The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 373

Chapter 13: 373

ARTHUR

Cadell stiffened at the sight of the relic armor, taken aback by my transformation. I could see his jaw working as his teeth ground together, the frustration he felt emanating from him like heat from a flame.

"Your tricks are a mockery to the asura, boy," he said scornfully as his form crackled with energy.

But his voice was muffled, smothered by the sound of blood rushing to my head. The world blurred and my eyes locked onto Cadell—the first true monster that I had laid eyes upon in this world.

I hurled myself into the air to meet him as Cadell fell from the sky like a bolt of dark lightning.

A wave of black fire roiled out from his hand. I countered it with an aetheric blast before slashing at his throat with my aether blade. However, Cadell's body dissipated like smoke, vanishing into the flames still filling the sky.

My arms blurred as I slashed around me, shredding the flames like silk curtains.

But when Cadell reappeared, it was from behind me. His hand, wreathed in fiery claws, plunged into my side, through the armor and aether, and curled up into my ribs. Ignoring the pain, I reversed the aether blade and stabbed back and down, barely missing his chest as he flew away from me.

I willed myself to follow, to fly, to simply ignore the restraints of this world as the djinn manifestation had instructed, but gravity pulled me back down.

With a roar of frustration, I flung the aether blade after him, which immediately began to dissolve after leaving my grip.

I hit the ground with another weapon already conjured, and threw myself after the Scythe, swinging with abandon, carving through the cloud of soulfire. But my weapon never found purchase, and again Cadell coalesced from the blaze to strike, this time raking fiery claws across my arm, nearly severing it at the elbow.

Dismissing the aether blade from my injured arm and conjuring it again in the other, I thrust at Cadell's chest with the full force of my momentum as I careened like a catapult stone through the air, but he burst into black flames and vanished back into the burning cloud.

I landed in the midst of the ruined arena floor fifty feet away, cursing loudly.

Cadell's form warped in my vision—the afterimages of how he had looked before he massacred the people in the castle, before he killed Buhnd, before he killed Sylvia all overlapping. He was responsible for so many deaths, including what was supposed to be mine had Sylvie not sacrificed herself for me.

Death wouldn't be enough for him. I needed to crush him, to make him feel weak and helpless, just as I had felt. Here, In front of all of Alacrya, Cadell would suffer.

Blood and aether rushed through my limbs as the emotions I had been suppressing all this time threatened to overwhelm me. It wasn't Destruction this time trying to overtake my sense of self. It was me.

The cloud of fire dissipated, revealing Cadell hovering over the battlefield, a blade in each hand. One was the same black iron that Uto and Nico favored, but the other was void-black, like a piece of night sky carved into the shape of a longsword.

"You are a lesser to the end," Cadell spat.

Letting loose an aetheric blast for cover, I burst across the ground before leaping at him, my blade poised.

We crashed together.

Black and purple sparks flew as aether impacted against his soulfire-sheathed weapons. I slashed and stabbed, but each furious blow was deflected. A dozen new wounds opened up across my body, but they hardly mattered.

Then I was hurtling away in the air.

The tip of the void-black weapon was embedded in my chest, and it was growing, carrying me along with it. Ten feet, twenty, fifty, a hundred, until I slammed high against one of the huge shield walls that protected the crowd of onlookers.

But the lance continued to expand, growing through me, pressing into the shield so hard that it began to quiver. My armor was peeled away as the lance grew wider, ripping a hole in my chest.

My aether blade lashed out, but the void-black material shifted, moving and reforming around my sword. I hacked at it wildly, like an untrained boy trying to split a log. My head began to pound, my pulse racing, each beat of my heart sending blood pumping out around the edges of the lance.

Then an icy coldness was pouring from my core, washing over the hot rage, dousing it in a focused kind of detachment.

A shadow loomed over me.

Regis, in his pure Destruction form. Huge wings of black shadow kept him effortlessly aloft. His massive, fang-filled maw opened and a gout of Destruction blazed across the lance. The violet flames raced in both directions, devouring the lance. I felt, for an instant, the hunger of those flames dancing in my open chest cavity, licking the inside of my wound, reaching downward toward my core.

