Kaius didn’t know what was more terrifying: that the Castellan-executor was fucking Mythril, a middle Tier Three, or that the bastard had teleported right into the middle of the mana core’s domed room.

  Regardless, the screams of warning were heeded and they exploded into motion. Even if his teammates hadn’t had the wherewithal to analyse the new threat like he had, he knew the panic and terror in his voice would have been enough.

  As a single unit, they burst off the ground, sprinting for the open doors. They had to get out. Even as they kicked off, each and every one of them responded to the threat with overwhelming force.

  It was a simultaneous assault and a reaction to violence and danger made in an instant.

  Trails of light streamed from Ianmus’ feet as he tore his way to freedom. Even as the mage ran, the densely packed power within his keyseal was unleashed. It was full to the brim, bursting, having drunk deep from the thick haze of arcane that hung in the room.

  All of that power was consumed in an instant as he cast a twin pair of Preeminent Halos, densely packed magic that filled the room with golden luminance and scorching heat.

  The skill wavered for a moment before it destabilised and collapsed utterly, unable to support itself with the mana drained from it so fully.

  Yet despite casting enough war magic to kill a Gold twice over, it was clear that Ianmus did not feel secure in his prospects. The mage drew deep from the energy stored in his marrow, shaping it into a free-cast spell. Kaius knew there was no guarantee he would get the time to cast it.

  Porkchop, too, reacted with desperate ferocity. In a single, bounding leap, Kaius watched his brother thrust his claws into the ground, summoning a prismatic shard wall. It tore off at an angle — a desperate attempt to cover their retreat.

  Then he did it again and again, every step he took sending a solid wall of orichalcum, tall enough to come up to the Castellan’s chest, surging towards the automata. For all its mystical strength, Kaius knew the orichalcum may as well have been glass.

  Vines burst and coiled around Kenva’s feet, speeding her forwards as she fled towards safety with the rest of them, the ranger drew her bow, instantly layering a Howl of the North Wind and Lance of Fury to send a ballista bolt of death towards the chiselled bronze chest of the Castellan.

  Yet for all of her accuracy and devastating ability, Kaius knew it would be a mere gust before an ocean storm.

  They were so fucked. So unbelievably and totally fucked.

  Rotten roots, they still had to try.

  Roaring in desperation, Kaius made his own move, acting in that same initial instant that each of his friends had thrown everything they had at their enemy. All care, all consideration of risk, and all sense of sanity was forgotten. There was only frantic, burning, unending desperation — a will to somehow, some way, survive.

  Kaius drowned in VOS. Surrendering himself to it utterly, he burned.

  No matter his circumstances, no matter his wants and needs, the system’s own great rune was simply too vast for his mortal mind to comprehend. It shifted beyond reason, warped his mind and understanding with its depth and intricacies. It wasn’t that understanding was beyond him, but that he was staked, drawn and quartered as comprehension was forced upon him.

  As a single instant stretched into infinity, Kaius just barely maintained his focus. Every scrap of his Authority stayed his course. VOS was large. Too large. It was an opening and an expansion, the breadth and the depth. It was vastness and so much more.

  But all he needed right now was power.

  The miniscule scrap of Redoubt of the Speaker he had inscribed burnt out, leaving him adrift in an ocean of ruin with no heading and no sail. The waves grew tall, but he didn’t balk.

  Kaius’ pillars burned like they never had before, and a spark of light and heat ignited in the very centre of his being — just enough for him to not lose himself. A lighthouse to steady his course.

  Throwing his weight and will behind his intent, Kaius discarded all but the strength ofVOS. It was too much, beyond even what he had reached for in the fight against the Abrissian manticore. Yet he was stronger now, reforged by his ascension, strengthened by his Authority, and supported by his completed Aspects.

  It was the fullest extent he could manage without crippling himself. Falling now would mean death.

  Power burned him from the inside out, and Kaius reached for Starfall.

  A void of black opened above the Castellan, flawless and bottomless, like the maw of a great and hungry thing.

  He didn’t centre it over the automata. Barely eclipsing it with the furthest edge, the vast majority of the field cut off the automata’s approach.

  Descending orbs of stellar hatred appeared in the night sky, growing wide and bright as they burned with barely contained energy. The Castellan didn’t move, as perfect a statue as its cast bronze form suggested.

  Kaius coughed, tasting blood as wracking pain swept from his head to his navel. Backlash. It was bad. His health dropped precipitously, Greater Regeneration repairing the damage even as a shrill whine filled his ears and his eyes narrowed.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  He kept running.

  None of them spoke. There were only panicked gasps, noises of pure atavistic terror, like they were some small primeval thing fleeing before a beast of hunger and fang.

  Barely seconds into their flight, Kenva’s arrow struck first.

  It was a howling thing, physically potent, as large as a spear and wrapped in the cutting winds of a polar hurricane. Kaius had seen its potency vaporise Silvers. He could see she’d used one of her good arrows, those spun from trees they’d found on the twenty-ninth layer of their most recent delve. With her capstone skill, such things were viciously, viciously potent, drastically magnifying her offensive potential.

  To his horror and complete and utter lack of surprise, Kaius looked back to watch the arrow slam into the perfectly sculpted sternum of the Castellan.

  It shattered, winds bursting with concussive force and spraying a cone of splinters. They skittered harmlessly over its chest and abdominals.

  The Castellan wasn’t even scratched.

