2033 Golden Knight (Part 1)
'I have expendable humans to spare whereas you have to defend those little Demons of yours.
'If you hadn't been forced to split your focus between me and my troops, things might have ended differently. Alas, no one can be in two places at the same time.' Iata said with a mind link to not waste time chatting and go for the kill.
Thanks to Life Maelstrom multiplying her strength tenfold, her Adamant-coated claws through Lith's armor, scales, and bones as if they were paper. While the opponent lay helpless on the ground, her maw opened wide to bite and rip off the Tiamat's head.
'I always wondered if you are an immortal as I am and now I'll have my answer.' She said as her fangs clinked on the helm of the Voidwalker armor, dealing it no damage.
While the rest of the armor was just comprised of Dragon scales coated with Adamant, the breastplate and the helm had been made using respectively Syrook's skull and ribcage as a scaffold.
It made them much sturdier and protected Lith's vitals.
'Do you want to bet?' He replied.
'On your immortality? That's why I'm here.' During their telepathic exchange, the Tiamat was drawing a useless deep breath.
Iata had no stupid pride to uphold so instead of trying to crack the Dragon's bones, she moved her mouth toward the much more vulnerable but still vital throat.
'No, about being in two places at the same time.' Lith replied as black light seeped through his wounds and made that corner of Mogar a darker place.
The Sekhmet refused to fall for his bluff and bit as hard as she could.
Blood spurted everywhere and pain blinded her vision when her fangs struck the wrong metal. Lith had released his hold, allowing War to jump into Iata's mouth. Full Guard had warned her but she had chosen to bet on her speed rather than let her enemy free.
Fusion magic and Life Maelstrom made her faster than any flight spell but she had failed to take the blade's intelligence into account. War had simply slipped in and out of Lith's dimensional pocket, choosing his neck as its exit point.
Double Edge was now stuck between the open maw, its Adamant producing sparks as it clashed against that of Iata's mouthpiece. The cut was shallow, but enough for War to use its Counter Flow ability to damage the Sekhmet from the inside and make all the spells she had prepared for the fight fade away.
To make matters worse, Iata could feel that somehow the enchanted weapon was trying to steal the Life Maelstrom coursing through her body.
'If this thing is already this strong, I don't want to even think about what might happen if it gets empowered by my bloodline abili-' Her train of thought derailed when she heard more screams coming from the battlefield.
The Demons' voices resounded with war cries whereas those of the livings were a choir of death throes. Iata wanted to turn around to understand what was happening, but she couldn't afford to take her eyes off the enemy.
"Who in the gods' name is that?" Varegrave and the other two Divine Beasts in the sky said in unison while pointing a golden-clad figure to their respective armies.
Thrud's second battalion had finally managed to smother the Noxious Flames and had joined the battle. They had opened their ranks to allow the few survivors of the first battalion to take cover while the mages unleashed a volley of tier five spells on the Demons.
It was then that a figure wearing a golden version of the Voidwalker armor had appeared. A wave of their hand had dispelled most of the incoming attacks while a wall of light had blocked those comprised solely of earth and darkness elements.
For some reason, they were unaffected by the golden knight's odd ability. The small figure spun an odd hammer, too slender to be a proper weapon and too small to be threatening.
It looked like a ceremonial weapon, something that could be used in a forge at best. Yet with each cycle, it crackled with more and more power, making the gemstones it was studded with shine like suns.
"Thanks, Yurial. I wish I had the opportunity to know you." The voice revealed the knight to be a woman.
Her words made no sense to Thrud's soldiers and so did her aura. They could see with Life Vision that the person standing in front of them was Lith Verhen, the same Lith Verhen that was struggling against Iata a few hundreds of meters away.
The mages and the Divine Beasts conjured a second volley of spells that shattered the wall of light. Solus raised her hand again so the enemies focused Life Vision on her, expecting the tier five magic to disappear again and hoping to learn her secret.
The gods fulfilled their wish in the worst possible way.
The blue six-pointed star at Solus' feet suddenly burst with light as it channeled through her small body the energy it had stolen. Yurial had derived his Hexagram from Silverwing's and just like the original, it was a training ground to learn the Bastion and the Annihilation.
Yurial had left behind in his notes several theories and suggestions about how to modify both the original Hexagram and his own in order to convert them into means of offense.
Yet he was no Awakened and had no knowledge of Spirit Magic.
It was the reason he had devised Immortal Fetters for the first version of Yurial's Hexagram, converting the stored energy into a gravity spell that made use of all the six elements.
Yet after their trip to Verendi and learning from Faluel how to cast Silverwing's spells, a much better alternative had become obvious to Lith and Solus. It had taken them just a short time to learn how to insert themselves as the seventh point of the array and infuse it with the final element.
Solus' earlier gesture and the light show conjured by the Fury were just meant to draw the attention to her and away from the array. Everyone was so busy turning their head from Lith to her that they had completely forgotten about the blue array.
The very same array that had nullified all those War Mage tier five spells, adding their power to its own in order to fuel something that only a white-cored Awakened could use alone.
Yurial's Annihilation burst out of the golden knight's hand in the form of an emerald pillar that overpowered the incoming wave of tier five spells and cut the second battalion asunder.
Even the spells of the Divine Beasts were dispelled by the sheer pressure of the mana surrounding Solus as the energy accumulated inside the array mixed with her Spirit Magic.
The Annihilation turned everything and everyone it touched into memories, leaving scorched earth in its wake. The Orichalcum armors of the second battalion lasted for a split second before being vaporized, allowing the emerald beam to move onto the third and then the fourth battalion.
Amid chaos and destruction, Lith exploited Iata's distraction to unleash a burst of Void Flames from his entire body. The black fire erupted from his opened wounds in the form of angry snakes that slithered through the gaps in her armor, reaching her flesh.
