Solvei floated in isolation, surrounded by nothing but empty space and the most distant stars.
The nearer ones were gone. Swallowed to ignite her fires with enough power to finally burn through the Anatla. She had been surprised to find that each of them was an Eternal Inferno of their own.
Above all else, she hoped those stars were connected. If not, then she’d sacrificed her people’s afterlife for the sake of the living… and lost both.
It still felt unreal that the Anatla were all gone. Incinerated beneath the very pink flames that had been with her as a child… as an artefact of a forgotten era. Ember had first created that inverted fire. What would she have thought if she knew she had a method to fight the Anatla all along?
Not that it would have done her much good. Solvei had commit the ultimate taboo to achieve the strength required to push back. Well, nobody had labelled it as such, considering how impossible it should have been.
She had reached the Eternal Inferno, and took its power for her own.
Originally, she’d made the journey to plead with the sun. Only, she’d been very quick to learn that their afterlife wasn’t sapient after all. It was simply a massive burning ball of fire without so much as hint of a thought behind that intense blaze.
Now Solvei was a burning ball of fire. Far more massive than the Eternal Inferno had ever been. Having drained the strength of the hundred nearest stars and the Anatla themselves, she was now brimming with an inner fire far beyond the imagining of any áed.
She had become more powerful than anything… and yet it hadn’t been enough to save her friends. To save anyone.
After fighting off both the Anatla behind the Void Fog, and the green one once contained by the ancient chthonics, Solvei had made the ultimate choice. She wasn’t strong enough to beat the Anatla, and so she left for the sun. By the time she’d succeeded, her world was already gone. Each and every one of the people she cared for — those she wanted to save — had fallen to Armageddon.
In a fit of rage and desperation for her own life, she triggered all that burning energy to erupt. It had been almost too easy. She spun herself into a supernova and her firestorm spread millions of times further than it had ever before. Wherever she felt the Anatla’s vile influence, she incinerated. She fought back their ever-spreading infection, and in some cases, even pushed beyond the world as she knew it. She reached into the planes of existence they came from.
Unfortunately, fighting those Anatla on their own turf was exceedingly difficult.
For the longest time, her flames fought back the Anatla. She didn’t know why she bothered. Everything she cared about was already gone. What would it matter if she allowed herself to fall here? It wasn’t like there was an afterlife to enjoy with them any longer.
Solvei continued on out of a combination of spite and a lingering stubbornness to never fall victim to another again. It was a losing fight that just seemed to always keep going.
Then, relief came. She wasn’t entirely sure of the cause, but one by one, the Anatla began struggling. Their worlds suddenly didn’t feel so overwhelming.
Something had been helping her.
An opportunity like that seemed almost impossible and when it appeared, she clasped the helping hand with all she was. But she wasn’t going to use it poorly. Sure, she could have thrown herself into the realms and burnt through her fire killing the first two she faced, but she didn’t want any of these Anatla to survive. They wouldn’t take the world that had once been theirs.
So she’d pulled back from the Anatla, and reached deeper into space. She consumed stars and gathered their power. For some reason, these stars were far stronger than her own. Solvei hid that power until she was sure she could kill them all. Then, she became an inferno that made the earlier supernova appear tiny.
When everything was said and done — her enemies vanquished — Solvei curled into herself. Now that she’d taken on so much burning intensity, it was impossible to take on her original form. The Eternal Inferno had already been at its maximum density even before she touched it. And her fire was now a lot more intense than that blazing ball had been.
What was she to do now that she’d taken the Eternal Inferno’s place?
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Everyone she knew was gone. Despite winning, she’d lost. Was there any purpose to linger near the broken space any longer? It would do nothing but instil her with hurtful memories. Maybe she could wander to the furthest stars. If she ever stumbled across the remaining Colossi, then she would give them a piece of her mind for opening the path to the Anatla.
Just as she was settling herself to leave this graveyard of a solar system, the unchanging background of stars cracked. The fractured remnants, instead of exploding as she intuitively expected, they folded out of the way to make space for something enormous. Solvei was large enough to be a million suns, and the serpent that slithered through met her scale.
Orm.
It was that damned serpent that had trapped her on the Other Side.
The snake was very different to how she’d last seen it, but there was no mistaking that presence. Especially with the spatial distortions that now flowed off each scale as if the world was struggling to allocate any one property or appearance. The portals were much stronger than they’d been the last time they’d met, but they were still familiar. Not like she’d ever seen another creature with an ability like it, besides a secondary effect of Jörmungandr’s mass.
