Malidreus roared, a loud, terrible, bone-rattling roar that caused the walls of his Catacomb to tremble violently. Milius and Shakil scrambled to their feet, raising their swords, but before either could do anything further, Lumeus came pelting out of nowhere and rammed into Malidreus, sending him flying into the wall; large cracks began to spread along the dark stone, and fine powderings of dust trickled from the high ceiling. Aleia screeched with fury and a great jet of water erupted from her mouth like a geyser, slamming into the dark dragon, who wailed in agony as it pressed him harder and harder against the wall; Lumeus opened his mouth wide, and a violet thunderbolt burst from his mouth and mixed with the stream of water, so that Malidreus shrieked even louder.

Milius tore his gaze from the grappling beasts and rounded on Shakil. “Did you —?” he began urgently.

“Yes, the first Sapphire Knight told me everything,” he said quickly. “What are we going to do?”

“We have to get out of here, head for the tomb — leave Malidreus for another time — but we have to take the sword too!”

As Milius spoke, Frederick came into view, staggering to his feet on the other side of the Catacomb with an unpleasant smile on his face as he gazed up at the dragons. As Milius looked at him, he suddenly realized why Frederick appeared so strikingly familiar, despite them never having met before. He had seen that exact leer before, on a face composed of smoke, reflected on a shining golden blade in the Dragonknight’s Armoury.

Frederick whipped around, as though he had felt Milius’s gaze on him, and their eyes met. White-hot fury exploded in the pit of Milius’s stomach; ignoring the three dragons, he hoisted Palpatunde, and burst after him.

Frederick raised Ectomorda as Milius approached, but whatever Archimedes had said, he wasn't worried — it had taken the other Knights weeks to master their swords’ abilities. With his inexperience with the blade, he posed no threat. Milius dove forward and swung Palpatunde, but Frederick parried the hit. The blades met in flurry of steel and sparks; Frederick was slashing wildly, the silver cross cleaving through the air so fast that it was almost a blur. But Milius ducked under his arm as he swung, plunged his sword into the ground and, using the blade as a kind of pivot, wheeled around and stamped, hard, in Frederick’s back. He lumbered forward and spun stupidly on the spot, lashing out in a wide arc — and then a streak of blue crossed the air: Shakil had joined the fray.

He intercepted Frederick’s swipe, knocked the sword out of his arms, and smashed his elbow into Frederick’s obsidian visor, which shattered under the impact. Frederick staggered, but recovered himself almost at once; his hand flew to his bone dagger, which was extending ftom a scabbard produced by his armour, and he launched it at Shakil, who dove aside.

But as Milius made to streak towards Frederick again, his eyes were drawn once more to the dragons. Lumeus and Aleia’s mixed streams of water and electricity were no longer crashing over Malidreus, but ricocheting off of a wall of what seemed to be solid darkness, erected between Malidreus and Lumeus and Aleia, and spewing wisps of dark mist across the Catacomb. Malidreus gave a cry of rage and reared, then plunged forward: the wall of darkness expanded outwards, overcoming the jets of water and lightning, and slammed into both Aleia and Lumeus, knocking them over backwards with squawks of pain.

A streak of white flashed across Milius’s vision of darkness, a great, pale arc slicing across the dragon's pitch-black bodice — Frederick had come lunging out of nowhere, his bone knife ripping through the air. Milius leapt back, shocked, but he was too slow. The knife tore through his armour, coursing through his chest underneath.

There was a spurt of scarlet and Frederick’s face was peppered with spatters of Milius’s blood. He staggered and fell, his hand launching towards his chest, but more out of instinct than anything. Blood was blossoming from the wound, dripping onto the floor, but he could feel nothing. The pain had been numbed somehow. Frederick’s shadow stretched over him as he lay there on his knees, one hand supporting his weight and the other coated crimson, and his wonder at the inexplicable lack of anguish turned at once to boiling, bubbling fury. He rolled aside and Frederick’s hand plunged downwards, impaling the area underneath where Milius’s head had so recently hovered.

He seized Palpatunde from the floor and leapt up again; Frederick’s hand zoomed upwards as he struck out, as though to try to defend against the incoming blade, but Milius adjusted his stance slightly and the sword narrowly veered past his bared palm and drove straight through his chest.

