Cadell POV

I stiffened and ground my teeth at the sight of the boy’s armor.

After all their sacrifices, you still return to die. Your imitations of Lady Sylvia’s powers were superficial at best, and now you dare appear as Lady Sylvie to me?

“Your tricks are a mockery to the asura, boy,” I said scornfully, my form crackling with energy.

Arthur hurled himself into the air to meet my thunderous descent.

A wave of black fire roiled out from my hand, which he countered with an aetheric blast before slashing at my throat with his amethyst blade. I dissipated my body like smoke, and vanished into the flames still filling the sky.

The boy’s arms blurred as he wildly slashed around him, shredding the flames like silk curtains.

But when I reappeared, it was from behind him. My hand, wreathed in fiery claws, plunged deep into his side, through the black scale armor, and curled up into his ribs. Arthur reversed the aether blade and stabbed back and down, barely missing my chest as I flew away from him.

Arthur fell with a roar and flung his blade towards me, which immediately began to dissolve after leaving his hand.

He had another weapon ready by the time he hit the ground, and he dashed back at me. He slashed even more wildly than before, carving through the clouds of soulfire but failing to find purchase. Again, I coalesced from the blaze to strike, this time raking fiery claws across his arm, nearly severing it at the elbow.

Arthur abandoned his wounded arm and conjured a blade in his left, thrusting it at my chest with the full force of his momentum. Again I transformed my body into black flames and vanished back into the burning cloud around us.

He landed in the middle of the ruined arena floor, cursing loudly. I couldn’t sense any mana from his but whatever his presence was, it was getting heavier and heavier the longer the fight went on

I dissipated the fire cloud, and was overlooking the battlefield, a blade in each hand. One was void metal, while the other was void-black like a void of space shaped like a longsword.

After all their sacrifices, this is all you’ve amounted to.

“You are a lesser to the end,” I spat, the words tasting wrong.

Arthur burst across the ground, releasing an aetheric blast before leaping up at me with his blade poised.

We crashed together.

Black and purple sparks flew as aether impacted against my soulfire-sheathed weapons. He slashed and stabbed at me, but each furious blow was easily deflected. In our exchanges I opened a dozen new wounds across his body, but he didn’t seem to care.

Enough!

I thrust my void weapon deep into his chest and let it devour the space around it, letting it grow and extend, along with the boy, until it slammed him into a shield wall over a hundred feet away. Even after impact my void lance continued to expand, peeling away his armor and ripping a hole in his chest.

Arthur lashed out like the child he was at my void lance but it shifted and reformed around his sword. His movements grew wilder, then slower as his life blood continued to spill onto the battlefield.

I watched as Arthur died, by my hand, pinned to the barrier. I even considered canceling my spell, but I knew I couldn’t. Not here, or now. It was too late for those thoughts. I was sealing my emotions away when another presence made itself known before me, as a shadow loomed over the twitching boy.

A hulking feral beast made of black and violet flames grew out of the shadow, held aloft by massive black shadow wings. It released a violet flame from his fang-filled maw at my void spear and to my utter surprise, it raced along its shaft and devoured it as if it was kindling.

Impossible.. what?

Arthur fell and hit the ground on his back, collapsing in a heap.

The beast floated over the boy protectively as I sent a wave of soulfire at it. Again, that violet flame was released and it ate through even my own flames.

Scowling I twirled and twisted the mana around me and created a swarm of void-wind missiles, with the flip of a finger they span and darted around the purple flames, but it wasn’t fast enough.

The flames leapt from missile to missile, burning them into nothing. My eyes shot wide open when I realized the flames were continuing to chase me, forcing me to retreat off into the sky.

Siphoning mana into 6 of my runes at once, I began to manifest one of my trump cards around me.

Lightning crackled and the sky mourned as a storm of pure Decay swirled to life. The sound of shearing metal tore through the sky, the black metal colliding in the blustering void wind and flame spiraling around me, centered in the eye.

I jerked my hand downward, sending a rain of black spikes and soulfire from the cloud, like a downpour of shadows. I willed infernal wind to chase the burning spikes, pushing them faster as they fell.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I watched apathetically as the black spikes slammed into the ground around the edges of the arena floor, some glancing off the walls or piercing through the shield protecting the nearest seats. A nullification sphere momentarily wrapped around the high box, and any spikes that struck it melted away.

Over the child and that new beast was a shield of those violet flames which devoured my spells effortlessly. Cursing internally I almost missed the slight flickering in and out of the flames. The beast was tiring, I had to strike before it recovered. My form shimmered into smoke as I entered the shadows of my storm.

In a few moments I was next to the beast and emerged from the shadows, a soulfire clad void-iron blade swinging down. Half of a breath from landing my slash, Arthur appeared between us with violet lightning, catching my strike with his own blade.

The shadow wolf dissolved into the air, returning to the boy’s body like a phantom.

I conjured a wave of black spikes between us, so I could get some space. I had range and more versatility but I had to admit, the boy was a better swordsman and he seemed completely fine after the massive wound earlier, rested even.

Whatever Lady Sylvie had done to save the boy has clearly done more than just saved him. At the thought of Lady Sylvie my expression grew cold.

Compared to Lady Sylvie.. Compared to an Asura…

“Your new bond is a rather crude excuse of a beast.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘majestic’,” he retorted with a grin, hurtling forward and unleashing a flurry of cuts and stabs, pressing me even further back.

I tried to escape into the air, the boy seemed to have lost the ability to fly. But he cut me off, appearing in another flash of violet lightning.

He drove his blade into my ribs and attempted to cut me in half, but my hands closed around his arm, preventing him. A cold chill ran up my spine at the realization of a near death experience.

