Chapter 701: Round Three

The gorge was deep and dark, certainly unnaturally so. Leon’s magic senses could only penetrate so far before the darkness became like a shroud, making the gorge appear like it led down into the deepest depths of the plane.

It wasn’t like this the first time Leon had seen it during the mission to grab the eggs and wyvernlings. It had been a fairly normal, if deep gorge, and had only revealed itself to be more than that when the black wyvern first appeared from the shadows. Now, however, with the sun almost completely set, and the black wyvern seemingly returned, the gorge was shrouded in unnatural darkness such that none in their hunting party could see the bottom.

“That’s encouraging,” Alix quipped as they stared down from the cliffs. “Kind of glad we’re not heading down there…”

Leon’s entire retinue, minus Talal and Elise, were there at the cliffs overlooking the gorge. Penelope’s surviving retainers were there, as well, and so were a number of heavily armed and armored female warriors in Cassandra’s service. None of them would be accompanying the main fighters down into the gorge. Instead, they’d be keeping an eye on the cliffs within Leon’s fortified villa, keeping an eye on the surroundings while Cassandra’s ark circled around overhead.

Only Leon, Maia, Penelope, and Cassandra would be braving the darkness below.

That wasn’t their original plan, but with what they could sense, it was the safest. Penelope had already lost several of her retainers to these wyverns, and she wasn’t looking to lose anymore. Besides, they had four eighth-tier mages. Even with all the power of the wyverns, that was still an enormous amount of power on their side.

More, if Leon counted Xaphan, though the demon was reluctant to join this fight, and even gave Leon no small amount of mockery when he’d asked Xaphan to be ready. Xaphan didn’t think this was a matter worth his power, and refused to join the fight unless Leon’s life was actually on the line.

Still, even with all the power on their side, Leon didn’t allow himself to ignore the danger in this foray into the black wyvern’s lair. Wyverns were incredibly powerful, stronger than mages of equivalent tiers, and down there, he wouldn’t be able to summon lightning from the sky.

With Alix’s statement ringing in his ears, Leon turned to his three companions standing to his left.

“This could very well be our point of no return,” he observed. “Heading down into that abyss will mean entering Black’s domain. He’s been chased off twice, but down in his lair, who knows if that’ll even be an option? If anyone wants to back out, now, I think, would be the time.”

Maia didn’t respond, though she didn’t need to. Through their connection, Leon could feel her readiness for battle, and for whatever might come down there—though, that readiness was tinged with the barest hint of fear, likely stemming from the last time they’d plumbed the depths of the earth and encountered significant darkness magic, back during the campaign in the Serpentine Isles.

Still, she was ready and wasn’t going to turn around, not at this point.

Cassandra, it seemed, shared that resolve. “I’m not running away,” she proclaimed, her aura rising in intensity and filling with killing intent. Leon saw that she wore an almost mad smile, an expression of anticipation that rather surprised him coming from a Princess. “A little darkness doesn’t scare me.”

Penelope then added, “I can handle some darkness magic. Just try to keep up, Leon.”

Leon didn’t respond to the challenge; he could tell her heart wasn’t in it, and the statement itself seemed almost token. If he was worried about anyone, it would be Penelope. She was clearly the most reluctant to head down into the gorge, even before finding it filled with darkness magic.

But she wasn’t running away or begging off the mission. Instead, she simply stared down into the dark, her almond-shaped eyes unwavering in conviction. For all her reluctance, she was committed to heading down there, at least.

“All right, then,” Leon said. He then turned to Valeria and channeled his own darkness magic.

[Keep an eye on everyone out here,] he said to his silver-haired lover. [Stay where that ark above us can cover you. Don’t take any risks.]

Valeria nodded back to him, and Leon relaxed ever so slightly. With Valeria in charge of his retinue, he felt like he didn’t have to worry too much about them and could focus on the hunt.

“If there’s nothing else,” he said aloud, “shall we begin?”

Cassandra laughed with an almost manic anticipation and leaped off the cliff wall and into the gorge. Leon had no doubt she’d survive, given the fact that not only did she have Sunlight drawn, she also wore her gleaming white armor with powerful defensive enchantments.

“After you, Leon,” Penelope replied.

