Echoes of War, Ch 39: Guardian's Strength (Patreon)

“It's not enough yet,” Sam replied as he looked at the Astral Guardian and then back to the Vos'Rekan. There was no time to study the differences between the crystal flame elemental’s avatar and real body. All that mattered was what he could do to help.

“That injury will only make it angry. It was half asleep until now and didn’t use most of its racial abilities. Vos’Rekan only think about eating, but they haven’t survived this long by being weak.”

As if his words were a premonition, the Vos’Rekan’s head began to rise back into its normal position. The bones in its neck had to be healing already. The vitality in the beast was massive, more than enough to give it almost instant regeneration.

“If I keep its attention, can you injure it?” he asked quickly. To drive it away, they had to injure it so severely that the beast wouldn’t be able to recover anytime soon. That meant doing enough damage to exhaust its regeneration, so that it would be forced to hibernate.

Hopefully, the guardian was strong enough, because Sam had already tapped out most of his stored essence in that blast, not to mention the price the Silver Nagas had paid.

The mobility granted by their formation let him use the Vos’Rekan’s size against it, but it had limited effectiveness unless they could do more damage. If he could keep teleporting, he would last for a few more exchanges, but eventually the beast would crush him.

If its dimensional bubble stayed down, he could run away, but that wouldn’t help Aster Fall. If it came to that, he would race back and grab his family before retreating into the Void, and only come back once the beast left to whatever ruins remained of the world.

“I will do my best,” the guardian replied with a nod. Crystal flame radiated away from him as his living sapphire body glowed like a radiant gem. “I have called for reinforcements, but even with the time compression to help them arrive quickly, they will not be here for months. For now, let me show you why I am the guardian. I will not allow this creature to approach Aster Fall while I have the ability to resist.”

“I’ll distract while you attack,” Sam agreed. Even as he spoke, he had his avatars pull out more of their stash of auras and combust them to restore their energy. He was doing the same.

He’d come here with thousands of auras, all of them charged to 750 or more essence each, and the avatars had more than a thousand each. That was enough to refill his essence 24 times, and it was twice that for them. They wouldn’t run out anytime soon.

Even as they made a quick plan with their thoughts traveling back and forth like lightning, the Vos’Rekan was already recovering. Its head snapped back into place and its massive yellow eyes turned toward them. They’d been fixed on Sam before, but this time they were glowing with a dark energy that hadn’t been there before he hurt it.

A roar cut through the Void, sending a crushing pressure against the shield covering Sam’s formation. Then across the Vos’Rekan’s body, a layer of dark dimensional energy sprang up, roiling like flames as it surged across the stony surface. It wasn’t any type of natural flame or part of the major elements, but Sam recognized it. It was one of the Vos’Rekan’s innate abilities.

The titans called it void fire.

It was much more dangerous than anything the beast had done before. Void fire had the unique ability to destroy nearly anything it touched, from magical spells to stone, by tearing through their substance with tiny dimensional rifts. It was formed from layers of dimensional energy that the Vos’Rekan compressed around its body, crushing them together until their innate energies rebelled and created a dimensional flux that resembled dark fire.

If it had used this ability before, they would have had to pay a much greater price to attack it.

Without any more delay, however, the guardian stepped forward. A wave of crystal flame condensed around him. The familiar sapphire blue energy burned with an intensity that Sam had never achieved when he’d used it. The concept of frozen flame in it was different too, far beyond what he’d managed.

Every curl of flame felt like it was carved from gemstone with solid facets shining from the surface, but at the same moment it was fluid and burning, shifting its structure to another form. Deep in the heart of the guardian’s flame, an even brighter sapphire blue flame burned, very similar to the elemental’s own heart.

It was obvious that the energy was the life energy of the guardian’s race, and his body was the perfect medium to channel it. It was obvious what Sam had always been missing. He had managed some aspects of crystal flame, but without a matching race and its inherent knowledge, the core concept was always unfamiliar to him.

Seeing it now was eye-opening.

The guardian was at the Fifth Evolution, and his spells were a work of art. Lines of crystal flame stretched out into the Void, piercing through the local dimensions as he wove space and thought into the flames. A storm of crystalline shards flew from his hand and burned in the darkness, swiftly taking the shape of a sapphire regiment.

