He dashed out of the archway running not at the Annihilator but veering off through the scattering slag and the residential area.
"Cassiathon, NO!" Tania's scream was raw with terror.
The Angels jet-black eyes glanced at him a lapse, in his complete concentration. The Annihilator took advantage of the diversion rushing at the Angel, its leftover weapons spinning.
However Cassiathon wasn't targeting the beast. He grounded himself firmly confronting the advancing flow of lava. He made no effort to block it. He made no attempt to counter it with his fathers ultimate demise.
He modified it.
He recalled the intense frightening power of the rift. The brutal, existence of the Abyss. He grasped the fragment of himself he dreaded the fragment that had harmonized with the corruption. He did not release it. He channeled it.
From his hands grey energy interwoven with fierce streaks of intense purple crashing against the forefront of the slag. This was no conclusion. It was a tumultuous ignition.
The slag did not disappear. It transformed. It bubbled, churned and burst forth into a nightmarish swiftly expanding thicket of crystalline spikes and obsidian tendrils. The progression stopped the force redirected into forming a huge barrier that consumed the slags force and temperature.
It was revolting. It pulsated with wrongness.. It was not destroying his home.
The exertion caused his knees to give way. Harnessing the power in this manner not like a blade or a harvesting tool but, as a wild accelerator was excruciating. It seemed like ripping his very spirit.
The Annihilator, bewildered by the turbulent expansion paused for a deadly moment.
The Angel of Death refused.
His scythe gleamed—a gesture effortless it appeared to erase moments from reality.
The Annihilator came to a halt. Its buzzing ceased. Then from a fracture in its steel shell it started to crumble. Not breaking apart. Turning into delicate noiseless dust drifting downward until it vanished entirely. The fierce rifts in the sky mended themselves with a noise, like an inhalation.
The quietness that ensued was deep.
The Angel remained in the midst of the courtyard the pale dust, from his energy gradually drifting down. He gazed upon the spiky barrier Cassiathon had constructed. His eyes then fell on his son quivering on the floor veins bulging along his neck and arms his eyes shining with dim unhealthy violet afterglows.
He approached. The lifeless area contracted with every stride as though he were drawing the spirit of conclusion back, into himself.
He paused in front of Cassiathon. There was neither commendation nor reproach. Just a profound inscrutable evaluation.
"You redirected its force. You didn't terminate it. You converted it." He looked toward the thorn barricade. "This taint must now be cleansed, cautiously. It has roots."
"I understand," Cassiathon gasped, the flavor of iron and ozone lingering on his tongue. ". It protected the east wing. It preserved Moms garden. The neat conclusion would have destroyed everything."
The Angel remained quiet for a moment. He gazed from the monstrosity his son had fashioned to the protective resistance, in his sons expression.
"You picked the narrative of the duration " the Angel remarked at last. It was a statement, with meaning. He then. Headed over to Tania, who was already sprinting toward Cassiathon.
Morgan stepped out from the archway, his face a mask of stunned realization. "Wildfire," he murmured, to no one but himself.