A burst of purple-black fire erupted from one of the Hydra’s outer heads, engulfing a warrior clad in shining gold armor. I couldn’t see his fate through the thick flames, but I felt his core sputtering like a candle in the wind. His agonized shrieks confirmed what I already suspected—he would soon die.
His body plummeted through the bottom of the spewed inferno, limp and lifeless, buffeted by air currents. The golden armor had melted in the heat, fusing to his skin as the cold air solidified it during his descent. It was a grotesque sight, a terrible reminder of the Hydra’s overwhelming power over the people of this city.
Even I winced at the sickening thud as the golden soldier hit the ground, his bones snapping in unnatural directions upon impact.
The Hydra unleashed an earth-shaking roar of triumph, its massive black-scaled wings beating with slow, deliberate power to keep it aloft. Four of its heads exhaled plumes of purple fire into the air. At first, I thought it was a display of dominance, but then the flames arced downward and began to pelt the city like acid rain.
Wherever the acid fire landed, it erupted into human-sized bonfires of purple-black flames, devouring everything in its path and spreading like a living entity searching for its next victim. For its next meal.
“By Ashwash’s beard,” I muttered, struggling to comprehend the scene before me. The Hydra must have been far closer to the diamond realm than I’d anticipated to use a type of living flame. “Fuck.”
I had hoped that the city’s gold-core warriors would at least minimize the damage to a quarter of Elyndor. But this? This was total devastation. At the pace the fight was progressing, the entire city would soon be up in flames. Even when I’d unleashed monsters in Sealrite, the destruction hadn’t been this catastrophic—and Sealrite was far smaller than Elyndor.
I needed to act.
However, before I or anyone else could react to the raining flames setting the city ablaze, a second roar echoed through the air. This one was less primal but brimming with the same fury as the Hydra’s.
A torrent of harsh red fire exploded from the distance, slamming into the Hydra’s side with unparalleled might. The impact sent the creature plummeting from the sky, its wings unable to sustain both its weight and the blow. It crashed into the city, crushing buildings and people beneath its massive form. For a split second, the warriors and mages battling the Hydra froze in shock, but they quickly regained their composure and adapted, surging forward with renewed hope now that the beast was grounded.
Even those who had been unable to engage the Hydra in flight now swarmed it. Silver-core warriors leapt into the air, targeting its necks, while first and second-realm mages bombarded it with spells now that it was within range.
Vespera soared above the city, a tenth the size of the Hydra but radiating ten times its majesty. In the weeks since I’d last seen her, she had grown significantly in power. I could feel the pulsating energy of her golden dragon core, defiant and furious. Her black scales mirrored the Hydra’s, but where its scales absorbed light, hers reflected it, giving her an almost divine gleam.
I leapt into the air as she swooped down toward me. She paused briefly, ensuring I landed securely on her back before accelerating again. I was momentarily surprised to find that someone had replaced her old wyvern saddle with a larger, more comfortable one.
“Who added this?” I asked Vespera.
“The Draconian,” she replied, unleashing another blast of crimson fire at the Hydra. Her flames forced a group of silver-core soldiers to scatter as they collided with the Hydra’s scales.
The creature howled, more out of frustration than pain, as it struggled to rise against the force of Vespera's flames.
“Your fire isn’t hurting it,” I observed.
Vespera snorted, small plumes of black smoke escaping her nostrils. “I’m just warming up.”
I wanted to ask how she’d learned to speak the common tongue, but I pushed the question aside for later.
Without needing instruction, Vespera dove toward the Hydra. She tucked her wings tightly against her body, rocketing us downward as I gathered soul-weaver energy into a massive blast. She pulled up just fifty feet from the Hydra, and together we unleashed a torrent of energy. The combined forces spiraled into each other, slamming into the side of the Hydra’s head with a deafening boom.
Yells from behind us momentarily drew my attention and I turned to see an enormous silver sphere hovering above a group of cloaked mages. The heat radiating from the sphere distorted the air around it as it slowly advanced on the Hydra.
“Keep it grounded!” shouted a raven-haired woman with rounded features and bright, innocent blue eyes that belied the power of her two-ringed gold core. Her voice was amplified, rising above the sounds of war like the voice of a god. “Stand strong, soldiers! We will be victorious. Think of your families, your loved ones, and fight!”
That must be Dame Annalise, I figured.
Like the other gold-core warriors, Dame Annalise didn’t need a mount to fly. Energy shimmered behind her like a halo, granting her the ability to soar. The halo was stationary against her back, intangible but glowing with a sense of divinity that was hard to comprehend.
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I’d never seen that particular method of flight before, but most gifted Awakeners who reached the gold realm at a young age discovered their own unique method of flight, so it wasn't surprising.
The Duke of the North burst from the rubble of a fallen building, his enormous mana core thrumming with power. Blue mana coalesced around him, forming a blizzard that launched shards of mana-filled icicles the size of houses at the creature. Duke Granger shouted in defiance and rage, but the Hydra barely paid him attention as its tail struck him and sent him crashing into another building before the Duke's next wave of attacks could even take form. The man's blizzard aura fizzled to nothing and he went still. I allowed my senses to wash over him only briefly to make sure he was still alive. There wasn't time to do anything more for him.
The Hydra roared, and a burst of energy erupted from its core, repelling all its other attackers in a single, powerful pulse. The monster scrambled to its feet, its wings beating as it prepared to take flight and escape the silver sphere’s trajectory.