The numbers multiplied instant by instant until there were fifty thousand miniature elementals in the Void. With a twist of mana, the guardian pulled dimensional energy from nearby and poured it into them, making them grow taller.

Within seconds, all of them were a copy of the guardian, standing seven feet tall and with a blue sapphire shield and spear in their hands. All around them, a field of crystal flame burned, as if they were embers giving rise to an enormous conflagration. The heat around them consumed the energies of the Void as fuel and the elementals grew even taller. The flames around them stretched a mile high and fifty miles long.

He’d summoned an army with a wave of his hand.

The guardian stepped higher into the air as he pointed at the Vos’Rekan. The army of crystal flame elementals charged forward, their formation changing into a giant triangle that pointed directly for the beast.

At the Fifth Evolution, power and size went hand in hand. The elemental was shorter than Sam, but with access to dimensional energy to infuse his spells, the distance he could cover was incredible.

The guardian began to shape another spell as he tracked the Vos’Rekan’s movements, one that took the form of translucent sapphire rays gathering around his hands, but Sam had his own job to do. As the crystal flame army raced forward, he poured essence throughout the Fourfold Star and gathered his strength. Then he teleported away.

He had to distract the thing to give the guardian a chance to hurt it.

He reappeared a hundred miles in front of the Vos’Rekan’s head, directly in front of its massive eyes. It was the worst possible place to fight a Vos’Rekan, but it also guaranteed that the beast would try to eat him.

At the very least, it would have a hard time ignoring him. Hopefully, it would give the guardian an opening.

The beast was so large that from here, it felt like he was standing on its nose. In front of him, a field of void fire burned like an evil wind.

There were some racial abilities in Sam’s memory that he had never used in battle. Some of them needed more strength than he had still, but there were others that he’d only been able to test out on his own, like the abilities he gained as his attributes increased.

He’d never had a real opponent for them, and so their purpose wasn’t realized. With the Vos’Rekan in front of him now, the shadow of the past became clear.

His Dimensional Sight easily picked out thin points in the void fire, places where it would be easier to break through, as well as denser ones that he had to avoid. Stellar Mind raced at full speed as calculations filled one section of his mind to balance the formation, another three managed the avatars, and potential spell forms were constructed in a fifth. He still had a sixth division available that left him free to think. It seemed he could divide his mind once for every 5,000 Intelligence.

His Auric Awareness let him see the flow of essence and regeneration through the Vos’Rekan, as well as how much of its energy it was devoting to the void fire versus its other attacks. It had been at half awareness before, but now that it was waking up, it was closer to 70%.

At the same time, perhaps because he was at the Third Star, he could feel the echo of the Void in the beast, the way its essence had condensed over the ages into its current form. It was trapped in loops and points like scattered dust in a spider web, intricate and a mess at once, completely different from the way his essence constellation worked.

He wanted to tear it apart and make it his own, rearranging it into a more perfect form. The beast was a travesty of waste and excess.

The thoughts passed through his mind in an instant as he gathered his energy and made the formation flare with a brilliant intensity of astral light.

“Come and die, trash pit,” he growled. His words were unintelligible to the beast, the hatred was obvious.

The Vos’Rekan’s eyes were already fixed on him, and as the flare lit up the Void, he felt the beast’s rage surge. A wave of void fire followed, expanding toward him in a miles-long tide.

If it had been a different attack, he would have teleported out of the way again, but his job was to keep the Vos’Rekan distracted, and against this old enemy, he had a better way. His hand rose up and the dark wall of Void Barrier appeared.

With his avatars and the nagas supporting him, the barrier was over a mile wide, more than enough to cover their formation. The barrier was a window to a different part of the Void and stars shone through it with a strange angle.

As the void fire approached, it flowed into the gap and disappeared, leaving a giant stretch of space behind it undamaged. Torrents of dark flame flowed past on either side, but nothing struck Sam or the nagas.

It didn’t even require much strength to maintain it. It was skill against strength. The Vos’Rekan’s attack was transferred away to where it would do no harm.

