As soon as the Sage destroyed the Void Ship, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Atalar quickly lost the surveillance capability of the fight. The fire team was dispatched from a distance, frozen solid with barely a chance to escape. Their carefully prepared trap had proven ineffective. Atalar’s calculations had once again been shown as inadequate. This was not the first time. And this made it think that there was something wrong with its programming, a flaw that it could not see. Even with a generous error margin, their ambush still didn’t develop according to its calculations. Ra’azel had forewarned it, but Atalar and its advisers decided to trust their data. Now, Atalar would need to adjust. There was a component to the advancement that it could not accurately quantify. A Way was obviously more intricate, with a wider power coefficient than it had assigned. The moment Ra’azel and Erik Ornn attacked, was the moment Atalar lost all sight of the battle. It attempted to send drones, but they lost contact as soon as they got anywhere close. There was some information flowing from the long-range reconnaissance units stationed at the edge of the territory. The change in the moon had been territory wide, and it had impacted all other Essence in it. Reports came in of freezing temperatures, of Light behaving in unnatural ways. Atalar documented everything, but this only showed it the importance of their great work. For a single soul to have the ability to toy and alter the laws of reality to such a degree was blasphemous. A natural law was a law because it didn’t change, because it was immutable. Something should never have been possible. It attempted several times to get closer and get eyes on the situation, and it failed every time. The effects of the moon were hazardous to their machines; even those who were shielded could only get marginally closer before succumbing to the same effect. The only thing that made Atalar pause and not call in more reinforcements was the fact that the battle was still clearly ongoing. Besides, moving any reinforcements across the board would be difficult, and they would need to be the higher-rated pieces to make a difference here. And all of those were stationed at the border to repel the Sects advance. Instead, it waited, it watched, all the while in the background thousands of its processes worked on fixing the issues that it had encountered in its reasoning. Perhaps it couldn’t actuality predict individuals whose power superseded the natural order of things, but it could adjust its error margins. The battle lasted for several more hours, and its end was announced by the slow fade of the moon as it was replaced back into the sun. Atalar sent drones in immediately. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. As the drone got closer, the area turned more hostile. Without the moon’s presence, the drone didn’t break down immediately, but its operation was still impacted. It’s visual sensor flickered as one of the lenses cracked from the cold. The backups survived long enough to show what lay ahead. Pillars of fire frozen like sculptures, earth that was ravaged in a way that made it look like a giant hand had come down and scooped up a piece of it. And there, in the center, there were two survivors. Quickly, Atalar issued orders to its people. Ra’azel sat on a piece of broken stone, a device rotating around his elbow, closing up the wound where his hand had been frozen and shattered. He sighed, the effect had been incredibly painful, and hadn’t impacted only flesh, the frost had spread through layers of reality to impact his Soul too. Losing that piece of his Soul was a greater hit than just losing flesh. He had recovered well since his last battle, but this injury had shaken his recovery. He had underestimated the Sage; despite all his warnings, he did not expect to have such a hard time in accomplishing this task. But that just went to show just how big of a difference being in control of a Way truly was, to touch upon the divine, to be able to shape an Essence to your will not just force it. But influence it, make it be whatever you believe it to be. Erik Ornn stood nearby, his injuries were many, but he hadn’t lost anything as significant as Ra’azel’s arm. A few fingers were missing from his hand, lost to frostbite, then torn off by Erik himself. One eye was closed, the skin around it darkened, but perhaps he would be able to save it. The Infinite Realm had miracles enough for it. Erik looked at a burnt patch of ground with an angry frown on his face, Ra’azel had enough experience to know that the man regretted taking the job. It had obviously turned out far more dangerous than he had expected. Well, Ra’azel couldn’t fault him there, he hadn’t expected this level of difficulty either. The patch of ground that Erik was looking at was covered in ash, or what was left of the Sage’s body. The body was already broken beyond repair before Erik torched it. Ra’azel understood that too, everyone needed to let their anger out at times. A drone whirled and buzzed in the air above them, getting closer. It was one of dozens that had been circling them since the battle ended. They were annoying but at least it meant that the Machine God knew the outcome. The most update n0vels are published on novel-fire.ɴet Soon enough a large shuttle arrived, landing some distance away. By now the area had slowly warmed back up, thanks in no small part to Erik who had broken his fire out of the frozen state it had been in and used it to scour their surrounding, banishing the cold. Once the shuttle’s landing bay opened, a group of cthul walked out. Before anyone could say anything Erik rounded on the leading cthul. “Speaker,” he said. “My part in this is over. Provide what was promised.” The Speaker inclined his head. “Your reward awaits back at our staging point. The shuttle will carry us back.” Erik grumbled, then walked over to the shuttle and entered without looking at anyone, clearly annoyed at everything and everyone. The Speaker walked over to Ra’azel and looked him over. “The task is accomplished?” Ra’azel nodded, then tapped the big container covered in runes sitting next to him with his remaining hand. “Got it right here.” “Good. We are expecting results. Our timeline is shifting, our window is closing.” “I’m confident that this will help accelerate our plans greatly.” The Speaker inclined his head, then turned and walked back to the shuttle. Ra’azel leaned over and looked at the container, then whispered. “Don’t worry. You and I are about to have some great conversations,” he grinned. The soul of the Sage inside the container raged, power pulsing from within the very core of who he was, but Ra’azel knew souls well. His trap was not something easily countered, apparently not even by someone who commanded an entire plane of Essence. Soon, those secrets would be his.