Illigar arrives on the top of the stump, his boots clicking against the hard wood. I never saw him in the tent before, but I can't imagine he looked much better then. He stands, bare-chested except for the bloody bindings over his chest. Six golden arms stretch from his back, each far longer than a normal man's, the surface looking hard and almost insectoid. The fingers of the arms rattle as they flex.

Hovering just outside the range of the wooden monster's aura, I can see Iona stopping on one of the branches further down. Magic flares around her as she concentrates on the injured form of Maladasca Jane, pouring soothing light into the injured woman.

The other two strangers arrive, landing nimbly on the top of the top. There was something in the way they held themselves that spoke to both competence and confidence. It made me more worried than put me at ease.

The one on the right wore a mishmash of green and white leathers; each piece glowed with high-level enchantment. In his hand, he held a small crossbow, even smaller than the one I bought in Westgrove, which feels like a lifetime ago. He holds a metal tube clenched between his teeth that glows with ember fire, trailing blue smoke in the air behind him. The other stranger is an elven man, one wearing an enchanted dress shirt and black, linen pants. Stitched into the breast pocket of the shirt is the insignia of the Ramacalla Empire. I wonder for a moment if this man could be another imperial prince, but think better of it. His hair lacks the metallic sheen of the true blood elves.

Illigar, his face haggard and a bit pale, takes the lead of the ensemble. He looks about at the wreckage of the palace tossed about like he was looking at fish at the market. When his eyes fall upon the man with the shining walls, he pauses. It isn't the man that captures his attention, but the crimson pillar.

"I see that Lumina failed in her task." The wooden monster is the first to break the silence. Her voice is like the rasping sound of two sticks rubbing together.

"Are you the mind behind these events?" Illigar asks.

The monster ignores him, looking off to a discarded block of stone. A lone vine curls up from behind the stone, the end wrapping around a severed foot. With a flick of her wrist, the vine whips, tossing the boot into the air to land at the feet of the six-armed demon standing next to her. The reptilian eyes of the demon turn down, locking onto the severed appendage. It bends, picking up the foot, biting off more than half of it with a single chomp of its sharp teeth. Gore spills down its chest, mixing with the rest that is already staining its auburn fur.

"Everyone around me fails," the monster says, looking out toward the city. "It would seem that not even an infusion of incredible power can turn one competent."

Illigar's hand moves, the motion so slight and smooth that it is difficult to notice. He holds a steel ball in his hand now, just slightly smaller than his palm. The monster looks back at him then.

"Yes, I am the one you have been chasing," she says. "Your opponent in this game."

"Do you have a name?" Illigar asks. He shifts his weight, aligning his foot.

"You may call me Sigrid," the monster says. "I have had others before, but this is what I use now. Your companions there, they are not from Danfalla."

Illigar turns his head, looking back at Halford and the two he brought here with him. "No, I just met them a moment–" The man gives no sign before his arm slashes forward, the steel ball launched like a missile. The ball races forward, but not towards the monster Sigrid or the powerful-looking demon. Rather, it hurtles toward the man with the glowing planes of energy.

A piece of bark peels away from the ground, like the wooden monster expected the attack ahead of time. I don't think I would have been able to react to Illigar's throw before a hole was blasted through me by the power infused into the ball. The steel ball meets the strip of bark, bending it before it begins to roll along the length. It arcs over the surface, digging a long gash into the wood, before sailing off into the sky, disappearing.

Everyone below is already in motion, several events happening simultaneously. Three of the huge branches of the tree spiral down, but rather than lash at anyone, they circle the man and the pillar, forming a cocoon of dense wood around him. Illigar and Halford move forward, closing the gap between themselves and Sigrid in the blink of an eye. The demon moves, leaping at the nearest adventurer, only to have a crossbow bolt sting into the side of its neck. It spins in the air, the bolt leaving a trail of white lightning behind it, while the unknown elf in the fine clothing grabs its leg, hurling it to another part of the stump.

About six detonations of various energies pepper the top of the stump, knocking me back even as I stand in the air far overhead. Halford and Illigar move so fast I can hardly keep up with their movements, but, somehow, the wooden monster outpaces them. My brother swings his swords in a double slash, missing the monster as it slips through the gaps between the strikes. Spinning in the air, it moves impossibly, grappling one of Illigar's golden arms as it arcs to smash her face in. Sigrid's foot lands against Illigar's shoulder with a snap, the man kicked away as one of his golden arms is ripped free of his body.

