The golems hit first, but the giant wyrm didn’t even twitch when they landed upon his broad back. If Zeke had taken a moment to stop and think, he’d have marveled at the sheer scope of the creature. Baraziq wasn’t just enormous. His size, especially up close, was nearly incomprehensible. As wide as a building, and the length of a small train, the wyrm moved with the fluidity of an eel, his comparatively smaller legs propelling him forward at unbelievable speed.

Zeke leaped from the wall and landed in a crouch. To keep from falling off, he jammed his hand between two gleaming black scales. But even so, he couldn’t stop himself from wobbling the moment he tried to rise. His head spun, and he briefly felt like he was going to pass out. Red mist enveloped him, twisting around him like a clutch of ephemeral snakes. Zeke gritted his teeth, remembering how he’d managed to drive the lesser blood wraith away outside the Rainbow Forest.

He embraced his Will, letting forceful energy flood his entire form. And to Zeke’s surprise, the red mist retreated – but only for a moment. Even as the wyrm slithered across the enormous, cylindrical cavern to attack his former mate, a half-dozen slender, black-robed figures appeared around Zeke.

And then they attacked.

But they didn’t move. Instead, the red mist swirled around each of them, collecting into a single pillar of opaque fog, and then, with an inhuman screech, each of them thrust their skeletal hands in Zeke’s direction. The pillar leaped toward him like a misty spear, jabbing directly into his head.

It felt like taking a blow on his old shield, the momentum of the attack sending his mind reeling with an echo of its power. His thoughts splintered, and for a moment, he couldn’t even remember who he was, much less what he was doing. He reeled, taking a step back, and the wraiths advanced.

But the stun only lasted a moment before Zeke reasserted control over his mind. As his thoughts wove themselves back together, he felt [Bulwark of the Triumvirate] vibrate with the reverberations of the attack. It had held, though.

“How strong was that attack that even blocking it nearly knocked me unconscious?” he wondered in his own mind.

Eveline answered, “You would have been entirely obliterated if you hadn’t had some sort of mental protection.”

“Still hit like a truck,” he mused.

“Yes,” was her shaky answer. As an entity of the mind, she’d probably gotten hit much harder than Zeke. But at least she had survived. If he hadn’t created [Bulwark of the Triumvirate], that would not have been the case.

The wraiths advanced, practically hovering over the giant wyrm’s scales, but when they saw that Zeke hadn’t been overwhelmed, they pulled to a sudden stop. Zeke went on the attack, summoning his hammer and swinging it with all his Will-reinforced might. The first wraith managed to slither out of the way, but the second in line was a moment too slow. As a result, it took the hammer-blow directly in its thin chest.

It exploded into red mist, but Zeke didn’t need Eveline’s reminder to recognize that he hadn’t gotten a kill notification. When she added that the creatures were single, collective entity, the lack of a notification made sense, even if it was more than a little frustrating. He utilized that annoyance to fuel his next force-imbued attack, which dispersed another wraith. The fog swirled faster.

Another mental attack battered against [Bulwark of the Triumvirate], stunning Zeke with its ferocity. Even as he struggled to recover, another hit him. Then another. The remaining wraiths screeched in glee as the swirling fog – augmented by their comrades’ disbursement – descended upon him in one spear of mental energy after another. Zeke staggered to one knee as his mind splintered into a thousand pieces only to repair itself a second later.

Over and over, he endured. All the while, Eveline screamed inside his mind as her very being was ripped asunder. Time lost all meaning. Zeke forgot who he even was. He just knew that he couldn’t give in. So, he flooded [Bulwark of the Triumvirate] with every ounce of earth-attuned mana he could absorb from the area.

It wasn’t enough.

Slowly, the battering attacks chipped away at his mental shield, leaving cracks and craters with every blow. All the while, the wraiths never moved, save from a few quivers of joy as they saw Zeke’s defenses crumbling before their might.

Eventually, Zeke’s grip failed, and he fell face-first onto the wyrm’s back. Even if it had seemed like an endless expanse of formless time, the entire attack had only taken a second or two. Finally, the wraiths advanced, seeming to float across Baraziq’s scales. Mist swirled, columns darting here and there before battering into Zeke’s mind.

And all the while, he endured.

In fact, that was the only thought he could muster. The only edifice to which he could cling. That all-important facet of his personality that made him who he was. There were plenty of stronger entities out there. The wyrms certainly fell into that category. Even the wraiths, minions though they were, were more powerful than Zeke. He’d accepted that he wasn’t the strongest person in any world.

But he could endure whatever life threw at him. He believed it because that was the core of who he was. Of who he had become. His rebirth had remolded him into a powerful warrior, but his greatest asset had always been his ability to take whatever life threw at him and come out the other side.

And these mental attacks were no different. So, even as every other thought faded away into nothing, shattered and pulverized by the wraiths’ mental attacks, the stubborn refusal to give in remained a shining pillar of his enduring identity.

