“Larek? Are you…?” Nedira didn’t finish her question, but he could hear the concern in her voice as he reentered the Calamity and landed on the top deck of The Hopper. Now that he could really pay attention to his surroundings, he saw how damaged the vessel had become while he had been caught in the mental trap that Varlera had placed him in with his family. He hoped that they were doing alright after he had forcefully cut the connection between them and the Mentalist, as it was probably quite sudden and unexpected.

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, not saying anything for a moment as he closed his eyes, putting thoughts of his family out of his mind so that he could concentrate on the here and now. After a few seconds, he nodded, and because she couldn’t see him from where she was pressed against him, he asked, “Am I alright? Am I crazy? I’m not sure, but I’m doing better now. What they did to me was… wrong.”

  “I heard from that woman what they were doing to you,” his betrothed agreed. “And it seems as though they paid the price for what they did.”

  After all that had happened, from the meeting of his family to his absolute slaughter of the Gergasi who had attacked them, the tension he had been feeling the entire time started to drain away; he couldn’t stop the chuckle from leaking out of his mouth. “That they did.”

  There was a small pause, before she hesitantly asked, “Larek? How did you do all of that?”

  It made his heart warmer that she didn’t ask why he did that to them; she knew exactly why he had systematically eliminated each and every one of them without mercy. “I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “For some reason, when all of the anger filled my body, it was like I was locked into all of the energy around me, able to understand it even more than I had before. After that, I simply let my instincts take over, and… that happened.”

  He still didn’t understand it, but he didn’t really need to right now, he figured. There were more important things to worry about.

  “I see. Now what?”

  That was a good question. The remaining Gergasi in the Enclave were sure to know that their team sent to kill him had failed, or they would know soon, and he hesitated to guess what they would do about it. Before, they might have thought that his victory over Chinli and the pair in the undead Calamity had been flukes, but after wiping out 9 of them together, they would likely take him much more seriously. What that meant, Larek didn’t know for sure; he could only assume that they would react with something a bit more drastic – and dangerous for people other than just him.

  But what was more important than that, at least in terms of proximity, was the Calamity. While the monsters and the environment hadn’t changed inside its territory, something else had.

  “There’s nothing we can do about the Gergasi right now, at least until we get out of here. In fact, that needs to be our priority, because this place has just become a little bit more volatile than it was a short time ago,” he said as he looked at the border, which was still covered in Primal Essence – but it wasn’t nearly as thick as it was before. As he was coming through it to return to The Hopper, he had noticed that the layer of Primal Essence wasn’t nearly as dense as it had been when it had prevented them from leaving. Now that he could observe it in a little more detail, it was clear to see that its thinner appearance meant two things.

  First, if they moved through it slowly enough, he was fairly sure they could push The Hopper through it without having to resort to another use of a Mass Energy Absorption Fusion. This was important, not only because it was already going to be a little dangerous trying to time their exit for when the hole in the barrier was weaker, but also because weakening that barrier was proving to have some unforeseen consequences.

  Which brought him to the second thing about the thinner barrier, which was more of an issue than anything else right now. Unless he was wrong, which he didn’t think he was, then the only reason the Calamity hadn’t expanded its territory was because of the Primal Essence keeping it contained. He wasn’t sure if it was something that was naturally occurring and the Gergasi had taken advantage of the situation to trap him, or if they had engineered its development, but as it started to thin because of recent events, he could sense that the Aperture in the center of the Calamity was testing its limits. There was a subtle flexing of the energy within the Calamity, which most wouldn’t notice, but his sensitivity to such things made him take note of it; it was as if the entire territory had been slowly suffocated and now its airways had been reopened, which caused the border to flex as it took some deep breaths. At any point, he was fairly certain that it would—

  “Oh, no. Is that the Calamity expanding?!” one of the Volunteers shouted, before he ran down below. Most of them had left for the lower deck after Larek arrived, as if they were slightly afraid of him, though a few remained.

  Larek nodded. Just as I thought.

  “We have to go. Now.” Larek was already directing the damaged vessel toward the border, slowing down as he approached the thinning layer of Primal Essence.

  “What? Why?” his betrothed asked. “Granted, I know that the Calamity is expanding, but now that the Gergasi are dead, don’t you need to experiment with your Fusions?”

  He shook his head. “No time. Plus, I think I have more than enough evidence that they work, and there’s only one other that I haven’t tested yet. It can be done later, if I have the chance.”

