Prometheus, that was his name although at this point there was no sense in thinking about it; suddenly a fire had covered the entire underground complex beneath the city of Alessandro. The capital city of the province of Maeve was extremely imposing, being older than the Hegemony itself and so large that to traverse it on foot one would take months.
The fire would take hours to reach its peak probably, but that would already be enough to draw the attention of the authorities, which in itself was a considerable problem.
"Destroy everything, leave nothing incriminating, even your slaves and servants if necessary," he shouted orders while throwing dozens of notebooks and notes into the fire, hours of research into the trash; although at this point there was no sense in lamenting, the information itself was useless beyond the symbolic. What was truly important and what really hurt him to destroy was in front of him.
"A real shame," growled one of the alchemists in charge of the research, while trembling in an attempt to contain his frustration in front of them; there were dozens of small abominations that had already lost every previous aspect of what they had been.
Feys, beasts, and even Sidhe, and other creatures and races that had been deformed by the touch of The Tempest writhed like masses of flesh covered in tumors while expelling pus and blood from every one of their pores due to infections and self-inflicted wounds from their painful existence.
"How much time will this set back the advances," he growled with pain while grabbing one of the containment bars with anger.
"Months, maybe years, but the losses can be recovered if we recover that girl alive; maybe we can use her in some way and advance the rituals," said the alchemist.
"The rituals are sacred," growled Prometheus, offended in a certain way.
The alchemist hid his disdain while saying with certain tact: "Rituals are rituals, results are what's important; The Tempest doesn't care if there are sacrifices or not, but the intention. Feelings are the greatest source of energy, rituals are means to gather that emotional energy, focus it, just as runes or sigils are unnecessary if the mystery is mastered."
"Then master it quickly, then we won't need rituals," growled Prometheus while thinking of leaving the place. "Kill those things quickly and burn them, I don't want any more demo..."
But before he could finish, his eardrums exploded from the intensity of the shockwave that impacted his body.
In an instant his world spun as if it were a mirage; he saw a familiar but also unknown figure floating in the air in front of him, he tried to say something but realized that his mouth had already disappeared.
But what had not disappeared was the pain.
...
Fire, she was the fire or rather she wanted to be the fire.
The flames covered her entire prison consuming everything around her, there was no longer flesh on her where they could hurt her, there was no longer pain only fire, the warm and vengeful fire that consumed everything she hated.
Although she no longer had a body as she had conceived it before, she continued to retain a vague human and unconscious form; she extended what appeared to be her arm, which at this point was a set of bright and painful flames, which devoured the metal wall in an explosion of fire.
As if they were fireworks, the flames spread like a wildfire throughout the place; everything could burn in this world because that was her will.
"I wish everything were that easy," whispered a voice behind her; like a mirage a figure materialized behind her who seemed indifferent to her flames as if it were an illusion.
"Master," she whispered despite having neither mouth nor throat at this point.
"Yes, I'm glad you still consider me your master, Labrainne," whispered the beautiful woman; she was covered in a crimson veil and was attired in a beautiful and blinding golden dress, she was the image of perfection in body and soul.
The holy compassion and mercy that only gods could have.
"What am I," she murmured now terrified by her appearance; confused she tried to contain the flames that now acquired a dark reddish hue.
"Calm down, calm down it's not your fault, you simply awakened a gift that was always yours," she murmured as she advanced and hugged her, drawing her to her shoulder; to her surprise the flames had disappeared, even her body had returned to normal and she was wearing the same clothes as before.
"What just happened," she whispered confused.
"You are a witch darling, you are a witch and from now on the veil of confusion and falsehood has fallen; from now on the world is yours to change, but there is a price, there is always a price."
...
Labrainne had awakened as a witch and as a pyromancer; on top of everything she was probably a jackpot for the Witch Cult, but for now the main objective was to find information about the illuminated of The Tempest.
"Mars, can you calculate the location of the archives?" she asked while looking slightly at her companion; she didn't enter her mind as she did with Labrainne although doing so in itself with her telepathic abilities was complicated, besides she also didn't know if she could withstand the amount of information in Mars's brain.
The Witch Cult had been founded less than three years ago, at least on the continent, but its number of members continued to grow at an accelerated pace. Twelve of those members had awakened their gifts, the rest were auxiliary agents, or people who showed talent for the apparent awakening.
Labrainne was one of the latter.
The nature of her abilities according to her leader's own description was quite complicated; as she had explained, probably if she hadn't intervened with her manipulation of laws, anomalies like them, the witches, would have likely died because of their own abilities.
Spontaneous combustion, a stroke, or other mental conditions or apparently degenerative diseases.
Their master had saved them and had paid a cost for that, they couldn't let her down; as saviors of the world and of all lives in it they couldn't allow it.
