Savage Awakening 252. The Temple of Zol (III)

For a while there was only grayness. Grayness spreading to the horizons of Zane's mind. He floated there, blinking at the nothing.

Then—a light.

Stormfire. Deep within. Burning with a familiar strength. The rest all seemed to fade. The flame brightened in his mind…

It was an old flame. Blue. Like back when he’d first put it together. 

And slowly echoes faded in around it, ghostly mirages, almost suggestions in the mind, impressions of visions. He saw Stormfire appearing deep in stormclouds, where the lightning grew hottest. Across a hundred, a thousand storms, soon too many to name… that same color. Echoing endlessly.

He saw himself. Fists full of the stuff. Pounding in the shells of giant steel beetles. Pounding in ice wolves. Pounding in undead skeletons. Lots of pounding. These were fond memories. He was pleased to see them again; they brought a warm feeling to his chest. 

Then the flame began to brighten. Began to change. Began to gain a certain profoundness.

The blue began to brighten. The echoes, the images, shifting, melting into new ones—ghostly lightning striking at the hearts of volcanoes and that blue going to shocking purple, spiking up the spectrum of intensity. A thousand lightning-bolts, striking a thousand flames, a thousand eruptions of magma…

That was his Stormfire now, he saw. And it had gained Concepts he knew. The ferocity of Plasma. The power of Extreme Intensity, the explosive spread of Chain Combustion—

Now Zane saw himself beating up giant crabs, and golems, and that one minotaur. 

He liked this highlight reel. It was getting him pumped up—now a part of him wanted to go out and smash more. Maybe when this was over.

The flame only brightened. 

Zane remembered how he had gotten Extreme Intensity. Seeing a dying phoenix crash through the heart of a star. Stars—the place where Stormfire was greatest.

That was where this flame was heading, he saw, as it strengthened more and more. Taking his powers to the heavens… beyond past, and present. To something new. 

It had gained a new color in the Astral Plane. A new dimension to its aura, a new Concept, an aspect of soul. It would burn there as fiercely as it burned here. It would catch on essence and flesh and life-force with the same intensity. It was a flame from which there was no escape. It would swallow every last part of you. 

Zane saw a man, back turned to him. A vague image, an impression in his mind. A big man of striking stature, rippling with muscle. He had long shaggy hair. He was burning up with that new Stormfire. Crushing down a dragon Monster with a stone slab of a head, whose scales were thick as boulders. The flame swallowed the beast one brutal blast—its essence, its flesh, even its soul—destroying it utterly. Feeding the power of the flame, the hunger… the Monster could only screech as its soul went up in smoke. 

A flame that burned life and soul and body alike. An all-consuming fire. 

The man stood there over the ruins, big fists clenched, breathing heavy… 

Nice.

Zane wondered who it was. Now Zane was breathing a little heavy too, just watching. 

It seemed pretty far out though from where he was now. Pretty advanced. 

He would get there, though, he vowed. 

The scene faded away—until only that Stormfire was left.

This Stormfire had a sense of completeness to it. He could feel it just looking at it. This must be what a full Fusion felt like.

But it only kept growing—growing, where there was nothing left to grow. It had to evolve. To change form.

To get even bigger.

A new vision: a sun flaring up before Zane. And he saw the Stormfire within.

Changing.

It grew dense. Dense with sheer raw power, solidifying—and Zane felt new Laws, new fields, come into play. Steel Laws—Magnetic fields of immense magnitude, streaming off that star, off all the super-heated steels within, lines of it washing over the Stormfire crisscrossing bearing down, carrying within them great powers. Electricity too—exciting Stormfire to a new stratosphere of power—to a new form entirely—

Something new blasted out of the surface of the sun. Some tongue of super-concentrated kind of Stormfire, one rush of pure power arcing straight out of the heart of the star, breaching the surface of space. And Zane felt a new dimension to it, a violent radiation flaring out, unseen energy scattering to the cosmos, hitting spectra of power he could not begin to understand... 

A new vision faded in. 

There was that man again. The wrath of a star flaring on his fists, wrestling down a silver-backed, silver-front gorilla Monster—a massive beast made of some metal of untold density, untold power... it was not in a league with any beast Zane had seen. The Laws in its body were past Mid-Fusion. And yet this man’s bare fists were melting straight through it. Pitting his muscle against the gorilla’s own, tearing the bellowing frothing beast apart with his bare hands. 

Zane was getting so pumped up he could almost hear the blood rushing in his ears. He was starting to itch. He wanted to get his own hands on something now. 

The man stepped on the chest of the fallen half-melted beast, smashed a star-streaked fist to his chest, let out a triumphant bellow… 

Zane blinked. 

