Chapter 45

Pyre raced up the slope, his boots barely touching the lava-stone as the Deep Nether’s warped gravity carried him farther than it should have. Flames streamed from his Sigil, leaving brief afterimages in the dark as he pushed himself harder, lungs burning, Pyre’s only focus now on reaching the others.

The battlefield sprawled ahead of him.

Sura and the Shepherd were locked with the Synod leader near the crest of a fractured ridge, time buckling and snapping around Sura’s movements as the Shepherd struck with brutal precision. Each blow from his crook landed with finality. The Synod leader reeled, wings beating unevenly, yet he managed strike after blistering strike to push them back.

Below them, Ronark and Tallow fought like a collapsing wall. The jagged-bladed Synod slammed into them again and again, sparks filling the air from Ronark’s bellows-blasts while Tallow shifted through forms too fast for Pyre to follow—bladed limbs, plated shoulders, bodies built to absorb punishment.

Arrowfire rained down in burning arcs, their archer loosing volleys that forced constant motion from all parties.

There! Pyre thought, finally able to locate Balefor.

The Synod woman with the needle and thread Sigil rushed away from the center of the fight, dragging the lion-man behind her.

One of her wings hung low, feathers bent and torn, but the thread still held fast around Balefor’s neck as he slammed and bounced across the uneven stone, claws scraping uselessly, Balefor trying to find footing.

She’s slowing, Pyre realized. Not beaten, but strained.

Fully aware that he’d be little help against the others, Pyre cut wide, angling around the chaos. The heat of nearby impacts washed over him as he ran, the world flashing with magical detonations and snapping soundwaves.

Ahead, the Shepherd crested a ridge.

The giant slammed his crook down at the same moment as Sura accelerated the Synod leader’s next strike.

The leader’s weapon overextended by a fraction of a second. He struck the lava rock hard, and the Shepherd’s stored charge detonated into him, hurling the winged figure downslope in a storm of fractured stone.

They’ve got this, Pyre told himself as he pushed harder.

He spotted Marrowsven advancing alongside Balefor, darting in and out of reach of the dragging thread, her movements sharp and economical. Balefor’s body flopped violently as the Synod woman hauled him over broken ground, his weight slowing her further.

To close the distance, Pyre leaned into the Deep Nether’s strange physics.

He pushed off once and launched far higher than expected, landed, and did the same thing again, resistance bending unpredictably as he flew forward and touched down close enough to hear Balefor’s snarl of pain.

“I’ve already tried cutting her thread!” Marrowsven shouted to him. “I can’t cut through it!”

“Let me try,” Pyre said. “Hang on, Balefor!”

He leapt again, this time angling his broken blade sideways. The thread burned as it met his Sigil, searing heat racing up his arms, but his fire held. Pyre swung with intent, not force, and the Anima-thread parted in a hiss of severed tension.

Balefor dropped to the ground, skidding hard.

Balefor hit the ground hard, stone cracking beneath his weight.

The sudden loss of resistance threw the Synod woman off balance. She pitched forward mid-flight, wings flaring as she fought to recover.

Pyre reached him in two strides and hauled him upright. “Are you—”

Balefor pushed him away, his rage drowning out pain. “The wench! She thought she could capture me? I will kill her myself!”

Marrowsven joined them. Balefor’s mane stood on end, eyes blazing with hatred. The tension held for a breath, then thinned as he forced it down.

“Thank you both,” he said, his greataxe manifesting in his grip.

“We’re not done yet,” Marrowsven told him as the Synod woman hovered toward them, needle and thread re-forming in her hand. Her mask gave nothing away, but her posture spoke volumes—controlled, assured.

“Three Unclaimed,” she hissed, her voice old and frail. “Perhaps I bring all three of you.”

Her needle snapped forward. Pyre stepped into its path and struck it aside, sparks flaring where fire met condensed Anima.

The woman retracted the weapon. Rather than taunt them further, she accelerated, circling above the three Unclaimed faster and faster, wings carving tight arcs through the dark.

“Back to back!” Balefor barked. “If she gets any of us, cut the string!”

“Only Pyre can cut it,” Marrowsven said as the woman’s speed increased.

“Then Pyre in the middle,” he said. “We’ll protect you, so you can protect us!”

Pyre moved between Balefor and Marrowsven, heart pounding.

We have no ranged attacks, he thought grimly. Even if I can throw fire somewhat, I can’t reach her.

The needle came again. Marrowsven twisted aside at the last second, and Pyre struck, severing the thread mid-flight.

“Like that,” Balefor said, “until the others get here!”

The Synod woman screamed in frustration and dove again. This time she caught Balefor, the thread snapping tight around his torso.

Pyre cut it before she could lift him.

“Marrow, can you see the other fight?” Balefor asked. “How’s it going?”

“I can’t tell,” she said, careening her neck toward it. “But something else is happening.”

