Not only did I fail to spot the carriage as we crested the sand dune where I was certain it should be, but the loud buzzing in my ears hadn’t stopped—it was only getting louder.
I turned to Nida when I felt her hand tapping my shoulder frantically, her mouth moving in words I couldn’t hear.
“What?” I shouted, my voice more scream than question. Nida pointed to me, then her ears, shaking her head.
She can’t hear either, I realized, nodding to show I understood. I scanned the horizon for any sign of the carriage or Brianna. We had found her footsteps a few minutes ago and followed them here, but they disappeared at the top of the dune we now stood on. Where the hell did she go?
The sand dune trembled beneath us, vibrating with the distant but overwhelming force of the Hydra and the Windwalker. Sand flowed down from the slope in a soft, whispering cascade, each grain tumbling over the other in a delicate but hurried stream that reflected the glow of the sky's golden morning sun.
I still couldn’t hear the battle, but I could feel the raw power radiating from what was left of Brightstone. We needed to leave before the fight ended, which wouldn't be long now. Although the Windwalker was formidable, its aura didn’t compare to the Hydra’s. I doubted it could last much longer.
I took a step forward, digging my heels into the shifting sand and sliding down the slope to a flatter section of the desert. Turning back, I saw Nasq already off the dune as well and on his knees, drawing shapes into the sand with his fingers.
We watched in silence as he worked, connecting lines to circles, circles to triangles, and triangles to stars, wrapping the entire design in a massive outer circle. Nasq pulled a small knife from his pocket and made a shallow cut on his forearm, letting droplets of deep scarlet splash onto the golden sand. His lips moved rapidly, reciting words I couldn’t recognize or hear.
Why does he need blood? I wondered absently, having seen Nasq cast magic plenty of times without it. And what's with the shapes? Are those runes?
He looked at us, nodded, and then slammed his hands onto the symbols he had drawn. A cloud of sand erupted as his hands made contact, swirling with a halo of white-gold mana particles that soared into the sky.
The small tornado of sand and mana split into three, each portion hovering over one of us. Then, as if severed from their strings, the mana clouds collapsed, sprinkling down like rain. A warm sensation spread through my body, coalescing in my head and ears until there was a final, deafening pop. A sharp headache exploded between my eyes, and I groaned, dropping to my knees and clutching my head.
But the pain faded just as quickly, like a whispered thought long abandoned.
“My lady, can you hear me?” Nasq’s voice came through clearly, splitting the silence.
My attention snapped toward Nasq, my eyes wide with surprise and shock by the sudden ability to hear. “I can. Did you heal our hearing?”
“I’m not skilled in healing magic, but that spell should have repaired some of the damage from the Windwalker’s scream,” he said. “Thank the Gods it’s a standard spell all mages learn before their first year internships with an adventurer’s guild.”
I didn’t understand half of what he said, but that didn’t matter. I could hear again. “What about my arm?”
Nasq shook his head. “That’s beyond my abilities. Even before becoming a Paragon, I specialized in battle and utility magic.”
“How will we heal her, then?” Nida asked, her voice pitched louder than necessary. If I hadn't heard the panic in her tone, I might have thought her still suffering from hearing loss.
“I’m not sure,” Nasq replied, grimacing. “Maybe powerful healers from the Holy Kingdom can regrow limbs. I know someone at the academy who can reattach them, but…” He trailed off. The implication was clear—reattaching something that no longer existed wasn’t an option.
“It’s fine,” I said, absently touching the stump where my left arm had been, the skin charred black from the heat of my lunar flames. “I’ll recover the next time I undergo Reformation.”
“Like when you reached the silver realm?” Nasq asked, his expression pensive.
“Yes.”
“How long will that take?” Nida gripped the torn remnants of my shirt, her knuckles more white than the shirt had once been.
“I don’t know, but we’ll have to manage.” I looked her in the eye. “This changes nothing. We still need to reach Alistar territory and enter the succession battle. If anything,” I gestured to my shoulder, “this will make them underestimate me, which is to our advantage. An enemy who underestimates is much easier to deal with than one with an abundance of caution.”
“How will you fight?” Nida’s gaze lingered unwaveringly on the stump. Nasq, at least, had gone back to searching for traces of the carriage and the wyverns.
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“Nida, enough.” My tone was firm. “It’s just an arm.” I turned to Nasq. “Fire a flare into the sky.”
To his credit, Nasq didn’t hesitate or ask why. The elf raised both his hands skyward and, with a pulse of mana, summoned a blazing red ball of flames. He flung it into the sky directly above us, where it detonated in a series of red-orange explosions. The sound was faint compared to the roars of the monsters in Brightstone, but I hoped the driver or Brianna would see it.
“There!” Nida shouted, pointing at a distant dot on the horizon. A larger figure loomed ahead of it.
No, not larger—closer.
A creature cried out in what sounded like glee as it approached, landing heavily beside me. A cloud of dust rose from its clumsy descent, but I recognized it immediately.
“I really should give you a name,” I chuckled, staggering forward through loose sand to stroke the wyvern's smooth, leathery black scales. It chittered happily, stretching its wings and shaking off streams of running stand. It nuzzled my hand, a deep purr vibrating from its chest. Though smaller than others, the wyvern still dwarfed me.
