Chapter 41 Typhoon of Celestial Tears

  The winds howled and tore at Jane and Clark’s robes. Jane’s mana and will danced to a tune of geographical alteration and destruction that could be measured in square miles. The only thing that was keeping a tornado from forming was Jane’s very delicate touch preventing the potency of the swirling winds to spiral inwards. As it stood, she was on the cusp of forming a tornado three miles wide. That was where the edges of her actual spell were. She had been forced to cast Control Weather in order to keep her own tenth level spell in check. The reason it was even necessary was that if a tornado formed then the acid rain would be launched outwards in all directions. That was fine if she was planning to leave a desert where a forest once was but it was not fine if she and her student were two miles away from ground zero. A little acid would be unpleasant for her but the odds of Clark surviving a good splattering of acid were not great, not quite low, but not great nonetheless.

  Lightning streaked down from the green tinted gray clouds and beat the rain to the ground. The lightning was fast, yes, but still slow enough that one could watch it move from heavens to ground with their own mortal eyes. As soon as the first lightning strike hit the ground, the entire heavens flashed an angry and ethereal rainbow before a chunk of the ground ten feet across was simply removed. There was no electrical discharge but a disintegration of the highest caliber instead.

  “Master!” Clark called over the near deafening winds. “There is someone coming!”

  “Give me another potion!” Jane called back, entirely uninterested in someone arriving to witness her world shaking magics. The undead hoard had already been nearly halted by a pair of gashes in Primatia.

  A spell that storm sorcerers liked to use, commonly referred to as a Whistle Blade, had been transformed from a spell for brand new mages to one for her and her alone. A small blade of wind, that resonated with a sharp whistle, had reverberated and fed on itself for ten whole minutes before she released it. It had flown up and then back down in a strike from the heavens that left Mother Gia with a new open wound. A gash in the world, fifty feet wide and one hundred and seventy feet long at the most severe, had been formed blocking off the undead’s northern flank. She then casted a second one and cut them off at their southern. Now, with only a small path, a mere fifty feet wide, that they could easily traverse, not only were they funneled but they were also slowed to a more manageable pace. Catastrophe was not known for quickly casted spells but rather for world shaking ones. The delay that their new chokepoint had created was enough for her Control Weather and Typhoon of Celestial Tears to be able to be unleashed before the undead could overrun her position.

  Clark handed Jane another potion and she greedily gulped it down before she dropped it next to another three. She had started drinking mana as soon as she had reached seventy five percent of her mana reserves and would continue doing so until she no longer needed to cast tenth level spells back to back. In fact, she was the only demigod who could cast tenth level spells. Time, Space, Gravity, Unity, and Freedom could all do things that were on par or even greater than her tenth level spells, but none of those were actual spells in the literal sense. They were freeform applications of mana and concepts rather than carefully created mana equations that were written in the language of magic itself. Technically, anyone who could find a way to cast any tenth level spell could cast all of the ones that she had created, there were even copies of them written in tomes in the nearby collage for new students to see what the absolute pinnacle of magecraft looked like.

  Another disintegration bolt hit the ground and removed another chunk of land. Both of the first two bolts had hit tightly packed areas of skeletons. There wasn’t a single zombie among the undead which meant that all of the prospective shambling undead had been used in more powerful rituals instead of generic reanimation. Both of her currently active spells were in full swing which meant that she no longer needed to hold them both in an iron grip. She only needed to loosely keep a hand on her Control Weather and a guiding one on her Typhoon of Celestial Tears. She still needed to manually direct each disintegration bolt but other than that, the spell would keep going by itself until she cut off the steady stream of mana it was drinking out of her. The acid rain had finally hit the ground in force and was starting to do its job nicely. Skeletons were dropping like flies as the acid melted straight through their bones in a matter of tens of seconds. That acid was one of the reasons why her spell was drinking her mana reserves dry.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Jane couldn’t hear how many people landed behind her but she could see Clark out of the corner of her eye and he looked more than a bit concerned. He had his wand at the ready but they both knew that Clark was a godsawful combat mage, a mediocre ritualist, and a young genius alchemist. He would lose in every head to head engagement he would ever take part in, that was just how most alchemists and enchanters were.

