Chapter 818 (2/2)

All for this.

The Spearman smiled, because there wasn’t a shred of his energy in the images that Shal carried around with him.

“It’s time to seize your destiny, Shal.” The Spearman said in a low voice. “We have waited so long for this; so much has been poured into strengthening you. You are the hope for Tellus. And it is time you make good on that promise.”

There was a flash of tightly controlled fury in Shal’s eyes at those words. The Spearman almost laughed; the fool was incensed by him. Likely by the manipulation that the Spearman used to get them all to this point.

But anger was useful. It was an excellent motivator. The Spearman would know; he had been angry for six hundred and thirty-two years.

Since the System took you from me, Ethe.

“So?” Shal asked in a tight voice. His face was twisted into a rigor mortis blankness as the man clearly struggled to not glare outright. “Who else need die-”

As if on cue, there was an explosion a few blocks distant from them. The shockwave shook the building. Immediately, Shal’s face drained of blood. In a whisper, he said, “There is no need to involve her.”

The Spearman kept the grin from his face, but only barely. Some part of him wanted to tell Shal that Rumera was only a piece of his own Spearsource that had unexpectedly gained sentience. Just to see Shal’s expression. But that impulse too was suppressed.

At first, the Spearman had been furious when he found out that, rather than being stolen, the Spearsoure appeared to have gained sentience and wandered away. It was relieving that he wasn’t being betrayed, but it also filled him with fear that the incarnations would once more spread his image across the land. It would ruin hundreds of years of work.

But when he realized he needed to use his own images to be the loser of this battle anyway, he had acknowledged the Spearsource’s usefulness. It rapidly empowered those who came into contact with. Especially fools like Silo, who didn’t possess half of the combat experience and sense that Shal had. As such, it was an easily slain villain.

For all that, the Spearman had dreaded allowing Shal to associate with Rumera. But it did serve as a convenient lever to force conflict now.

“Run toward destiny, boy,” The Spearman whispered, even as Shal leapt out the window and dashed toward the building in which Rumera had been waiting.

*****

“You need to let me go,” Randidly said evenly, looking at the Oracle. She was the weak point of the duo. If he could convince the Oracle.

“Impossible. You are an unpredictable element. You will only cause difficulties,” Versault said with a shake of his head. “You are young and impatient. It is known. But still-”

“You were right about me being betrayed,” Randidly said, his face twisted into a grimace. “You just… didn’t realize who had betrayed me. It’s just a theory, but you have to listen. If I’m right… this battle is going to go wrong. Someone is going to steal Shal’s thunder. Someone who is an expert at getting thunder stolen.”

*****

Shal pictured dozens of horrifying images as he dashed over to save Rumera. Her body contorting, blood dripping from her lips, her limbs broken and mangled, her eyes dead and empty, her hair tore away from her scalp...

None of them prepared him for what he found when he arrived at the spot of the battle.

Rumera sat, pale but unharmed, against the remnants of the destroyed wall.

In the center of the room, Silo stood, covered in ridged bone armor with a powerful veil of darkness rolling about him. Ghastly claws formed and dispersed as easy as the scales of fishes flashing in the shallows of the ocean. But even through that thick, cloying blackness, a bright spot of color was visible: there was a crimson needle sticking out of Silo’s chest.

With blank eyes, Silo slid off of the spear, blood spurting from the gaping hole in his chest to flood the small apartment. Above him, with ivory hair and fiery eyes, Azriel stood. A pair of vivid red ribbons extended from each hip on her leather armor, coiling behind her.

With an inexorable flow, darkness traveled up Azriel’s spear from Silo into her body.

She grinned at Shal. “And here Helen told me he was already dead. Foolish girl. Do not worry Shal, I will be much more thorough.”