The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 516

Chapter 516: Ever His Humble Servant

CAERA DENOIR

Sh*t!

The ground erupted at my side, lifting me into the air and sending me spinning. My crest flared, and wind pushed at my shoulders and heels, righting me before I touched down lightly onto the churned soil of the battlefield.

Mana ignited in my Dicathian regalia, and illusory smoke and flames wrapped around me, disguising my physical form before jumping from my body and springing up into a handful of dim copies of myself.

An instant later, a black jet of void wind and soulfire seared the ground only a few feet to my right, passing through one of my duplicates. I didn’t even have time to look around and get my bearings before throwing myself aside as several more black beams decimated the ground all around me.

Aiming wildly, I fired back with all seven currently active orbitals, each of which emanated a similar black beam. I sensed, rather than saw, the soulfire glance off a powerful mana signature. Wraiths, I thought as I scrambled across the ground, my duplicates shifting around me, melting and then reappearing in different places to further disguise my location.

My counterattack had barely faded before I pulled the orbitals back into a defensive structure instead. The seven silver shards, zipping like little birds around me, connected with each other, their stored mana fusing into a barrier. A heartbeat later, another ray hit, this time directly into my shielding.

The barrier broke, and I sucked in a breath as mana was dragged out of me to replenish the orbitals. Desperate, I looked around for a safe place to take cover, knowing I couldn’t take another such strike. If not for the increased strength and power I’d gained since meeting Grey—or Arthur—I’d already be dead, I knew.

The battlefield was chaos. Smoke and dusk occluded everything, and the constant flashing of spellfire only served to further blind me. The original loyalist army had taken heavy losses in the first exchange, but I could hear shouted orders and sense their battle groups reforming as our own forces were trapped between them and the beasts flowing out of the two Relictombs portals.

The appearance of an entire battle group of Wraiths just as Arthur disappeared into Taegrin Caelum was the death knell of our ability to remain organized.

Before I could find a place to take cover, two loyalist Strikers caught sight of me through the gloom. I was trapped between them and the Wraith at my back, who I hadn’t even gotten a good look at. Another heartbeat passed, and I felt a swelling of mana behind me: the Wraith preparing for another volley.

A bright yellow-orange flash lit the murk, temporarily blinding me. A bright intent collided with the dark signature of the Wraith, and a gust of wind blasted away all the smoke and dust for several hundred feet in every direction. Chul!

The two Strikers had taken half a step forward before flinching back as the impact rolled over us all. I didn’t hesitate, wind pushing my feet as I sprang forward, clearing the fifteen yards with a single bound and bringing my blade around in two quick cuts. The first Striker barely got a stone-covered arm up to deflect, but my sword skated off it and caught him in the temple. Fear caused the second Striker’s mana to waver, and the flames around his sword dimmed just as my own collided with it. His cheap steel snapped at the hilt, and the red blade of my weapon buried itself in his ribs.

Before their bodies had even hit the ground, I leapt atop a boulder, which sat in the crushed remains of a large tent. From there, I was finally able to get a look around the battlefield.

Chul clashed with three Wraiths fifty feet above the battlefield.

One, a four-horned man with glowing red eyes, gripped the haft of Chul’s weapon in one hand while clawing at Chul’s throat with the other. Black flames crackled against bright orange phoenix fire, sending out whistling flares that crashed into the battlefield below them. Wherever they fell, men screamed and died.

The second Wraith, a woman wrapped so deeply in shadow that I could not make out her features, sent out tendrils to wrap around Chul’s wrists and ankles, preventing him from breaking the hold of the first.

A huge man with horns that curled down his jaw fired sparkling bullets like black diamonds that burst with acid on impact, each one finding its mark against Chul even as the other Wraiths wrestled with the half- phoenix.

On the ground, Wolfrum’s forces were struggling to reform their lines. After the Strikers broke, the Shields and Casters had been pushed back until they could go no farther due to the barrier around Taegrin Caelum. With that gone, they were falling back and regrouping, while the Strikers flowed in from around the mountain pass. Their number had already been cut in half at least.

