Striking down Morgana was not the plan. It had never been the plan. Not now, anyway. I still had use for her.

  Yet for some reason I was consumed by the need to kill her before the Hydra’s threat grew worse. I wanted, no, needed her dead—now.

  Fortunately for Morgana, my charge was cut short and her life was saved by the sudden entrance of judges rushing the stage to evacuate us. Two of them stepped directly into my path, raising their hands to signal me to stop.

  For a moment, I debated cutting my way through them—painting the arena in crimson if that was what it took to end the puny, insignificant life of the girl who had caused me so much pain.

  Who had caused... Lilliana so much pain.

  I grunted, cutting off the surge of bloodlust and reluctantly diverting my path. With a sharp turn, I rushed off the stage to regroup with Nida and Paragon. I leaped from its edge and landed in motion, the impact of my landing doing nothing to slow me down.

  I didn’t spare Morgana or Justicia another glance as the three of us exited the arena. There wasn’t a moment to waste. Most of the other expert division fighters had already left, having been defeated in earlier bouts, so we made quick work of the Collosseum's inner space and reached the public paths quickly enough.

  “Where are they?” Nida shouted over the cacophony of panicked voices as the crowd surged toward the exits.

  “Head up,” I commanded. The two obeyed without hesitation. The first five minutes were spent forcing our way against the tide of the audience. While they descended from the stands in a desperate rush to escape, we fought our way upward.

  I shoved a particularly intoxicated man out of my way when he refused to move, sending him flying over the edge of the arena into a group of bystanders. They yelped in surprise as he landed among them. The fall probably wasn’t high enough to kill him, but I also didn’t care. I’d played the good little girl long enough.

  When we reached the top floor of the Colosseum, we were met with eerie silence. Unlike the open seating below, this area had stone walls and a roof. Doors lined the circular hallway, each likely leading to private overhangs for VIPs and Colosseum staff.

  "Wow," Nida muttered. "The rich are really slumming it, huh."

  “My lady?” Nasq asked, ignoring Nida's comment and leaving the rest of his question hanging.

  “This way.” I followed the field marshal’s instructions, turning left down a long passage toward the VIP section. “Find the door with a crescent moon insignia.”

  It took longer than I would have liked, but Nida eventually called out from a few doors ahead, “Found it!”

  She waited for us to catch up, but I didn’t feel like knocking. Instead, the instant I registered the crescent moon carved into the door's face, I kicked the door down with a burst of heart energy to my leg. The metal frame buckled, the wood splintering as it was torn from its hinges. Inside, a draconic man and a stout, fat man stood frozen in surprise.

  Surrounding them was a ring of fighters dressed in the golden cloaks of House Alistar, all adorned with a silver crescent moon—my silver crescent moon.

  Each one of them a resurrected knight of the deceased duke.

  I greeted my waiting soldiers with a devilish grin. “Everyone ready?”

  “Yes, Duchess,” they shouted, planting one fist against their heart and the other just below the elbow in unison—the official Aedronirian salute.

  Field Marshal Daern Maglov stepped forward, adding a deep bow to his salute. “The pieces are in place, Your Grace.”

  “Was anyone caught?” I asked, motioning for Dralos and the fat man to step forward.

  “Two, Your Grace,” Daern replied. “The spies on the temporary Alistar matriarch and the King were both killed this morning.”

  Unfortunate. The position of the King and Marchioness would have to remain temporarily unknown. Nothing I could do about it now.

  “Let us ensure their sacrifices were not in vain,” I said. “Do we still have eyes on Duke Goldenhearts?”

  Daern nodded, handing me a black coin that resembled the House Alistar coin. It was much smaller and more rough, flat, and without any design on either face. “This black coin will relay the location of our spies directly to your mind. similar in function to the House Coin. You’ll find them near their targets.”

  “Perfect.” I stowed the coin in my storage ring and turned to the fat man. “I assume this isn’t actually Jarold the announcer?”

  The fat man, who I assumed was in the form of the announcer, gave me an extremely evil, extremely wicked grin as it shifted from the form of Jarold, altering itself into a replica of Morgana Silverwater. “No, I am not,” the mimic said. “I am Morgana Ssssilverwater.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I laughed. “Glad to see you’ve decided to join us, Mimic.”

  It pointed a slim finger at me. “Your man promised me cores for my work,” it said, gesturing to Dralos. “Many cores. I desire payment now.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t take any from the dead Brutes?”

  The mimic sniffed disdainfully. “I only eat hhhhhuman cores, woman.”

  “Then you’ll just have to die,” I said, shrugging as I moved for the hilt of my sword. "I don't have any cores on me right now."

  “W-w-w-wait!” the mimic stammered, raising its hands in surrender.

  “If you wait,” I said, pausing, “I’ll let you have your fill of the corpses in the city. After all, the Hydra will leave many dead in its wake. But no gold cores. Those are mine.”

  The mimic tilted its head, not understanding why a human would want human cores, but eventually nodded anyway. “I agggreeeee.”

  “Good.” I turned to Dralos. “Where’s Vespera?”

  As if answering my question, a feminine voice whispered in my mind. "I am here, Lilith. Jump into the sky, and I will catch you."

  For a moment, I froze, looking around to see if anyone else had heard the dragon’s voice—or my true name. No one reacted, though, and Dralos filled the silence.