  “Why the hurry? What’s wrong?”

  Larek didn’t respond as he sent them moving slowly through the Primal Essence barrier. There was a definite slowdown as they pressed up against the energy, but it wasn’t enough to stop them completely. After about 20 seconds of gradual movement, they were finally through it, and he sighed in relief before turning to Nedira.

  “I think I may have made things a little worse when I pulled out so much Primal Essence from the Calamity to fuel my Fusion,” he admitted, waving toward the barrier they’d just passed through.

  “Yes, and?” his betrothed prompted.

  Larek took a few seconds to order his thoughts. “First, I believe that the Primal Essence was somehow keeping the Calamity from expanding – as that should be pretty obvious by this point. Second, with the expansion of its borders, there will be less Primal Essence to keep it contained as it thins out along its newly expanded territory. Third, and most importantly for the moment, there is enough energy within the confines of the Calamity that it won’t stop expanding, at least until that energy is used up.”

  With a horrified look on her face, Nedira asked, “How long until the energy is used up, do you think?”

  “Could be 6 months to a year,” Larek responded with a shrug. “At that point, it could cover the majority of the Kingdom.”

  “Well then, we just have to close it before it gets too big. That’s what we were already planning, so this just speeds our timeline up a little.”

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  Shaking his head, he dashed whatever hope was on her face. “Unfortunately, that won’t work. I wasn’t quite done with my explanation of the problems facing us. The final issue we’re going to have is related to the energy inside the Calamity itself. While the current energy might be consumed with the territory expanding, the amount of energy inside will only continue to build as it gets larger. We can try to mitigate the build-up by sending everything we have to start culling the monsters inside and siphoning off some of the energy. But ultimately, it will not matter all that much in the long run.

  “As for closing the Calamity, that will cause even more damage in the short run. All of that energy will be released when its territory collapses, which will sweep over the Kingdom and beyond, potentially opening Scissions randomly, creating monsters that will seem to appear out of nowhere, and even boosting Apertures with the extra energy so that they expand multiple times almost instantly. I’m not sure what it would do to the people living in the Kingdom, but it’s also possible that it might harm many of those without their potential unlocked.”

  Nedira thought about what he was saying for a few seconds, her brow furrowing in worry. “So, our choices are to allow the slow takeover of the Kingdom while the Calamity expands, or to immediately exude a cascade of energy that might essentially unleash waves of monsters over an unprepared Kingdom – is that what you’re saying?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And I’m assuming that there’s no other alternative?”

  Larek shook his head. “No, I didn’t say that. I have an idea of a plan, but its implementation will require a bit of a change in our strategy.”

  “What is the plan, then?”

  Ever since Larek had noticed the Primal Essence layer weakening within the Calamity, and figured that the expansion of it was inevitable, the Divine Fusionist’s mind had been going full-force to find a solution to the problem. At first, he thought about a way to create a Fusion similar in breadth to the one he’d made just a short while ago to kill the Gergasi, one designed to siphon off the energy and convert it into something else, but he almost immediately dismissed the idea. There were a few reasons why it wouldn’t necessarily work the way he might want it to, but the main one was because the scale of such an endeavor was entirely too large to contain. Even the one he’d made during his fight with the Gergasi had only used a tiny fraction of the Primal Essence within the Calamity, and it hadn’t touched all of the other energy within its territory. His actions hadn’t necessarily pulled out a significant portion of the Primal Essence, at least not enough to make a difference; instead, he’d simply destabilized this small portion of the barrier where the Aperture in the center took advantage of it to push through its constraints.

  He'd started a chain of events that wouldn’t be easily stopped by a simple Fusion designed to absorb energy. There was so much volatile energy inside the Calamity right then that nothing he designed, even if he were to create millions of them, could contain it without creating a disaster of its own. He thought that if he had enough time and planning, he might be able to find a solution to absorb and contain it all, or at least to bring it to safe levels, but they didn’t have that kind of time right then.

  If he couldn’t find a way to absorb or contain the energy, the only other option was to redirect it somewhere else.

  “We need to get to the tear in the world that the Gergasi created over 1,000 years ago,” he stated, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

  “What?! Why?!” she demanded.

  “It’s based on what I understand of how Scissions and Apertures work,” he began, even as he started taking stock of The Hopper’s longer flight worthiness. The vessel was a wreck on the top deck. Fortunately, though, it appeared that it hadn’t been too damaged to fly long distances. “All of them are connected to the world of Corruption one-way, so all of the energy from the other world bleeds into this world, but it doesn’t go the other way. However, the tear in the world is different; it is a two-way connection, which means that I should be able to redirect all of the energy built up inside the Calamity so that it passes through the tear, shunting it off our world and into the other.”

