Nothing had given Zane as strong an impression as back then, deep in the heart of the tornado. He needed that feeling.
He looked to the horizon and knew what he had to do.
It was just a matter of how much punishment he could take.
Nearly a week in this pocket dimension, fighting very air with every breath, had eaten away at his reserves. He was down to less than half now.
If he was to do this, he'd have just one try.
He cast his senses about, feeling things out in the Astral Plane.
This chunk of the world was still recovering. He could feel it in the air—a slowly rising field of energy, a simmering cloud of Law blanketing the atmosphere, like a spell of humidity before a thunderstorm.
He closed his eyes, brows furrowed, and felt farther.
The landscape of essence and Law expanded in his mind. Shimmering fields of Solar Flare, denser in places, lighter in others...
It grew stronger out west.
He looked, squinted.
There was a faint shimmering of pale gold on the horizon, barely visible at this distance.
His heart quickened.
He stomped and blasted toward the light.
The ground blurred to a cracked blur beneath him; on his way, he came across pools of Solar Flare big as inland oceans—good bounties of Law. But he passed over them in three strong blasts.
He was after a bigger prize.
Sure enough, that shimmer was starting to brighten, take clearer shape, and he felt the Law in the air thickening all around him, singeing his skin again.
He sped closer.
And there it was—a pillar of furious gold.
The heat—the Law pouring off it—was astounding. Zane was breathing heavier, but not from fear. It didn't frighten him; it didn't even make him wary. Not anymore.
Even from this distance, he could feel that vicious heat, that raw power.
It excited him.
The winds were picking up now, ripping chunks of earth out of the ground, sucking pools of Solar Flare for hundreds of miles...
Zane was still hurtling at the thing full-force. And now he was in the throes of the beast; its high shrieking howl, and that low stellar rumble, was all he heard.
He was so close now it took up all his field of view. Everything in sight was cast in shining gold. He saw stones melting midair just from the sheer heat of it, before being fed into that golden incinerator.
Zane stared it down as he charged, a steely resolve in his mind. No turning back now.
That power was his.
He bellowed, leaped straight for it—and crashed through the outer rim.
It was just as excruciating as last time.
A magnificent lash of pain shot through his whole front side, like he'd run into a wall of molten spikes.
It got a grunt out of him—but that was all.
Then he was thrown spinning into the chaos.
And the powers of the sun started wrecking his body once more.
His skin charred off. His muscles blackened wherever the gold carved through. He was slapped with Solar Flare, spun around with it, battered every which way by those cruel lashes of heat—lashes that left blackened furrows all over his body...
But though that Law crashed madly around him, though the entire tornado flexed in, trying to crush him like a beast with its prey in its jaws—though his body, his senses screamed bloody murder—
Zane's mind was calm.
It was an effort of sheer will.
The pressures outside were immense. His Asura State was blasting full-force. And still, he could feel himself dying. Ascendant bodies were not meant to survive stellar assault—even a body like his.
But a far greater pressure came from within. The force of his focus.
In that moment, he only had a mind for Solar Flare. He was locked onto the task, eyes narrowed... his mind was the eye of the storm.
As that vastness tore through him, he soaked in every little detail. Made a study of his own destruction.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
The shape of Solar Flare was fast coalescing in his mind. And he knew it, the way a blind man knows the shape of a thing by feeling it. It grew clearer and clearer...
He was growing woozy.
He could feel his muscles disintegrating, going to slag, his bones softening, the hard edges of his very being searing away under the onslaught—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟝𝟘%
This second time, the feeling came faster than the first, like he was remembering something he once knew. He resolved never to forget it again. A great natural Law was being written into his mind in strokes of blinding pain.
He let nothing slip away. Seized every last chunk of it.
His body had been charred to half its size. He was a big frame of bones and sinew and half-melted muscle.
The pain had well passed the upper limit of what any body was meant to experience. When faced with pain beyond the world, the minds of the living shut off to protect themselves.