  “Are you referring to the dragon?” he asked.

  I nodded, still unsettled by Vespera’s unexpected intrusion into my thoughts.

  “She awaits you outside the gates,” Dralos said. “As commanded, we kept our distance and did not disturb her.”

  “Good,” I said again, regaining my composure. “And the army?”

  “They’re just out of sight,” Dralos replied. “Mages are camouflaging their approach. Though even with many soldiers riding wyverns and cockatrices, it will still take some time for them to arrive.”

  “Not an issue,” I said with a small grimace. “There are many more Gold Cores and Third Realm mages in this city than I’d suspected. They’ll likely hold off the Hydra until we’re able to overwhelm it with numbers. How were the trap preparations?”

  Dralos held up a small brown sphere. “As you instructed, we’ve prepared mana-toxic explosives. Based on reports, the Hydra’s scales are likely resistant to direct attacks, so the toxins will need to be detonated from within.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Poison bombs? That’s what you came up with?”

  He shrugged. “It seemed the best option against a platinum creature. No one could think of anything else."

  “It’s worth a shot,” I said, taking the toxic sphere from him. “Though poisons are usually ineffective against cultivators at that level.”

  “This is meridian poisoning, Your Grace,” the field marshal explained. “Even Duke Alistar tread cautiously around it. Before his death, he banned nearly all research into its creation.”

  “And my sword?” I asked.

  “It remains in the King’s treasury,” Dralos answered. “We couldn’t get past the guards—at least half a dozen bronze and silver realm warriors, possibly a mage as well. We might have succeeded with the Field Marshal and the silver-realm lieutenants, but it would have drawn too much attention at the time."

  “Go back there first,” I ordered. The city would just now be descending into chaos, and I needed to move soon. Timing was critical—too late, and the higher-core fighters would be too drained to fight; too early, and I risked being overshadowed. “Most of the guards will likely have abandoned the treasury to reinforce other positions.” I gestured at Nida and Nasq. “Help them retrieve the sword. I’ll need it. I don’t care how big the fight is—get me that sword.” Nida opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off sharply. “No argument. Don’t return until you have it. Without that blade, we don’t stand a chance against the Hydra. Go. Now.”

  Everyone nodded and began moving toward the door. The mimic, however, warped back into the heavyset man from earlier and dashed to a small table etched with runes.

  “RUN!” he shouted dramatically, waving his arms as his voice thundered outside with enough volume that it caused my ears to ring. “FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE GODS, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEE!”

  We stared at him, all of us taking a second to process what he was doing. Then he grinned. “Desperation very quickly turns into frenzied panic with a little... nudging."

  Dralos grunted and stalked over, shoving the mimic toward the door. “Move.”

  “Actually,” I said, pausing in the doorway and stopping Dralos, “Mimic, shift back into Morgana. Go cause a mess with her face.”

  None of the Alistar soldiers even blinked at the implicit command for the mimic to kill people. It reminded me once more that they were all among my resurrected. I silently thanked the Gods that my earlier use of necromantic energy against the Hydra hadn’t severed ties to all the resurrected. Some had broken—I’d felt it—but according to Dralos’ earlier reports, the majority of the resurrected remained under my control.

  The fifteen soldiers sprinted from the room and disappeared down the corridor, heading for the Colosseum’s exit.

  "Come now," I sent telepathically, feeling my thoughts link with Vespera.

  I lingered only a moment before returning to the commentator’s room. Crossing to the window that overlooked the Colosseum battlefield, I unleashed a pulse of heart energy, shattering the glass outward. I stood and leaned out the window, letting my left foot dangle in midair. Then I jumped, wind tearing at me as I leapt through the opening and landed atop the neighboring VIP lookout. The stone foundation cracked beneath me, groaning under the impact, but ultimately held steady.

  I ascended higher and higher, vaulting from one structure to the next until I reached the royal overhang, the highest peak of the Colosseum. My senses detected no one inside—no royal lackey lying in wait—so I decided to stay on the overhang, thankfully unimpeded.

  “Almost there.” Her words rang like a melody, less language than pure resonance. It felt as though her communication transcended normal understanding, a fleeting but profound sensation.

  Must be an effect of her evolution, I mused. Dragons were inherently transcendent beings, far beyond what the Hydra represented. But Vespera was unique—she was an evolved wyvern, not a true dragon. Or at least, she hadn't been born a true dragon.

  From my vantage point, I watched figures in the distance clash against the Hydra. Even from a distance, I could feel the pulses of their gold core energy and overflowing mana collide ineffectively against the creature. It had breached the city’s barriers seemingly with ease, its black-purple flames engulfing more of the western front each time one of its heads released more of the dark fire.

  The cackling of the Hydra's fires seemed to echo the screams and desperate shouts of people fleeing the inferno. I watched impassively as each of them was devoured by the flames, their terrified cries cut short by the scorching heat of fire.

  At some point during my conversation with Dralos and the others, but clearly only after it had torched the western front, the city's golden-realm Awakeners had somehow managed to draw the Hydra's attention away from the city itself. A half-dozen of them hovered in the air, engaging the beast. To call it a fight would have been generous—it was more a desperate attempt at distraction. The Hydra swatted at them as though they were insects, its massive heads weaving lazily, annoyed but unthreatened.