But Vespera and I were already in motion, circling behind it. “NOW!” I shouted.
Our energies merged once more, spiraling downward and slamming into the Hydra’s lower back. It yelped and stumbled, momentarily losing its balance. One of its heads twisted around to glare at me, its golden eyes widening in recognition.
Its maw opened as if to speak, but it quickly turned away, letting out a pitched shriek as the silver sphere accelerated and collided with it. The resulting explosion sent shockwaves rippling in every direction.
Even Vespera was knocked from the sky, sending us both crashing into one of the few remaining buildings. Dust, debris, and fire filled my spinning vision as the concussive force of the explosion overwhelmed my senses and we tumbled through a stone wall. I shut my eyes against the unbearable pressure and heat. Our momentum finally halted against a pile of stone, my ankle cracking painfully as I was thrown from Vespera’s saddle.
I ignored the pain and hunkered down against a slab of stone. It absorbed most of the remaining ripples from the mana bomb, breaking apart during the final wave of destruction that left the city in complete silence.
“Vespera?”
For a moment, there was no response, and a sense of worry gripped me.
“I’m here, Lilith,” the dragon finally answered. I cracked open my eyes and shook a half dozen layers of dirt and debris off me. A pile of stones shifted to my left before sliding off black scales to reveal a rather grumpy-looking dragon. “What was that?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted, retrieving Dralos’ toxic mana sphere from my storage ring. “But I suspect it was a larger version of this—minus the poison.” I didn’t bother speaking aloud; the dust was so thick that even breathing through my nose was difficult and my throat was raw to the point of being painful.
“Is it over?”
“No,” I answered. “It’s just beginning.”
As if to emphasize my words, the Hydra’s triumphant roar shattered the silence of Elyndor.
Human shouts echoed the monster’s challenge, and the sounds of battle quickly resumed. I turned to Vespera with a frown, my senses reaching out toward the Hydra. The creature was barely weakened, but at the very least it seemed to have taken some damage. “That explosion had enough power to obliterate every gold core in this city, including us. How is it still standing?” Even if it was a platinum core, I'd felt the power of the silver sphere and I'd known many platinum cores who would have been severely damaged by it back on Ordite.
“Its scales,” Vespera said with a sniff, causing her to sneeze and momentarily clear the dust cloud around us. “Hydra scales are highly resistant to magic. Even DragonFyre would only scorch it.”
I glanced over at her questioningly. “DragonFyre? What’s that?”
Vespera paused, her scaled face twisting into an expression of confusion. “I… I’m not sure. How did I know that?”
“We’ll figure it out later,” I said, grabbing hold of the saddle and pulling myself back atop her back. "Let's go."
Vespera grunted and spread her wings, destroying what little remained of the building. Despite the damage we'd both taken from the mana bomb's explosion, we were far from being out of the fight. My cuts and broken ankle were already on the mend, heart energy swarming to heal them with haste whereas Vespera's scales had taken the most of her damage with barely a scratch. With three powerful flaps, Vespera soared upward, breaking through the building's weakened roof and leaving the dust cloud behind.
From our new vantage point, I looked down and my eyes widened. The entire west side of the city was blanketed in dust, only parting under the force of energy and mana attacks. Even the Hydra’s fire only temporarily cleared the cloud before it closed in again.
“That’s not normal dust,” I muttered.
Vespera nodded. “It’s imbued with mana.”
"We need to get the creature to start chasing us. You remember the plan?" I asked.
Vespera nodded.
I briefly wondered if the city guards had intentionally created the dust and whether I could use it to bait the Hydra toward the city gates, but my thoughts were interrupted as one of the Hydra’s heads turned toward me.
In a guttural, inhuman voice, it spoke. “Therrree you arreee. Pawwwwn of thheee sssecond Sysssstem.”
The Hydra shrugged off an attack from Duke Goldenhearts and began to beat its wings. Once, twice… and on the third beat, it launched itself into the air. Each powerful flap sent gales of wind scattering the mana-filled dust and knocking lower-tier fighters aside.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted, my heart racing. Vespera turned and sped away from the Hydra. She didn’t speak, but I could feel her anxiety mirroring my own. I shot a glance over my shoulder to see the Hydra's enormous wing span covering far more ground than Vespera could. "Faster Vespera, it's catching up!"
Although I had suspected the creature was aiming for me, I hadn't expected it to completely abandon everything else the moment it saw me. It was still a lot stronger than I'd wanted it to be when I initiated the second stage of my plan, but there was no helping it.
I summoned the House Alistar coin from my pocket and sent a surge of energy through it. I didn’t have time to parse the connections or ensure that only the soldiers I’d converted in Sealrite received the message. So far, only the Alistar knights and soldiers who had accompanied Duke Alistar to Sealrite seemed linked to the House Coin. But with my proximity to the Elyndor-based knights, I had no way of knowing if the coin’s reach had expanded to include them as well or how that all worked. I didn't have time to dwell on it. If all House Alistar soldiers heard my call, so be it. Maybe it would light a fire under them.
“I’ll distract the creature as long as I can. Regroup quickly. And by Ashwash’s sack, where the fuck is my sword?”
Is there any interest in having a Soul Weaver discord for faster updates and to ask questions and stuff?
