LIGHTNOVELONLINE 297 – Fragment of Lost Hyperborea
Another, larger seal came after it, one which would temper the resultant projectile, hardening it with selective Gelum saturation much like Ubul hardened his own stone with Terra saturation, while also imparting “Stillness” into the projectile to render it more like the stillness of death, thus more resistant to change.
The third seal was Impact Driver, serving to accelerate the projectile even further and vastly improve its penetrative capabilities, should it hold up under the strain.
Each seal only took a few moments to draw, but these moments piled up, leaving her with only a scant few seconds before causality would take effect once more. Each seal took the form of an encircled belladonna flower with split-ended petals, the core glyph contained within the flower’s center, secondary glyphs contained upon the petals, while tertiary supporting glyphs filled the outer ring.
Steady aim. Shoulder the gun. Empty the mind, bring it to a total standstill. Adjust aim, accounting for Ubul’s movement vector and speed from before she had brought him and all else upon the battlefield to a standstill. The Philosopher’s Eye made such visual calculus almost too easy, the Homunculus Eye made sure no underlying factors escaped her sight.
A long breath out, burning every last bit of it on yet another cast of Impact Driver just to impart even more kinetic energy into the bullet before it was inevitably enveloped in ice. She had half a mind to invoke Essence Shot, but this wasn’t that technique. It had carved itself into her mind before she had even formed the first of its glyphs; it had been there since the moment she had invoked Eternal Snow.
A pull of the trigger. The First Seal began spinning clockwise, the Second counter-clockwise, the Third remained still. What was left of the Great Seal overhead vanished in a split-second, the First Seal visibly cannibalizing it in the form of thick, white-blue bands winding around its outer length and disappearing into its structure, seemingly pulled from thin air.
The unceasing march of time was allowed to catch back up in the immediate surroundings, the fall of snow resuming just as the slug exited Tempesta’s barrel. It ripped forward at a speed far beyond the capacity of anyone present to sense, nearing the velocity of Pentacle’s bullets before it even passed the first seal. As it crossed the threshold, the seething sphere enveloped in blue-white magick suddenly became a gigantic spear of pristinely clear ice, as transparent as glass, its growth causing it to pass through the subsequent Seals yet faster, its kinetic energy amplified to the point of breaking the sound barrier thrice over.
Zefaris expected crushing recoil, but none came. In its stead, she was forced backwards by the tremendous shockwave in the glass-spear’s wake.
BELLADONNA SIGN
EMBODIMENT OF SNOW DEVIL
HEADPIERCER ARTS: FRAGMENT OF LOST HYPERBOREA
It all happened in a few moments, to those affected by the Great Seal of Eternal Snow.
At one moment, they felt the anticipation, the Great Seal hanging over them all like the Sword of Damocles. A split-second later, it was already over. There was no feeling, no memory, nothing - only a momentary flicker, a disruption in awareness no greater than a single blink.
In the span of this blink, a spear of Hyperborean Glacierglass impaled Ubul straight through the core, having ripped across half the battlefield faster than anyone could perceive. In its wake came the deafening CRACK and a gust of wind that carried for hundreds of meters.
Deafening silence fell over the battlefield as the skull-masked origin of the shot walked into plain view, raising a Tyrant Muncher shotgun and, in a flash, projecting an ominous seal in the telltale colours of Gelumancy in front of it. Wait, no… Those colours weren’t right. It was nigh-imperceptible, but to those with a trained eye and hi-res sensor array such as Collier, it was as clear as the spear that had impaled the stone general. That bone-white colour, this was Gelumancy tinged with the cold of death itself. It confirmed what Collier had hoped to be the case even beyond the unimpeachable evidence of time itself apparently being brought to a momentary halt, this elusive manifestation that she herself had once attempted and failed to pursue in an effort to make her late brother proud.
Indeed, she would not have recognized that telltale mixture of colours otherwise, this secret art that made so many legendary archers, mages, and soldiers who they were in their time. The Gnosis of Rigor, of the Stillness of Death, extrapolated into a force of stillness so profound that even the world can do naught but stop for a moment.
Zefaris fired, this time producing a glacierglass arrow that stuck straight into Ubul’s right elbow. Another shot went straight through his knee, and the next through the other. With each shot, Zefaris seemed to flicker the tiniest bit, as if moving by one or two steps between blinks, immediately exhaling tremendous clouds of Fog that she couldn’t have conceivably inhaled in such increments of time. The intensity of the arcane geyser jetting from her left eye was the clearest sign of what was happening, wildly fluctuating from a whipping tail as long as Zefaris was tall, to barely perceptible, and everywhere in between. Despite the great general’s attempts to dodge, each glass arrow struck before he could move to dodge, for there was no telegraphing to read, no aim or twitch of muscle to suggest a next target.
No telegraphing at all.
Just a dead, empty glare, spilling ice-cold fury to chill even Jorfr’s heart.
Ubul summoned up pillar after pillar, smashing them into himself and encasing his body in stone both as a defense and an effort to break apart the glacierglass, but to no avail. His stone gave before the ice did, his gait, his gestures, his movement at large becoming a twitchy, slowed-down version of itself as hoarfrost spread across him and spikes of ice erupted from inside his body all around the sites where he was run through. He conjured up a wall solid enough to stop the steel-core ice arrows which erupted from Zefaris’ shotgun, with his other hand pulling out those already stuck in him and crushing them in his grasp. The moment they lost integrity, they just exploded into frozen dust, not unlike a Prince Rupert’s Drop when its tail is struck.
