Final Battle?
"No."
I stood frozen.
Doya was beside him.
Every part of me rejected what I was seeing.
Kumbuye had done it.
I had watched him fight for hours. Watched him bleed just to force Balshak out.
Kumbuye...
The thought hit me so hard my knees nearly gave out.
If Doya was standing beside Balshak... what happened to Kumbuye?
"Come to me willingly, and he might not have to do what I want done next." Balshak echoed.
I lost my voice. My throat tightened so much I couldn't force a single word out..
"Doya," Balshak called.
My breath hitched.
"Do it."
Doya slowly stretched out a hand.
Someone was lifted from the ground. She gasped as an invisible force wrapped around her throat and pulled her through the air toward him. Her legs kicked helplessly beneath her.
My heart nearly stopped.
"Lysara?" I croaked.
She had been one of the Novitiates promoted to Bound because of the war.
She clawed desperately at her throat as she hung suspended before him.
"No," I whispered.
Doya's hand trembled when he looked up. His eyes met mine. There was pain there, and fear, and resistance. The Doya I knew was still in there.
"Stop!" I screamed.
For a moment, it looked like he was trying. Like he was holding back.
Then Balshak's expression darkened.
"Do it."
Doya stiffened and then Lysara's neck snapped.
The force holding her vanished and she crumpled to the ground.
It was like the world stopped moving. Tears blurred my vision.
"Who next would you like to sacrifice?" Balshak's voice drifted through the haze.
But all I could see was Lysara lying motionless.
My heart couldn't take it anymore.
"Noooooo!"
The scream tore out of me as I fell to the floor.
I could barely see straight.
Below me, everything broke into motion.
The Ascend moved through the veil and launching themselves toward Balshak where he stood. One after the other.
From the distance, the Forsaken surged forward, pushing through the gap they had earlier been forced back from.
The Bound formed up and charged straight back into the chaos again.
I reached inward, deep into myself, calling for help, searching for the presence of the guardians I had felt before. But no one answered.
I forced myself up anyway.
Everyone was still fighting. I couldn't stay frozen in my own pain.
As I reached for the veil, ready to go down to join the fight, Balshak suddenly appeared right beside me.
I flinched.
"You just had one thing to do," he said quietly. "Surrender."
My eyes dropped instinctively to the battlefield.
The Ascend were down there, now fighting against Doya and the other Forsaken. Their numbers had grown. And worse still, the corrupted gifted children were there too.
My heart broke at the sight of it.
When I looked back, Balshak was closer. His hand came up and caught my chin, lifting me off the ground.
"Surrender," he commanded. His eyes hardened, and his voice turned dark.
"I will never."
My power lashed out and shoved him away from me. He staggered back a step.
His expression changed.
Oh... now he was angry.
The air cracked as a wave of force tore toward me. I threw my hands up and parted the air in front of me. The blast rushed past my ears, leaving them ringing, but I didn't wait to see what happened next. Power surged into my fist as I charged and drove it straight toward his jaw.
He ducked beneath it.
Before I could react, his palm slammed into my ribs. Pain exploded through my side. The breath rushed from my lungs and I stumbled, but Balshak was still moving. His hand caught my shoulder, spun me around and hurled a fireball straight at my chest.
There was no room to dodge.
I threw up a barrier of force to block the attack, but the fireball crashed into it.
Heat blasted over me, searing my skin, but I held the barrier and pushed back. The blast from the fire threw both of us apart.
I hit the stone hard and rolled across the platform before forcing myself back to my feet. Across from me, Balshak slid to a stop several paces away. The calm look on his face was gone. He looked furious.
Both his hands rose, and suddenly, I couldn't breathe.
The air around me vanished. My throat tightened as an invisible pressure wrapped around my chest and neck. My knees hit the ground. I clawed at my throat, while my vision slowly darkened.
No. Not like this.
I gasped for air, but there was none left. No force to grab onto. I looked straight at him and reached inward instead, gathering every bit of power I could find.
Then I drove it outward.
The force struck him.
Balshak staggered and the pressure around me shattered instantly. Air rushed back into my lungs, burning all the way down.
I didn't hesitate. I sprinted toward him and drove a blast of force straight into his chest.
The impact sent him crashing onto the stone.
I followed immediately, closing the distance before he could recover. I dropped onto him with one knee planted firmly against his chest. Power gathered in my hand, aimed directly at his face while blood dripped from my lip.
"I said," I hissed, "I will never."
Force, fire, and heat gathered in my clenched fist. I brought it down toward him, but his hand shot up first. A violent force slammed into my chest and threw me off my feet. My back crashed into the stone barrier at the edge of the platform, shattering it on impact. The force didn't stop there. It carried me straight over the edge.
For a terrifying second, there was only the wind screaming in my ears.
Then I crashed into the ground hard. The impact rattled through every bone in my body.
A high-pitched, deafening sound filled my ears, drowning out the noise of the war. I forced my eyelids to stay open, but everything felt hazy.
