Redmane halted at the top of the stairs, as a thought struck him.

  Vos glanced at his father out of the corner of his eye. He stood at the top of the stair as well, gazing down into the darkness of the caverns below.

  “Having second thoughts?” he asked.

  “No,” said Redmane. “An idea.”

  Corpus: 57,762

  Gnosis: 1070

  He created ten red birds with short but strong wings. To each he gave Astral Stalker and Flame of Redmane, and enough Gnosis for a single shot of each.

  One by one, they formed from the flesh of the palm of his hand and took off, flying as fast as their beating wings would propel them. He bid them to find, and burn, one group of legionnaires each.

  If it worked, the flames would feed his Wrath before the fight would even begin.

  Redmane turned to follow Vos down the curving stone stairs, which soon became an unevenly sloped path down into the darkness. The transition felt like going backward in time, from uniform steps and surfaces shaped by human hands to the natural stone. Here, there were no torches to light the way.

  But this deterred neither Redmane nor Vos, who possessed eyes keen enough to see every contour of the cavern walls and floor, even in near-total darkness. They descended in silence, walking next to one another with Vos slightly in the lead, his golden sword banished to whatever hidden place he used to store his things. Redmane wondered if it was like Soulspace.

  In the quiet, he wondered about several things.

  How had Vos escaped and brought the Morholts with him? Was it a peculiarity of their connection as father and son, or some failsafe Vos had fed his father’s all devouring incarnation? Why had they appeared to surface at an Abyssal Well? Was his own soul somehow connected to the Abyss?

  The more he learned, the more there was to learn. The answer to one question spawned three more questions.

  Vexing.

  The cavern descended at a gentle gradient, sometimes expanding and sometimes narrowing, but never so much that it became cramped. It grew cooler the farther they descended from the dry desert air, the darkness and the porous stone walls insulating them.

  He felt a surge of power in his body, as the first of his little birds found its mark.

  Wrath (4)

  A few moments more, and the second splashed a group of legionnaires with flame.

  Wrath (9)

  More and more found targets, and as they did so the flame in Redmane’s belly grew more intense, fed by the flesh of the Numantians.

  Wrath (22)

  And then he felt the last of them exhaust their supply of Gnosis. It was over quickly, but it would give him a great surge of strength with which to open the battle. And perhaps even bring about its swift denouement.

  Wrath (45)

  Redmane and Vos walked in silence. The cave gently curved as it descended, until at last, it opened out into a vast cavern.

  Seeing it through the eyes of a little spawn did not do it justice.

  They faced a vast, vaulted gallery beneath the earth, large enough for a city the size of the one above their heads. Most of it was taken up by an underground lake, its waters as dark as an Abyssal Well, but Redmane could see that the four entrances to this cavern in the north, south, east and west led to rough stone walkways sloping down its walls, which then became paths across the water to a central island.

  And there lay the last Seal.

  Wrath (90)

  Redmane realized he was holding his breath.

  He shook it off, and continued down the path.

  As the distant circle of bones drew closer and closer, gradually, Redmane noticed the force of his heartbeat. The hair raising on his arms, and at the nape of his neck. He felt his increasing breathlessness, even a touch of light-headedness. He was a few yards away from the completion of a journey of eons. Truly he did not know what would emerge from it, and a part of him acknowledged the unsettling possibility that his son may be right about it all.

  But he’d come too far to stop now.

  For good or ill, the end was near.

  Wrath (135)

  He glanced to the side, and found the face of Vos tight with distress, turmoil in the eyes.

  “Where is this trap you spoke of,” said Redmane.

  Vos looked for a moment as if he would not answer. Then he forced his gaze to shift to Redmane. “You’ll see it when the Dragon is slain.”

  Redmane nodded. Took a breath to steady himself. Then he stepped into the circle.

  Wrath (180)

  Directly before him was the Seal itself, a flaring, surging sphere of power whose glow brightened when he drew near. It swelled, pressing against the cylinder of force containing it, as if reaching for him.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  And then the Dragon coalesced behind it.

  It towered over the Seal. It towered over everything.

  From the first hint of its outline, it was plain that this beast would be half again as large as the Manticore, the Sphinx, the Gryphon or the Kirin. The first things to form were the wings, immense pinions which stretched out to nearly the length of the entire circle. Then a long neck, and at its peak a pair of tall, curved horns, a head with burning red eyes and a maw of dagger-like teeth. The body, with four sturdy legs ending in wickedly taloned feet and a tail capped with spikes of bone, was the size of a house. Its black scales gleamed in the roiling light of the Seal.

  Wrath (225)

  Baravas the Dragon

  Monster Type: Primordial

  Level 500

  Redmane’s heart burned with exhilaration. The Wrath in his guts swelled like magma from the depths of the center of the earth, threatening to burst him open from within.

  It was time to let it out.

  Wrath (0)

  +450 Might

  +450 Grace

  +450 Fortitude

  +450 Armor

  +450 Evasion

  The fire flowed through his veins, and deep into the fibers of his bones and musculature. It raced along the electric pathways linking his mind and body, magnifying even the tiniest bond to immense levels. Redmane had never felt so aware of his physical self, down to its smallest, most invisible constituents.

  From head to toe, he thrummed with divine power.

  His enhanced awareness extended outward, to the circle and the sphere of power contained within the Seal, to the giant form of the Dragon towering over him, feeling its cavernous lungs expanding, its heart thundering in its chest, to the quickened heartbeat of his own son, who stood with his eyes fixed on Redmane, unrestrained awe in his expression.

