by Ben Wolf
“Lilly,” Condor said, his voice unusually firm, “these are the King’s men, attacking us at night. There’s a chance the King himself, or at least his Imperators, are among their forces. We cannot risk your life under these conditions.”
As if Condor had planned it for that exact moment, half a dozen Wisps in the telltale bright-orange armor of the Royal Guard descended to accompany them.
Lilly knew she should listen to Condor. He was doing his job, and he was doing it well.
But she longed to join her people in battle, to add her power and speed to their cause. That was the whole reason she’d brought them here in the first place. The more she fought, the fewer of them would die trying to bring her vision to fruition.
“You will escort me above the camp, but we will not flee,” she declared. “If any of our people—including Lumen’s army—need aid, we will assist them. You will all protect me should I choose to engage in the battle.”
Lilly stared into Condor’s piercing blue eyes, partially for confirmation of her compromise and also for his reassurance that he would, in fact, keep her safe no matter what.
He gave her a solemn nod, and together they ascended out of the tent with her Royal Guard close behind.
Axel hadn’t stopped fighting ever since he’d returned to the camp.
Lumen hovered above everyone, occasionally lashing out against the King’s soldiers with targeted spikes of blinding light, dive-bombing cuts with his sword that reduced his enemies to ash, and even the occasional bolt of lightning from his fingertips. Most importantly, it was Lumen’s light that enabled Axel to see who he was fighting.
Thus far, not a single blow had even come close to penetrating Axel’s Blood Ore armor. He’d gotten to test it out before, but now, in the most frantic battle he’d ever fought, with enemies coming at him from all angles, the armor really proved its true worth. No wonder Magnus had sworn by it before he’d transformed into a dragon.
For that matter, so did his Blood Ore sword. It was heavy enough to knock most of his enemies backward whenever it connected with their bodies, and it was sharp enough to cut clean through their armor—at least sometimes—when he put enough heft into the swing. He’d even snapped a few lances and spears and managed to break a few swords along the way as well.
Still, he longed for a measure of Lumen’s power. If he could match even a fraction of Lumen’s wrath on behalf of his people, this fight would end much faster.
Instead, the fracas continued to rage all around him. Lumen’s army, now a combined force of humans, Windgales, and a handful of Saurians and Wolves who hadn’t gone off to hunt battled side by side, fending off the King’s soldiers with fervor and zeal.
They were literally fighting for their freedom—absolute and everlasting, just as Lumen had described it. But even though they fought hard, the King’s men continued to advance, continued to progress deeper and deeper into the camp.
No matter how many of them Axel killed or bashed unconscious, more still came. No matter how many Lumen zapped with his lightning or cut down with his silver-and-gold blade, the enemy soldiers continued to invade the camp.
Magnus had sure picked a terrible time to go off hunting with the majority of his Saurians. If he’d been here, they’d have another powerful ally to help thwart the uncountable numbers of soldiers streaming into the camp from every direction, plus durable Saurian soldiers to bolster their ranks.
But this was nothing new. When Axel really needed help from his friends, none came. Calum, Lilly, Riley, and Magnus were all nowhere to be seen. Yet again, Axel was on his own.
That suited him just fine. He didn’t need anyone else.
For the time being, all he could do was continue to fight. So that’s what he did.
Captain Anigo’s boots hit the dirt next to the tent post, but now his hands were no longer shackled around it. He sucked in labored breaths and gave silent thanks to the Overlord.
The shackles themselves still hung from his wrists, but removing them would be nothing to the blacksmiths in Solace. Now he just needed to find a weapon so he could carve a way out of this mess and return to his King’s ranks.
Just outside the perimeter of the tent where he’d been held captive, he got his pick of dozens of weapons amid the bodies of slain men, those of Lumen’s army and the King’s forces alike. Since his hands remained shackled, he chose a sword instead of his preferred weapon, a spear. It would make for easier fighting.
Then Captain Anigo scampered into the campsite, looking for the quickest way to escape.
