He bumped into little Prince Rei first thing on the planet—the boy was a little swaddle of yak furs, playing with a ball of pseudo-Stormfire near the lake under Zane's house.
"Zane!" cried Rei."Hello there," said Zane. "Have you seen your uncle?"
"He was over there." Rei pointed at the horizon.
"Hmm," said Zane.
A pause.
"Zane!"
"What's up?"
"Can I show you my Stormfire?" said Rei.
"Sure."
Rei opened his palms to show a ball of flickering vivid blue flame.
Rei was close to making true Stormfire—he seemed to be a little prodigy. He only had to master a few more Minor Laws before he had all of Electricity. Zane gave him a tip on Magnetism, and Rei ran off to go try it.
***
Not long after—"'Lo, my lord!" It was a grinning Jawl ambling on over. Zane waved. Jawl saw Rei's little fuzzy form barreling off, and blinked.
"Hope my nephew wasn't much bother."
Zane shook his head. He didn't mind. "Noughtfire says you've got something prepared for me."
"That's right." Jawl nodded. "We've just finished it up an hour ago."
He wiped a line of soot off his brow. "Should we have a look?"
"Lead the way."
And off they went.
***
They saw it long before they got there. A towering cube of ghostly shining white striking high into the skies.
It ran a few hundred miles wide and a few hundred miles long too. It was sustained by an array at its base drawn equally as big, teeming with bright-purple arcane symbols.
As they arrived, a huddle of master Scryers in reflective robes were just putting on the finishing touches, etching them with what looked like giant shiny needles.
The Azure Flame Faction had its share of scrying talent—it shared that with the Steelheart Faction. There were lots of overlap between the two Factions; folk heading over to study abroad, and gather new Concepts. Fire and steel shared quite a few.
Zane vaguely recalled Noughtfire telling him once that it was pretty common especially among the Core Disciples—True Gods and higher. Once things got to the scale of star systems—real big-picture—lots of the more profound Concepts were meant to apply to many things.
Noughtfire had said it in passing, and he wasn't quite sure what it meant. But he figured being in both Factions meant he'd have some kind of leg up when the time came.
For now, he turned his eyes to the quarantine zone.
"This thing is meant to serve as a containment field," said Jawl cheerfully. "One of those pointy-headed folk—"
He gestured at the Scryers. "Said it'll cleanse anything going through it, coming in or out."
Zane and Jawl closed in on the thing with a few massive burst-stomps. Up close it looked like a waterfall of foaming white light, streaming downward; the air nearby felt oddly fresh and cool, an oasis in Stormhaven's hot, smoky clime. Stormhaven's ever-present embers floated through the air, but as they went through the veil they were swallowed up, vanishing in bursts of sheer white.
Zane saw the runes powering it on ground level—each rune as big as a football field, running horizon to horizon. On the far side, he could vaguely make out a giant battery shed—a fortress stuffed full of Heaven-grade spirit stones. It'd be powering this thing during Zane's time here.
Sage Noughtfire had constructed this vast, expensive machine just to him his best shot at the Concept. And the Sage hadn't batted an eye.
He was rather grateful.
He resolved to make sure it didn't go to waste.
"She's a beauty, ain't she?" said Jawl, looking it up and down.
Last time Zane broke through, it took a few weeks. He expected this would take a bit too.
" Well—you take care in there, my Lord! " said Jawl cheerfully. "I'll get the servants to make you a yak-steak dinner when you get back."
Zane nodded, and Jawl herded the scryers off. Leaving him to it.
***
Zane took out the case and considered it.
The Concept of Radiation.
He'd been quite looking forward to getting his hands on it ever since Noughtfire gave that demonstration, throwing Solar Flare deep into the skies. Those strange auroras around it, softening the air, hollowing out dense stone…
It seemed to Zane a core part of his Solar Flare. The same way Radiation was core to a nuclear bomb—only for Zane, it was in a much bigger way.
Even just holding the case, which trapped nearly all Radiation's powers, he could feel his fingers getting creaky at the joints.
He stepped on through the quarantine zone boundary.
It felt like he'd gone straight into a freezing waterfall. There was an all-encompassing roaring, filling his ears, his head with thunder; an enormous freezing brush down the front of his body. It felt like he was thrust into a blizzard crashing straight downward—a blizzard colder than any he'd ever been struck with.
It was a bit of a shock to his system. His body reacted, his Asura runes roaring to life, bringing with them a furious rush of heat.
Then he was through the veil, heart beating hard, Asura half-activated.
He blinked; his heart was slowing again. He calmed fast.
A slap—that was all. It still felt like he'd been scraped raw—his skin looked a little pink.
Inside the containment zone the air was cool. Smelled fresh and stale at once, like a laboratory. Tinged faintly blue.