Then I was falling.

I hit the ground on my back, collapsing in a heap.

Regis floated above me protectively, and I could see his clash with Cadell, holding off another attack with a blast of Destruction.

'After patronizing Nico… look at you.' His voice was an inferno in my head. 'Get a hold of yourself.'

I spit up a mouthful of blood as the hole in my chest slowly grew back together, bones fusing, organs reseating themselves. Finally, I was able to take a deep, heady breath. And through each breath after, I realized, through these last reckless exchanges, I had channeled too much of my aether into my attacks, ignoring my wounds and neglecting my armor.

Despite where I was and how the situation was unfolding, I laid in the ash and rubble for a moment more and let the rage that had overtaken me fizzle into frustration and embarrassment.

What had been the point of growing stronger, learning aether arts, obtaining relics, if all I was going to do was hack blindly in rage?

Yeah. I'm good now, I sent Regis with a sobering sigh.

Clearheaded but still incapacitated, I continued to draw in aether from the atmosphere while studying the battle above.

Purple flames erupted from Regis's jaws as a barrage of void-black missiles swarmed like a flock of corrupted ravens, spinning and darting around the purple flames, but not fast enough.

Destruction leapt from one to the next, burning Cadell's Decay-attribute magic to nothing, then chasing Cadell up into the sky, forcing him to retreat. Patches of purple flame burned in the arena and over the shields, but they were quickly doused by my companion.

I'd faced both soulfire and the black metal before, but the changeable, gusting black magic was a different attribute, likely wind, which meant Cadell could control at least three different elements. And he could combine them, like his ability to fuse soulfire and wind to meld into the atmosphere.

His power was more versatile than mine, but mana didn't offer strong protection against aether. All it would take was a single decisive blow to defeat Cadell, just as I had Nico.

The sky above grew dark. Cadell flew at the center of a hurricane of blustering Decay-infused wind, which coalesced like an impenetrable cloud.

He jerked his hand downward, and a rain of black spikes and soulfire was launched from the cloud like a downpour of ballista bolts. Coal-black lines of infernal wind chased the burning spikes, pushing them faster and faster as they fell.

The coliseum trembled as the black spikes slammed into the ground around the edges of the ruined stadium floor, some glancing off the walls or punching through the shield protecting the closest seats. A black sphere momentarily wrapped around the high box, and any spikes that struck it dissolved, the soulfire flickering out like expired candles.

But over Regis and me, a shield of Destruction devoured everything that came in contact with it, keeping us both safe.

'I know you've got your deep physical and psychological injuries to sort out, but I have a limit you know,' Regis thought with a mental grunt of exhaustion.

I noticed the shimmering, smokey apparition before Regis did.

Cadell solidified from the gloom still cast by the clouds overhead, swinging down with a burning black blade. Activating God Step, I appeared just before him, catching the attack with an aetheric sword.

I was just waiting for you to tap out, I answered, straining under the force of Cadell's blow.

The shadow wolf dissolved, becoming immaterial and drifting into my body. 'Since you're back to making crappy jokes, I assume you've got it from here?' Despite his banter, I could sense the fatigue setting into my companion. He was near the end of his strength.

Black metal spikes burst out of the ground between us. My sword swept cleanly through them, but it gave Cadell time to step back and bring up his own sword. "Your new bond is a rather crude excuse of a beast."

"I think the word you're looking for is 'majestic'," I quipped, hurtling forward and unleashing a flurry of cuts and jabs, pressing him further back. He tried to fly up into the air, but God Step allowed me to cut him off, pushing him back toward the ground where we were on more even footing.

Cadell may have been more versatile, but I was the better swordsman.

Driving the aether blade into his ribs, I tried to slash sideways and cut him in half, but his hands closed around my arm, holding me there.

