The dagger flashed as it summoned its magic, forming a magic circle with the blade at its center. A terrible roar shook the cavern as a creature rose out of the light, rapidly taking form. Towering segmented legs formed, each tipped with three-toed claws big enough to crush boulders. Another set of four limbs jutted from its shoulders, slashing through the air with sickle-like claws that left small spatial fissures in their wake. Its body was flat and covered in a dull ruby carapace, reminding me of the scorpians I’d seen in Blacksand. It had several pairs of eyes around a short, squat head and a pair of mandibles. It roared again, stretching open its mandibles to reveal a circular-shaped maw filled with too many teeth.

The monster had no soul of its own, which meant it was bound to Lusha’s. As I predicted, as the monster lunged at Luke, her soul weakened proportional to the mana which filled its chittering legs.

Luke dove out of the way in a burst of speed, yet one of the sickle-like claws caught him on the arm, effortlessly slicing through his armor, cutting to the bone. His blood soaked into the blade, and it began to glow softly, leaving a trail of crimson light in the air behind it.

Luke slid back, clutching his arm and grimacing. The monster lunged at him again, but he evaded it without striking back, dodging time and time again as it chased him around the room. I didn’t waste time watching for long, as soon as I was sure he wasn’t in mortal danger, I turned my attention to myself. The sunpurge had overtaken about half of my flesh and had corrupted the outer fringes of my soul. Every breath was accompanied by a burning pain, leaving my breathing short and shallow.

"Requiem," I gasped, wincing as soul casting caused my soul to flare with pain.

Ribbons of soft gold and green sprang up around me, slithering across my flesh and into my soul. I focused on my soul first, driving the sunpurge out entirely, and then to my side. The wound itself had entirely crystallized, even worse than the sunpurge that had nearly claimed my life before. Healing it would take too long, so I held Requeim just long enough to curb the spread and loosen my breathing up enough to stand.

My magic didn’t go unnoticed. Lusha gritted her teeth as I hobbled to my feet, calling my staff back to my hand. Luke’s eyes widened as he finally noticed me, and he took a step toward me. The momentary distraction was enough for the monster to land a blow, punching through his shoulder with the tip of a claw, impaling him through. He grunted in pain and wrenched himself free, slashing his sword at its arm. The blade skittered off its carapace, barely leaving a mark.

"Xiviyah!" he cried, retreating before the onslaught of slashing claws.

"I’m fine," I lied, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

I staggered away from the fight, toward the crumpled heap of blood-dyed silver fur against the wall. Every step sent pain lancing through me, but I could deal with pain. It was nothing compared to the terror that gripped my heart, a terror that only abated slightly when I saw Fable take a shallow breath.

"I’m sorry," I half-sobbed, collapsing at his side and embracing him. His eyes flickered open, but they were hazy and distant.

I searched for his wound, soulcasting a seventh-level life spell, the strongest I could manage at the moment. The spell glowed beneath my palm, releasing a healing warmth that slowly seeped into him. The gaping hole in his chest gradually began to shrink, and my hopes rose until he shivered and squirmed, almost knocking me over.

"I know it’s hard," I whispered, flinching as a shockwave hit my wards. "Please, endure it. Just a little more."

I pushed more mana into the spell, ignoring my own pain as I desperately tried to mend him. The wound knit shut from the inside out, bone pushing through the space, followed by muscle, nerve, and veins. Progress was slow, gratingly so against the desperate intensity of the battle behind us, but scarcely halfway through, something changed. A threshold crossed, his regeneration finally catching up. Wounds across his body began to close, even where my magic didn’t touch. The process accelerated, and in seconds, Fable stood, pulling away from my hands. He gave his coat a shake, flinging blood droplets across the cavern. They hissed as they danced across the smoldering stones, evaporating in the blink of an eye.

He nuzzled my cheek, and I threw my arms around his neck, sobbing in relief. He lifted his head, gently raising me to my feet.

"Go," I whispered, squeezing him fiercely. "Help him."