In a brief lull in the attack, Axel noticed an unusually dressed man running away from one of the downed tents. The man wore neither armor nor even thick clothing, but he carried a sword. His appearance gave away his identity, even more so than the shackles Axel noticed around his wrists.
Captain Anigo.
He thinks he’s gonna escape.
Not if Axel could do something about it.
He abandoned his position in the battle and raced after their escaping captive.
Calum noticed Captain Anigo’s escape by virtue of him running past in the middle of the battle. Calum blinked to confirm that it was in fact Captain Anigo, and sure enough, his eyes told him the truth.
Their prisoner, the one Calum had shown mercy to, was now fleeing toward enemy lines.
Calum couldn’t let that happen. He shoved the man he was fighting aside and then rushed to follow Captain Anigo.
Near the northwestern edge of the camp, the fighting still raged, but less so than in other areas. Calum chased Captain Anigo’s footsteps, dodging swords, axes, and spears. He made a mental note to shackle prisoners’ ankles from now on.
Out of the corner of his eye, Calum caught a flash of bright blue metal glinting in Lumen’s light. He turned his head to the left and saw Axel, clad in his Blood Ore armor, running parallel with Calum some twenty feet away, also pursuing Captain Anigo.
Calum pushed down his sour feelings about Axel. At least they were unified in their purpose once again. They could sort the rest out later.
As Captain Anigo left the majority of the battle behind and approached the outer border of the camp, he slowed to a halt and looked around, as if trying to find a way out. The wall of ten-foot vertical logs, their tops whittled down to sharp points, that fenced in the camp would keep him inside.
“Stop!” Calum shouted at him.
Rather than running again, Captain Anigo turned back to face him, still holding his sword, still wearing shackles.
A battle cry sounded from Calum’s left, and Axel charged into view with his Blood Ore sword ready to strike.
As Axel closed the distance, a flood of emotion overtook Calum. Axel was doing what he always did—barreling in headfirst without thinking—and it infuriated Calum. But because of what happened next, he didn’t have time to be angry.
Axel’s sword lashed through the air, but instead of Captain Anigo blocking the blow, an enormous axe swung into view, catching Axel’s strike. Upon impact, bright amethyst light crackled throughout the axe like lightning, and as it faded, the whole weapon glimmered with crystalline refractions.
Terror replaced Calum’s irritation with Axel as the gemstone warrior’s gigantic form materialized out of thin air. In his wake, a portal burning with violet flames and crackling with amber lightning promptly sealed up behind him.
It was a power similar to Lumen’s. If Calum hadn’t been convinced that this warrior was one of the King’s Imperators before, he certainly was now.
Unsurprisingly, Axel didn’t relent. He swung his sword repeatedly, issuing grunts and shouts with each strike as he battled the Imperator, whose gemstone armor glistened with color in the moonlight.
What did surprise Calum was how deftly the Imperator parried each of Axel’s attacks. Despite his undoubtedly heavy armor and weapon, the Imperator moved with the alacrity of a dancer, nimble and quick. Twin axes, one amethyst and one diamond, spun and twirled in purple and white blurs, batting Axel�
��s attacks well clear.
Even if any of Axel’s blows had gotten through, Calum couldn’t imagine his sword would pierce the Imperator’s armor. Blood Ore was an incredible metal, but if even the Dragon’s Breath sword couldn’t damage the Imperator’s axe, then Axel’s sword stood no chance whatsoever.
Of course, there was no telling Axel that—especially not in the heat of battle. And that elicited another deep emotion within Calum: fear.
The Imperator could easily kill Axel at any moment, and Calum could do nothing to stop it. Despite their differences, Calum didn’t want to lose Axel. They were best friends, and no amount of arguing or scuffling would ever change that.
But death very well could.
“Axel!” Calum shouted as he charged to engage the Imperator alongside his friend, but he was already too late.
One massive hack from the Imperator’s axe blasted through Axel’s attempt to parry the swing, and its blade slammed straight into his chest. The dull thwack of Axel’s breastplate taking the brunt of the blow resonated like a thunderclap in the night.