Our eyes locked, and I took in the snide, cruel expression the boy had and realized that it matched my own. But unlike me, the boy had no hint of fear or uncertainty. He had utmost confidence while I was afraid.

Was I afraid of death? No, I was afraid of something else, something worse than my own death. I was afraid of leaving my family alone.

I channeled even more mana into my runes and conjured a towering spike from the ground, bathing us in its shadow. Not us, just me. The boy had vanished yet again. This was different to his borrowed use of Static Void and his Warp Steps from our previous battle.

My thoughts were cut off as the metal spike crashed into the arena floor, dragging me into a huge crater.

Screams echoed through the crater as I manifested into my Void-Form, decaying the entire arena around me, collapsing the stadium

Darkness coalesced around me as I crawled out into the light and stretched my long, thin limbs tipped with jagged claws. Shadows twisted and bit at the air like flames as I let my spell settle.

“Enough,” my void grated like teeth shearing through metal.

Images of Lady Sylvia hiding the boy under her wings, sending him through the portal with the last of her energy. Lady Sylvie clutching onto the boy with all her strength to prevent him from destroying himself. The unknown sacrifice that Lady Sylvie had to endure to fix his mistake.

“There are no dragons around to save you this time, boy.”

My shadow-clad arms spread wide, and black fire began to boil out of me. My void magic spilled out of me, like burning tar that covered what remained of the arena and splashed against the already failing barriers around the audience.

A momentary thought of taking this fight away from the masses passed through my mind, but it was too late. I had to admit that when it came down to it, the only lives I wouldn’t sacrifice were my family’s. Isabelle had already agreed to take Bella away if she felt my mana surge for a fight, I can only pray that she has made it to the portals by now.

The shadow emerged from the boy’s body again, this time as a wolf.

I have no time left.

I barreled toward the pair, claws ready to rend. A torrent of soulfire trailing behind me.

The boy raised his sword, as if to block my attack, but instead he plunged the sword into his companion.

The wolf’s body flared before enveloping his amethyst blade with dark violet flames. My fear flared within me and I roared.

“It doesn’t matter how many more tricks you pull out, lesser!”

I unleashed a full array of my strongest spells with abandon; blood iron volleys, void wind maelstroms and a barrage of pure soul fire.

But it was useless. Arthur’s flame-clad sword effortlessly slashed through everything I had thrown at him, eating away at my spells like a starving baby attached to their wet nurse for the first time.

He flashed between the small openings his destructive flames created. My blood red eyes widening in fear more each time.

The boy flashed in violet lightning, appearing right in front of me, sword raised over his head, those purple flames blooming into a blaze. I crossed my arms in front of myself as a last ditch effort to defend myself. Wreathing them in soulfire, materializing black metal as shields.

Then his blade swung down. My body buckled instantly under the full force of his blow, cratering into the ground, sending a shockwave that shattered a towering black spike behind me.

“This is for Sylvia.”

Huh?

The violet flames grew violent as he thrust his sword through my chest, piercing out my back. As the flames ate away at my consciousness my last thought was

Why had I never told him the truth?

Bella POV

We were running now, shockwaves erupting from the coliseum like ticks of a clock. Momma wasn’t looking at me and she wouldn’t explain. She just said that we had to use the special tempus warp that daddy had prepared for us and that he would meet us later.

A few paces away from the gate, the unthinkable happened. Daddy’s pressure vanished.

We both stopped immediately, frozen in our last steps.

Momma slowly turned and faced the coliseum, which was deathly quiet now.

“Impossible…” was all she said. Then she grabbed my arm and tried to drag me the rest of the way, but I resisted.

“We can’t leave daddy alone, momma!”

She pulled harder.

“Momma please, we have to make sure daddy is alright!”

She pulled even harder, painfully this time.

“MOMMA!”

She let go of my hand, surprised by the outburst, then she fell to her knees. Tears streaming down her cheeks.

I felt bad but the growing pressure in my chest quickly overpowered the momentary remorse.

“Bella... I don’t.. I..“

“Momma..” I whispered, unsure if I could bear to ask the question digging into my mind.

“Momma, is…”

“Daddy… daddy isn’t going to meet us later is he?”

As soon as the words left my lips, I knew I wasn’t ready for the answer.

My mother regarded me with her puffy red eyes. She reached for my face and wiped at the tears already streaming down my own face. I didn’t even know I was crying. Her mouth opening and closing several times, words escaping her. She cleared her throat and swallowed hard.

“No, baby.”

At her words the world grew silent and dark, as if the whole world was despairing with me, a lonely despairing me.

I never knew that sadness could cause such pain, or that pain could feel heavy. The weight of it squeezing my little heart tighter than all of the hugs I’ve ever received, threatening to shatter it.

My hands were clawing at my chest as my breathing stopped, the pain becoming white hot.

“Baby what’s wrong? Breathe, sweety!”

I was on the ground now, or perhaps I always had been. Everything coming in flashes, the pain still growing. No, it wasn’t growing, it was moving. It arced from my sternum to my lower back, searing into my flesh like the edge of a hot pan was being pressed into me.

My throat grew coarse and I belatedly realized I had been screaming. At least I was breathing again. I thought with a cold giggle, the pain, while receding, had reached up to my head. My mom’s hands pulled away from my face slightly and I saw that they were covered with blood.

Slowly, I brought my hand up to my face and felt the slick warmth of blood and traced it along my face, knocking my bangs, my braids had come undone, into view. They were longer than before and more than that, they were colorless, like it had been bleached in the sun for far too long.

The world grew dark as the pain flared up again, overtaking me, momma was over me now, tears falling down her cheeks. The last thing I saw before darkness overtook me was my own eyes reflected back at me in my mother’s, my own blood red eyes.