  The awe he understood. Surely he was the strongest being on the world of Volos, in this brief span of time.

  And soon it wouldn’t be so brief.

  The Dragon rose to its full height before Redmane, its terrible face lit from below by the volatile light of the Seal, and in answer he brought forth the wings of the Manticore to rise with it. To bring him up to eye level.

  The effort barely required one beat of his wings.

  The next beat he aimed at the Dragon’s face, and there was so much Might behind that buffet of his wings that the Dragon went skidding backwards, its talons shrieking across the stone floor trying to find purchase.

  It roared in defiance, and in the back of its open maw there was the beginning of a glow of red flame.

  Redmane folded his wings to shield himself an instant before a river of fire engulfed him.

  When the flame cleared, he was gone.

  Or so it seemed, In actuality he was now behind and above the Dragon’s head, a claw raised to strike down with such force that the blow blasted off one of its horns, which went spinning off into the darkness ahead of a spray of blood and gleaming scales.

  The Dragon screeched in pain and whipped its head around, using its remaining horn as if it were the end of a flail. But Redmane was gone already, and the blow, which would have felled a castle tower like a boulder shot from a catapult, struck naught but empty air.

  Redmane had swooped around to the front of the creature, swinging his claw diagonally downward, carving out four lines of bright red blood across the Dragon’s neck and chest and again driving it back with such force that the grip of its claws on the stone barely saved it from going over the side of the small island and down into the water.

  Instead, it took flight. With a beat of its own powerful wings it swept upward, charged and loosed another gout of fiery breath, and the path of Redmane’s ascent arced around that blazing cone on his way back to the Dragon’s head.

  Redmane felt impressed by the Dragon’s stalwart resistance to even two blows from him in this state.

  It wouldn’t take much more.

  The scales were weighted on the opposite side now.

  In the beginning, the Manticore nearly ended his journey as quickly as it began.

  Somewhere along the way, he felt the vastness of the soul of Kraal dwarfing his own.

  Now he was the giant, and the Dragon was his prey. Their relative statures were most deceptive.

  The outcome appeared to be a foregone conclusion. Vos apparently shared this opinion, as he simply stood and watched with a growing sense of dismay evident in his facial expression.

  Redmane grinned when he noticed it, in the midst of a dive away from another blast of flaming breath.

  If the lad was impressed now, his jaw would hit the stones when he boosted his power level again. For the Flame of Redmane still burned out there on the battlefield.

  Wrath (45)

  Wrath (90)

  Wrath (135)

  +270 Might

  +270 Grace

  +270 Fortitude

  +270 Armor

  +270 Evasion

  The Dragon’s talons, vast and mighty, strong enough to smash down a thousand pound iron portcullis, missed their mark again and again.

  The doom of its breath failed to touch Redmane, even as its neck curled and snapped like a whip, spraying that crimson fire in every direction.

  The snap of its jaws echoed throughout the huge cavern, but ever did it bite at empty air. Unoccupied space.

  Redmane was too quick. His senses too keen. His body too strong.

  But still the Dragon fought him. Not as a raging animal, but with the pride of a warrior. With dignity, and valor. Despite its great size, its movements were as graceful as they were powerful, its wings carrying it through the air as if it were weightless, its talons flashing in the light of its own flames as they fell upon Redmane from above, much as its comrade the Gryphon had done.

  Redmane’s heart pounded vigorously in his chest, as the might of his wings carried him clear of danger again and again, and his own claws struck true and hard, cleaving through the Dragon’s armored scales like they were silk.

  He could practically taste its blood as it sprayed from the wounds.

  His senses, heightened so far above even their normal level of sharpness, took in every detail at once, and his instinctive mind had the capacity to process it all.

  Most of all he was aware of a tingling sensation spreading from his burning core all the way to the tips of his claws and toes. A blazing well of vitality. The stuff of gods.

  For the first time, here and now, Redmane began to understand what the ascent to his former state would truly be like.

  And the Dragon, mighty as it was, was no god. Merely a monster.

  Redmane’s dipping evasion brought him close to the ground, so he landed. To bait a dive from the Dragon.

  It took the bait.

  He stood and watched it bank in the air, swoop up high overhead and twist around like a dancer in the air, only to suddenly flatten its wings back and drop like a stone, speeding through the air in a straight line down, fire breath sparking in its mouth to herald the moment of impact.

  One instant before it landed, its talons cratering the stone and sending up a spray of rocky shrapnel in every direction, Redmane leapt straight up.

  Not even Vos’s eyes could follow it.

  There was merely a blur of motion to suggest the vertical path of Redmane’s jump. Followed by a fountain of dark blood spurting straight up into the air as the Dragon’s head, and a generous section of its long neck, split into two vertical halves and fell apart.

  Level Up!

  Level 129 —> 130

  Level 130 —> 131

  Level 131 —> 132

  Level 132 —> 133

  Level 133 —> 134

  Quality Points awaiting allocation: 5

  Might 120 —> 125

  Out of the corner of his eye, Redmane noticed the look of grim determination on Vos’s face.

  He was thinking about the trap.

  Whatever it was, its effects would soon be upon him.

  Redmane’s eyes narrowed, and a frown touched the corner of his mouth.

  He’d collected a formidable array of powers on his journey. But he didn’t have the power to compel the truth from someone’s mind.

  Vos’s gaze shifted to Redmane, and it hardened the moment the son’s eyes met the father’s.

  The First Sovereign nodded toward the Seal.

  “Go on, Father,” he said. “Open it.”

  PATREON