Chapter 189: Death of Ophelia
The energy came without warning.
It did not build. It did not announce itself. It simply released, expanding outward from Ophelia's body in every direction simultaneously, a wave of pure divine power that hit all three of them at the same time and threw them in three different directions before any of them had finished processing what was happening.
Ren hit the ground and slid and came up on one knee.
Fey hit a tree and came off it smiling.
Ezra caught herself in the air with her wings and steadied.
Ophelia rose.
She rose slowly and the laughter that came with it was not the frantic kind. It was the patient kind, the kind that came from somewhere that had been carrying its certainty for a very long time and was finally in a position to let it out properly.
She looked at Ren.
"Did you really believe it would be that simple?" she said. "Hundreds of years. That is how long I have worked toward this. Every infected. Every body. Every plan within a plan within a plan, all of it leading to this exact moment." Her eyes moved across all three of them. "And you thought you were going to stop me with teamwork."
She let the word sit there.
"Even if I fail to become what I have set out to become today," she said, and her voice dropped into something quieter and more absolute, "I will make sure that you watch every single one of those dear to you die before I go. Every subordinate. Every person you have collected into that little territory you are so proud of. I will take all of it from you."
Ren straightened up.
His mana was not where it had been at the start of this. He could feel the edges of it, the places where it had thinned from everything he had already spent, and he was going to have to be smarter about what he did with what remained.
He looked at Fey.
She was already moving.
Her arms came out wide and the magical formations spread from her feet outward in every direction, green and deliberate, and from them the bone wyverns rose first, three of them, circling upward immediately to engage Ophelia from above. Behind them came the skeletons, dozens of them, armed with whatever weapons Fey had available to give them, and they moved toward Ophelia without hesitation because they did not have the capacity for it.
Ophelia's spider legs fired.
Purple slashes carved through the first wave of skeletons without slowing, each one scattering bones across the scorched ground, but Fey was already pulling the bones back together and redirecting them, the pieces forming into constructs that were not the same shape they had started as, sharp and dense and aimed at the parts of Ophelia that were already damaged.
One bone lance found the crack in her shoulder exoskeleton and drove in.
Ophelia screamed in anger and fired a blast that obliterated the construct, but the moment her attention went there Ezra was already coming in from the other side.
The metal formed in rapid bursts ahead of her as she moved, sheets and spikes launching at Ophelia's flanks, each one aimed at a different cracked section of exoskeleton, and her spear came through the gap the metal created with the flame tip blazing, driving at the exposed section on Ophelia's left side.
Ophelia caught the spear on a spider leg and redirected it.
Ezra let it go and pulled it back with the metal manipulation before it left her range, the chain of command between her and the metal instant and continuous, and she sent it in again from a different angle before Ophelia had finished accounting for the redirect.
It hit.
The flame bit into the crack and widened it and Ophelia's leg came around and caught Ezra across the midsection and threw her back, but the damage was done and it was added to the total.
Ren came in low.
He had been watching the exchanges, reading what her attention tracked and what it did not, and the pattern that had emerged through the entire fight was still holding. She could not fully account for three attack vectors simultaneously when each one was being pressed properly.
He compressed the lightning into a narrow beam and fired it directly at the crown of the exoskeleton.
She moved to block it with her arm and the bone wyverns dove at that exact moment from above, the timing reading as coincidence but not being coincidence, and she had to split her attention between the wyverns coming down and the lightning coming sideways and the spear that Ezra had just sent in again from her left.
The lightning got through.
It cracked the crown section down the center, the fracture spreading from the top of the exoskeleton down toward her face, and she answered with a blast from her eyes that hit Ren in the chest and sent him skidding backward across the ruined ground.
He caught himself and kept moving.
Fey summoned the giant.
The massive skeletal form pulled itself up from the circle in segments, the scythe already in its hands before it was fully upright, and it swung the moment it had the clearance to do so without hitting Aris or Ezra. The arc covered the space between it and Ophelia and she had to move sideways to avoid it, the displacement forcing her out of the elevated position she had been holding and dropping her closer to the ground.
Ezra was there.
She drove the spear into Ophelia's abdomen the moment she dropped into range, the metal around the tip reinforcing the impact, and the exoskeleton cracked through at the point of contact.
Ophelia ripped the spear free and hurled Ezra back with it.
She turned and the blast she fired at Fey was large enough to scatter the giant and disperse the bone wyverns simultaneously, the divine output behind it clearing the field around her for a moment.
Ren used the moment.
He transformed.
The dragon form came back in full, the Chaos Devouring Dragon filling the air above her, and he fired the compressed Dragon Breath the instant he had the angle, a sustained beam aimed directly at her from above, and she brought both arms up and the purple barrier formed between them.
He pushed more into it.
The barrier cracked.
Fey drove three bone lances into the back of the barrier simultaneously from behind, and Ezra sent a sheet of metal into the side of it, the metal superheated by the flame she channeled through it, and the combination of pressure from three directions put fractures through the barrier faster than Ophelia could reinforce it.
The barrier shattered.
The Dragon Breath hit her chest and drove her back and down and she hit the ground on her hands and knees, the exoskeleton across her upper body fractured in multiple places, the cracks deep enough that the pale skin beneath it was visible through the largest ones.
She started to rise.
Ren transformed back.
He moved.
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He crossed the distance before she was fully upright, reading her position, reading the largest crack that ran from the crown of the exoskeleton downward across her face, the fracture splitting the protective layer across her forehead and leaving the skin beneath exposed from hairline to the bridge of her nose.
She looked up.
He compressed everything he had left into a single point.
The chaos flame breath came out as a beam no wider than his fist, tight and dense and carrying everything remaining in his reserves behind it, and it hit the exposed section of her head before she could finish raising her arm.
It passed through.
The sound it made going through was not the sound of an explosion or a blast. It was simply the sound of something ending, precise and complete, and the light behind Ophelia's eyes went out between one moment and the next.
She fell forward.
The exoskeleton went dark as she hit the ground, the purple light leaving every crack and crevice in it as the body that had been maintaining it stopped doing so, and the forest fell quiet around all three of them in a way it had not been quiet since before any of this started. Ophelia was dead