I left them alone for a while, and ordered the rest of the envoys to give them some space. Then I left to meet up with Malek and Asare so that we could coordinate the next move we're to make. With the lich dead, everything apart from the Thralls in the final division were destroyed and their soul flames became a part of big ball of burning green soul gas above our heads.
"My lord! We need to take this soul flame stuff back to Ethernalia Leonis. Apart from being a very good energy source, it can induce evolution to higher ranks for vampires. We need to analyze it, and find out where we can get more!" Malek spoke up with excitement.
"That gas is the collective energy from the souls of millions of people, resurrected and animated through necromancy. Short of being a necromancer yourself, or go around the galaxy and different planets looking for places like this where a lich or a necromancer has been holed up for thousands of years creating undead. Either way, whatever method you choose will have you dealing with one of the darkest magic known to exist. So put a lid on your scientific hard-on." Asare berated him as they both drew close to me.
"Either way we have to contain it; to prevent the risk of it being dissipated and essentially lost forever. But the problem is how do we do so. That thing is like a baby sun, it's huge! I don't think I could quite create a blood crystal that big or powerful enough to contain it yet. We need to think of something else."
I said to them as I stared at the soul flame. Malek didn't need to tell me how much of an important resource it was, or what we could achieve with it. But before we could make those sort of plans, we have to make sure that's it's firmly within our grasp, without any risk of loosing it.
"You can weave a containment seal around it, just like castle Sarang. That shouldn't be a problem right? You've studied those seals so much you mumble them in your sleep and draw them out absent mindedly." Queen said as she drew closer.
"And how is it that you know that?"
I asked her with my eyebrows raised high in suspicion. She ignored me and walked past, moving a bit towards the soul flame, before turning her head a bit to answer me.
"People talk, and most of the time it's obvious."
Okay that was weird, but she was right. I could just create a containment seal for it just like Castle Sarang. It would at least keep it contained long enough for us to figure out another option. But before we could worry about it, we had to go to next stop on our map, straight to demonville.
Creating the seal for it wasn't as easy as I thought to would be, but using the containment seal around castle Sarang as a blue print was a good idea. So at the very least I wasn't working blind, just working long. I had to incorporate both my soul runes, and normal runes into a plethora of rune sentences to get a functional rune circle going.
To be honest, I made a lot of mistakes or couldn't get a rune to work the way I could intended because that particular rune word did not have that particular function. It's like how you can't tell and earth rune to freeze or a metal rune to blow a gust of wind. You had to get a rune, and work your intent around what it could do. For example my soul rune [BREAK] could destroy things physically, but as I've proved with Adein, it's not in the literal interpretation of the word itself, but the meaning and the concept within. It could break minds just as well as it could break bones.
And fire can't freeze and ice can't burn, I couldn't order them to do so, rather I had to use a word or just as easily combine both into a rune phrase that could do what I wanted. Which means rather than separating fire and ice, I could just weave a phrase and have it read (Ice Flame), creating an entity that could both burn and freeze, and work my intent around it.
This was why weaving was so dangerous and powerful. It would completely overturn the laws of nature, and create things that are not normal in a general sense. With that, forming or creating an entirely new planet that was flat and could support life would be entirely possible. At least if the weaver had a strong enough mental energy and body to resist Nature's backlash.
The containment seal that I created for the soul flame, rose up in flash of golden light to completely encompass and encase it in a floating golden cube that had runes moving all over it's golden transparent surface. The seal would keep it's e edgy contains and protected to prevent any form dissipation, and then it would protect it from outside, stopping any sort of outside interference, whether physical or energy like.
But creating that seal completely floored me. And not just from the nature's backlash that came with it, but due to the mental strain I had to put into doing this. It took me two hours! Before today the longest time I've spent on a seal was five minutes, and now a whole 120 minutes.
I was exhausted, and now had a new found appreciation for weaving. It's it always as simple as it looked, as weaving, had a lot of intricacies involved within. Sure it wasn't as hard or profound as alchemy or enchantment, or even spell casting. But when you could alter the very essence of nature and reality to a specific degree, all of your concentration and then a little extra would be required. Or else you could easily fuck up the world and yourself; and when that happens no one would be laughing.
