As she approached, a halo of purple and black light blazed around her head, and things began to appear around her. The first to emerge looked like a serpent made of shadows, with glowing purple eyes, and a dozen more appeared an instant later. Shortly after that came a creature that I thought looked like a lesser dragon of some sort, with stunted black wings and long, obsidian claws. A herd of horses made of toxic green and purple chi formed an instant later. The last to form was a triad of shadowy figures that looked like humans, but unnaturally thin and tall, with a bloodline scent that reminded me of Yushin’s after she began cultivating. Even as the clan leader summoned the servitors of her god, I was thrusting my hand out and shouting instructions to my own side.

  “Wadjetktt, I want you on the dragons! Lytemoths, high up and pepper your spells on everyone. Orla, take the gadhar up and protect them. If you can spare some power, then protect everyone else too. Seren, take the fire elementals and go for the snakes – start with a focus on light over heat, if I’m reading this right. Steel crocs, go after the horses. Jackson, Salem, I want you on the shadowmen.”

  A small part of my brain, one that had become so overwhelmed with panic that it was wrapping back around to focusing on the bromidic and banal, noticed that it was really quite a good thing that I had completed the true tongue ritual. After all, trying to swap between so many tongues at once could have really slowed my orders.

  Jackson’s golden armor formed, and threads of purple shot from Salem’s hand, while my summons obeyed orders. The clan elder shouted her own instructions, slashing her hand through the air, and three ripples of chi erupted from it. My eyes widened as they raced across the distance, moving with enough speed that even drawing on the bits of flame I had left, I couldn’t match them. The clan elder was a nascent immortal cultivator, and an old one. That put her on the same relative stage of power as an eighth circle wizard, and she had access to divine powers and a synergistic bloodline. My group and I were strong, stronger than most people our age, and we hit much harder than average mages of our circle.

  But we could do nothing to stop, dodge, or evade these attacks.

  That was when Jackson began to laugh, and my burgeoning ability to smell divinity picked up on something. A bearded figure of an elderly man appeared in front of the matriarch, his power exploding upwards as the Shé elder tried to kill us.

  “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling toward slaughter!” Saint Hykym roared, and a golden shield formed in front of each attack. I swore I heard the laughter of Effervesce as the elder cultivator’s attacks were matched by a shield of golden light.

  It wasn’t a clean sweep. The shields cracked and splintered, before fading away into nothingness. But he had stopped the blows, at least for now, and the clan elder turned her eyes on him.

  “You have no right to be here, saint. Leave, and you don’t need to die,” she said, before turning and snapping at Yushin’s mother. “Ying! What are you waiting for?”

  “I…” Ying said, her eyes flicking between Yushin and the woman she’d followed her entire life.

  “No,” Hykym said, and held up his hands. Golden light cascaded from them, and stones wove into spears, crashing against the light. They began to trade blows, with Hykym wielding golden light and shaping it into various constructs, while the Shé leader shot bloodline-empowered chi attacks at him.

  “Do it now!” screamed the matriarch, turning her head again to look at Ying. She wasn’t a fool, she’d put up a barrier of chi to protect her from Hykym. But not from me. I was burnt out, after all, and to her spiritual senses, I should only feel like I had a few seconds of fire. Not enough to cross the distance and threaten her.

  That was true, but there was one small detail that she’d missed – I hadn’t let go of the paper swarm spell. In fact, I hadn’t even finished using all of my cards. Suffering curse spellglyphed papers wrapped around the clan leader’s hands, worsening the drain of her chi, her bloodline, and the stores of faith within her divine powers. At the same time, curses of bad luck speared through her, and small shreds of her chi and bloodline were sealed. Those seals would only last seconds, but it was enough to distract and weaken. I used the last of my control over the paper swarm then, unleashing the force-empowered sheets to leave cuts all over her arms and face, before the last of the ether I’d put into the spell faded, and I was left with just a few sparks of fire.

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  She turned, raising a hand to kill me, but I’d bought time for saint Hykym to break through the barrier, and they raced off as she was blasted backward, their fight continuing with absurd speed and power. Around me, my summons and friends battled against the monsters that belonged to the dark god, and even Shé Rui and Martha had regained their footing and were attacking. Martha was casting defensive spells while Rui used his blades of wind to cut through the weaker monsters.

  It was going to be a rough fight, especially since I couldn’t help at all, but we would win. Saint Hykym was slowly wearing down the Shé matriarch, and we were making steady progress against the monsters. The tear in the sky would only remain open for a short bit longer. And the only people left who might be able to tip the scales of the battle were staring at one another.

