2056 Checkmate (Part 2)

Without the angry blade, the only piece of equipment with a power core that Lith had crafted was his Voidwalker armor. With that alone Ruin couldn't manifest half of its power due to the lack of offensive skills of the artifact.

Silverwing's Annihilation, instead, only required for seven Awakened to be assembled. Varegrave, Valia, Locrias, and Trion had answered Lith's call, returning by his side as quickly as they could.

All the Demons that Lith conjured were Awakened and by sharing his knowledge through the mystical chains that bound them to him, it was as if they had practiced all day with Faluel as well.

After being recharged, they had still six eyes each, bringing them just one step below Lith. Varegrave had been a Demon for just a few minutes but what he lacked in experience he more than made up for it with his mastery of magic.

After serving for decades in the army and being entrusted with the Small World multiple times, the late colonel outperformed even Trion who in life had lacked any magical talent of sorts.

The weakest link in the formation was Solus with her blue core since both Silverwing's spells required to have reached the violet minimum. Yet she used the technique she had developed to cast Blade Tier spells in order to tap into the power cores of her equipment and fill the gap with the others.

Crank was the only one with a bright violet core so he took point and harnessed the seventh element of magic, taking control of the Annihilation. Devouring Light was a powerful tier five Spirit Spell but Silverwing's legacy outshone it like the sun does the stars.

Iata used all the power left in her equipment and the spells she had at the ready, but to no avail. The Annihilation vaporized her and the Adamant she wore on contact, turning a treasure worthy of a king into a silvery mist.

Then, the spell moved upward where the Sekhmet's allies were still fighting. Crank didn't let the power of the Annihilation go to waste, cutting through the enemy lines like a hot knife through butter.

"We did it!" The Hyperion shouted in triumph. "Belius is safe. You are safe. Both my paychecks are as good as signed."

As the emerald pillar disappeared, Lith could see with his keen Tiamat eyes that Thrud's forces were scattering in a hasty retreat both in the sky and on the ground. Even the pillar surrounding Solus disappeared marking the end of her tribulation.

'We really did it.' She said via the mind link amid tears, listening to the cries of joy that the wind carried all the way from Belius. 'I shaped more than metal. I gave those people the hope and strength they needed.

'For the first time in my life, I fought not for you, but for myself and everything I believe in.'

"Wrong." Lith said to them both. "You saved me, Crank. You succeeded, Solus. The Kingdom is fucked."

"What do you-" A sudden gust of cold wind cut her short, quickly followed by pouring rain.

Only then did they lower their gaze and notice what was truly happening.

Jirni's quick thinking had allowed the Council's forces to understand the real goal of the Mad Queen and Lith's intervention had tipped the scales of the battle as the Royals had hoped.

Not even Thrud could have predicted that someone capable of using Blade Tier spells would have interfered, nor factored for the prowess of Solus, the Demons, and the Golems.

All those unknown factors had made her lose the battle, but she had still won the war. Her Divine Beasts and Awakened soldiers weren't retreating because on the verge of defeat but because the mission had been already accomplished.

The ground troops had been just a diversion to keep the Kingdom's forces split until it was too late. The storm had always been her winning move and by the time Jiza had developed a countermeasure, it had almost reached its target.

The Emperor and Divine Beasts of the Mad Queen had kept the thunderclouds packed and moved them forward even at the cost of paying for it with their flesh and blood.

Unlike the humans, the Golden Griffon would always bring them back. Pain was transitory whereas glory was forever. The rain turned into snow and then into hail that started hammering at Belius' stone buildings.

At first, it sounded like someone was knocking on the doors for shelter. After just a few minutes, between the wailing of the storm and the ice ramming at the rooftops, it was as if a giant had sieged Belius.

The wind also grew in intensity until the clouds started to swirl downward in a funnel that turned into a tornado the moment it reached the ground. It sucked in the pouring rain, the hail, and everything it touched until water and air became one.

Lith had never seen a storm so violent even back when he was a Ranger, let alone a hurricane forming on dry land. Yet the monster ravaging his adoptive home was born of magic, making it possible for the two natural disasters to fuel each other in a loop.

Due to the Kingdom's weather mages meddling with the air currents, the storm had been unleashed outside Belius but the persistence of the Mad Queen's generals had brought it close enough to make it work anyway.

Even without the arrays pushing it forward, now the storm moved along the natural air currents and reached the city in the space of minutes. The downpour drowned the cries of joy that came from Belius' walls and turned them into despair.

"No!" Solus yelled.

"My home!" Lith said as the storm became so intense that he couldn't see further than his own nose.

"My paycheck!" Crank's wallet hurt in a way that the Tiamat would have sympathized with in any other circumstance.

Then, the storm grew again in size and violence, reaching them. Even the fringes of the hurricane were fast and violent enough to lift the Hyperion off the ground. Without his protection, Lith and Solus were quickly swallowed as well.

The cold sapped their strength while the hail striking at them moved at hundreds of kilometers per hour.

The gravity sheath of their armors allowed them to survive, but deflecting so many projectiles charged with so much energy was depleting the power cores faster than they could be replenished.

'Let's use the Bastion!' Lith and Solus thought in unison.

They coordinated with Crank via the mind link and with the Demons via the chains, grabbing onto each other before the storm separated them. The Tiamat and the Hyperion shrunk to the size of a human, using both body and mind casting to weave the spell as fast as they could.

All of them were spent after using the Annihilation and had to squeeze until the last drop of their mana to succeed. With the help of the Mouth of Menadion, the seven Awakened conjured an emerald barrier that even though was barely big enough to shield them was as thin as paper.

Luckily for them, the hurricane had no mind guiding it. Despite the little mana used they had left, it would have taken a powerful and focused attack to destroy even such a half-assed version of the Bastion.