After another hour of rest, all of the vampires fell into formation and we marched forward. The valley which was previously inhabited by millions of undead was desolate, it was completely devoid of life, and all this probably had to do with high amount of death energy that has been around for a long time.
An impromptu gate was made at the entrance of the valley where we had come in, and a few vampires were left behind to stand guard. And when we got to the hill where we had fought the lich, we saw that it led to another tunnel. The valley itself was located in huge cavern, and the tunnel ahead went deep into the bowels of the mountain range above our heads.
Another gate was made at this entrance and reinforced with both my weaving and Gus's enchantment. Then it closed shut behind us as we made our way into the tunnel, leaving behind the battlefield of the undead and our memories of it behind. Now we had to focus our attention on what lay ahead.
The tunnel we were in was phosphorescent, glowing a deep green and yellow as we walked past it. There were patterns on the walls of the tunnel, but we could not recognize any of them, or figure out if it meant anything or was just there due to the formation of the tunnel.
And just like the previous tunnel that led to the valley, this one was also incredibly wide and open, allowing for a great deal of space as we moved through it. However unlike the previous tunnel, this one was a lot longer, and it slipped upwards, almost as if we were ascending rather than going straight or down.
We had been traveling through this tunnel for almost eight hours, when suddenly we were assaulted by a sweltering heat and the smell of Sulphur and ash. Heat glistened of our skin, and it was extremely difficult to breathe. It took us another two hours of moving to finally see something different.
There was a massive door wide open, and leading out into a world made of fire. Down below I could see the ground was cracked and lava seeped out of the cracks. It wad like a plain was stretched from left to right, having no end in sight. But ahead of us, almost five hundred meters away was lone hill with another door open wide, and it led to another tunnel just like the one we just came out of.
At first I was confused. The lone hill with the wide open door was right in the middle of the plain, with no mountain wall behind it. It was as if the door was hanging on air, I couldn't make heads and tails of it, because the world of fire and brimstone I was seeing wasn't another cavern, it was exactly what I just said it was; a world.
"Those fucking idiots!" Asare muttered whilst gritting his teeth.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"They actually summoned a layer of hell in between the doors. This door leads us into another world, or to be more precise, hell, whilst the other door leads us out of it. Think of this as a rather elaborate trap, to get to our destination we have to walk through another dimension, but in a place as lawless and dangerous as hell: The home ground of demons and demonic beasts, there's no way we can get to that other door without casualties, and it wouldn't be light. The demons here wouldn't let us through that easily." Asare explained.
He was right, and giving how numerous we were, we all wouldn't be able to make it in time even with our speed. And I could weave a shield, but I have no idea how or what sort of reaction my runes would have in another dimension. It was too much of a risk, which means we really have to be careful about what we'll choose to do, and I believe there's only one option here.
"Not everyone can go on from here. We need a smaller contingent of fighters, the strongest we have to offer, and the fastest. That way we can protect ourselves easily and move through this dimension faster." Bien offered as she came closer.
I've been ignoring the bloodline elders so far, but what she had just suggested was the best plan. Each force would have to choose a specific number of people to go with them. Though Queen and her two hundred elders didn't seem to have a problem, after all, they were elders and could probably move a hundred times faster than we could.
So I took Bien's advice and divided my forces, choosing to take a hundred Envoys just as usual. The rest will remain here with Asare to guard this damn dimensional gate. I'm sure there's some sort of enchantment that kept the demons from going through it, though I don't know if the enchantment would stop us too, we had to give this a shot.
I called Soren over and got onto his back, transforming him into his bike form. It would take me a 5 seconds or less to cross that distance unimpeded, but I had to make sure the others could safely get across. This was not a fight, but rather a race, and we had to make every second count.
"Alright guys, saddle up, and prepare yourselves, because whether you like it or not! We're going to hell!"