The Primeval Era-Chapter 140: Choices and Advancements III

In the next moment, his massive beast form launched from the mountain peak. The leonine body shot upward like a meteor of gold and blue, nine tails streaming behind and wings beating with force that cracked the air. Everything below grew smaller as it climbed higher and higher, ascending toward the layer of thick clouds hanging over the Lands of Stone.

Golden light gathered around the beast as it rose.

The Crown of Kingship blazed above its head. Lightning crackled in its wake. And then, high above the mountain, high above the tribe, high above everything that crawled upon the lands, the forehead of the massive lion split open!

Blood gushed out freely.

Crimson-gold fluid poured from the self-inflicted wound, not dripping downward but spreading outward as Mana carried it in directions gravity couldn’t explain. The blood dispersed into the air around the beast form, and where it touched moisture, where it found the water vapor comprising clouds, it began to grip.

Even more clouds formed around the beast.

Golden vapors materialized from Mana and atmospheric moisture, condensing into masses of gathered storm. The Land and Sky Physiques his beast form exemplified could cause lightning to rain down at will. At this moment, Damian turned that power toward a different purpose.

Golden clouds formed.

Blood flowed to them like a radiant stellar gold river!

Lightning gathered within those clouds, crackling energy responding to his intent.

The bolt struck out, and the river of blood wrapped around it like a snake!

Not downward. Upward.

A golden tendril of lightning as thick as an Ancestral Pillar shot from the clouds around his beast form toward the distant heavens. It carried blood within its structure, crimson droplets protected by energy too fierce for atmosphere to resist. The lightning climbed and climbed and climbed.

Seconds later, it crashed into those thick clouds shrouding the night sky.

Blood splattered across the distant heavens, painting vapor and moisture and the very substance of the sky itself. Damian felt it through connections that shouldn’t have been possible. He felt his essence spreading across clouds that hung over the Lands of Stone like a ceiling between earth and stars.

He breathed heavily with excitement.

Thereafter, even he couldn’t believe what he was doing.

He raised both hands toward the thick clouds his blood had painted over. His human form below mirrored the gesture of his beast form above, both bodies reaching toward heavens they had just claimed.

"Persevere."

BOOM!

In the skies above, a heavy and thick cloud shrouding the night had a section of it shine blue.

The light began small, a single point of radiance no larger than a star. Then it spread. Sacred fire raced across vapor and moisture, following paths his blood had painted, igniting everything it touched. Blue flames consumed the clouds without destroying them, transforming them into something new.

Rapidly, the illumination expanded.

Briefly, the night sky became illuminated as if a radiant flaming blue star had appeared directly overhead. Light poured down upon the Lands of Stone nearby for miles, turning darkness into something approaching day. Shadows fled before radiance that had no business existing in the heavens as some lone beasts and critters scattered in shock!

And Damian floated there between two bodies, watching the sky itself burn with his flames!

He felt his entire body burning with exhilaration.

Power coursed through every fiber of his existence, through flesh and bone and blood and the very essence of what made him who he was. The flames in the sky were his flames. The clouds burning with blue radiance were his clouds. He had extended himself into the skies!

Who said he couldn’t do it? Who decided he couldn’t do it?!

And then his vision changed.

He seemingly closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was no longer looking up at the sky. He was looking down from within it. His awareness had shifted, consciousness sliding along the pathways his blood had painted until it settled somewhere among those burning clouds.

He was gazing from above.

Small points of light glittered far below, scattered across a landscape that seemed impossibly distant. The Lands of Stone stretched in every direction, dark and quiet beneath his new vantage point. Mountains rose like wrinkles in fabric. Rivers gleamed silver where moonlight touched them. Forests spread in patches of deeper shadow.

And directly beneath him, several lights burned brighter than all others.

His massive beast body blazed gold and blue on the skies of that raised mountain, a beacon of power visible from any distance. His human form sat below it, smaller but no less radiant, twin flames marking where his consciousness had originated.

