20
KRAGNA
The world shudders when our fists connect—and again when they pull apart.
I haven’t felt that much force since the Drakken Wars, but this isn’t war. It’s hell mirrored in flesh and steel. Laertiez moves like a phantom with purpose. Each swing of his glass blade detaches a shard of sound from the air, makes the world stutter.
He’s faster than any human, faster than any monster I’ve ever known. His magic warps time, folding seconds in on themselves. I feel every strike thrum through me like bullets—bone snapping, ribs fracturing, obsidian armor cracking. I bleed black ichor wherever the steel finds me, but I don’t fall.
Because that’s not who I am.
My vision goes dark at the edges, trumpets of adrenaline crashing in my ears. I stagger back, tasting iron on my tongue that bleeds into sweat.
But I shift.
It starts as a rumble under my skin—deep and angry. My arms thicken, muscles knotting into bull’s bone. Fingers curl into hooves, horns grind from my skull. Horns like spiraledobsidian. Muscles thrash beneath skin that darkens to charcoal night. I inhale deep.
I’m a minotaur.
Laertiez falters, eyes wide for a sliver.
Then I roar.
The shockwave knocks guards back, dust exploding off walls. I charge him again, claws carved for tearing steel draped across flesh. My body contorts, shifts again mid-stride—as if the bones are refusing orders. I grow wings.
Wyvern wings—leather torn, bone spiking through flesh. They burst from my back, spanning wide as pitch. Air burns through them with every beat, ember-hot and alive.
I spin, claws or wingbones or both smashing into armor. Glass splinters. Flesh opens. I taste him, fear and blood and desperation.
He responds with crushing magic, sword swinging fast as moonlight, strikes that slow the air, distort reality. I stagger, wings buckling. One claw falls through cracked stone, I rear, flesh tearing.
Time bends again—my vision doubles, swords blur, bones melt.
I grow again—shoulders heaving, spine bulging, body outgrowing itself mid-fight.
The earth beneath us cracks. I feel every breath laertiez takes in the shifting space that only he can call slow down. I feel the result of bone and death and fight in my fingertips. I can hear Harriet hiss behind me, Bruce growl, Charen sweep overhead, but Laertiez and I are the storm’s eye.
He snarls, swinging both blades. I block with a wing, shards flake off. I strike with a hoofed fist. Time splinters. I hit with bone and blood. My roar echoes. I fight.
Lightning-lurching chaos. My mind fragments. I grapple with the shift ripping through me—horns burning, blood leaking, wings coated in char and ichor.
Laertiez hisses through teeth. “You can’t win!”
I snarl, “Watch me.”
He slashes. I block. I strike. He moves.
Time shivers. I die a thousand times on impact.
And still I stand.
I shift again, monster and man blurring to one shape.
The world quivers on the brink of storm.
We collapse in the eye of the storm. Laertiez staggers but doesn’t yet fall, adrenaline and dark steel somehow still fueling his movements. I’m reeling—oblivion tearing through my ribs where his blade gashed me—but River’s shot cracks through the chaos with a clarity that stops the world.
I feel the scorching pain in my chest, the wet warmth of my own blood. Every breath is a luxury ripped from the mouth of death. My vision caves in from one blade wound and one bullet’s finality. But my ears—my ears find River’s voice. That’s where I still stand.
