"Make your offer, but know this. If Friya dies, you'll be next." Lith said.
Axiran had no physiological need to swallow, yet he did it and did it hard.
'What's happening? Verhen has suddenly beco much stronger, and his aura keeps growing. I need to be careful.' He thought.
"I have your friend, your precious Thundercrash…" The Blood Warlock said while taking the railgun off Friya's back. "And all the artifacts Faluel entrusted your fellow disciple.
"Yet they are not worth the trouble of making you and the entire Hydra bloodline my enemy. You, instead, have the Rezar, but what good is he to you? You are already a Light Master, and your friend Nalrond can teach you everything the Rezar can.
"Give the Rezar to , and I'll let your friend go. You have my word I won't reveal Nalrond's secret to anyone. After all, if I did, I would also betray myself and unlike you, I don't have Guardians covering my back.
"Why should the Council chase your Agni friend when they can much more easily snatch my Rezar? Do as I say, and everybody wins. I'll even help you get rid of Iraka. Nobody knows she is here, and if we join our forces, nobody will."
Axiran used a healing spell on Friya to stem the bleeding and buy her so ti. She was getting weaker by the second, and she was of no use to him dead.
"I might have spared you if you had pulled your spear out of her wound and healed her. Now it's too late." Lith replied.
A wave of his hand released one of the Silverwing's Annihilation stored inside the Cannon Vault. The anti-Guardian spell was focused in a small magic circle, half the size of an adult man.
Exactly the size of Axiran's upper body that wasn't covered by Friya's kneeling figure.
The Annihilation blasted through the Crimson Dragon and Raging Phoenix spells like they were wet paper. It overpowered the defensive arrays that shielded the Blood Warlock and pierced through his Spirit Barrier, hitting him like a space rocket.
The beam of energy pinned Axiran to the wall and vaporized him from head to waist, but it wasn't enough to kill him. Blood Maelstrom strengthened his body, and his vital core was hidden in his right foot, away from the epicenter of the concussive blast.
At the sa ti, a gentle tendril of Spirit Magic pushed the spear out of Friya's chest and sealed her wound while the Warping Mirror brought her to safety.
"You take care of her. I'll deal with the rest." Lith combined the powers of the Heart and the Watchtower floors, conjuring a space-compressing array that foiled Iraka's attempt to Warp away.
'What?' She had silently cast the spell as a contingency asure and kept it at the ready in case Lith killed Axiran or one of her disciples. 'I have a bright violet core just like Verhen and five more cores at the peak of the deep violet.
'How can he suppress us all?'
"Friya!" Nalrond struggled against Protector again, and this ti the Skoll let him go.
The Agni put his hands on the gaping wound, nding the flesh and flooding Friya's body with his breathing technique. He needed to assess the damage on her life force and check if the spear had coated the gash with poison or imbued it with a long-lasting spell.
Friya's chest healed as quickly as her armor self-repaired, and her face regained color, but her vitality kept dropping.
"Her core!" Nalrond cried in despair. "The fucker cracked her mana core! She's dying!"
At those words, Lith and Solus gave their mana one last push and took control of the mana geyser. The entire cave warped around them, stretching over 50 ters upwards and (166') thrice across.
The walls, floor, and ceiling moved back as if they were retreating in fear as the tower took form deep below the ground and absorbed the world energy to fuel its floors.
Lith tapped into the Cannon Valt and shot another Silverwing's Annihilation, but Axiran had already retreated to the safety of his magical formations. Dozens of concentric Spirit Barriers ford around him while the offensive arrays combined their strength to take the Annihilation head-on.
Axiran's Spirit Barriers shattered, the offensive arrays collapsed, and his body exploded in a fountain of gore. Yet he survived. Barely.
His blood core had been damaged by the second blast, forcing him to redirect the blood fueling the Raging Phoenix and the Crimson Dragon to rebuild his body from scratch before it was too late.
"Stay away!" Iraka focused all the mana she and her apprentices could muster to overco the space-compressing array and failed. "Stay away, you monster!"
Flowing Strength gave her vitality while her apprentices used Invigoration non-stop, but it wasn't enough. Iraka cast six tier five Spirit Spells at once just to see them crash against a Silverwing's Bastion that covered Lith's half of the cave.
Lith grunted in fury, using the Hands, Ears, and Eyes of nadion to identify the focus points of the mines' defensive arrays and destroy them. They were far away from him and fueled by the mana geyser, but that wasn't enough to protect them.
The world energy was now under his control and he only needed a thought to cut off the arrays from their energy supply. Without it, a re chore magic spell undid them all.
"I warned you." Lith swung Ragnarök and released the Tower Blade Spell, Red Ruin, which the Mouth had brought to completion. "You should have listened."
A blood-red tidal wave of energy flooded the cave. It cut the Flowing Strength array first and then diced those who sustained it. Axiran converted his entire body into energy and squeezed his blood core dry, keeping just enough mana and life force to keep himself alive.
He imbued every iota of that energy into the Crimson Dragon and Raging Phoenix, turning them into ferocious beasts that could hold their ground against a Divine Beast each. His armor wrapped around his core, forming a thick sphere of Adamant shrouded by a Spirit Barrier.
Red Ruin shredded the constructs, the barrier, and the enchanted tal without ever slowing down its advance. Iraka and Axiran had different ans and abilities, yet they died at the sa ti.
"Solus?" Lith used the Watchtower powered by the Ears to make sure there was no survivor, that no one had run away, or was close enough to the scene who could later connect him to the murders.
They were alone and that was the only silver lining of the situation.
"Way ahead of you!" She replied while Warping everyone inside the tower the mont the fight was over. "I've moved Friya to the Infirmary and I'm diverting all the power stored in the Elental Storage to the life support tank."
"Is it working?" Nalrond and the others stepped near the tank.
Friya was floating in a violet liquid, her left arm already missing.
"No." Solus' fingers danced over the control panel like a pianist's during a solo. "I slowed down the collapse of her mana core, but she's still dying. Why isn't the tower fixing her, Mom? Why hasn't the Bleed kicked in already?
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