96. The Soul Enters the Titan

The Soul Enters the Titan

Mort’s work did not collapse with the death of his flesh.

The changes he had made to the local weather did not disperse. The foundation he had built was not uprooted.

His army had been destroyed, and their summoning circles shattered, but that had only fed something stronger.

Just as he had sacrificed sixty-six captured locals to create a barrier that delayed the enemy agent, everything he had done had been transformed and reborn, because it had all been tied to his soul.

And his soul still existed.

Not everything had gone according to plan.

His original design had been to sacrifice a powerful member of the local resistance, use that death to empower his greatest victory, bind the enemy agent’s soul to the gift of his lords, and construct a guiding intelligence through which Mort could control everything.

When Mort was killed by his greatest weakness—his obsession with the complexity and cleverness of his own plans—that portion of the plan failed.

And yet, apparently through an unbelievable coincidence, the ritual’s requirement that the enemy agent be defeated by her own weakness had been fulfilled.

Mort did not believe in coincidence.

In the Great Realm, the powers that stood even above the Lords of Mavis did not roll dice.

They used fate and misfortune, prophecy and mission, story and faith to shape reality on levels mortals could scarcely comprehend.

Thus, Mort himself believed that what had happened here was the Dark Lord and the Crimson King extending a clawed finger to tilt the scales of fate and guide the outcome.

As an emissary of Mavis, Mort could have returned to his domain in an invisible soul-state like all Dark Masons. There, he would have been given another body and new resources with which to invade this… Earth once again.

Now that Mavis magic had established a foothold here, there was no need to accumulate power slowly.

They only had to expand their war machine.

Within a few hours, or at most a few days, they could conquer the planet.

But to do that would be to ignore the hint and implied command of his own gods.

So he did not.

His soul flowed into the growing seed. The seed became his vessel, and Mort’s consciousness took command.

He rose from the cradle of his birth and set his feet upon the earth, declaring possession of this land.

From his spiked, rootlike feet to the six crimson eyes set in his black adamantine skull, he looked down upon his new territory from a height of one thousand six hundred and sixty-five meters.

His body was likewise formed from black adamantine, roughly sculpted into the shape of muscles beneath thorn-covered skin. It retained tremendous resilience, and only strength beyond mortal limits could make it bend.

Each of his feet was one hundred and ninety-eight meters long.

The First Law of Mavis magic flowed out from them, and steel magic seized the iron in Earth’s crust with an iron grip.

His skin was fire-red and covered in spikes the size of houses, from which red mist rose.

The Second Law of Mavis magic extended outward from those spikes and embraced the environment around him. Fire magic strengthened him and his followers while denying that strength to their enemies.

Rage and passion, ambition and desire drove the people of Mavis forward in body and mind, while confusing, distracting, and maddening their enemies.

His left hand was shrouded in green light, a castle-sized barbed claw illuminating the surroundings with the blinding radiance of the Third Law of Mavis magic.

Beneath that light, all children of Mavis evolved and grew according to their worth, while those without worth sickened, mutated, or crumbled into dust according to the depth of their uselessness.

His right hand was clenched into a black fist, devouring the light of this new world with the darkness of the Fourth Law of Mavis magic.

Wherever he touched, enemy fortifications decayed. Their engines stopped. Their lights went out. Their buildings collapsed…