You will never be without me ever again. I’m with you forever. The powerful resolve I saw in her face was my sole strength as I rose to my feet.
Forever. I gave her a gentle nod, and she stood and moved behind me in line with Val. “Okay, new plan,” I panted as I took another step forward into a fresh wave of death. “Stay behind me and clean up anything that makes it past.”
“Lux, no,” Val insisted. “You cannot sacrifice yourself for us. Not again.” There was genuine pain in her voice as she lunged forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “We can find another—”
I threw her arm back at her and glared over my shoulder. “I said, stay behind me.”
Val’s eyes widened as she recoiled, and Lia pulled her back a step. “Val, I know we haven’t explained anything, but please, just listen. This is the only way we can…”
Lia’s voice cut out abruptly as I took another step forward. KILL THEM ALL, rumbled the presence in my head, blocking out the distraction of my allies behind me. My vision refocused on the movement at the end of the long hallway, where the scuttling Serathids were now outlined in vibrant red light. THEY WILL SUFFER IN RETRIBUTION.
The booming voice crashed over me like thunder, and I felt my body preparing for battle, already accepting its offer. I slowly lowered my barriers against the darkness throbbing in my arm and chest, and the burning energy immediately engulfed the rest of my body. Black flames burst from the surface of the manasteel blade in my hand and rippled up my arm to my shoulder. I felt myself take another step forward, unbidden, then another, and another, each coming faster than the last. My consciousness retreated to the safe haven hidden deep within my mind, and I let go of the last of my resistance. Yes. We’ll kill them all.
My surroundings blurred as I rocketed forward, running in a low hunch with the tip of my sword dragging along the stone floor beside me. The screeching steel echoed along the corridor ahead of me, and the teeming horde of beasts stilled and looked in my direction. “COME AND MEET YOUR END,” I roared in a distorted, booming chorus.
The Serathids accepted my challenge without delay. Dozens of the beasts spilled into the hallway, with countless more taking their places at the chamber entrance behind them. My low run shifted into a beastial sprint as I flung myself forward with both my hands and feet, desperate to meet them in battle. Just as we were about to collide, I brought my sword up in a spinning horizontal slash that sent a vicious wave of dark fire through the air. The energy snapped like a whip as it connected with the leading two beasts and exploded into a shower of black and white sparks that immediately engulfed the pair in flames.
A horrible screech filled the hallway as the burning Serathids fell backwards. A wicked smile crossed my face as I realized the piercing shriek was the first noise I had ever heard the monsters make. They can feel pain.
THEY WILL FEEL MORE. I leapt through the smokescreen I had created and attacked the next closest foe with a whirling skyward slash that sliced easily through its carapace. The wound instantly caught fire, and another scream echoed against the stone. My arm surged with an influx of new power as the beast was consumed by dark flames. MORE. Serathids approached on either side as the tide of beasts surged around me, and I brought my sword up to parry an incoming volley of strikes. Spinning in a tight circle, I caught each scythe with the tip of my bastard blade, shattering the bony weapons like glass.
A sharp pain raked across my chest as a taloned foot cut through my cuirass and into my flesh. Hungry black flames raced across my body and engulfed the monster’s limb before it could retreat; as it writhed in agony, the fresh wound in my chest wove closed, and my awareness of the injury instantly faded behind the consistent dissociating pain of the void. More, I thought in harmony with the dark presence driving my body.
Every step that brought me closer to the open chamber fueled me with a fresh wave of energy, and every kill further clouded my head with an overpowering, intoxicating pleasure. The dark flames fully enveloped me as I continued my rampage through the sea of monsters, bringing sickly-sweet death with every stroke of my sword. THE SOURCE IS AHEAD. THEIR ULTIMATE END. WE WILL CLAIM IT. The thought of an even greater ambrosia than what surrounded me set off a deep hunger in my stomach, and I rushed to claim my prize. Raising my sword above my head, I smashed the blade down onto the floor with both hands and sent a billowing wave of fire ahead of me that saturated the entire hall in flame. The air filled with fine black ash as the Serathids burned, corpses and living beasts alike, and my path forward was suddenly cleared.
The effort of my attack had drained a majority of the dark energy from my body, reducing the blaze around me to wisps of black smoke, but the ambient power lingering in the air quickly surged in to renew me as I sprinted into the chamber. The construction of the room changed abruptly at the entrance: the floor, walls and ceiling of the massive chamber were constructed of a seamless, white marble, not unlike the roads and buildings Lia and I had seen in Atsal. Old oil lamps hung from the walls at regular intervals, lighting the room with a flickering orange glow. There appeared to be three exits from the marble room: the large, open space through which I had entered, a roughly tunneled hole ten feet in diameter on the wall to my right,