Pyre risked a glance upward to see the Deep Nether was growing brighter. Not lantern-bright, but illuminated from within. Dust and debris caught light that hadn’t been there moments ago, floating stones glowing faintly as if lit by a distant dawn.

He didn’t have time to dwell on it as the needle bolted toward Marrowsven. Pyre intercepted, fire searing through her attack.

“She’s going to go for me next,” Pyre said.

“You’ll have to cut the thread on your way up,” Balefor warned. “Her thread burns. Be ready for it.”

As predicted, the Synod woman shifted her angle, stopped abruptly, and feinted an attack on Marrowsven, one actually aimed for Pyre. The needle wrapped around Pyre’s throat.

Agony flared instantly, white-hot and suffocating, until he sliced through the thread and dropped hard, boots cracking stone as he landed and rolled back into position.

The Synod woman slowed and finally stopped circling. Hovering in place, she extended her arm as the needle started to grow. It elongated, thickened, splitting into multiple prongs until it resembled a quiver of living metal, threads coiling around it like serpents.

The harpoon-sized needle came down fast.

Marrowsven reacted first, twisting sideways and batting it off course with a sharp crack of bone on metal. The impact rang through Pyre’s arms even from where he stood.

Before the weapon could retract, Balefor surged forward and caught it.

He wrapped both hands around the Anima-thread and hauled it back. The Synod woman lurched midair, dragged violently toward him. She shrieked as Balefor yanked her down and drove his fist straight into her mask.

The blow split the air as something brittle gave way.

Balefor roared as the impact tore a gash across his knuckles as the mask shattered along one side, a jagged fracture running from beak to temple.

The Synod woman screamed; Pyre brought the flaming edge of his broken sword up and across her wings. Fire caught instantly, rolling over feathers and flesh and fur alike. She tried to beat upward, but her damaged wing buckled. She slammed back into the ground hard enough to crater it.

Marrowsven didn’t hesitate. The Executioner in her rang true as she went straight for the neck.

Her blade bit deep but didn’t sever completely. The woman’s power sputtered, her Sigil flickering as the needle reformed in her hand, then phased translucent, its shape unstable.

“Let’s keep the pressure up!” Balefor brought his greataxe down with both hands.

The impact drove the Synod woman into the rock, shockwaves rippling outward. Pyre slipped in again, syncing with Balefor’s rhythm. He swept fire across her body, flames coiling tighter, hotter, feeding on every burst of Anima she spent trying to defend herself.

By now, the Synod woman was crawling.

One wing burned uselessly, the other still flailing as she dragged herself forward, fire clinging to her. Pyre didn’t strike this time. He brought his blade close—too close—and let the heat surge.

The Synod woman shrieked, voice cracking as she screamed promises of death, of vengeance, of returning with a thousand more. She tried to wield the enlarged needle as a blade, swinging wildly at Marrowsven, yet she slipped aside with assassin’s grace.

Balefor was there instantly, hammering her down again.

It dawned on Pyre then—clear and terrible—that the woman was making it worse for herself. Every ounce of Anima she burned fed the fire, Pyre’s flames drinking it greedily.

“Careful!” Pyre shouted to Balefor once he saw the lion-man’s greataxe wobble. “You’re pushing it!”

Balefor snarled but stepped back, chest heaving, Sigil trembling as he forced himself to hold.

Marrowsven moved in, delivering a rapid series of precise stabs. Blood spilled—dark, shimmering with Anima.

The Synod woman convulsed as her Sigil destabilized further. Pyre delivered a final strike, and her Sigil shattered, exploding into fragments of fading light. She froze mid-motion, her body draining of color as gray spread from the cracks in her mask outward.

The woman collapsed, and silence rushed in around them.

Balefor stared down at her, blue eyes wide. “We just sent her to the Hollow.”

“We did,” Pyre said, lowering his sword as the flames dimmed.

“Good riddance,” Marrowsven said flatly. “I would send her again if given a chance.”

Balefor grunted. “One Synod down.”

“Two,” Pyre said. “Irix helped me kill one as well.”

“Two?” Balefor nodded once, impressed. “Even better.”

A distant concussion rolled across the Deep Nether.

The battle between the Synod and the Unmoored still raged beyond the hills, but the light was changing now—brightening, warping, bleeding through dust and debris in violent pulses. It was impossible to see clearly through the rising glare.

“Soon,” Marrowsven said.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Pyre replied. “Let’s go!”

The three scrambled over jagged lava rock, boots skidding, leaping across craters and shattered ridges as shockwaves rippled beneath their feet.

A blast from Ronark’s bellows screamed past them, close enough to force Pyre to jump to the side. He recovered, and they pushed on, almost there, almost within sight of the Shepherd and the others when the sky tore open.

Light and force slammed down at once, the Deep Nether erupting in explosions of raw Anima. The ground heaved, flipped, and vanished beneath them as everything inverted.

Pyre felt weightlessness seize him as the landmass dropped away entirely, debris and pillars of blinding light hammering down from above as the three Unclaimed plummeted into the unknown together.