Small lacerations cut across Sigrid's wooden skin as Halford chases her across the stump. The cuts come from his soul presence, the slicing magic surrounding him constantly cutting at the monster as he pursues with a series of sword swings that are too fluid to look like anything other than a choreographed dance. Vines sprout from the bark, whipping at Halford's blurring swords, getting cut apart. Flowers sprout around his feet, but the moment that motes of magic begin to gather on the petals, the heads of the flowers are snipped away, falling dead to the ground. Halford pushes forward, his swords cutting like a scythe through the fauna sprouting around him. Yet, he can't reach Sigrid. The monster stays one step ahead, moving backward like an acrobat as my brother pursues.

"Wake up!"

I blink, realizing that Illigar is standing in the air next to me. The five remaining arms of golden light sprouting from his back reach forward, collecting in front of him, a ball of energy forming between the collected palms. His face is turned toward me, and I can see the deep rings beneath his eyes.

"Do not let that man escape with the pillar," he says, nodding at the bulb of wood wrapped tightly around the space where the man had been standing. The bulb rattles as the six-armed demon collides with the side of it, nailed to the wood by a crossbow bolt four feet long jutting through its shoulder. The demon rips itself sideways, tearing off one of its arms at the shoulder to escape the pin.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Why? What is it?" I ask.

"Later."

The golden hands push together, the glowing magic coalescing into a solid sphere of shining metal. Illigar grabs the magical ball before diving from the sky, the muscles in his arm bunching as he pulls his hand back to throw. The magic emanating from the ball distorts in the final moment before he releases it, sinking down toward the sphere and rippling clockwise like water going down a drain.

The orb falls from the sky faster than any attack I have been able to follow before. It passes just over Halford's shoulder, knocking my brother to the side with its wake of air. Sigrid, with the forewarning of her presence, just manages to pull herself back before the ball can blow one of her legs off. Instead, it collides with the bark of the tree.

The ball of light sinks into the wood like the tree is made of soft puddy. Less than a blink later, a solid sixth of the humongous tree cracks, ripped away from the whole. The sound of the tree snapping is what I imagine it must sound like for a ship to be snapped in half. A spray of pulp and splinters flies skyward as the wedge slips away, tumbling down toward the ground below. The smell of damp wood pervades the air.

Sigrid is knocked away by the ripping of the tree, flailing out toward Danfalla, her arms making cartwheels. One of the tree's branches turns, creating a platform for her to crash into. The monster bounces as she rolls down the limb, somehow finding her way to her feet before sliding to a stop. She sneers up at Illigar, three of the golden arms extending from his back now having turned dull like brass. She doesn't have time to make a counter-attack. Halford is on her in a second.

I turn my attention away, focusing on the bulb of wood beneath me. My commander gave me a mission, and since that mission involved stopping one of these monsters disguised as a person, I had no reason to object. Standing on a platform of air well outside the reach of Sigrid's flower-spawning aura, I call on the black sand. It comes, eight balls of dull grains forming in the air around me. The cold fire seemed to work well for the flowers, but when turning my attention to the actual tree itself, regular, old-fashioned dragonfire would be the best. Nine of the orbs grow hot with orange dragonfire, shot through with ripples of white as I add the growth affix to the mix. High up here, with all of these powerful magicians around, starting an inferno with my most dangerous affix wasn't that great a concern. One of the black sand orbs drifts away, sailing upward toward the edge of my presence's reach, just in case.

A column of flame pours down from the sky to wash over the bulb of wood. Four globes above me and five beneath, I make for myself a true dragon's maw, burning dangerous levels of mana as I scream fire toward the stump below. The burning magic hits the wood and washes over it like water. Flames spill in a cascade, running over the top of the stump, spreading as the bark begins to crackle and burn. In just a few seconds, a pool of fire stands atop the stump, vomiting smoke up into the air as the fire rages and grows.

The bulb of wood itself burns like a torch, but the wood is thick there, and the flames can only burrow so quickly. I stop spilling fire down onto the tree, my mana stores made dangerously low by the sheer amount of magic I poured forth. Already, my mana refills at a steady pace.