Axel’s body launched backward, and he smashed into the side of a large wooden wagon and continued clear through it, shattering the wood and collapsing it in the center. He skidded to a halt not far behind, unmoving.
“No!” Calum shouted. The Imperator had no doubt just killed or, best case, severely wounded Axel, and the sight of it made Calum sick.
Rage threatened to overtake him, to hurl him into combat with the Imperator to avenge his friend, but he didn’t react to his emotions. Instead, he exhaled a shaky breath and positioned his sword between himself and Captain Anigo and the Imperator, both of whom now stalked toward him.
Lilly hovered over the battle with her complement of Windgale warriors. She imagined they must resemble a floating ball of flame, clustered together and clad in bright-orange armor. She’d never quite understood why her ancestors had chosen the vibrant purple and orange colors for the Wisp soldiers; such armor diminished the chances for stealth or surprise almost entirely.
But perhaps that was by design, especially given the Royal Guard’s commission to protect the Sovereign of the Sky Realm. Perhaps they were obvious so as to dissuade attacks in the first place.
She glanced at Condor, who drifted next to her, his handsome face illuminated by Lumen’s white light. The guards’ orange armor certainly hadn’t dissuaded him from attacking her father.
But, as her grandmother used to say, “once the bird’s been plucked, you can’t put the feathers back on.”
Below them, Windgale soldiers clashed with the King’s forces in the night. Thus far, despite Condor’s assurances to the contrary, Lilly had done little to intervene on behalf of her people in the fight.
It wasn’t because Condor and the Royal Guard were trying to prevent her from engaging per se; rather, it was more so because whenever she did intervene, her entire Royal Guard descended with her in an intrusion so dramatic that it forced friends and foes alike to flee, or at least to back away.
Lilly’s relative ineffectiveness thus far grated on her, but any thoughts of supporting her people on the battlefield faded to the background of her mind as a new threat presented itself.
His molten eyes burning, the Imperator Matthios, the Brazen General, leaped toward them from within the camp with his bronze spear in hand.
In a burst of copper light, his double-bladed spear delivered an explosive blow that sent the majority of Lilly’s Royal Guard spiraling away like bright-orange flower petals caught in a maelstrom. Now she was exposed, except for Condor and a few others who’d managed to withstand the attack.
Rather than landing on his feet again, Matthios stayed airborne, continually spinning his spear in brazen arcs as he relentlessly thrashed the remaining Royal Guard protecting Lilly. The sight sent pangs of terror coursing through her veins, but she pushed it away.
She was no ordinary soldier. She wielded the legendary Calios, and she was the Premieress of the Sky Realm. She could fight back.
The Calios burned red-hot in her hands, matching her fiery fury, and she darted toward the Imperator, even as Condor called for her to stay back. He, too, quickly joined the fight as the last of her Royal Guards succumbed to Matthios’s brutal attacks and fell from the sky.
The two of them traded lightning-fast attacks with the Imperator, whose bronze spear twirled and clanged against their weapons, deflecting every attack with precision. Only a few months earlier, Lilly doubted she could’ve even tracked what was happening in this fight, much less actually engage in it. Matthios’s speed matched—or perhaps even exceeded—their own.
His bald head glinted with light from the moon and from Lumen’s ever-present glow, and the bronze circlet crown on his head inexplicably stayed in place despite his violent swings and parries. Lilly likened fighting him to dueling with a demon; his molten eyes and the bronze facemask that covered the lower half of his face made him look even more menacing at night.
The Calios hardened to a blade of ice with Lilly’s cold resolve, and she sent a frozen stream of it at Matthios. It struck his left arm and coated it with heavy frost, but his constant movement shed the ice as if brushing off a layer of snow.
He counterattacked with ferocity, and Lilly’s reservation activated the Calios’s rock-solid defenses, transforming her very limbs into movable stone, all but impervious to Matthios’s attacks. Meanwhile, Condor assaulted Matthios from behind, trying to land fatal blows on the Imperator while also attempting to pull Matthios’s attention away from Lilly.
