A rush of blades.

  Each swing moves faster than thought.

  My body, twisted by Zaenith's potion, blazes with power. Every nerve set alight, burning with energy.

  Beside me, Luna soars even swifter, her limbs streaked in blue light, veins glowing like lightning, visible beneath her skin. Together we move, an incarnation of wrath and violence.

  Spiders fall one after the other. Carapaces split, black eyes gouged, legs hacked apart mid-lunge. The floor glistens with black ichor.

  Maldor stands ahead. Motionless. Watching. Before him, gaping dark pools hang mid-air, tears in space, bleeding foul oil. From them, the spiders pour, birthed from rot and shadow.

  I roar, strength surging through every tendon, and seize a spider by its leg. I swing it overhead, muscles snapping taut, and hurl the writhing beast directly at Maldor’s unmoving form.

  But black tendrils lash out from the hovering pools and snatch the spider out of the air. Carrying the momentum, they swing it in a wide, whipping arc and hurl it straight back at me.

  "Fuck-" I throw myself to the side just in time. The spider's limbs are spread, splayed grotesquely, unbothered by the violent toss. Misses me by inches, slamming into the sticky ground and tumbling in a heap of twitching legs.

  A flash of blue.

  Luna, bisects the beast mid-roll. Her short sword cleaves through its body like a hot wire through wax.

  I glance to her side. The spiders she had been fighting lie strewn in pieces. Mine are now gone too.

  That's all of them...

  I turn back to Maldor, but he's vanished. The black pools still hang in the air, pulsing, but the man himself is gone.

  "Gaaahh!" Luna's scream jolts me, and I whip around.

  Acid burns through her leather jerkin. She rips it off with a grunt, tearing the crumbling material and hurling it aside. Black and purple lesions coat her back.

  Ahead, Maldor levels Nsam Nkrante and looses another toxic arrow. But Luna's faster, she blurs around it, closing the distance in a blink. Just feet away-

  -but from Maldor's own shadow, a tendril lashes out and spears her ankle. She stumbles, falling hard, tumbling forward and skidding to a stop at his feet.

  "Hmph."

  Maldor swings down.

  She raises her blade just in time, deflecting the first blow, then another, each clash ringing out. She scrambles backward, ducking a slicing arc aimed at her throat, twisting her hips to evade a shadow whip snapping from below. Then she counters, slashing at his ribs.

  But he’s already gone, flying sideways, skating across the shadows as though they were water.

  He thrusts the blade toward Luna and another arrow of acid blasts out, she rolls aside just in time. Before she can rise, Maldor is already above her again, his blade crashing downward. She catches it with her shortsword, the weapons grinding together inches from her face as she strains under the force.

  "Hrrmm!!"

  I swing from behind, but Maldor glides away, the shadows shifting beneath him. He skates sideways and spins to face us. The shadows around him ripple, more tendrils emerging.

  Luna presses the attack and I rush out to join her, cutting through the dark whips. He batters at our blades with his own steel, but Luna slips low under a sweeping arc, pivots sharply, and hooks her shortsword under the crossguard of Nsam Nkrante. With a twist of her wrist and a hard shoulder shove, she rips it from his grasp and sends the weapon clattering across the stone.

  I don’t hesitate, surging forward with both hands on my sword, muscles bulging, swinging with all the strength the potion gave me, blade arcing for a fatal blow-

  "Bl?ctr?l."

  The word reverberates through the air like a curse, so loud and deep. I feel it in my bones.

  From Maldor’s outstretched hand, black tendrils erupt and stab through the air, piercing both Luna and me. They lift us effortlessly, holding us aloft, writhing with cold power.

  “GaaaArrrghg!!!” We scream in unison, agony coursing through every nerve as the tendrils burrow into our flesh like drills of ice and shadow.

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  I can feel it creeping into my mind, like mold blooming behind the eyes. Memories and sensations, long buried, are dredged up unbidden. Emotions twist, contort, refract. Is Rose. Zaenith. Emily. Fang. A whispering chorus hums in my ears, threading through my skull with voices that are not my own.

  And then I see her.

  The Mother.

  Eyes vast and wet like obsidian moons, peering into my core. She looks inside me, uncoiling through my brain. My flesh shudders beneath her attention. My will bends, a great pressure weighing down on my soul.

  She is waiting for me.

  For her rebirth.

  Maldor picks up his shortsword with visible disdain. "This is a waste of my mana," he mutters, almost to himself. "A battle this trivial isn't worthy of it."

  But through the corrupted tendrils still burrowed in my flesh, my sight twists. The veil parts. I see the world as it truly is. Mana pulses through the threads of this cavern, vast rivers of energy coursing through stone and web. The suspended bodies glow with inner light, each of them, their lifeforce drawn out and funneled into the heart of the chamber.... Where grotesque cocoon swells, brighter now, greedily feeding on the siphoned essence.

  More than that, is Maldor’s own mana, braided into the great construct. He’s feeding it with his own life force, more than any of the others. The webbed arteries of power that stretch into the cocoon pulse in time with him.

  “You've diminished my offering,” he says, turning toward us. “You two will make up the loss.”