  Jane barely heard a whistle come from one of the newcomers over the winds. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is…” His voice trailed off. If he said anything else, it was too quiet to hear. As it was, she was having trouble hearing him. She felt the slightest stirring of dark mana nearby and Clark jolted in freight. “Relax.” The newcomer told Clark. “How focused is she?”

  “Decently, but not too much to speak.” Jane replied while she kept her eyes and the majority of her mana senses glued to the three hundred thousand undead that she was trying to utterly annihilate.

  “I’m Isaac Wexler, the Lord of Darkness.” He introduced himself. “And this is my wife.”

  “Lenna V’Nova, the Lady of Hellfire.” She introduced herself. Where the man’s voice was pleasantly in the middle of the average male register, the woman’s was soothingly and alluringly at the bottom of the female one. Jane’s first thought was that if Lenna ever sang a lullaby, she would probably fall asleep standing up. Her voice was just that smooth.

  “And my retainer, Shamesh.” Isaac finished the introductions.

  “It is a pleasure, Lady Catastrophe.” Shamesh said with a bow. Jane couldn’t see him bow but it was clear based purely off of how he talked that Shamesh had done so.

  “He might be made of bones but he is not a lich, please do not mistake him for one. Shamesh does not eat souls.” Isaac informed her. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “Just Jane is fine.” The Demigoddess of Catastrophes told the newcomers “And don’t expect me to call you by your titles or anything.” She then quickly glanced at Clark. “Potion.”

  Clark immediately grabbed another potion and handed it to her. “I apologize for my master, she will probably forget your names at least once before the hour is through.” Clark said and finished with a bow bow. “I am Clark Kristenson, but just Clark is fine.” His master had already downed the potion by the time he had finished his useless apology.

  Jane couldn’t see, but Isaac nodded in acknowledgement. “Alright, Jane, Clark, what is our plan of attack?” Isaac asked again.

  “Wait.” Jane told him. “Our plans will change based on how many of them are left by the time I am done.”

  Isaac shrugged. “Fair enough.” He walked up to stand next to but still slightly behind her. “What spell is this?” Isaac couldn’t help but ask.

  “It is two.” Jane replied just as a fifth disintegration bolt hit a group of undead. “Typhoon of Celestial Tears is what you can see with your eyes, my Control Weather is keeping the destruction more localized.”

  “That’s localized?” Isaac couldn’t help but question. As it was, the area of destruction was a sizable chunk of Sapphirestone or Safeharbor. “How wide would it be otherwise?”

  “Four miles of total destruction with another half mile in each direction still inside the splash zone.” Jane explained.

  “That could wipe out a city all by itself.” Isaac commented.

  “Yes.” Was Jane’s only reply. She glanced at Clark again. “Potion.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He got right to it and handed her another such item. He had a bottomless bag entirely full of nothing but her mana potions. In fact, he had two of them. Right now she was drinking from the bag that had all of the imperfect ones. The other bag had potions that he could use as well, not that doing so would likely increase his odds of survival if he ever managed to run out of mana while out in the field.

  “Should we stop for tea or are you going to run out of mana soon?” Isaac asked the demigoddess next to him.

  “Do you have biscuits?” Jane asked him. “Cookies? Bread?”

  Isaac looked back at Shamesh. “Do we?”

  “Yes.” Shamesh replied. “I retrieved an assortment of baked goods from the manor before we left.”

  Isaac nodded. “So, tea time?” He asked Jane.

  “I could really use something that isn’t liquid to consume.” She confirmed.

  “Okay, Shamesh, you heard her. Let’s stop for tea while the Demigoddess of Catastrophes continues enacting her namesake on the local undead population.” Isaac told his retainer and then turned back to Jane. “We’ll keep our eyes out for any of the higher tier undead that might escape the disintegration thunderstorm. If any of them come this way, we’ll handle them. This won’t be our first lich kill.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Jane replied with a nod and continued channeling her spell of ‘localized’ destruction.

  Amaranth Serentia V'Nova Wexler