The Primeval Era-Chapter 87: The Primal Surge! II

Damian’s eyes remained cold with a terrible light filling them.

He saw the outline of the massive beast clearly.

It was a serpent.

But calling it a serpent was like calling the Roaring Stone Mountain a rock.

Its body was longer than the entire Purple Stone Tribe, coils of scales that shimmered with darkness and flashes of lightning that arced between them like living things.

Its head was not the head of a snake but something closer to a horse, elongated and terrible, with eyes that burned with the fury of storms and a mane of what looked like concentrated thunderclouds flowing behind it.

And it had wings.

Massive wings that spread from its serpentine body like the sails of impossible ships, their membranes crackling with electricity that turned the air around them into ozone. Each beat of those wings generated winds that bent trees and scattered smaller beasts. Each movement of its colossal form called forth changes in the weather itself.

Storms appeared around it.

The clear morning sky darkened where the beast passed, clouds forming from nothing to follow in its wake. Lightning flickered within those clouds, answering the call of the creature that had summoned them. Rain began to fall in sheets wherever its shadow touched the earth.

Damian had learned of the legends of creatures like these!

An Inkanyamba.

A Storm Serpent!

A creature stemming from the deepest legends of the Lands of Stone, a beast so powerful that entire Sworn Tribes had been founded around the reverence of its kind. It was said that an Inkanyamba could drown Tribes with a thought, could call down lightning that cracked mountains, could summon hurricanes that lasted for generations.

And it was headed straight toward the tribe.

It certainly meant death and destruction!

There was no surviving something like this. No wall, no matter how transformed, could withstand the fury of a Behemoth Primal Beast. No Warrior, no matter how powerful, could stand against a creature that changed the very weather with its passage.

It was an extremely heavy and terrifying scene.

And before Damian could do anything else...

"I... am sorry."

He heard these calm words from Serala.

A moment later, from behind the Holy Daughter, white-blue wings of Mana erupted into existence.

They spread from her back like the pinions of some great bird of prey, translucent and beautiful and burning with power that made the air around her shimmer. Her wing-shaped pupils shone with a dangerous light, the whites within them pulsing with the same energy that formed her wings.

And without anyone’s input...

Her figure carrying extraordinary grace and bearing, with eyes burning with a glorious imperial attitude...

She shot out from the wall.

Directly toward the incoming tide of Primal Beasts.

As if she could never live with herself if this Primal Surge, caused in part due to her presence, decimated this Unbound Tribe that had taken her in.

Like a lone white-blue bird, a single girl shot out toward a Primal Surge all by herself!

Damian closed his eyes for a moment.

He thought of the Tribesmen behind him. The ones who had danced the Umoya last night. The ones who had shared their feast with a stranger. The ones who had called him Tokoloshe and looked at him with hope instead of fear.

He thought of Elena with her fiery hair.

He thought of Grandmother Essun with her shrewd yellow teeth.

He thought of Uncle Adam, who had protected him for eight years and deserved a rest that might never come.

He opened his eyes.

And he gave a simple command to those standing on the wall.

"Stay."

HUUUM!

After that, Mana surged around his legs with intensity that made the air crackle. He bent down, and the wall below him responded to his intention. It sank slightly beneath his feet as if gathering strength, as if preparing to assist him in what came next.

Then it pushed up.

And he jumped.

His figure shot upward and made a curve toward the beast tide, a streak of blue light against the darkening sky. The wind tore at his clothes and his hair, but he didn’t feel the cold. He only felt the power coursing through him and the rage that was building in his chest.

He was not thinking of too many things right now.

He couldn’t.

Because in front of him were hundreds of Primal Beasts and even a Behemoth that could devastate entire regions.

And yet he found himself questioning...

Why?

Why did the forces of that Murderous Saint think they could do something like this so freely?

What made them so bold across the Lands of Stone for them to initiate Primal Surges just for the sake of one girl?

Did they care how many Unbound Tribes would be crushed?

How many would be killed and paint the Lands of Stone red?

Why did they think they could do whatever they wanted?

BOOM!

With a single terrifying leap, Damian descended toward the earth below.

The scene seemed to move in slow motion.

He could see Serala’s flying figure ahead of him, her white-blue wings beating against air that grew increasingly turbulent as they approached the storm surrounding the Inkanyamba. Her eyes were decisive and sharp, accepting of death if that was what this required.

She stared at his figure as it fell past her, plummeting toward the land below.

CRASH!

He hit the ground and created a crater that sent shockwaves rippling outward, stone and earth exploding away from the impact point. But he didn’t stop. His legs coiled beneath him, gathering power that exceeded anything he had produced before.

And he jumped again.

Shooting up like a meteor of blue Mana, he passed Serala’s flying form. His trajectory carried him higher and faster than her wings could match, his body burning with the silent flames of the Primordial Tongue as he rocketed toward the tide of beasts!

And as he passed her...

Serala could only hear a single word.

He shouted it out while he looked toward the tide of beasts ahead, his voice carrying across the storm-torn sky as if demanding an answer from the very Lands of Stone themselves.

"WHY?!"

BOOM!

Damian Vakochev questioned.

And he demanded an answer!