LOCATION: THE CRUCIBLE, 100TH FLOOR
PLANET: LAPIS DIVINUS, ORION LUMINARY INSTITUTE
YEAR: ? | DAY: ?? | TIME: ??
The abomination continued pushing past the long wooden benches, shoving them to the side as it single-mindedly chased after Rowan and the Scouts. It slammed into a column, and the three-story tall marble pillar crumbled under the monster’s weight.
Shards of stone fell, crushing one of the Scouts’ feet and trapping him in place.
Rowan extended a hand to help pull him out, and the creature used the opening to smash its fists down onto Rowan’s back.
He fell to the ground and his head cracked against a slab of stone, and the world went dark.
The second Scout began pelting the monster with arrows, desperately trying to pull its attention away from executing the killing blow.
As it was about to reach down for Rowan, an arrow flew directly into the King’s eye. The monster stopped and turned, pulling the arrow out and tossing it to the ground.
The Scout landed another shot in the second eye, hoping it might blind the abomination. The King’s mouth opened and shrieked again, the bone-chilling sound freezing the Scout in place for a moment.
But the arrows had worked, and the monster lumbered around aimlessly.
Atop the dais, Kaela was dealing with her own problems. She had extricated herself from Carmina’s blood control, but that didn’t mean she was in the clear.
“Tell me!” Carmina yelled. The power behind her voice caused the blood on the floor to vibrate. “How did you break my spell?!”
Three spears shot at Kaela so fast that she was unable to use Phantom Step to evade them. One pierced the right side of her stomach, rupturing at least two internal organs, one stabbed into her shoulder and the third into her back, puncturing her right lung.
Kaela fell over. Pain coursed through her body, causing the edges of her vision to blur. She could barely breathe.
Carmina raised the scepter again, but the spell was broken, and with it, her hold on Kaela.
She screamed in fury and started chanting again, raising her arms high into the air.
“I call on the blood! Come to me! Enrich and empower me!”
Kaela struggled to stand, but her health was dangerously low now, and she knew she’d be unable to take much more.
She slipped in the blood and fell to her side.
Get up!
You’re stronger than all of this!
She shouted it inside her mind over and over.
Bump bump…
She felt her pulse quickening again, urged on by her mind’s decree.
Carmina was standing still just twenty feet away. Kaela raised herself up on her elbow, then she got a knee underneath her.
She coughed up blood, and more was spilling out of the three open wounds she had just taken. It pooled on the floor, joining the tide that was—
Kaela looked around.
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Blood was flowing across the floor from all over the audience hall. The more that Carmina chanted, the faster the torrent surged.
Kaela tried to stand, and had to crouch in order to keep her balance as the river of blood rushed past her.
Hands reached out to grab her feet again, but before they could get purchase, even they were pulled along in the current.
All of it was moving toward Carmina herself.
Kaela watched for just a moment as she tried to understand what she was seeing.
“Empower me! Strengthen me! Nourish me!”
Carmina continued droning on.
The blood from the floor climbed Carmina’s clothes and skin, covering her completely in crimson. Her hair dripped with it. The whites of her eyes flushed with red. Her mouth was full of blood, and it bubbled as she kept chanting, showing red teeth.
Kaela had a plan, but she had to time it just right.
She crouched low, using all of her remaining strength to stay balanced and not get swept away with the bloody torrent.
“Come to me! Feed me!”
Carmina’s body began bloating. Veins pushed to her skin, then one in her arm burst and began spewing blood. But even as that blood exited her arm, her body pulled it back and absorbed it again.
Carmina’s eyes fell on Kaela and she smiled.
Two more lightning-fast spears shot from the pool. Kaela took another blow to her shoulder before she stepped into the aether to avoid the other.
The spear disintegrated before she could grab onto it, and as she phased back to the throne room, it just slowly entered Carmina’s chest as she took it all in.
She appeared ready to burst now, and Kaela knew her window was closing.
She activated Phantom Step and rushed to stand right in front of the bloated monster who had been responsible for all of this destruction.
An image of her maid on the first day rushed to Kaela’s mind. The Queen waving solemnly as she entered the carriage alone. The King and the Prince with the smug look on their faces as they told her she would be traded away, nothing but a pawn to end a war.
Kaela had no love for these people.
But no one deserved this fate.
As Kaela moved through the aether, Carmina’s eyes opened and looked straight at her, somehow able to pierce the veil between planes.
Kaela smiled back, reached out from the aether, and grabbed onto Carmina’s head. Kaela pulled hard, feeling the familiar cold of the gray realm hold firm around her feet, then her legs. Then her torso.
The blood in the room was only ten feet in diameter now, quickly rushing into the mage commanding it all.
Time was nearly up, and Carmina held firm to the floor, her feet held in place by blood hands.
Kaela yanked with all she had.
But it wasn’t enough.
She pulled and pulled.
“A little… help… here…” she grunted through clenched teeth.
In a split second, hundreds of banshees charged at incredible speed to Kaela’s side. They joined in the effort, spectral hands wrapping around Carmina’s head and arms.
The blood pool was only inches from fully entering her, and at the last moment, Kaela and her ghostly allies succeeded.
The gray enveloped Carmina, and the bloated former noble woman fell to the ground.
“What have you done?” she asked.
As always in this realm, her voice sounded like it was being shouted under water.
Kaela didn’t answer. She took a dozen paces backward and watched as the banshees consumed the greatest feast of vital energy they had ever seen.
Completely exhausted, she phased back to the throne room.
The abomination had simply fallen apart without its puppet master, bones clattering to the floor and pink meat falling with a wet squelch. Rowan and the Scouts were brushing rubble from their armor.
Incredibly, Carmina’s final spell had completely cleared most of the blood that had been everywhere in the hall.
Where Carmina had stood on the dais, a single drop of blood remained.
Kaela collapsed onto the nearest chair and fell forward, elbows on her knees, and rested her head in her hands.
She was still breathing heavily from the entire ordeal, and finally her health, which had reached as low as 26, began ticking back up again as her out-of-combat regeneration kicked back in.
She leaned back in the chair, resting her head on the surprisingly soft material, and closed her eyes. Kaela fell into a deep sleep in that position.
She woke when she felt something cold touch against the palm of her right hand. Her fingers instinctively closed around it, and she opened her eyes.
Rowan knelt in front of her. He was on one knee and his head was bowed. Behind him, lined up in two neat rows were the eighteen members of the royal guard who had survived the battle, and eight of the nine Scouts from Seraph’s Hold.
They were all down on one knee with their heads bowed.
Rowan stood, placed a fist over his heart, and spoke loudly.
His voice echoed throughout the throne room.
“All hail Kaela Seraphen, Queen of Caerwyn!”
The others joined in as they stood and repeated Rowan’s gesture with their fists on their chests.
“Hail! Hail!”
Kaela looked down. Her fingers had closed around the scepter that Rowan had placed there after he had assembled the guards and Scouts who had survived.
And the chair she had fallen back onto was the Throne of Caerwyn itself.