Chapter 33

Selene…


She stared Malthael down with both her sunlight sword and the moonlight sword in either hand. As she looked at him she couldn't help but be curious as to how Malthael was still here. She had overheard Artemis say that she was going to erase his existence and from what she could tell, Malthael now looked nothing like Jiroh. His body was a mass of crystallized blood slowly forming into new bones and solid black flames. As difficult as it was to pick out the details making up his face, she could still tell that he was no longer the same man she had fought before.

In fact, she had a theory as to why it was happening.

Any rituals involving dragons, from what she knew, usually involved ingesting the blood of the dragon itself. Doing this would transform your body into something closer to that of a dragon's humanoid form and give you greater power but at the risk of having the mind corrupted. Most dragons are inherently greedy, lustful, violent, and even cannibalistic creatures, even more so than humans. Adding that and the fact that Jiroh had a fragment of Kayron's Bloodletter sword with him, Malthael must have used the fragment to reform himself after Jiroh died.

Which meant that his skin and bones still needed more time to fully reform, leaving only blood and fire to hold him together.


He's more vulnerable now than he ever was before.

The biggest problem though was the fact that she was almost completely drained of energy. The deeper the well of energy a person has, the longer it takes for that energy to regenerate. Over the past few days she had fought Artemis, healed Marcus from his wounded arm, sent Jiroh into the void of space, and not too long ago healed herself from a stab wound to her gut. All of which demanded so much from her reserves. She didn't have the ability to just take energy from others by absorbing magic based attacks like Marcus did.

She was running on fumes and didn't think she had the power necessary to finish Malthael off. Not to mention Artemis' moonlight sword.

Why did she give it to her in the first place? It was made of the same adamantine metal as her sunlight sword.

Adamantine bonds to the magic of its host and changes its nature to suit its wielder's needs. To Selene, who only uses fire based magic, it was useless to her since she and Artemis had completely different magical elements. Why would Artemis giver Selene her moonlight sword?

But then, just as the thought was going through her head, she felt her magic stir within her. The moonlight sword started vibrating in her right hand and sparks of moonlight began shining from the sword and quickly traveled up the length of it until it reached her hand and up her arm. At first she nearly dropped it out of fear of being split apart until she realized that the light was shining from her rather than from the sword itself.

Why is...Why is Artemis' magic being emitted from my body? This shouldn't be...possible, she thought to herself.

She held the moonlight sword above her chest as she stared at it in amazement. She never would have thought that this moonlight was a part of her innate magic.

This opened up so many questions in her mind but she knew that they would have to wait until after she survived this battle.


Malthael began eyeing her with a disturbing hunger in his eyes as he said, "That is the power I wanted to see fifteen years ago, but letting you mature as you are now was definitely worth the wait along with that child of Hestia, that man Marcus Wright."

"Well I'm glad you find us to be worth your time," she said sarcastically.

Malthael crossed both of his arms over his chest and blades of crystallized blood extended from them, and as he swung them both at his sides, he charged forward with crazed glee. As he did, his speed increased in such a way that felt unnatural. She couldn't feel the vibrations in the ground indicating the change in force needed for him to move at that speed, nor was there a sonic boom that followed after him. It was as if he was manipulating the flow of time around his body...

But that's absurd. A creature like him, manipulating the flow of time to move faster? Just how much power can a single dragon have?

And yet, despite Malthael's increase in speed, Selene's moonlight heightened her senses and Malthael slowed down to the point that it was like he was moving through tar. Malthael had lunged at her to try and split her in two but Selene simply stepped aside as he passed by her harmlessly, with his eyes watching her in surprise.

Even Selene was surprised at how easily she was able to avoid it. The properties of her moonlight magic was amazing. Usually she would have to focus a lot more of her energy to manipulate her perception of time but the moonlight seemed to do it by its very nature much like Marcus's lightning did for him.

She then pulled back her left arm and swung her sunlight sword down at Malthael's neck. Her sunlight sword cleaved through him and blew apart the top half of the flames forming his body and his lower flopped backward with only his right arm scrambling to get his bearings. The crystallized blood forming his skeleton was cracked but not completely blown apart.

