Chapter 24 #2
Killian’s answer was a spear of lightning and raw fury, a strike that should have vaporized a mountain and scattered its atoms to the solar winds. Instead, my father simply opened his void of a mouth and swallowed the blast whole. The power meant to destroy him only made him stronger.
“Time to break my daughter’s heart!” Ruin vowed viciously.
His crimson blade flashed. Killian parried with his starlight sword, but the sheer force from the god drove him back several feet before he steadied himself.
A flicker of surprise twisted Ruin’s features.
He hadn’t expected any being to possess such strength.
Now, he would stop at nothing to eliminate my mate, taking out the competition.
Ruin unleashed his shadows, and they were suddenly everywhere. A shadow-wrapped fist slammed into Killian’s ribs. I felt his agony as my own, a sharp, sickening crack of bone. The entire battlefield seemed to freeze at the sound of an apex predator’s pained roar.
But my mate did not fall. His dragon healing surged, knitting bone even as Ruin pressed his advantage.
Killian used the momentum of the next attack, spinning to bring his blade around in an arc.
It carved through Ruin from shoulder to hip, cleaving him open to the spine.
For one glorious, satisfying second, I saw fear in my father’s eyes.
Then, shadow poured into the wound like water, sealing it. By the time Killian completed his spin for a follow-up strike, Ruin stood whole, smirking.
“You fight well for a mongrel.” My father’s blade carved through the air where Killian’s head had been a moment before. “A dragon polluted with human weakness, godly blood tainted by mortality. You are everything that is wrong with this realm.”
“Big words from a void being,” Killian snarled, his death shadow erupting to clash against Ruin’s shadow.
Where the two forces met, reality distorted. Shriekers, demons, and humans who strayed too close simply ceased to exist. It was a good thing my mate had warned his men to keep their distance, and my shield, though stretched thin, helped to dull the worst of the impact.
They fought with mirroring darkness, but the difference was immediately clear. Killian’s death shadow fought with a righteous purpose, a power inherited from Hades and honed by his own will. Ruin’s darkness was born of the void, insatiable, unholy, and all-consuming.
The clashing shadows exploded outward. Killian used the concussive force to launch himself skyward, his wings snapping open.
Ruin leapt after him, claws slashing. Killian twisted in mid-air, and his dragon claws raked across Ruin’s face, tearing half of it away.
The ancient shadow simply flowed over its master, knitting the features back together.
Ruin retaliated, his fist slamming into the joint of Killian’s dragon wing. The membrane tore with a sickening, wet crack.
Killian cratered into the ground. He rolled away as Ruin’s blade came down, leaving a pool of molten rock where his heart had been a second before.
They reset, circling each other. Killian bled from half a dozen wounds that healed with agonizing slowness compared to his opponent. Ruin stood pristine, shrouded in regenerating shadow.
“Don’t use lightning or starlight!” I screamed, seeing Killian’s power begin to gather. “He devours them!”
My mate heard me. He shifted tactics, relying on blistering swordplay enhanced by raw dragon fire, the one element Ruin couldn’t easily absorb. But even as his flesh burned, the shadows always writhed back to heal him.
Steel rang against cursed steel once more, a blur of motion too fast to follow.
For a few critical seconds, skill prevailed. Killian’s blade opened Ruin’s throat. As the god clutched at his neck, Tyson’s tail whipped around, its venomous, barbed tip piercing deep into Ruin’s left eye.
Ruin staggered back, a roar of pain finally tearing from him. Black ichor poured down his face as he wrenched the barbed tip free.
“You dare—” Ruin snarled.
Killian’s starlight blade cleaved him in two. For a single, suspended heartbeat, I saw the dark column of his spine through the gap. Then, shadow poured into the chasm like black water, knitting him whole before the separated halves could even fall.
A flash of movement pulled my attention away as human traitors flanked our position with missiles. My dark flame rolled over them before they could aim, erasing a third of their number in an instant.
“Fall back to secondary positions!” a voice screamed over the din.
The battlefield had devolved into a meat grinder.
We were taking heavy casualties as well.
A shifter crawled past, both arms missing.
A mage tried desperately to hold her own organs in place.
A fae warrior fell, his silver eyes going dark, and another soldier from the reinforcement team snatched his blood blade before it hit the ground, driving it into a Shrieker’s gut.
My vision blurred with unshed tears. Each death carved something out of me, something I knew I would never get back.
Through the chaos, I spotted the heirs still standing, still fighting like the legends they’d become. A wave of relief hit me so hard my knees nearly buckled.
Silas had gone full berserker, his warrior form standing atop a mountain of Shrieker corpses. He was drenched in black blood from head to toe, but his amber eyes burned fiercely through the gore.
Louis led his vampires in a ruthless wedge formation, piercing enemy lines like a crimson spear. Gunnar fought at his prince’s side, ensuring no Shrieker could flank him.
Rowan and Cade held the center-left, their combined forces creating a kill zone.
The earth split open beneath the Shriekers’ feet, then sealed shut.
Cade rushed in to finish off the trapped abominations, while warriors from both houses fought back-to-back, systematically picking the Shriekers apart.
Against impossible odds and an endless enemy, we held our ground.
Then Ruin raised his hands to the burning sky.
“Arise!” His voice rolled across the battlefield like black thunder. “Your god commands!”
The impossible happened.
The corpses began to move.
A Shrieker Silas had decapitated moments earlier pushed itself upright, its head reattaching with a wet, visceral clicking.
The piles of ash I had created swirled and merged, forming new, snarling abominations.
Wounds sealed. Oil-weeping sockets blinked open.
Severed tentacles slithered back to their stumps.
“No, no, no—” The denial was a cold stone in my throat.
Understanding hit my lungs like icy water. At his full power, Ruin had bound their very existence to his. As long as he stood, they would never truly fall. We could kill them a thousand times, and they would keep coming back.
“They’re rising!” a mage screamed, his voice cracking with pure terror. “The dead are rising!”