2049 Time's Up (Part 1)

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While Crank listened to the messages, Solus flew on Faluel's shoulder and the pillar of light followed her.

"Look kid, this is a great idea to have your troops always know your position on the battlefield but right now you are just wasting your mana and making all of us a target." The Hydra said.

'I'm not doing this on purpose. I think I'm undergoing a world tribulation. Do you have any idea how to make it stop?' Solus replied via a mind link to avoid being overheard.

'What?' Faluel had never witnessed one and had mistaken the light for a strategy and Solus' odd appearance for a disguise to protect her identity.

She used Lifestream to check on her apprentice, just to discover that according to her breathing technique nothing was happening and Solus' life force was unchanged despite her metamorphosis.

'I'm sorry, but I have no clue. Lith you are the expert.' The Hydra replied.

'Expert my scaly ass. When it happened to me, it was always about killing or protecting someone. Except for that time when I tried to save Protector's life.' He said.

'Are you telling me that if we lose this battle Solus dies?'

'Maybe and maybe not.' Lith shook his head. 'I failed to save Protector yet I'm still here. I think that tribulations are more about proving to Mogar who you are than about success.

'I didn't destroy Kolga alone, I just freed the souls from the Forbidden Sun with Solus' help.'

'Let's do everything we can to save Belius, just to be safe.' Solus said, pacing non-stop to relieve her anxiety.

"Okay, the lizard is right. We have new orders." Crank said, oblivious of their conversation. "Ignore the land army and move to the sky. Our new target is the storm front."

"How is that going to save Belius?" Lith asked. "There are hundreds of Awakened mages just a few hundreds of meters from us and it just takes one of them to open a Spirit Warp inside the city."

"The plan is to stop the advance of the clouds and buy enough time for the weather mages to bring the hot spring air to them. This way, the storm will trigger away from the city and unleash its fury on Thrud's army.

"Two birds with one stone." Crank replied.

"Are you kidding me? There's no time for that." Lith said.

"It's a gamble, kid." The Hyperion's voice became serious. "Either we stall the advance of the Divine Beasts or we kill enough of them to make the clouds disperse. Everything else will end in our loss."

Lith looked at the incoming army, then at Solus' pillar that refused to disappear, and lastly at Belius.

He felt that by allowing Thrud's army to reach Belius' walls, he was letting its people down again, but he had no choice. Solus was much more important to him than any city of the Kingdom, even Lutia.

If he were to lose Belius, it would have been painful, but losing her would have been like losing Carl all over again, if not even worse.

"Let's go, then." He flapped his wings, raising a lot of dust as his army of demons followed suit.

The moment he took off, half of his shadow remained on the ground while the other half crawled on his legs up to his knees. The Demons who had yet to fully reform refused to give up and clung to him in their slime form to not be left behind.

"Fair warning. I suck at flying so if anything happens, one of you has to catch me." Crank drew a circle with his left leg, using earth magic to cut deeply in the ground and create a thick platform a few tons heavy that lifted him up in the sky like an elevator.

"Seriously?" Faluel asked in disbelief.

Even magical beasts attuned with the air element learned how to fly once they reached adulthood. An Emperor Beast incapable of flight would have been a joke, let alone a descendant of the Guardians.

"No, I'm just screwing with you. Of course I can fly. It's just that since I don't know Light Mastery yet, I don't feel safe sticking my head in a thunderstorm without a bit of dear old Mogar covering my ass."

Lith thought for a moment about the Faraday cage in his pocket dimension.

'Use it if necessary, Solus. It's too small for me now but if you fold your wings you should fit.' Lith said, receiving a nod in reply.

'Guys, remember what I told you about not using Domination in presence of witnesses?' Faluel chimed in.

'Yes.' They replied in unison.

'Now more than ever I forbid you to use it. If there is someone up there who has a vague notion of Domination and figures it out, we're royally screwed.' Faluel said.

'Raagu was right when she reminded me that defeating Thrud's followers just buys us time whereas whatever they learn from us, they can use it during our next encounter.'

'Any more good news?' Lith's voice oozed sarcasm.

'Yes.' The Hydra pretended to not notice it. 'That said, remember that we are about to enter a thundercloud. It means that we are going to be surrounded by natural bolts of lightning that will hurt even those who have conjured them.

'In a battle of mastery over the air element, there would be nothing strange if a "genius" like me managed to wrestle control of the lightning bolts from Thrud's generals, and since you are my apprentices…'

'We can't Dominate spells but we are free to go all-out on the natural elemental forces, got it.' Solus completed the phrase for her. 'Are you going to be alright with all that cold?'

'Don't remind me of that.' Faluel shuddered at the thought and cranked up the heating system of her armor to the max.

Lith glanced at the plains in front of the city walls, noticing that the Emperor Beasts had left their stations and only the human and small-sized Awakened Fae remained to stand guard.

'This is weird.' He thought. 'Divine Beasts are strong, but just ten of them should have already lost to the Council forces. It takes seven bright violet-cored Awakened to cast Silverwing's Annihilation and just one shot of that is enough to cripple even someone like me.

'Thrud's generals are around my level so how the heck can they defend themselves and guide the thundercloud at the same time?'

The answer arrived a few seconds later when they reached the aerial battlefield.

There were just eight Divine Beasts left now, but there were over 100 Awakened belonging to all races on Thrud's side. Lith had failed to notice them from the ground because of their relatively small size and because they were hidden in the blackness of the clouds.

They were arranged in seven-men units and used Silverwing's spells as well, bringing the fight to a standstill. Every time an Annihilation crashed against a Bastion, an emerald flash painted the clouds green and the resulting boom drown out even the noise of thunder.

The battle was one of the trickiest that Lith had ever seen.

The Awakened of both sides had to be wary of the clouds, of their respective enemy, and even of their own allies.