She needed to put more effort into this is if she wanted to kill him for good.

Malthael quickly reformed himself and his speed increased even further as he tried to match her, swinging his bladed arms with far greater speed and precision than Jiroh had. It only took a few swings for him to pressure her into actually deflecting when he had sped up enough to match her.

She had to wonder how Captain Dean ever managed to fight against such a monster at his strongest before he was first killed. With the speed and skill that Malthael displayed using his bladed arms, its a wonder that anyone could manage to fight against him on an even playing field.

However, she didn't have the luxury to fight fair and needed to use any tricks she had right now to kill him.

She used her flames to rapidly teleport around him while simultaneously using her newfound moonlight to swiftly swing her sword at greater speeds than she had ever been able to before and yet despite that, Malthael still kept up with her.

Malthael then retracted one of his blades as he grabbed her left hand as she was slashing her sword at him and held her there. She then swung with her right hand but he blocked it with the blade on his left arm.

He pulled her closer to him as he asked, "With one god out of the fight, one other struggling to hold onto my other half, and you, half a foot already in the grave with exhaustion, how do you expect this fight to end?

Selene glared at him as she roared in his face, “With you dead at my feet!”

It was in this moment that the two of them paused to have this heated exchanged when they heard the thunderous boom of lightning. It crackled so loudly that they both jumped in surprise and looked over to the sky above the mountain.

As if the sky were made of glass, blue cracks formed in the clouds like a spiderweb before focusing on a single point.

When it fell, the sky trembled.


Marcus…


Malthael still continued to slam his head into the ground and buck like a crazy bull just to shake him off but he refused to let go of his sword as he drove it further into the dragon's eye with blood spewing out of it and drenching his armor.

It was only when Malthael reached around with his right arm and clawed at his own face, one of those claws slamming into him, did Marcus start to lose his grip. To try and prevent himself from being flung off, he created a chain to attach himself to the sword, wrapping it around the handle and his arm in the process. Even with that counter measure, it wasn't enough to keep Malthael from grabbing Marcus off of his face and holding him in a tight grip as he punched the ground. The shock rattled his body and stunned him a moment long enough for Malthael to throw him into the clouds.

The whole time that Malthael was pulling Marcus off of his face and then thrown him into the air he had been extending the length of his chain to keep him fixed to his sword. Being crushed in the dragon's claws and slammed onto the ground was enough force to fracture his armor and break his ribs which made him cough up blood.

If not for the pain keeping him alert he probably would have feinted from accelerating so fast into high altitude. To keep himself from being flung any further into the sky he tugged on the stone chain and stared down at the dragon in fury.

"I've long run out of patience dealing with you so its time for this to end," he grounded out with blood filling his mouth. His bones ached, his muscles were sore, and his breath was short but his rage kept his spirit high as he lifted his right arm above his head and lightning shot out of his hands lighting up the sky.

He took in a deep breath and said, “Railgun: -”

With that, he slammed his right hand against the obsidian chain and traveled down the chain as a bolt of lightning moving faster than he’s ever moved before. The chain glowed as if the energy coming off of him was far greater than the chain was capable of conducting. In the corner of his eye he even noticed that the color of his lightning had changed color. Instead of the normal bright blue it was now a violent shade of red.

He didn't know why his lightning had changed color and he didn't care. All he cared about right now was severing Malthael's head from his body.

The moment he reached the end of the chain, he reformed back into his body and felt the energy become amplified even further as his hand gripped his sword.

As he passed through Malthael’s head he shouted with defiance, “-Deadbolt!”

He tore through the dragon's massive skull and blew it completely apart as he exited out the other end. The force from his attack caused Malthael’s head from the neck up to explode into a storm of bloody mist and chunks of flesh and scales. his neck to flail around helplessly.

Marcus crashed to the ground covered in stone, lightning, and blood as Malthael’s body collapsed and his headless neck fell at his feet.


