm. When he looked closer, it also didn’t move like water; it was more like a thick, gloopy mud.

So this had to be something else. What would be like thick mud, not contain water, and be the result of a lightning storm? Serenity had expected glassy shards from the lightning, not mud.

Unless. What if he was looking at glass, just glass that was still somewhat liquid? He knew it could take time to cool down.

:Don’t come: Serenity hastily warned Rissa. :I think we have a pool of molten glass here.:

:Glass? How is the centaur even moving then? He can’t possibly have your Heat Resistance.: Rissa was clearly watching through Serenity’s vision.

:If you look closely, it spatters on him but doesn’t quite touch him before falling away. He has a form-fitting shield of some sort that looks like it also deals with heat.: Serenity watched the scene; there was something about it that made him think there was more to it than that. :Oh, I see. Wherever he’s moving slow enough, the liquid actually supports him, but that means it also resists his movement, and he’s not handling that at all well. He’s breaking the surface tension or whatever is supporting him whenever he lifts a paw because it’s embedded in the stuff and he moves too quickly. That’s when he’s splashing himself. Which means we don’t know how deep the liquid is; it might be supporting him even above the solid part.:

:Why would we care how deep it is? He’s stuck, isn’t he? Surely whatever is protecting him won’t last forever?:

Serenity watched the centaur struggle forward another few steps before he replied. :I think he’s using an item. It won’t last forever, but it could be a long time if it’s as good as it could be. The problem is that we can’t really do anything to him until he’s out of here, and that means I have to keep watching him. How deep it is probably tells us something about how wide the area is and it definitely says something about how bad the damage is.:

:How do you think he survived the spell discharge?: Rissa kept asking questions the entire time.

:The same way I did. He wasn’t hit by it. That was - I think it was the full energy of a thunderstorm, released into the ground all at once. Maybe more.: Serenity had seen effects like it before, but only rarely. They did far less damage on a higher-Tier planet, but even so this was excessive and reminded Serenity the most of a miscast ritual he’d heard about as a student. They’d even been taken to see it; that particular teacher had thought the example might cause some of her students to be a little more careful.

It had probably worked on some of them. Others, like Vengeance, took it as a challenge.

It took the centaur nearly an hour to struggle his way to solid enough ground that he could walk instead of a sort of awkward waddle-swim, even though he “only” had to cross about 250 feet of molten material. By the end, a crust of cooling glass was starting to form on the top that he had to break through to move forward, but it wasn’t even close to strong enough to support his weight.

The process created a lot of small shards of glass that Serenity was glad he didn’t have to get near.

By then, they had a pretty good idea just how bad the overall effects were, and they were unexpected. The portal had been found not too far away; Serenity had drifted one of his two forms over there to handle it. Once again, it seemed far easier to manage two Sovereign forms than two chimera forms. Even though it was easier, he felt clumsy when they were separated and could really only manage one at a time.

The portal turned out to be outside the liquefied zone, but was still affected by the heat coming off the molten rock. It was easy to close down.

Only a relatively small part of the surface was affected, but the effect wasn’t dissipating at all quickly. Initial estimates were that the ground was liquefied several hundred feet deep at the center of the area, because that was the only thing that would explain how slowly it was cooling. It was going to play havoc with the local and probably national weather patterns for at least a week.

Rissa laughed at Serenity as she showed him a replay of one weatherman saying “but the lightning storm was going to do that anyway. This is more predictable; we can expect…”