Leon smiled at her and took one last moment to check his own gear. His armor was donned and in his left gauntlet was the anti-darkness opal. His right gauntlet gem slot was empty, waiting to be filled with the gem he felt might be best suited for whatever awaited them down in the gorge. But most of all, his helmet was coursing with magic power, the wards that protected him from darkness magic strong and active.

Confident his gear was in top shape, Leon waved to his retainers and then jumped from the cliff, Maia following not even a second later. Finally, Penelope leaped off the cliff, her hesitation plain for Leon to see even as he plummeted into the depths of the gorge.

They fell quickly, the walls of the gorge rising around them like the jaws of a massive beast. Leon controlled his descent with his flight gear, but otherwise didn’t slow himself, and he hit the curtain of darkness at the bottom of the gorge with great speed.

He braced himself for a hard impact, but none came. Instead, he hit the black shroud and fell right in like it was as tangible as a cloud.

And he kept falling for much longer than he expected. All the light above vanished faster than it should’ve, and he felt some magical pressure assert itself around his helmet, though fail to penetrate his wards.

Finally, he hit the ground with a tremendous crash, the stone at the bottom of the gorge fracturing beneath his feet with the force of his impact, throwing dust everywhere and sending cracks spider-webbing out from him. At the same time, lightning blazed through not only his body, but his armor, too, fending off the darkness that now surrounded and pressed in around him.

Maia landed beside him with considerably more grace, though creating a crater of her own. She had surrounded herself with five spears of water during her descent, and they now revolved around her, aimed outward and ready for battle.

Cassandra was already on the ground, Sunlight glowing in her hand, her purple hair glittering in the cast light. Finally, Penelope landed just beside her, a large spear in her hand pulsing with white light magic.

The four instinctively closed ranks with each other as they evaluated their surroundings, not getting too close to each other, but still ensuring that nothing could strike at their backs without going through one of the others, first.

Their magic senses inundated their surroundings, passing harmlessly through the curtains of darkness magic that surrounded them.

They found themselves in a dark and gray world, surrounded by crags and boulders, and little else. The walls of the gorge could still be seen, but they seemed strangely distant, and the sky above them was shrouded by the black curtain of darkness that shielded the bottom of the gorge from view. Much of that inky darkness leaked from the shroud like heavier-than-air gas, pooling in the cracks between the crags and lapping at their ankles, reaching for them, pulling at them, but not doing any real damage.

The atmosphere was oppressive, the four just waiting for something to burst out of their surroundings and strike. All of them were just waiting for the black wyvern to lunge out of the darkness around them and snap and bite and swipe at them, but nothing happened.

Until they began to relax.

“I thin—” Cassandra began, turning her head slightly to glance at Leon, her posture dropping just slightly, but before she could even finish the second word, the ground beneath their feet shattered and exploded upward. They were showered in deadly stony shrapnel infused with magic power, making each sliver of stone that much tougher and more dangerous.

For all their danger, the shards pinged harmlessly off Leon’s armor, doing likewise for Cassandra. Penelope was armored a little lighter, but she came out just fine, if a little unbalanced. Maia, however, had to pull her water spears in, taking a few good hits before getting her water shield in place.

Once the explosion calmed, Leon reached out and grabbed his river nymph, letting the power of the tau pearl flow into her. She wasn’t injured particularly seriously, but she was still bleeding from a few cuts here and there, and that was a sight Leon couldn’t allow.

It only took a second to fix those wounds, and in that second, a roar of fury filled the gorge. Leon barely turned his attention back to their surroundings before the massive form of the brown wyvern erupted from the earth like it was water and snapped her massive jaws at him.

Leon was ready, though, and he swung his blade, blazing as it was with silver-blue lightning, as he slid right underneath Brown’s gnashing jaws. He hit the beast in the chin, his prodigious strength hitting like a blow from a stone giant. Lightning poured out of him, arcing all over Brown’s face, blackening and tearing at her scales. She reeled back, hissing in pain.

Maia furiously hurled one of her water spears at the beast, but the seventh-tier wyvern sank back below the surface as if the stone beneath her claws was as liquid as the sea and Maia’s water spear sailed off into the dark for a few dozen feet before freezing in place, and then promptly reversing course to rejoin Maia.

“That was a bad hit,” Leon said to the others. “I don’t think I did much damage.”

He half-expected Penelope to make some snide comment, but he thought that maybe the situation was settling into her mind a bit, for she let his statement go without comment.

