by Ben Wolf
“I’m open to ideas.”
“That puncture on his side.” Windsor nodded toward the old stab wound that glowed with bright light. “Looks vulnerable to me.”
“You really think it’s that obvious?” Riley panted when he wasn’t talking.
“Worth a try.”
“We’d need a weapon to jab in there.”
“Look around,” she motioned to the general area around them. “Plenty of debris. Take your pick.”
Riley nodded. “We’ll have to get in close.”
“Obviously.”
“It’s gonna hurt.”
“Obviously.”
“We’ll probably die.” Riley stopped her. “And if you say ‘obviously’ again, I’m gonna kill you myself.”
“You couldn’t, even if you tried,” she countered with a sneer. “And besides, I was gonna say ‘probably.’”
“Appreciate your optimism.” Riley looked up at Rhaza again. The hulking Shadow Wolf abomination stalked toward them, staring down at them with his glowing eyes. “Wasn’t there some old lore about driving a wooden stake through a Werewolf’s heart to kill it?”
“That’s something else.” Windsor shook her head, also panting. “But I’m pretty sure if you drive anything sharp through any living thing’s chest, it’ll kill it.”
“But is he even still alive?”
“We killed the Dactyls, Gronyxes, and other Wargs easily enough,” Windsor said. “Why should he be any different?”
“Look at him.”
“I’m trying not to.”
Riley sighed.
Rhaza had closed in close enough to lurch toward them in a flurry of glowing claws and teeth. The two of them evaded every attack and raced down a perpendicular street to buy more time, but Riley doubted their rest would last for long.
“Look, you killed him once, or you almost did, by jabbing something sharp into his side.” Windsor reached down and grabbed the pointy half of a broken spear. “So let’s do it again.”
She handed it to him.
“Why me?” he asked.
“You’ve had more practice than I have.”
“I don’t know about that,” Riley countered. “You’re pretty adept at stabbing people in the back.”
“But not in their sides,” she said without missing a beat. She held it out for him. “So this one’s on you. Of the two of us, I’m faster, anyway.”
Riley took the broken spear in his hands. The spearhead on top looked plenty sharp, but he doubted it would pierce through all the layers of muscle on Rhaza’s enhanced body on its own. Riley would have to perfectly drive it into the wound on Rhaza’s side, at the correct angle, in order to reach Rhaza’s heart.
Easy, he thought. Just another day in the sunshine.
“I’ll distract him,” Windsor said.
“Hopefully it’s not with your looks,” Riley quipped. “Unless you’re trying to scare him to death with that dogface of yours.”
“When this is over,” Windsor warned, “I’m gonna throw you off a cliff.”
“Better than having to look at you for the rest of my life.”
“Then maybe that’ll be the punishment instead,” she fired back.
Riley grinned at her, even though the wounds on his face made it hurt to do so. “I can live with that.”
“Not if you get your idiot self killed. Pay attention. Do this right,” Windsor said.
“Waiting on you.”
Windsor darted around to the right while Riley took the left.
As Rhaza turned the corner, his attention landed on Windsor, then he fixed his glowing eyes on Riley. He issued a low, menacing growl, and Riley’s progress stalled.
There was no way to hide from Rhaza. The way the battle had gone so far, it was clear he could see them whenever they tried to hide in the shadows. As such, speed was their only real asset against him. Speed and viciousness, both of which Rhaza also possessed.
But as was the case with most Saurians Riley had faced, the bigger something got, the slower it moved. Rhaza was still plenty fast, but not as fast as Windsor, who proved it by streaking toward Rhaza’s legs in a blur of black fur. Rhaza reacted just a hair too slow, and his swipe missed her.
She leaped onto his thigh and clawed her way up his back, avoiding his arms in the process. Rhaza roared his droning roar again, and he reached up to try to grab Windsor and pull her off. As he did, he exposed the glowing wound on his side.
Riley bolted forward, fixated on that spot. He bounded over debris and bodies, moving faster than ever before. He reached Rhaza in less than a second, and he drove the spear toward the wound.
