Chapter 46

  Arnaut flew into action first. He raced after the anomaly, sword at his side. Dalex wondered if the hero actually had a way to stop it. So far, he hadn’t demonstrated the power necessary to disrupt what essentially amounted to a force of nature. But, watching Arnaut chase the anomaly, Dalex had to admit he was impressed. If nothing else, Arnaut was proactive.

  Dalex took to the skies and followed close behind, studying the anomaly carefully. If it came down to it, there were lots of ways he could destroy the anomaly before it reached the town. If the mass of the hydra was vaporized, the {adamantine} itself probably wouldn’t pose as much of a threat. Once it was free of the monster’s stomach, Dalex could retrieve the deposit and Seventh could neutralize it.

  There were two problems with that option. First and least important, he wouldn’t get his achievement for slaying the hydra with only {Skull Anchor}. Second, in vaporizing the hydra, he might destroy the {adamantine} at the same time. Dalex didn’t know how resistant the metal was to his benefactor’s weapons. Of course, that wasn’t the most important problem. As much as he wanted the {adamantine}, he could probably find more elsewhere.

  The third and biggest problem was that any blast strong enough to destroy the hydra would probably kill Seventh who was inside the mass. For all kinds of reasons, Dalex didn’t want to do that, even if he wasn’t sure what it would mean for the [android] to “die.”

  Arnaut overtook the anomaly and ran past it a couple hundred yards to stand in its way on the ground. Dalex zoomed past the paint cloud as well until he hovered over the hero. The anomaly closed on them quickly, its airspeed about as fast as an average human running at full speed.

  “You got some trick up your sleeve?” Dalex asked.

  “One or two,” Arnaut said. He went to one knee and rested a palm on the ground. For a moment, he only concentrated. Then, he chanted, “Nativasmons births a mountain.”

  A tremor went through the earth. Floating in the air, Dalex couldn’t feel it, but he saw a ripple of dust spread out from Arnaut’s palm. Birds took flight. Animals large and small broke from cover and ran away. The ground began to fracture. Hairline cracks ran away from the hero in every direction. And then he rose, borne up by the earth beneath him.

  He did not create a mountain, per se. Enormous columns of rock and dirt erupted beneath and around Arnaut, carrying him into the sky. The columns congealed into a single solid mass, and Arnaut knelt at the summit of a rocky butte that had risen just high enough to meet the level of the anomaly. All around the butte, the forest had been uprooted and decimated. Great fissures of broken ground spread out from its bottom. The land would never be the same.

  The anomaly crashed into the side of the butte, cracking the formation down the middle and blowing away a mountain’s worth of loose dirt. It reminded Dalex of a pollen-laden tree being shaken at its trunk and releasing all of its dander. Paint and dust went everywhere.

  In the middle of the storm, Arnaut lifted his sword toward the center of the anomaly and screamed, “Calcus prijictam bombards you with stone!”

  Many of the loose rocks around him lifted into the air and shot toward the anomaly. They ranged in size from pebbles to boulders bigger than an elephant. They disappeared into the anomaly with incredible speed, pummeling the core directly. Not content with just stopping the mass with the butte, it seemed Arnaut was now attempting to push it away with a fusillade of solid objects.

  But the anomaly was not repelled. Its impact with the butte deflected it higher into the sky, but it continued toward Dugan, undeterred. For some reason, it no longer took an erratic path, instead barreling inevitably in the direction of the town. Arnaut remained kneeling on the ground, panting desperately with his sword still raised in the air.

  “It was a good try,” Dalex called down to him.

  Once again, Dalex had to admit Arnaut impressed him. It seemed like he really cared about Dugan, even though it was a town populated solely by beastkin and elves.

  The hero just waved a dismissive hand at Dalex, clearly exhausted after using so much mana. Why hadn’t Arnaut used either spell on Dalex during their battle in Batulan-bar?

  Dalex resumed the chase. It was still another few miles to Dugan. As high off the ground as the anomaly was, it might not come close enough to do any damage to the town. But, considering how it had randomly smashed into the ground earlier, Dalex couldn’t count on getting that lucky.

  Still, he wasn’t out of time. He could try out another option before he absolutely needed to wipe out the hydra and save the town.

  He made sure the most powerful version of {prismatic strike} would be ready at a moment’s notice and then soared past the anomaly again to prepare a new snare. When he was about a mile from the outskirts of Dugan, Dalex came to another stop and put his final plan into action.

  He dismissed {Skull Anchor} and summoned the fake grimoire again. The {astral mortar} book didn’t serve a practical function, but Dalex felt like it helped him think. He watched the anomaly for another few seconds, making sure he had the trajectory right, and then he cast, “{Harpoon trap}.”

  He pointed at a particular patch of ground and then moved on, not waiting for the spell to catch up to him. A moment later, a canister slammed into the ground where he had pointed. It dug several feet into the earth and then sat inert, waiting for its prey to come into range. Dalex zoomed back and forth across the approaching anomaly’s path, setting more {harpoon traps}. The {steel wyvern} allowed him to cast the spell fifty times. Just as the last trap slammed into the ground, the anomaly entered the snare.

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  The closest trap activated. A cap popped off the canister, revealing a harpoon that shot up into the core of the anomaly. A line of reinforced chain strung out behind it, connected to the canister still buried deep in the ground. The harpoon struck true, embedding itself in the flesh of the hydra. A trickle of blood poured out of the anomaly.

  A system alert popped up in Dalex’s peripheral vision.

  Dalex gave a defeated sigh. The system had counted the harpoons as a damage source other than {Skull Anchor} and invalidated the achievement attempt.