The wyrm hit one of the crystal bridges and slithered across it, destroying a few stunned dwarves along the way before he leaped onto the central pillar and darted toward his former mate. That’s when the kobolds entered the fight. A few landed upon his broad back, where they immediately jabbed their spears at his impervious scales. Beams of light bounced away, harmless to the wyrm.

But his minions were not so lucky. A particularly thick beam of light caromed off of Bazariq’s back at a perfect angle to bisect a couple of wraiths. They howled, but they didn’t disperse. The kobolds weren’t stupid, though. And though they weren’t as devoted to Zeke as they were to their mother, they still cared deeply about their would-be savior. So, when a few kobolds – Silik among them – saw that they had the tools to save him, they wasted no time in sending dozens of light spears in the wraiths’ direction.

Most did nothing. They were just too weak. However, some of the more powerful legionnaires had begun to find a path, and due to that, their attacks packed a little more punch. Moreover, the wraiths were particularly vulnerable to expressions of Will. So, those few legionnaires managed to make all the difference.

Wraiths staggered, and suddenly, the attacks on Zeke’s mind slowed. Then, just as suddenly, they ceased altogether. He regained the capability for conscious thought just in time to see the wraiths turn on the kobolds and launch their mental attacks at the lizard-like warriors.

And one after another, they fell. No cries of pain or despair. No build-up. Instead, they just went limp, fell to the wrym’s back, and then tumbled away when the creature took its next slithering step on its quest to finish off its still-stunned former mate.

Watching a wave of kobolds fall, Zeke screamed, “No!”

Then, without another thought, the barrier he’d maintained to keep the demonic energy at bay crumbled into nothing, and a flood of anger and corruption crashed into him. Immediately, his body shifted into the demonic form of [Triune Colossus]. He couldn’t be bothered to care about the details. All he saw was the raging inferno of his fury. He sprang to his feet, and the world trembled at the sudden ferocity of his emotions.

A pillar of mist slammed into him, but [Bulwark of the Triumvirate] had been infected with demonic mana just as that corrosive energy had suffused every other aspect of Zeke’s being. As a result, the mental shield didn’t simply endure the attack. It ripped it to shreds and sent a spike of corrosion back at the responsible wraith. When it hit, the minion reeled as if struck by a physical blow.

That reaction served to stoke Zeke’s fury.

He advanced with implacable furor, his every step distorting the ambient mana. The world sizzled and spat sparks as the anger roared in his mind. And then, he reached the wraiths.

At some point, Zeke had dismissed his hammer. He didn’t bother re-summoning it. Instead, he dove into the slender wraiths with his bare hands. The demonic form of [Triune Colossus] was equipped with sharp claws, and Zeke put them to good use, ripping into the wraiths with reckless abandon.

They fought back, but robbed of their mental attacks – which rebounded on them any time they attempted to assail Zeke’s mind – they were ill-equipped to combat someone like Zeke. He tore them asunder, ripping them limb from limb until only a dense cloud of red mist remained.

Then, with a bellowing roar, he attacked that too, infusing his body with as much of his Will as he could. He didn’t differentiate between his two paths. Instead, he dragged energy from both, letting them intertwine until they became indistinguishable from one another. All the while, Eveline screamed at him to stop, to think, but after having his mind shattered, he was almost entirely incapable of resisting the effects of the demonic corruption. In that moment, he became a true demon, powerful and unstoppable, but wholly unable to form rational thought.

The mist ignited with purple fire that spread throughout its diffuse form, eating through it with an explosion not dissimilar from lighting a puddle of gasoline on fire. And then, suddenly, they were gone.

For a moment, Zeke jerked his head around, searching for another enemy, but there were none in evidence.

Except the giant wyrm beneath his feet.

Who better to hold accountable than the being who’d directed the wraiths that had killed his people? Who’d caused him such pain? Zeke didn’t need more than a second to decide his predictable course of action. So, he summoned his hammer and his considerable strength before aiming a momentous sledgehammer blow at the scales beneath him. The attack hit with explosive force that sent a shockwave to spread through the immediate area, but when Zeke retracted his hammer he saw that the scales were entirely unblemished.

Furious, he swung again.

And again.

Ten times, each bearing more of his power than the one before, Zeke’s hammer fell. And ten more times, they did so with utter impotence. No cracks. No craters. Not even a dimple marred the sleek scale’s perfect form.

Zeke roared again, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that he had more power in reserve. He only had to reach for it. To mold it. And to release it.

He was in the process of gathering his Will and three disparate types of mana when he heard a booming voice in his head. It said, “Not yet, little one. Wait until the proper moment.”

The voice – clearly uttered by the wounded wyrm mother, Mikaena – had bypassed his mental shield as if it wasn’t even there. More, it was so forceful that it drove some of the fury from his mind, allowing for some measure of rational thought. And finally, it gave Eveline the opening she needed to reestablish an avenue of communication.

