The Forsaken Hero

The stars within the portal surged, and an all too familiar bellow roared from the gate. A silver-scaled head, wreathed in ghostly golden flames, emerged, followed by a long, serpentine body with clawed limbs. Stars glittered across its scales, designed in natural magical arrays as strong as a Canyon Crawler’s armor. The dragon was enormous, stretching over a thousand feet long, with a gaping maw of jagged teeth and a presence that shook the Grand Aegis. It was formed from the same essence as the remnants, without soul or actual flesh. Even more terrifying was that, while it wasn’t quite ninth-level, neither was it eighth.

The gate closed behind it, and the lava dragon--no, whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t that--roared again, diving at the arbiter without preamble. The angel met its claws with its sword, releasing a shockwave at the collision. He flew back, tumbling head over heels, before stabilizing himself with a beat of his wings. His expression had turned to one of concentration, a dangerous light in his eye.

As the two clashed together again, obliterating even the ruins below, I stared in shock, my tail frozen rigid. Of course I still remembered the lava dragon from Blacksand, but to think it had become this...monster? Remnant? Just what had Emlica done with it?

Emlica’s voice sounded in my mind. ”Hurry, child,” she chided, ”I’m simply buying time. As fearsome as this pet looks, it can’t trade blows with an arbiter forever.”

”R-right!” I stammered. My heart hammered against my ribs as I stumbled down the narrow stairs. The ship groaned around me, shaken by the fight, but I ignored it, my focus narrowing to a single point: the Aetherial Prism waiting in the lower hold.

”My lady, you can’t be serious,” Jenna said as my guard realized where I was heading.

”It’s too dangerous. You don’t even know how it works,” Luxxa agreed.

I ignored them, running past the Aetherial Prism and throwing open the door to the lower hold. The massive, ninth-level mana cannon glittered in the light sneaking past me from the door.

Reaching out, I laid a hand on the cannon’s barrel, and my soul tingled in warning. Just touching it caused my fingers to curl, memories of the last time I’d touched a weapon coming unbidden. The searing agony of defying the curse in Blacksand...I shuddered, quickly withdrawing my hand.

”You can’t, my lady,” Luxxa pressed. ”You couldn’t even hold that ceremonial dagger.”

”Gith, tell the captain to send a mana cannon crew down,” I said.

He nodded, vanishing in a blur as he headed above deck again.

”Should have mentioned that when you were up there,” Jenna said dryly.

I ducked my head. ”I didn’t think of it then. But...yeah, I definitely can’t wield this myself. But I can do this much,” I said, returning to the Aetherial Prism.

As I rekindled the connection between it and my soul, a group of soldiers rushed past us, wearing mage robes. I nodded at Gith, who led them, and concentrated on the lantern, feeling for the conduit I’d first sensed when appraising it. The ship rumbled beneath my feet as the bay doors opened, light streaming in from the lower hold.

More of my mana vanished as I finally found it, taken by Emlica in another spell. I half wished I could witness it, just to see the remnant’s magic in person, but I buried the desire, focusing on the mana cannon. Almost had it, just a little more...

”All ready, my Lady. But charging this thing to capacity would take hundreds of mages!” a soldier cried from below.

”Don’t pressure the Lady,” Luxxa scolded her, ”You just focus on aiming this thing at that bastard. You only get one shot, so you’d better not miss.”

I tightened my grip on my staff, pouring my soul into the connection with the Aetherial Prism. The lantern pulsed, first with a warm glow, then with sudden, intense rainbow shine. It fell across my skin with a pleasant tingle, and for a moment, I just stood there, bathing in its brilliance.

It filled my soul entirely and then, as before, overflowed into the mana cannon. The soldiers in the hold yelped as the cannon thrummed, shining so brightly I could see it through the wooden walls of the hold.

”More,” I whispered, pushing past the feeling of fullness and drawing deeper.

It was no longer pleasant. Every fiber of my soul felt like it was being stretched thin, the strain of channeling such an immense volume of mana threatening to tear me apart. I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to pull away. As the seconds ticked by, Emlica drew more and more of my mana, stealing it as quickly as the Prism could replenish it.

Emlica’s voice cut through the sensations, re-anchoring me to the present. ”Xiviyah, any second now!”

The cannon’s hum filled the lower hold, a thrumming that vibrated through the soles of my boots. It grew to a deafening roar that threatened to overwhelm my senses, the sheer magnitude of mana contained within the crystal spike of its barrel terrifying in its scope. A vortex of raw power swirled within the crystalline barrel, casting flickering rainbows across the walls. The boards groaned around me, the ship’s wards flickering and failing under the strain. Wood creaked and splintered as the very integrity of the Azure Wing threatened to give way. Above us, the ship listed sharply as the core sputtered in a continuous series of micro-failures, causing us to rapidly drop in altitude.

Letting go of the prism, but maintaining the conduit through its final stages, I staggered across the hold to the open bay doors. The wind whipped at my hair as I looked out at the scene unfolding below. The ground was a mess of craters and raging fires, no longer recognizable as the forest. My friends had disappeared, but the dragon continued to engage the arbiter. It seemed completely unharmed, yet the distance between us had more than halved. With every blow, the arbiter forced it back further, slowly working toward us.

As if waiting for an audience, the arbiter brought his sword down on the dragon’s head, releasing an eighth-level art. It roared with fury as a blast of white-hot light enveloped it, tracing its sinewy body from horns to tail. The explosion grew in magnitude, rupturing as the dragon shot back like a limp noodle, flying just past the ship. Its massive tail clipped my wards and registered as an attack. Weakened by the extraordinary power of the arbiter and the charging cannon, the Grand Aegis shattered, releasing the storm within in a compressed burst of mana.

The arbiter’s head wiped up as the wave struck him, eyes widening in shock. He avoided a series of ice lances from Emlica, lunging directly toward us. His approach crossed the miles between us in the blink of an eye, blazing a trail of sunlight that dimmed the sky.

”Fall before my light!” he cried, bringing his sword down in a vicious arc.

Another eighth-level art erupted from the blade, traveling in a crescent directed at the Azure Wing. It filled my vision, growing large enough to split the ship asunder. Somehow, Emlica reacted, throwing her staff forward and creating a wall of black space between us. It caught the art, but cracked under the strain, the arbiter’s power so immense it burned through her shield as if it were paper.

We were dead. Adaptive Resistance would never hold against that—not when it was already straining from the repeated shocks, not when Emlica’s shield was cracking before my very eyes. Even as the arbiter’s crescent of light burned through the void between us, I could feel the ship groaning beneath my feet, the very structure threatening to give way.

But we hadn’t come this far only to be torn apart in the final moments. I could feel the Aetherial Prism still pulsing, still connected to me despite the distance. There was no time to think, no time to plan—barely a heartbeat remained before the art struck us.

My grip tightened on my staff, knuckles white as I raised it toward the oncoming destruction. I pushed every ounce of my will into the desperate prayer, my soul straining as I poured everything I had into the last card I held, drawing the prism’s mana through the Oracle of Eternity.

The world slowed. My breath caught in my throat as the art froze mid-air, creeping toward us at an inch a second. That I could even see it move at all just proved the arbiter’s strength.

I fell to my knees as a crushing weight levelled against my soul. My consciousness wavered, the world breaking up in black dots. A bead of blood trickled down my nostril, pooling in the corner of my lip, but I barely noticed it. It felt as if all Enusia rested atop me, my soul buckling and creaking. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on a single thought. I had to survive. Luke had to survive. We had to survive.

A voice cried behind me, the voice of the mage, startling me in the silence. ”Fire!”