Rhaza’s hand caught the spear, stopping it in place. Then he tried to move it away.
Riley pushed back, fighting to keep it lined up with the wound, but even his two hands against Rhaza’s one arm couldn’t match the abomination’s new strength.
But Riley didn’t solely need strength. Not when he had teeth.
He clamped his jaws on Rhaza’s wrist and bit down hard.
Rhaza flinched, but he didn’t let go of the spear. Worse yet, he managed to grab hold of Windsor and peel her off his back. He held her in the air by her left leg, and she dangled in front of him, thrashing and scratching but only hitting air.
Riley had to do more. He matched Windsor’s thrashing, whipping his head back and forth as his teeth dug deeper into Rhaza’s wrist, shredding flesh and snapping tendons. Riley abandoned the spear and instead gripped Rhaza’s hand and forearm. Then he yanked his head back, tearing through the abomination’s wrist.
Rhaza’s grip on the spear faltered, and he dropped it. Riley snatched it up, and as Rhaza raised Windsor higher to slam her into the ground, Riley jammed the spear into the glowing wound in his side.
Rhaza did more than flinch this time. He loosed a roar that sent shudders throughout the entire city, and he flailed his useless hand at Riley while also dropping Windsor.
Riley dodged the attack and drove the spear even deeper into Rhaza’s body, so far that the light ceased to shine from the wound. Instead, glowing pink blood trickled out.
With his good hand free, Rhaza tried to grab the spear in his side, tried to get enough of a grip that he could yank it out, but he couldn’t. It was already in too deep. He kept roaring, kept groping for it, unaware that Windsor had regained her footing and was leaping toward him again.
As Rhaza had hunched over to try to pull the spear free, it had exposed the opposite side of his throat. Windsor found it and latched onto it with her jaws immediately.
When Rhaza reacted to that new threat, it exposed the other side of his throat, which Riley then attacked, also clamping down hard on it with his teeth.
Rhaza flailed and tried to yank them off, but they refused to let go. Riley’s eyes locked on Windsor’s as they both bit down on Rhaza’s throat, and he gave her a wink.
Then together, they tore his throat wide open.
Rhaza went down hard, clutching at his bleeding throat, but he bled out in seconds as Riley and Windsor watched.
The sight was beautiful—the perfect end to a perfect hunt. And now Rhaza was dead.
But most importantly, Riley was with Windsor again, and they were safe.
Well, safe-ish.
“Hate to break it to you,” Riley said between ragged breaths, “but there are still way too many monsters around here for us to rest. We have to keep fighting.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Windsor grinned at him, also breathing heavily.
“I… wasn’t asking,” Riley said. “It wasn’t a question.”
“I’m answering it anyway,” she said. “Catch me if you can.”
She bounded away and pounced at the nearest Gronyx battling a group of soldiers.
Riley smiled. He could chase that tail all day.
So he did.
Though it wasn’t the first time he’d seen Lumen do this to Calum, Matthios had finally come to understand the sensation of it. Thanks to Lumen’s first
spike, he’d been able to associate and identify his emotions and feelings with what Calum now endured.
It wasn’t just the pain of being wounded. It was the fear of losing control over his body. The fear of the unknown. The fury and desperation of wanting to make it stop, and the hopelessness of helplessness.
Matthios had wanted it to stop when he’d experienced it, and now, upon seeing Calum experience it as well, he knew it had to stop, or else Calum would be overcome.
It made sense.
Matthios launched forward in a streak of bronze and swung his spear at Lumen, who blocked the shaft with his armored gauntlet, keeping the blade from reaching his head. The impact sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil, only ten times louder.
Matthios attacked again, spinning his spear over his head and striking at the other side of Lumen’s head. Lumen blocked it again and shrugged off a blast of ice from Lilly’s Calios sword. Condor dashed in as well and attacked, and so did General Anigo, but neither of them managed to have any effect either.
All the while, Lumen did not stop pulling at the light in Calum’s heart.
“The King may have told you that the light within you now belongs to you,” Lumen said to Calum, even as he defended against Matthios’s attacks, “but that was untrue. The light has always belonged to me… and it always will.”
