The sky was lined by a purple mist, one ethereal in nature. Behind the mist was towering keep, one unmarred and imposing. A path of onyx lead to this black keep. Today, it would be more than a legend, but also a reality.

Flyte traveled alone with a blade on his hip, the winter shield on his back, and a Dark Guild cloak to keep him warm. The cloak caried a variety of magic knives, although Flyte wouldn't be able to rely on his spirit friends for this fight. Flyte kept the frozen lightning bolt that Telin had tried to hit him with.

Ontin had told Flyte not to worry too much about the outcome of this coming fight, but there was no way that Flyte could be able to understand the honorsoul's lack of reservations. That being said, his power was comparable to that of a god's, so maybe he could trust Ontin on this one.

Around Flyte, the land seemed to speak in ghostly, harrowed voice, one warning him to flee while he had the chance. The voice rose, climbing in intensity as it left the uncut stone. These were the voices of those who were turned into shades, already beaten down by Flyte's target.

"Don't worry," Flyte said. "I'll get you out of here and we'll all be safer for it." Flyte doubted that he could forgive Will of his trespasses. To allow the torment of hundreds, perhaps thousands, all for a little power. After leaving Dark haven, Will would be Flyte's next pile of ashes. 'Flip the brazier and someone will get burned.'

Sooner than Flyte could have guessed, he was standing before an unopened door.

Harnessing any power that he could muser withing himself, Flyte bit down his apprehensions and fears. he pushed open the ephemerally metallic gate.

Flyte kept his eyes focused on his adversary, a being he could only describe as one devoid of light. Pillars circled the armored fiend, crystals floating above them.

The voices of the shades spoke once more. "Eternium guards the way out, be wary of this prison warden. Make sure not show it any mercy."

The one devoid of light, Eternium, picked up a huge greatsword, one evidencing thousands of battles. Its armor floated around its body, the chestplate thereof marked with two eight sided shapes, the smaller of which connecting its vertexes to the larger's sides. It was a node.

Flyte braced himself, breathing in deeply.

This was it.

Ander was a little confused, the ridge on which he, Elliot, and Kayr stood was very remote, although he had no clue why.

"Kayr," Ander began to ask. "If we're just bringing Flyte to the Dark Haven, why are we still here?"

Kayr smiled lightly. "Does this 'Will' strike you as the type of beast to sit around as its advantages are stolen from it?"

Ander looked across the ridge, and it surely was defensible, but not nearly so much as the camp was.

Kayr seemed to see his gear's turning. "Ontin is too wary to risk even the slightest chance at collateral damage, and personally, I'm fine with this choice. This barren mound will allow me to unwind."

"Is this wise?" Ader questioned. "In your own words you go berserk at the sight of shades."

"It'll be fine," Kayr smiled. "I'll be at the bottom of the ridge for my slaughter, all you guys have to do is stay up here and take care of any potential stragglers. Seeing you fight, I don't have any worries, but make sure that Flyte is far from danger. He'll be in enough of it in the hellscape he's in now."

Elliot chose to respond. "After losing him like we did last time, Ander and I will never allow any sort of danger to pass by us again."

"Good, because there's not much time left." Kayr grabbed a greataxe from his supplies. "Get armed, I can smell the scent of ash and kindling."

Kayr began to walk away. "I'll see you guys see, stay safe."

"We will," Ander said.

Grabbing Dancing Flames, Ander steeled himself to defend his friend.

The arena was covered in darkness; Flyte couldn't see a thing. Purple lightning bolts arced from the sky, each desperately twisting to hit the young mage, who was only barely avoiding each strike with the help of his compounded speed spells.

'I need to do something quick, or else I'll eventually slow down and be charred pile on the floor.'

Flyte brightly said "Nelar", casting a basic light spell, as he didn't feel like he could muster a triumphant tone in his rush.

The arena's darkness was dispelled for only a moment, and even with Flyte's speed spells still in effect he was only narrowly able to spot his foe, but all he needed was a glimpse.

Throwing knives at Eternium, Flyte watched for sparks to tumble down, and when they did, he again knew the warden's location.

