Dan triggered Merella’s killswitch through his System. She didn’t even flinch. With a mental frown, he moved his sword into a guard position. He had to try. He’d given Merella too many chances to take her at her word here.
He threw a pair of Forcebolts at her, unsurprised as they rippled into nonexistence on her spellshield. She hovered higher in the air, a cyclone of flame projecting from each hand, tracking across the floor as Dan wove toward her.
Behind him, Dan’s soldiers began to filter in, only for a mix of Orakh warriors and commanders to immediately charge them. He didn’t have a moment to spare. Dan circled Merella, tossing low-powered spells to probe her spellshield while she flew above him, a glint in her eye as she did the same.
Dan parried a firebolt, the purple flat of his blade slapping the spell from the air. Merella cackled as she threw burst after burst of fire at him. He gritted his teeth, sidestepping a second blast as they continued their game of cat and mouse, while the Orakh hordelord watched on.
Neither of them had spells capable of punching through the others’ spellshield. Well, Railgun would do the trick, but he just didn’t see Merella holding still long enough for him to hit her. Instead, they were stuck trading feints as each side tried to run the other out of mana.
If he could actually reach her, Dan was confident his sword could carve through her shields in a couple of blows. Unfortunately, Merella remained in the air, cackling madly as she lobbed small balls of fire and plasma at him. Even using his normal trick of jumping from force bubble to force bubble, Dan doubted that he’d be able to catch up to the flying elf.
Merella dodged two more Forcebolts before the third caught her in the shins, spinning her vertically in the air. As she shrieked, flames erupted from her body. She dove toward Dan, swooping out of the air with both of her arms extended.
Dan grinned, igniting his own flame aura before leaping toward Merella. He couldn’t see the surprise on her flame-shrouded face, but it didn’t matter. His left arm snagged around the back of her shield while the sword in his right rammed into the unseen barrier.
The flames burned at him as Merella increased their heat. Dan could feel his resistance rune struggling to keep up as his skin began to redden beneath his own aura. With a grunt, he hacked at her spellshield, frantically trying to collapse it before the elf cooked him alive.
They tumbled through the air, held aloft by Merella’s spell as they careened around the throne room. Dan slammed into the severed head of a rhino-like creature, mounted as a trophy on the wall. Its head slammed into his lower back, forcing the air from his lungs.
Merella wrapped her legs around Dan, bracing herself between him and the trophy before she raised an arm above her head, a ball of flame growing in her outstretched hand. Frantically, he wrapped his free arm around the trophy before launching a Forcebolt at her hand.
It impacted her spellshield, deflecting her hand to the side. A massive blast of energy slammed into the landing craft’s walls, melting a massive swath of rock and metal into magma.
Briefly, Merella’s face became visible, surprise and hatred warring across her features as her flame aura flickered in time with the spell’s discharge. Dan gritted his teeth and stabbed her once again, barely penetrating her shields and digging the point of the blade into her upper thigh.
She kicked off of his shield, leaving him stranded on the trophy as she flew back, charging another spell. He slapped her with another pair of Forcebolts, damaging her spellshield further. Before she could release her reply, Dan let himself drop to the ground, activating Gravitational Easing and twisting his body so that he could land in a roll, hopefully dissipating the force of his fall.
Another column of fire tore into the wall just above Dan, close enough to cause his shield to sparkle as it began dissipating the heat. He checked his mana reserves, a slight frown on his face. As powerful as he was, it was clear that Merella had spent hundreds of years killing awakened creatures. Her mana stockpiles far exceeded his own, and a battle of attrition was not one he would win.
He glanced at the entrance to the room. His soldiers were beating back the Orakh. The commanders were more than a match for any one soldier, but working in teams, they were able to keep the huge monsters from inflicting fatal wounds, all while pounding them with fifty-caliber repeaters and flamethrowers.
The huge Orakh on the throne watched on impassively. Merella had dubbed it Garnash, but whatever the creature’s name, it seemed wholly unaffected by the massive casualties inflicted on the Orakh guarding him. Instead, most of his attention seemed to be focused on the battle between Merella and Dan.
His attention snapped back to his battle as Merella landed on the floor of the throne room across from him, massive white hot balls of fire enveloping both hands. She eyed him up and down before sneering.
“Thrush,” she hissed, stalking toward him. “It seems like you learned a couple things about running and hiding since we last met. If you plan on claiming the mantle of a mage, fight like one. Stand tall and trade spells with me, if you dare.”
“You were the one flying in the air,” Dan replied, circling her as she approached, prepared to bat down a Fireball at a moment’s notice. “I don’t see how I could fight you properly when you were the one running away.”
She threw a Fireball the size of Dan’s head at him, forcing him to throw himself into a roll to avoid the attack. “Your petty goads mean nothing to me. For what you have done to me, I will wipe your name from the very annals of history. I will burn you to cinders and use your ash to fertilize a small garden. This will not end with a clean and painless death for you, Thrush.”
“Other than win a fight against you and your nephew?” Dan replied, sprinting at her in a serpentine pattern to divert her attacks. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I spared you the first time, and I made an effort to spare you during the second encounter, when I could have easily killed you. I wouldn’t think any of my actions were unforgivable.”