Frederick’s horrified scream pierced Milius’s ears, just as the amethyst began to glow. He stared at Frederick as he felt the energy coursing from his body and into the blade, and he suddenly realized that he had no intention of removing it. Frederick would be drained, he would shrivel, dissolve into oblivion like so many others —

But then an enormous crash rocked the floor and he lost his balance — both tumbled away from each other, but Milius managed to maintain his grasp upon the sword’s hilt, holding it firmly even as he landed on the cold ground. He looked up, certain that this sudden disturbance had something to do with Shakil. But Shakil was standing a short distance away, leaning against the Catacomb wall, struggling to remain upright, and looking as nonplussed as Milius suddenly felt.

He stared around. The scene seemed temporarily frozen; all three dragons had abandoned their elemental assaults and were staring upwards; Milius and Shakil were still looking wildly around for the source of the tumult, Frederick lying, motionless, some feet away.

For a moment nothing happened. Then another tremendous boom! shook the Catacomb.

“What is that?” Shakil yelled, as more dust began to trickle from the ceiling, but Milius had a shrewd suspicion as to what it might have been. Before anyone could move or make any further inquiries, however, there was an explosion of blackness and all sight was extinguished. Milius closed his eyes against the sudden gloom, but through the dense, dark cloud he heard a loud whooshing sound, as though something huge was soaring past him. Seconds later, the eerie green light illuminating the room pierced the murkiness and vision was restored, and as Milius looked around, he saw that Malidreus had vanished.

“He's gone,” Shakil muttered.

“We'll worry about him later,” Milius said. “We have to get back to the Cave, I don't think Sirius and Ariana know what's happening.”

“And Cole. . . . But what about him?” Shakil said suddenly, nodding towards the motionless form of Frederick. “If we leave him here, he'll die.”

“And he'd deserve it!” Milius snapped, but he consented to bring him nonetheless, taking care to keep Ectomorda as far away from him as possible, even in his weakened state. Milius hated having the sword near him; he had never sensed much from Palpatunde before, magic or otherwise, but even now he could tell that the obsidian-hilted blade felt dark, tainted . . . evil.

The exit of the Catacomb was a giant, spiraling black hole positioned in the center of the room just beyond, which Malidreus had obviously just vanished through, and which they now plunged into (slightly apprehensively) before emerging above ground near the very lake in which Milius had first met Phontus.

“Oh my God,” Shakil said, staring out at the horizon. Milius looked around in horror. The entire night sky, which had been curtained by darkness when they had found Lumeus’s Catacomb, was now illuminated by a harsh red glow, supplied by a beam of light erupting into the sky a great distance away, in what Milius was sure was the direction of the tomb. The thunderous booms! were still resounding through the air, rhythmic pulsations like the beating of some unseen, gargantuan heart, and with each one the ground below shifted as though an earthquake had passed through, leaving scenes of total devastion in their wake: trees had been uprooted; boulders demolished; great craters drawn into the ground; fires were now spreading across the land.

“The Cave,” Milius said. “We have to go, now!”

Aleia and Lumeus turned and hurtled through the air, in the direction of the Dragoon Cave, the silence punctuated by the ominous booms sounding from the direction of the streak of light. They arrived within minutes, and when they did, they found Ariana, Sirius, Cole, Hestia, the Elders, Vrydius, Verdona, and Cerea, and — to Milius’s enormous surprise — Minerva, all waiting for them in the yard. They landed, and Milius leapt from Lumeus’s back at once.

“Mother!”

Minerva dashed towards him, and they embraced.

“Oh, Milius,” she said, disentangling herself. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but what are you doing here?”

“Well, all of this started around an hour ago or so, and after it did, Sirius came to find me in the town. People are terrified back there, they have no idea what all of this is about. I thought everything would be explained when we arrived, but no one here knows what's happening either!”

“Milius, what is that? What's going on? Where's the sixth dragon? And what happened to him?” Sirius demanded, stepping forward.

“Frederick!” Hestia screamed suddenly; it seemed she had not noticed that something was wrong until Sirius had pointed him out.

“We made a mistake,” Milius said, looking away from Hestia, who had rushed over to examine her cousin's feebly stirring form, tears pouring down her face, “finding the Catacombs. We should never have touched them, the first Knights explained everything.”

“The first —?” Ariana began, looking taken aback, but Milius cut across her.

“No time!” he said urgently. “Back in the first generation, there were six swords, six Knights, and six dragons. But the sixth dragon, the one that the tablet led us to, he went rogue. They couldn't control him, and he ended up killing people, a lot of people, including even his own rider. They had to do something about him, but at the same time, they were fighting a war against the dark god who was reigning over the world. It was after they beat him that they did it: they couldn't kill either, so they sealed both of them. But the god managed to mess with their spell at the last possible moment, and Cerea got accidentally sealed.

