MAGUS INFINITE

It would be a mistake to believe that putting myself within the range of the Arcanists instead of fighting them at a distance like a mage was a miscalculation, but the chill of death that was erupting from my body was a plague that drove chill into the bones of those who surrounded me for thousands of meters.

The cold thing in my chest that sat beside my dead heart was pulsing with a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat, and every pulse sent a wave of power through my channels. The souls in the storm were screaming, but their screams were a song, and I was the conductor.

I raised my left hand, and ten thousand threads burst out of it, surrounding the Arcanist near me and driving them into a cage. I snarled, and the sound was like thunder as I fell upon them as a ravenous wolf unleashed on sheep.

I moved through them like a scythe through wheat, my spells and my body tearing through them, and their shrieking souls joined the hosts that surrounded my body and screamed my glory with all the might in their souls.

You should hear it; the sound is the most beautiful thing you would ever listen to, both in life and death.

They tried to form up and mount a defense, but I was too fast, even for something of my size, now that I was nearing a hundred and fifty feet. The bigger the body, the greater the energy required to drive it, and as my storm spread and more souls were drawn from the continent, power was the least of my worries... I believe that the souls in my storm had crossed ten million at this point, but I was focused on slaughtering the Arcanists.

Even though their souls would weigh the same as a child, they were still dangerous when not under my chains, where their screams were meant to worship me.

The cold thing in my chest grew, and I felt the chains on my back shuddering as millions of souls were poured into the storm behind me. The weight was immense, but I did not stumble; I was still growing, my body being fed by the vitality of the dead.

I reached for dozens of Arcanists, but with clever application of magic, they teleported out of my range, although three of them were too slow, and their screaming bodies slowly collapsed to ash before their souls were chained to my banner.

My massive red eyes turned to those that escaped my mercy, and I reached into the ground, grasped the roots of the skull field, and I pulled, pouring the power of Lightning Edict in my fist. The ground split open, and a massive black pillar of Grave Soil erupted, slamming into the fleeing Arcanists and crushing them against the sky.

This moment of distraction cost me as one of the last floating fortresses that had been primed for a while and waiting for the opportunity caught me square while I had my hand stretched out in front of me, and the anti-essence took my side off. If I had not moved with Stormsteps, it would have taken off my head.

I took several steps back, my massive feet churning the earth below, as cold vitality poured into my side, and the wound sealed shut, but it grew back wrong.

The cold vitality knew mass, and it knew strength, and it knew death, and it built me back out of those three things without the memory of me that the Marrow used to carry.

So what grew back from and sealed the hole at my side was not flesh and bone, but a slab of dense, functional load-bearing wedge of pale death-muscle that was filled with strange runes that bled black smoke and scales that created madness if they were observed.

∞

The battle continued, and even as I killed hundreds, the wounds accumulated. The Arcanists that had fled before had returned, and they carried a vast army with them.

I knew that they did this not because of bravery, but because they had seen that fleeing was not a solution. Mt storm was spreading, and the millions of souls being added to it as time was passing meant that the entire continent of Aelmar would fall to Death sooner rather than later, and if they did not fight, they would not survive.

I nearly laughed when I saw that although the army they carried over with massive teleportation circles was vast, most of them were mortals, who were carrying any weapon they could find. The souls who surrounded me felt my amusement, and millions of them began to laugh, even as their eyes kept weeping blood.

The pulsing tumor on my right shoulder burst, and a new arm emerged from the wound. It was longer, thinner, covered in a black chitin that gleamed in the red light. The arm was attached to a tangle of nerves and flesh that had not been there before, and I watched it move with a life of its own.

The cold thing in my chest was no longer pulsing. It was singing, a wordless song of hunger and rage that drowned out everything else.

A flash of white flashed past my eyes in the distant armies, and I did not know why it drew my eyes. I paused and looked at the armies of mortals, and I saw a small white fox with four tails standing on the shoulder of a young girl with black hair and bright blue eyes.

The child must have been very scared, but she had a stubborn look of determination in her eyes even as tears had dried on her face. A piercing pain went through my dead heart, and a hint of a memory clawed at the edge of my consciousness.

I had stopped moving and unconsciously raised my left hand and reached for that child, because it felt as if she should be here with me, that I should protect her, and her tears were digging holes in my dead heart. But the battle had not ended, and in the moment that I spent trying to claw for the memory at the edge of my consciousness, an unmaking lance that should have torn through my heart took me through the left shoulder, tearing apart the arm that was reaching for the girl.

A cry of rage burst out from my throat that would have killed every mortal here if not for the protection of the Arcanists, and I threw away the memory that was scratching at the edge of my mind and furiously took charge of the cold vitality and poured it into my shoulder.

Massive vibrations shook my body as a mass of flesh burst out of my left shoulder, and instead of one new limb, there were three; each of them had too many joints, the fingers ending in claws that drank the light.

I wanted to tear into the army in front of me, but again, my sight was drawn to the girl and the fox on her shoulder, and I froze, forgetting how to move, and the army did not hold back.

So they began to hurt me... but I could not move.