"What in the Goddess’s blessed name is that?” Collin shouted, eyes wide with a mixture of awe and shock.
The aged general by his side, Roderick, simply shook his head. Despite being the only one among the golden knights close to achieving a gold core, he was just as lost as Collin. “I do not know, my liege. Nothing good for us.”
The mana surging out of Marquess Sharma was like nothing Collin had ever experienced. It was as if the spell was forcibly pulling every last particle of mana and life from the Cael Marquess and everyone around him. There seemed to be no end to its absorption, even as the magic circle continued to expand until it cast a shadow over half of Sealrite.
“Prepare for impact!” Collin shouted to his wyvern riders, unsure of what to expect. His riders seamlessly obeyed, and over fifty energy and mana shields slammed into existence around him. When it seemed that the magic shield was at its maximum output, Collin braced himself and poured forth even more of his golden heart energy into their protective barriers. He had no doubt he would survive whatever the Marquess had planned, but his knights wouldn’t be so lucky if their barriers failed.
Then, just as the magic shield undulated with a desire to at last release its wrath, a small voice cut through the noise of war with a calm, regal composure.
“Stop. You are not worthy of speaking Runic.” Though he’d only heard the voice once before, Collin recognized it immediately. Words said with the weight of royalty and an overbearing aura that commanded obedience. Unless the Emperor of Pandoria had arrived, which Collin both couldn’t believe and prayed was not true, there was only one other person who spoke with such authority.
Flying next to him on a wyvern she’d obtained from the Goddess knew where, the young Silverwater girl, with bright red eyes staring at the Marquess with such disdain, made Collin do a double take. Where could this girl have developed such hate in her heart? Her eyes became angry slits, her lips curled into a sneer as he sensed her reach out with a string of energy so solid he could scarcely believe it came from a new silver core. He could only sit upon his wyvern in amazement as her energy slammed intangibly into the Marquess’ magic core and tossed him off his wyvern.
For a moment, no one moved. No one spoke. There was only the cackling of the magic circle and the soft whoosh of the wind buffeting the Marquess’ fall. Then the world snapped back to life all at once. The female wyvern rider next to the Marquess angled into a dive, Cael and Lysorian knights collided with renewed desperation and focus, Collin’s few mages in his wyvern platoon began to chant their own spells in retaliation, and his advisors were abuzz in his mind with the telepathic link.
“Fool,” Lilliana said, shaking her brown hair. “Pathetic fool. Was he so desperate to bring such beings into this world?”
Collin only had a moment to shoot her a questioning gaze before the magic circle seemed to collapse in on itself, coalescing into what Collin thought was a portal. It only took a few seconds for his suspicions to be confirmed when hundreds of red-scaled creatures poured from the hole in the sky like a horde of insects. They chittered, buzzing softly as their small wings vibrated with the effort of keeping their bulbous bodies in the air. It was difficult to see the details at such a distance, but they appeared to have large bodies, small heads, and many legs. Collin thought they were the size of a small horse, perhaps a pony.
Lilliana spoke quickly in her usual commanding voice just as the scaled creatures flung themselves in their direction. She glared at them warily, though Collin could sense no fear or worry in her eyes. “The fool activated summoning magic overlaid with Runic words. If I’m not mistaken, these are blood insects from one of the nine hells. Use fire.”
Collin frowned at how he and others moved in accordance with her words, transmitting the information to his men via their telepathy links. For some odd reason, his mind did not protest against the Silverwater girl’s behavior. It should bother him. Anger him, even. Especially amidst battles where a loss of hierarchy could cause their destruction.
For some inexplicable reason, however, it seemed normal that she would address him as her… lesser?
He knew he should feel anger at the thought. At the mere implication of a baron’s bastard daughter acting as if she had dominion over him.
He didn’t, though.
Collin shook his head to dismiss the sudden thought and gripped his sword, digging his heel into his wyvern’s side to urge her forward. “Burn them back to the Hells!” He roared, his golden core illuminating the night with a blast of fire-attributed energy that drowned a group of insects in a great tidal wave of power.