Matthios threw a new flurry of blows, each of them expertly blocked either by Lumen’s single arm or by his leg, always on the spear’s shaft, never on its blade. He knew as well as Matthios that the blade could actually pierce Lumen’s armor if he struck it right. The spear, after all, had once belonged to the King himself.
Yet even though he tried and fought and strained, nothing Matthios did broke Lumen’s hold on Calum. If he couldn’t separate the two of them, Calum would die. Matthios had no doubt about that.
He had to get in closer to Lumen. He had to physically separate them.
But to do so was a massive risk.
Matthios glanced at Calum between attacks. This boy carried a measure of the King’s power, and Lumen was killing him for it.
Above all else, Matthios existed to serve the King of Kanarah—the true King of Kanarah. With the King dead, this boy was as close as he’d ever get. The King had chosen Calum to reign in his place, which meant Matthios now served Calum with his very life.
Thus, when it came to the boy’s life, there was no risk too large.
Matthios lowered his spear and his body and charged toward Lumen’s midsection. The impact of the blow pushed Lumen back and doubled him over. His grip on Calum faltered, then broke.
Together, they crashed into the back wall of the throne room in a mass of shining bronze and glowing white light. Lumen recovered first and drew his sword, cursing Matthios, and he attacked.
They traded blows as Lilly, Condor, and General Anigo tried to tend to Calum.
Matthios’s spear became a bronze blur, alternating between lashing at Lumen’s sword and at his body and head. Lumen parried each attack and then threw several more of his own in response, so much that Matthios strained to keep up.
But he was an Imperator, commissioned by the King himself. He was strong enough to defeat Lumen—or at least he had been when the King was still alive. Now it seemed as though each successive blow left him more and more fatigued.
Then, to Matthios’s great surprise, Lumen left him an opening. Perhaps it was a mistake, or perhaps he’d been too slow, but Lumen had exposed his flank. Matthios swung his spear to take advantage of it, hoping to even the odds in the fight.
Only after it was too late did Matthios realize it was a trap.
With his sword in one hand, Lumen parried Matthios’s spear away, which left Matthios exposed instead, right in the center of his chest, where Lumen had already destroyed a portion of his armor. Then, with his other hand, Lumen pushed another spike of light through Matthios’s heart.
And this time, it pierced clean through the other side and struck the wall behind him.
Pain unlike anything Matthios had ever experienced seized his body, and he staggered backward. His vision shuddered, and so did his limbs. The same fears he’d realized when Calum had been dying returned, as did the desperate fury to fix it, and the hopelessness.
But this time, he recognized a new emotion as well: sadness.
He’d failed. He could no longer protect Calum or defeat Lumen. He’d lost.
Would he carry that emotion, more so than all the others, into the afterlife with him?
As Lumen’s sword flashed toward his head, Matthios heard Calum shouting his name for the last time.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“I warned you when you left Valkendell that if we met again in battle, I would not grant you mercy a third time,” Gavridel intoned.
“I don’t need your mercy,” Axel growled. “But I’ll take your head.”
Axel had finally managed to coax the Imperator out of the building where they’d been stuck battling, but their fracas had actually carried them even farther away from Valkendell in the process. Over the rooftops, he could still see Magnus and the Jyrak battling, but they seemed to have moved away from the fortress as well.
The Jyrak could handle itself, Axel reasoned. He’d done his part. He’d brought it back, and now it would fight Scales to the death. Whether it won or lost didn’t even matter—Axel and Lumen would finish off whatever was left of Magnus after the fight ended.
But first, he had Gavridel to deal with.
Outside the confines of that house, Axel could fly around and warp through the void much easier. The added mobility helped him deal with Gavridel’s attacks, as the big Imperator could maneuver his axes quickly, but he couldn’t advance or retreat as fast, perhaps due to his bulky armor.
Still, Gavridel proved more than a match for Axel’s fighting prowess. Even when Axel pulled out his most dastardly tricks, Gavridel always seemed to have an answer.
