None of the resurrected ever returned as themselves.

  My gut twisted violently and I wanted to vomit. My heart thundered against my ribs, defying its containment and threatening to break free.

  I wanted to follow Nida. To chase after Nasq. He had to be okay. He had to be. Benedict had survived using Runic once. Nasq could too, right?

  Images of his crumbling body flashed in my mind.

  Something inside me snapped.

  I screamed with a level of pure rage I had not felt in a very, very long time.

  Nasq was dead.

  Dead because of me.

  Because I had hesitated to command Benedict's death. I'd sacrificed a Greater for a Lesser again.

  “Wanting to protect something will always cost something greater,” my father once said. “If you wish to protect without losing, you do so by taking everything from others.”

  The portal shuddered and a horde of Dash’Ora poured through, their continuous chittering bug noises flooding the night. They were slightly larger than those from Sealrite, though their scales were just as red—just as hard. Each of their sides dangled four feet, their bodies split in three— head, body, and rear. Attached to their body were each a pair of transparent wings, fluttering so fast it was nearly impossible to even spot the wings if I hadn't already known about them.

  But I didn’t care.

  Fuck them.

  I clutched my hair, pulling at the sticky and disheveled strands with maddening insanity.

  No, no, no! He can't be dead. We're just getting started.

  I turned my crimson stained eyes on the Hydra and my scream of agony became instead a roar of unrestrained rage.

  The Dash’Ora followed as I charged, their chittering and bulbous forms surging in my wake. I pulled in mana—every single fucking kind of it—forcing it past the limits and attribute requirements of my lower dantian.

  Fire, water, air, lightning, Lunar. Everything.

  With it, I unleashed a storm of raw destruction. The Hydra's stream of black and purple flames split, blown apart of the force of my surging mana. The collision created enough space and diversion that groups of Dash'Ora managed to reach the Hydra, clinging to its scales like horse flies.

  The massive creature bellowed in protest even as the Dash’Ora clung to it, their ichor seeping in and poisoning its core. It didn’t understand. It wasn't from Ordite.

  It didn’t—couldn't—know the cold, creeping death infecting it from within.

  The ichor worked slowly, insidiously, seeping into the Hydra’s body like a creeping frost. It would slither through its veins, coiling tighter with every pulse, inching toward its heart with quiet inevitability.

  I didn’t want a swift kill—I wanted it to suffer. To feel its own strength erode. To have its dominance unravel.

  I needed to keep it thrashing, distracted, blind to the poison eating it from within. If it realized what was happening and found a way to resist, it would all be for nothing. Nasq's death would be for nothing.

  I could already see the signs of weakness stemming from its outer body. The once-impenetrable scales were beginning to dull, their luster fading as its body betrayed it. The more the Dash’Ora swarmed its, the more sluggish its movements became. Its power was swiftly bleeding away, faster than I'd expected.

  When its defenses seemed to completely fall aside, I threw myself at the Hydra with all the sense of a mad berserker.

  The Hydra lunged, its many heads jerking forward in a handful of different direction, spewing many torrents of its black fire. I didn’t know if the attack was meant for me or the passing Dash’Ora, but it didn’t really matter. I dipped beneath the flames and weaved through the chaos, shooting between the Hydra’s massive legs.

  I punched Deathbringer up into the beast’s underbelly and screamed as I drove it further and further into the Hydra until I was completely inside it. The soft of its belly gave way, the rotting scales providing little to no resistance. Flesh parted around me in a violent embrace as I hacked and tore with manic desperation. I didn’t care what I was cutting or even where I was cutting—only that it was part of the Hydra. Everything around me needed to be carved, cut, sliced, broken, and utterly destroyed. Slowly and painfully.

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  Organs ruptured. Muscles shredded. Blood and unknown fluids poured over me in a sickening deluge as I sliced through a wide, pulsing organ.

  The Hydra roared in defiance, but it was growing weaker. I could feel it. Its core sputtered, choking on the Dash’Ora’s poison. Even if it realized what was happening, it was too late. I would rip it apart from the inside out and there was nothing it could do to stop me anymore.

  Cut.

  Slice.

  Stab.

  Curse.

  I followed the violently wild sequence, rampaging through the beast’s innards. My blade carved through hardened sinew, past an acidic stomach still dissolving Lysorian warriors, and organs that still beat with life. I had no sense of time, only darkness and destruction—until I found it.

  The heart.

  A powerful beating echoed from the pulsing red mass of muscle before me. It encased by a blackening nearly diamond-colored sphere that shimmered even in the darkness, untouched by the Hydra's blood and ichor. It pulsed again, comfortable within its case of brittle and blackening ribs.

  Finally, the source of the Hydra's energy and its very existence was in front of my eyes. Vulnerable and weak.

  Each step I took forward squelched against something I didn’t care to name or know. I hacked away the weakened bones of the ribcage as I approached, Deathbringer constantly swinging in chaotic arcs. Each movement of Deathbringer slicing and cutting more flesh and muscle from within the Hydra's chest, causing the entire creature to shudder in agony and knowledge of its imminent death.