Selene…


The impact from Marcus’s attack sent a shockwave cutting through the air so massive that it created a vacuum that pulled all the dust and shattered glass littering the streets of Lunaas and sent it flying out of its walls. The wave then reached past the town and the intense blast of wind and force reached Selene and Malthael as they were both knocked off their feet.

Selene slammed both of her swords into the ground and at the same time Malthael dug his claws into the dirt to keep from being blown away.

When the blast of air finally receded, Malthael's arms weakened and his blades shattered as he struggled to maintain his control over keeping his body together. His eyes looked vacant and he stumbled backwards in a daze, shaking his head as he tried to hold it together. He brought his right hand close to his chest as he clutched at his heart, gritting his teeth in defiance as he struggled to stay alive.


Malthael...


The last things he saw was Selene staring him down without a hint of fear in her eyes and a flash of light in the sky as a lightning bolt rained down upon him before everything started to fade into a haze.

He knew that somehow every injury he received from the warrior was being healed by that strange blood magic that Jiroh was using. When he died Malthael tried to take advantage of it but his dragon body was too massive to heal as effectively as his human form could. There was too great of a surface area to cover for him to heal his dragon body quickly enough and the damage only continued to get greater as Marcus tore him apart. His scales had weakened in his age as he was well past his prime even when he was alive the first time. Being resurrected with a body that had been brain dead for fifteen years only worsened his condition and made his scales easier to cut through.

Even so, it was a far more enjoyable outcome than being killed by that boring swordsman Dean Smith. If anything, this was the best possible outcome for him, to finally die in battle at the hands of not just one great warrior god, but three. Even so, he wanted to look his adversary in the eyes to admit defeat to them personally. He wanted to enjoy hist last moments to the absolute fullest.

Malthael used the last scraps of power he had left to regenerate his orbital bone and right eye. He didn't have the power to form a mouth but he had hoped that he could look Marcus in the eyes with satisfaction and let it be enough of a message.

Yet...when he opened his remaining eye Marcus was already on top of him and his eyes were wild. They were those of a bloodthirsty animal who had no patience for words and only wanted to tear him apart.

He saw the man drenched in blood, with lightning and energy coming off of him in waves. He planted his foot beneath his eye and said, “What? You’re still alive? Are you really going to put me through all the trouble of killing you again?”

Malthael watched as the light of the moon flashed upon the warrior’s body and reflected off of his icy blue eyes that held nothing but animalistic wrath. He then watched as his blue eyes briefly flashed the color of gold. Their eyes met within that second and Malthael saw something that, for the very few moments in his very long life, terrified him.

For what was just a split second seemed like minutes to him as the world faded into darkness and red smoke and millions of chains wrapped around him. For some reason though, he could no longer see Marcus's eyes as they were hidden behind the thin blade of a curved sword.

Malthael then looked behind Marcus to see a hooded figure with six black wings, one half of her body was that of a beautiful but pale woman while the other was a charred corpse. The woman's charred hand wrapped around Marcus's throat and she lifted the edge of the blade off of Marcus's eyes.

Before Malthael could see what laid behind Marcus's eyes, a flash of gold shined from both of her eyes.

The flash of gold made him shudder as even he feared the archangels that bore the golden light within their eyes. It frightened him so much that his claws twitched involuntarily.

With that minor bit of movement, the winged woman lifted the sword from Marcus's eyes and-

He drove the point of his sword an inch away from Malthael's eyes as he roared.

Unlike his own roar that shook the very earth itself, split the clouds and laid entire cities to waste, Marcus's roar scarred Malthael's very soul. It was like an unbearable burden of crushing fear and horror. All of his rage and hatred pour out of his soul into his voice and echoed in Malthael's own.

No human being could make such a terrifying sound.

Even though Malthael was the Archdragon of the Abyss, a beast that brought death in his wake, the fear that echoed in his soul was that of death itself.

When he had finished, he stared into Malthael’s eyes as if waiting to accept his challenge. Begging him to continue to fight so that Marcus could continue tearing him apart with unmistakable cruelty.

The dragon opened his mouth and spoke his last words to him.

His only words were, “Finish me.”

The warrior smiled at him as he raised his sword and truly ended his life.