  Close on the arrow’s tail were the twin suns of Ianmus’ unleashed war magic. Spells were always dangerous things. By dint of the time and preparation that went into their casting compared to a standard skill, they were viciously potent.

  Yet still, the Castellan didn’t move. Two orbs of burning plasma burst against its chest, expanding into a blooming flower.

  So potent and volatile was the magic that even with Kaius’ Truesight, it still seared away his vision. He was left hopeful as his heart pounded in his chest and he burnt a charge of Slipstep to keep pace with his team’s movement skills.

  Yet as burning solar fury subsided, Kaius’ hopes were dashed.

  The metal of the Castellan’s body, from the sculpted waves of its loincloth to the individual pores on its neck, had been blackened, yet there was no damage, only a shining shimmer as latent heat was absorbed into the metal and slowly radiated. Like its purity was untouchable and unquestionable, the ash on the Castellan’s body flaked away, erased by some natural magic of its construction.

  Slower than the rest, Porkchop’s shard walls slammed into the automaton one after another. To the last, they shattered, the crystalline ore that made them flaking and crumbling like common fired clay.

  Still, the Castellan hadn’t moved.

  Only then did the first celestial comets exit the night sky that Kaius had summoned into being. He grit his teeth. They were so close, nearly halfway to the exit of the room; something had to have gone wrong with the Castellan. It still hadn’t moved.

  If they could just break line of sight, if it was suffering the effects of whatever degradation had befallen the rest of the automata, it might need to search for them, give them the time they needed to escape and leave it trapped deep beneath the bowels of the earth until they could muster the strongest powers of the Guild to take it down.

  Far beyond every other use he had made of the skill, dozens of burning orbs fell for every second that it was active. As they impacted the ground, racking shudders coursed through the shaped stone of the Imperial ruin. The concussive blast was nearly enough for Kaius to lose his footing. He stumbled, but threw out his arm to steady Ianmus as the mage slipped.

  “Go! Go!” he screamed. “We’re almost there!”

  Daring another look to the side, Kaius watched the stars fall on the automata. They were distributed randomly; so far, most had fallen on empty ground. Yet right as he looked, he watched one descend right towards it.

  Please! If anything could give them a chance, it would be his strongest spell, backed by Vos.

  Kaius heard a tortured squeal of metal. A celestial bolt took the creature in the shoulder. Pressure ripped through his jaw.

  Was it possible?

  Yet as the brightest peak of the explosion subsided, despair filled his chest, leaving him feeling cold and empty.

  Its once flawless shoulder was dented, a pit a handspan wide and a single fingerwidth deep, like somebody had thrown a rock at a tin plate. A direct hit from his strongest ability and all it had done was dent it?!

  The smooth orbs of its eyes burst into flawless white light.

  “Anima reignition successful,” it said in a murderous baritone, its timbre one of bared steel.

  The Castellan moved.

  It cut, and Starfall shattered. The very fabric of his spell was cleaved by the automata’s bronze blade — mana streaming in and siphoned away.

  There was no time to react. No parry or defence to be had. It was just suddenly there, in the middle of their loose formation, right in front of Porkchop.

  Kaius barely felt a blurt of shocked panic course through their bond as his brother instinctively slammed into the defensive embrace of The Stone that Weathered Time. It was a skill potent, almost impenetrable in most circumstances — its strength paid for by its short duration and total impediment of his movement.

  Porkchop froze.

  His skill wasn’t enough.

  Kaius barely saw a bronze blur. In the same instant, he heard a shattering crack to his right, underwritten by the most godless and awful of wet squelches. Porkchop’s mind went dim, a haze of total agony filling his body.

  A glance only showed him a shuddering heap of bleeding rubble and snapped bone.

  Panic overrode all sense. Kaius screamed in hatred and fear as a triple layering of shunts burst behind him, sending him straight towards the Castellan. He threw everything he had at it — a hurricane of Stormlashes arcing between them, accompanied by an endless stream of hateful nails.

  There had to be something he could do, some move he could make to distract the Castellan so that Ianmus and Kenva could get to safety and his brother could recover.

  They would not die here.

  The automata shrugged off his assault like it was summer rain. His attacks had barely covered half the distance between him and the creature when its head snapped to him, a light of burning contempt shining in its eyes, marring its otherwise placid features.

  The Castellan moved for a second time.

  He blinked, and it was in front of him. Kaius caught the barest impression of a swinging blade so colossal it may as well have matched a pine trunk in scale. His balance shifted. Agony bloomed through his left thigh. A sudden impact hurled him through the air, sending him tumbling straight to the ground.

  As he spun, Kaius saw blood roar in a river from the remnants of his leg.

  A stump. It had been severed.

  Before he could even process his ruin and the death that had come for him, Kaius slammed back-first into the ground, ribs crunching as yet more pain resonated through his chest. His head cracked back and his helmet rang like a bell.

  The soul-deep ache in his head, a Vos backlash, grew.

  There was nothing they could do. Yet he would not cower in the face of death.

  Kaius stared up at the Castellan, ready to spit, scream and bite until his final moment.

  Only to see the automaton frozen, his blood still dripping from its blade.

  He flinched as it moved for a third time, only to freeze in confusion as it snapped its legs together, pivoting towards him, standing at attention with its blade planted point-down in the stone, both hands resting formally on its pommel.

  “Ave, Unterstern. Ave, Scion of the Risen House of Creation,” it spoke, its once murderous voice now calm and respectful — but no less artificial.

  Kaius snapped.

  “What the fuck! You cut off my fucking leg!”

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