Chapter 74 #3
The chains shrieked through the air, and Serguei attacked the voracious's mind, halting her assault just long enough for him to roll clear. The woman grabbed her head and screamed—she hadn't been prepared for the force of the blow.
Then he orchestrated a pattern of attacks and defenses based on what he knew about the fight.
When the woman attacked, he blocked and then struck back at her mind, forcing her to block him in turn, which gave him time to close the distance.
It was a dance where every second was precious, the hammering of steel against iron producing a song of desperate rhythm.
The psychic attacked and countered until he gained ground and got close enough to land a fatal blow.
By now, he could feel his power draining—he'd used so much of it to exterminate the carniceals.
But when he finally drove his sword toward her chest, attacking her mind simultaneously, she unexpectedly drew a dagger from her waist. Serguei couldn't strike her without being hit himself.
He thought that if he was lucky, he might survive the wound.
He put everything into the blow while watching the blade aim for his heart, but at the last moment, shadows engulfed his body and Serguei felt himself slide into darkness. The psychic stared in shock as his son held him tight, positioning them behind the voracious.
“Are you okay?” Zion asked.
His voice was determined, cold as polished obsidian. The psychic breathed a sigh of relief.
“Yes. How's the girl?”
“Alive.”
That single word lifted tons of worry from his shoulders. Zion, seeing the queen approaching, pushed Serguei aside and drew the daggers at his waist. He released the shadows to move freely, but saw reluctance in the tendrils, as if they didn't want to participate.
“Hello, little brother!” she hissed at Zion as a chain shot toward him. “How good to see the family reunited!”
He vanished and reappeared at her right, blocking another attack already coming his way.
Serguei immediately joined the fight, and this time the balance had shifted.
Despite still attacking, the voracious also had to block.
She trembled with each blow Serguei launched at her mind, but she didn't stop, and her chains seemed to have a life of their own.
No matter where Zion materialized, the iron tips followed him.
“What do you want here?” Zion hissed at the woman, but it was Serguei who answered, seething with rage:
“To kill the archangel while she's weak and disable Kyller's body.”
“I've wanted to meet you for a long time,” the voracious shouted through the rain. “The man made of shadows, blood of my blood.”
“Don't listen to her, Zion!” Serguei shouted amid rain, sparks, and mud.
Zion didn't need warnings; knowing this thing had come to hurt his partner was reason enough to want to exterminate it as soon as possible.
He slipped into battle mode and wouldn't listen to anyone—only the whispers of death the shadows sent him.
The woman tried to retreat toward the forest, but she could barely take a step back before Zion was already intercepting her.
Then something on the horizon changed, and suddenly the intensity of that wave of golden power diminished, signaling that the union between the archangel and Kyller was almost complete.
Zion had ensured his partner's safety by covering every trace of her existence with darkness, blinding the divinity so it couldn't find them hidden in the vast terrain of the mind.
That was the only reason the archangel hadn't been able to kill her.
But when the window for attack closed and the archangel became trapped in the subconscious, Zion brought Kyller to the conscious part of the mind, certain nothing would happen to her.
Now the union was about to be completed, and he didn't know what would happen when the two consciousnesses woke in the same body.
“Get out of my way!” the voracious shouted when she saw time was running out.
Her eyeballs turned black, growing more maddened by the second.
A chain struck the side of Serguei's head, sending him flying.
In that moment, Zion faltered at the sight of Serguei sprawled on the muddy ground, not knowing if he was unconscious or just recovering—but there was no time to dwell on it.
The general appeared and disappeared between the chains.
His movements were smoke, night, and mist, keeping the woman away from Serguei while always trying to get close enough to sever the creature's neck, but the shadows weren't helping.
As soon as he materialized to stab the voracious, she sensed it and pulled away with her chains.
Zion grunted when he realized something about this fight didn't make sense—he should have been able to get close by now, yet the shadows simply retreated whenever they got too near.
Then, tired of this game, he seized the tendrils with a firm grip and hurled them all at once, ordering them to kill.