Hold on. 

This man… seemed familiar. 

The fight-scene faded away. There was just the Stormfire again, burning in space. Flaring out of the surface of the sun… 

Getting bigger, wider until those flares raged across the surface of the star, taking up a huge swathe of it—gaining untold sums of raw power, gaining profound Concepts Zane could not begin to wrap his head around... Just when Zane wasn’t sure things could get bigger. They got bigger. 

It started projecting a field of heat and radiation so wide you could see it melting voids in space itself, see it burning up distant planets. Astral Lightning raged all over its surface… 

He wondered what level of power this was. Did the Patriarchs of those big Sects have power like this? 

The big man was back again. An increasingly familiar man to Zane. Zane saw, in flashes and impressions, a vision of him wielding these solar storms. Storms burning down his body, burning through him, firing up the core of him—he was erupting with its power. Eviscerating in three big blasts an army of giant dinosaur-looking Monsters. Fading away, moving faster, scraps of knowledge moving in a faster- and faster- flowing river… 

The raw Stormfire faded back in. Zane saw those solar storms spreading until it encompassed the entirety of the star—and just when he thought it couldn’t get bigger, brighter, the intensity just couldn't keep ratcheting up—it did… 

Until the surface of the star itself began to expand. Began to boil up—and things had reached a critical stage now, a point of unbelievabe high-power. It all started collapsing in on itself—great beams of light streaking toward the center. 

The sun exploded.

The amount of heat, amount of energy rippling out, washed over dots of planets— blackened them whole, crushed them, erased them in massive blasts. Vast sectors of space—crushed under the sheer force of it, the sheer heat, the raw power—Zane saw a of white-scaled, three-headed dragon-Monsters.

Streaming with lightning and light laws far above Zane's knowledge. Shooting across the vast sense of space like meteors, screaming, going super-sonic, racing away. Trying to get ahead of that wave of sheer destruction.

He saw monstrous Space-Whales, each as big as a planet, carrying great Monster hordes on their backs—little armies clinging onto them like barnacles—floating through space. They let out roars as blubber sheared off their bodies. After the first heat wave, there were just skeletons; the next wave passed, and they weren't even bones. Just particles released to the universe…

A new scene was fading in. That same man. Holding the power of a collapsed star in his fists. And this time Zane caught a glimpse of his side profile. A big chest. Strong jaw. Dark eyes. 

It was Zane. 

There was more—the scenes were nowhere near ending—but the flow had gotten too fast now. The scenes were splitting apart, fuzzing up, fading away—Zane tried to cling on. He wanted to see more. But it was fading too fast, swirling into the grayness… 

He growled in frustration. But he lost it. 

He was left there in the nothing. Breathing fast. Hands twitching, heart hammering. Trying to make sense of what he just saw. 

That would be his future. It was nowhere near finished. But that level of power… 

It was not something you could get at Level 500, he knew. He did not think that was Level 600-power either. That… 

The world was very big. Bigger than he thought. 

Then even the grayness faded away, and he blinked some more.

He appeared to be face-down in some dirt. This did not faze him, as it was a position he found himself in quite often. He rolled over. Blinked at the air, at nothing. Thinking. Heart still pumping, still breathing heavy. 

After a while he sat up. 

He ambled back to Reina in a bit of a daze. She had just finished up a meditation—she smiled, gave him a kiss, said she’d gotten close to her Concept. She would take a little break the next day or two. Then make a final push—she was pretty sure she would get it. After her Fourth Evolution her comprehension speed had shot up yet another grade—it might be the fastest of anyone Zane knew except for himself now.

Then she studied his face. He was pretty sure his face was not really different than usual. But she seemed to have a sixth sense for him; she could tell just looking at him. She could tell when something had gotten into him. Her brow furrowed. “What is it?”

“I will become bigger,” he informed her. 

She looked a bit puzzled. 

She said she thought he seemed a little agitated. Like he needed to blow off some steam. 

He blinked at her. She blinked at him. 

They stumbled off to do some Leveling.

Level up! 

Essence Level 308 -> 309

*** 

The creature once known as Fennick let out a shriek. A shriek of laughter but it sounded like a crowd, all screaming at once.

It was racing up the floors. Up to the Water-World of Thora now, Floor 71—a world covered in 98% ocean…or it had been.

From a bird’s eye view, it would seem the whole blue surface was being wiped over by a line of frosty black. Crackling over with black seething ice as a creature with powers beyond this world raced across its surface at blistering speeds. Shredding anything that dared get in its way with casual swipes.

Soon… it laughed.