“The spell was already set, so they couldn't do anything to help her, which is why she was down there when we found her. The Catacombs were all hidden, and the memories of the other dragons and swords were all erased, even from the four dragons that were passed down, so that they could preserve the secrets of the seals and keep the sixth dragon and the dark god locked away. But this idiot” — he gestured angrily at Frederick — “broke the seals when he claimed the last sword, Ectomorda.

“We fought, and we took him down, but the last dragon got away. And that light is coming from the white marble tomb we found when we were looking for Frederick and Cole — the god's seal. It's breaking, and the only way to reset it is to insert all five of our swords into it and chant the spell as we do it!”

There was a ringing silence as Milius drew breath. Everyone looked horrified, even the four Elders, but none more so than Cole, who spluttered, “You — you killed him!”

“He's not dead!” Milius said impatiently, still refusing to look around at Hestia, and though a tight knot of guilt was furling rapidly in his chest, he continued defiantly, “Wounds from Palpatunde don’t kill anyone immediately, the sword keeps them alive long enough to absorb as much energy as it can, they don't even bleed. And we were just defending ourselves, he was the one who attacked us —”

“He would never!” shouted Hestia, and Milius turned at last to see her glaring at him, her dark eyes sparkling with tears. “He wouldn't — I know he wouldn't —”

“Well he did!” Shakil roared, taking everyone aback. “I was there, he started all of this! He's lucky he's even alive, but he still is, and he should be grateful!”

“I always knew something was off about him,” Sirius said, surveying Frederick’s body distastefully.

“So did I,” Milius said, “but I could never place him. Not until a while ago, when I remembered that I saw his face before, on a blade in the Armoury.”

“Oh how ridiculous!” spat Hestia. “A dagger, really —”

“A golden dagger?” Aaron said sharply. “With an inscription on the hilt: Morosmidia?”

“Yes!” Milius said, surprised. “How did you know?”

“Because I was the one that placed it in the Armoury. That blade is cursed, it displays the face of the one who will bring about the most despair in the life of the one who looks at it. The person who had it before me, a princess, was driven mad by its power, constantly looking up for the face of the man who would cause her untold suffering. The paranoia overtook her, and she killed herself. I voted to toss the cursed thing away, but Demus persuaded me to keep it. Why didn't you say anything?” he demanded of Milius.

“I didn't know what it meant!” Milius said.

“And now we do!” Ariana screeched, pointing dramatically at the beam of light. “So how about we get back to the matter at hand: fixing the seal! What was the spell you were talking about? Did they tell you?”

Milius looked at her in horror. He had not had the chance to ask what the spell was! He stared around, aghast, but before he could speak, Calder said, rather gravely, “If I might speak; I imagine this spell is quite literally at your fingertips. The inscriptions on the blades are of a language we have yet been able to translate, possibly because of the age of the swords, and seeing as though the blades are the key in resetting the seal, and Milius quite clearly did not receive news of the spell from Elder Archimedes, it seems that it may be our most plausible action.”

This indeed seemed the most logical solution, Milius thought, but he could not help wondering — there were inscriptions on the hilts of all six swords (Milius had seen the inscription on Ectomorda’s hilt during their flight to the Cave), but Archimedes had explicitly said only five swords would be needed for the seal. What, then, was Ectomorda’s purpose in all this?

“We need to go,” Shakil said, as another huge boom reached their ears. “Sirius, Milius, Ariana, Cole —”

“I imagine we should go with you as well,” Basil said calmly.

“Indeed, I think this matter concerns us all,” Demus added.

“I'm coming as well!” Hestia shrieked.

“What? No!” Cole said at once. “Hestia —”

“I'm not staying alone with him!” she said fiercely. “We're both going too, and the moment you're done you'll be carrying him to the medical ward!” she added to Milius, who gulped and turned to Minerva.

“Mother —”

“I know, I know,” she sighed. “I should stay here where it's safe —”

“No,” Milius said, “you'll be coming as well, I don't think you should be alone here.” This was not particularly true; he mainly wished to bring her because of the threat of Malidreus, who could, Milius feared, know of the existence of the Dragoon Cave and in his determination to punish those who had wronged him, come here to destroy it. But he did not want to worry her with such information, though she looked thoroughly taken aback in any case.

“All — all right.”

“So we're all going?” Sirius said. “Great, let's hurry up then!”

They clambered atop the dragons, Cole with Cerea; Shakil and Basil atop Aleia; Ariana, Aaron, and Vrydius; Sirius, Demus, and Minerva; and Milius, Frederick, Hestia, and Calder, and as another huge boom hit their ears, they took off.