  Oh well. There were probably other hydras out there in need of hunting.

  The chain at the end of the harpoon remained loose as the anomaly went by. The trap was smart enough to wait for more of its fellow traps to spring before it drew the line taut. A second trap activated, shooting another harpoon into the hydra. Then a third and a fourth. Within less than a minute, half the traps were sprung and twenty-five chains dangled off the anomaly, all of them linked back to anchors in the earth.

  Before the chains drew taut, in anticipation that the anchors would not be enough to stop the anomaly, Dalex cast one more spell, “{Web of the void arachnid}.”

  The {steel wyvern} let loose a single, purpose-built spell. As with the other skills related to the [airburst] function, this one exploded a hundred yards above the anomaly. It did not scatter paint this time. Instead, it unfurled a wide net several hundred yards across. Weighted at the edges, the net descended over the anomaly, draping down to the ground and restricting its mobility.

  The rest of the {harpoon traps} fired, and, all at once, every trap tightened its chain. The sound of tortured metal filled the air. The anomaly came to a halt. It strained against the anchors and net but could not move forward. More hydra blood poured onto the ground below. Dalex felt increasingly sorry for the creature.

  The anomaly pulled on its bindings, struggling to get free. It behaved a lot like an animal caught in a trap. Dalex and Seventh hadn’t thought the hydra could exert any control over the anomaly, but maybe they had been wrong.

  But the chains were holding fast. Hopefully, they would keep the hydra and the anomaly in place long enough for Seventh to work her magic.

  On the ground below, Arnaut trotted into sight. Dalex went down to meet him.

  “So, your words of power do more than just destroy,” Arnaut said, commenting on Dalex’s handiwork with a smug expression. “That net seems positively humane.”

  “You’re just jealous that I actually stopped the thing,” Dalex said. He turned to Arnaut. “In fact, I bet you’re the type of guy to—”

  He was cut off by the abrupt and piercing sound of metal snapping. The noise made him flinch. He slowly looked back toward the anomaly. One of the chains hung loose, free of its anchor.

  “That’s not good,” Dalex said.

  The anomaly surged up, changing direction and wrenching against the snare. Another chain snapped, pulling out of its anchor. And then a harpoon fell out of the anomaly with a chunk of gray hydra flesh still attached to its barbed end. One by one, the harpoon traps failed until they all gave way. Some of the anchors were ripped straight out of the ground, carrying big clods of earth.

  “You were saying you stopped it?” Arnaut said. Dalex could feel the hero’s eyes on the back of his head.

  “For longer than you did,” Dalex muttered.

  The anomaly traveled up about fifty yards and then returned to its original trajectory. Without any anchors to slow it, it ripped through the net, proceeding without resistance.

  It would probably fly right over the town, but Dalex couldn’t take that chance.

  He pointed at the core of the anomaly and opened his mouth. Several seconds went by, and he remained silent. The words rested at the back of his throat. {Prismatic strike}. He needed to do it. Hundreds of people could die if he didn’t stop the anomaly. There was no other choice.

  But he was pretty certain he was sentencing Seventh to death.

  She was an [android]. Could she just be replicated on the {voidstalker}? She had cloned herself so easily before they left the Expedition 7. But a clone was not the original, and the being he next met might not be the same Seventh.

  “What are you doing?” Arnaut demanded. “If you have mana to spare, act. Dugan is in danger.”

  Dalex grimaced and said, “{Prismatic—}”

  Before he could finish uttering the spell, another voice broke his concentration.

  “Devyntemptis uncoils the whirlwind.”

  The air stirred. Dalex looked over his shoulder to see Yesui standing behind him. She was drenched in purple paint.

  The trees beneath the anomaly trembled. A gust of wind pushed Dalex back. Leaves and dirt and rocks and then entire tree trunks were cast into the air. The gust became a gale. The gale became the raging eyewall of a hurricane. Dalex had to struggle to stay in place. Arnaut crouched behind a boulder, using it to blunt the wind.

  Yesui stood still in the open, watching the anomaly, unaffected by the abrupt storm.

  The anomaly slowed and then stopped. It hung motionless in the air. A progressive wave of wind moving away from the town pushed against it. The wind stripped all of the orbiting paint away, leaving the anomaly invisible again.

  For a long moment, the world was consumed by a raging storm. Even Dalex could no longer stand against it. He summoned {Skull Anchor} and dug it into the earth at his feet, rooting himself to the ground. But Yesui was unaffected.

  And then something huge slammed into the ground next to them. It rolled over the forest away from the town, pushed along by the wind.

  “Good thing I showed up,” Yesui said, shouting to be heard over the roaring squall. “Don’t tell me you two were about to let this thing flatten the town.”

  Finally, as if to punctuate Yesui’s timely arrival, a cloud of chunky orange liquid burst from the core of the tumbling anomaly. A moment later the hydra rolled into view, as if it had dropped its cloak of invisibility, and kept moving with the force of the storm. Three long necked heads coiled around a thick body. The creature spread out huge, clawed feet to catch itself, digging into the ground and ripping up acres of forest land as it brought itself to a halt, fighting against the storm. One of its three heads was in the process of vomiting a torrent of sickly orange sludge.

  Some of the forest was still visually distorted by the anomaly itself. The ground warped around a central point as if captured by a fisheye lens. But the effect was stationary now. The anomaly—now sans hydra—wasn’t darting around in the air. And then even that effect suddenly ceased, leaving Seventh clinging to a thick tree root, covered in hydra vomit and with a lump of dull gray metal clutched to her chest.

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