Echoes of the Abyssal Blade: Path to Free Will-Chapter 59: Unruly Matriarch of The Celestial Feathered Tribe
The heat gathered, coalescing into a figure descending from the ruptured sky.
A tall, handsome man wearing normal clothes, his presence radiated fierce, unrelenting vitality, his hair was a cascade of untamed black and embers, and his eyes gleam like twin suns, on his back rested a Sword, its edge concealed within its sheath, the air shimmers around him, as though the world bends to his passage.
Zerypha’s expression, for the first time, shifted, not out of fear, but of irritation.
"Draven."
The name alone was enough to make Lyneex’s half-healed form stiffen again.
He landed without a sound, his gaze passing over Lenaia, pausing briefly, before settling on Zerypha.
"My dear Zerypha, do we have to be at each other’s throat when we can all live amicably with each other," Draven remarked in a light tone, his face had a soothing smile. "And I can’t have you snuffing out Shaman of my family now, wouldn’t that be ominous."
Zerypha’s wings lifted slightly, and holy power was gathering once more, as it shimmered with blinding radiance.
"Enough with your sophistry, state what do you want," shouted Zerypha with a thunderous expression.
"Look at that temper of yours, and you call yourself an advocate of truth, come on now, haven’t I just said that we can just live amicably with each other," he replied, grinning wolfishly. "How about this, you can take that little snake with you, and I will return back to my castle with Lenaia, where my wonderful wives are waiting to attend to my needs."
"Hmph, I have already divined the ones responsible for ruining my great experiment. I cannot sit back and take it lightly after your servant, who doesn’t know her place, dared to interfere with my things; she will die today," said Zerypha in a menacing tone, radiating her attack once again at Lenaia.
Simultaneously, Draven’s calming smile changed to a twisted and somber smile, he dropped his sword from his back, the blade hitting the ground by his side with a hollow, thunderous crash, and the environment started to tear apart.
"I’ll make that plain," Draven went on, his voice lowering to a killing whisper."Leave this place, take your crippled serpent and crawl back to your floating nests, but if you so much as raise a hand against her again, I’ll turn one of your precious floating cities into ash, and who knows I will get the hang of it, I might not stop."
The air trembled.
Zerypha’s eyes narrowed behind the veil.
"You would dare wage war against my race," retorted Zerypha with seething rage overflowing from her.
"It doesn’t matter, because us humans grow quite fast, whereas your Celestial Feathered race has this problem of having too few members, by the time I am done with eradicating your entire race, how many humans could you have possibly killed, maybe quarter of the entire or maybe even less" Draven shot back, his grin razor-edged. "And that other guy from your race doesn’t care about your race members as much as you do, so I will have no one to oppose me."
For a moment, time itself seemed to hold its breath, Zerypha’s wrath was overflowing nearby, the heavens dimmed, the earth started to smolder.
Lenaia’s face twitched, how can his holiness talk about eradicating an entire race with such a straight face.
Whereas Lyneex’s face turned frigid, here she thought herself to be cruel enough, but this Hero of the Human talks about eradicating an entire race like it’s nothing, just eradicating a city had made her this notorious and unyielding, what about these Heroes, whose powers are a mystery.
Then, Zerypha finally released a quiet sigh.
The holy sphere in her palm vanished.
"You meddle too freely, Draven."
"It’s what I’m good at," remarked Draven with a soothing smile again.
Without another word, Zerypha turned, the air parting before her as she drifted toward Lyneex’s prone form, the Monarch flinched as the Matriarch passed, but no reprimand came. Only a cold command enetered her ears.
"We leave."
A wave of white light closed around the two of them, and in a burst of glory, both had vanished.
The battlefield was quiet as death.
Draven shrugged, looking down at still-kneeling Lenaia, walked over, holding out a hand.
"Tough day, huh?"
Lenaia hesitated, then reached for it.
"Thank you, your holiness," she croaked.
"Don’t thank me yet," Draven grunted, assisting her to rise. "This was just opening salvo, and the serious game’s going to begin now."
