Chapter 136. Holding Onto Him as if He Might Dissolve Into Smoke
The creature sensed the shift in the air, the lethal mathematics of their desperation. It knew, with a primal, pre cognitive terror, that the dance had changed.
It surged forward, not with predatory grace, but with the suicidal fury of a cornered god, its movements a chaotic storm of snapping bone and tearing sinew.
William met that storm head-on. He raised the white hilted sword, his muscles screaming as he adopted a defensive posture that felt like a second skin Catherine’s posture.
As the creature’s massive claw descended like a falling guillotine, William didn’t meet force with force; he moved with the fluid, deadly economy of a dancer.
He twisted his hips, his boots skidding through a slurry of black ichor and shattered stone, and allowed the blade to catch the underside of the strike. The impact sent a bone-jarring shockwave up his arms, threatening to pop his shoulders from their sockets, but he held.
’Left pivot, roll with the momentum, redirect just like she does,’ William thought desperately, his vision blurring from the strain. ’Come on, you bastard, look at me!’
’Look at me and forget about her!’
He played the part of the sacrificial lamb with flawless, terrifying precision. He danced on the edge of annihilation, drawing the creature’s wild, dark energy toward himself.
Every slash he made with Catherine’s blade was a calculated provocation, carving shallow but bleeding wounds into its chitinous hide to keep its murderous attention locked on his every movement.
"Keep moving, Catherine!" he roared through gritted teeth as he ducked beneath a lashing tentacle that shattered a nearby boulder into razor sharp shrapnel. "Don’t stop until it’s over!"
Catherine was a phantom in the smoke. Using the explosive momentum of Wind, she circled wide around the creature’s flank, moving faster than the eye could follow.
She was a silver streak cutting through the carnage, her eyes locked on the cracked section of armor that William’s blood and sweat were buying her.
She reached the opening. The world seemed to hold its breath.
Aetherion screamed in her hands as it reached critical mass, the Arcane configuration glowing with a sickly, brilliant sapphire light that promised annihilation.
"NOW!" William screamed, throwing his entire weight into a final, desperate parry that forced the creature to stumble sideways, exposing its vulnerable center.
"THIS ENDS..." Catherine pulled the trigger. "...NOW!!!"
The mana bolt didn’t just hit; it detonated against the creature’s torso. The sound was catastrophic: the shriek of rending metal mixed with the wet crunch of pulverizing bone.
BAAMMMMMMMM!!!
The concentrated arcane force punched through the remaining necrotic plating like a hot needle through rotten silk. The breach widened violently, revealing the Life Anchor: a pulsing, raw, crimson core that beat with the frantic rhythm of a dying heart.
It was beautiful and horrifying, exposed to the cold air of the battlefield.
The creature’s reaction was instantaneous. Its entire body convulsed in a spasm of pure agony.
"NOW, CATHERINE! FINISH IT COMPLETELYYYYY!" William’s voice broke as he watched the beast prepare to collapse inward.
Catherine didn’t hesitate. She channeled every ounce of her trauma, every drop of her resolve, and every spark of her remaining mana into one final motion.
With a burst of Wind that shattered the ground beneath her feet, she surged forward. In midair, she shifted Aetherion back to its single-wield configuration, the blade elongating into a spear of pure light.
"HHRRAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
She drove the blade directly into the exposed core.
For a heartbeat, there was absolute silence. Then came the scream.
RAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!
It was a sound that would haunt the survivors forever a dual, horrific harmony. It was the guttural, inhuman roar of the abomination fused with the unmistakable, agonized shriek of Corwin’s human voice.
It was the sound of a soul being torn apart from its cage. The scream tore across the clearing, echoing off the academy walls like a death knell.
Then came the huge explosion.
BBRROOOOOVVVMMMMMMM!!!
A violent eruption of dark, crimson light burst outward from the center of the impact. The shockwave was absolute, vaporizing the last stragglers of the swarm instantly, reducing them to ash before they could even register the threat.
Even the students watching from the defensive line had to shield their eyes as the dying light consumed everything.
At the epicenter, the creature’s massive silhouette began to fail. Its armor didn’t just break; it dissolved, crumbling away like burnt paper.
The grotesque limbs retracted, snapping and reshaping themselves in a wet, horrific display of reverse metamorphosis. The monstrous bulk collapsed inward, shrinking, folding, and shedding its corruption in a cascade of gore and fading magic.
