Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 286: A Weapon's Purpose

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Toren Daen

My blood flowed freely from my stomach, but I couldn't see it. I could feel the red dripping down to the floor, hear my lifeforce sizzling as it steamed on the impossibly red spear.

But even worse... Even worse, my senses for my core began to mist away. Any and all control over the ambient mana left me as the cloaking artifact that hid my appearance was disrupted.

My limbs lost their strength as I gripped the jutting spearshaft. I could feel in real time as the cold clutch of death inched its way along my mana veins and channels, sealing them off. Sonar Pulse fractured. My hearing dimmed. My vision darkened.

Through the painful haze, I was barely aware that Sylvie was already moving. The dragon put herself in front of me with quick and shocked steps, her fists clenched in anger. The red stain of my blood across her chest drank in the light.

"Taci, what is the meaning of thi–"

"Step aside, Lady Indrath," the pantheon warrior hissed, his fists clenching at his sides. His aura redoubled, washing over the cavern and making my innards squeeze. I coughed, blood dribbling from between my teeth. "The intruder will die."

Arthur's bond didn't flinch at Taci's threat. Instead, soulfire sputtered across her fingers as she blocked the pantheon from my sight. Those dark flames rippled with a purple incandescence that haunted the shadows themselves.

"You tried to assault me," Sylvie hissed. "The heir to Clan Indrath! If this 'intruder' hadn't placed himself between us, then I would be–"

"Incapacitated," Taci sneered. "For as long as it took to finish my purpose. Because you are a weak, short-minded dragon who doesn't understand what it means to be a deity."

I blinked past the pain, gritting my teeth as I slowly wrenched the spear from my stomach. At the same time, I called on my heart.

I knew what this spear did. Whenever a target was cut by it, the spear severed the target's connection to their mana core for a time. It wasn't unlike... the mana shackles that had held me so long ago.

My heartbeat quickened. My lifeforce flowed. And the head of that spear slowly, painfully sliced back through my ruptured innards, blood dribbling out in steady waves as I blinked past my weakness. Little tendrils of fire traced their way along every cell of my Vessel as my other hand desperately fumbled with the phoenix wyrm pendant.

But I couldn't activate it. Not without mana.

"Get out," Sylvie snarled, her visage rippling as dark scales slowly shifted over her skin. "By the power vested in me by Epheotus, you will leave, Taci Thyestes."

More and more dark, Vritra-tinged mana swirled around Sylvie's hands, which had shifted to something approaching claws. That energy licked at the edges of the shadows themselves.

Taci didn't seem to notice me in that short moment. He was too focused on the dragon blocking his way in the dungeons to realize that I had almost wrenched that wretched spear from my gut. His aura had frozen in the air, but that was somehow more intimidating than the overwhelming pressure from before.

He doesn't think I'm a threat, I realized. And why should he? With his weapon embedded in my stomach, I wasn't able to use mana. Its suppressing effect was constantly attacking my veins and channels, and though my heartfire healing fought to keep me alive, this wound would've been mortal for any other mage.

God, the pain was hard to think through. My weak grip slipped and fumbled along the blood-slick shaft as I coughed, agony racing along my nerves. Just needed to... activate the pendant, and–