"Foulos!" Flyte yelled electrically. The bright bolt of lightning illuminated the room, and Eternium's armor lost plating.

'That armor is beyond sturdy.' Flyte was ready though. He had people to protect, and with that in mind, he couldn't let this daunting foe scare him.

While Flyte doubted that his parents had ever fought enemies similar to Eternium at all, he did believe that they would have if they the same reasons to.

And so, Flyte decided to let loose.

"Nelar." The Aliranic word for light left Flyte's lips with a cold tone, the same as in the castle Ithiles, as well as with the same effect.

With the light-formed shortsword again in his hands, Flyte was able to spend a moment inspecting it. Its material was almost like shattered glass; it was just as sharp and was somewhat see-through, but the tactile feel of the sword made it feel nearly indestructible despite its near weightlessness.

The sword emitted a faint glow, wonderful for helping with the visibility of the fight, although not quite enough to possibly see the entire arena.

In order to see Eternium once more, Flyte needed to cast the light spell yet again. "Nelar."

"Ah!" Flyte screamed as Eternium leapt from the shadows towards him. Barely managing to parry Eternium's massive greatsword, Flyte swung a shabby riposte only for his foe to avoid it and push him several feet backwards.

Flyte nearly allowed his shock to make him quickly cast spells, but he remembered his spar with Kayr, which ended disastrously. Flyte did use the excess adrenaline pumping in his veins to speed up to his strengthened body's limits, but beyond that he forced himself to calm down. Anxiously rushing to defend himself might be worse than not defending at all.

Flyte threw an ice enchanted knife at the chink in Eternium's armor at the left elbow, hoping to eliminate the foeman's sword arm.

Eternium deftly struck the knife out of the air, but in doing so, his sword became covered in ice with a very sub-zero temperature.

Flyte surmised that the greatsword, having very many nicks as it did, was much less durable than his shortsword, so he went on the offensive.

Feinting towards Eternium's head, Flyte instead drove his sword through Eternium's albeit only slightly, subjecting his ears to a cacophonous screech.

Backing up, Flyte could see that his attack had done significant damage, but it wasn't nearly enough.

A rune appeared above Eternium's helmet, and the being's right arm became coated in shadows, forming a strange gauntlet that ended in an odd thin and hollow pipe.

A sound akin to lightning erupted in the arena, causing Flyte to look up so that he could dodge the lightning, but as he looked up, he saw his Winter Shield try to intercept an object flying towards him.

The projectile impacted Flyte's armor, knocking him backwards. Wet blood poured from his wound, a wound that had pierced all the way through his stomach, forming a hole no larger than the smallest coin.

Flyte didn't really feel the pain, but he could tell that his body was beginning to crumple, and worse, Eternium was walking towards him.

Weakly holding his sword in his right hand, Flyte pressed down on his wound with his left. "Elgro," he said with as soothing a tone as he could muster, gritting through the pain as his stomach slowly healed. Flyte strained to keep Eternium from creatin more wounds in what seemed like a losing battle.

Even with Kayr devastating the shades down below, Ander and Elliot still struggled with the shadowy horde.

Ander's Dancing Flames cleaved through two in one slash, but with the hundreds more that made it up the ridge, he'd need more swords.

And it was so. Veins of iron and coal were buried deep within the ridge, but sill in reach. Ander willed his magic to pull the minerals into view.

Feeling that he could change more about the raw metal than its positions, Ander allowed his magic to turn the iron into molten metal. Feeling that the heat was sufficient, Ander bid the coal to join with the iron.

The steel hardened quickly, more compact than even the greatest non-mage blacksmith could manage. Ander split the metal into twelve chunks, forming a simple sword out of each. None of the swords would touch a human hand, as the hilts were all too sharp, but they would work for Ander.

Blades spun around Ander, who kept his cool. With the lessened pressure around, he had more room to think. He hadn't seen Honorious, Borigan, or Will's dragon at all.

Preparing himself for a likely ambush, Ander kept his swords fighting irrhythmically. One moment they would take turns slashing at whichever shades got too close, the next they would each fall on a different shade's head, each similar to the sword of Damocles.