Next to him, Lilliana’s core burst forward with a flash of brilliance and strength unfathomable for a silver core, her wyvern surging into the oncoming crowd of hell bugs. The wyvern did not seem to fear for its life as it dove toward its certain death. Even his personal wyvern hesitated slightly when he pushed it forward, clearly understanding the threat level.
He slashed and cut the insects with fury, splitting heads from torsos to send buckets of loose blue blood splashing wildly. His wyvern dove under the pursuit of a scaled insect, just barely dodging its massive pincers while Collin drove his sword into its underbelly, easily piercing the red scales. His golden energy flooded through his wyvern, giving it strength and speed, all the while massacring the never-ending onslaught of hell bugs.
It should have been a losing battle.
Collin knew there was no way they should have been able to win. After all, the Golden Knights and the Cael Wyvern riders had long since found each other’s limits and had settled upon a stalemate. With the hell insects in the mix, the outcome should have been quick and clear.
And yet, they were… winning?
After he decapitated yet another insect, he risked a glance toward the grounded knights to lay eyes on a small group of what seemed to be civilians cascading into the battlegrounds. There were a hundred or so, all coreless. But at the lead of the small group were perhaps fifteen individuals who laid waste to the first few Cael knights they came across.
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One man in particular towered over the entire scene at somewhere Collin estimated to be around twenty feet tall. He was coreless as well, but by the Gods, he didn’t fight like it. Collin’s final thought before he was forced to return his attention to the army of insects of hell was that the man was releasing an aura of someone nearing the power of a silver core.
Were they reinforcements? From where?
How in the world were they wielding such power without cores?
Adrenaline pumped through his veins at the knowledge of victory, the feeling of triumph. The old duke lifted his sword as he sent a message out to his knights on the ground and his wyvern riders through the telepathic link. “For Alistar!”
The battlecry was echoed by hundreds below, loud enough he could hear it even over the roar of the wind. Collin and his riders became blurs of terror as they rampaged through the insects, Lilliana and her wyvern at their backs. Any insect that broke through their ranks or somehow managed to get around them was quickly dispatched by Lilliana, the girl’s movements sharp and exact. He watched her fly into a group of a dozen insects, dispatching them with the cold ease of a veteran.
There was no way this was her first battle. What had she gone through in the slave arena?
That was when an insect penetrated their formation, speeding toward Lilliana like a spear of death. He saw her eyes widen as she yanked on her wyvern’s reins to dodge the bug, but it curved just as they changed course.
Collin yelled, his old parental instincts kicking in at the panicking girl. He urged his wyvern into action and flew forward to provide aid, his golden core thrumming with power. He extended it out and the speed of his wyvern soared. He had just reached their location, golden energy forming a shield around her, when it occurred to him that she could have raised her own shield.
He disregarded it as an oversight of panic on her part, but then Lilliana flew over him in a quick spiral, angling around the bug spearing at her. Her wyvern’s tail nicked his own, causing his steed to cry out in pain.
The seconds of control lost cost him. The sharp-headed insect crashed into them with its long, tusk-like pincers that slid with ease into his wyvern’s side. It screamed, but Collin was already falling off and tumbling toward his death.
A large hand gripped his collar as he fell. The arm was like steel as it withstood the toll of interrupting his momentum and gravity. Roderick gave a large oomph before yanking Collin atop the general’s wyvern. “What the fuck is that girl doing?” the old general growled, narrowing his eyes toward Lilliana. It was quickly redirected, however, as more insects flew at them and he had to command his wyvern into basic evasion tactics.
Collin pulled himself up behind his friend and strapped himself into the wyvern’s saddle, clasping the secondary carabiner to his `belt for stability and focusing his golden energy on the palms of his hands. He wasn’t the greatest at utilizing long-distance energy casting, but they were running out of options.
