The Rifts of Psyche by Kyle West (popular e readers txt) 📗

They tossed and tumbled in the air, shooting into the distance. Lucian had hoped the lower gravity would make kinetic force even more powerful, and it was a bet that was paying off. The wyverns screeched their dismay, but they spread those wings wide and were slowly regaining control.

It would only be a temporary reprieve. It gave him time, nothing more. He could not indefinitely overdraw from the Manifold, as the poison of ether would make it impossible to remain conscious.

So, he cut off the Psionic stream, his chest heaving. The power felt sweet, but at the same time, gut-wrenching with the nausea it had introduced. His skin prickled with fire. It was almost as if he could feel the poison of the Manifold rotting him from the inside out. The taste on his tongue was acrid and foul. If he drew any more ether, he would be in dire danger of fraying.

He had to figure out how to use the Orb. And he had to figure it out now. Nothing else would save him.

The words of the Oracle returned to him. The Orb of Binding would allow him to stream the Binding Aspect without fear of overdrawing. While its power was theoretically unlimited, it was still constrained by the strength of Lucian’s Focus.

His heart pounded, not knowing what to expect. Using this Orb might even kill him. But he was dead anyway, and there wasn’t a moment to waste. He sought the Binding Aspect, only dimly aware of the flapping of leathern wings accompanied by monstrous shrieks.

He opened himself to the Binding Aspect. And beyond even that in his mind’s eye was the Orb, waiting and thrumming with potential power. He reached for it with his Focus, and streamed.

And gasped as the Orb siphoned an insane rush of ether into him.

He had never known such pure, unadulterated power. And within the ether given by the Orb, there was no hint of the foulness of the Manifold’s toxin. It was as if it were naturally accrued ether, although even compared to that, it was purer. It was magic as it was meant to be, as it had been designed to be. And he could drink of this well as deeply as he could control it. In his mind’s eye, the Orb of Binding’s radiant blue light pulsed with seemingly endless energy. He had the power to Bind entire worlds, crash them together, rip them apart . . .

It would kill him, but it was a possibility. If only he knew how.

That power needed an outlet. Now, those wyverns would die. He had no doubt about that. He knew that as surely as he knew his own name.

He began by streaming a focal point on a nearby stand of sharp rocks, and the focal point held with ease. As the wyverns entered a dive, he created two more streams, anchor points, one for each wyvern. These two streams held as well. That shocked him; the greater the mass of the bound object, the more magic required to complete the anchor point. Magic rippled through him, his hands emanating blue light. And still, the Orb pulsed, an endless fountain. He strengthened the energy in each of the anchor points, allowing more and more magic to stream into them. The rate of his magic flow doubled. Then tripled. And then quadrupled. The Orb opened further, allowing more ether to flow. The tethers connecting the wyverns to the rocks grew brighter, and brighter, until Lucian could hardly look at them.

The rush of magic burning through him was unreal. It was like blue magma, and he knew without the Orb, it would have frayed his mind and body to a crisp. Even with the Orb, he could hardly control the two tethers, such was the power behind them.

And if he lost control, he died.

The Orb pulsed like a beating heart. With every pulse came more ether, more power, more magic.

And that magic had to go somewhere.

With a guttural yell, Lucian released the tethers’ tension, which had become a laser of blue light connecting the wyverns to the sharp rocks. The wyverns shrieked as they shot with incredible speed along those lines, the change in direction so fast and sudden that their bodies ripped apart in midair. Most of the wyverns’ remains were pulled along toward those rocks, where they were impaled, while the rest of the bloody bits and viscera had been obliterated into a fine, red mist.

Lucian had no time to wonder at this power. To be horrified by it. The Orb was still beating like a heart, spewing more and more ether into him. Did this thing have brakes? He couldn’t hold it in, and it had to go somewhere. He set a new anchor point on some nearby cliffs, in the direction he had come from, and a new focal point on the cliffs opposite those.

There was no time to think. He simply had to do. Holding this amount of magic for any longer would end him. He could feel the power of the Orb ebbing, the force of its pulses fading. He had to make sure every bit of it was streamed into the new tether.

Lucian held the tether as long as he could, until he could no longer maintain the stream.

He released, and with that action came a deafening crack. In a single moment, metric tons of rock ripped from the two cliff faces, guided by a crackling blue energy tether which looked more like lightning. The bright blue tether spread, diffusing into random rocks and debris, creating a storm of floating boulders that crashed into one another with thunderous booms. Small bits of rock rained from the sky, pelting Lucian’s back.

He ducked behind a nearby boulder. For minutes, that rock rain fell in the slow motion of Psyche’s gravity. His chest heaved, and though his eyes were open, he couldn’t see a thing. When he tried to stream a light sphere, he didn’t have a drop of ether left.