As the blinding light ebbed away, leaving only swirling smoke and the copper tang of blood in the air, the truth lay exposed on the cracked earth.
Corwin lay there, crumpled and broken. He was human again—small, fragile, and terrifyingly mortal.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged gasps, his skin pale beneath the grime of battle. He looked less like a fallen enemy and more like a child lost in a nightmare, his eyes staring sightlessly at the sky as he bled out into the dirt.
The silence lasted only seconds before the clearing erupted. A wave of exhausted, primal cheering rose from the defensive lines, a roar of relief from soldiers who had stared into the abyss and survived.
But above the cheers, William could hear something else. A voice, raw with terror and desperation, cutting through the victory like a blade.
Kaela was running toward them.
"INSTRUCTOR WADEEEE!"
The scream tore through the ringing silence of the battlefield, raw and desperate. William turned just in time to see Kaela sprinting across the ruined clearing, her boots skidding through blood-soaked earth and pulverized stone.
She wasn’t running like a soldier anymore; she was running like someone who had just seen a ghost return to life.
Before he could even draw a breath to speak, she collided with him. It wasn’t a gentle embrace; it was a full-body impact that carried the momentum of her entire desperate sprint.
The air left William’s lungs in a sharp oof as she wrapped her arms around him in a fierce, crushing hug. The force sent them both staggering backward, their boots carving twin furrows in the gore slicked dirt.
"You idiot!" she sobbed into his shoulder, her voice cracking between laughter and tears. "You absolute, reckless idiot!"
Lia arrived half a second later, a blur of motion that crashed into them with enough force to nearly send them both sprawling again.
She was more composed; her breathing still labored from the fight, but the way she clung to William’s arm told a different story: she was holding onto him as if he might dissolve into smoke if she let go.
Then came Ellie and Clara, both moving with the unsteady gait of adrenaline crashers, piling onto the group with such reckless enthusiasm that William’s legs finally surrendered entirely.
With a wet thud, the five of them collapsed into an undignified, tangled heap against the broken, smoking earth. For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing and the distant, fading echoes of the battle.
"We did it," Kaela whispered against his shoulder, her words muffled by his torn uniform. "We actually did it, Instructor Wade!"
"We killed it... and we’re still alive..." Her voice wavered, somewhere between bone-deep exhaustion and the kind of manic thrill that only comes after staring death in the eye.
William lay there, staring up at the smoke-stained sky, feeling the weight of his students and his family pressing him into the dirt. A genuine laugh bubbled up in his chest despite the ache in his ribs and the blood drying on his face.
"You did it," he managed to wheeze out, grinning despite the pile of bodies currently pinning him to the ground. "All of you..."
"That defensive formation... it held beautifully. You all held the line."
"Beautifully?" Kaela pulled back just enough to glare at him with tear-streaked eyes, though her grin betrayed her. "I got fourteen confirmed kills, Instructor Wade~! Fourteen~!"
"I was a goddamn whirlwind out there."
"Fourteen?" Lia interjected, wiping blood from her forehead with the back of her hand, her voice weak but laced with obvious competitive fire. "I got eleven, but mine were clean tactical strikes."
"Quality over quantity, Kaela."
"Oh, please," Kaela snorted, wiping her nose. "Quality doesn’t clear a battlefield."
"Raw power does."
"It’s not a competition," Lia muttered again, though the protest lacked any real conviction; she was too drained to even pretend she wasn’t trying to prove herself.
"Everything is a competition when you’re trying not to die," Ellie chimed in, grinning wickedly despite the way her hands still trembled from the magical feedback. "For the record, I released eight controlled mana bursts... Eight... and there’s zero incidents with zero collateral damage."
"I would like that formally recorded in the academy annals."
"Formally recorded," Clara confirmed without missing a beat.
Even now, with her face streaked with soot and her robes torn, she had somehow managed to produce her journal. Her fingers shook as she scribbled furiously, the pen scratching against the parchment.
"Eight for eight... No hedges harmed in the making of tonight’s victory."
"Though I may need to file a report regarding the excessive amount of ichor currently contaminating my boots."
William closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sounds of their bickering wash over him. The taste of copper was still in his mouth, the sting of his wounds was sharp, and the sight of Corwin lying broken in the distance still burned in his mind but here, pressed against the earth with these girls, the darkness felt momentarily held at bay.
"Now, now... at least we all can see the sunshine again..."