Chapter 592: No Rest for the Wicked

Grey hooked a thumb toward the white-haired man whose lips were still stretched apart by white-gold threads and looked toward Elowen.

"Who the hell is this guy?"

Elowen finally seemed to recover enough from everything that had just happened to remember she was supposed to be ruling a room full of former monarchs, even if the lingering flush across her cheeks still betrayed how badly Grey had thrown her off.

After clearing her throat and straightening on the throne, she introduced him as Emperor Vaelor Ren of the Asterion Territory.

Grey nodded once as though that explained everything, snapped his fingers, and the white-gold hooks immediately vanished from Vaelor’s mouth. The former Emperor stumbled back while rubbing his lips, his eyes carrying considerably less confidence than they had a few moments earlier, while Grey rolled one shoulder and gave an exaggerated yawn that had nothing to do with actual fatigue.

He had already swept his gaze across nearly every face in the room and understood most of the situation without needing anyone to explain it.

Some were angry, some were afraid, and a few were trying very hard to pretend that they were neither, which was really all Grey needed to know. He stretched his back until several pops echoed through the throne room, then nodded to himself and said: "Alright, I can already see how this is gonna go. Some of you are gonna be unhappy after this, you’re gonna let it fester, and eventually one or two of you are gonna try something stupid that makes me have to kill you."

Several expressions tightened, but Grey only smiled brighter as he continued.

"So how about instead of doing all that, we decide things right here and now, because if any of you think you’ve got a shot against me, make it known now. Think of it as me saving your bacon, because otherwise I’ll put you six feet deep."

Somehow, the throne room seemed to become several degrees colder despite the fact the most threatening person in it was standing there in nothing but boxers.

Nobody seemed capable of explaining how Grey had managed that, but perhaps it had something to do with the fact they had only recently learned that this half-dressed lunatic was the same person who had beaten their allied Goddess to death and erased Duke Valdi like an afterthought.

Whatever the reason, nobody seemed willing to answer him.

Grey waited a few moments longer, already preparing to call them all pussies, when his eyes suddenly narrowed and his head turned toward the distant western wall. Several people followed his gaze without understanding what had caught his attention, but before the confusion could fully settle, the air violently shuddered and every window in the throne room exploded inward.

Thousands of shards of glass rushed toward the people inside, only for white-gold tendrils to flash through the chamber and catch every last piece before even one could touch Elowen, Mauve, Brad, Amunet, or anyone else Grey cared enough about protecting.

The control required was precise enough that several of the former monarchs forgot the threat from moments earlier and simply stared. Some pieces of glass were no larger than fingernails, yet every one of them hung suspended in a massive white-gold web while, a heartbeat later, the ground itself finally began to shake as though the city had been too stunned to react at the same time as the air.

Grey sighed as he looked toward the shattered windows and complained, "No rest for the wicked..."

"Then stop doing sinful shit," Amunet mumbled under her breath, clearly not intending for anyone outside her immediate surroundings to hear it.

Grey’s ears caught it anyway and he burst out laughing, then pointed vaguely toward the room and said, "Hey, I dunno which one of you has Ma Famille right now, but give it to Elowen and Xerchen."

Xerchen blinked when his name was suddenly called, while Grey clasped his hands behind his back like some wizened old monk and added, "Sounds like I need to go stretch my legs."

Grey walked through the shattered remains of the windows as though none of this was remotely unusual, while the thousands of captured glass shards floated after him in a slow procession.

With another step, his body blurred out of existence and reappeared high above the Palace, where his expression shifted the instant he saw what was approaching from the horizon.

Calling it a storm almost felt insulting, because the hurricane filled most of the western sky, its clouds rotating in a massive black wall while constant flashes illuminated entire trees and chunks of earth being carried through the air like scraps of paper.

Grey pursed his lips and reached out one hand, causing The Virtueless to tear free from the room where he had left it and rocket through the Palace toward him. The rod slapped into his palm with a thunderous boom that sent a ripple through the skies, while Brad, Elowen, Xerchen, Mauve, Amunet, and several others hurried outside below to see what had caused the disturbance.

Grey glanced at the thousands of glass shards still hovering around him, realized he had only kept them because he thought he might find some dramatic use for them, then dismissed the tendrils and let the pieces clatter harmlessly across the Palace rooftops.

"Thought I was gonna do something badass with those," Grey muttered before turning his attention back toward the approaching hurricane. Brad landed nearby and asked whether he was worried, causing Grey to tilt his head and answer, "About the hurricane? No. About how the fuck I’m supposed to punch weather? Kinda."

His lips pursed as he thought for a moment, but then his eyes suddenly brightened and a grin spread across his face.

"Oh, right," Grey said as he slowly lifted one foot, his Neural Frame surging with enough force that his white hair began dancing around his head while white-gold lines spread beneath the Palace and raced outward through the streets.

The formation beneath Melix awakened in response to him, carrying those same lines farther and farther until Grey could feel its reach stretching toward the very edges of the Territory.

Grey pressed his raised foot downward slowly, almost as though he were forcing it through spacetime itself, and the instant it touched the air below him, the entire Empire shook from its capital to its furthest borders.

White-gold Light erupted from the ground in a wall thousands of meters high, curving upward and over Melix until an enormous barrier enclosed the Holy City beneath a luminous dome.

The approaching hurricane slammed into that barrier with enough force to make the horizon disappear behind black clouds and lightning, yet for all its fury, the storm could not move another inch.