He pulled from my grip, his lip curling in a growl, and bounded across the cavern. Stars exploded around him, the cavern trembling as his mana coursed through him, and he swelled in size, growing to his true form in the space of a single bound. A hundred feet of pure silver and fury.

The monster screeched in surprise as Fable slammed into it with a paw the size of its torso, releasing a shockwave that blasted across the room, pushing the waterfalls out of their paths and splattering them across the wall. I raised my hand, hurriedly casting a ward before it struck me, getting it up just in time. Adaptive Resistance could handle the raw mana of the art, but the sheer force of compressed air released in such a collision would obliterate my organs.

The monster was sent flying, slamming directly into the shard of omniscience. It screeched in rage as it picked itself up off the ground, its armored hide cracked and shattered in places. In the blink of an eye, it was charging at Fable, slashing with all four of its cruelly curved claws. Luke began charging his mana, but I cried out to him, pointing at Lusha.

He looked over and nodded, leaving Fable behind to deal with the monster and sprinting toward the mage. Her face paled as he reached her, renewing his assault on her wards. She threw some spells at him, but with most of her mana split between the World Barrier and her summoned monster, it was all she could do to keep her wards intact.

The monster tried to come to her aid, but Fable pounced on it, tearing one of its legs from its body with a snap of his jaws. It lashed up with its claws, burying them in his flesh. But, as seemed its nature, most of the strength was concentrated in the claws themselves instead of an art, and unlike with Luke, being cut by a few feet of blade meant very little to the enormous wolf. He bit down on its shell, a fang puncturing the carapace and digging into its insides. Ichorus blood spashed across his maw, steaming and hissing with toxicity, yet it failed to penetrate his fur.

With Fable on the monster, and Luke distracting Lusha, I ran as quickly as my trembling legs could carry me toward the shard, circling the entire cavern to reach it without being crushed beneath the behemoths. As I closed, I could see that the world barrier was still intact, fully restabilized after Lusha diverted her mana from it to break my wards. The purple hues of its runes mingled with the currents of my aura and the shard’s prismatic sparkle, forming a royal, majestic dance of swirling color. I gazed at it, transfixed by the pure, magical beauty. Not even my pain pierced the wonder that filled me.

Until I realized what that beauty meant, the World Barrier was still up. My fight was not over, and I was out of time. Everyone in the city above, no, everyone in the world, was waiting for me, whether they knew it or not.

I raised my staff, pointing it at the center of the formation. "Orendaclysm!"

I held nothing back, throwing every ounce of mana I had into the spell. Seven magic circles appeared along the length of my staff. Crimson light roared around me, gathering into a condensed point on the tip of my staff, a few inches beyond the crystalline star. Sweat beaded on my face as I pushed it further, beyond any spell I’d cast before. The magic circles trembled from the strain, struggling to contain so much mana, so I layered on another Orendaclasm, pushing its capabilities further at the cost of more mana. A makeshift array for sure, but I didn’t know if a simple seventh-level spell could break a ninth on its own. I didn’t dare risk finding out.

When I could hold it no longer, I thrust my staff forward, releasing a beam of light. It was so pure, so concentrated, that the realm shuddered, a pulse of discordance racing through fate itself.

"No!" Lusha screamed, groping toward me with a clawed hand. "You mustn’t!"

Orendaclysm struck the center of the array and exploded. The light was blinding, overwhelming every one of my senses, and waves of discordant mana flooded the room, cutting through every spell and enchantment at once. My wards flickered and died, and even Adaptive Resistance went still. Violent turbulence tore at me, whipping my hair and clothes, forcing me back against the shard.

As suddenly as it had come, the light faded. Everything went silent, save for the ringing in my ears. My entire body burned without the protection of my heat wards, my skin blistering and cracking, the sunpurge screaming, yet I managed to open my eyes a crack, blinking away tears as they fell and peeking around the cavern. My gaze rested on the World Barrier...where it should have been.

The magic circle was gone.