Chapter 465 (2/2)
This was an act of desperation They were pushi+ng thee of their control to destroy me
Even as I realized what I needed to do, the darkness began descending yet again, creeping into the emptiness I had conjured between us and it
The ate was thick with all the mana that I’d transplanted to create that barrier Now, I took hold of it, pulling it all close to me Some of the Instillers and Wraiths cried out as they felt the o, but I had no time to explain
When all that condensed ether like a hot white soup sloshi+ng in the air around lance at where the void crackled and dragged across the aetheric walls, I hurled theit as far and as fast as I could
The living darkness of the void took it in greedily, absorbing and unrowing rapidly, surging doard us and pressing against the barriers constraining it, dark tendrils digging into the aetheric walls Like ice freezing the cracks between cobblestones, the void expanded
There was no explosion, no fireworks, not even a noise One e surrounded us, the next it si at all, and the void lost form and shape, like a wisp of cloud quickly bloay
The dragon to ed under the backlash of the spell’s failure and could do nothing to defend hied on him As ancient and powerful as he perhaps was, he was still flesh and bone, and under the rain of destructive ic, his skin broke open, his bones shattered and turned to dust, and only very little of hiless bird into the Beast Glades below
Despite a sudden punishi+ng fatigue that made my arms feel like lead and my skull pulse with each desperate beat of on toa pocket of empty space around hiled to keep hold of his ownout wild spells
A gout of silver fire scorched the air between us, and I intercepted it with a glea whips cracked around the shi+eld’s edges, e from the silver flames, and I severed the apart in several smaller fireballs that all dropped like catapult stones toward the Instillers still struggling to set up the equiped and withered to nothing as I fought to cancel out the spell, releasing the mana back into the atmosphere
Fro at the other surviving dragon, but dozens of interlocking plates of bright violet energy appeared around her, s of a complex watch to catch the Wraiths’ attacks and diffuse thele plate
The dragon whose ht, but my arms still trembled as I deflected his spells We sat in equilibriu, his purebetween us with each attack I bidedto catchmuscles
Each attack eaker and slower, until I was able to reach out and snuff a bolt of pure ertips With a wary, desperate moan, I clenched ed back in, crushi+ng his unprotected body like an insect between ed fro into a spell, but being brushed out of the way of one—and I dodged just as a short spear of aether thrust at the base of my neck The blow, viper-strike quick, nicked the top ofa hot line of pain and blood
Elsewhere, dozens of other spears appeared out of thin air at the same moment, and several of my Wraiths cried out si, I barely dodged another attack, then a third, unable to strike back or assist the others as spear after spear for froto thrust into the direction I would be forced to dodge
Re my battle with Arthur, I wrapped e away fro of the air and rabbed it with both hands even before it could launch itself at my throat Mana swelled into , and I spun through the air
Before a new spear couldmy own mana around it It flew like the bullet of an old earth firearm, almost too fast to see with the naked eye When it struck the spinning ic plates, the aether spear shattered one s into the wo with her own spell, which battered her back and forth several times before both the spear and the shi+elds faded
She fell in slow ic but lacking the strength or ithal to keep herself aloft or prepare new defenses
Or so I thought
In theto me for orders, the wo little old as her body expanded rapidly outward, wings sprouting fro forward as it elongated
Pushi+ng off against the mana as if it were a wall, I hurled on’s neck twisted around, glowing aht with fear and fury She bared teeth as long as swords and snapped at me
Gravity increased so quickly and with such enorain, teeth breaking and es bent aardly, the s All her forward ravity, and she tuht dohich would have daround, several Instillers fell as well, the shockwave of her i trench into the hard-packed ground and obscuring her in a cloud of dust
The surviving Wraiths, each one with a spell burning in their hands, arranged theon at any sign of le, see the weak effort of her ravity well Under the cover of the dust, I saw her outline inher humanoid form Unhurried, I drifted down into the dust A breeze blew aroundat the botto asura
I wondered, very briefly, who these three had been How long had they labored to learn the aether arts they had perforhts of their presuave theret and despair as they realized that they’d failed
The wo with pain, then relaxed, unfurling across the ground to stare up at aze All that life…and I have undone it This thought wasdeeper and harder to identify
I shook it off and kneeled beside the dragon Her throat bobbed as she sith difficulty I thought perhaps she would say sorona, but she was silent
Reaching out, I gripped herit fully Arthur’s coh to really gain a sense of the dragons’ ht in order to ht ined It was instinct, like clawing at hands wrapped around her throat But she was too far gone, and her efforts were feeble
I braced ht come with the mana, afraid but also tantalized by the opportunity to see her memories However, it see unique to the phoenixes—or, I realized somewhat uncomfortably, perhaps even a purposeful effect by Dawn in the moments of her death—because all I experienced was the power itself