  Shé Yushin and Ying stared at one another, softly speaking. I couldn’t hear them over the chaos of the battle, and I could only partially read the lips, but I got the sense that Ying was both berating and congratulating her daughter. Ying pulled Yushin into a hug, then the pair looked up into the sky, where the hole to the realm of the Traitor Wyrm rippled, the flashing magic of my seal still holding firm. Then Ying leapt off the ground and sailed into the air, flying toward the realm. Her chi wrapped around her, and she vanished.

  I felt the pit of my stomach drop out when she reappeared right in front of my seal and reached through. My curse had been targeted at the Traitor Wyrm, to prevent him from betraying and using the ritual for anything but the purpose that had been stated. No part of it had targeted Ying. She slid through as if it wasn’t even there.

  “No! Teleport your spawn in, idiot!” the Shé leader shouted, but Ying couldn't hear her.

  The shifted portal looked into a hall, wide and incredibly long. The entire thing seemed to be made of polished basalt, with obsidian and amethyst serving as accents. Purple flames burnt in braziers made of a blackened steel, casting the room in a glow, and revealing the massive throne made of white bones and multicolored serpent scales on the far end of the room. A man sat on the throne, his arms, neck, and legs covered in scales. His hair was jet black, and he had the eyes of a serpent, but with irises that were purple. There was a certain sharp elegance to his features that did remind me of Yushin. As he surveyed the battlefield through the portal, the entire fight seemed to still for a moment.

  The Traitor Wyrm met my eyes, and my entire body shivered. He couldn’t act on this world without a medium, as was in the nature of gods, but if he could, I’d have been dead. He was furious that I, a mere mortal that wasn’t even an Erudite or the like, had dealt him a serious blow. Then his gaze moved to Shé Ying, and I was able to breathe again. Ying was fully on the flow in a bow. Though it broke every rule of propriety, Shé Ying began to speak, calling out to her god.

  “Let me take her place! We need an avatar. We must have an avatar. But please, don’t take my daughter. Use me in my stead.”

  The Traitor Wyrm raised his hand, and in an instant, Shé Ying’s body dissolved into ashes. Yushin let out a pained cry, but the ashes swirled to the tip of the Traitor Wyrm’s finger. Another light began to dance there, the power he’d extracted from Yushin.

  “My own clan lies in ruin. Hundreds of years of fortune burnt. A ritual interrupted by a mere boy,” the Traitor Wyrm said, his voice thundering down with a wrath that made me collapse to my hands and knees. “All but one of my elders lie dead. The saint of another god, that self-righteous hypocrite, stands in my way.”

  His voice began to rise and grow even louder, until each of the words caused blood to pour from my nose and ears and mouth, even through the suppression that Magyk wrought to stop gods from acting directly. My vision was fuzzy, but I thought I saw the lights of the ritual re-ignite, and I had to wonder why. How? There was nothing left to use it for. Yushin’s power had been taken, and he couldn’t send forth an avatar. Could he?

  “And my brother STILL stands upon his throne of lies and stops my worship. This curse, these chains, my brother? I shall stand for them NO LONGER!”

  The ritual exploded in power, and the Traitor Wyrm raised his hand. His body seemed to waver and warp, and I realized after a moment that I wasn’t looking at him, but the very divine essence that made up his existence. The dark god reached into that essence and tore a chunk out, like a mortal cutting off their own hand. The god’s scream echoed through the land like nothing I had ever heard before.

  The power merged and flowed in with the dust that had been Shé Ying, and the power he had taken from Yushin. The ritual beneath us blazed with light, and the Shé clan leader thrust up her hands.

  “Yes!” she screamed.

  All of the power held in his hand shot toward the portal. It impacted against my curse, and the powers battled out.

  I frowned. My curse shouldn’t stop him from simply sending forth an avatar. That was the key – if he simply sent it forth as a summons, then nothing would happen. So what was he doing?

  The godly power tore its way through, but my curse wrapped around it, infecting it, cursing the very essence that was being sent through. It slammed into the ground, the sparking blue runes of my curse woven through it, then suddenly sparking across the entire ritual. The Traitor Wyrm, having permanently ripped out a piece of his very divinity, sagged against his throne, and the portal began to vanish. The power, now contained within the ritual, raced through the land, then up into the Shé matriarch’s body. Curse magic still flickered around her, infusing into her skin and casting a dozen runes in every direction, fighting the violation of the Traitor Wyrm’s word.

  And she began to transform into the Avatar of the Traitor Wyrm.

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