Leones was still adjusting to her Soul field when the sky to the west split open. I didn't to turn to know who it was. There is a very specific distortion that occurs when Anamorsia accelerates. So, I switched to her to see what caused that racket.
And of course, the junkyard sector was deliberately inhospitable.
Mountains of discarded constructs formed heaps of trash. War machines from previous eras lay dismembered in heaps. Blades the size of ships were half-buried beneath sheets of warped alloy. Towers of scrap leaned at impossible angles, fused together by old explosions and failed experiments.
The Sixth Enlightenment automaton activated. It stood at forty meters tall, humanoid in shape but stripped of elegance. It was all mass and reinforcement. Its single ocular lens ignited in blinding white as it targeted Anamorsia Richinaria.
To the world of Spheraphase, she is the Supreme Commander of Richinaria. To the Third Generation, she is a benchmark of terror. To everyone, she is the anomaly who rewrote the Dynasty Meeting in bloodless silence.
More than nine Minor Deities fell to her. Tens of thousands of Divine Rank beings vanished under Eclipse's End, her Overwrite. But of course, not a lot of people know her well.
Most Spheraphasians receive their Pinnacle Tether at six years old. It manifests as naturally as breath. Anamorsia received nothing on her first birthday.
When her parents forcibly ascended her to Sixth Enlightenment before they left Spheraphase permanently, the ritual elevated her Soul, expanded her vessel and hardened her body into Divine resilience. Still, it did not grant her a Divinity.
She stood at Sixth Enlightenment with nothing. Do you understand how grotesque that is in a world built on inherited power? And yet, she did not break.
The automaton fired first. A column of compressed Divine Energy caused a glowing scar through the sky. Anamorsia vanished before it reached her. Six wings flapped once and the sonic detonation followed after she had already relocated hundreds of meters above the machine.
Her six wings are not decorative. Each one is longer than her body. From a distance, they appear white. Up close, they are not.
Each feather contains white and golden prismatic veins that allow them to function as independent blades when detached. They are aerodynamic, sharpened along both edges and reinforced by a body that trained without the crutch of Divinity.
She folded her wings inward and spun. Each feather vibrated at a frequency calibrated to destabilize almost anything upon contact. Air ignited around her from friction alone.
She became a drilling machine, to be more elaborate.
The automaton reacted instantly. Defensive plates sealed over its head. Additional reinforcement locked into place over the cranial core. It would have survived most Sixth Enlightenment assaults.
The first shield layer split under rotational stress. The second layer shattered. Her spiral compressed into a singular piercing axis. Her wings were folded just enough to channel all rotational momentum into a focused area. When she broke through, it felt as though a vacuum had been forced into existence at the point of impact.
She cut into the robot's skull from the crown. Circuitry burst into violet sparks as feathers shredded conduits and reinforcement simultaneously. She exited beneath the cranial chamber in a flash of white. Her wings snapped open at full extension. Detached feathers curved back toward her in perfect recall trajectories, reattaching seamlessly as she decelerated mid-air with precise control.
She landed lightly atop a slanted slab of scrap metal. Behind her, the automaton stood motionless for half a breath before it collapsed. It crushed entire mounds of discarded constructs beneath its weight. Towers of twisted steel buckled and snapped. Shockwaves rippled outward, flattening smaller debris and sending clouds of metallic dust roaring into the sky.
Anamorsia did not turn around immediately.
"It didn't even take ten seconds. I can't believe that they can make mechanical lifeforms of that level."
Anamorsia is Veneri's younger sister who is considered one of the strongest Divines of the Third Generation. After years of existing without a Divinity, she made a vow to Spheraphase itself.
Her Divinity of Vows and Soul was granted as a consequence of that vow. That Divinity is bound entirely to one function; her Overwrite, Eclipse's End.
That is why it's overpowered.
She cannot use her Divinity for augmentation or apply it defensively. It does not branch into variations. It exists solely to be used in her Overwrite. And when she invoked it at the Dynasty Meeting, Deities learned what power feels like. Yet even without activating it, she moves like an Aeterium. After all, she still has her Base Tethers from being an Aeterium.
Leones stood at the arena with her Soul field flickering as she analysed my sapphire crystal movements.
I watched both of them. One is learning to use her Divinity and the other learned to thrive without one.
The dust from the collapsed automaton had barely begun to settle when my interface unfolded beside Anamorsia's shoulder. She did not look surprised. From her perspective, I was a hovering beside her in a feminine silhouette. From mine, I saw her on a hologram and she was still standing on the robot.
"Anything else?"
I ran a brief scan over the wreckage. The automaton's energy signature had fully collapsed. External systems were destroyed.
"Yes. Retrieve the core."
She glanced back at the cranial cavity. "For Viaca?"
"Yes. They'll attempt structural analysis. It is… unusual."
"Unusual how?"
"The strength and energy output were calibrated to Sixth Enlightenment parameters. That is not normal."
She understood what that implied. It was one thing to build a durable construct. It was another to create something capable of replicating Sixth Enlightenment physical strength without pseudo-cores.
She nodded once and leapt down into the collapsed cavity.
Metal groaned under her weight as she descended into the machine's ruined skull. The interior was a maze of severed conduits and torn reinforcement beams. Faint arcs of residual energy flickered uselessly along exposed wiring.
The core sat embedded at the center. It was nearly four meters in diameter. It took the shape of a dense crimson sphere with wires coming out of the exposed area where she saw it. She simply reached out and gripped the exposed structural housing with both hands. She then braced one foot and pulled harder.
The entire spherical core tore free in a shower of sparks. Energy fluctuations still pulsed faintly across its surface. Most Sixth Enlightenment Divines would require reinforcement techniques to manage something that dense. Seriously, the Aeterium bloodline is really a superior one.
Anamorsia adjusted her grip, summoning her Inventory. The space sealed shut after she threw it in. She stepped back out of the ruin and spread her wings.
"Estimated arrival to Palace, three minutes at top speed."
The ground shattered beneath her initial acceleration. A concussive burst detonated as her wings flapped once and she became a streak of white tearing across the skyline.
Anamorsia might be the fastest being in the air. There was an incident years ago when Veneri proposed a "friendly comparison." He deployed his Flight Circles. They were beautifully made but she beat him by such an overwhelming margin that she circled back mid-flight to ask if he required assistance. He did not appreciate that but I believe she felt mildly guilty afterward.
Her speed is not merely a function of wing span but Soul Energy allocation.
Because she lacks a Pinnacle Tether, her Soul Energy capacity is restricted to her Base Tethers and Overwrite. When she feeds energy into her wings, it goes entirely into propulsion. The more she channels, the faster she becomes.
She kept making sonic booms as she accelerated beyond normal. Cloud formations distorted violently. I tracked her trajectory across the realm in real time. Her path curved in a clean arc toward the Richinaria Palace complex.
She took two minutes and thirty-six seconds.
I withdrew my projection from her side and shifted back to the arena. Leones was still maintaining her Soul field. To my surprise, it had stabilized significantly. She was learning to feel without looking.
"Relax for now."
She exhaled, letting her field settle to a sustainable baseline.
"Is she done already?"
Leones asked, glancing toward the distant horizon where a faint shockwave ripple was still visible.
"Yes. She's coming back. Adelasta is already present at the Palace. Preparations are complete."
"Already?"
"Yes."