She screamed, “What did you do?!”

That cut through his fury even more concisely than the wyrm’s forceful voice. “Huh?” he thought.

“You combined your paths, you idiot!” she yelled, her voice echoing through his mind. “You can’t just…you don’t do that! Not without years of preparation! There’s no telling what you’ve done!”

Only then did Zeke notice the notification begging for his attention. He opened it, and gasped at what he saw.

Congratulations! You have combined two paths into one. The Paths of Force and Runecrafting have evolved into The Path of Arcane Destruction (E). Be wary, the power of this path is greater than the sum of its parts, but some characteristics of your previous paths will be forever lost to you.

“Uh…”

“That is…distressing,” said Eveline. “Especially considering that you now have to finish a battle with an untested tool. Has no one ever told you not to evolve during a fight? Are you an idiot? I didn’t think so, despite some of your actions, but now…”

“It’ll be fine,” Zeke growled, even though he wasn’t so sure. He’d depended on his runecrafting path almost from the very beginning, and now that it had changed, he couldn’t help but wonder how. Of course, there was no changing things now, so he could only accept it and move on as best he could. “At least it’s stronger. And the destruction part seems well-suited to the situation.”

“I suppose. You might want to switch attunements before you go into another murderous rage,” she said. “The calming effect from the wyrm won’t last much longer.”

Zeke nodded, then forcefully cut himself off from the demonic energy, supplanting it with his own, pure mana. Soothing energy raced through him and splashed against his ragged, raw mind. He let out a sigh as his thoughts cleared. Looking around, Zeke couldn’t help but feel a little overwhelmed.

The battle between the former slaves and the dwarves had resumed as if it had never been interrupted by a fight between two titanic wyrms. The dwarves might’ve reacted to the newcomers, but such was the slaves’ hatred for their captors that they wouldn’t let something like that deter them from getting their vengeance. As such, the dwarves had no choice but to defend as best they could.

And they were losing.

Meanwhile, the kobolds who hadn’t jumped onto Baraziq’s back were still lobbing streaks of sizzling light at the impervious pseudo-dragon. The wyrm ignored them as it raced toward the recovering Mikaena, who’d finally extricated herself from her craterous point of impact. It was just in time, too, because that’s when Baraziq slammed into her.

His body bucked, nearly throwing Zeke aside, but he managed to kneel down and grip the ridge of a massive scale just in time to keep himself from being thrown into the abyss. The two wyrms’ claws and teeth snapped as they eschewed skills or paths, instead relying on their natural weapons.

It only took a moment for Zeke to realize that Mikaena was doomed.

The battle had clearly been ongoing for some time, because the mother of the kobolds was obviously injured. One of her legs had been cut so deeply that Zeke had to wonder how it had held on, and her body bore dozens of smaller wounds as well. Blood seeped from those injuries, and her beautiful scales had lost some of their luster. By contrast, Bazariq looked almost entirely unhurt.

And he moved like it, too. Quick as a striking serpent, he darted in, latching his massive jaws around the slightly smaller Mikaena’s neck. She twisted away, but not before his fangs pierced her scales. The wyrm mother lashed out with her stubby claws, raking them across Bazariq’s underbelly, and Zeke was surprised to see the comparatively softer scales part with ease, showering the closest bridge in deep, red blood. But only a moment later, the great, black wyrm’s flesh knitted back together until no evidence of the wound remained.

It was hopeless.

“Yes,” said Mikaena in Zeke’s mind. Time seemed to slow, and in the space of an infinite instant, she continued, “He is too strong. I will fail, and I will fall. The only hope is in escape.”

“How?” Zeke asked, feeling as if he’d been rooted in place. The reality was that his perception of time was so fast that his body simply couldn’t keep up. It was a level of power that Zeke had never encountered; even the great dwarf king or his traitorous brother had failed to live up to that degree of might. “How can I save you?”

“The wyrm-killer wishes to save me?” she asked, a tone of slight amusement riding alongside the thought. “No, little one. You cannot save me. I have known that since the beginning. But you can save my children. In a moment, I will subject Bazariq to my most potent attack. When I do, you must strike with everything you have. It will not kill him, but it may give you an opportunity to lead my children to safety. Once that is done…”

She continued to explain her plan, and Zeke found himself mentally nodding along. It could work, but at the cost of the wyrm’s life. There was a chance that she could overcome Bazariq, but neither Zeke nor Mikaeana considered it a real possibility. As she’d said, escape was the only option.

So, Zeke agreed.

And a moment later, the wyrm’s motherly voice, powerful and brooking no room for dissent, echoed through the minds of each of her children. For some reason, she had included Zeke among their number.

“My precious children,” she said. “I love you more than you could ever know, and I know you love me as well. However, I must ask you to do something I know you will not like. You cannot save me. The enemy is too powerful. So, I beg you – abandon me. Escape. Follow Ezekiel, and live honorable lives.”