Chapter 482: Unrelenting Hunger

A shrill howl erupted around the point, and the pull from it rose sharply.

At that moment there were hundreds of thousands of the undead inside that space, and all of their feet came off the floor in a long, slow, curling line, and they went into the point. I did not think they were going anywhere. They were becoming fuel for it, and every one of them made the pull stronger.

My eye widened as I realised what that meant, and a wave of force spread across the ground that made the stone ring like a struck bell, and all of it began to rise, while massive chunks of stone flew out of the pyramid I had created as the entire structure began to lean inward.

The north, east and west faces left the earth in the same instant, millions of tons of hardened stone travelling sideways and upward and inward all at once, folding as they came, breaking into slabs the size of city blocks and then into pieces the size of houses and then into gravel and then into dust, and every stage of that happening in different parts of the same wall at the same moment, so that it was like looking at a mountain being unmade from the inside while it was still arriving.

It was one of the most amazing and terrifying things I have ever seen.

The crater I had been lying in was sucked into the point, and then the bedrock beneath it came up after it, and then the rock under that, and I could see down into the earth, layer under layer under layer, strata that had been laid down before there were people to walk on them, peeling off and going into the light like pages torn out of a book.

What sort of power had I unleashed?

Through the massive door showing the realm of the Necromancer, I could see the grey plain tilting, and the dead standing on it in their millions beginning to slide across the ground, as if the force of the black hole had reached into that place and was no longer satisfied with consuming flame alone. Even the massive bones of the gods in there had begun to shiver.

I was on one knee in the middle of all of it, and nothing touched me. A slab the width of a town square crossed the bowl four feet over my head, and the wind of it did not pull my coat.

The Necromancer screamed something, and the bones of the god she had summoned moved towards the point, and it raised its hand, and closed it on the point.

In that instant everything stopped. The force that had been dragging the stranger and the Necromancer away from me, and all the apocalyptic destruction it was causing, simply halted.

Then the point ate the hand of the god.

The bones of a god were durable enough to hold back that pull, but whatever powered the point had grown too fast, and I watched with fascinated horror as the god drew back a wrist with nothing on the end of it, and looked at it almost in surprise, before its entire body came off the floor.

A roar like a beast out of the deep erupted from it as it fought to pull itself away. It dug its feet into the stone, and it was useless, because the stone broke off and went into the point with it. The end did not change. The god was drawn in, and its screams suddenly stopped.

∞

All this while, the Necromancer had not stopped chanting, but the moment the god vanished she coughed out green flame as if she had been struck. That distraction caused the massive portal she had opened into her realm to snap shut, and without that portal taking the majority of the pull, the force exerted on everything around us exploded.

I saw the faces of the stranger and the Necromancer turn towards me, and for the first time I saw pure fear in them. Then they were sliding backwards towards the point, much faster than before.

The claws on their seven limbs dug into the air itself, and it tore, and they were dragged closer and closer.

"You cannot do this," they both screamed at once.

"I believe that I already did," I said, from one knee, with one eye and one arm and most of my chest gone.

They cursed me and kept fighting the pull, green flame pouring out of their bodies and travelling a few feet before it was dragged in, and before long the lower half of the spider body was touching the point, and the point was taking it apart.

Maybe the stranger was used to pain, but the Necromancer clearly was not, and her screams would have given the Elric of before nightmares for the rest of his life.

The green fire in their shell was pulled out of it, and the shell began to vanish into the point. The stranger gritted his teeth as he fought, anchoring all seven of their legs on empty space, and he turned towards me.

"I am a Sky Beast... I can serve you if you save me. I can smell the heavens on your body. Save me, I am willing to serve."

My eye widened at that.

I had never felt any godly power from the stranger, and I had not known what to make of him. He must have been something similar to Aurora, though not a Heavenly Beast like her.

But the thought of taking this creature with me never crossed my mind. I was a Heaven Beast Tamer, which meant I could claim more than one beast, and I would never accept a thing like this.

"No," I said.

The stranger’s face went slack, and the seven legs holding it back from the point were torn out of space, and its shell split as the body and everything inside it were drawn in.

"Ahhh... Vymrri sorlahari tuvahhrr!"

Those were the last words of the Necromancer, before her face was torn off the stranger’s head and sucked into the point, and the green threads that had stitched them together came apart.

I expected the stranger to follow, and he held on, even with no fingers and half a face left, with nearly all of the spider-like part of his body already gone.

Then what was left of his head turned, and he looked at me, and he grinned, and he stopped holding on, and in the moment before he went in he tore out one of his arms and launched it at me.

Against the pull and against all common sense, the arm came through the air straight at me, and I could barely move before it went into my chest under the heart. If I had been any slower, it would have torn the heart out.

I looked up at the moment the stranger vanished, and he was still smiling.

Falling on my back, I gasped at the edge of death as I watched the world being taken apart in front of me. The entire pyramid I had created was gone, but the hunger of the point was not exhausted.