  “How do you know that will work? In fact, how do you know that it is a two-way connection in the first place?”

  Shrugging, he said, “I don’t, for sure, but it makes the most sense. I have a feeling that the only reason no one has gone through to the other world is because the energy flowing through it is too strong to force a way through, but that shouldn’t be any problem with the less physical energy I want to pass through it. Of course, that’s only the most obvious reason no one has tried to go through; they probably wouldn’t live long enough to make it back to tell anyone.”

  “But… are you even sure you can do all of that?”

  Larek thought about it for another few seconds, working through the steps he would have to take to do such a thing safely – or as safely as redirecting an amount of energy that was dense enough to frighten him more than a little. “I believe so. It’ll take a special Fusion to handle the stress of pulling in the energy and rerouting it through the tear, but it could be done.”

  “And once the energy has been shunted off to the other world?”

  He smiled down at her. “Then we can close the Calamity just like any other.”

  “You make it sound so easy,” she whispered, leaning against him. “You know what this means, though, don’t you?”

  He nodded. It meant that, for the moment, they would have to abandon the idea of closing the Calamity first before tackling the problem with the Gergasi. Then again, that looked likely to be the case anyway, given that he’d just killed 9 more of them; retaliation from them was probably going to happen soon…

  …unless Larek and the others acted first.

  That meant going up against the Gergasi sooner than planned, and with how hesitant those in charge of the different branches of the Volunteers were when considering closing the Calamity, he didn’t have high hopes that they would be ready anytime soon to take on the powerful group living near the capitol. Unfortunately for them, he doubted that the Gergasi would give them the time they needed to prepare for such an assault; it needed to begin sooner rather than later, or else even more people would suffer.

  Nodding again at her question, he turned his attention to the Gergasi he’d killed, looking over their remains on the ground below. As much as he wanted to go see what kinds of armor and weapons he might be able to gather from them, many of them had been so damaged from his attacks that they were unusable; for those that were still intact, most of them had already been swallowed up by the rapidly expanding Calamity. Theoretically, he could go down there and pass through the barrier again to collect it, but he didn’t think it was really worth it; most of the effects that the special equipment seemed to have could be duplicated via Fusions if he really wanted to copy them.

  What he did do before they left, however, was ask Nedira to wait for just a moment as he jumped off the side of The Hopper and used a Pattern platform to bring him down to the ground, passing through the Primal Essence barrier once again. He glanced at a few of the Gergasi corpses he’d produced, but nothing really stood out to him as something he might want to salvage; instead, his entire focus was on a powerful concentration of energy just ahead of him.

  Bending down, the Divine Fusionist picked up a glowing orb of multi-colored energy, approximately half the size of his fist. The moment he touched it, he felt a zap as his hand reacted to the intense concentration of energy it held, with the majority of it being pure Primal Essence. It didn’t take long for him to identify that this orb was the result of his Mass Energy Absorption Fusion, which had not only absorbed quite a few spells powered by Mana that the Gergasi had cast at The Hopper and those standing upon it, but also a large chunk of the nearby Primal Essence barrier.

  As the Reactive Necrotic Siphon had done, the Mass Energy Absorption had condensed all of the energy it absorbed into a perfect sphere, though this one was larger than any that he’d seen from the undead Calamity. What it could be used for, he wasn’t exactly sure, but he had some ideas as he tossed it a few times in his hand, feeling a weight that was surprisingly heavy for such a small orb. If he was to compare its weight to anything, it was like holding a ball of solid iron. It was also somewhat indestructible, as he squeezed it and found it to be quite sturdy, even more than iron would be.

  With his prize in hand, he took off again, passing through the barrier and up to The Hopper, where he showed off the orb to Nedira. She was equally impressed by it, even if she wasn’t sure why she should be.

  Nothing else was keeping them there; and with the information about the Calamity and the Gergasi they had to share with those in charge of the Volunteers, it was better that they get back to Thanesh and break the news as soon as possible. So, with a last look at the troublesome Calamity and the corpses of the Gergasi on the ground, Larek aimed The Hopper to the south, intending to reach their home city within an hour or so.

  After that, they had a lot more planning to do – and a lot more convincing of people that they should come with him into the belly of the beast.