Path of Dragons

Sadie met the descending blade of an axe with her sword, sending sparks flying in every direction. The force of the blow drove her to her knees, but she mitigated that by twisting and throwing the axe head to the side. It thudded into the ground, cutting deeply enough to lodge itself in the paving tiles. Sadie used that momentary distraction to her advantage, launching herself forward and swinging her sword in a horizontal arc. The off-balance skeleton couldn't react quickly enough, and her glowing blade hit the thing's shin in a shower of ethera.

More importantly, her impeccable aim meant that she managed to hit the spot she'd already targeted a half dozen times. A single blow couldn't cut through the durable creature's bones, but the seventh finally did the trick. The cut wasn't clean, and the result was more of a break than a severing, but the end result – that the leg became detached – was all that really mattered.

The fifteen-foot-tall skeleton teetered on one foot, then fell with a crash, crushing a handful of zombies beneath its immense weight.

It wasn't enough, though. She knew it even before she looked around and took stock of their situation. Hundreds of zombies flooded out of the bone-arch gates with every passing second, and they showed no signs of stopping. The only good news was that Avara, the so-called Queen of Desolation, hadn't personally joined the battle. Instead, she'd planted herself on her grotesque throne, trusting that her minions would do her dirty work.

More troubling was that Dat had disappeared, slipping into stealth. Elijah had tried to destroy the arches, but when he'd failed, he'd flown off, chased by incorporeal wraiths. Sadie had no idea when he would return. That left only her and her brother, and despite his relatively decent level, Nico was not suited for such a battle. Because of his incredibly low Regeneration attribute, he had no staying power. Even if Sadie managed to whittle the enemy down, she knew it wouldn't be a quick process. There was no way Nico could keep her – or himself – alive that long.

Sadie needed to buy some time.

So, she raised her sword and activated a Miracle. Her weapon erupted into a light so bright that if she wasn't protected from it, it would have blinded her. It didn't stop there, though. Instead, the light became a miniature sun, radiating with so much ethera that the atmosphere in a thirty-yard diameter felt as thick as water.

And then, it exploded.

Not with a force Sadie could feel. For her, it only felt mildly warm. To the undead monsters all around her, it was a different story altogether. The closest were entirely atomized by the blast, but with every yard it traveled, it weakened until those at the very edge were only knocked backward.

It was the spell she'd gotten at level one-twenty:

Explore hidden tales at My Virtual Library Empire

Sadie stumbled at the loss of so much faith, though she was still grateful that it didn't take her entire store. The effect on the battle was obvious, with the charred remains of hundreds of zombies and a handful of giant skeletons littering the platform.

But she knew it wouldn't be enough. The streams of undead flowing from the gates had briefly faltered, but after only a couple of seconds, it resumed. What's more, the rate of entry had increased, largely because there was now room for it. Without any other option, Sadie braced herself for the next wave.

Meanwhile, Nico remained behind her, recuperating his ethera as best he could manage.

Before she clashed with the enemy, Sadie used Aegis of Faith, the evolution to Bulwark of the Faithful. The upgraded version of her personal shield lasted longer, was stronger, and when it burst, it gave her a much more potent influx of attributes. There had been other options that added different effects, but she'd opted for the straight-line upgrade.

When she met her undead foes, the shield proved effective, protecting her from numerous blows before shattering. Even as it went on cooldown, her attributes skyrocketed, and for a few moments, she felt like a god amongst mortals. Her sword swept out, cleaving whole swaths of zombies in half. The skeletons fared no better, and though she didn't take them down in a single blow, she did manage to knock them off kilter.

Like that, a tentative balance emerged. By the time her attributes returned to normal, Aegis of Faith had come off cooldown. So, there was barely any lag where she lacked the benefit of inflated attributes. And even then, she was protected by the powerful shield.

Nico didn't have that advantage. And Sadie, try as she might, was incapable of being everywhere at once. Thankfully, she had another spell evolution at her beck and call.

She cast Halo of Protection:

It was not a complex spell, but it was different from its predecessor in one key aspect. Instead of having to individually place shields, as she had with Consecrated Shield, she could cast a single spell and protect all of her allies in a given radius. At the moment, that only included her brother, but it could shield up to five people before the strain on her ethera grew too strong to ignore.

In any case, the new version of the shield was far more durable than the old one, and it was more than enough to keep him safe from the few zombies who made it past her. He wasn't entirely defenseless, and he'd produced a small mace that he used to kill any zombies within arm's reach.

Even so, Sadie knew she was engaged in a losing fight. Little by little and despite her best efforts, she lost ground. Slowly, she and Nico were pushed back until they found themselves against the wall of the central spire. The door through which they'd arrived was now sealed.