The chaos of the battlefield moved slow. A few feet away, a Bound swung his sword, fighting desperately, but he fought against three, no, four, Forsaken. He didn't stand a chance.
Everywhere I looked, the Bound were bleeding. So many of them were gone. The ones still standing were completely surrounded, fighting impossible odds as the Forsaken surged forward. There were just too many of them.
My eyes snapped toward Doya, and I saw him summon a blade from the ground into his hand. He drove it straight through Ascend Seraphine's chest. Her body froze. When he pulled the blade back, she collapsed to the floor.
Ascend Corvath reacted instantly, sending a storm of fallen swords toward Doya. Before they could reach him, he turned them back mid-air. Corvath raised a shield just in time to block the counter.
Doya was awfully strong.
I looked up toward the top of the tower, and Balshak stood at the edge, smiling down at me.
He did this... he corrupted Doya. I was going to make him pay.
I forced myself up.
Power reverberated around my whole body. Rage burned through me, and all I wanted was his death.
Then a horn sounded in the distance. The ground trembled as the western troops approached the Temple.
"The Western army is here!" someone shouted.
The gates were thrown open to allow them through.
A host of the Western troops — thousands strong — poured through the gates.
Balshak moved down from the tower to where I stood.
The moment he reached me, my rage connected with my power, taking control before I could hold it back. Light burst out of me, spilling from my eyes, my hands, everywhere at once. I couldn't contain it.
"Take control or you'll burn out!" Malvorin's voice echoed inside my head.
The light surged again and wrapped around Balshak.
Something in his expression shifted.
Then I felt it — the Cranium. The bond was there again, but this time it was different.
The power wasn't coming only from me anymore.
It reacted before I did. My body moved, but I wasn't in control.
I tried to pull my arm back, tried to strike, but the Cranium didn't respond to intention like that. My right hand slammed into Balshak's chest.
The impact went deeper than anything physical. Balshak froze, then dropped to one knee as the pressure broke through him.
The power of the Cranium kept surging through me. It hurt. Gods, it hurt. It felt like my body was being torn apart and rebuilt at the same time, like I was losing pieces of myself just to keep it going.
Balshak clutched his chest, a sharp sound of pain breaking out of him. The calm, controlled stance he carried was entirely gone.
He looked up at me, searching for the version of me he had been breaking earlier, but he didn't find her.
"Release him!" I commanded.
"I told you," he rasped, still clutching his chest, "if you resist, I start with him."
I pushed another wave of pressure into him. Balshak coughed hard, blood spilling from his lips as his body jerked forward.
His eyes shifted to Doya. Then he closed them.
Doya moved immediately. A sword lifted into his hand and he raised it toward himself.
"No!" I snapped.
I struck the blade out of his grip before he could bring it down, then forced a chain around him, locking his movements in place. I would deal with him later.
Balshak let out a low laugh.
"The power will kill you," he said.
"Not after I'm done with you first."
"You cannot kill me."
I let the power take over, forcing it into shape. A binding formed between my hands, hardening into a collar meant to shut his power down.
"But I can neutralize you. You're no god. You're just a man who got lucky with power."
I snapped the collar shut around his neck. His hands flew to his throat, desperately trying to tear it off, but the collar only tightened.
The power of the Cranium still wrapped around me. The battle was still raging, even after Balshak had been restrained by the collar, and the Western troops had pushed us into an advantage. But I wasn't focused on that anymore. I followed the hum of the Cranium and kept moving.
Ascend Kaelric had seen Balshak fall, and no one tried to stop me as I moved past the gates and into the open ground beyond the battlefield.
I walked toward the source of the pull. Toward where the Forsaken had come from.
And when I arrived, I saw him.
Jephas.
And in that moment, it felt like the world had finally brought him to me.
He was holding the Cranium. And as soon as he saw me, he flinched.
The power answered the rage rising in my chest. He turned around and started running, like the coward he was, but it was already too late. I summoned arrows of compressed air and released them. They shot after him, but it didn't kill him; he dropped to the floor and started crawling desperately.
I wanted him to feel it.
The air twisted again, forming blades that cut into him from different angles, slowing him down as blood ran across the ground.
I slowly walked up to him.
"Please," he muttered as he dragged himself over the ground.
"You smiled when you took them from me." My voice came out different, darker even.
He kept struggling on the ground when I reached him. I drove my foot into him, forcing him down and burying his face in the sand.
When I released it, he spoke quickly, wincing in pain. "You don't want to do this, please. I'll do anything... please."
I dropped to one knee, turned him over, and looked him straight in the eye.
"Oh Jephas... this will be the last face you see, you filthy coward."
I hit him hard on the face. Again. And again.
He kept begging for me to stop but I only hit harder. All I could see was my parents' faces flashing in my mind... distant and cold, after they died.
His whole face was bloodied and he was wincing heavily in pain. When he finally went still, I placed my hand on his chest and pushed a final surge of force through him, that tore open his heart.
I scoffed. "So much for immortality."
I rose from the ground and straightened myself. My hand reached for the Cranium. The moment my fingers touched it, my body gave out, and all I saw was darkness.