Our eyes locked, and I took in the snide, cruel expression that seemed permanently affixed to his pale gray face. His chin jutted out proudly between the serrated horns that curled around below his ears. But the air of absolute confidence he usually exuded was long gone. He was worried.

And he was afraid.

I noticed the shadow almost too late.

God Stepping away just as a spike several times the size of my body would have struck me, I watched from above as, instead, it crashed into the arena floor, dragging Cadell down into a huge crater.

Cracks snaked out from the crater, running beneath the stands and making the entire coliseum shift and tremble. Somewhere, metal sheared and wood snapped, and two sections of the stadium seating began to separate.

The forgotten audience screamed as the shield protecting them flickered and vanished, only to be replaced by dozens of smaller shields as the mages leaped into action.

The underworks collapsed, opening fissures in the coliseum walls and causing large portions of the seating to sag. A few people had the wits to run for the exits, but most were still frozen where they sat or stood. I noticed Seth, Mayla, and some of my other students hunkering together beneath a clear panel of mana being cast by an older mage, their mouths agape, awe etched on their distant faces.

Something shifted in the shadows as I caught myself along the edge of one of the hundreds of black spikes sticking up from the floor. A creature, more shadow than man, crawled out into the light and stretched long, thin limbs tipped with jagged claws.

The shadows around Cadell twisted and bit at the air like flames. "Enough." His voice grated like teeth shearing through bone. "There are no dragons around to save you this time, boy."

Cadell's shadow-clad arms spread wide, and black fire began to boil out of him. His corrupted magic spilled like burning tar into what was left of the arena and splashed against the shields protecting the staging areas, the light of which crackled inconsistently as the shields reached the end of their capabilities.

I felt an icy claw clutch at my insides as I remembered the last desperate moments of my battle against Nico and Cadell, racing away from this same hellfire conflagration with Tessia, desperately exhausting the last of my strength. Only this time, Cadell wasn't holding back.

Regis emerged beside me, fiery hackles raised but only barely able to hold his normal form.

My brows furrowed as I glanced down at my companion. Regis. You shouldn't—

'Relax, Princess. I'm no martyr; I'm your weapon, remember?'

Flashes of instructions blazed in my mind like a branding iron, showing me glimpses of Regis in a dark forest clearing.

This is…How did—

My vision darkened as Cadell's shadowy form barrelled toward us.

'It's not perfected, but it'll probably still work. Just do it!'

As the flood of hellfire was almost on us, Regis closed his eyes, his lupine body growing shadowy and see-through as it became incorporeal. I raised the aetheric blade in my hand, but rather than attacking, I reeled back and…

I plunged the aetheric blade into my companion.

His body flared before enveloping my sword until the aetheric blade grew larger and was sheathed in dark violet flames.

"It doesn't matter how many more tricks you pull out, lesser!" Cadell roared as his shadowy, demonic form neared.

My grip tightened around the Destruction-clad sword and a shared sense of a cold, emotionless void wiped my senses clear of anything other than Cadell. His long, taut limbs of flickering obsidian, his jagged horns that had grown twice in size, and the aura of soulfire wrapped around him like wings—I took it all in.

Cadell unleashed his arsenal of spells with abandon—a volley of blood iron, a maelstrom of void wind, a barrage of soulfire—but it was useless.

The dark violet sword in my hand arced in jagged flames as my body blurred. Concise, wasteless movements carried behind the small openings carved out by my new sword.

Arcs of violet tore through every spell spat out by the Scythe, and his gleaming red eyes widened in fear more each time.

Ignoring the icy grip around my core, I let God Step carry me right in front of Cadell's distorted visage. I raised my sword over my head, Destruction blooming in a blaze of violet. His ghoulish black arms crossed in front of him, wreathed in soulfire, black metal spikes materializing like shields.

The blade came down, passing through the black spikes as if they were nothing but mist. I struck him with the full force of my strengthened body, flooding every muscle with aether. He was crushed to the ground, and a shockwave rippled outward from us, toppling the thirty-foot-tall spike that jutted up just behind Cadell.