Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2352 Warped

Maybe Sylas should have been surprised to see a Mesmeryx appear before him, especially one whose scales carried the same impossible beauty that had always marked their kind, but he wasn't.

If anything, his expression remained so calm that it almost seemed as though he had been expecting this moment from the beginning. Selythra watched him in return, waiting for some sign of recognition or hostility, only to receive nothing at all.

When Sylas didn't answer her greeting, Selythra tilted her head and continued to observe him, her translucent fins fluttering gently as she remained suspended in the air.

At first there was curiosity in her eyes, then concentration, and finally a growing solemnity as she reached outward with the strange senses of the Mesmeryx and found something she had never expected.

She couldn't find a path to twist the reality around him.

Her abilities had never relied on overpowering reality outright, because that would have been crude compared to what the Mesmeryx were capable of. They found the cracks, the soft places, the interpretations that could be bent until what had happened became something else, but around Sylas there seemed to be no such opening at all.

The longer she searched, the more it felt as though reality itself had already accepted him too completely for her to insert another path.

Fear began creeping into her heart.

Selythra's usual carefreeness chipped away piece by piece as she drifted backward without consciously deciding to move, increasing the distance between them while Sylas continued to stare through her rather than at her.

The pressure wasn't something she could point to, and yet lumps began forming in her throat while her heartbeat grew heavier, her telekinesis struggling to keep her body aloft despite having carried her without effort moments before. With every passing second, the suffocating weight became worse.

CRACK.

Selythra coughed out a mouthful of blood as something within her Will gave way, the light in her eyes dimming almost instantly. Her consciousness faded before she could understand what had happened, and her body began to fall until a wave of Sylas' telekinesis caught her in midair.

Far in the distance, shrieks tore across the battlefield.

A sea of Mesmeryx surged forward in polished pinks, starry blues, and soft violets, so many translucent wings gathering together that they seemed to form clouds rather than an army. Their bodies flickered between reality and illusion as they approached, painting the blood-soaked battlefield in a beauty it had no right to possess.

Sylas raised one palm, lifting Selythra's unconscious body higher.

"Do you want me to kill your people to the last, or would you like to appear, Nosphaleen?"

There was no answer.

Sylas waited for only a moment before his gaze cooled further. "No woman of mine will be disobedient."

His fist clenched.

Telekinetic pressure collapsed inward with such violence that Selythra's body folded before anyone could react, silver scales, flesh, and bone compressing together until there was little left but a mangled mass of blood.

Those observing felt their hearts shaken by the horror. An invisible force doing that much damage was little more than the stuff of nightmares. How was it possible for telekinesis alone to supply that amount of strength and power?!

Vaelith's eyes widened beside him. Telekinesis was usually used to supplement strength. Adding force where it needed or improving control. It wasn't something that should be capable of casually crushing someone of comparable tier as though their physical body possessed no resistance at all. Usually, that could only be done if your enemy was already far beneath you.

At some point during the crushing, you wouldn't just have to overcome the target's bodily strength, but also their internal Will as well. Doing this was little different than if Sylas wormed his Will into the Mesmeryx's body and combusted her from the inside out, something even far stronger Wills should have been incapable of doing.

Sylas didn't care about their reactions at all.

His gaze lowered toward the fighting below, where Iskaleth, Dry Mouth, and Sarethvane were beginning to lose ground. Their enemies possessed stronger bloodlines and better foundations, and the gap was showing more clearly now, even if the fact his Contracts remained standing at all proved they were far from weak.

Sylas extended one finger toward Selythra's corpse.

A thin strand of polished pink Will was torn free from the ruined body, shimmering with faint blues and lavender as it writhed against the force holding it. Sylas didn't even glance toward the furious Mesmeryx army closing on him as he shifted his finger toward Iskaleth.

"This one will do well for her."

Chi.

The strand crossed the battlefield in an instant and pierced through the back of Iskaleth's head. Her body convulsed once as the foreign Will sank into her, spreading through the strange structure of her eyes and the Fate sense that had long replaced ordinary vision.

Something shifted.

Veyrask had been nearly impossible for her to follow whenever he slipped through the void, his presence appearing only as possible paths that she had to anticipate before they became real. Now the twisting uncertainty around him peeled away, and for the first time his hidden movements became almost embarrassingly clear.

Iskaleth's tail moved.

Silver Will gathered along its length before it snapped across Veyrask's skull.

BOOM.

His body tore out of the void and crashed through the battlefield, the darkness around him breaking apart as Iskaleth's newly sharpened perception refused to let him disappear again.

Above them, another pressure was already forming.

The approaching Mesmeryx had stopped spreading out and instead aligned themselves in a vast formation, their individual Wills reaching outward until pink, blue, and violet currents intertwined between them. Reality trembled beneath that collective pressure as hundreds of mouths opened together.

They breathed as one and the world warped.

A tide of Mesmeryx Will descended from every direction and swallowed Sylas whole.

For as far as the eyes could see, the clouds consumed all there was.