Zane roared, exertion written in every line of his expression—and refused to go out.
He wasn't done.
Then—
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟚𝟝%
His eyes snapped open.
His pupils flashed gold.
He lashed out his Chains in one decisive motion and dropped anchor.
He plummeted.
Past a wall of scything Flare, then another—smashed deep into a plateau, a plateau that instantly crumpled to a crater.
This time, he landed on his feet. Deep in a crouch. Still breathing heavy, steaming all over. But ready.
He felt the tornado rage off somewhere behind him.
That was this world's best shot to finish him off, he thought.
He crossed his legs, sat down—and closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, he would be a changed man.
He began for the last time.
He opened his palm. And in burst glorious Stormfire.
The first thing he needed, he already knew.
That density, that hyper-concentration—so concentrated it changed its very nature, drew fluid from flame, and made a controlled chaos.
It was like Noughtfire said, he realized.
The fire in his hands began to change.
From flickering and thrashing to seething and surging... drawing in, condensing—moving less like a bucking stallion and more like a coiling python.
His brow furrowed more the more essence he poured in. The more he chased the shining shape in his mind.
This time, he moved with an iron certainty.
And sure enough... as the purple grew brighter, denser, there was a deep rumbling.
The Laws of Stormfire flickered. As though shifting between forms—caught halfway between Stormfire and something greater—
Gold.
A shining gold rushed into the world, a gold shot through with Destruction white. A single strand of beautiful, violent color, coiling in the air. Air that warbled under the heat of it for miles, as though shuddering...
Zane allowed himself a moment of great satisfaction.
But this thing was not Solar Flare—not in full. It was just the first step.
The forces in that tornado were stark in his mind. The forces that lit up this world's sky. What Noughtfire had shown him came to mind again—drawing a line, and searing the skies...
Everything had been in that little show, now he thought of it.
To make Solar Flare, he needed to think bigger.
In his hands was a trickle making lazy circles in the air—if he unleashed it as is, it would cause catastrophic damage, he knew.
But Zane needed something that could threaten planets.
He willed in more essence.
And the stream began to grow. Widen. Rushing faster, rumbling louder, starting to make the sounds churning stars make—
It was a hugely essence-intensive thing. Especially in his current state.
The most taxing part was that Heavenly Destruction.
The brilliance at the heart of his Flare, the engine of its power. It made his Flare much more volatile, he felt—but the power in his hands...
This was a different beast compared to the Flares in the sky.
It only grew more evident as the flow widened to the size of a creek, then a river.
He knew, in that moment, he was creating something special.
He was so close he could taste it.
That growing Flare rushed all around him now, a band of brilliant power that trembled the realm as it passed, as though the fabric of this reality could barely contain it...
His essence was deserting him in a great rush now. He knew he'd come to the critical moment.
Zane gave it his all.
The world erupted in solar gold. Rushing faster, and all around him he could feel it taking full form—
A new light spilled into the world. Almost a divine thing. A gold brighter than gold, an ocean of it raging around him, faster and faster. Its lights spread far, flaring proud, touching lands far into the horizon. The ground for miles around began to soften under its vicious glare, as though they didn't even dare hold solid form in its presence.
He was so agonizingly close—but the ocean was starting to spill over, and it took a massive effort of his exhausted soul to keep it steady—
His teeth were gritted so hard he could taste his own blood.
He could feel just how precarious things were. Success and failure hung on a knife's edge.
Then he felt a disturbance in the distance.
A familiar pyre of Solar Flare, drawing closer at alarming speeds. A challenger.
He frowned, looked east. Saw a new light over the cracked lands, wrestling with his own.
It was the tornado he'd just dropped out of. It had ballooned to double the size.
It must've swallowed another tornado. Now it was curving back around, making new canyons in its wake.
Making a warpath straight for him.
This world had come to finish him at his most vulnerable moment.