As the beast noticed what was happening, however, its massive jaws opened wider, releasing a roar that sent lines of crushing dimensional force through the area. The space where the Void Barrier was standing was torn apart under the pressure, its structure twisted in every direction.

A moment later, both the wave of Void Fire in front of them and the Void Barrier were gone, shredded by the roar, but the Vos’Rekan wasn’t content with just breaking Sam’s wall.

In the distance, the crystal flame army was attacking the Vos’Rekan’s body and many of them were being incinerated by the void fire. Sapphire and black explosions covered the horizon, punctuated by searing blasts of crystal flame that struck down like rays from above.

Above the army, a massive spell form rotated that was made of spiraling energies. Geometric runes like cut gems glittered in the mix, some of them falling and others rising as attacks blasted down toward the Vos’Rekan. At the center of that spell form, the guardian stood like a brilliant flame, his body as intense as the blue sun in the distance.

The Vos’Rekan’s claws were slamming against the crystal flame army, crushing them like ants, and a devouring aura was radiating from its skin to consume every fragment of crystal flame that fell toward it, but Sam only had an instant to glance at the battle.

In front of where he was standing, the beast’s jaws opened wider. The dark vortex in the depths of its throat expanded in an instant, swirling out as a gigantic pulling force dragged him and the nagas forward. It was trying to eat them.

He swore as he studied the dimensional energy around them, which was locked down into a grip more solid than steel. Bands of devouring energy were extended all through the space around him, making it impossible to teleport away. Devouring the Vos’Rekan’s main ability and it was a lot more difficult to deal with than void fire.

“Attack the space around us to break through,” he ordered the nagas. There was only one way to break out of a Vos’Rekan’s jaws, and that was direct force. Fortunately, the formation was designed to help.

With a shout, he strengthened the dimensional blades of the Fourfold Star and flew to the right, heading for the edge of the vortex. At the same time, a golden astral blade formed in his hand, followed by another three in the hands of his avatars.

With his other hand, he reached out ahead of him. His hand seemed to stretch through the air, covering a mile with a ripple of dark light. Within that area, silver strands of starlight poured in, creating a mirage like a thousand stars had suddenly appeared. Then the space twisted, shattering into shards of broken dimensional space.

It was a targeted Astral Rift with the full strength of Sam’s essence against one tiny point of the Vos’Rekan’s ability. With the tier difference between them, it wasn’t fully effective, but the edge of the vortex shattered as sections of it distorted into nothing, weakening the border.

The formation crashed into the edge of the vortex as the four cutting blades between the stars hummed with force, slicing through the distortion. At the very points, golden astral blades flashed, tearing through the sections that were directly in front of them.

It was almost enough to escape.

Perhaps if he’d been a little stronger or if the Astral Rift had been twice as powerful, he would have broken through, but the Vos’Rekan’s devouring vortex only shuddered under the impact. Their formation slammed against the border and they were hurled backward like they’d been slapped by a giant, falling straight toward the center of the vortex as it sucked them down.

Sam’s hands blazed with silver flame as he stabilized himself against the pull and targeted the center of the vortex. Double Astral Rifts tore through the space in front of him, heading for the center. His three avatars did the same, adding another six lines of distorted space to his.

It was like eight spears falling toward a dark gulf.

He needed to disrupt the pull.

Here and there, the devouring force tried to tear apart his formation, stabbing in with chaotic edges and warping layers as it pulled them down. Fragments of shattered weapons and chunks from broken golems fell toward the center of the vortex, their shapes stretching out across the distance as they twisted and then disappeared into the depths.

The lines of the formation held the nagas in place as the eight Astral Rifts struck in an explosion of dimensional backlash.

The vortex shuddered as it slowed down and the pull faded, but it wasn’t enough to break free. They were held in place by the dimensional pressure around them, halfway into the Vos’Rekan’s mouth. Its fangs were closing around them in the distance, massive stone spikes heading down to seal their fate.

At that moment, a lance of sapphire blue light pierced through the slowed vortex in front of them, shattering it into a tempest of chaotic energy. It created a brilliant explosion inside the Vos’Rekan’s mouth that lit up the area for miles, making the stone inside glow with bright crystalline flames.