Elliot held his own, his shadowy weapons switching forms when needed. It seemed like second nature for him, as though each weapon was just as practiced as the last. Axes cleaved through crowds, swords through the few, even arrows were used in Elliot's defense of Flyte. The shadow on his arm seemed to climb higher every minute that Elliot's innate power remained in use.

"Hey Elliot," Ander shouted to his friend. "You're doing good, but you might want to cool it a little."

"Not while Flyte is vulnerable," Elliot responded. "I'm the reason we lost him last time, I won't let that happen again."

Anders's swords took his place in defending as he walked over to his friend. Placing his hand on Elliot's shoulder, he calmly said: "It wasn't your fault, Elliot. Both me and Flyte have a portion of the blame. I ran to try to kill the dragon, but my efforts were useless. If I aimed to kill Honorious, who was once a good friend, Flyte could have taken the dragon without any threat. If Flyte had gotten out of the way first, he wouldn't have been hit at all."

"Think about it Elliot. We strained so hard to kill Will because deep down, it's all his fault. Who brought the shades to Palantriss? Him. Whose Shades left Flyte weakened before the battle? Him. Who endangers Flyte now? It has always been Will. He needs to be put under as soon as we can kill him. We'll never get a break until he's dead. It's not your fault that we lost Flyte, a temporarily as we did, but it will be your fault if we lose you to the shadows that you allow to eat at you."

"Fine," Elliot said. "But if Flyte gets to be in more danger, I'm not going to hold back my powers regardless of the are future consequences."

"If that consoles you, so be it." Ander was protecting both of his friends, whether Elliot kept himself safe or not was unimportant, Ander would just save him too.

Slicing through a couple dozen shades with his floating blades, Ander looked down the ridge where he saw Kayr fighting what must have been over a thousand shades on his own. Kayr didn't even seem to struggle.

'I suppose that he really does fight under an honorsoul.'

That was somewhat concerning to Ander. Ander's only magic simply manipulated stone and the such, but, if Ander's guess was correct, Ontin would be Une, the same speed manipulator that killed Kili, the honorsoul that specialized in manipulating stone and earth. That would mean that Ander would have no chance whatsoever to become as strong as Ontin.

Ander's chain of thought was interrupted by the sound of shades speaking words, not screams.

"Garhavojk is arriving," is what they seemed to say in a synchronized mess of voices.

'What?'

A dragon's roar broke through the net of words. Not a dragon shade's screams but a real dragon roar. Will had done the impossible.

The dragon shade had been given back its life but not its mind.

Flyte pushed away several of Eternium's small projectiles with an adaptation of the speed spell that Ontin had taught him.

Imbuing objects with new accelerations was already turning out to be quite handy.

Flyte launched over a dozen spears of light in short order towards Eternium, choosing each of their origin points and trajectories with his spirit contracts.

'How come I ca cast so many of these now?'

Little over a month ago, Flyte was only able to cast around ten spells, but now he was just tossing around spells like they had no cost whatsoever.

'I'll have to ask Ontin later, because a month of training shouldn't have increased my stamina so much.'

As Flyte hit Eternium with several spears, the armor absorbed most of the impact but lost pieces wherever they hit.

Energy flooded the eight-pronged node in Eternium's chest. The air in the chamber slowly began to be absorbed as the destruction node did its work.

Flyte threw a knife towards Eternium's face, trying to stop it, but the knife simply vanished right before making contact.

Ontin had told Flyte about the workings of nodes, and so he knew that the only things that destruction nodes couldn't affect were living creatures and spirits.

Flyte would have to get within close range of this warden.

Running towards Eternium as fast as his sped up body could move him, Flyte prepared to make the best parry of his life.

With Flyte in range, Eternium swung its colossal blade with devastating force. Flyte leapt forward, using his tougher sword to block the attack.

The strike pushed Flyte to the side, where he lunged at Eternium, punching the center of the node.

"Nelar," Flyte yelled aggressively, modifying the spell's effect from a spear to a horizontal wave of light centered on his fist.

The entire front of Eternium's torso armor exploded, launching Flyte back with a spray of his own blood while Eternium fell back, a starry ooze leaking from its wounds.