The tribe glowed with crimson-blue light from walls still growing and strengthening. The mountains nearby pulsed with faint echoes of his essence, remnants of blood he had spilled in battles past.

He saw it all as if looking down from the skies themselves.

He couldn’t believe it.

His blood had permeated into thick cloud matter, saturating moisture and vapor until it became an extension of his being. Just like the mountain. Just like the walls. Just like the second body he had forged from transformed flesh.

The sky was becoming part of him.

But more than this, the blue flames seemed to have caused a reaction in the clouds he had infused.

He felt it happening without fully understanding the mechanism. Other clouds were condensing and joining his clouds, drawn by forces he hadn’t consciously summoned. Moisture accumulated from miles around, vapor currents redirecting toward the burning mass that now carried his essence. The clouds grew thicker. Denser. More saturated with potential.

They began to rumble in the skies.

Thunder rolled through the skies as atmospheric pressure built beyond normal limits. Lightning crackled within the expanding mass, bolts dancing between vapor particles that carried traces of his blood. The power gathering above was immense, beyond anything he had intentionally created, a storm forming from the simple act of painting the sky with his essence!

He felt it all.

And in a moment of pure exhilaration, he roared in his mind with everything he had.

Persevere!

But what actually occurred was something else entirely.

In the brightening skies of this region of the Lands of Stone, lightning grumbled and crackled with gathering intensity. Bolts formed within the clouds, energy condensing into patterns that shouldn’t have been possible. And when that energy released, when the lightning finally spoke, it didn’t simply flash and fade.

It formed a voice.

For dozens of miles in every direction around the Purple Stone Tribe, sound crashed down from the skies like a declaration.

"PERSEVERE."

....!

BOOM!

The word boomed across the landscape, shaking trees and rattling stones and waking every creature that slumbered beneath that section of sky. The voice was unmistakably his, amplified beyond limits, projected through clouds and lightning and the very atmosphere itself.

Every man and beast jerked awake in shock.

Even Damian was shocked.

He hadn’t meant to do that. He had roared in his mind, not with his voice, not with any intention of being heard. But the clouds had carried his thought outward, had transformed mental exclamation into physical sound that painted the Lands of Stone with his presence.

And then he felt himself rumbling and pulsing with something new.

WAA!

Rivers of moisture bloomed within him.

Not around him. Within him. The clouds that were now part of his being began producing something they had never produced before. Water condensed from vapor, but this water was different. It formed into vibrant clear blue droplets sparkling with radiance that had nothing to do with reflected light.

The droplets began to fall.

For dozens of miles, sparkling radiant rain descended on the barren Lands of Stone.

It fell on rocky plains and scattered forests. It fell on the raised mountain and the massive beast form resting upon its peak. It fell on the tribe and the thousands of refugees sleeping within expanded walls. It fell on the stupefied figure of Serala still sitting in meditation, and on Grandmother Essun standing amid the huts, and on Uncle Adam whose cultivation had just broken through to the Fourth Circle.

The rain was beautiful beyond description.

Each droplet caught light from the burning clouds above and scattered it into prismatic fragments. Blue and gold and white danced together in falling water, creating curtains of radiance descending from the skies. The sound of it was gentle, a soft pattering against stone and soil and flesh.

Serala raised her hands.

The drops landed on her skin and didn’t roll away. They absorbed into her flesh instantly, vanishing as if her body were a sponge desperate for moisture. And when they did, vibrant waves of Mana crashed through her cultivation, energy flooding her channels without warning or explanation.

Others throughout the tribe did the same.

They raised their hands and faces toward the sky, feeling radiant rain land upon them and sink into their beings. Every drop carried power. Every drop carried traces of the Primordial Tongue’s blessing they did not even know!

This... what the hell was this?

Damian watched it happening from two perspectives simultaneously. From above, through clouds that were now his body. From below, through eyes that stared upward at rain he had done without intending to.

He had painted the sky with his blood.

He had infused it with the Primordial Tongue.

And now the sky was raining glory upon everything below!