When they reached the voracious, the shadows stopped in midair, as if time had frozen.
The woman smiled and extended her hands, making the shadows fall to the ground and crawl to her feet, where her skin absorbed them. Zion stared, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. He tried to call them back, but none responded. He tried to transport himself, but couldn't do that either.
“Weren’t you listening to me, little brother?” The voracious smiled diabolically. “We share the same blood. You can control the darkness, but I am part of it. I was born from it, raised in it, made of it.”
She attacked and Zion dodged, blocking the blow with his two daggers raised in an X before him.
There were no more whispers, no dematerialization, and certainly no sense of protection.
His mind was silent as a tomb. Without the tendrils, he shifted to a defensive fighting style, able only to endure her attacks.
It was as if one of his senses had been stripped away—the shadows had been his eyes and ears.
“What did you do?” he shouted, blocking a blow that nearly took his head off.
The woman laughed and attacked again.
“I evened the odds. As I said, I’m made of darkness, so it can’t hurt me.”
As they fought, Zion realized he had never felt so vulnerable in his life.
The chains struck and he dodged, but the voracious laughed—and the sound reached his ears at the same moment a sharp blade point pierced his right shoulder.
His mouth flew open in an agonizing scream, and as pain seared through him, another chain sank into his left thigh, driving him to his knees.
His vision went red from the agony. Zion tried to pull the point from his shoulder, but tugging only drove it deeper.
The voracious watched the blood flow down and licked her lips, as if savoring the taste.
She smiled, surprised and pleased, like she’d discovered a joke only she understood.
“So predictable,” she exclaimed in ecstasy. “Seriously? This was the best place your father could think of to hide it?”
“Hide what?” Zion screamed in his mind. He had no idea what the creature was talking about—all he could think about was breaking free.
Hearing Zion’s scream, Serguei staggered to his feet, still dazed from the blow to his head, and tried to distract her with his psychic gift—already pushed to its limit—but the metal strikes drove him back again.
His sluggish, disconnected mind reeled at the sight of his son’s predicament, and he soon realized another attack was already underway.
Zion couldn’t move—a third chain had pierced his left arm, immobilizing the limb.
The psychic relived Kyller’s memory, the one where Lagherta had been trapped and killed by six chains, exactly as Zion was now.
It seemed like a macabre torture ritual, where the final blow would be an act of mercy aimed at the heart.
“No, no, no,” his mind screamed as he desperately searched for a way to free Zion, but a fourth chain rose from the darkness and drove deep into his son’s right thigh, pinning him on his knees. It looked far too much like the nightmares that plagued his sleep night after night.
“Choose, Serguei,” Julius shouted in his mind. “There are only two futures.” But the psychic knew there was no choice for him. Only one path.
Gathering every last crumb of the gift remaining in his elemental well, he launched himself like a violent tornado against the woman’s barrier.
This time, the glass crumbled beneath his claws.
Without thinking, he entered. Serguei would end this.
He would kill her and lose his life in the process, but he would make sure Zion and Kyller were safe from this evil.
But the voracious wasn’t defending herself—she was using the gift of metal, and the chains continued on their path.
Serguei searched for the doors of the subconscious.
Everything was happening so fast: rain pounded down furiously, lightning illuminating the cold night.
He entered the subconscious even as he swung his sword at the woman.
He knew it was the end for both of them.
But when he looked around the subconscious, there was only darkness. No life core—nothing was as he knew it. Too late, he realized the problem: that thing, the voracious, had no life, which meant there was no core to destroy.
He wondered why she had defended herself so fiercely from his mental attacks if there was nothing to protect.
It made no sense. Then he saw the answer stamped on the woman’s mind: that whole little show had been a strategy to drain his power bit by bit, because she knew she would never get past Serguei if he used his psychic gift.
The army of ghouls, the mental barrier he had fought so hard to destroy—all of it had been carefully designed to drain him.
Then he heard the woman’s laughter echoing in his own mind.
“Little fool. A fox never falls for the same trap twice.”