From his position hundreds of feet into the air, Damien watched impassively as the giant shadow behemoth dwindled into dark motes of energy, slowly dispersing like ash from a burning building.

  What he had just done was unprecedented, a never-before-seen feat. Even he understood very little about it, all he knew was that he'd simply poured an obscene amount of energy into his makeshift technique and then jammed it into the Astral Images of his opponents. The rest had been left to the element itself.

  Unlike other elements, Damien seldom found the need to dive deep into the essence of Destruction. It was simply that... Destruction. The only thing he felt required effort was controlling it, that and also finding new and more exotic ways to kill, as he'd just done.

  If news of what he'd just done got out, it was more likely than not that he would be getting a new batch of enemies that would be joining the ranks of those he already had. After all, if he could do it to Elora and Igor, then what was stopping him from doing it to the rest of them? Never mind the fact that all Damien had ever wanted was to be left alone.

  He considered finishing her off. It would surely spare him the effort of fighting off scared Spirit lords who felt the only recourse to a potential threat was a preemptive strike.

  He glanced down at the woman, helpless and unconscious, and changed his mind. Although he had already designated a messenger to deliver his message, he felt that a new one, with more power and influence, would surely send home the impact he was trying to make.

  They would only listen if they saw their compatriot lying half dead with a disintegrated image.

  He brought himself down toward the unconscious woman. Looking at her, he could sense that she wouldn't be advancing any further in her path, telling from how swiftly her Astral image had dwindled. The woman gushed out energy from her skull like water through a broken dam, which told Daimen that severe damage had been done to her Crown Meridian. She was unconscious, which meant that there was no will to stave off her Meridian's slow destruction, and so his element was left to do as it wished.

  He could help, he knew. But Damien felt it was only proper the woman suffer for all she'd done.

  Her passive aura had already decreased significantly, going from that of a fully-fledged Spirit lord in the mid tiers to a Monarch on the verge of ascension.

  Maybe she could find advancement in conceptual understanding, but aside from that, Damien reckoned she was done.

  He pulled out an alchemical health potion from his storage, the emerald liquid sloshing thickly as Damien considered it. In the end, he sighed and moved to administer it when he felt a presence approaching.

  "This one greets the Spirit lord."

  Damien turned around to the view of a woman with beautiful black hair and eyes bowing to him. He caught the tattoo on her shoulder, which designated her as one of Cirin's Monarch Realm Wielders.

  By her side was the former leader of the decimated city, Ymal. His expression battled between terror and awe as he took in the destruction that had been wrought on his land.

  Damien felt sympathy for him. This had been his home, alongside thousands of others, and over the course of a few hours, it had been reduced to rubble and melted sludge, all caused by the very same man he stood helpless before.

  Realistically, there was nothing he could do. Even though he harbored hatred—which Damien couldn't tell seeing as awe and horror masked his face—the man was entirely weak before Damien.

  This was what Damien strived to avoid; to be helpless against the reality of the world.

  He sighed and nodded to the Monarch, acknowledging her. He reckoned she was here as a witness, and moved to speak when he was interrupted again, this time by a loud explosion and a heavy displacement of air.

  Damien's hair whipped violently, and Ymal staggered backwards, almost blown away by the heavy gust of wind. He was lucky to be standing beside a Monarch who—plucked him before he was lifted— weathering the gale almost as stoically as Damien.

  "A few days! I left you for a few days, Damien, and what did you do? You go and start a fight, decimating a city, killing an Empire Pillar, and paralyzing the other!" The new arrival yelled while he gestured behind to the shattered city and to Elora at his feet.

  By the time he was done, Damien was certain there was smoke spewing out of both his ears. He wisely chose not to point it out.

  "In my defense, I did give them a warning," Damien replied instead, defensively. He teleported towards the still-screaming Empire spy, bringing the Monarch and the Lord with him. The new arrival arrived on his own.

  With barely a gesture, he reduced the snake coiled around him to ash. "I told this one to deliver a warning to his superiors not to interfere in my business, and what did they do? They went ahead and attacked this very same city barely two hours later."

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  Unfortunately, his excuse failed to work.

  "Are you surprised!? They are the Empire, for crying out loud! They don't listen to warnings until it gets beaten deep into their skulls!"

  "That's what I did! I beat it into their skulls," Damien pointed out

  Both of them blinked and then paused, suddenly remembering that they weren't alone and that they were supposed to act as the mysterious, powerful figures that they were, not squabbling children.

  Keilan sighed. "You know that the Empire will have sensed the death of their Spirit lord; heck, the whole world should have sensed this fight just from their manifestation alone. We can't take that kind of heat right now."

  "First; that's a bit too much of a stretch that everyone could have sensed this fight," Damien said and then folded his arms. "And second; No, I'm not going into hiding again."

  Keilan slapped his face in clear exasperation. Dramatic much? "We'll talk about this later," He gestured at the potion in Damien's hand. "I presume this was meant for Elora? Why do you want to heal her? Don't tell me you're banking on her gratitude and adoration for saving her life to ease your relationship with the Empire? Damien, you put her in that situation."