Instead of pulling them down, a backlash of pressure from the ruptured vortex hurled them outward, tossing them for miles through the beast’s fangs and out into the open Void.

As Sam caught his balance and halted their flight, he saw the Astral Guardian standing there. His hands were glowing and surrounded by crystalline spell circles, but the left half of his body was bleeding with blood that ran like slow blue magma. He’d been injured.

“The distraction is working,” the guardian said with a nod. “Its attacks are scattered as it chases you. Try to give me some more time.”

In the distance, the crystal elemental army was tattered, but still fighting. Their weapons were ripping into the Vos’Rekan’s hide like dwarven miners, tearing massive gashes in the stone as they tried to exhaust its regeneration.

One of the beast’s arms was missing two of its clawed fingers, and the stumps were seared dark with a tracing of sapphire energy. That must have been how the guardian was wounded.

The guardian disappeared in a flare of crystal flame, leaving behind only a trace of sapphire heat that wavered in the air. The ability was almost the same as Sam’s old Crystal Passage, but more intricate.

Sam turned to look at the Vos’Rekan’s head, but this time he avoided the mouth as he flew toward one of its giant yellow eyes. The eye wasn’t much of a weak point for the beast, since it had other senses, but it was still a good place to get its attention.

As he was approaching, however, the Vos’Rekan decided that it had enough of the things attacking it. Dark waves of energy rose up from its hide like visible rage, stretching for hundreds of miles along its body as they soared into the Void. Dimensional currents covered the area, locking down the space like hardened steel for hundreds of miles within its reach. Void fire burned in the tide of energy as it swept over the crystal flame elementals, drowning them in a sea of devouring force.

The waves of energy were shaped by the Vos’Rekan’s will and moved like sentient things. Torrents of crystal flame were disappearing by the instant as the leading edges of the waves turned into sharp spikes and whistled through the Void toward Sam. They were distant at first, and looked normal compared to the size of the beast, but as they came closer, it was obvious that every spike was the size of a mountain.

At that moment, although it was destroying the elementals near it, the beast was ignoring the guardian. Its attention was fully focused on Sam’s essence. The attack looked like a rain of dark meteors descending toward him, like the beast’s mountainous back had come alive and hurled itself at his head.

The guardian began his own attack again in the distance, where he was standing above the beast’s spine, but Sam was alone in front of the assault. Teleportation was locked down all around him as the dimensional space twisted under the Vos’Rekan’s will, and even the bladed lines of the Fourfold Star were trembling under the force, bending like they were about to shatter as they tried to cut their way free.

This time, the Vos’Rekan wasn’t holding back.

The attack was miles across, more than he could move quickly, so he had no choice but to try and block it directly. A Void Barrier sprang up in front of the formation, but at the same time, he began to layer more of them with help from his avatars. Four intersecting Void Barriers appeared, with his at the center and the avatars’ at the sides, to make an enormous wall that hid their formation behind it.

He could only create one Void Barrier at a time, and even with his avatars to cheat and create three more, it wasn’t enough to completely seal off the area, but it did block the main approach.

As the attack arrived, the size of each dark spike at the front of the Vos’Rekan’s attack was larger than their entire formation. Each of them was over a mile across and three miles long. Behind the spikes, the same tide of void fire rushed toward them.

Two spikes barreled toward them side by side, leading the way as they struck the Void Barriers. Part of the energy disappeared into the Void inside the dimensional gaps, but the spikes were so large that they overlapped the edges of the holes. The result was an explosion of dark essence as the spikes were split apart on the edge and disintegrated into a chaotic whirlwind that roared through the area where Sam and the nagas were defending.

A silver barrier of stars covered the nagas and the golems, and Sam’s avatars leapt forward with Astral Shields to block the approach, but it was like being picked up by a hurricane. Energy poured in from every side, slicing through their formation in a thousand directions of spiraling, twisting darkness. Despite everything Sam tried to do, nagas and golems disintegrated in the face of it, unable to resist the pressure that was devouring them.

Blades of devouring energy sliced into Sam’s body, crashing against the remaining defense of his armor and the shield from his Cloak of Frozen Stars. In many places, it tore straight through, the concepts behind it too powerful to resist. His shield was like a sheet of paper.

