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Cedric flung his arms wide.

His magic ignited.

And a brilliant, beautiful, terrifying sunfyre dragon flared its wings and roared.

It leapt into the air, tail sweeping a fiery path through the abominations nearest to Cedric, Tenny, and Sid, knocking the creatures back, setting them ablaze. Golden flames danced down the length of the dragon’s body, smaller and sleeker than Lyrica but just as beautiful, just as formidable, as it reared back and sprayed a long stream of sunfyre across the field.

The monsters screamed as they burned.

And Cedric reveled in the magnificent manifestation of his power—of their power.

Even if he couldn’t maintain it forever.

Sweat slicked his temples, dripped down his armor from the back of his neck. The dragon released one last burst of glorious white-gold flame before sweeping down over the battlefield with widespread wings of fire and dissipating back into the ether with a flare of shimmering light.

But the stretch of the field between Cedric and the crater was clear, for a moment.

And so, he ran.

I’m coming, Elle, he thought.

He was.

And he wasn’t.

Because stars fucking damn it all, six of those powerful sanguinagi were still standing, spread in a semicircle in front of the crater.

They did not attack.

They did not approach.

They did not conjure blood-crystal weapons capable of inducing varying amounts of pain.

They only stood there, smiling, while blood dripped from their fingers into the surrounding snow.

Cedric swallowed, summoning a ball of sunfyre to one hand, and rolled his shoulders back. He didn’t need to slay them all. He just needed to get past them.

He just needed to get to her.

“Time to taste steel, ye bleedin’ sons of bitches!”

Thraigg’s shout was a simultaneous balm and fuel for the terror gripping Cedric’s heart. It was clear these final cultists were of a different ilk than those they’d cut through before. And for all his bravery, for all his skill with a hammer and axe, Cedric could tell Thraigg was fatigued. The dwarf swayed slightly as he bounded up beside Cedric, his massive hammer discarded in favor of a small hatchet gripped tight in his hand.

“What say ye, Ric? Feel like ending this madness today?”

“From your lips to celestial ears,” Cedric replied, bracing his weight on his back foot, readying himself to launch forward.

“What, and let you two hog all the glory?” There was a flash of ice-blue at the edge of Cedric’s vision, and Ollie flitted into view. “I think not.”

“Forgive them, Olyndor,” Tristan said, sword coated in blood as he came up on Cedric’s other side, chest heaving with spent breath. “They’ve clearly succumbed to madness themselves if they think they can do this without us.”

“You’re right, of course.” Ollie flashed a brilliant grin at Tristan, and orbs of water began dancing in the air between his swirling hands. “You always are.”

But whatever cute quip was clearly about to spill from the knight’s mouth in return would have to wait. Because now faced with not two foes, but four, the sanguinagi did move—all six of them converging on Cedric, Thraigg, Tristan, and Ollie.

“Go!” Ollie’s voice cut through the thick layer of dread settling on Cedric’s shoulders. “We will hold them.” The tideweaver threw a wall of water up between the advancing enemy, then parted it down the middle. The cultists were pushed to either side, opening a path that led straight to the crater.

Cedric shook his head. “You can’t—they’re too⁠—”