Mars dressed in her typical whitish toga covered in golden lines, which barely covered her chest, evidencing that she wore nothing under the toga. She wore a death mask on her face that hid it from prying eyes while her ebony black hair, which was braided, fell over her right shoulder.
But what stood out most about her was obviously her two horns similar to a bull's that protruded from her head.
"Over there, I can see clashes and combat in this direction as well as greater resistance, here they must be keeping anything of use."
The remaining five responded with different voices and postures of assent; it was rare for all seven to gather.
But for that reason, it was impossible for them to fail.
Do you know the definition of a computer? Well, the most obvious definition is a machine that generates computations, that is, it analyzes and solves problems thus generating information that can be read.
Each datum had different values and to do it simply bits are generated, which are the alternation of value of one and zero, which people call binary language.
Why do I talk about this, why do I try to define the concept of a computer when now I was in a world where those concepts were unknown.
Well, the reason is quite simple really, I had discovered a device or rather a computer, it really didn't look like a computer at the time, I had found it by chance, it had the appearance of a glass tablet or even an orb but its appearance wasn't fixed.
It took me a few months to understand what it was and when I did I was stunned, it was a computer and not an ordinary computer.
It was a damn quantum computer.
Or at least it functioned as such, the concept under which it functioned was aligning probabilities and cause and effect, granting an authority.
That authority allowed it to govern a single concept absolutely as if it were the incarnation of that word, but it had limits.
But she was good at breaking them.
Suddenly the door in front of her opened revealing a basement, or rather a rudimentary laboratory.
In front of her were dozens of men dressed in long robes with a strong smell of chemicals and herbs, but also of blood and especially burnt flesh.
Her gaze fell on the poor existences locked in the containment cells at the back of the room, the alchemists were throwing different types of acids and accelerants to consume their bodies totally ignoring their suffering and pain.
At this point they were no longer human...
No, from the beginning they weren't human, but despite that they were living beings, it was life even though she couldn't consider herself a savior, this type of pain inflicted so indifferently, this unnecessary suffering...
Why and for what.
Before the leader of the group could say anything even she whispered: "Fire."
Her sister had a predilection for fire, she could see it through Monday's eyes, and she could also see her wounds, she also knew who had inflicted them on her.
She planned to pay him back with the same medicine.
A small contained explosion of heat like a small white sun emerged in the middle of nowhere, what she had manifested was a small concentration of intangible fire.
The flame authority arose in her, she could use dozens of types of fire although it had its limits, flames above the void rank were impossible for her but intangible flames could damage even a mortal lord.
The ethereal flame was the one she chose, the fire was invisible but the heat absolute; in an instant everyone in the center of the room felt an absurd wave of heat that charred their skin and made their airways burn.
Those closest to the explosion died due to the immediate evaporation of internal liquids from the water in their body to the blood, those furthest away screamed in pain while large portions of flesh from their bodies disappeared consumed by the white light which ended in relatively quick although painful deaths.
While the leader of all this operation had been thrown a short distance from her, Korelia's body was covered in a robe made from the leaves of a faerie tree and it was a spiritual treasure that was fireproof, therefore immune to most natural flames, although she moved away from the center of the flames so as not to be affected by her own attack.
Then her gaze shifted to her primary target in that attack, the telepathic synapse she had with Monday allowed her to receive a large amount of information which Mars had provided her through her divinatory calculations so she managed to deduce in a few moments the name of the broken person in front of her.
Prometheus was in a totally agonizing state, his body was totally broken; most of his shoulders and even legs had been mutilated with multiple holes showing the remains of burnt bones.
But what stood out most was his face, it was totally decomposed; his hair had long since been completely burned leaving his pale skull totally exposed while one of his eyeballs had already partially melted, its white matter falling from his cheek, while his own lower jaw had already disappeared only his frontal remaining which hung showing his few teeth due to his lack of lips.
"It seems you're already on your last legs, how unfortunate, I planned to make you suffer a bit more," she growled with annoyance at the idea of not being able to take complete revenge although at this point it didn't matter, Monday had already rescued her by this point.
"Just die," Korelia growled indifferently as she advanced toward the flames intending to see if there was any useful record she could rescue from the laboratory although she didn't have too much hope.
But then her body moved by instinct to the right dodging what seemed to be a kind of claw.
Stunned, she turned around quickly frowning with disgust upon seeing her opponent.
The creature or rather the existence she had in front of her eyes at this point was no longer a person but rather an abomination, a spawn.
The broken and shattered flesh had regenerated around the muscles in twisted and unnatural ways; tentacles and strange appendages emerged from Prometheus's legs as his body stood up so to speak.