It worked, but not in the way either Lilly or Condor had hoped.
In a blinding flash of copper, Matthios whirled around and slammed the shaft of his spear into Condor’s chest, loud as a blacksmith’s hammer. The impact knocked Condor from the sky.
As Lilly’s Captain of her Royal Guard fell, she drew in a frantic breath, more out of concern for him than for herself. Every feeling, every sensation she’d come to associate with Condor swirled in her chest and sloshed in her gut, unsettling her. Was she going to lose him?
Matthios didn’t give her long to suffer those thoughts. He immediately resumed his attack on her, now even faster than before since he only had one Windgale to contend with.
Lilly did her best to keep up, but even she couldn’t match his speed, and neither could the Calios match his power. He disarmed her, and she watched as the Calios plummeted toward the battlefield below.
The next thing she saw was Matthios launching toward her, his molten eyes ablaze, and then nothing but darkness.
The Dragon’s Breath sword cut through Captain Anigo’s blade with ease, but Calum soon realized his mistake: he’d left himself open to attack from the Imperator.
The first blow nearly knocked his teeth clean out of his head. The Imperator had struck him with the flat side of his amethyst axe rather than with the blade, and the attack left Calum sprawled out in the dirt.
His head swimming, Calum forced himself up to his feet and raised the Dragon’s Breath sword. Now, instead of one Gemstone Imperator coming for him, there were two. They both wiggled in his vision like mammoth gemstone-covered worms.
Calum blinked hard to clear the confusion away, and the image of the Imperator sharpened into a solitary wiggling gemstone giant. Not perfect, but better.
He waited for the Imperator to make the first move and ducked under the amethyst axe’s first strike. The Dragon’s Breath clanged harmlessly against the Imperator’s diamond axe, and the amethyst axe came in with a follow-up strike, this time to Calum’s left shoulder.
Calum both felt and heard the pop, and then his left arm decided to go limp. He looked down to find it severely dislocated, but he saw no blood. The limb just hung there like a dead fish.
The pain came next, and Calum couldn’t stop himself from shouting.
He knew then and there that he’d lost. That it was over.
The Imperator’s diamond axe came for him next, and Calum sucked in a final breath before everythi
ng went black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time Magnus returned to camp, the battle had already concluded. The King’s soldiers, despite having the advantage of surprise and numbers, had fled, leaving behind the ravages of their incursion.
As the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, Lumen hovered over the camp, touting the outcome as a victory. The survivors responded with wild and raucous cheers, but for Magnus, it was anything but. Along with Riley, his Wolves, and Magnus’s Saurians, they frantically searched the dead for any sign of Calum, Axel, and Lilly.
They found nothing. All three of them were gone.
“What happened?” Magnus asked Condor as Riley helped him to his feet.
Around them, Saurians and Wolves helped those of the Premieress’s Royal Guard who’d survived to their feet as well. From their traumatic appearance and the brutalized condition of those who had perished in the battle, Magnus understood that they hadn’t faced a normal foe.
Condor’s usual sense of confidence and bravado had vanished along with Calum, Axel, and Lilly. Now, at the break of dawn, his haggard appearance more resembled that of when they’d rescued him from Oren’s clutches back at the Blood Chasm.
“Matthios,” was all he said, followed by a long pause. “It was Matthios. I couldn’t…”
Magnus stared down at him. Condor had battled an Imperator and lived?
Magnus had chosen to reserve judgment until he’d gathered enough information to comprehend what had transpired, but upon hearing that Condor had fought with Matthios himself, he immediately abandoned his search for his friends. Instead, he headed straight for Lumen.
“Magnus?” Riley followed him, easily keeping pace with Magnus’s thunderous footsteps. “What are you doing?”
Magnus’s eyes remained fixed on Lumen, who still hadn’t stopped commending his soldiers. “We must act now.”