Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 306: Death to the King

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Arthur Leywin

Bairon rocketed away from me, his body spinning as electricity jumped from his skin. Lightning leapt from him, singing the cobblestones before his body dug a furrow in the rock. He slid through the stones for several yards before he finally stopped, sparking like a defunct motor.

I ignored him for now.

I knelt in the rain, threading my hand through Tess' hair, brushing out a few chips of stone and debris that coated her gunmetal gray. Though my touch was gentle, it did not match the cold fury I felt building inside.

Tess raised a shaking hand, her fingers trembling as they clutched my wrist. She looked like she'd personally been dunked in a hurricane. Her uniform was tattered, burned, electrified, and then soaked through, but despite it all, she still managed to maintain a sort of exhausted elegance as she sank into my arm.

"Took you long enough, idiot," she said, tiredly. A strained smile stretched across her lips. "You pick the best times to show up."

The entirety of the street was quiet, save for the crashing rain and ominous rumble of the unfolding spatial ritual. I could feel it, see it as weaves of infinite purple tied the world into knots that tore themselves apart in an increasing wave. The lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Dicathians fueled the growing fire of Agrona's ritual, and the effects were painfully clear to my aetheric senses.

Toren drifted down from the sky a moment later. His hair was a burning, vibrant red that pulsed in time with the feathered runes adorning his physique. An armor of glittering crystal mana refracted the constant streams of light that shone in the skies, bathing him in a warm, otherworldly glow.

He clenched his fists as he stared at the expanding dome of breaking space. Those burning pits widened in horror and comprehension as the lifeforces of countless people carried the ambient mana toward one violent crescendo.

The world flowed inward toward a concentrated point. It reminded me of a mana core, in a way, if a mana core were made of haunted souls and bloodstained weeping.

"This is what he meant," Toren said quietly. "This is what he tried to distract you from. The death and the slaughter... All for this."

Sylvie—in her human form—knelt by Tess, her amber eyes grave and focused. She pressed a soulfire-coated hand to my childhood friend's back. Cleansing aether particles danced amidst the blackened red of her Vritra arts, the combined effect washing away the many wounds across the elven princess' body.

And through it all, Cadell Vritra watched. His gravestone face showed no emotion, and his countenance was smooth as polished marble. But his eyes. Those pits of red burned as they focused on me, memories of my earliest days on this continent threatening to pierce my composure.

Memories of Sylvia, caring for me and calling me grandson. Memories of one moment of time stolen from the world, where a dragon too good for her Fate entrusted me with her daughter and her Will.

Bairon rose slowly from where he'd been struck, snarling in anger, but the other two Alacryans drew more of my attention.

The red-haired one took a hesitant, slightly fearful step back as she looked at Toren, her eyes wide with surprise as they darted between my kneeling form and the lingering scion of the Asclepius Clan. "Spellsong?" she asked, confused. "What is the meaning of this? Why are you with—"

It was only after Toren's hand snapped outward in a blur, a gauntlet of shrouded light clenching into a fist, that I realized someone else had started to move. The purple-haired Scythe had turned, barely in the process of fleeing, before a shimmer of white fuzzed around her throat.