“Begone!” the Soul Devourer snarled. With a lazy flick of one skeletal wrist, an obsidian soul spear congealed, dense as reality, honed to pierce creation itself. It shrieked across the void, aimed dead at Coall’s skull.
The dragon whipped his serpentine body aside. Even so, the spear grazed his neck, shaving off a sheet of gun-metal scales. A gash to the bone yawned open, and black vapor rose to gnaw at the spirit beneath.
“Coall!” Jared cried, the name tearing from his throat. Pain lanced through Jared, mind and sinew aflame, yet he forced himself into the air, wings of raw energy sputtering behind him. He understood one truth with brutal clarity: they could not survive a war of attrition.
The Draconian army was mighty, yes, but the Soul Devourer had lived through forgotten epochs and now fought in a citadel soaked with his own power. Here, his soul energy seemed endless, his tricks limitless. If the battle dragged on, only the Draconians would die.
Jared had to break the rhythm, now.
“Beast-Subduing Tower, seal him!” he shouted.
Ignoring the taste of blood, Jared flooded the tiny tower in his palm with torrents of chaotic Power of Immortals.
The tower spun, ballooning until it loomed over him. From its base poured cleansing light and a brutal suction meant to smother Soul Devourer’s power and grant the dragon a single desperate breath.
“Annoying trinket! Shatter!” Soul Devourer hissed. He split a sliver of will, raised the soul banners, and sent a column of compressed wailing spirits, thick as a fortress tower, slamming into the tower.
Bang!
The impact rang like a cathedral bell struck by lightning. Light guttered, hairline cracks crawled across bronze flanks now dim and trembling.
Agony ricocheted through Jared’s link to the artifact. He spat blood, and the sky lurched as his body nearly dropped from the air.
“Mr. Chance!” Cyanna screamed. Her formation faltered, runes flickering like candles in a sudden gale.
That single, stuttering heartbeat was all the Soul Devourer needed, and he saw it.
“Now! Netherworld Soul-Devouring Curse!” he roared.
Nine shadow-drakes, each forged from bottomless resentment, abandoned their clash with the golden energy dragons and whipped toward Jared in a black, spiraling tide.
The wraith drake nearest the Golden Dragon’s burning talons convulsed midflight.
A heartbeat later, two more followed, banking hard and letting the dragon’s fire claw rents the size of canyons across their scale-less hides.
Bleeding shadows instead of blood, the trio hurled themselves toward the spell-core, the glittering eye of the formation where Cyanna and the other Draconian champions hovered in tight, disciplined ranks.
High above them, Soul Devourer spread his spectral arms. Lines of black light folded between his fingers, knotting into a sigil so malicious it seemed to eat the color out of the sky.
An inaudible ripple—cold, invisible, and all-pervading—rolled outward like rings through dark water, saturating the suicide-diving drakes and the formation’s heart with a curse older than language.
“Fall back, reform the array, now!” Cyanna’s voice cracked as she felt that venomous ripple brush the very root of her soul.
Her emerald aura stuttered. Even her dragon-queen composure faltered as she tried to redirect the ranks.
But it was too late!
“Shatter!” Soul Devourer breathed the single word, colder than the void itself.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three wraith drakes detonated beside the array’s core, flowering into black suns whose expanding coronas were equal parts raw energy and curse-forged soulfire.
Blood—thick, incandescent, unmistakably draconic—erupted from Cyanna’s lips and from a dozen lesser warriors nearby.
The moment it cleared their throats, the curse consumed the vital essence inside, turning crimson to ash. Her once-regal dragon aura shredded like leaves in a gale.
Face bleached bone-white, Cyanna spiraled toward the ground, her life-force guttering. Above her, the majestic Golden Dragon avatar gave a mourning roar. Light bled from its scales, then the entire gargantuan shape went translucent, scattered, and died in a silent shower of golden sparks.
Hundreds of Draconian soldiers holding the spell-matrix screamed as backlash ripped through their channels. Scales cracked, horns snapped, and they tumbled from the sky like broken meteors.
“Cyanna!” Jared howled, lurching forward, desperate to catch her, but his own wounds dragged at him, slowing his reach by a fatal fraction.
Pain lanced through his ribs; the world lurched out of focus, forcing him to one knee while she fell.
“Pathetic…” Soul Devourer cackled, the sound a rusted hinge on a crypt door. Even dimmed by the outburst, his presence blotted out the sky.
His gaze swept the ruined Draconian lines, then fastened on Jared, who was struggling merely to breathe.
“Your turn, whelp! Watch every last shield you hide behind die screaming, and know I am the hand that ends them!”
The ten thousand soul banners whipped overhead, releasing a starving storm of vengeful spirits that dove for the wounded Draconians on the ground.
Soul Devourer himself blurred into a twisting shadow, murder pouring from every contour as he streaked straight for Jared. He meant to crush the young man’s soul with his own hands and savor the shatter.