“Why are you here?” Solvei’s voice surprised herself. The immense presence that flowed from her flames was uncontrollable. She’d had plenty of experience managing it as she had grown stronger, but it had never reached the point of unwillingly bleeding into her voice.
Despite her lack of face, the áed’s surprise must have shown. “It’ll become easier to control.” The serpent curled up in the space around her, nestling in the void as if it were a branch to cradle it. Solvei wished she hadn’t burned through all the Nightfall Shroud. If for nothing else but to see them bite the snake. “Try to split your voice from your power. You are an elemental, no? It is likely easier for you than any other type of creature.”
“Where-” She tried again. “Where did you come from? What have you been doing?” Solvei was almost annoyed at how helpful the advice was. Her tone began accusatory, but she realised something as she spoke. While she had no concept of how, this was very likely the being that had helped her. Orm had given her the opportunity to end the Anatla.
“Outside the realms. In the space below,” the snake said, all too calmly.
“The place the Anatla came from?” Solvei was still unsure of what to make of this creature. Even if her hunch was right and it had assisted her, then what did it matter? They hadn’t saved anyone. Still, she could forgive the way it trapped her on the Other Side now that the Anatla were dead.
Maybe the serpent was here to enact a ploy against her. For what other reason would it show itself now, years after the last Anatla was vanquished? If so, she wasn’t so sure she cared. She’d fought for a long time. If another fight was avoidable, then she would at least hear out the ploy before incinerating the snake.
“In a sense. Though I was beyond their reach.” It pulled closer. “You are the one that got in my way.”
Solvei tensed. Well, as much as a hyper-compressed ball of fire could. The snake’s the one that trapped her on the other side of the planet from everyone she knew. Orm shouldn’t be the one getting mad here.
“Thank you.” To her surprise, it bowed its head. “If you hadn’t, I likely would have killed Ceph the moment I found her. I feel, if that had come to pass, I would have regretted it.”
“I was trying to stop you from destroying the Pact Nations. Not like it made much difference in the end, huh?” Solvei muttered sourly. She would never get over the loss of her team, her family, and everyone she cared for.
“It did,” Orm denied. “That is why I’m here. I have the people of this world trapped outside time, waiting to come back.”
Solvei stared. She didn’t believe a word the snake had just said. “How?”
“I swallowed the continent.” That didn’t do much to sooth her disbelief.
“If you have them, then why don’t you bring them back?” Solvei’s tone was slipping into accusatory, but she didn’t care. She wouldn’t accept anyone making light of their deaths.
Orm’s tail whipped through space, gesturing to the emptiness around them. “I cannot. They will not survive without a home to nurture them.”
“But our planet is gone,” she snapped. “There is no undoing the damage the Anatla have done.”
“You’re right. We cannot undo what they have done. But we can rebuild.” Orm spoke with such conviction that she couldn’t have turned her mind away if she wanted to. “You can rebuild. I have seen it; as a star, you have the ability to create planets. The sun you consumed did it once, billions of years ago. It birthed our home. The same can be done once more.”
“You… you want me to wait here for billions of years?” It was a number she couldn’t even comprehend. She still felt young. She’d barely reached what the Pact Nations considered adulthood before the Pact Nations ceased to exist. It had been a while since then… but not nearly to such a massive scale. Could she last that long for the sake of those she cared for? Would she even remember them after all that time?
“You are an elemental commanding a star. It will take as long as you wish it to.”
“Oh, in that case, I wish it would appear right now.” She sent out a solar flare deep into the void as an emphasis to her statement more than any actual effort.
Orm remained quiet.
Solvei sighed. She knew exactly what the serpent meant, but it would have been nice if she could have taken the statement at face value.
“Are you going to stick around? Or will you be returning to that pit under the realms?”
“I shall remain, while I am able,” Orm said cryptically. “But there is something I must search for.”
“What?” she asked. “Is there even anything left to find?”
“An echo.” The serpent seemed wistful. Hopeful, even. “A single memory ingrained in the spatial fabric, the distant light, and whatever lingering hyle remains.”
“Should I be concerned?”
Orm shook its head. She opted for trust.
“Then I guess we both have our tasks ahead of us,” she said. With a plan set, she was elated. “Let’s bring back our friends.”
“Yes.” Orm shared her enthusiasm with a deep nod. “Let’s.”