I only hesitate a moment before pushing ahead, the cost of my next attack present in my mind. One of the black sand orbs floats in front of me. As I focus upon it, the grains begin to condense. There is pressure, the sand fighting me as I command it to crunch in on itself, growing more and more dense. The sphere of sand grows unstable, the particles within fighting their base nature as they are pressed together. It won't hold for long, but I don't need it to.

With a yell, I hurl the condensed ball of sand down at the bulb, filling it with as much blue dragonfire as I can fit. My control over the sand vanishes just moments after it crosses into the range of Sigrid's aura that suffuses the top of the tump, and the orb begins to bubble as if the surface is boiling. It holds, just long enough.

The ball of blue burning energy collides with the burning surface of the wooden bulb, cracking into the brittle wood, coming to a stop for only a moment before detonating. Blue dragonfire erupts from the hole the sphere bored into the wood. Where the orange and blue flames meet, they destroy each other, the affixes mixing and annihilating one another. The top of the bulb cracks like an egg, splitting sideways across the top. I plummet into the fire.

The heat of the blaze licks at me, the hem of my clothes turning in on themselves from the fire. The head of the moonsilver staff connects with the split across the top of the wooden bulb, a surge of dark cerulean energy erupting from the head of the staff. Spending a near month experimenting with my affixes inside the coffin taught me a lot. I never was able to discover a way out with the dragonfire, but that didn't stop me from trying everything I could think of. In the fight with the mystical wolf, what felt like a lifetime ago, I managed to combine the three affixes with those already inside the wolf's domain. Doing it this way, mixing each kind of dragonfire, had similar effects.

Lightning cracks through the charred and burning wood beneath me. The orange and blue flames spiral toward the head of my staff, sucked in by the explosion of sky mana. The twin fires seep into the cracks running along the wood, racing through in a wave that lights up the cracks for an instant before the entire mound erupts.

I am tossed back through the air by the blast, once again failing to regain my balance before my shoulder collides with the wooden floor beneath me. It is worse now; I don't even have an ounce of control as I bounce off the floor, rolling before finally sliding to a stop. My coat burns with orange dragonfire that slowly spreads across the material, trying to devour it. In front of me, a clear line of black char is cut through the pool of flames, the evidence of my being tossed literally into the fire. Where the bulb of wood stood just an instant before, only broken and smoking pieces of wood remain.

The monster disguised as a man stands among the destruction. The two panes of yellow light still stand in front of him, closer now to the pillar than they were before. His left arm hangs limp at his side, a splinter of wood sticking through his shoulder and protruding out the back. More splinters decorate his body, stabbed haphazardly down his left side. His face is a bloody mess, a deep gash across his forehead leaking spurts of blood to cover his face. Despite the evident pain, his eyes stay glued to the pillar in front of him, his teeth clenched as he strains to bring the walls of light together.

A bolt of metal cuts through the fire, spinning toward the injured monster, the point at the end aimed right at his open eye. Snap. The sound of Sigrid catching the bolt hurts my ears. The power behind the missile is too much for the peak rank-three monster to handle, and she jerks backward, just managing to misdirect the crossbow bolt into the bark of the tree. Halford falls from the sky after her, and Sigrid turns, throwing her hands up. The bark across the scorched part of the tree peels away, forming a lattice between her and Halford; a lattice that my brother starts to hack his way through.

Despite the distance between us, the power of the throne still pulses through me, elevating all of my attributes by a ludicrous degree. The boost to my perception is the only reason I hear the monster's words, the one swaying on its feet behind Sigrid.

"Do you think it is necessary now?" he mutters, his head dipping toward his chin.

"Yes!" she shrieks back at him, more and more bark peeling away from the tree to block off Halford. "Yes, do it now."

A third pane of yellow light appears behind the bleeding monster as he takes a stumbling step forward, just managing to catch himself and keep his feet. A shadow darkens the pane of light before a new creature steps out from the magic, as if walking out of a door. There is something about the new arrival that makes my blood run cold. It stands tall, yet its humanoid body is thin and somewhat gangly. The skin that covers it is a color like old bone, and I begin to think that it isn't skin at all. It looks about as it comes to stand on the charred wood, small eyes taking in the battle at a glance. Then, those eyes settle upon me, its bone-like face cracking into a smile.

"I am the Thirty-Seventh, and I have come," it says.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.