Into Erebus

[Ascendancy]

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<dt>Curse tablet</dt>
<dd> </dd>
</dl>
"Cast your hate upon his, and I will bind my enemy in his blood and in his ashes, with all the dead to weep for his suffering.”

More power flowed through him than Nikolai thought existed. If he still had eyes, he knew they must be squeezed shut, but he was sure they had long ago burned from his skull. He wanted to roar with the magnitude of power flowing through him, but his voice was ash as surely as the rest of his body.

Fire churned and ice pelted his soul. He could see nothing else. Feel nothing else. He swam in surging seas of fire; a lord of hell incarnate, until the sea rose up and he became a being of pure fire. The power flowed like a tsunami, and had the creature of terror not controlled the flow, he would have been swept away with it. Obliterated by it.

He wanted to be swept away with it. He silently begged for it to be so.

Survival was impossible, but Nikolai knew he had to hold on. Just a little while longer.

Something moved. Mist devolved to fog, scattering droplets of white. The flow ebbed, waned, and crashed. The sheer amount of it seemed miniscule in comparison to the eternity before, but with it came the realization that he had not been swept away. He had not disintegrated into a being of pure fire.

The monster of smoke rolled and roared defiance. Its shrill voice screamed near to supersonic and rang painfully in his head. It turned its mouth of spikes and demonic red eyes to the other man in the room. But it was hung between them, willing itself to slaughter the second man but command kept him tethered to the first.

He was burning with fever. Sweat rolled the sides of his face, his eyes blinked hot, his throat was ashes. The power was about to burst like a dam, shattering himself, and the city with it, if it wasn't channeled into some purpose. Nikolai clawed himself upright. HIs knees dug into the cement.

Threads lashed out, dozens simultaneously. Aether and Flame attacked the mist, but it billowed and phased in and out of sight, untouched. Aether and Essence fanned the smoke, wafting his hair on funnels of furious wind as it whipped about his forehead, but the creature went untouched by the currents. Firmament, his chosen, made a bomb of a grid until it pressed the walls. Quaking started, and Nikolai drew strength from the miles of underground cacooning his dwelling. The interior walls burst outward. The blast wave threw him backward.

His head smacked the cement floor. Dust and shrapnel billowed through the chamber. But the ceiling was soon filled with mist again. Nikolai threw his hands up to protect himself, but it was a juvenile move. The mist wrapped itself around him, and as it latched, the flow of power was wrenched away. He howled in fury, and it began again.