He looked towards the faraway horizon, where black clouds foamed.
With a reassuring grin, he said, "And I get the impression you’ll be in the middle of things."
The wind howled pitifully across the battlefield, the bitter smell of burned earth and blood carried before it. All that remained of the last collision was gouged craters and molten stone, a land laid waste by power greater than mortal comprehension. Draven paused for a moment in silence, his gaze remaining where the light of Zerypha’s departure had vanished, as if daring the emptiness to deny him his ultimatum.
Lenaia coughed, her frame shaken by fatigue and residual sparks of heavenly heat that clung to her essence like smoldering chains. The green radiance of her previous healing had since flickered out, leaving her with only a dull throb and frayed nerves. She rested on Draven’s hand, her pride burning more than her injuries, but his assistance or the ground.
"She’ll come back," she muttered hoarsely, voice like gravel dragged across stone.
Draven chuckled softly. "Of course she will. A snake like that never learns unless you cut off the head, but the problem is, there’s always another snake, another head." He looked down at her, his eyes less twin suns now and more dying stars, burning from a place deeper than mere flesh. "That’s the burden of cleaning up other people’s messes."
"Wasn’t it your mess too?" Lenaia shot back, her voice finding a spark of defiance.
Draven smiled, a wolfish glint of teeth. "I told you I was good at meddling, I never told you I was good at cleaning up."
He let go of her when she was able to stand unaided and turned, recovering his sword from the ground. The blade was an ancient thing — plain, unornamented, its scabbard worn with infinite battle nicks and burn scars, but it vibrated with a pent violence that caused the earth to shudder beneath the weight of every step he made.
"I presume you weren’t just in the area by coincidence, your holiness," Lenaia replied, sweeping a strand of hair back from her forehead, her dirty fingers leaving trails of dried blood and dirt.
"No," he acknowledged, his face falling into a stern look."I was in my castle, seeing to... other matters."
"What kind of matters draws a man like you out of his throne?" she asked.
Draven’s smile faltered. "The kind that shouldn’t exist, and worse, the kind that do."
Draven’s gaze hardened, his jovial facade peeling away like ash in wind. "That," he said slowly, "is the reason why this isn’t over."
"Zerypha has always been a relentless bitch," Draven corrected, his tone was dark but not unkind. "The mission you assigned to Rhydian, somewhere along the way, your mission was really something that hurt her, and made her come back."
"How could I know everything, I sent them on that mission because, I found that newborn abomination to be the one with literally no influence, or background" she asked sharply.
"Yeah, and look where it got you." He stepped past her. "Go, Lenaia if you stay here, you might not survive." 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
She hesitated a beat longer, then turned, vanishing into the woods with a flicker of green sorcer. Draven watched her go, his hand brushing the hilt of his sword. His gaze lifted once more to the approaching leviathan in the sky.
"Okay Zerypha, it’s been a while since we’d played," he whispered to the heavens. "Let’s have it out."
At that exact moment, a blinding light struck the earth where Draven was, with his carefree face, he swung his sword up towards the sphere orb coming down towards him, cancelling it out.
Zerypha stood at the heart of the sky, she was surrounded by crystalline spires and cascading lights, around her multiple such lights were glimmering with radiances to attack Draven.
"I was ready to go back, but I don’t think I can swallow my anger, so you will have to face my wrath, WRETCHED HUMAN," she screamed, her figure was radiating icicle-shaped lights.
The heavens wept radiance as Zerypha descended, her wings unfurled into a storm of starlight and frost, crystalline shards coalescing at her fingertips. Around her, a dozen orbs of glimmering light shimmered like vengeful suns, each one promising annihilation.
Draven cracked his neck, a lazy grin on his face, though his eyes blazed like twin furnaces. He raised his sword, the weapon shedding its mundane disguise — the metal flared, runes igniting along the blade’s length in a searing, infernal glow. The very ground split beneath him, volcanic heat spilling from the fractures like the world itself was eager to bleed.
"Fine then," he muttered, his voice a low growl. "You want to dance, Feather-bitch? Let’s dance."
