Several hundred ships had reached the smoking plain unharmed, hovering just above the ground. Broad ramps sprouted from their hulls, and ranks of shouting Manslayers poured from their decks. Their commanders had spotted the charging Legions of Uurz, and now the ranks of Manslayers rushed to meet them. The sky was clear of dreadnoughts, but the plain swarmed with the unleashed legions of Zyung. They flooded in thousands from the surviving ships.
The Men of the Stormlands and their Giants were still outnumbered forty to one.
Never was there a salt such as this…
Sungui filled her mouth with a handful of Zyung’s essence, her head spinning, the light of his power streaming from her eyes. She was drunk on his Almighty potency, as were they all. They crawled across the last of his white mound, slurping the salt of divinity and moaning their pleasure. Heedless of those who watched them with silent condemnation, they devoured the one who had Diminished them for so many ages, sick with the boundless pleasure of it.
Her eyes caught Ianthe, spilling a stream of the pale grains into her own mouth, and, beyond her, Gammir biting into a congealed fragment. And there was fat Durangshara, who would not spare a single grain, and mighty Eshad, sweet Myrinhama, the alchemists Darisha and Gulzarr, and the triplets Johaar and Mezviit and Aldreka. And seven hundred more devourers of the High Lord Celestial’s immortal essence. The coven had swiftly salted and devoured those High Seraphim who refused to heed Ianthe’s call, yet two hundred more had joined the rebels this day rather than face destruction. Consuming the essence of their fellow Diminished ones while Iardu and his allies battled Zyung was nothing compared to ingesting the Almighty himself.
It was almost too much power.
The coven’s cries of ecstasy rose like glorious songs of shame and debauchery. They gloried in this consumption. If there had been any less of them, Sungui doubted they could have contained the power coursing through their bodies.
Her mind reeled, and she swayed atop the salt-mound. Soon the last of Zyung would be gone. Great thunders broke overhead, and the flames of Uurz were quenched by a torrential downpour, yet the coven paid attention to none of it. They rolled on their backs among the flattened grasses, caught in the terrible, transcendent rush of Zyung’s ingested essence. Sungui struggled to keep her feet. The Emperor of Uurz stood nearby with his sorcerer allies, watching as the seven hundred slurped up the remaining salt, which had mingled with the mud and rain.
Visions fell upon Sungui like waking dreams, fragments of Zyung’s scattered consciousness. An abyss of stars, seething with stellar eruptions. A primordial sphere of swamps and volcanoes. The dark temples of forgotten ages. A sea of blood and flame. Multitudes of tiny lives, flickering into existence and fading into nothing, numerous as the stars themselves. A continent teeming with savage life, endless wars, rivers of red and collapsing spires of crystalline wonder. Shapes and forms without name…
Memories.
She did not want Zyung’s memories. Only his power. Only freedom from his long rule, the opportunity to roam this world and beyond as she desired. The shattering of his empire, the death of his great dream. The untold power of her primal self.
Yet there was something else in the salt. Iardu had placed it there.
In the depths of the dark dreams spinning like stormwinds inside her head, there blossomed a deep and abiding warmth. A calm eye in the hurricane of thought and sensation. It grew like a golden lotus, spreading petals across the garden of her mind.
She saw unborn infants sleeping in the wombs of their mothers, like the world itself held in the embrace of the cosmos. The tears of lovers fell like sweet rains across her altering mind. The strong arms of Men building high walls and proud towers, the breath of mercy bestowed from one brother to the next. The innocence of children found in every soul that manifests into the living world. A boundless ocean of light containing all that lives, all that is yet to live, and all that has lived.
A sense of undeniable unity, heavy as the gravity of stars.
Oneness.
I will never be the same…
She wept tears bright as quicksilver. Those reeling in the salt about her did the same.
Iardu has poisoned us.
No.
He has enlightened us.
Sungui was on her knees now. Ianthe and Gammir stood over her. They grasped her hands, pulling her up. There were no tears in their eyes, yet they grinned as well-fed wolves must grin over the corpse of their kill. The rest of the seven hundred still lay senseless and dreaming in the rain, intoxicated by the power of guzzled divinity. Lost in the throes of an unexpected enlightenment.
“Is it not wonderful?” the Panther said. “Never have I had such a feast!”
Gammir howled at the storming sky.