His body turned silver as he was covered in blood.

He shifted his defense, overlapping the shields of his avatars in a tighter formation as he pulled the nagas and golems inward, trying to protect them. He threw up another Void Barrier in front of the onslaught, but the energy was coming from so many directions that it was of little use. The barrier could only absorb attacks from one of them. Even as he realized that, he poured his essence into an astral shield and put himself in front of his nagas, shifting the formation behind him as much as possible, while he had his avatars erect new barriers, trying to create as much of a defense as possible.

Searing whips of devouring energy tore into his body, leaving dark lashes on every surface, and hammering impacts thundered through his bones. The attack was coming from every direction, lashing across his back, legs, head, arms, and chest, until there wasn’t a single area where he hadn’t been hit.

Bones cracked and his vision blurred.

His Constitution was almost at 20,000 and with his essence attributes enhancing it, it was just over 51,000. Without that, he would have been dead at that moment. Behind him, the entire formation sheltered in his shadow as he tried to keep himself between the attack and his people.

He relied on the senses of the avatars and his dimensional awareness to orient himself as he moved, dragging the formation upward out of the line of attack. The Void was buried in the Vos’Rekan’s energy and they had to cross miles of space. It felt glacial, but step by step he dragged them up and out.

Here and there, the four blades of the formation sizzled and burned through sections of energy, making it a little easy, but they were on their last legs. The energy running through them was on the verge of shattering.

Sam’s avatars had done the same as his main body, placing themselves in front of the nagas to shield them as much as possible, and by the time he reached the open Void, two of them were eroded by the attack, with more than two thirds of their bodies eaten away by the devouring energy. Massive holes were visible from one side of them to the other as silver flames licked at the edges of the wounds and more expanses of golden skin crumbled away.

As soon as they were clear, the last of their energy poured into the silver shields around them and the two avatars exploded, turning into a field of shimmering stars and flames that swept over the army of nagas, covering them in a last defense.

The third avatar was missing an arm and one of its horns, and half of a cheek was a gaping pit that made his face look skeletal, but Sam ignored that as he looked at the nagas. Another fifty-eight of them were missing, and of those left, they were covered in dark wounds like they’d been seared by a flame that stripped away scale and bone.

The attack had been indiscriminate, and none of them had the ability to truly resist.

Pain stabbed at his heart like a twisted knife and boiled along his veins, and he let out a low growl as he sent a wave of healing scrolls toward all of them. He activated them in the air and used currents of wind to wrap them around the nagas all at once, affixing them into place. He had protected them as best he could, but it wasn’t enough to keep them all safe. The only consolation was that more than 300 were still alive.

The vast majority of the golems were gone, with only a few damaged ones remaining. Silverbeak had been destroyed protecting a section of the nagas, and he was lost until he could be rebuilt again. Then Sam looked down at himself.

His body was covered in black ridges and gashes everywhere, with not even an inch of undamaged skin. The Vos’Rekan’s energy had torn palm-deep lines in every direction from head to toe, covering his back, legs, arms, and chest, making him look like a charred stick of wood that was half-consumed by a flame. His face probably looked the same.

The dark energy was still trying to crawl across the wounds, concentrated in some of the deeper lines, and his astral flames were warring with it. Tens of thousands of points of his essence were missing, devoured by the Vos’Rekan. A wave of weakness came with it, but it was fortunately only on the edges of his essence constellation and hadn’t pierced through his spirit.

Artifacts hung on him in fragments, which was all that was left. His bracers were half melted, his cloak was missing two-thirds of its length, and his clothes were tattered strips draped over him. Except for the fragments and the silver flames that burned across every visible surface, he was as naked as the day he was born.

It wasn’t a pleasant sight. He looked like he’d been burned alive, and his movements were slow as he felt his skin crackling. In the damaged areas, his skin was as hard to move as tree bark.

The cost was steep, but the Vos’Rekan’s obsession with trying to eat him hadn’t gone to waste. In the distance, the flare of sapphire light from the guardian was striking down along the beast’s hide with a fury that Sam hadn’t thought the crystal flame elemental was capable of.