Nodding, he crouched. And made for the center of the zone with a few bursting steps.
By the time he got there his fingers creaked as he opened them. He considered them, curious. They were what grasped the handle—but even being that close to the little Radiation that seeped through were showing effects.
He set the chest on the ground.
ℂ𝕠𝕣𝕡𝕤𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝔽𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕟 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕣 [ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕧𝕖𝕟 (𝔸+)]
Even nearly entirely contained, he could sense the danger in that black box. Could sense that strange weakness it'd made in his hand.
It was something like a preview for the power he'd have. It only made him more eager.
In Zane's experience, it was best to take these things head-on.
He braced himself. Grasped the clasps firm. And threw open the lid.
The core was surprisingly small. Not much bigger than a bowling ball. A perfectly round gray-black hunk; its surface was mottled, slashed through with black streaks as though badly burned. Its colors churned like a restless sea.
This was the relic of what had been a star. It gave off no light to the eye—only a gentle smoke.
But in the Astral Plane, it was a pyre.
Bright with a strange light. In the Astral Plane, the living were bright. But this relic shone with the wrong kind of light—a dark light. The rays poured out of it in a mad rush, obscuring its form, making it hard to look at. The sudden contrast was a bit dizzying.
The air cracked around it like so much dry wood.
This was all Zane got—an impression in a fraction of a second.
Then all that radiation blasted out, and struck him.
Some unknown immensity swallowed him. A sea of soundless destruction.
It felt like he'd been hit by a crashing tsunami, a wall of invisible rogue energy; then he was flying, grunting in surprise, blinking wide.
It was the weirdest devastating attack he'd ever felt. Like a heatwave, but it went right through him. He felt a disturbance down his skin, his bones, his organs—a sudden queasiness, like something had gone horribly wrong in every bone, every organ, a feeling of sudden withering.
It went straight through his skin. Infecting every inch of him. Rushed through him in a shock.
Then it felt like his entire body had suddenly become extremely brittle. Like even moving a little would mean things would start breaking, shattering—starting deep inside. Especially his bones.
It was one of the least pleasant feelings Zane could remember. The sort that brought out a screaming primal instinct to flinch.
Zane did not flinch.
But his lips and his mouth went dry in an instant. The water in his eyes was gone; his eyes started to burn and crack.
𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘!
ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙 𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝟟𝟝%
…When had he lost so much Health?
He blinked in surprise.
Then his body roared right back.
His Asura State burst to life, fighting those vicious winds of decay; his runes burned searing hot on his skin, and the vitality of the Savage Sage spiked through his flesh and bones. Slowing the withering, trying to wrestle it back—
He hit the ground back-first, tumbled a few times, and came to a sorry halt.
He groaned.
He was pretty sure that impact had broken a few tiny bones. Which was rather surprising—he'd only fallen a few miles. He knew what his body could take, normally.
…That was some force.
He was vaguely aware of a wall of white light behind him, fending off the Radiation… he'd been blasted quite some way, it seemed like—a few hundred miles. He was back near the edge of the quarantine zone.
The ground beneath him had been scorched black in an instant.
But this far out, there was much less Radiation. Now that his Asura had been slapped awake and was busy burning through his essence, it was looking like his body could handle things—at least here. He was losing a percent of Health every few minutes. That seemed to be all.
He squinted back where he'd come from—toward the core. The air was shattered around it for miles around, voids carving down toward it like black lightning-bolts.
The case—and the core within—were a black dot in the far distance. Sat at the bottom of a shallow crater.
That blast had transformed the quarantine zone in a blink.
There were three clear regions that Zane could see, each going a few tens of miles.
There was the innermost region, where the ground was bleached bone-white. Deep cracks laced through it, making a canyon the color of death. He could see how thick the radiation was there in the Astral Plane. Right now, he doubted he could last there ten minutes.
Then there was a region in the middle scorched gray. The colors were bled out of it, but not totally. It was scattered with skeletons—the remains of some unlucky storm yaks and storm-wolves, it looked like. All the organic material—the flesh, the mucsle—had been scoured off the bones in a blink. And all those bones were cracked badly, like they might dissolve to sand at a touch…
Then he looked around where he stood. Hundreds of miles off, where the ground was only scourged black. Here he felt just a fraction of the damage—there was a fraction of the radiation.
It seemed to him like heat in a furnace. It grew much hotter the closer he was.
Even standing this far out, though was taxing on his body. He could only stay a few hours in here before he had to get out to take a breath.
If this was the kind of power meant to soften up his enemies before his Solar Flare hit…
Zane grinned.
There was no time to waste.
He sat down cross-legged and let his mind settle. It didn't take long—it was always quite easy for him to enter a state of intense calm; it felt like he was never far from it.
He opened his mind, and grew fascinated with the way that strange Concept was wrecking his body.