Chapter 391 (1/2)

Chapter 391

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Living with this constant fear of being unable to protect otten what that felt like In Alacrya, my battles had been entirely distant, separate, from my friends and family It was only ever ers and people who I had, for most of my unintentional stay there, seen as enemies

Now, as I God Stepped fro the potential death toll of a full-scale assault on Vildorial The people here were tired and afraid, the Lances only recently recuperated froes like Curtis and Kathyln and the Twin Horns, could not stand against even retainers, much less Scythes

Another God Step took e of the city doo levels to where a series of arched gates opened into a long, straight tunnel wide enough for thirty dwarves to march abreast

Afrom the portal room ahead, purposefully projected to loudly announce their presence I ignited Realnatures beca with the sickly intensity I'd come to understand as the corrupted deviant , I looked over hest level, where my sister and mother were sheltered with a thousand dwarven nobles The Royal Palace was much too close

'This definitely see in the same nervousness that quickened my heartbeat

I stepped beneath one of the arches leading toward the portal roo my hand on the cold stone pillar Of course It's a trap, after all Even if I defeated whatever ene intent in front of me, there were still the enemies behind me to consider I didn't know if the Lances could hold the line If it took …

The pillar crunched in my fist, which came away full of pinkish dust and stone shards But what other choice do we have?

Hurling the round, I took a step forward And then another And with each cautious step, I pushed down another question and source of anxiety The truest way to protect those I cared about was to ht as swift and decisive as possible and to do that, I couldn't be shackled by my own uncertainty

At the end of the tunnel, there was a ht red stone They opened into a huge, eh, fifty-foot-wide portal frae a sray and red rock held up a series of balconies that encircled the cave thirty feet up

The roolow of the still active portal

My eyesenergy the four dwarven corpses bleeding out in front of it, their bodies iures spread out throughout the chais trey I felt Uto'sover into hters of the basilisks who followed Agrona froic fine-tuned over a hundred generations I knehat these beings were Windsoo

'The Wraiths,' Regis thought, giving a narona's hidden half-blood soldiers

"Youin each figure

The fore locks of earth-brown hair tumbled around thick, corkscrew horns that stuck up several inches from the top of his head He wore red chainloith protective runes

His dismissive eyes e in witless banter"

"Oh coet to have any fun," one of the others said, whipping thick blond braids around his head and staring at ry eyes "If it is true that this one killed Cadell, we should have so him to the oblivion of death" Like Richmal, this second man also had blood-red eyes and onyx horns His curled out and down froain under his chin

While they spoke, Regis's Uto-memories continued to ripple across the mental connection we shared I saw a distorted, half-reaunt, ashen corpse of a wohtly-curved black horns protruded—a dragon, I was certain of it

Her golden eyes stared lifeless up at Richmal as the Wraith bent down and wrenched one of her horns free of her head The noise of it breaking sent a psychic treh me that made my stoency, I reached for the thread of aether that always connected the djinn's relic armor to me The black scales feathered into existence across ht and coolness to it as the ar of aether as the limited amount in the atmosphere pulled closer

"Ah, I think he wants to be one of us!" a rich, feminine voice drawled "Look at his little horns!" The speaker was a marble-skinned woman in heavy black plate ar off her short, bright blue hair, which was styled into spikes around her ridged horns Runic lightning bolts were tattooed across her scarlet eyes Ulrike, I knew, her nais's uncontained stream-of-consciousness

"Cadell must have been sauced on elder nectar to let this skinny lesser best his out of the shadows and intothe hair on the back of my neck stand on end I traced it back to a Wraith whose robes were dark with burn marks, the hood of which was pulled half up over his bald head Two daggerlike horns thrust forward froht red of his eyes was interrupted by dark splotches that seeray patches that marred his cold, marble skin

Next to hi shadows I caught flashes of jet-black hair curled up into horns atop her head and dark, ox-blood eyes surrounded by gray-black skin Valeska

"Enough," Rich the other voices "You de liquid shi+vered into existence in his fist, and he met my eye "We aste no more breath on you, lesser"

In the same moment, I activated God Step The room shi+fted in an amethyst flash, and I appeared just beside and behind Rich an aetheric sword and sweeping it backwards

The room exploded into chaos

Black iron spikes shot froust of black wind seemed to enfold Richmal I felt the aether blade strike hoet away A breath later, he reappeared across the roo from a wound in his side

This eneether with flawless efficiency I couldn't afford to hold anything back against theis, the blade

Mana condensed within the dust and shadows hovering in the air, and a ring of black iron spikes thrust out of nothing to stab atRealmheart to sense the formation of the attack, I sidestepped, pivoted, and ducked around the spikes, slashi+ng through those I couldn't dodge

A specter shaped fro overout toward the specter's throat Just before it is reached the sword, and the thin amethyst blade bursted in dark violet fire

Destruction devoured the specter, leaving behind nothing, not even a residue ofshi+elds of black wind and soulfirethe room into an inferno

Twin torrents of black fire and sluggish, bubbling ooze sprayed atthe railing of the balcony and flipping myself up onto it Theapart under the force ofas a cloud of soulfire chased behind me

The room becaet, the blue-haired Wraith, Ulrike I had only an instant to be surprised as her cri up to block my strike just as her spear lowered into a position to catch ainst ainst her towering shi+eld, which rapped in a thick shell of blue-black lightning Her conjured spear hitram, just above y shook the chamber as ere both throay by the force of our simultaneous blows I tumbled, landed on ht of violet fla her shi+eld before acidic tentacles wrapped around h them, and Destruction ripped the spell apart

The soulfire cloud caught up tofire that tried to force itself into eted nova of aether, nullifying the flaround heaved beneath oleranite tiles and reached for me I slid one foot back across the broken tiles as spiked claws closed on nothing but dust, then flicked out with the Destruction blade once, twice, three tiolem, which crumbled and burned

Greenish ed back just as the floor began to ooze thick, poisonous sludge A cyclone of black wind forced ed bolt of lightning with the Destruction blade and releasing an aetheric blast to ward off the clouds of soulfire

There were too s between their coo on the offensive As I pivoted to stay out of the gusting cyclone, I considered my own capabilities I needed to maxi Regis following along withaether into an to ache

God Step flared, and I was standing across the room, just inside the arched entryways

The aether blade vanished, as did is and the Destruction Godrune

Extending my arm, I released the blast

Ulrike and the braided Wraith, Ifiok, vanished in a cone of roiling purple aether It engulfed the long-range teleportation portal beyond them as well, and the portal frame shattered with a sound like a thunderclap The hard stone ca confetti as it dissolved The opaque liquid energy of the portal itself swirled with the turbulence of its failure, then hissed and faded away

At least they wouldn't be bringing in any reinforcements that way

Ulrike lowered her shi+eld, which was pockmarked and burn-scarred frohtly across its dim metallic surface Ifiok stepped out fro and one horn cracked The flesh on the side of his face was torn and bleeding

Now, I sent

In the breath that followed, Regis exploded into being between the two, fully ht by surprise, the two Wraiths were battered aside by his bulk, and his huge, square jaws full of razor-blade teeth crunched down on the wounded Ifiok's shoulder and ares cutting and snapping as they leapt across Ifiok's pale flesh

Si aether into every muscle, tendon, and joint, I Burst Stepped, blade thrust forward at the side of Ulrike's head

And sank into an ocean of pain and filth