Chapter 23 #4
Red laser-like fire erupted from Percy’s palms in a concentrated beam that punched through the bane’s center mass.
It shrieked and kept coming. Aiden’s Leo fire bloomed around him, and he slammed both hands into the floor.
The heat wave that erupted from his palms rolled across the stage and hit the bane like a wall of liquid sunlight.
It screamed again, its limbs curling, and this time it staggered.
I moved, the starlight swords like extensions of my arms, and I cut through the bane’s remaining limbs in two clean strokes. It dissolved into ash and shadow, the dark matter dispersing like smoke.
More were coming. They were climbing the stage from every direction, swarming over the overturned tables, crawling along the walls. The ballroom had become a nightmare of screaming civilians, flashing magic, the wet, tearing sounds of combat.
Draco was throwing shadow constructs at the bane.
Venomous, corrosive substance that ate through bane flesh like acid.
Eris split into one, two, three, four, ten copies of himself, materializing in a ring around the stage, each one armed and moving independently.
His duplicates fanned out, engaging bane on multiple fronts, buying us space.
Lucas’s water magic flooded the floor, creating a slick barrier that the bane couldn’t grip.
Rowan’s gravity manipulation cracked the marble beneath their feet, swallowing limbs and bodies into fissures that sealed shut as Phoenix closed the stone.
Theo was a blur of movement, their confusion letting him strike and retreat before the bane could react.
Vines like tentacles erupted from the floor.
Thorned vines and carnivorous blooms that wrapped around the bane and squeezed as Phoenix roared.
Jamie was doing something I’d never seen before.
He was projecting fear directly into the bane’s consciousness, making them hesitate, stumble, turn on each other.
But there were too many. The black portals kept spawning them, and every time we cut one down, two more took its place.
The ballroom was filled with shadow, the air thick with the stench of rot.
I fought at the center of the formation, my starlight swords cutting arcs of silver through the darkness. Every swing connected. Every strike killed. The bond fed me power, and I fed it back.
A bane broke through the outer ring. It was a Class Four, bigger than the others, its body a lattice of interlocking limbs and serrated edges. It moved like liquid, flowing around Eris’s duplicates and through Draco’s shadows, and it was headed straight for me.
Percy moved before I could react, stepping between me and the bane, and the red magic that erupted from his hands was not a beam this time.
It was a wall. A solid, burning wall of Aries magic that hit the Class Four and stopped it dead.
The bane slammed into the barrier and howled, its limbs smoking, and Percy didn’t flinch.
He held the wall, teeth bared, veins standing out on his neck.
The bane dissolved against Percy’s wall in a spray of ash and shadow, but there were already three more climbing over its remains. I pivoted, starlight blades cutting a wide arc, and caught a glimpse of the ballroom beyond our formation.
It was chaos. Absolute, unmitigated chaos.
Lydia’s shield had formed a defensive ring near the east wall, and they were fighting like hell. Lydia herself was a whirlwind of Aquarius magic, ice shards flying from her hands like daggers, each one punching through bane flesh and freezing the dark matter solid.
Valeria was at her right, lightning crackling between her fingers, and Tye was at her left.
But behind them, Kassie was screaming. She was pressed against the wall, hands over her ears, eyes wide and wild, and she couldn’t see what was killing people around her.
To her, the ballroom was just utterly collapsing.
People were dying for no reason. Tables were flipping.
Her mind couldn’t wrap itself around it because humans couldn’t see the bane, couldn’t process the dark matter, couldn’t understand why the air itself seemed to be tearing people apart.
Assembly members who’d been sitting in the front row minutes ago were now scattered across the marble floor in pieces.
A woman in a silver gown was on her knees, clutching the stump of her arm, her mouth open in a silent scream.
A man near the stage had been ripped in half.
I could see both pieces from where I stood.
The black portals kept spawning. Every second, more of them tore open.
‘We can’t hold them,’ I thought to the guys. ‘There are too many. They’ll overwhelm us. They’ll kill everyone in this room.’
The plan was already forming. I could feel it taking shape in the deep, instinctive part of my brain—the Ophis part, the part that remembered things deep in my blood.
It was insane. It was suicidal. It required more power than I’d ever channeled, more than my body was built to hold, more than any axis in recorded history had attempted.
The bond lit up with understanding. They felt it the moment the plan crystallized in my head. I visualized the scope of it, the cost, the sheer, suicidal fucking audacity.
‘Do it!’ Percy sent, and his voice in my head was absolute. No hesitation. ‘Whatever it takes. We’re with you.’
‘Try, sweetheart’ Lucas echoed. ‘We don’t have a choice.’
‘It’s insane,’ Draco sent, and there was almost a laugh in it. ‘Absolutely fucking insane. Do it.’
‘Every ounce—’ Aiden’s voice was a growl, his Leo fire already building, feeding the bond. ‘Take everything, Jupiter!’
‘No holding back, lass!’ Eris shouted, and through the bond I could feel his duplicates fighting harder, buying every second they could.
‘We’re here, baby,’ Jamie sent through to me..
‘Brace yourselves—’ Rowan and Theo said almost simultaneously, their magic already flowing into the bond like rivers of energy.
“Now, Jupiter!’ Phoenix said, and his earth magic rumbled through the floor, reinforcing the stage beneath my feet.