While the entirety of it was a complex algorithm of various factors, it was, at the same time, a known equation. He knew the foundational formulas from the language of Creation, from notes in a book he had found by First Wizard Baraccus, Secrets of a War Wizard’s Power, written expressly for Richard three thousand years before he had been born. There was also the underlying work done by Baraccus on azimuth observations, and what Richard had learned from the many other books he had read—even The Adventures of Bonnie Day, written by Nathan Rahl—as well as a variety of formulas in the Cerulean scrolls, and several useful ratios from a book his grandfather had once found in the Keep, Continuum Ratios and Viability Predictions. There were computations of gradient angles affected by speed that Richard had already made the same instant he saw the perspective and distances while computing reflective effects of what he intended. He had to factor in the power that he would bring to bear and how it would affect every one of the calculations.
He saw all of those calculations and computations in his mind’s eye in a flicker of time. They were done almost as soon as he saw what would be necessary.
Those calculations came together with instinct honed from every experience in his life, from every battle he had fought, every person and creature he had killed. He wondered why he had never realized it in quite that same way before.
Even as he wondered, he knew that his time spent in the eternity of the underworld—when he had straightened out tangled connections in his gift—had given him inestimable insight he could have gained nowhere else but in the world of the dead.
All of that power crackling around him, was him. It was a creation of his gift. He had brought it into being. It was his to direct. It was his to wield. It was an extension of his fury.
In that instant, at the peak of the swirling haze of colors and flashing points of light surging up from his soul, Richard unleashed his rage.
The air between him and the creatures distorted as it was violently compressed to an infinitely small point. Throughout the palace, through every open window and door, every place open to the sky, air rushed in to fill the void he had created up on the balcony by that sudden compression. It abruptly sucked the air from the lungs of everyone around him, instantly forming ice crystals around their noses and mouths. Their eyes bulged from the sudden pressure difference.
Richard leaned his body forward, arms out, projecting and directing his gift through his hands to push that point he had created toward the enemy. It shifted in among them as they were helplessly suspended in that moment frozen in time. Near the focal point of that pressure gradient some of their chests ripped open from the internal pressure of the air violently escaping as it tried to equalize the pressure in the vacuum around that compression point. Some of their eyes burst.
As Richard pushed that compression point through their midst to position it where it needed to be in the center of the mass, the tissue nearest the steepest portion of the pressure gradient vaporized. From his point of view, what Richard saw was a hole being tunneled right through the creatures, and unfortunately the soldiers, through flesh and bone and steel as he pushed it to where it was going to need to be. Flesh around the vaporizing tissue shredded as it was sucked in toward the point.
But that was only in the first infinitesimal fraction of time before he released the heat and energy he had pulled from the air he had compressed into that point.
Richard, that power’s origin, its genesis, its creator, its commander, gave it what it needed: command.
He pushed his hands out with the effort of pressing that point of concussion not only tighter but also into the midst of the Glee.
When he at last released that compressed energy at that central, infinitesimally small point, it expanded with such a violent detonation that it shook the palace and knocked everyone except Richard from their feet.
The heat of the explosive expansion ignited the air itself. Countless shards of elemental fire, like splinters of white-hot burning glass, tumbled, spun, and flew everywhere inside the expanding discharge of energy. Those glowing splinters of heat flared through everything within the shell of the expanding central point. Flesh, bone, blood, even the steel of the soldiers’ weapons, all fragmented into burning particles that blazed from white hot, to red, to ash, all in one explosive instant.
Richard, though, could see it all drawn out in its full dynamic display.
The air that had been sucked into the palace now had to leave, driven before a violent shockwave. The pressure that had built up broke windows in its brutal rush outward. Air that had been sucked from lungs suddenly rushed back in with a thump and an involuntary gasp.
In that instant of release—the center of it located in the center of the mass of Glee—the concussive energy violently reoccupied the void around the central point with such force that everything ignited in something akin to wizard’s fire, but not concentrated and not actually fire in the same magic-generated sense. This was something else entirely. This was elemental heat and force, a forge of a war wizard’s power unleashed.
To Richard it all was a predetermined, programmed formula unfolding in deliberate stages that he had calculated the instant before releasing the energy he had gathered. To anyone else seeing it happen, it was a sudden detonation that filled the corridor with a blinding flash and thunderous blast, and in that pristine instant of release, they would have felt the hammer of force against their chest as they saw the Glee explode into ash.
Richard felt it all as an extension of his rage unleashed, exquisite, pure, and profoundly violent. It was glorious.
In the ringing silence that followed, the greasy cloud of ash that had been the Glee floated through the air, gradually drifting down.
There were sooty piles of it similar to the ones left in the library’s containment field, even if created in a different manner. There were splatters and smears of it against the walls, the pillars, and on the short wall at the side of the balcony. It covered the floor in a thick mass like the aftermath of a black blizzard.
Amid that devastation were also the gray, ashen remains of the soldiers of the First File who had been coming to protect them. They had been there, caught up in the center of that maelstrom of energy Richard had released.
He had ached with sorrow, even as he had released his power, knowing it would also kill those brave men.
11
In the hush as time returned to normal, those with Richard slowly tried to gather their senses. The ones still conscious held their heads, groaning in pain from the pressure he had created both in the compression of the air, and in its explosive expansion.
Richard alone stood unaffected, gazing first for a time at the ashen remains of the Glee and the soldiers, then around at everyone else.
Rikka and Cassia looked to be unconscious. Nyda, Vale, and Berdine were just sitting up, holding their heads and taking deep breaths. Shale put a knee to the floor as she steadied herself before trying to stand.
Richard bent to help Kahlan get up. Like everyone else, she looked stunned. As consciousness gradually returned, she blinked, trying to collect her wits. He lifted her to her feet. Still trying to get her balance, she leaned against him for support.
“Richard,” she managed as she winced, panting to catch her breath, her hands grabbing hold of his arms, “what … what just happened? I thought we were all dead. How can we be alive? What did you do?”
“Not the kind of thing I would want to do outside a containment field, but I had no choice.”
“Where are we?” Rikka asked, sounding groggy and only half awake.