Chapter 84: Seris Ravenveil [3]
For the first time since the fight began, Seris didn’t get back up immediately.
Her fingers pressed into the bloodstained snow, trembling with the effort of just holding herself off the ground. Her hair hung in silver strands across her face. Across the clearing, Augustus stood watching her with the patient certainty of something that knows it’s already won.
"DAMN IT!"
Roselle’s voice broke across the battlefield. She fired spell after spell into the vampire line — arcane missiles punching through armor, sending bodies flying backward into the snowbanks. "GET OUT OF MY WAY!"
BOOM.
A burst of force cleared a path.
She took two steps forward.
Three vampires sealed the gap immediately, red blades raised.
"Every time I push them back, more flood in!" She clenched her teeth through another spell, sweat cutting cold lines down her face. The math wasn’t working. For every gap she tore, two more vampires filled it.
"I KNOW!" Leon’s voice came from somewhere to her left, completely buried in a different problem. Half a dozen vampires pressed him from every angle, and he was burning mana just to keep their blades off his throat — defensive knockback rings, one after another, each one buying him three seconds and costing him something he didn’t have to spare. "They’re holding us here deliberately!"
He drew a blazing crest beneath his boots.
BOOM.
The shockwave threw his immediate attackers into the snowdrifts.
Another squad was already sprinting toward him before they landed.
"Are you KIDDING—"
Nicholas wasn’t listening to either of them.
His eyes had found Seris in the snow and they hadn’t moved.
I have to reach her.
A vampire warrior rushed him from the right, curved sword coming down at an angle. Nicholas didn’t adjust his stride. His blade swept up through the weapon’s arc and cleaved it in half at the hilt, the follow-through sending the vampire backward through the air. Another came from his blind spot — he felt it without seeing it, pivoted hard on his heel, blade cutting horizontal across a wide arc.
BOOM.
Three bodies launched sideways simultaneously.
He kept moving forward. One after another, the vampires tried to form a wall. None of it held. They were throwing themselves at a sword that was moving with the specific kind of focus that didn’t take requests.
I can’t let her die here.
The Eternal Dragon’s aura erupted from his blade. Golden energy coiled around the steel like something alive, burning with heat that had nowhere else to go. Nicholas’s grip went bone-white.
He swung with everything he had.
BOOM.
The golden arc tore through the formation’s center, ripping a clear channel through the snow and bodies. He stepped into it, breathing hard, sweat stinging his eyes.
Just a little longer. I’m coming.
At the rear of the formation, the vampire commander walked toward Augustus with his brow set hard.
"Your Highness."
Augustus didn’t turn.
"Our agreement was clear," the commander said, his impatience cutting through the military discipline he’d been maintaining. "You received the blood. You received the power. In exchange, you were supposed to lead us directly to the academy."
Augustus glanced sideways. The expression he gave the commander was the one reserved for things he’s decided are no longer relevant.
"Can’t you see I’m not finished here."
"We are falling behind schedule—"
"SO WHAT?!"
The commander flinched. An involuntary half-step backward.
Augustus turned fully. His eyes were burning with something that had moved past strategy and past grudge and had arrived somewhere much simpler and much worse.
"I am here for one reason." He extended his sword, the blood-coated tip pointing straight at Seris in the snow. "Revenge. Those academy insects humiliated me." His grip tightened until the leather hilt groaned. "And I am going to make every single one of them understand what that cost them."
The commander’s patience broke. "That was not our agreement! You are completely ignoring the pact—"
He stepped toward Augustus.
Augustus tilted his head toward him.
The commander’s expression changed immediately. "W-Wait—"
SHING.
A flash of red.
The commander froze mid-step. A thin line appeared across his waist, so clean it took a second to understand what had happened. His upper body slid off and hit the snow face-first. His lower half followed a beat later. Dark blood spread fast through the white.
The surrounding vampire soldiers went completely still.
Augustus flicked the blood off his blade with a clean snap of his wrist. Let out a long, contented breath.
"Much better." He looked around at the frozen faces of his army. "Now it’s peaceful."
His gaze drifted back down to Seris.
"Where were we."
Seris had seen it. Her eyes were wide in the quiet way of someone who has just recalculated how far gone the person in front of them actually is.
Her scythe lay several feet away. She reached for it — forced her bruised body to move through the snow, fingers dragging through the ice, pulling herself forward inch by inch.
Almost.
Her fingertips found the cold metal of the handle.
She started to close her grip.
THUD.
Augustus’s boot came down on her fingers.
The crack that followed was sharp and small and absolutely horrible.
Pain tore up her arm and she gasped. She pressed her lips together and did not scream.
Augustus crouched slowly. Brought his face down close to hers.
"How does it feel, Seris?"
His voice was conversational. Then his expression dropped flat.
"...You arrogant bitch."
She said nothing. Her fingers were shaking violently under his boot but she kept her jaw locked.
He lifted his foot and grabbed her chin in one hand, forcing her head up until her eyes had nowhere to go but his.
"Do you understand now?" He pressed his fingers into the bruise he’d already made on her cheek. "Do you finally understand how humiliated I was?"
Her breath came shallow.
"If you had just stayed away from him—" the contempt in his voice went all the way through— "if you had stayed in your place and kept away from that worthless commoner trash—"
The word came last.
"I wouldn’t have to punish you."