Our own soldiers had also been forced into a defensive position, however, huddling beneath the protection of their Shields and a roving cloud of void magic controlled by Seris, who I couldn’t see through the chaos.

Up on the ridges, monsters still poured out of the Relictombs portals. Four of Arthur’s exoforms stood on each plateau, slaughtering the creatures as they appeared. I thought I had seen one pierced through by a massive blood iron spike, and I did not know where the last exoform had gone.

I took all this in with a sweeping glance, my mind racing.

Chul is the strongest combatant on the field, which is why they’re piling on him. If they take him out, there will be little the rest of us can do against them. Seris’s ability to scour away the connection between a mage and their mana is powerful, but when they’re grouped up like this, the Wraiths are stronger.

I sensed the building up of mana an instant before a spell struck me: a bullet of ice, which shattered against the mana cladding my skin but still knocked me off the rock on which I’d been perched. My orbitals all swung in the direction the spell had come from, and I locked eyes with a Caster, hidden behind a crystalline shield of mana and flanked by two Strikers. Their Shield brought up the rear, twenty feet behind them.

Gritting my teeth, I pushed mana into the orbitals. Soulfire lanced from the seven silver spikes, and the crystalline shield grew to protect the entire battle group. The crystal shattered on impact, the sound echoing like a punctuation mark throughout the valley, and soulfire gouged into all four mages almost simultaneously. The Shield had only enough time for her eyes to widen a fraction of an inch before the beam scorched her chest cavity. It took less energy to push soulfire into their flesh and let them burn from the inside, but such a death was slow and needlessly cruel.

There was a rush of air and fire; my ears popped, and the collision of mana signatures took my breath away.

I fell flat on the ground as a shadow passed over me, and the four-horned Wraith crashed through several lines of nearby tents. I jumped back to my feet and sprinted toward where the Wraith had fallen.

In the distance, a single figure was flitting around the edges of the Alacryan forces, bombarding them with spells.

Suppressing my signature as best I could in the heat of combat, I kept my focus locked on the end of the long trough left by the Wraith’s fall, watching for any hint of movement or flare of power. I could tell from the continuing mana signature that the Wraith was not dead, but his aura was weakened.

Soulfire ignited around the red blade of my sword, and I drew back for the strike just as I reached the lip of the crater—and my pulse skipped as I found it empty.

Something took hold of my hair from behind, and I felt my head begin to jerk backwards. Reacting in the only way I could think of, my weapon, already poised to strike, twisted in my hands to adjust the angle of the blade, then chopped down through my long hair, shearing it cleanly off.

I stumbled forward at the sudden release of tension and threw myself into a diving roll that brought me back up facing my opponent.

The four-horned Wraith stared down at the handful of my dark blue hair, his nose wrinkling as if in disgust. “How barbaric,” he grumbled, tossing my hair to the ground at his feet. Then, his eyes shifted to mine. “Tell me, mage, what is your blood name? For your act of cowardice, I would quite like to hunt down your lineage and exterminate them one by one.”

I swallowed heavily, unable to break eye contact with the Wraith. My orbitals hovered between states as my thoughts faltered. I could not fight this creature one on one. My Dicathian regalia was flush with mana, but I withheld the effects of the spell. Even with my illusions, turning and running was likely to result in an even quicker death than attempting to fight.

The Wraith scoffed. “Scared silent? No matter. You’re Vritra-born; someone will be able to identify your head after I rip it from your neck.” He took a casual step toward me.

Smoke and fire poured out of me, hiding my body and forming into a dozen identical copies.

The Wraith hesitated, his eyes sweeping across the collection of indistinct forms before locking directly on my own. A wry smile twisted his features cruelly. “Pathetic. You really don’t—”

A volley of spells struck the Wraith, but he didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. Two battle groups of mages were rushing toward us, split off from the main force. The Wraith raised one hand, and a black fan of soulfire and void wind emanated out from him. Conjured shields shattered like glass as the fan bisected all nine mages in an instant. As the magic retracted, their bodies splattered across the ground, each one cut cleanly in two.