His unusable arms broke while the bone hardened to the point of almost becoming metallic, he replaced hands with blades while a huge mouth-shaped appendage covered in blade-like teeth emerged from what had been the man's broken jaw up to chest height.
The blade arm of the existence that had been Prometheus retreated from the place where it had stabbed Korelia while its remaining eye, which was so swollen and covered in clotted blood that it seemed about to explode, moved desperately in all possible directions.
"You smell strange, female," growled the creature as from its mouth emerged a tangle of tentacles covered in cysts and spines simulating a tongue, the remains of the ravages caused by the white phosphorus with curiosity, "and you also have strange abilities, your soul is strangely abnormal."
The creature's screeching voice resonated in all the rooms echoing from all directions as if the sound of its words bounced off the walls crawling into her ears in an unpleasant and unholy symphony.
"I am the Architect of Reality," growled Korelia arrogantly, "I manipulate the programming of this world as if it were a game, although breaking reality at my whim yes I can create and I suppose you are one of the spawns of The Tempest who plan to open up to this world."
"Reality, programming, strange words I know but not in the way you say," growled the creature while laughing, its words dug deeper into Korelia's brain, with each word a beep clouded her consciousness as if someone tried to enter her head.
"Hehe," Korelia laughed with a strange smile suddenly hitting both her ears with force with such force that it was practically lethal especially using it on one's own head, the pain was such that even she couldn't help but bite her tongue while tears emerged from her eyes.
"I got tired of listening to you, I have no interest in what any creature of your kind says, apparently you entered that bastard's body through an unholy ritual, so I will exterminate you like the vermin you are."
The creature looked at her strangely, it seemed to be speaking but at this point she couldn't hear it, she even felt some dizziness with the loss of her hearing, apparently her inner ear had also been partially damaged affecting her balance.
She couldn't heal herself, she didn't have that ability so now her hearing was limited but even so.
Closing her eyes she smiled, she didn't need hearing at this point, after all Monday at this point was linking her senses with her own allowing her to have total spatial awareness through the natural evolution of Monday's ability, Far Sight.
Monday was a telepath so she could communicate with others through mental messages or even read minds although that was a bit more complicated than it seemed and normally was too great a physical burden for the affected as well as for Monday herself.
But the other unique capacity she had was Far Sight, which was practically that her senses could leave her body at will being able to perceive in three dimensions outside her body what occurred at a great distance, although this had as a condition a bridge, that is, another person being nearby.
Monday could extend her senses outside Korelia's body and link both of their senses sharing the information they received which made her an extremely useful support person.
"Now I can hear again," Korelia thought with a smile, as she saw that the creature was getting bored and simply advanced in her direction at surprising speed, Prometheus was a Feysir with only one dharmic rune, his physical strength was enough to break a normal person's neck with a slap and although she herself was stronger than a normal person his physical strength had increased considerably.
"I possess no more spiritual energy," she thought to herself, she had accumulated quite a lot of spiritual energy to make a single attack that would exterminate a large part of the cultists, apparently she had overreached.
"I the envoy of the blizzard, will devour your mortal soul," growled the creature now able to hear her and was glad at a certain point that apparently listening to her no longer had negative effects.
"Thunder," she murmured with a superficial smile suddenly the air pressure began to change around her from the tip of her finger emerged a small metallic bullet formed from a coin in her possession.
Lightning formed through the variation of atmospheric pressure when cold air collides with hot forming a change in pressure that ends in electrical energy.
She didn't have energy to generate that amount of electricity but her body did, the bioelectricity circulating through every nerve and cell of her body, was much greater than any human had.
She only had to sacrifice a bit of energy for her vital functions.
"Bang."
The creature moved at absurd speed, it was twenty meters away in a breath and a half it was half a meter away from Korelia and the bullet immediately pierced its amorphous arm.
The flesh exploded, but in a few moments it began to regenerate again as if despite having burned, but despite that Korelia didn't seem too worried, after all she had gained new material.
"You are just a mortal, a sack of meat to devour," laughed the possessed Prometheus despising the wounds he had gotten on his body.
But unfortunately for him Korelia had obtained materials to work with.
After all she hadn't foreseen the appearance of a possessed one, so she had burned everything but now she had enough iron to work.
The blood and flesh that had fallen from the explosion the creature had suffered solidified under Korelia's will, she only needed to touch a drop of violet blood to transform the rest into a beautiful sword.
A screech of metal hitting metal resonated when Korelia while dancing among the flames was pushed backward by the clash between both although the monstrosity at this point couldn't be considered unscathed at this point.
What remained of the creature's head had been severed by Korelia's blood blade while she herself had her face stained with her enemy's blood.
"First blood," she smiled, "or rather second, although at this point who's counting."
And then the abomination's laughter was suppressed by Korelia's own maniacal laughter as the duel of two monsters began.