A massive geometric spell circle was rotating in the air above the beast, covering hundreds of miles. It was made of sapphire flames that shone like hard crystal as it slowly rotated. Enormous bolts of energy fell from it, slicing into the Vos’Rekan in cascading waves. Each of them was a glittering sapphire spear.

As the spells struck the beast’s stone hide, trenches hundreds of feet deep were carved into its body, making even its enormous form tremble. Void fire rose up in response, consuming some of the strikes, but many still got through.

The guardian stood to the side of the spell circle, his body blazing as a new wave of crystal elementals formed around him. He was trying to reconstruct the army he’d used at first, but it was slow going against the devouring energy around the Vos’Rekan.

That wasn’t the only battle the two were fighting. All around them, clashing dimensional energies devoured each other, the splintering light of sapphire and dark explosions erupted, void fire met sapphire shields, and scales and chunks of frozen crystal went flying in every direction.

Sam could feel the dimensional energy of the Void trembling in response, like a pool of water that was constantly attacked by giant hammers. Space was fluctuating and twisting, rising up in ridges and crashing down again, warring one way and then the other.

The guardian had said he wasn’t the Vos’Rekan’s match, but he was putting up a good fight. It didn’t look like the Vos’Rekan would be able to win anytime soon.

Even as Sam took stock of the battle, the beast’s giant yellow eyes tracked his movements, locking onto his new position. A flare of rage and hunger made its eyes glow, and Sam felt the surge of essence through its body as it lunged forward toward him. Its movements were outlined in a swirl of dimensional energy as it twisted space to accompany its attack.

A massive claw sped through the Void toward him, just ahead of the beast’s jaws that were spreading wide to engulf the area. Teleportation was locked down here, making it difficult to escape, but it wasn’t as stable as before. The chaotic space created by the battle was making it hard for the Vos’Rekan to seal the area.

It also made teleportation dangerous.

Sam gathered the remains of the formation around him. With two of his avatars gone, there were only two points left to the star, as well as a faint image where the other two had been. The Fourfold Star was destroyed and the dimensional blades that had help him cut through space were gone as well, all except for the one line between him and his last avatar.

His body protested as he reached out with his remaining essence and swept everyone toward him with an astral shield. His avatar helped on the far side by pushing the nagas ahead of it. The two sides of the shield came together in a sphere with a burning star on either end.

He scanned the dimensional space around him before he dragged the entire group into a thin area that was a little more stable than the rest. It was still like hitting a steel plate and the dimensional force made the shield crack in massive gaps. They tumbled out a few dozen miles away, closer to the beast’s shoulder.

The Vos’Rekan’s roar crashed through the Void, flattening energy in every direction with its pure pressure, and it rolled in response, its jaws snapping toward Sam’s new position.

Sam tried to drag the nagas with him into another teleport, but this time the beast’s roar suppressed the nearby space and it was all he could do to try and fly away. The shield trailed out in a line as his formation was stretched out like a streak in the black.

The beast’s jaws snapped closed around the tail of the formation, swallowing the nagas who were at the end. Even as their view of the Void was sealed off by stone fangs, the half dozen Silver Nagas glared fiercely at their enemy and attacked, releasing blades of elemental energy, curses, and scrolls that they hadn’t yet expended.

Then they disappeared forever, even as a final explosion rocked the space around the beast’s fangs.

Even as it bit down, the rest of the Vos’Rekan wasn’t idle either. A wave of stones and dust flew upward from its body, debris that it had accumulated while sleeping in the galaxy, and formed a river of elemental stones that crashed toward the guardian’s spell circle.

Chunks of elemental earth infused with dimensional fire tore through the spell structure, destroying the crystal flame runes that made it up. The structure that had been a grand enchantment more than a hundred miles was torn apart. The area was awash with stone and devouring dimensional force, like an asteroid belt from a neighboring star system had suddenly crashed into this one.

At the same time, the Vos’Rekan twisted around, its spine like a mountain range slamming toward the guardian. But that was only a feint. As the guardian moved to dodge, the beast continued twisting, its four arms coming around as it reached for the crystal flame elemental. Its claws slapped together, sending a shock wave of essence through space that tossed Sam away.

