Valdun was the only one standing. He was pointing at the wall, his blond hair draping his muscled shoulders, his whole body leaning toward Bravurn, his back to the door.
Bravurn’s eyes widened and he lunged toward Jarex.
Xandera made no threats. Had no use for bluster. Even as she stepped into view, she raised her palm, and unleashed a hellish torrent of lava at the quartet of Great Souls.
Chapter 52
Scorio ignited and rose into his scaled form, stepping into the room behind the advancing Xandera. Black fog began to boil up from the corners of the room. The temperature was rising, rising, rising.
Jarex yelped as the flood of lava rocketed toward him, but before it could engulf his seated form he disappeared.
Bravurn recovered his balance, raised his hand, and a cylinder of perfectly gleaming iron a foot wide flew from his hand at Xandera, who raked her hand across, hosing the entire corner of the room with lava, its violent spray engulfing the cylinder and drinking it whole.
Valdun roared as he spun, lava spattering across his back, his movements slowing as he burned.
Amity let out a cry of hoarse panic and flung himself under the spray, crashing into a low coffee table and tumbling down and out of sight.
Scorio felt his blood rise. His hate. His need to kill. Bravurn. The man who’d slain Xandera with such callous ease. The bloodless traitor. There was the tiniest flicker of doubt: they’d not confirmed his guilt. But that was washed away by the memory of his murder.
Scorio flung himself forward as the room filled with armored warriors, each clad in shining steel chainmail, a red kite shield in one hand, stabbing spears in the other. They were replicas of Valdun, but as if seen through a heavenly prism, so that their forms were glorious and surrounded by sprays of rainbow light.
The dozen armored men filled the room, shields rising as Xandera brought her lava gouting across them.
A vast cylinder of iron manifested above Xandera, three yards in diameter, appearing just beneath the ceiling and slamming down like a hammer from the gods.
Xandera shouted in rage as she was crushed beneath it. The blow was such that the floor cracked then shattered and collapsed into the hive level below. Scorio yelled and extruded his wings, beating them furiously as carpet and lava and five-foot thick shards of calcified mud all fell apart beneath him, tumbling into a warren of dark rooms.
The Nightmare Lady appeared behind the wall of shield warriors. Scorio caught a flash of her tail, but saw not what she struck.
Gaining height, he grunted as three spears flew at him. He raised his Shroud and they impacted, points digging deep and stabbing through, six inches of steel stopping just shy of his body.
PANIC! he commanded the wall of shield men, dismissing his Shroud so that the spears fell away. Their eyes widened but they didn’t fall back.
Pyre Lords.
Not so easy to push around.
That’s when the enhanced Titans waded into the fight. The first flung himself clear across the pit of shattered flooring that revealed walls and rooms below to blast into the warriors. A fist the size of pony keg slammed into one man, shattering his shield and knocked him flying. The Titan fought for balance as he dropped onto the edge of the ruined floor, then lost it and fell back, arms flailing, to fall a half-dozen yards beside the iron cylinder that had crushed Xandera.
Scorio flung himself at the remaining ten fighters, rage making him reckless. Those that had flung spears had replacements in hand. The warrior that Scorio dove at raised his shield, and Scorio tore it away, only to stare right into Valdun’s blue eyes. The Pyre Lord had swapped in. The man looked tormented, but he swung a great silver blade and Scorio attempted to deflect it with his Shroud, but the blade clove halfway down its thick curvature before Scorio stepped past the attack, dismissed his Shroud once more, then slammed his talons into Valdun’s side.
His claws dug deep, but it was like trying to slash apart ever denser mud.
Had the man’s durability not come at the expense of his speed, the Pyre Lord might have lopped Scorio’s head right off. As it was the blade cruised in at a slow chop, and Scorio tore free, seized the man by the waist, and flung him into the mess below.
The other shield warriors were battling the two other enhanced Titans, who’d leaped deep enough into the room to find purchase on unbroken floor. They ringed them both, shields raised, stabbing futilely with their spears.
Scorio dismissed them.
Bravurn: where was he?
The Blood Baron rose abruptly into view, his expression livid, a vein pulsing in his temple.
He raised a Ferula. It was only two feet long, of polished jet, with a line of crimson spiraling up its length to terminate in ruby. He aimed it directly at Scorio, then grimaced and leaped back as the Nightmare Lady stepped out of darkness and slashed at him with her tail.
Bravurn raised his palm and blasted at a cylinder of iron from his palm at her point blank. It hit her shoulder and spun her around. Scorio roared and lunged, hitting the Blood Baron with his command aura.
The Iron Tyrant, cool and in control, summoned his Shroud and Scorio slammed into it as if into an iron wall. There was absolutely no give.
Bravurn raised his Ferula once more, and that’s when the heat in the broken chambers rose to such an abrupt and absurd degree that the scrolls in their hexagonal shelving, the parchment on the broad table, the paintings on the wall all blackened and then burst into flame.
Xandera rose from the depths, and gone was the darkened layer that had clothed her. She was all naked molten fury, her body resplendent in golds and orange, her hair a writhing fountain of magma behind her, the air shimmering so that she seemed to dance as she ascended on a column of lava.
“Bravurn!” Her cry was a thunder crash. “You have defiled my home long enough!”
Bravurn sneered, raised his Ferula, then shouted in panic as Xandera unleashed a river of magma at him.
She raised both hands and from their base a volcano erupted. It was a veritable torrent, five yards wide, a complete and utter assault.
But the Iron Tyrant raised his Shroud just in time. It encompassed him completely, a globe of power that her lava engulfed.
Amity rose, face pale, and with great reluctance closed his eyes, threw his head back, and his whole body clenched, tendons standing out in his neck.
“Watch out!” Scorio screamed.
Amity took on the ravaged look of a man at the last days of a terminal illness, then he raised his hands, both reduced to little more than claws, and between his palms, a tiny prick of light appeared, so bright it burned Scorio’s eyes to look upon.
The Nightmare Lady appeared behind him and whipped her tail around so that its blade connected with Amity’s neck.
The surviving shield fighters all cried out as lacerations opened on their necks.
Xandera turned her blast upon the Pyre Lord. It washed over the man, the Nightmare Lady leaping away, only for his fleck of light to slip through the torrent and collide with the blazeborn queen.
It detonated like a thunder crash and hurled Xandera across the room, her body torn apart as if by the claws of a giant. She smashed through the room’s far wall, and disappeared as the wall began to collapse.
There was no more sign of Amity.
A shield warrior screamed as the enhanced Titan backhanded him across the air, his head shattering.
“What the hell…?” A blonde woman had appeared in the suite’s doorway, her hair in two thick braids, her face round and tanned. Sharess, Dread Blaze in service to the Iron Vanguard.
“Damn it,” Alain said from somewhere.
Bravurn’s Shroud was still shedding thickening lava, the far end of the room plastered beneath Xandera’s assault, its lines and angles drowned. The heat was terrible. It baked Scorio’s lungs, cindered his throat, caused the edges of his scales to glow.