From her position at the edge of the clearing, Johamma watched with growing concern. She could see words of Lodawg were having an effect on Jolthar, as he seed more angry now.
Nearby, hidden among old trees, Cleora gripped her dress with white-knuckled intensity.
"What is happening there? I want to go there, but Jolthar wouldn't like that, would he?" Cleora said, and Maelruth, as if she understood Cleora's words, grumbled, steam flared from nostrils. It seems not only Cleora was worried about Jolthar.
Back in the clearing, Lodawg launched another attack—this ti more asured, more calculated. Bronze talons swept toward Jolthar's midsection, followed imdiately by a kick aid at his knee.
The combination would have crippled any normal opponent.
But Jolthar was no longer entirely normal.
Chaos energy enhanced his reflexes beyond human limits. He slipped beneath the talon strike and sidestepped the kick with liquid grace. Horgath responded to his lightest touch, striking at Lodawg's extended arm.
The chaos blade bit deep into bronze flesh, but instead of the spray of crimson energy Jolthar expected, the wound simply... unmade itself. Where the blade passed, reality rippled and reford, leaving unblemished bronze in its wake.
Lodawg staggered back, looking at his arm in shock.
No damage remained, but the sensation had clearly disturbed him.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
Jolthar looked equally surprised. "I'm not entirely sure," he admitted. The blade in his hand pulsed, as if pleased with itself.
Understanding dawned in Lodawg's golden eyes. "It's not cutting matter," he said slowly. "It's cutting the bonds between reality and form." A new wariness entered his voice.
"Remarkable. Truly remarkable."
For a mont, scholarly appreciation seed to override his enmity. Lodawg, recognizing the brilliance in his weapons. He was amazed just how much the aura around Jolthar changed when he summoned the sword, and the chaos of the sword was an unparalleled primal force.
But the mont passed quickly.
Lodawg gathered crimson dragon-fire between his hands, compressing it into a sphere of devastating potential. "Let's see how your chaos blade fares against draconic essence," he challenged.
After eating the dragon, he had taken all of its fire and mana. The very essence of the black dragon and nacing power – all of them now belonged to Lodawg.
Maybe, if he could trigger a tribulation, he would now beco a deity himself. And if that happened, the chances of Jolthar defeating Lodawd were slim.
The sphere launched toward Jolthar, expanding as it travelled.
Instinctively, he raised Horgath to intercept it. Chaos energy t dragon-fire in a collision that sent shock waves across the clearing. This ti the collision caused even more devastation.
The nearby trees were uprooted and the ground cleaved, small hills cracked, and both combatants skidded backward from the point of impact.
There was no lake anymore. The water splashed everywhere. Nothing left of it.
Where the energies had t, a small tear appeared in the air itself—a montary glimpse into sowhere else, neither the mortal realm nor the Void, but so third state of existence. It sealed itself almost imdiately, but not before both Jolthar and Lodawg had glimpsed sothing moving within.
"Fascinating," Lodawg breathed, golden eyes alight with dangerous curiosity. "The energies are incompatible on a fundantal level. They're creating temporary breaches in the fabric of reality."
Jolthar felt the chaos blade's hunger intensify.
It wanted more—more conflict, more power, more chaos. He tightened his grip, asserting his will over the weapon. This was precisely why the Mad Sovereign's blade had been hidden all these years.
"Enough experintation," Jolthar said firmly.
"This ends now."
He centred himself, drawing the chaos from the blade.
Lodawg sensed the gathering power and responded in kind. Dragon-fire burned brighter around his bronze form, and magic sigils appeared on his tallic skin, glowing with dark magic power.
"Indeed it does," the transford magician agreed. "But not as you imagine."
The sun began to dip on the horizon, the light fading, but the battlefield burned brighter, and it seed to deepen as Jolthar and Lodawg faced one another across the ruined clearing.
The bronze hybrid golem that Lodawg had beco after consuming the dragon heart towered over Jolthar, crimson energy pulsing beneath tallic skin, golden dragon eyes gleaming with malice.
The chaos started to whisper around his blade, a faint hum of the energy lost in the wind.
"It is a pity that I have to kill you, boy," Lodawg rumbled, his voice carrying tallic undertones that echoed unnaturally. "If you were born in our clan, you would have been celebrated and even taken over the clan."
"You just had to be born as a bastard in that clan."
Fury flashed through Jolthar, but he contained it, channelling the emotion into focus rather than blind rage. "Shut your fucking mouth!! You filthy crossbreed mongrel!"
Bastard was the one word he hated being called as, and whenever soone referred to him as one, he couldn't stop his rage. Just like his anger, the chaos was rising, proportionally fuelled by his anger.
Seeing the change in Jolthar's deanour, Lodawg grinned, "What? Do you hate being called a bastard? But you are one. You don't know who your father is? And your mother couldn't tell you because she died."
"Oh, what a poor soul." Lodawg was just taunting the young man. He thought that if Jolthar was consud by his emotions, the chaos would eat him away.
Jolthar's grip on his blade tightened, the air around him distorting as the chaos whispered louder, weaving through the steel like tendrils of a storm barely held at bay. The hum of its energy was almost lost in the wind, but it was there—growing, pulsing, waiting.
Lodawg's grin widened, his eyes gleaming with amusent. "Did I strike a nerve, boy?" His tallic voice carried an unnatural resonance, like the grinding of steel against stone. "It must be miserable not knowing your own bloodline. No father. A dead mother. A bastard through and through."
"Aren't they treating you as one too?"
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