“Lilliana!” Brianna’s voice reached us as the carriage grew closer, her head and arms sticking out the window as she waved frantically, her eyes brimming with panic. I was about to wave back, but Nida beat me to it.
“Can you land?” Nida called out.
The noblewoman turned to the driver, her lips moving in response to Nida’s question. The driver nodded, and Brianna looked back at us, her brown curls pulled straight in the wind.
“We need to hurry. The driver says the Windwalker is nearly dead,” she yelled. Before she managed to go back inside, the carriage suddenly dipped diagonally toward us and Brianna screamed, a pair of hands reaching out to tug her head back into the carriage.
“Get in the carriage,” I ordered, swinging a leg over my wyvern’s back with the same ease I might a horse despite its much larger size. “I’ll follow.”
I needed to see if there was an opening to grab the mimic I'd captured earlier.
The flying carriage never fully stopped, only slowed enough for Nida and Nasq to jump aboard. Brianna and Victor held out hands for Nida and Nasq to grasp onto as they boarded the still moving transport. I clicked my tongue and gave my wyvern a light nudge. It chittered, flapping its wings a few times to create a cyclone of sand before finally launching itself into the sky right behind the leading carriage.
Once in the air, my heart began to slow. My guard never dropped, but I no longer felt as if death's door chased hot on my tail. The nagging and ceaseless jolts of sharp pain surging from my missing arm every few seconds, however, was a constant reminder of just how close I’d gotten. I needed more experience using and understanding my Soul Weaver abilities.
Until now, I'd been lucky.
But today had shown me that luck could run out. That it would run out.
In hindsight, that wasn’t surprising. Any power, if unknown and used incorrectly, could and would eventually result in disaster. It had really just been a matter of time.
I grunted, putting pressure in my knees to indicate that I wanted the wyvern to turn, angling slightly left to approach the outskirts of Brightstone. The wailing scream of death that echoed all around signaled the end of the battle before I’d even gotten within a few miles of the place.
Caution, Lilith.
If I spotted the Hydra anywhere near, I'd run.
Even after a few minutes of traveling cautiously around the outskirts of Brightstone, I'd kept a proper distance and was still too far to see any details of the finished battle. I edged my wyvern closer, my senses pulsing outward to where I’d left the mimic and finding it exactly where I’d left it. The creature hadn’t moved at all.
I grinned despite the pain from the morning, and was about to fly my Wyvern closer to the mimic so I could descend into the city and grab it, when the powerful beating of enormous wings filled the air. I looked up, the cold fingers of panic once more gripping my heart in its freezing embrace, and saw the Hydra’s burning golden eyes, its nine heads twisting and curling with malice, and eight wings stretched wide, casting an enormous shadow over the village.
When they began to beat, each flap caused a barrage of sand, stone, and debris in all directions. Buildings collapsed and shattered under the sheer force of the wind pressure the massive wing’s caused as they worked to lift the Hydra into the air.
“By all the Gods,” I swore, my words a breathless plea to the heavens. What in all the Hells had I created?
It hovered there, air churning around it as its nine heads scanned the landscape. Our eyes met, and I knew, with every fiber of my being, that it was after me. That it wanted to do something to me that I would not like.
My mind raced to figure out what I could do to survive.
The reality was, I had only two options.
I could run. Flee toward the carriage and race with everything we had to the Alistar Duchy, hoping there was someone there who could fend off the Hydra. I doubted anyone in Graedon could fight this Hydra on equal grounds, much less soldiers of a duchy.
I grimaced at the next option, every part of me recoiling even at the thought of it—the darkness buried deep within my core. That bundle of power I had only ever tapped in small ribbons of necromantic energy. Even at my lowest, I had never fully emptied it. I kept it hidden from my people. From my world. Those who knew of my necromantic abilities had never grasped just how deep my power truly went.
In truth, neither did I. I still didn't comprehend the full extent of the necromantic energy that had accumulated within my soul across this life and the last.
At the thought, the darkness within my heart's core seemed to writhe, like sludge sluggishly coursing around my heart. As I drew on it, the energy burned hotter and more painfully than the flames that had seared my shoulder.
Unlike the time at the banquet, I didn’t hold back. This time, I didn’t restrict the flow to mere ribbons. I flung my core wide open, unleashing the dark, corrupting force of necromancy in a tidal wave of raw, unrestrained power.
The power surged forth the moment it escaped my core, writhing and twisting through the air like a living thing. It reached out hungrily toward the corpses of fallen monsters and the still-living humans in Brightstone. The Hydra hovered in place, all nine heads bending toward the dark energy with a curious gleam in its eyes. The necromantic force seeped into the dead, animating their lifeless bodies, while at the same time it invaded the living, killing them instantly and resurrecting them as undead in a single, terrible sweep.
Thousands of newly risen undead howled and roared, clawing their way back from eternal slumber. I could feel countless cords—tens of thousands—latching onto my heart, winding around it like tangled threads. The pain was searing as the bonds tightened, carving deep marks into my once smooth, unblemished core, binding me to each of my creations.
With what little strength remained, I tapped the spine of my wyvern. "Go. Follow the carriage."
The last thing I remembered was the cry of my wyvern and the Hydra's defiant roar before darkness swallowed me whole.
So much for retrieving that mimic.