The Duke wasn’t exactly sure how many minutes passed. He killed insect after insect with hundreds of golden energy blasts. Some of the bigger ones took two, most only one. The effort was laborious, more so than he had endured in decades. Collin condensed heart energy around him for a full minute before allowing the pent-up energy to explode outward in an awesome wave of raw power.
The attack caused the hell insects to shift into a rain of corpses, bouncing off wyvern scales and armor on their way to the ground. It barely did anything.
Hundreds more red-scaled insects continued to pour out from the portal. After some time, different types began to emerge. Much larger, bulkier creatures Collin found hard-pressed to describe as insects. The newer ones were more akin to large monsters.
At the forefront stood a red-scaled humanoid, its pincered face a look of bemusement. It sauntered out from the portal, massive black leather wings beating a soft rhythm at its back. Power, unlike anything Collin had felt before, pulsed off the creature with every beat of its wings. The power was distorted. Unnatural.
Bone-chilling.
A cold chill raked up his spine like claws when the terrible energy collided with his golden core. The impact was so disgusting Collin couldn’t stop the acid from curling in his stomach, and he vomited into the wind. The simple feeling of that humanoid creature’s power was as if Collin were drowning in sewage, distorting the golden energy in his core to black muck.
The feeling lasted for only a few seconds before the Silverwater girl appeared in front of the creature with a blur of red and silver, her sword curving a perfect horizontal line to cleave the humanoid’s head clean from its neck.
The black muck staining his core clung to existence even as he fought against it, trying to remove the forced impurities.
“Your Grace,” the general cried out, banking a hard left. The wyvern’s wings snapped out, and they tilted hard. Collin had barely enough warning or presence of mind to reach out and grab the saddle’s side handholds. He tried to increase his strength with his core. Nothing happened.
He couldn’t even sense his core anymore. Only emberlings of energy leaking through the blackness clinging to his core indicated his core still existed.
What had the beast done to him?
Collin felt a panic that he hadn’t felt since he was a child well up in his stomach, and even what little magic cultivation he’d done failed him in that moment.
In that instant, Collin was mortal.
His body became heavy under the weight of his age and the effort of the day. No longer sustained by endless golden energy, his muscles tensed and shot with pain from the constant harassment of flying in the naked night.
Collin gritted his teeth, refusing to yell or shout in pain. After all, he still had his sword. Motion from behind him caused the duke to whip around, his old body protesting loudly at the sudden jerk. Roderick was staring at him with wide, confused eyes, though his tension relaxed at Collin’s expression.
The general mouthed something, but it was lost in the wind. Without the telepathic link that kept their thoughts bonded, there would be no way to hear anything against the rushing air.
“Bring me to the ground,” he tried shouting, hoping the general would understand. He only received a confused look in return. “Fuc—”
That was when a wyvern shot past them, clipping its wing into Roderick’s shoulder. That shouldn’t have done more than jostle the high-tier silver-cored general, but the wyvern’s silver-clad wing shredded Roderick’s arm like his armor was nothing.
Just as Collin’s vomit had, Roderick’s arm blew past them in some current of wind. Warm liquid splattered over his face.
His friend screamed in pain and confusion.
The wyvern bucked once and went still. Dead.
Collin wiped the blood from his eyes in a desperate attempt to see what had killed the wyvern, a feeling of utter disbelief flooding him as he spotted one of his knights atop his wyvern with an outstretched hand.
His spear jutting from Roderick’s wyvern.
Then Collin fell. Again.
Collin desperately reached into his core to pull out anything. Any whisper of energy to help protect him against his imminent landing.
Nothing.
He was dead.
A cold energy suddenly coalesced around him, slowing his fall, and a wyvern swooped underneath him. It yelped when he landed, though it continued to fly as if unhampered.
His eyes widened at the sight of the rider. Lilliana. Next to her was Roderick, passed out and bleeding profusely, but alive for now. He moved swiftly to clamp down against the wound, anguish coursing through him more powerfully than adrenaline ever had, and he struggled against the black muck around his core to access his power.
His core gave a small pulse of life. It was there. He just needed to access it.
It refused.