The guardian’s sapphire body shone through the cracks in the beast’s claws at the center of that grip like a gem encased in the earth. With the beast holding him, it was unlikely he’d be able to teleport away. Even as Sam watched, a brilliant flare of crystal flame slammed into the claws again and again, shattering against the enclosure as he tried to escape.

"I'll try to break you free," Sam sent. His voice was grim as he saw the guardian get trapped. He was barely in a condition to fight, but he had to figure something out. He pulled the remains of the Silver Army toward him as he combusted more auras and gathered his essence.

There was a chance the beast would drop the guardian if he tempted it by flying past its front claws. It would put him back into the most dangerous area under the thing's neck and in easy range of its mouth, but if he left the guardian to his own devices, they'd lose all the damage he was creating. Not to mention, the guardian had already saved him once.

He had to return the favor.

The layer of hardened skin from the dimensional burns sounded like rusted metal as he moved. Silver flames poured out around him as he infused auras into an Astral Strike and reinforced it with runes for shattering force and dissipating energy. He built it higher as he targeted the Vos'Rekan's claws and changed his path, heading toward the guardian.

The Vos’Rekan continued twisting its body, its claws moving toward its mouth as its jaws opened again. It was clearly planning to swallow the obnoxious elemental that had hurt it. Its rolling gave Sam a better look at the damage it had suffered.

Nearly a quarter of the beast’s body was gone. Massive slabs of stone were drifting in the Void like a continent had been shattered and holes gaped open along its back, descending for miles into the center of its body. Pools of molten stone in a variety of shades from red to black sizzled against the elemental winds of the Void. It looked like a lava field where the earth had been completely torn apart by heat and fury.

The guardian's attack had done far more than Sam had thought possible. The crystal elemental had understated his strength. To see a Fifth Evolution of a younger race harm one of the primordial terrors of the Void this badly was incredible. It spoke to his strength, and it made Sam appreciate how dedicated such he had to be to watch over Aster Fall for age after age.

Aster Fall had flourished under his watch.

Even as Sam flew closer, the Vos’Rekan’s claws were approaching its mouth, ready to swallow its prey. Sam infused another aura into the spell, giving a sense of frozen ice as tiny snowflakes drifted around the Astral Strike, and then he hurled it toward one of the beast's claws. It cut across the Void like a bolt of frozen winter.

It crashed into the Vos'Rekan's claws like a cutting blade, leaving a trail of crackling ice shards as it tore into the beast's hide. The ice expanded outward, forming great arches and frozen pillars as if it were constructing a hallway inward. The beast's claws trembled under the impact, turning blue from edge to edge, but then it just tightened its grip and the ice that was covering its claws shattered into fragments of stellar dust.

“You won’t be able to save me from this,” the guardian’s words reached Sam’s mind, outlined in blue flames. He sounded far calmer than Sam expected, his voice patient and accepting. “It’s a better opportunity than I’d expected to hurt it even more. It should be enough. Now, take this and try to escape! ”

With those words, a tiny blue shard flew out from the elemental and tore through the beast's claws, heading for Sam like a tiny sapphire comet.

“This is my life gem,” the guardian sent, along with a burst of quick information on how to use it. “As long as it still burns, I will eventually be able to restore myself. It will just take time. I have always known that this day might come, and I prepared for it long ago. Take it and go. Aster Fall needs you more than it needs me.”

The blue gem landed in Sam’s palm, shining like a miniature flame. It was about a foot tall and a third of that wide, like a crystal that had grown beneath the earth. Its surface was faceted like a sapphire and it blazed with the same pure brilliance that had been at the center of the guardian’s body. A strong sense of vitality and power radiated from it.

It looked like he’d torn out his heart.

At that instant, the Vos’Rekan’s claws reached its mouth. It stuffed the elemental into its maw as the dark vortex in the depths spiraled open, sucking in the chaos winds  of the Void and everything nearby. At the center of that draw, the Astral Guardian blazed like a sapphire blade, the light around him increasing until it was so bright he resembled a miniature sun.

Spell circles flashed into existence around him, rotating with blazing runes, and dimensional space twisted like it was being wrung by a corkscrew. The intensity of mana coming from the guardian increased even more and the dimensional space was pulled in toward him, fighting against the Vos’Rekan’s hold.