"Elgro," Flyte healed himself as he got up. He let his light shortsword dissipate as his energy needed to be preserved.

With Eternium's armor shredded, the warden was finally vulnerable. So long as Flyte went for the torso, his attacks would go through.

Eternium got back up; it lifted its blade, looking forward despite its wounds. Shifting its stance Eternium prepared to dash forward.

"Nelar," Flyte tried to sound triumphant despite his pains. 'I should get myself checked for internal bleeding after I get out of here.'

Eternium dashed, keeping Flyte at distance with the greatsword, but Flyte's spell made the blow much weaker.

Flyte abused this weakness to get close to Eternium. Creating a slow-moving light spear on Eternium's chest, Flyte kept the warden locked in place.

"Nelar!" Flyte ran to the side as he surrounded Eternium with eleven spears.

Eternium, suddenly lacking options, was forced to run forward, spilling a mass of its starry blood.

The issue with its plan was that Flyte had gotten behind Eternium. Grappling the light devoid being, Flyte put a hand on Eternium's now helmet-less head and inhaled.

"Nelar," he said brightly.

Garhavojk breathed dark crimson flames down at Flyte's body.

"No!" Ander yelled, but he wasn't fast enough.

Luckily Elliot was sufficiently fast. He rushed forward, summoning a huge shield. Stopping the flames from hitting Flyte was an easier task than avoiding them himself.

Elliot sacrificed his health to save Flyte, he wouldn't fail again.

Elliot covered the burned through holes in his body with shadows, allowing a little more mobility as he watched Ander attack the dragon with twelve swords at once.

Barely reacting in time, Elliot blocked an arrow from hitting Flyte. He spotted Borigan stalking around pitifully.

Honorious leapt off the back of the dragon, landing on the side opposite to Borigan.

Blocking another arrow, Elliot turned his shield into a halberd and thwarted Honorious's attempt to strike Flyte. Molten steel rained from the sky as Ander's own battle slowly turned south.

Elliot kicked Honorious back. The shade was wearing the same armor as he did the night that he met Flyte. Borigan shot yet another arrow, but this time Elliot formed a shadow appendage to absorb the arrow so that he could send it back. He shot the intercepted arrow back towards the former king's lessened desert lion.

In dodging the arrow, Borigan was hit by a spear that had traveled the distance from the bottom of the ridge where Kayr had thrown it.

Kayr made a show of bowing down, then he continued his blind massacre.

Elliot blocked a blow from Honorious yet again and forced his foe backwards.

He had people to protect.

The center of the arena now held a pedestal holding a glass orb containing the spirits of the shades, but before breaking it as Ontin said would permanently kill the shades, Flyte wanted to see if imbuing the sphere with light magic would help the spirits at all.

Pushing as much of his energy into the sphere as he safely could, and even some of his mannah, Flyte gave his best effort.

The sphere almost seemed to glimmer for a second, but nothing happened. Flyte's heart dropped a little.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more," Flyte said to no one in particular, although he thought that maybe the shades around could hear him.

Flyte pushed the orb over and was pulled out of Dark Haven before the glass shattered.

Garhavojk seemed sick for a moment, then the small wounds scattered around its body shined with light, and even the dragon was brought down, panting out its body's last.

"Thank you," the majestic dragon seemed to say to Ander with its final breath.

Honorious's body began to fade, but even as he turned to mist, his eyes gained light and lucidity.

"I'm sorry Elliot," he said. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you when you needed it. And Ander, I'm sorry for betraying you. When I told the king about Lion's Watch, I didn't realize that would be the result, and I was too much of a coward to stop him. I understand that neither of you can forgive me, but-"

Ander and Elliot rushed in to hug Honorious, who blinked melancholy tears.

Ander spoke up. "Honorious, I missed you so much. Please don't worry so much about the past. Me and Elliot handled ourselves alright."

Honorious smiled, but when he tried to speak his mouth vanished, but Ander hugged his lost friend closer.

And then he was gone.

And Ander was empty.

But Flyte woke up this time at least and that helped.

Ander could live with that.

Ander closed his eyes and let his exhaustion take him.