Bytra couldn’t move fast in such an enclosed space and swinging her hammer was dangerous.
She adjusted her grip right below the head of the Absolution, shortening its range but giving her fists the hardness of Davross and the destructive power of the bolts of lightning conjured by her horn.
Lith freed Ragnarök from its bloody scabbard and shortened the blade to not be impeded by the nearby walls or be a threat to his allies. The angry blade cut through the enemies like a hot knife through butter, guided by the Full Guard enchantment of the Voidwalker armor.
Solus combined the Full Guard of her armor and the shortened grip on her hammer to squash living and undead like bugs. She had turned the elemental crystals on the Fury black, painting the Davross into an obsidian surface.
The darkness magic snuffed life forces and smashed blood cores alike, denying those risen from the grave the gifts of undeath.
Yet she felt scared. She had no idea why, but she felt scared.
As her heart kept pounding harder and harder in her chest, she called upon the Sage Staff and used its enchantments to turn the area around her into a kill zone. What her arms missed, the elemental crystals and evil eyes of the Staff would destroy.
‘Something is very wrong.’ She tried focusing on the ongoing battle but her brain was screaming at her. ‘This attack is doomed to fail. Numbers are meaningless against overwhelming power.
‘If I know that, so does our hidden enemy. Then what does he hope to achieve by wasting so many powerful undead? Why am I scared?’
***
The battle had barely started and half of Maergron’s minions were already destroyed for good. Based on his calculations, it would take less than ten more seconds for the second wave to be destroyed.
If things didn’t change.
The Fae looked with a smile at the bronze basin and at its crimson content that was seconds away from spilling on the floor. The attack was just the first step toward victory. Even with his support and the power of the Garden, the lesser undead had too many limitations.
Maergron had overcome their weak constitution by exploiting the regenerative abilities of Fae like him. The vines attached to his minions took the power from the Garden and converted it into life force but there was only so much world energy the vines could take before burning like it had happened to Ryka.
By being connected with his undead, however, the excess energy was fed to the blood cores, preserving Maergron’s tissues and empowering his creations. Undead could only feed upon members of their own race but their creator was an exception.
Not only could they feed off his vitality, but also one single drop of the creator’s life force was worth hundreds of times the energy that the undead would have gained from the best alternative source.
Maergron used the Garden to trigger a loop that made the almost black blood cores of the lesser undead turn red in mere seconds. The process bestowed upon the undead the raw physical strength to fight on par with the Awakened and made their limbs hard enough to damage the armor.
With no intelligence, spells, or bloodline abilities, however, even if the lesser undead reached the full-red blood core it would never be enough against a skilled opponent. That was what the vines were for.
They fueled the undead with fresh power, they poisoned the enemies’ bodies with Maergron’s seeds and their cores with his mana. And that wasn’t all.
The Fae filled his cupped hands with Strider’s blood, feeling the power of lightning coursing through him and bestowing his minions with his ability to accelerate. He reveled in seeing the stupid feline’s shocked expression when the zombies started to follow his movements and outspeed his companions.
A second mouthful, this time from Ryka, increased the strength of the undead to the levels of an Emperor Beast and the blood cores boosted it further. The third mouthful was from the Naga, turning the clumsy movements of the animated corpses into a graceful and nimble dance.
The power of the Naga combined with the Titania’s strength and the Zouwu’s speed, allowing the undead to tap even more into the abilities of their unwilling donors.
Now the battle was at a standstill, the two sides equally matched. One had quality, but the other had quantity and still more blood from Maergron to drink upon.
“It’s sad that Liches and Abominations are dried wells.” The Fae sighed. “But luckily the other two don’t have such an issue. Let’s start with the heavyweight.”
Unbeknownst to him, he was referring to Solus who in the frenzy of battle tended to lose control over gravity fusion, making her steps much heavier than Lith’s.
When the blood filled Maergron’s hands, he felt his whole body tingling. Suddenly he was filled with euphoria, power, and knowledge.
New details and better specifics for his current projects came to his mind, making him feel like an idiot for missing for so long such simple and elegant solutions.
“How is this possible? Who does this blood belong to?” It was then that he noticed it. The blood was resonating with the Apprentice Ears which unlike its current owner recognized the heir of Menadion and resonated with her tower half in the attempt to restore the Master Ears.
“If this is what I get from touching it…” Maergron lost no time and brought the blood to his mouth, seeing it turn golden as he poured it through his lips. “Who has golden blood and why I don’t feel any different?”
The euphoria, power, and knowledge were all gone along with Solus’ blood. Away from her body and the tower, it had reverted to its energy form, turning golden first and then fading into speckles of light.
“No!” Maergron tried to salvage the miraculous blood but what was left in the bronze basin had turned golden as well and was disappearing.
“No, no, no!” He tried to store it in his dimensional amulet, but like everything it had done until that moment, Solus’ blood defied logic and refused to be contained.
***
“No, no, no!” Solus screamed at the top of her lungs in the tunnel above the temple. “They are killing me! These things are killing me!”
Her words didn’t make sense to her comrades. Due to her position in the formation, Solus had taken much fewer hits than the others. Between the spells from the Sage Staff, the power of her hammers, and her physical prowess, she had suffered just a couple of scratches.
That was on the outside. On the inside, the situation was much worse.
Solus wasn’t like any other being that was supposed to be alive. Her life force and mana core bore a deep, wide crack that constantly bled her life essence. Thanks to her bond with Lith and the tower, however, she recovered more than she lost.
Until that moment.
Maergron’s tendrils and spores found fertile ground in the cracks of her life force, spreading them wide and making them fester. His mana followed the stream of Solus’ bleeding mana to strike directly at her core, poisoning it.