Whenever Axel disappeared into the void, Gavridel did so as well, vanishing into a portal burning with violet flames and crackling with amber lightning. When Axel finally emerged, Gavridel would be behind him, ready to strike, forcing Axel to evade the attack.
They traded blows, but no matter what Axel did, he couldn’t get past Gavridel’s axes. Outside of their first impact, when he’d caught Gavridel by surprise, Axel hadn’t landed a single hit.
He tried to think of what Lumen might do in this situation. After all, Axel was essentially a dark copy of his new master. As he recalled Lumen’s attacks, he conjured a spike of darkness in his left hand, and he hurled it at Gavridel from ten feet away.
The diamond axe batted it away, and the spike shattered into bits of darkness that fizzled away into nothing. Axel hurled another spike, then another, faster and faster. Gavridel deflected all of them and started to charge forward.
Rather than move away, Axel opened another void in front of himself to swallow Gavridel whole, but the Imperator vanished into a portal of his own before he reached Axel’s void. Instead of waiting for Gavridel to reappear, Axel leaped into his own void and promptly rolled back out.
Gavridel was already there, swinging his axes down at Axel.
A desperate block with Axel’s sword saved his life, but it also laid him flat on his back with Gavridel looming over him, pushing down, trying to crush him. Axel strained with all of his newfound strength, but Gavridel was stronger—and much heavier.
Axel opened a void beneath himself, and he and Gavridel both fell into the darkness.
Inside the shadow dimension, Axel thought he would have control, but Gavridel held onto him, and Axel couldn’t break free. When he opened another portal, the two of them fell back into Kanarah from high above the city, entangled in a mass of color and darkness.
Axel tried to shake Gavridel off so he could fly away, but the Imperator managed to stay on top. Rather than be crushed upon impact by Gavridel’s incredible mass, Axel opened another void halfway down. This time, once they fell through, Axel opene
d a portal back to Kanarah that repositioned him so he was on top instead. Then he flew down.
Gavridel still clung to him, now on the bottom, and they landed hard on the city streets, reducing several of the cobblestones beneath to powder. The impact shook the entire city, and Gavridel grunted. It wasn’t much, but it signaled Axel that this was his chance to triumph.
He forged thick chains of darkness and clamped them around Gavridel’s wrists, then he connected the chains behind Gavridel’s back so he couldn’t move his arms forward. Axel had realized early on in the fight that Gavridel would never let go of his axes, so restraining him, even if only temporarily, was the next best option.
Then Axel raised his tortured Blood Ore sword and swung it at the base of Gavridel’s sapphire helmet, where the Imperator’s neck should’ve been, and he flooded his sword with dark power.
Gavridel strained against the chains to try to defend himself, but Axel got there first. His sword cleaved through the gemstones that formed Gavridel’s helmet and severed his head from his body.
Axel watched, partially in disbelief as Gavridel’s head tumbled across the street and clacked against a pile of rubble. He’d done it. He’d won.
He couldn’t believe it—but then he reconsidered. Axel was an Imperator now, too. He wielded incredible power, and he’d put it to the test against one of the strongest warriors in the world. And, of course, he’d won.
He supposed he could believe it after all.
Axel stood up, exhaled a relieved breath, and stared down at Gavridel’s motionless armored body. Finally, he’d released his grip on his axes, which now lay at his sides, limp in his lifeless hands.
The shadow chains released, and Axel sheathed his sword and bent down to pick up the diamond axe. It had to be worth a fortune—not that he needed coin, now that he and Lumen would rule all of Kanarah—but it would still make a fine keepsake, a memento which would remind him of his excellent victory here.
But as Axel reached for the axe, Gavridel’s armored hand lashed up and grabbed him by his throat.
Axel’s eyes bulged, and he grabbed hold of Gavridel’s wrist to try to pry it off, but Gavridel refused to budge. Axel glanced over at the Imperator’s head lying near the debris and saw that he’d missed something—that being Gavridel’s head—entirely. He’d only knocked off the Imperator’s helmet, and nothing more.