Killing these men had been effortless, and I looked at the Captain; he did not run, which was commendable, but his hand was shaking, and the dark light at the tip of his staff was flickering.
I looked into his eyes, and the fear in them disgusted me, because I could as well imagine this same fear in the eyes of the multitude butchered inside this city.
Still, he had seen me butcher his men, and understood that there was no version of this where he walked away.
"Who are you?" he asked, the fear leaking out in his voice. I saw the mages on the ground beginning to shift towards me, hope in their eyes.
I did not answer, but walked closer to him, and the Captain raised his staff, and the dark light at its tip flared. I flicked my finger, and all ten of his fingers fell off, causing the staff to drop and pain finally filled his eyes.
Another flick of my finger, and I made a clean slice behind his thigh and ankle, causing him to fall to his knees. I raised my hand, and a single thread of lightning wrapped around his throat. I made it visible so he could see it.
The Captain’s eyes bulged; the screams that should erupt from his mouth at losing all his fingers and the injuries on his legs were forced to remain inside his chest.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I looked around me and saw the mountain of the dead, and a sense of helplessness filled me... what was the point? I was already too late.
I loosened my thread a bit, causing him to gasp in pain. "What city is this?"
The Captain bravely held back his cries of pain and said, "You are in Tarth, please, I can..."
His head fell off his shoulders, and I closed my eyes, pulling up all the information I knew about my continent. I had never truly focused on geography, but the soul of an Arcanist was a ridiculous thing.
I was able to draw out every map I had seen of the continent, and it did not take me a long time to be able to find out where I was. From there I traced the path to my village, and it was about 2,500 miles.
Any other time I would think this was a far distance, but I have seen the scale of this war, and I knew that nowhere was far enough.
Opening my eyes, I released dozens of threads, tearing through the bindings that held the mages in place, while I pulled out all the spikes in the chest of the Adept. I kept one spike with me, then I turned around and took a single Stormstep, pushing as much of my Anima into that spell, and it took me far outside the city, nearing the place that I had crashed.
No doubt there were a lot of people in the city still needing my help, but trying to save them all at this time was useless. I already knew what I needed to do, but before I did that, I needed to see them, even if they were dead; I wanted to see my family.
The channels all over my legs expanded as I pushed more power inside them, and I took another Stormstep, my body vanishing only to reappear a hundred feet in the air, nearly a mile away.
Then I took another step, and I pushed that distance even further. The spell description had told me that the area for this spell to operate should be counted in meters and not miles, but I knew that this spell description had been tailored to me when I was an Adept, and not now that I was at the Arcanist level.
Not even considering the effect of my Arcanist Title, my crystalline soul could supercharge any of my spells to levels beyond anything I had ever known before, and I would need all of this power for what was going to be coming ahead of me.
I had decided that no matter what happened, and the state I saw my family in, I would return to the heavens to see how many Arcanists I could kill, and if there was no Arcanist that could stop me, then I would go above the clouds and fight the Sovereigns.
It was not that I had gone mad; it was just because I knew that I needed to go back, to Caelith Mourne. Only there could I hunt demons and open all seven of my Earth Gates, and finally become something more than a Broken Celestial.
I needed power... I needed all the power in the world.
∞
I did not stop, even when my legs began to hurt... I could not stop. Every Stormstep carried me farther from the city of Tarth, farther from the bodies and the blood and the screams that still echoed in my memory.
The wind howled past me, cold and sharp, and I pushed more Anima into my legs, pushing it into the spell that was carrying me home, and the distance I was covering with each step kept growing, and yet I could never escape the devastation.
How could all of this happen in just three months?
The landscape blurred beneath me. Burned fields, shattered villages, columns of smoke rising from places that had once been alive. I saw them all, and I filed them away, one by one, into the cold place in my chest where I was keeping everything I could not afford to feel.
I saw a lot of carnage and battles, but I was moving so fast I knew I was barely a flicker to those who had glimpsed me by chance.
Two thousand five hundred miles. I had done the math in my head. It would take me hours, even at this speed, to reach my village, and so I pushed harder; my Anima seemed endless, and it would take far more than a single spell to create any considerable drain on my soul.
The sun, which seemed to be dying, was setting by the time I crossed into the familiar terrain. I began to see the mountains, rivers, and forests that I knew since I was a child... but they were wrong.
The trees were blackened, the rivers were choked with ash, and the mountains had been scarred by something that had torn through them like a claw through wet paper.
I slowed; my heart was pounding, and I could feel the cold thing in my chest beginning to crack.
The village was ahead.
"Please... please be alright."