The beast bit down, its fangs closing around the blue light like shadows surrounding a star.

"Go." The guardian looked out at Sam, his features calm as he gave him a nod that was clear across the distance. 

His body was surrounded by leaping sapphire flames that flowed like frozen water. They climbed higher until they filled the beast's mouth, towering as high as the teeth around him.

Then the elemental's body turned to a sphere of sapphire light and exploded outward, turning into ten thousand slashing rays that filled the Vos’Rekan’s jaws. There was so much power behind them that they tore through the beast’s fangs, shattering them like they were made of mud instead of stone, and then pierced into its skull and neck.

The Vos’Rekan’s mouth was filled with a sun going nova.

The rays expanded, followed by a wave of crystal flame in an expanding sphere that tore into the beast’s skull. The Vos’Rekan was durable, and it tried to bite down on the explosion even as the vortex in its mouth opened wider, but the guardian’s disruption of dimensional space gave the explosion a penetrating force.

As the shockwave expanded outward, half of the beast’s fangs melted away, a section of its jaw disappeared as a gap was opened to the Void below, its nose fragmented as sapphire energy boiled through from the inside, and one of its eyes was incinerated.

The Vos’Rekan curled in on itself, its enormous body bucking so hard that sections of its spine ruptured. Its head tilted up toward the stars as it screamed and tried to escape from the pain, but there was nowhere for it to go.

By the time the blast faded, a good half of the beast’s skull had melted away.

Sam didn’t waste the time, either. The guardian’s life gem was held tightly in his hand as he gathered the nagas around him and tore through the chaotic dimensional space while the beast was distracted. All of his attention was focused on finding the smoothest path. He wasn’t sure if the damage would be enough, so he needed some distance to prepare for what came next.

When he reappeared, it was after a handful of teleports. He stood in the Void a few hundred miles away from the beast. The dimensional space was calmer here. Silver flames poured across his body, still purifying the last of the Vos’Rekan’s energy that was trying to work its way into his wounds.

Behind him, the nagas looked like they’d been through just as much. They were missing scales in enormous patches, burn marks covered their bodies, some of them were missing limbs or their tails had been sliced in half, and their mana was nearly depleted.

Despite that, they were hissing in anger as they pulled more scrolls out of their storage and raised their weapons into the air. Elemental spells filled the air around them, shining with an edge of venom and their classes as they stared at the Vos’Rekan in the distance.

The Vos’Rekan’s roar reached a thunderous level, as if it were howling out its fury to the darkness. Its roar sounded like it was mixed half with gravel as it echoed from its broken jaw, but it was still full of power.

Sam gathered his essence as he prepared another spell. His artifacts were drained, but his mind raced to come up with a way to injure the beast again. The guardian’s spell circles shone in his memory, the combination of runes an insight into much larger spells than he’d ever considered. The twisting of dimensional space in the battle was also pulling at his attention, as if there was something there to find if he could only see it.

Perhaps if he combined his essence and created an enchantment like the guardian had, he could do some more damage without risking the nagas. They could help to fuel it with their own mana. The golems were broken and the formation was lost, but he could still make it work.

At that moment, however, the Vos’Rekan turned to look at him, its body twisting around as it stared full at where Sam was standing. Its single yellow eye fixed on him, glowing with dark fire at the edges. It looked at him like it was recording him in its memory, and a menacing growl resonated through the Void.

But then its head turned away toward the open Void and its body twisted around. Its legs kicked at the chaos winds as the fins along their length began to shine with force. Swiftly, its speed increased as it headed into the distance, past the blue star that marked the center of this system.

As it retreated, the massive amount of damage to its back and skull were on full display. It looked like it had been chewed apart by meteors, and a gigantic tracery of molten stone glowed like spilled blood across its hide.

The nagas let out a warning hiss of victory, long and threatening, as if they were telling the Vos’Rekan to never return to their nest.

As he watched it go, Sam gripped the sapphire gem in his hand and diverted his essence toward eliminating the last of the void fire that was burning across his body. Then he began to organize the remains of the Silver Army. His movements were slow and stiff.

Far behind him, he could sense the familiar aura of Aster Fall.