Their desperate situation got even worse when Nico growled, "I can't keep this up for much longer. Where are you friends? Did the cowards run away?"

Sadie frowned, wanting to argue with her brother. She had every faith that both Dat and Elijah were working toward solving the problem. Unless they were already dead, but that wasn't something she wanted to consider. So, instead of responding, she focused on their most immediate issues.

And there was only one solution, even if she'd have preferred to hold it in reserve. But what she wanted and what she needed to do were rarely the same, so she was used to compromise. In that spirit, she embraced the first spell of her updated plan of action:

Immediately, a shining silver bell manifested above her head, then let out a pealing toll that echoed across the platform. The zombies crumpled to the ground, entirely insensate, and the more powerful undead – which included wights as well as giant skeletons – shuddered to a stop.

Six seconds. That was all she had.

So, she used her one-fifteen spell. It had an incredibly long cooldown, so she normally held it in reserve. However, in their current situation, she didn't think she had much of a choice in the matter. She needed all the power she could muster, and Divine Momentum would provide precisely that.

Sadie erupted into motion, slicing through zombies with ease. Each one she slaughtered resulted in a one percent increase to her physical attributes. That didn't seem like much until she started stacking one kill after another. As the description implied, there were only two limitations to the ability. First, if she failed to kill an enemy within one-point-two seconds of the last, it would fall away. Not all at once, but about one percent per second until she returned to normal. However, she would then be incapable of extending it further.

The second limitation was that she could only go so far with the increase, topping out at a little more than double. Still, that was an incredibly potent enhancement, and it could perhaps make all the difference in the fight.

The only other problem with the spell was that, at around two months, it had such an incredibly long cooldown. That meant it was an emergency measure.

She tore through the undead, one after another. Because of Aegis of Faith, she managed to avoid taking any damage that might interrupt her rhythm, but even as she sheared through one enemy after another, a couple of limitations became apparent. The most evident was that she lacked the experience to utilize her inflated attributes. As a result, she often overcommitted with her attacks, putting far more force behind them than was absolutely necessary.

But almost as problematic was that, after that first burst, her enemies were a little more evenly spaced out. The platform was still crowded with undead, but they weren't packed in like they had been before. Because of that, she had to move further and further afield – all while still trying to protect Nico – just to keep the buff going.

Inevitably, she faltered after only a few seconds at peak power, and with every following second, the buff decreased until, after a little more than ninety seconds, Sadie returned to normal.

She had cut through hundreds of zombies and quite a few of the more powerful undead, but her efforts had barely made a dent in their numbers. In fact, because of the steady flow out of the three gates, there seemed to be even more than before.

Or maybe that was just her trying to process the futility of the situation.

No matter how many they killed, there were always more. After all, those gates assuredly lead to the Underrealm – a plane occupied entirely by undead – and as she'd discovered during the Trial of Primacy, there was no shortage of creatures willing to cross over.

On and on she fought, growing ever more fatigued. As she downed one undead monster after another, Sadie fell into a battle trance. Often, that was the only way she could endure long fights against massive hordes. She'd developed the ability – such as it was – early on after the onset of the apocalypse, and it had been honed to perfection ever since. She was still aware and in control of her actions, but she was far enough removed that she barely felt her exhaustion or the pain from the many wounds she suffered. Thankfully, due to her own high attributes and her various shields, Nico wasn't forced to heal much, but she was well aware that his pool of ethera would eventually run dry. When that happened, they were doomed.

It felt inevitable.

Sadie was on the verge of accepting her own fate – and making plans to go out with a bang – when she felt a surge of ethera. It emanated from the throne, but it quickly tore across the platform and collected beneath the arches of bone. It built and built, not unlike a pressure cooker, and then, suddenly, the gates exploded.

All the undead within a few feet of those arches were vaporized, but the explosion quickly dissipated, leaving most of the horde intact. However, with the destruction of the gates, hope bloomed within Sadie's heart. More importantly, she knew that it meant that one – or both – of her friends were still alive.

That brief surge of hope bolstered her efforts – right up until the Queen of Desolation let out a bellow of wordless rage at having her gates destroyed. Waves of green fire erupted in the sky, roiling like storm clouds, and casting the entire platform in verdant light. Suddenly, the zombies straightened to their full height, and the skeletons' bones shimmered with green-tinted ethera. More distressingly, their eyes erupted with green flames, and they moved much faster than ever before.

Sadie defended as well as she could, but by that point, even the mundane zombies were her match. And she was completely outclassed by the skeletons and wights.

But still, she fought on. Doomed as she was, she never considered doing anything else.