“Then just hit it again when it shows itself,” Cassandra responded with gleeful anticipation. “And hit it harder!”

Leon spared a moment to regard the Princess with some surprise, her raging killing intent and clear bloodlust standing in contrast with what he expected from her. He quickly turned his attention back to the situation at hand, though, and summoned his enchanted moonstone into his gauntlet in preparation for another strike from Brown.

He didn’t have to wait long, and this time, the strike didn’t come for him. Instead, a massive stone spike erupted from the ground and tried to impale Maia, but she nimbly leaped out of the way, and continued to dance through the air as the ground beneath her opened up, threatening to swallow her up into jagged rocky pits.

“Take to the air!” Cassandra shouted, and without hesitation, everyone engaged their flight gear and rose up a couple stories.

Another spike then blasted out of the earth, aimed at Cassandra, and this one Leon was ready for. As soon as he saw it, he engaged the enchantments in his moonstone, and the spike halted in midair. He gritted his teeth and hurled the spike back into the ground.

“Very nice,” Cassandra said appreciatively. “That was an enchantment, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Leon readily admitted, though not taking his eyes off their surroundings. Cassandra might take this situation fairly lightly, but he was just waiting for any of the other wyverns to appear from the dark.

“I thought so,” Cassandra calmly replied. “You don’t look much like an earth mage. Not quite brutish enough.”

Penelope finally interjected with a barbed comment, saying, “I might disagree with you on that, Your Highness…”

“Brute or no,” Leon responded, “this is hardly the time to relax. Let’s try to stay focused, yeah?”

Cassandra shrugged and Penelope scowled, but neither of them said another word.

Brown then made herself known again, rising from the earth about two hundred feet away. The earth simply split open, and she crawled out, her teeth bared, her aura staggering, her wrath more than evident. She roared in challenge, and all four of them turned their attention in her direction.

A moment later, Leon realized their mistake. As soon as their eyes were locked upon the roaring brown wyvern and no longer focused on the rest of the gorge, the shadows beneath them burst forth. A column of smoky darkness shot up and enveloped them completely, pressing in and trying to take root in their minds.

These tendrils barely managed to close around Leon’s helmet before his enchantments flared to life and vaporized them. Without a second’s thought, Leon summoned his magic power and let his lightning blast out from him while he engaged his black opal at the same time, hoping to weaken this attack.

The result was that all the darkness around him was ripped and torn asunder, though that radius didn’t quite extend to the rest of his party.

They didn’t need his aid, though, for a moment later, a massive water dragon broke free of the confines of the black column, carrying Maia to safety. Penelope emerged with a blast of fire, looking a little haggard but otherwise all right. Cassandra, meanwhile, cleaved her way through the darkness, her body protected by a shield of brilliant white light projected by Sunlight. The blade itself glowed with white light that projected outward, tripling the weapon’s effective length.

As she came out to hover by the rest of them, Leon heard her say more to herself than to anyone else, “By the Gardeners, I love this fucking sword…”

Behind his helmet, Leon couldn’t help but beam with pride, his face splitting open in an utterly absurd smile that would’ve had him burning with embarrassment had it not been hidden.

But his reverie was shattered a moment later when Black finally revealed himself, bursting from the ground with White and Green in tow, all three wyverns having been shrouded in darkness and hidden from view. But now, White opened her toothy maw and horrible light streamed forth.

Leon, however, swapped his moonstone out for his enchanted lapis, projecting a shield of ice to hang in the air just as this beam of light lanced toward them. The light hit the shield and scattered right off, the frozen water crystals refracting and reflecting the damaging light and preventing White’s attack from doing any damage.

Leon had to fight to maintain the shield, though, as White kept up the pressure, not ceasing her light breath and threatening to overwhelm Leon’s shield.

Fortunately, the mages at his back sprang into motion immediately, and Maia sent a pair of mid-sized water dragons slithering through the air on either side of Leon, one toward Green and the other toward Brown. Penelope pulled back a little bit and started conjuring firebirds as fast as she could and letting them fly out on their own to harass the wyverns. Cassandra took a more personal approach, surging toward Black with Sunlight still brightly illuminated.

