Amara’s hand finds mine for a heartbeat, a spark of life that burns even in this place of death. Then she tears away, green fire erupting from her palms. It arcs through the darkness, slamming into Gygarth’s chest, the explosion blinding, shaking the foundations of the temple. Vines burst from the scorched stone, coiling up the monster’s limbs, thorns digging deep.
He laughs.
The sound is hollow thunder that crawls inside my skull. The vines shrivel to ash before they even finish blooming, their life devoured, absorbed. Amara stumbles, clutching her chest, as if he’s drinking straight from her veins.
The ground splinters. A dozen tentacles surge upward like towers, lashing through the battlefield.
Zyphoro is the first to answer, wings bursting as she soars high, twin daggers gleaming. She dives, slicing through tendons and shadow, each strike a blur of light.
Below her, Orios bellows, charging through the ash. He grips two tentacles in his massive hands, veins bulging, muscles straining, and rips them apart with a wet, shuddering crack. Black ichor spills across his armor, burning through the metal, but he doesn’t stop. Solena fights at his side, her blade hacking at tendrils of smoke, weaving as they slam against the ground, too slow to catch her, until luck runs out. A tentacle whips through the air and catches her full across the face. Blood sprays. She screams just before another strike sends her tumbling down the stairs.
Orios roars. His wings explode as he launches himself into the air. He dives, catches her mid-fall, folding his body around hers as they hit the stone. The impact shakes the stairs, and still he takes the brunt of it, shielding her with his wings.
Reon rushes forward, fury burning bright in his hazel eyes. His sword flares gold as he thrusts it toward the advancing tentacles. Time shudders, the world flickering and stalling, freezing one, two, three of the monstrous limbs mid-strike.
But Gygarth is too vast, too ancient to be slowed. His other limbs surge through the cracks of time, moving faster than Reon can draw breath. A spike of shadow pierces hisabdomen, lifting him from the ground before flinging him aside. He crashes against the temple wall, leaving a smear of blood as he slides to the floor.
“Reon!” Amara cries, but there’s no time.
Another tentacle whips toward her, faster than I can move.
Ronin moves instead.
He lunges between her and the strike, sword flashing, deflecting one blow before another coils around him. The pressure is immediate and unbearable. His armor creaks, then cracks, the sound a sickening symphony of breaking bone and splintering steel.
He gasps, blood spraying from his lips as the demon crushes him. Then Gygarth drops him like refuse, his body slamming against the stone with a thud that silences even the storm.
Zyphoro drops beside me, one wing dragging, feathers torn and dripping shadow. Amara stumbles to my other side, green fire guttering weakly in her trembling hands. Together we stand amid ruin. Our friends broken, our strength bleeding from us as Gygarth looms above, his writhing limbs blotting out what remains of the sky.
Zyphoro spits blood. “This is impossible. He is death itself. He has no weakness. He cannot be killed.” Her eyes flicker, mind grasping at anything. “Emranth. He could not die either, but you caged him.”
I shake my head. “Emranth was not a god,” I say quietly. “He was not pure death.” I force Zyphoro to meet my eyes. “To consume Gygarth is to die, sister.”
Her gaze cuts between Gygarth, then me, then Amara.
“Did you not hear me?” I snap.
“I heard you,” she whispers. “To consume Gygarth is to die.”
Then she punches me hard, stars bursting behind my eyes as I stumble. “But a cage does not need to live,” she snarls, “it only needs to hold.”
And then she launches herself into the sky, faster than I have ever seen her fly, even with one broken wing. A streak of black hair, a comet of fury and sacrifice, arrowing toward the monster that destroyed our world.
Amara grips my hand, voice shaking. “She won’t survive.”
“I know.” My voice is ash. “It’s suicide.”
I look at my wife. At the woman I bled for, burned for, would kill gods for. I memorize her one last time.
She catches my stare. “What?” confusion tightening her brow.
“I love you,” I murmur.
Realization hits her. “Daedalus… no.”
“Zyphoro is right. He cannot be killed. This is the only way we save Estra. The only way we end him.”
“There has to be another way,” she begs, voice cracking, tears streaking dirt and blood on her cheeks.
