Magma Dragon's Heir

47th of Season of Fire, Year 1197 AL

“Newt!” Magmin roared, snapping Newt out of his trance. He spared a fraction of his attention, forcing it away from eternity and ephemeralness of existence, focusing on the present.

The three outer gods were approaching fast; in a handful of seconds, they would tear into the forces fighting for the survival of the world, and with how much mana they flared with, they would shred them to pieces.

Under normal circumstances, Newt would have had the equivalent of an hour to think of a solution and act, but with nearly all of his attention focused on fighting the connection of the three entities passing through the rift, what he had were indeed seconds.

He had no power to spare, not enough focus, yet he had to do it. Mana rushed out of him, towards the ground and the approaching monstrosities. It was less than ten percent of what Newt could usually invest in a technique like that, but the energy flowed with that of the world, which tripled it.

The usually searing white magma Newt created was more mundane red and orange as it wrapped itself around the outer gods. Blood turned to plasma left Newt’s nostrils as an outer god struggled, a crab-like claw of ice and water snapping at its bindings. Newt sent more mana than he had, vitality leaving his body along with steam wafting from his eyes, nose, and ears.

The crack shrank further, it was only as thick as a single log, still giant, but collapsing faster.

An obsidian claw struck and tore at the magma bindings, and Newt spewed blood, shaking and near collapse.

The world darkened as he invested not just the mana of his realm, but also what his baptisms had stored in his body, ripping it apart.

***

Maelstrom slashed at the imperial minister, the man distracted by the sudden disappearance of the outer god force which had empowered him and hampered her. Maelstrom’s icy sword struck his neck, his head went flying, but instead of dying, the man exploded.

His body split into flesh, blood, bone, and faint miasma, which entered the four nearest cultists. The infusion of power had a brief window where it made them weaker, and mana rushed out of Maelstrom, freezing the ghostsovereign. The shell of ice burst and shattered the inhuman creature into pieces. Shrapnel smashed against the defenses of friend and foe alike, but everyone was too high realm for an attack’s aftermath to affect them.

In the chaos of the battle, she had lost her sense of everything. The flow was impossible to tell, she lost track of time, the sky suddenly blue, whether from the sun or magic, she couldn’t tell.

The only thing she still held to was the sword in her hand and the trust that her allies were doing their job. If not winning, then at least buying time for Newt to win.

Above, human and saurian exalts clashed, a body dropping down every handful of seconds, including colossal carcasses of saurians, which altered the battlefield and threatened to crush the unwary.

She had absolute trust in her comrades, and yet, she looked up to see how Newt was doing. In that split-instant of inattention, a bone spear bit into her chest, digging for the ribs. Before she could react, it shattered her sternum, but Maelstrom severed the bone from the rest of her skeleton, and coated the rest in ice. She formed a protective shield around her organs, but she was too slow.

The spear pierced her heart, and exploded a hole in her back. The cultist moved to consume her bones, but the man she freed by slaying the ghostsovereign rushed over to fight the suddenly free opponent.

Maelstrom was lying on her back, looking at the sky as Newt clenched his fist.

“Pumpkin.” She smiled at her sun as her chest burned.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

***

Lady Alabaster and her family fought desperately, trying to escape the battlefield and the imperials’ attention. Just about everyone had bigger things to worry about than people unwilling to fight, everyone save for cultists.

A seventh realm blood cultist had already fallen to their combination, but a cultist of bone attacked them just as they neared the far edge of the battlefield.

“You run!” she shouted at her husband and children. “I’ll stall him.”

Lord Flameax didn’t run, he stood next to her. “We’ll stall him. Run!”

The children wanted to protest, but they had enough common sense beaten into their thick skulls to obey.

“You too,” she told Flameax. “Run!”

“Not happening.” He charged at the cultist, hardly any mana left in him.

You were always a pushover, why act stubborn now? She grit her teeth and launched herself after him.

Their battle was desperate, their teamwork impeccable. Where others would have fallen, the two still stood, beaten and bloody, but alive. Flameax stood over her, protecting her with his body. His sword flew away as the cultist disarmed him.

“I love you more than life itself,” he said, and blood splashed.

A trihorn-sized boulder had smashed the cultist to pieces. From above, Emeraldstreak, Alabaster’s former student, nodded at them, the eighth realm mageknight rushing off to her next battle.

“I can’t believe it,” Flameax said, “we’re alive.”

“Bite your tongue, you old fart.”

***

Emeraldstreak slew her opponent, and as she rushed towards the next, she noticed her former master’s plight. A single spell erased the unwary cultist, then she clashed with a shriveled woman with long white hair trailing behind her.

The ghost cultist had just started feasting on the soul of her victim when Emeraldstreak interrupted her. Stopping the cultists from draining the dead was everyone’s number one priority. Right after stopping the enemies from getting to Newt.

“Just die!” the ghost cultist shrieked, her voice and the wind she produced rattling emeraldstreak’s bones.

It wasn’t an attack, though, just madness. The ghost woman was also at the eighth realm, but a higher layer. Emeraldstreak didn’t care. She was a slayer, one of the best at her realm, and she would become an exalt one day.

She had long since abandoned a weapon, back when she had first survived her tribulation. Instead, she wielded a tall shield, enduring attacks, as was her nature, then crushing those before her like a disturbed mountain unleashed a landslide upon the fools daring to challenge it.

The ghost, like most with the wind attribute, relied on a weird weapon. Hers was a serrated chain somehow flexible enough to stretch, and nimble like an extension of the ghost’s arm.

The woman screamed and flailed, and Emeraldstreak endured her nonsense, like she did everything else in life.

It seemed like her storm of attacks lasted an eternity before the annoying presence in the back Emeraldstreak’s mind whispering of her fears and failures disappeared. The ghostwoman screamed and threw herself at Emeraldstreak without regard for her own safety. Foolish.

Two slabs of rock flew at her from her flanks, but the oblivious zealot ignored them, and Emeraldstreak splattered her into paste.

Emeraldstreak lowered her shield, and the arm wielding the chain that was left sticking outside the rock flicked in her direction. The chain moved with blinding speed, piercing her chest. Spikes shot out of the chain, their power devastating, but all they hit was petrified flesh.

Then the hand and the chain went limp. Emeraldstreak tore the damn thing from her torso, spilling blood.

I need to find a healer. She filled the hole in her body with emerald crystals, and limped towards the back lines of the battle. With some luck, the healers weren’t compromised, and they could patch her up. Otherwise, she was out of the battle after merely killing three eighth realm cultists and that one scuttler attacking her defenceless master.

***

After a momentary blackout, Newt regained consciousness. Life was leaving him, leaking out of his body, but even barely conscious, he kept sealing the rift. He was close, so close, with the outer gods frantically struggling against him.

The hole in space jerked and yanked, pulling in three directions at once, trying to grow, but Newt gripped it fully. It shrank further, growing as small as a scuttler egg, and for no other reason than because it would help with his visualisation of what he was doing, he grabbed it, balled his hand into a fist, and squeezed harder.

Then, as life fled his body, power surged into it. Power beyond the realms and anything else he could have imagined. The world rippled, and Newt realized there was another anomaly.

He grabbed it with his left, thinking it was another agent of the outer gods or some kind of trick, a backup hole in reality.

Newt glared at the intruder, ready to smite them, then he saw confused and terrified Dandelion in his study, back in Hailstown, a town a thousand years gone from the face of the world.

“Big Brother?”