Chapter 11
Lilith's pulse jumped as the High Priest's full aura crashed over the battlefield.
He stood at the very peak of Veteran Rank.
He might even have one foot across the threshold of Elite.
Lilith had never faced an enemy this powerful.
Three tiers separated them.
The thought flashed through her mind and was gone.
The High Priest had already moved.
He vanished from sight, too fast for Lilith to track cleanly.
She refused to bet her life on her reflexes.
"Ossuary Colossus!"
Undead power surged from her body.
Bones erupted from the ground and locked together around her, forming the frame of a massive skeletal giant. Blue light burned through the structure, illuminating runes carved into every rib and joint.
That was only the first stage.
The runes flared.
Blue soul fire poured across the skeleton, followed by layers of black flesh that wrapped around its frame.
Lilith stood within the completed Ossuary Colossus, now towering more than thirty feet above the battlefield.
Its arms were thick as tree trunks. Blue flames burned in its empty eye sockets.
The giant raised both hands.
Soul fire condensed between them, taking the shape of an enormous scythe.
A crushing wave of power rolled outward. Dust and broken branches whipped into the air, and even the nearby Vital Soulfire guttered out under the pressure.
The colossal scythe swept across the battlefield.
The High Priest reappeared in midair, abandoning his original attack.
He was a spellcaster. The moment he felt the power radiating from Lilith's transformation, he knew better than to contest it up close.
Emerald fire gathered at the head of his staff and swelled into a sphere nearly ten feet across.
The flames brimmed with raw life energy.
To an undead creature, that power was poison.
"Let life return to ash—burn!"
The High Priest thrust his staff forward.
The emerald sphere streaked through the air like a falling star.
Lilith's scythe met it head-on.
The collision shook the forest.
Blue undead power and green Vital Soulfire detonated across the battlefield. The ground caved beneath the impact, gouging out a vast crater and stripping everything around it bare.
Dust and ash boiled skyward in a towering plume.
The Specters had already scattered into the air.
The Goblin formation had no such luxury.
The shock wave ripped through their ranks and further destabilized the barrier Morwen was already tearing apart.
"What?"
The High Priest stared at Lilith.
He had expected the spell to cripple her.
Instead, she had stopped it cold.
The Ossuary Colossus still stood, apparently untouched.
They were evenly matched.
That should have been impossible.
Lilith gave him no time to recover.
The Colossus brought its hands together.
Fragments of bone swirled around it and reformed into dozens of jagged spears. Red and blue flames ignited along their shafts.
Lilith loosed them.
The barrage screamed across the battlefield.
The High Priest swept his staff forward and raised an emerald barrier.
Bone spears hammered into it one after another.
Cracks spidered across the glowing surface as frost and fire burst against it, choking the air with steam and smoke.
Before the High Priest could see through the haze, the giant scythe came sweeping in from the side.
The barrier shattered.
By the time he realized what had happened, it was too late to dodge.
He raised his staff in both hands.
The scythe struck.
The staff snapped, and the impact hurled him across the battlefield like a stone from a catapult.
He hit the ground hard and rolled through the dirt.
A ragged cough rose from the dust.
Then blood.
The High Priest had blocked the killing blow, but his staff was gone and the impact had left him badly hurt.
"You..." He forced himself upright. "What are you?"
Nothing was supposed to live inside the Blighted Forest.
Yet this undead army had appeared out of nowhere, as if the forest itself had spawned it.
And its leader made even less sense.
He could read Lilith's Rank clearly.
Tier 6 Veteran.
How could someone three tiers beneath him match his full strength?
There was only one answer.
She was a prodigy.
And prodigies did not simply appear from nowhere.
Someone had trained her.
Some greater power had planted her here.
The High Priest's confidence wavered.
Not out of fear of Lilith herself—but because killing her might bring down the wrath of whatever stood behind her.
That could doom the entire Goblin race.
For the first time, he questioned whether this war should go on.
The High Chieftain had to hear of this.
Then screams erupted behind him.
The High Priest spun around.
Morwen had finally broken through the priests' barrier.
Netherfrost Breath poured over the Goblin army. Warriors froze mid-stride, their bodies locked in blue ice as their souls were snuffed out.
The Bone Dragon struck a moment later.
Fire swept the rear ranks, engulfing dozens of Goblins before they could scatter. In seconds, little remained of them but scorched earth.
The priests at the front fought on, but without the High Priest reinforcing their defenses—and with the Black Knights bearing down on them—they couldn't rebuild the barrier.
Once the undead broke the formation, the outcome was inevitable.
The High Priest could keep fighting Lilith.
His tribe would die around him all the same.
They were losing.
"Damn it!"
He turned toward his warriors.
The Ossuary Colossus swung again.
One massive bone arm drove him back before he could disengage.
His internal injuries deepened.
With his staff destroyed, he was forced to channel magic directly through his body.
Vital Soulfire erupted around him.
"Retreat!" His voice thundered through the flames. "All forces, retreat!"