  He raises a skeletal hand. “Feed the Mother... and know redemption.”

  Panic seizes me as another spider emerges from the nearest dark pool, its limbs clicking as it scuttles toward us. I struggle to move, to fight, to do anything. My limbs twitch, seized by the corrupted tendrils still embedded in my flesh. My muscles writhe under foreign command, contorting in resistance. But I can't break free.

  My mind begins to dim, the last threads of will flickering as his control suffocates my thoughts, burying me beneath his will.

  Fear takes me.

  Terror.

  And the overwhelming instinct.... to survive.

  My eyes blaze, will, burning like fire. I scream out, I twist, forcing my arm upward, dragging a single word from the depths of my soul.

  “H?tbolt!!!”

  Flames erupt from my outstretched fingers, a culmination of my trials, every ounce of will forced through one final act. The bolt sears through the air and slams into Maldor’s chest.

  "Grraaaannngh-"

  He screams, stumbling back, flames engulfing his robes in an inferno of orange and gold. The tendrils holding us convulse, shuddering, then snap and writhe away as the magic falters.

  We crash to the stone floor, gasping for air.

  Luna clutches her head, eyes wild with disorientation, scanning frantically. Then she locks onto something behind me. Her expression hardens. She whips up her blade and throws.

  I duck instinctively, heart lurching-

  -but the weapon flies clean over and sinks into the skull of a spider skittering toward us from the side.

  Without missing a beat, she turns to Maldor. He tears off his burning robe, revealing a gaunt, skeletal frame carved with glowing runes, now flickering with mana.

  Luna wastes no time. She grabs the second blue potion from her belt and downs it in one swallow. Mana ripples across her skin as she draws her wand, lips curling.

  “Līgetstr?l!”

  Her voice is swallowed by the crash of thunder as a bolt of blinding blue lightning tears from the rod. It slams into Maldor’s chest with a crack like the sky splitting open. He lets out a twisted, guttural scream as the force lifts him clean off his feet, his charred form hurtles backward, limbs flailing, before vanishing into the yawning pit with a scream that echoes long after he disappears.

  Luna collapses to her knees, gasping, trembling from the effort. I stagger beside her, falling to one knee, breath catching in my throat.

  Even now, I feel the lingering touch of his magic, dark tendrils slithering behind my eyes, gnawing at the edges of my thoughts. I shake my head, trying to cast it out, but it clings stubbornly.

  I crawl toward Luna. "You alright?"

  She nods faintly, wincing, one hand pressed to her temple. Her breath is shallow, her face pale. But when her eyes drift to the pit, a small, weary smile touches her lips. "We did it."

  I follow her gaze, but the sight unsettles me. The mana still flows from the cocoon, from the bodies suspended above. Maldor may have fallen, but his spell lingers.

  “What do we do about all this?” I ask, voice low.

  Luna frowns, scanning the cavern again, as if hoping the answer might be hidden in the threads of mana still pulsing through the air.

  She turns to me, lips parting. "We best-"

  Her voice cuts off with a sickening snap as a black tendril bursts from the pit, spearing into her chest.

  "Luna!!" I scream her name as the tendrils wrap around her limbs, yanking her off her feet. She’s dragged backward like a ragdoll, toward the edge of the pit. Just before she disappears over the rim, she stops, suspended.

  And from the depths, Maldor rises.

  His body is charred, blackened nearly to the bone, skin sloughing in places, yet still he floats upward, weightless, pulsing with raw, burning mana. The air warps around him. His voice is ragged, half a rasp, half a whisper.

  "You've impressed me, apprentice. I did not think you capable of such magic. A wise secret to keep."

  The mana between him and the cocoon is gone, I can see it. Their link severed. He no longer feeds the construct.

  He turns his eyes to the pit.

  "Forgive me, Mother," he says softly. "But I must ask for a brief reprieve…."

  Luna’s body floats upward like a lifeless doll, suspended by the tendrils that extend from Maldor’s fingers. Each subtle movement of his hand pulls invisible threads, and her body obeys with eerie precision.

  Her head jerks upright. Her eyes snap open.

  But they are no longer gold.

  Black as pitch, bottomless and glossy, her gaze fixes on me, void of recognition, filled only with alien malice. Her hand rises, clutching her sword, and without hesitation she pivots toward me.

  Then she surges.

  She rips through the air like a missile, blade flashing. I barely raise my sword in time, steel clanging against hers. "Luna!" I shout. "Stop! You're-"

  Maldor’s voice slithers between us, low and final. “Pointless. You resisted the first casting, but your minds are weakened. She is mine now.”

  Luna stabs again, faster this time. I parry, barely. My balance falters. I twist and kick her square in the stomach. She flies backward, slamming to the ground with a grunt.

  But Maldor twitches his fingers...

  And she springs upright with unnatural ease, limbs jerking into place like a marionette.

  “Careful,” he warns. “This is your ally. Do you truly wish to harm her?”

  My grip tightens around the hilt of my sword. I take the second strength draught from my belt and drink it down, its fire spreading through my limbs, empowering me further as I face the possessed body of my ally.

  Luna...