I pushed even more mana into my regalia, focusing on losing myself in the midst of the copies. My orbitals spread out, haloing randomly within the cluster and launching beams of soulfire at the Wraith as I prepared to dodge his counter attack.

A black shape, rippling with reflected gold from the wound above, flew over my head and slammed bodily into the Wraith. The immediate collision triggered another shockwave, sending me skidding backwards fifteen feet and momentarily disrupting my orbitals, which flew off in every direction.

A squat figure wrapped in what looked like black diamonds pummeled the Wraith with an oversized hammer. The ground around him was cracking as he sank into it with each blow, warped gravity visible twisting the air as the dust and smoke was pulled from it.

Recognizing the form as Lance Mica Earthborn, I tossed a glance back to where the primary loyalist force had only moments ago been warding off her attacks. She had left them in disarray, but no less than ten battle groups had broken away and were closing in on our location.

Taking a fortifying breath, I steadied the flow of mana through my regalia. The scattered, smoke-and-fire copies surrounded the Wraith, some darting in to feign attacks, others continuously moving. In a moment of inspiration, I extended the smokey camouflage to Mica, and half of my copies flickered into a new shape, taking her form.

My orbitals flashed back into place around me, and seven beams of black flame bore down on Wraith, but they seemed to glance off harmlessly as he dodged back from Mica’s blows, his counterattacks piercing smokey illusions but missing the real Lance.

“He’s a Caster!” I shouted to her as I watched him fight. Wraiths, like all Alacryans except the Scythes, were primarily trained to fight in battle groups. Without Strikers to keep us off him or a Shield to defend him, he was vulnerable. “Keep him pinned down!”

His eyes flicked in my direction, and he tossed a ray of mana back at me, but it speared through one of my copies. Mica’s hammer collided with his outstretched arm, slamming it down—but the other snapped toward

her, gripping her by the throat. Flames licked between his fingers against the indistinct black diamond armor. There was a horrible crack as the armor began to break.

My orbitals bombarded him with strikes, but they did no lasting damage. He was just too powerful. With each heartbeat, more and more of Mica’s armor broke and fell away. She clawed at the Wraith’s arm with one hand and punched her hammer into the side of his head ineffectually with the other.

The seven controlled orbitals came together in front of me, their power building as I prepared a single focused strike at his arm.

But the shadows shifted, and a second Wraith appeared, cutting me off from Mica and the four-horned Caster. I released the strike, jumping backwards and adjusting my target, but shadows swallowed the soulfire. A white slash appeared in the face where the mouth might have been, and then dozens of inky tendrils lashed out in every direction.

I threw myself back, recalling my orbitals into their defensive formation, but I was too slow. The tendrils struck with whip-crack speed, cutting through each of my regalia’s conjurations and lashing across my chest, slamming me to the ground.

My vision swam. Dark motes of black and purple seemed to swallow the light, and I thought I must have hit my head. Just as quickly, my vision cleared and I rolled onto my side.

The shadowy Wraith had turned her back on me and thrown up a swirling shield, but a cloud of void magic ate right through it and then pushed into the four-horned Wraith. His mana signature flickered.

Pushing myself onto my knees, I felt for the tethers to my relic bracer’s orbitals. They had been tossed away again when I was struck, but they zipped back into position around me. I took a firm mental grip over those tethers and fed as much mana as I could into them, until each silver spike unleashed a dense, continuous beam of soulfire at the Shield Wraith’s back.

She twisted with impossible speed, a second whirling shadow shield appearing between me and her. Two beams slipped through, striking her in the hip and stomach, but the rest impacted harmless against the barrier.

Behind her, beyond the four-horned Wraith and Mica, Seris strode toward us, a look of intense concentration on her face as she fought for control over her void spell.

As Seris’s spell ate into the man’s magic, Mica—no longer covered by my smoke and flame illusions—slammed her hammer across the back of his wrist, breaking his hold over her. Her armor was broken in a dozen places, and I could feel the Wraith’s soulfire inside of her, already burning her life force.