Black roared in indignation and launched himself toward her, while Green hissed and flapped her wings, sending dozens of sharp wind blades at Maia’s water dragons. Brown, ignoring the water dragon bearing down on her, called her earth magic and the ground beneath Green’s water dragon cracked open, sending thousands of tiny pieces of stone shrapnel rocketing skyward. Finally, White turned her head and her light breath sliced into the water dragon’s flank.

That water dragon was mercilessly torn to shreds, but the second crashed into Brown, wrapping itself around her and squeezing hard enough for the massive wyvern to shriek in pain.

Black roared in anger and launched himself into the air, his slitted reptilian eyes fixed upon Maia even as Cassandra spun around in the air to keep up. Leon growled in defiance, understanding where he was heading. Black barreled down upon Maia as smoky tendrils of darkness erupted from the shadows beneath him to tangle and tear into Penelope’s firebirds.

Leon and Cassandra both swiftly moved, interposing themselves between Black and Maia, but the beast didn’t slow down, barreling right past Cassandra, ignoring a strike she laid against his flank with Sunlight, and knocking her right out of the sky. He didn’t even slow as Leon pushed out and summoned his lightning magic as he fell back towards Maia, letting streams of lightning erupt from his fingers and rake across Black’s scales unimpeded. The beast was consumed with rage at Maia, and he ignored all else. Even when Cassandra righted herself in the air and charged after him and slashed at his wing with Sunlight, Black continued on, ignoring the burning light that pierced through the membrane of his wing, spilling a few drops of blood before the blade seared the wounds shut.

Cassandra, however, was thrown from the monster’s wing as he flew, leaving only Leon hovering between him and Maia.

But Maia wasn’t helpless, and as Leon reached out with his left hand, intent on disrupting the beast’s darkness magic, another water dragon peeled past him. It was a huge water construct and packed full of Maia’s power. However, it slid right through the wyvern as his scaled body dulled and darkened. Leon shouted in frustration as his lightning harmlessly slipped right through the wyvern, his black opal unable to sufficiently disrupt the monster’s magic power, and the wyvern battered him aside like a leaf in the wind.

Leon felt the flash of pain lance through him through their connection as Maia was hit by the wyvern, and he lost all peripheral vision. All he saw was the wyvern slamming his jaws shut upon his river nymph, and white-hot fury exploded within him.

Leon righted himself and hurtled after the wyvern, burning through his magic power to go just that much faster. Within his body, his lightning magic changed to fire, and he could feel it was just slightly different compared to what he usually felt when he channeled this strength. It was deeper, wilder, more potent, more primal. This fire yearned to be released, demanded to be let loose upon his enemies. It held a savage need to incinerate, to destroy all it touched.

With a bone-crunching impact, Leon slammed into the flank of the black wyvern and let this fire loose. Orange flames poured from his extremities like water through a burst damn, and within them were licks of black fire, searing and burning through Black’s scales, the beast’s shroud of darkness unable to stop this conflagration. At the same time, Black’s jaws were forced open by a pillar of ice, and Maia, encased in a small and weak-looking water dragon, fell the beast’s maw, bleeding from several enormous wounds that ran the length of her torso. Maia didn’t immediately respond to Leon’s attempts to communicate through their connection and didn’t move much from where she lay on the ground, her water dragon disintegrating all around her. Black roared in pain as he snapped the ice in his mouth, clearly hurt but not out of the fight.

Leon smiled; more of his power was needed, then. He let every spark of power flow through him and out through whatever body part would hold it. Fire exploded from his body like he was the sun itself, and Black screeched in pain again.

And then Leon felt another bone-crushing impact, and he was thrown away from Black with terrific force. He hit the ground and shattered the stone beneath him, not even his armor’s padding and defensive enchantments able to absorb all the force of that blow.

Above, Leon could see Black’s tail still swinging back after having struck him, and he could see a horrific hole burned into the beast’s flank by his black flames.

In an instant, Leon evaluated his condition and realized that while he’d broken a rib in that impact and had many more bruises, he was hardly debilitated. The power of the tau pearl was already going to work, fixing his wounds.

A bright flash of light got his attention again as he forced himself to his feet, and he saw Cassandra tangling with Black, Sunlight gleaming with light magic. Further away, Penelope was keeping the other three wyverns busy with her firebirds, but she was being overwhelmed little by little. She was unable to stop White from sending a beam of light into Black, causing much of the damage Leon had done to rap

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