The particular aspect of dragon mana—pure mana—unfolded in my mind No lesser core had ever clarified mana so brilliantly, even htIn some ways, it was the opposite of basiliskin their decay-type mana arts—or perhaps because of they and power that suffused me
The asuran wo inward as theout Her eyes faded to a pale lavender, her skin grayed, and her hair thinned Her handsoth, left her And then…she was dead
I sucked in a deep, fortifying breath, the infusion of draconicsoue
And then my eyes snapped open as I felt the distant natures Sions I could sense had the strength of these three, but eight—no, ten—dragonrapidly from the north and the east
“Quickly, co up into the air
Belowup the equipons were still too far off to see Can the re Wraiths and I hold off so many? I asked myself, but I knew the answer It had never been the plan for ons on Dicathen at once
As I watched the Instillers finish their work, my mind turned inward Frustration flared as the adrenaline of battle wore off and I was able to consider the fight that had unfolded That the dragons would be protecting the portal was obvious, but that spell, or coons had been doing…
My fists clenched, and the mana around me warped outward I knew I couldn’t have escaped this trap on my own Without the Wraiths, without Wrastor’s team’s sacrifice, I would have been dissolved within that void, everything that one
Bile rose up the back of my throat, and I tried to push the frustration—the cold and sickening rage—back down deep I was the Legacy I couldn’t just…lose—just die And I shouldn’t need anyone to saveelse—anything else—to focus on, I turned hout the battle, but whoon dry
No scolding, princess? I asked bitterly Aren’t you going to tell me what a terrible person I am? How evil and irredee left for me to say that you don’t already know,’ she replied, her voice dim, distant, and empty of emotion
I scoffed but couldn’t coht her I needed to defendmy jaw, I tried to shake off the childish i my job…what I had to do That was all
Below me, the last of the devices was assembled, and the power emitters—like antennas that collected and stored at placed and connected
Struggling to be in thetoo slowly
On the horizon, I could now er fro, I dropped down The array was all connected together, it just lacked the power it needed Steadying ainst the first of the heach device and letting it fulfill its purpose
Thought becaan to hulow This light radiated outward, slowly at first but with building speed and intensity until, with a sudden rush of mana, a dome of protective force curved over us to surround the rift, cutting it—and us, off from the outside world
Only ainst the side of the dome, which trembled under the force I pushedwith it froon Another spell, and another collided with the barrier rapidly Cracks ran across its surface, and the shi+eld ean to whine
“Get the rest of this ,” I said in a low, strained voice There was a frozen aze swept over them a second later, the Instillers jumped and hurried to comply as more spells impacted the side of the do the emitters up to their full capacity If only we’d had just five aze settled on the rift above nificant a round and flew into thethe rift but floating in that saons had occupied before the attack There, I drank deeply fro of that mana, but I did not hold it within h the tether and into the array, which pulsed with energy as the projected shi+eld surged and thickened, visible ripples of light pulsing along its surface to collide at the very top
The dragons arrived, their spells and breath and claws battering the barrier
I grinned, relief draining the fear out of eted as I watched the light show happening to the east It was too far for h the shi+elding technology had been designed by Sovereign Orlaeth to hold back even High Sovereign Agrona, and I had seen it stop even Cecilia fro a lot for it to hold up under constant attack by who kno ons
And then there was the disruption technology we’d developed based on the prototypes Seris left behind in the Relictoh the rift, so Lord Indrath couldn’t send dragons through from the other side Like Seris had done on the second level of the Relictombs, ould cut the torlds off frooth asked, scowling as he loomed over me
The rift was Cecilia’s task to complete I hadis in place?” I asked, et my head back in the process than because I worried they hadn’t
One of the handful of Instillers who accompanied us snapped out a nervous, “Yes, sir”
I checkedartifact, which had been synced with several other Wraith teams now spread out across Dicathen “Power up the teleportation fra the twenty-foot-wide teleportation frame I watched them with a mix of trepidation and pride: it was an artifact ofthe rifts, I was scouring dungeons in the deepest parts of the Beast Glades in search of a co-distance portals they developed still held up and were used throughout Dicathen and, to a lesser extent, Alacrya They could even reach fro the war
But Agrona’s Instillers had never learned to replicate theured it out
The fray spilled doithin the large open rectangle I checked the tiain “Corammed in the directions to a portal fra clarity A h Behind theh, and then another I knew that our forces were pouring out of identical portals all across Dicathen, set up by tea near-invisibly
Apprehension filled me
Despite the effort that went into this moment just to allow these soldiers to step foot on Dicathian soil, I kneas the easy part As rank after rank of h, I steeled myself for as to coe unburned…those had been Agrona’s words
Clearing my throat, I turned toward the Wall, less than a half-ins the second invasion of Dicathen…
“Dragoth, you knohat to do”