The Primordial Flames set the outer walls ablaze, burning matter and energy alike and opening a hole that reached the heart of the living castle.
Lith and Tista kept breathing fire until there was no air left in their lungs but the moment they stopped, the flames went out and the Eternal Fortress repaired the damages with a speed visible to the naked eye.
'How is this possible?' Lith panted, his life force strained from the prolonged use of Primordial Flames and the Life Maelstrom necessary to produce them. 'Without a geyser, this guy is no different from us. The only energy he has is what is stored inside his power core.'
'Pseudo cores. This cursed object is too old to have a power core. Also, there's no geyser here. I'm sure of that.' Solus said after both the Eyes and the Hands of Menadion confirmed what she already knew from mana sense.
'Just like I'm sure that the living legacy is now stronger than at its arrival. Don't ask me how it is possible, but it's like he hasn't cast a single spell or suffered any damage. Aside from wasting his time, the only thing we have managed to do is piss him off.'
["This does it!"] Thaymos stood up slowly, the orange of his windows turning red from anger as he glared at Solus. ["No woman can be so heavy and only a member of the family can hide her strength so well.
["The only possible explanation is that I was right from the beginning. You are the Destroyer and she's the living legacy who has taken you as her host!"]
He was wrong on multiple levels but after hearing his words through the mind link with Lith, Solus felt no need to correct him.
'Share with the others that this guy knows nothing about modern magic. We can use it to our advantage.' She said.
'Yeah, right. I just have to come up with a believable story about how we started to discuss what he does and doesn't know in the middle of a fight.' Lith sneered, passing the information only to Friya and Tista.
They were both flabbergasted, but not by how outdated Thaymos' knowledge of magic was.
'This doesn't make sense.' Friya said. 'This guy speaks gibberish that only Lith understands and his magic is as old as he is. It means that since his release this lost city hasn't learned anything about the modern world.
'Then how does he know about Lith and Solus? How does he know the title that Baba Yaga uses to refer to him?'
'I'm actually more worried about the gibberish part.' Tista looked around, glad to notice that the night sky was clear. The only tremor in the ground came from the Black Tide and the living legacy getting back to his feet.
'Whenever Lith understands a dead language is because there are souls involved. What if this triggers a tribulation?'
Lith squinted his eyes, his mind stopping for a second planning ahead and considering Tista's words instead.
'You are right. The souls calling on to me would explain how I understand the lost city, how he controls the Black Tide, and the reason he's gotten stronger during our fight.' He said.
'Explain how?' Solus asked. 'The Eyes don't perceive any form of energy connecting them and I doubt there's any slave spell capable of controlling so many creatures at the same time. Even the Golden Griffon had limits and it was-'
A roar of inhuman laughter cut her short and forced them to save finding an explanation for later. Thaymos was back on his feet and with each movement of his massive limbs, a raging torrent of pure mana was coalescing in front of him in a huge emerald sphere.
A huge emerald sphere aimed at Lith.
'Spirit Magic! That bastard can use Spirit Magic as well.' The shock from the vision made everyone shudder.
It meant that the lost city already had a living host and there weren't many ways the living legacy could fuel a spell of that magnitude without a geyser.
Either he was somehow capable of tapping into the mana cores of the monsters at his feet or the Eternal Fortress' pseudo cores exceeded the strength of a white-cored Awakened by a large margin.
Thaymos' spell, Cruel Star, shot forward with such violence that it cast an emerald ring over its launching point.
The fire element shrouded the emerald beam with flames thousands of degrees hot, the light element gave the external layer substance, and the darkness element saturated both, but with completely different purposes.
The darkness combined with the flames to increase their destructive power, which was pretty normal. Its combination with the light element, instead, was unheard of. The two elements of the external layer weren't meant to be used as a blunt weapon, but a containment field.
The earth, air, and water elements were sealed inside, forming a very unstable and highly destructive Gravity Spell.
Earth and air manipulated the electromagnetic forces that generated the abnormal gravity while water cooled them just enough to not make them explode. The light and the darkness elements of the external layer respectively sealed the chaotic gravitational waves and suppressed their strength.
Without the containment field, the Gravity Spell generated by just three elements would have detonated right in Thaymos' face.
Friya was the only one to understand the meaning of the unusual setup fast enough to do something about it. She could feel through her Full Guard and Dimensional Ruler spells that her allies were preparing shields and Blinks, mistaking Cruel Star's purpose.
'Blink, now!' Her voice echoed inside their heads, the order quickly followed by a mental image of the incoming spell's inner workings. 'Then Bastion!'
Raagu, Ilthin, and Solus went pale. Even in the split second they had to glance at the picture, they understood how deadly Cruel Star was. Inxialot understood it as well, but after double-checking the position of his phylactery, he took notes instead.
Lith, Tista, and Bodya lacked the necessary knowledge the grasp the full scope of Thaymos' Spirit Spell but they trusted Friya enough to follow her directions without asking any of the many questions they had.
Blinking would bring them to safety, but only some of them, and only for a while. Cruel Star was infused with willpower and it would chase either Lith or Solus. On top of that, Blinking would sever the strand of Spirit Magic that formed the mind link.
Without it, coordinating their moves would be impossible, let alone conjuring a difficult spell like Silverwing's Bastion.
The answer to everything was the Dimensional Ruler spell.
Friya hijacked her companions' spells and rewrote the coordinates for the exit points so that they moved together to the dimensional coordinates she set. Also, she had the entry point detonate the moment Cruel Star neared, hoping that the dimensional distortion would compromise the spell's integrity field.
["Smart!"] Thaymos laughed, taking mental notes about Friya's spell. ["Too bad it's not enough."]
He only had to send more mana to reinforce the outer layer and keep it from collapsing. Cruel Star stuttered for a second and then resumed its chase at supersonic speed.