  At that moment, I wasn’t a queen. I wasn’t even human.

  I was the monster.

  “You shouldn’t have fucking pissed me off,” I snarled at the Hydra's pulsing core.

  Both hands gripped Deathbringer and I raised it high, cutting up through layers of flesh and sinew, then I brought it crashing down.

  Drenched with the Dash'Ora's poison and weakened beyond salvation, the Hydra's core shattered beneath the weight of my blade and rage.

  The creature that had once threatened me, defied me, made me fight for every inch of ground—died with little more than a whimper as I cut through its still beating heart like rotten fruit.

  I gathered lunar energy originating from my core and pushed it outward, expanding from within the Hydra. With a single pulse of that lunar energy, the Hydra’s body exploded.

  Flesh, scales, bones—everything was torn to shreds, blasted in every direction. Moonlight spilled back into vision as gore rained down upon the Dash’Ora, the fighters, and the land below. For a few surreal seconds, it rained monster.

  But I wasn’t finished.

  I pointed at the portal, condensing lunar mana with lunar energy and Soul Weaver energy, forming a potent spear of Shen energy at my fingertip. It crackled like lightning with barely contained power, then surged forward. But it didn't stop at the portal itself— it pierced into crimson depths.

  A heartbeat later, an ear-splitting explosion shook the world. This world. And the world on the other side.

  For a long moment I stood frozen, simply staring at where my energy had vanished.

  In Sealrite, when Benedict had opened the portal, it had clearly been a one-way door. But this—my Shen energy passed through it. It seemed more a rip between the worlds, than a mere one-way portal.

  Seeming to sense that my energy had not simply killed the Dash'Ora at the portal's entrance, but had also struck at whatever lay beyond a ripple of fear passed through the wagon sized Ordite insects. As if possessed by the same collective thought, most of them instinctively fled back through the crimson portal, wings buzzing with frantic haste.

  Some remained however, too caught up in bloodlust to retreat.

  The largest group of the Dash'Ora surrounded King Zer’Nack, Dame Annalise, and the others who had fought with me. Only Ethan still stood against them, his lack of a core making him immune to the corruption that had drained the others.

  Nida still sobbing, fought to protect Nasq with a wild, desperate ferocity. She’d transformed and was circling around Nasq like he was treasure, clawing and biting and tearing apart any Dash’Ora that dared come too close.

  I helped her first.

  My Domain expanded around us, incinerating the Dash’Ora in its jurisdiction. I pushed wind attributed mana through my lower dantian, and summoned a gust of wind to lift Nasq’s broken form into the air so he floated at my side.

  Nida followed in a dead sprint as we headed to the others. She'd remained transformed and charged toward Ethan's side without hesitation when we'd finally approached. Ethan fought like a man possessed, though his focus seemed locked on protecting the Red Cardinal rather than the Lysorian King.

  Like a god descending, I let my Domain expand around them.

  The Dash’Ora dissolved into puffs smoke and ash, erased by the moon's cleansing energy radiating from me just as it worked to remove the ichor from their cores.

  Except for Duke Goldenhearts.

  I left him untouched by the cleansing aura of my Domain.

  "Your Majesty," I said, not bowing. I knew it was disrespectful, but I was not in the mood to deal gently with the weakling king whose false core had nearly killed us all.

  To my surprise, however, the King did not seem to mind. Instead, he inclined his head in a small bow.

  I half-expected Duke Goldenhearts to protest, but when I looked at him, he was too busy inspecting his core, his face twisted with quiet dread. Despite everything, I had to the fight the urge to smile at the man's misfortune.

  “Did you kill it?” the King asked, voice cautious. “I saw, but…”

  I met his gaze and nodded. “It’s dead.”

  Marchioness Eliza eyed me with an unreadable expression. “And you are covered in it.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I was drenched—Hydra blood, black ichor, Dash'Ora remains, ash, pretty much everything I could have found from a battlefield clung to me. Even remnants of human flesh hung from me like a second skin. The weight of it pressed down on me, thick and suffocating. I wanted a bath. A shower. To be anywhere but standing in the aftermath of this slaughter.

  But there was still one thing left to do.

  “You saved us all, my lady," the Marchioness said softly, offering me a small bow as well. It was slightly deeper than the King's, though I couldn't know if that was out of respect for me or her king's honor.

  “No,” I said flatly. “Nasq saved us.” I gestured to the sorcerer's ruined form. “We need a healer. Now. The best one you’ve got.”

  Eliza hesitated, eying the sorcerer’s husk, his skin all but gone with nothing but muscle and blood barely held together by my Domain. She opened her mouth, raising her eyes so that our gazes met. Mine was hard, broken, and looking for something else to hurt. She closed her mouth, opened it again, and then closed it, apparently choosing to keep her thoughts private.

  “Of course,” the Marchioness said with another bow. "Only the best for the Saintess' comrade."