Asunder

They paid the fee and arrived back in Hetforn soon after.

They took a collective breath of fresh air, a welcome experience after the stifling atmosphere of Fonford, and stepped down so the following people could use the pad.

"Any longer, and I think I may have gotten lung cancer," Fate joked.

He tilted his head upward, taking in the blue sky dotted with clouds and the radiant royal palace in the center of the city. He hadn't realized how much he took the blue lake above them and the pure air around them for granted until now.

He could stare up at that endless azure expanse for hours on end, the faint tinge of reds, yellows, and purples from the setting sun making it all the more beautiful.

A tinge that was expanding faster than it should have.

"What's that?" he asked the others, squinting.

"What's what?" Samantha asked, looking up with the other three.

What was a small tinting of crimson clouds was growing at a swift pace, swallowing out the other colors like a red blanket sliding over the sky itself.

In less than two minutes, the sky was blood-red, the clouds in the sky thickening to the point the heavens were heavy with rain.

Then the first drop fell.

The world grew silent, the eerie silence of a calm before a storm as not even the air itself dared to blow.

The small droplet, as red as the blood in Fate's veins, fell from the skies, smacking into the pavement and splattering apart in front of Cait's feet.

The wet slapping sound broke the silence that everyone had unknowingly agreed to. But even with it broken, no one could find it within themselves to speak, their breath still trapped within their lungs.

Then another came down. And another.

The sky wept blood as if a divine being had torn a hole in the very fabric of the world.

That analogy soon proved to be an apt one. The clouds parted above the Royal Mage Academy and the royal palace, pierced through by two gigantic scarlet hands, each thousands of feet wide.

They were a confusing, paradoxical mix of grotesque and elegant. They were feminine hands crafted by a deity, perfectly smooth and flawless. But their nails, or rather their claws, made it strange to call them anything other than ugly.

Each claw was ragged, torn, and chipped, like a weathered sword but sharper. They curved from the tips of the hands' fingers, each a deadly scythe capable of rending a city in two.

And that's exactly what they did.

The first one, over the Royal Mage Academy, attacked first. The sky flashed, and suddenly the hand was embedded in the ground, slicing through the enchanted concrete and wood like it was paper.

The hand stopped halfway, leaving the top half of its palm exposed as its wrist flexed.

Those in the streets watched with shock and terror as the second-most impervious place in the entire empire was torn asunder, the hand dragging through the ground and scooping a mile-wide section of dirt out, which was propelled along with so much force by the palm that it flew into the air and disappeared into the horizon.

Before it disappeared, Fate spotted several thousand human-shaped smudges jumping off of the flying landscape, slowed either by their own Skills or those of the staff.

'Kravoss? KRAVOSS!' Fate roared mentally.

'I'm fine, stop yelling!' Kravoss shouted back. 'I got out of there as soon as you saw that hand appear. So did most of the students. Those that didn't, well, you can see those for yourself. I'll be over there soon.'

"Is Pospo all right?" Fate asked Cait.

"Yes," she replied in a hushed tone, her eyes never leaving the skies.

"What about Gevum?" Fate asked Samantha.

"He's on his way," Samantha told him. "He left with those students in the air."

"It's not over yet," Venden reminded them grimly. "Look."

He pointed at the other hand, which struck down at the palace.

A dome of radiant light appeared, blocking the hand's strike.

The sound of metal screeching on metal echoed through the city as the light barrier brightened to the level of a sun, rebounding the hand back.

The fingers of the hand clenched into a fist as it pulled back so far that only its knuckles could be seen among the clouds.

A sonic boom shattered the glass in the city as it punched down with the fury of a god.

The light barrier shattered as the glass did before it, only for a second one to appear, twice as bright.

It failed to stop the hand, as did the third and the fourth.

Just as it seemed that the hand would squash the royal palace beneath it, a light shout rang through the surroundings as yet another barrier appeared.

This one wasn't a dome, but rather a flat circle placed directly in the air. The hand smacked into it and bounced off rather comically, only for the second hand to join in.

A beacon of Light manifested in the skies, the more observant people in the crowd having spotted a white smudge where the Light had appeared just before it did so.

The beacon grew brighter and brighter, but the hands were undeterred.

They gathered themselves above the beacon, clasping together and cocking back until they were submerged in the clouds.

Then, they attacked, another sonic boom shaking the city as the clouds above dispersed from the force.

With another shout, the beacon of Light conjured another shield above her.

As the fists collided with the shield, the light flared brightly. Then it started to crack.

But that was when something unbelievable happened.

The Empress – for that was who that beacon was – yelled a furious, vengeful yell, and a hidden shackle on her Facet loosened.

For the first time in millions of years, an Ascended was born.

Empress Settan embraced this newfound power, taking the blinding light that appeared around her and funneling it into her shield.

In an instant, the shield's surface grew into a sword, cleaving the hands in two.