  "No," Damien snorted and chuckled. "That'll be a sight to see, the great poison mistress transforming into my very own adoring fan. In all seriousness, what I plan isn't too far from what you just said. I'm simply going to turn her into my very own messenger."

  His brother blinked. "Do tell."

  "It crossed my mind that they might not take my message seriously if it was delivered by a mere Lord, a man whom they definitely now consider a betrayer. I reckon the warnings might stick if it's been delivered in a casket carried by their very own half-dead poison mistress."

  He teleported again, moving towards the half-dead woman, and then poured the liquid down her throat. It wouldn't heal any spiritual injuries, but it would close up all the physical ones, and any temporary backlash from strain would wash away soon.

  Sure enough, her wounds visibly began closing and she began showing signs of stirring.

  Damien turned towards the Monarch. "What do you want?"

  The woman was clearly nervous at being addressed directly, but her discipline held steadfast as she responded. "Forgive my presumptuousness, but I wanted to inquire if the Lord needs any help or errands delivered."

  "I don't know about needing help, but I need a message delivered," He told her. "Go back and inform your queen what has happened here. And tell her that I said she should hope for peace but be prepared for war."

  The Monarch nodded, taking Ymal with her as she left.

  "Now, for your own errand," Damien said, turning to the awakened Spirit Lady. "Knowing your Emperor, he should have already sent a force the moment he sensed your loss," He couldn't help but smile at that. "Or might even be coming himself. Hopefully, I won't be here when they arrive.

  "What I want you to do is deliver a simple. Salin here would give you context but you've sunk him into a traumatic coma," He pointed at the inert spy, who'd been overwhelmed by agony and had gone unconscious. "I don't want trouble, at least not yet. Tell your people to stay away from me and I'll do the same. If anyone asks, tell them that what happened here was a simple work incident, one that would surely be remedied by sticking to your assigned desk."

  Done with all that, he moved to leave when her voice rasped.

  "Kill... me. I... can't go back... like this." The great Elora Darkfang, mistress of poison and terror of the night, begged.

  Damien looked back. "What aim would killing you help me achieve?" He nodded at the unconscious spy. "If you die, my message would still get delivered, but unfortunately won't carry as much weight as if you'd delivered it yourself. Be a good girl and wait till your people come for you. You can do whatever you wish with yourself after, I don't care."

  He turned around and began making his way back to the city.

  "Why are you heading back there? It's nothing but rubble." Keilan followed.

  "Before we parted, I told you I felt a pull somewhere in this continent. Well, this is it, and I'm not leaving until I discover what drew me here."

  They arrived at where the walls of the city used to stand and gently floated off the ground, passing all the rubble on their path to the center.

  As they passed, they took in the city below them. It was unrecognizable from what it used to be a few hours ago. Most of it had either been reduced to rubble or was now turned to black, poisonous sludge, a huge courtesy to Elora.

  "Damn, you guys really did a number on this one, didn't you? And you didn't even manifest your Astral Images," Keilan whistled.

  "I was mostly trying to buy time for the people to flee; I couldn't very well add more destruction by summoning my image, could I? Besides, it wasn't needed."

  "They must have been smart people to have fled the city quickly. How, though, did they do that? No matter how small, evacuating more than a dozen thousand people on such short notice can't have been easy. Impossible, a doubting man might say."

  Damien shrugged. "It's not like what they did was surprising. Cirin, as well as the others, has methods in place to evacuate their cities within short instants."

  "Thank you for reminding me, sir obvious. But in case you forgot, those methods are only efficient when given a good deal of time. Say, an hour or two. I don't imagine this city was given the same."

  Damien bit his lips and nodded. "True."

  "Then we circle back to my question."

  Damien growled. "You can chase after the City lord if you want answers. Stop pestering me."

  The obvious truth was that Damien didn't know how it had been accomplished. He hadn't been paying that much attention. He contemplated confessing to Keilan, but chose against it. His brother would never let him live it down.

  They calmly made their way toward the middle of the city, carving a peaceful and unbarred path towards the temple. Of all the buildings in the city, the temple showed the least damage. Although a large portion of it was now rubble, the rest was surprisingly intact, with only a few cracks running through the walls to indicate damage.

  Damien waved his hands, channeling energy and both the intact and the destroyed parts of the temple were turned to dust, a fortunate gust of wind arriving just in time to blow it away.

  The absence of the structure revealed a giant hole beneath, dark as it rode deep into the foundation. Damien spread his senses, following the hole until it ended in the entrance of a mysterious opening half a mile below.

  Damien could sense a large room lay beneath, but for some reason, his senses failed to enter. It felt like he was standing in the entrance to a dark room. Large or small, he'd find out soon.

  He and Keilan glanced at each other, having sensed and agreed on the same solution. Together, they released their flight and let themselves fall into the hole.