My puppets were gone. The psychic backlash had left my mind reeling, my mana reserves scraped clean. A trickle of blood from my nose was a stark reminder of my new, profound vulnerability. Across the clearing, Rhonda stood with her last remaining savage, a hulking brute whose arm was clearly broken but whose eyes still burned with a feral loyalty. They were wounded, but they were predators who had just cornered their prey.
"No more puppets," Rhonda rasped, a triumphant, bloody grin splitting her face. "No more tricks. Now, you die."
They charged.
My body screamed in protest, every muscle aching from the strain. I had no magic left, no army to command. I was just a strategist without a strategy, a king without a kingdom. But a cornered rat will still bite. My eyes darted to the ground, spotting the twin daggers dropped by the fallen leader, Leo. Too small. My gaze then fell on a simple longsword, lying near the corpse of one of Rhonda's men. It would have to do.
I snatched the sword from the ground. The weight felt foreign in my hand, the balance all wrong. In my previous life, I had taken a few fencing classes, a brief hobby born of a desire to understand the discipline and precision of a blade. I knew the basic stances, the simplest parries. It was the equivalent of a child's drawing compared to the masterpiece of a true swordsman. But it was better than nothing.
Kael, the Mimic, scrambled to his feet beside me, his face pale but his eyes blazing with a desperate, defiant light. He had no weapon, but he had a library of stolen skills. He was now our only real line of defense.
"Stay behind me!" he yelled, positioning himself in front of me.
Rhonda's last savage reached us first, his good arm swinging a heavy club in a wide, brutal arc. Kael's eyes glowed with a faint silver light. He didn't try to meet the blow. Instead, he vanished in a blur of motion, using the Warpstep skill he had copied from Leo. He reappeared behind the brute, his hands crackling with stolen energy. He had seen the lightning mage's spell. A bolt of raw, untamed lightning, weaker than the original but still potent, erupted from his palms and slammed into the savage's back.
The brute screamed, his body convulsing as electricity coursed through him. He stumbled, his muscles locking up, momentarily paralyzed. Kael didn't waste the opportunity. A faint red aura, the echo of Rhonda's Berserker Rage, flared around him. He snatched a heavy rock from the ground and, with the borrowed, unnatural strength, brought it down on the back of the paralyzed savage's head with a sickening crunch. The brute collapsed in a heap, his skull caved in.
One on one.
But my fight was not going as well. Rhonda charged me, not with the wild abandon of her subordinate, but with the focused, terrifying confidence of a predator toying with its meal.
"A sword?" she laughed, her voice a low, mocking growl. "You, the puppet master, think you can fight me with a sword? Let me show you what a real warrior looks like!"
Her axe whistled through the air. I tried to parry, my fencing lessons a distant, flimsy memory. The impact was jarring, a bone-shattering force that sent waves of pain up my arm and nearly tore the sword from my grasp. I staggered back, my form clumsy, my defense pathetic.
"You're weak," she taunted, pressing her attack. "All your power was in those ghosts. Without them, you're nothing. Just a scared little boy playing at being a king."
She swung again. I dodged, but I was too slow. The edge of her axe blade caught my side, slicing through my jacket and deep into my flesh. A searing, white hot pain exploded in my ribs. I cried out, stumbling back, clutching the wound as blood began to soak through my clothes.
"See?" she grinned, advancing slowly. "You bleed. You hurt. You're just meat, like everyone else. And I'm going to enjoy carving you up."
I raised my sword, my arm trembling from the effort. My vision was starting to blur from the pain. I was going to die here. After all my plans, all my manipulations, I was going to be butchered by this savage brute.
Kael, having finished his opponent, saw my predicament. He used Warpstep again, appearing beside Rhonda, his hands crackling with another lightning bolt. But Rhonda was ready for him. She spun, her axe swinging in a low arc that forced Kael to teleport away to avoid losing his legs. She hadn't fallen for the same trick twice. She was toying with both of us.
"You have no one left to save you," she sneered at me, her attention returning to her primary target. She raised her axe high, preparing for the final, killing blow. I was on my knees now, the sword lying useless beside me, the pain in my side a blinding agony. Kael was too far away to intervene in time. This was the end.
And then, a sound like a screaming meteor tore through the air.
