‘What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?’ The Void snarled. ‘Where the fuck have you been until now?’
‘I was protecting our life force. That’s my role. Just like yours is to keep this thing closed.’ The Voidfeather snarled back. ‘I came here once I realized that if we don’t stop the souls from getting in, there is no point fighting.’
The invaders caught in the Dragon’s feathers were absorbed and their essence purified. Their strength became the Voidfeather’s and the souls were thrown back into the Void from which they had come with no hope to ever return.
Yet there was only one Voidfeather Dragon and he only had four wings whereas the souls came in droves of thousands.
The four Demons of the Darkness fought with everything they had and everything they were, following the teachings of the mysterious man who had guided them in the previous battle of souls.
‘How come there are so many?’ Trion asked, his form that of his child self.
A version of Trion who had found the courage to turn his back to Orpal and protect his siblings from the abuse instead of turning a blind eye.
‘Compared to this, the last time was a walk in the park!’
‘Because the last time, no fucking old fool opened the door!’ The Void replied. ‘What you faced back then were the few souls that managed to slip through the cracks while I was fighting Jormun.
‘This time they are not slipping, they are charging inside the house. Where is Lith?’
‘Fighting alone, as always.’ Valia pointed at the core of Lith Verhen’s very being where he was giving his all to keep the angry souls away from his life force.
They drowned him in pain and he returned the favor in kind.
All the trauma, the abuse, and the loss he had suffered during his three lives had become his shield. They burned the weak-minded souls upon contact while the fury and hatred tuned into his sword and cleaved the strong-minded ones.
The invaders were many, but that was his body. His mind. His soul.
And as Lith often liked to remind his enemies, he was never alone.
Elysia cried, feeling that not even the resonance with her father was enough to help him. She cried harder as she felt his pain, yet no one answered. Desperation and instinct drove her to what she considered her only option.
Blue flames burst out of her body as well and her Tiamat form slowly gave way to a small Void Demon Dragon. The baby girl wasn’t conjuring the blue flames. She had never done it.
Elysia acted as an exhaust port, using her bond with Lith to get rid of them safely for him. Part of her body was comprised of pure, stable Chaos which gave her greater resistance to the blue flames than Lith.
Her intervention weakened the souls controlling the Void Demon Dragon as the Voidfeather and the Demons did the same, yet Valtak could only pray that it would be enough to tip the scales of the battle in his favor.
‘Elysia is just a baby. Her body can’t take that much energy. At least not for long. This is all my fault. In my greed and impatience to find a successor, I’ve put two innocent beings in danger!’
The Fire Dragon focused his energy to the extreme, drowning the blue flames in Primordial Flames before they could infect more of the Valley of Life.
He had to win before Lith turned into the Void Demon Dragon completely and before the blue flames consumed Elysia.
The Guardians had sworn to protect her from each and every threat, but not from the consequences of her own decisions. It had been Lith’s choice to tamper with the blue flames just like Elysia was taking them on herself by her own will.
The Guardians would respect their decision and not intervene and Valtak knew it.
The Void Demon Dragon screamed in agony, but not because of the Primordial Flames. Despite their violence, they failed to breach past the thick shroud of blue flames that engulfed the area where Lith stood.
The pain was theirs and Lith’s, getting worse as the struggle progressed. More and more souls came forth, slowly overpowering the three aspects of Lith’s life force and his psyche.
The souls diluted his will, memories, and essence with their own. They formed a new being, born from the fusion of thousands of different personalities but with a common goal: conquer the Tiamat’s body and return to life.
Yet until they got rid of the Fire Dragon, they would never beat the real owner of the body they now inhabited. If the souls focused too much on Lith, Valtak’s flames would smother the blue flames that kept the door open.
If they focused too much on the Father of Fire, instead, the Void would shut the door himself and the Voidfeather Dragon would devour any soul left.
The desperate dead had to fight two battles at the same time and the Elder Wyrm was the easier opponent. The body, mind, and soul they inhabited belonged to Lith. He fought on his own turf and every soul that the Voidfeather consumed also strengthened the Abomination and the human side.
Valtak, instead, was old and weak.
The souls could smell death on him. They could feel how tenuous the thread linking him to the world of the living was. The souls now in control of the Void Demon Dragon knew they needed one, maybe two solid blows to extinguish his spark.
Valtak knew it as well and wrapped himself in the Primordial Flames, using them like a burning extension of his body to fight and keeping anything the enemy could dish out at a distance.
“Walk away, old fool!” A choir of shrieking voices came out of the Void Demon’s mouth. “No one needs to die today. Go away. Bring your hatchlings with you and leave us alone!”
“No one? What about Lith?” The Father of Fire took a deep breath and a new wall of fire rose from the Valley of Life, joining the first one in its siege. “Or does his life not count?”
“One life in exchange for four. It’s a fair bargain!” The Void Demon Dragon took a deep breath as well, releasing another burst of blue flames that swelled his protective cocoon and burned at the Primordial Flames, adding Valtak’s strength to their own.
“No, it’s a theft!” The Elder Wyrm waved his arm with sinuous grace, moving them up, down, left, and right.
With each of his movements, a wave of white flames condensed into a roaring Dragon that crashed against the blue flames from a different direction. Such was their violence that the Void Demon Dragon couldn’t consume them.
The Primordial Flames drowned the blue ones with overwhelming power, smothering them like a wet blanket.
“That body doesn’t belong to you parasites. You have no claim over Lith’s life. Your time is over and there’s no place for you on Mogar anymore.”
“Liar!” The voices roared and spread their membranous wings to release more blue flames. “There’s still more time! There is a place for all of us and we’ll take it by force if necessary.”