“But you cheated!” she shouted, backpedaling as she sprayed streams of liquid fire onto the throne room’s floor, igniting it. “The first time you had allies, and the second, you used the slave machines in my blood to disable me. You killed my nephew in front of me then, when I demanded a duel of honor, you broke the rules. Why wouldn’t I be mad?”
“Mad enough to side with the Orakh?” Dan bit out as he dove into the flames. His thermal rune dispersed the worst of it, but his clothes crackled and smoked from the heat. “You do realize that whatever he’s offering you, it’s a lie. Once he gets what he wants, Garnash is just going to eat you.”
“You won’t break our alliance with some pretty human words,” Merella replied, throwing a wall of flame at Dan that pushed his spellshield to its breaking point. “We don’t advertise it, but some of the more enterprising members of our family have come to clandestine agreements with the horde for centuries. It’s frowned upon amongst the other elves, but with enough money, magic, or information, even the Orakh will form a temporary alliance.”
She smirked, summoning another giant ball of fire just as Dan approached sword range. “With you, human, the price was more satisfying than most. They wanted me to gut this benighted planet’s defenses. That meant killing you, a task I would want to accomplish whether or not the Orakh provided their support.
“All I have to do,” Merella continued as the ball of flame coalesced into a sword and shield just in time to parry a wild strike from Dan. “…is kill you and ensure that human resistance is crushed, and Garnash will give me a shuttle to escape this awful world. I help him, he helps me, and everyone goes away happy.”
Dan grunted, ducking under a flaming sword and lashing out with his leg, catching the elf behind her knee and knocking her to the ground. Before Merella could recover, he rammed down his sword with both hands, barely punching through her spellshield to leave a two-to-four-inch deep incision in her shoulder.
“You can’t believe that!” Dan shouted back, summoning a force bubble to deflect a lance of fire launched by the downed elf. “The Orakh only exist to consume and expand. As soon as you outlive your usefulness, Garnash is going to eat you!”
He danced to the side, avoiding an eruption of flame and molten rock from the ground behind him. Unfortunately, giving her a moment to breathe was all it took for Merella to regain her feet, eyes blazing.
“He’s right, you know,” the giant Orakh rumbled, amusement on his wide, craggy face. “I plan on eating whoever wins this fight. The Horde doesn’t have allies. Just those it plans on eating later.”
“See?” Dan’s eyes flashed as he gave the elf more space. “If we work together, we could bring down the Orakh and end their invasion. Then, you and I could settle things, and you’d be free to leave if you won. Humanity isn’t the enemy of your people! We just want to be left alone.”
She glared at him, disgust in her eyes. Dan barely had a chance to summon another force bubble as she erupted into a cyclone of flames, dozens of tendrils slicing toward him, only to be slowed by his spell for a fraction of a second. The bubble collapsed, but Dan had already pumped enough mana into his strength runes to jump into the air.
A second later, Dan landed on another force bubble. His eyes flickered to the entryway where his forces struggled to make progress against the Orakh. Most of the average warriors were on the ground, smoking and riddled with holes. The commanders fought on, tossing powered armor around like children’s toys as their giant weapons rose and fell.
Gritting his teeth, Dan began to cast Railgun. Merella wasn’t going to back down, and he was uncertain that he could beat her in an open fight. Even if he won, it would take minutes that his soldiers didn’t have, and he would stagger out the other end devoid of mana and wounded.
He needed to win here and now. Holding still would give her a chance to target him, but with the help of his thermal rune, that was a risk that Dan was going to need to take.
“You don’t understand, Thrush.” Merella’s eyes spat hatred at him as she took his sudden lack of movement as an excuse to deliver a monologue. “I’d prefer not to die, but given how you’ve dishonored me, I’d rather be eaten by him than help you and survive. You killed my nephew in front of me, cheated to win a duel against me, and enslaved me. Because of you, I had to pretend to respect that simpering Ibis fool.”
Flames ignited in both of her hands. “If House Amberell knew what had happened to me,” she continued, madness in her voice, “I would have been killed out of hand. The only way to cleanse this dishonor is with blood, and it must either be your blood or mine. I am a dead woman, unless I can bring you down here. If I must die, I’d prefer to die with my honor intact.
“Do your worst, human.” She sneered at the constructs of mana growing in front of Dan. “But know that, if you fail, I will erase you from existence with the fire of a star itself.”
Dan released the spell. She didn’t even move, trusting in her spellshield to stop any magic he could throw at her.
The slug shattered her shield like a hammer striking a wineglass. For a brief moment, Dan thought he saw a look of shock on her face. It must have been his imagination. Before he could react, Merella erupted in flames. The shockwave threw Dan off of the force bubble and across the chamber.
His shoulder and head slammed into the wall, and suddenly Dan was surrounded by whirling motes of light. Then the heat was gone.
He blinked, his vision blurry. Where Merella once stood, now there was a gaping hole. Beneath, he could barely make out another vast cavern filled with eggs.
The Orakh Chief stood, hefting his weapon. With heavy footfalls, he descended his dias toward the center of the throne room.