A massive, condensed ball of fire, larger and hotter than anything Erica had ever created before, slammed into Rhonda from the side. She had no time to react. The fireball exploded on impact, engulfing her in a maelstrom of flame and concussive force. She was thrown sideways, her body smoking and charred, her triumphant roar turning into a scream of pure agony.
I didn't need to look. I knew that signature. I knew that power. A slow, pained smile spread across my bloodstained lips. My pieces had finally arrived on the board.
Rhonda, her armor melted and fused to her skin, her hair completely burned away, pushed herself to her knees. She stared into the forest, her eyes wide with disbelief and fury. "What the hell?" she roared. "Not again! Who is that?!"
From the shadows of the trees, a figure emerged. It was Erica. But this was not the shy girl, nor even the determined warrior I had seen before. Her eyes were burning with a cold, white hot rage that seemed to eclipse the fire she commanded. Her entire body was radiating a palpable heat, the air around her shimmering with power.
Rhonda stared at her, then her eyes darted to the side as a volley of razor sharp ice spears shot from the darkness, embedding themselves in her shoulder and leg. She coughed, blood sputtering from her lips, and looked to the right of Erica. There stood Masha, her face a mask of cold fury, her hands still outstretched.
"Prez…?" Rhonda whispered, her voice a broken, incredulous rasp. "Why?"
She began to crawl away from me, her body a wreck of burns and bleeding wounds. She wasn't crawling to escape. She was crawling towards Masha, her last act a desperate, confused plea to the girl who had once represented order and reason.
Erica ignored her completely. She rushed to my side, her face a mask of anguish as she saw the deep gash in my side. "Why?" she cried, her voice cracking. "Why did you do it again? Why do you always put yourself in this state? It always has to be you, doesn't it?"
I looked up at her, putting on a pained, noble expression. "I had no other choice," I gasped, my voice weak. "This boy… Kael… he was in danger. They were going to kill him right in front of my eyes. Before I could…" I interrupted myself with a wracking cough, letting a fresh trickle of blood run down my chin for effect.
Seeing my state, seeing the blood I had "shed for another," was the final catalyst. Erica's grief, her fear, and her obsessive devotion ignited. She stood up slowly, her gaze turning toward the crawling, pathetic form of Rhonda.
A wave of pure, unrestrained mana erupted from her body. It was not the gentle warmth of before; it was a violent, blinding light, a raw power that pulsed with the intensity of a newborn star. The light was so bright it felt like it could compete with the sun, chasing away every shadow in the clearing.
The mana began to change, to coalesce above her head. It swirled and compressed, pulling in dust and leaves and ambient energy, growing larger and hotter until it formed a miniature, terrifying sun. It was a swirling, incandescent planet of pure fire.
The heat was instantaneous and unbearable. From across the clearing, we could feel its scorching waves. The leaves on the nearby trees began to smoke and curl.
Kael, his eyes wide with terror and awe, grabbed my arm. "We have to move!" he yelled, and with a final, desperate Warpstep, he teleported us both a hundred yards away, just as Masha turned and fled from the blast zone.
Rhonda, on her knees, could only stare up at the celestial body of fire that spelled her doom. The arrogance was gone. The savagery was gone. All that remained in her eyes was a pure, primal terror, the understanding of a creature that it is about to be erased from existence.
Erica raised her hand, and then she brought it down.
She didn't scream. She didn't shout. She simply unleashed her judgment.
The ground did not just explode; it ceased to be. A silent, blinding flash of white light consumed the clearing, followed by a deafening roar that shook the very foundations of the forest. Trees for fifty yards in every direction were instantly vaporized. The earth was gouged out, leaving a massive, glowing crater of molten rock and glass. A superheated shockwave rolled outwards, turning the surrounding forest into a raging inferno.
It was apocalyptic. It was terrifying. It was beautiful.
When the blinding light finally subsided, the clearing was gone. The forest had been replaced by a smoldering, volcanic wasteland. Of Rhonda, there was no sign. Not a bone, not a shred of armor, not even ash. She had been utterly and completely unmade.
And in the center of this new hellscape, Erica stood alone. Her clothes were half-burnt, her skin blistered and bruised from the sheer force of her own power. She stood trembling, panting, a lone figure silhouetted against the raging fires she had created. A girl who had just unleashed the power of a god to protect the man she worshipped.