ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 370: The Green Calamity (5)

The moment they launched forward, the titan moved.

Its roar split the sanctuary sky, a thunderous, guttural sound that sent shockwaves through the entire landscape. Trees bent as if in reverence or fear, myst vapor rippling through the air in sickly green waves. Every footstep the golem took cratered the earth, sending tremors racing outward like ripples on a pond of soil and stone.

Liam reached first. He hurled his javelin with pinpoint accuracy toward the creature’s glowing chest—but the moment the weapon made contact, the titan’s bark-plated torso pulsed with a blinding burst of emerald light. The javelin was absorbed, incinerated into ash, and the titan’s body erupted in a ring of retaliatory myst.

Liam was flung like a ragdoll through the air. He crashed through the upper boughs of a tree, splinters and leaves spiraling around him as he twisted in midair, using part of his fire reserves to slow his fall. Still, he landed hard, knees crashing into the ground and kicking up soil and broken roots.

The beast turned its attention to Mabel.

She warped upward, high into the air, water spiraling around her blade in twin whirlpools. She dropped like a meteor, aiming directly for the creature’s shoulder joint. Her blade met the bark—and cleaved through the first few layers—before an explosive pulse of myst erupted from the wound.

The impact sent a shockwave across the sanctuary, toppling smaller trees and fracturing stone outcroppings. Mabel was thrown across the clearing like a streak of silver and blue. She crashed into a boulder, breaking it in half on impact, coughing blood but scrambling to her feet before the titan could stomp her into the ground.

Liam reappeared beside her in a blur of flames.

"We need to destabilize it!" Mabel shouted, wiping blood from her chin. "Those glowing veins—they’re myst conduits!"

"On it."

Liam conjured a second javelin, this one sharper, narrower, its blade pulsating with unstable fire and darkness. He sprinted around the creature’s flank while Mabel charged the front, a decoy meant to draw attention. She threw wave after wave of slicing water arcs, forcing the golem to defend with its massive wooden arms.

As the titan swiped at her with the force of a mountain, Liam leapt, shadow bursting from his back in winglike bursts. He soared upward, javelin held high.

He hurled it—not at the golem’s chest this time, but at the base of its spine, where thick vines twisted together like a rooted heart.

The impact was cataclysmic.

The fire-shadow javelin exploded on contact, a vortex of consuming flame and void energy erupting from the point of impact. The detonation sent black fire spiraling skyward, engulfing half the titan’s back. Bark charred. Vines sizzled. The titan let out a howl of agony that shook the land.

The myst flow destabilized. The emerald light in its eyes flickered.

"That’s it!" Mabel shouted.

She warped again—three times in quick succession—appearing directly in front of the titan’s face. Her blade now shimmered with condensed myst, thinner than paper and twice as deadly.

She slashed.

A diagonal arc of water-blade sliced across the golem’s face. Thorned bark split. Vines were severed. A greenish-black ichor sprayed out like geysers.

The beast staggered.

Liam didn’t waste a second. He launched an Umbra Star directly into the exposed vines at its neck.

The miniature black sun detonated.

The explosion consumed the creature’s upper chest and part of its face, obliterating the mask of thorns. Bark and stone rained down like meteors, the ground cratering beneath its collapsing weight.

With a final, groaning roar, the titan collapsed—shaking the entire sanctuary with its fall.

Dust. Smoke. Shattered myst conduits. The land itself trembled from the discharge.

Mabel dropped beside Liam, panting, bloodied, and grinning beneath her mask.

"Well," she said, voice ragged. "That was the easy part, wasn’t it?"

Liam, breath shallow, his body bruised and his hair singed, gave a dry chuckle. "Still breathing. That’s what counts."

But neither of them let their guard drop. Because from across the fractured battlefield, through the mist of shattered roots and scorched soil... Morenelle was still standing.

Her clothes were torn ever so slightly, her once-perfect composure cracked—but her eyes burned with vengeance now.

And she was smiling.

***

The moment hung in silence, thick with tension, until the air itself trembled.

Einar moved first.

His blade—a long, pitch-black greatsword etched with glowing runes—came down in a brutal diagonal arc, aimed to split Magnus from collarbone to hip. The swing wasn’t just powerful—it carried the weight of myst-infused momentum, the ground beneath Einar’s feet cratering from the force he poured into it.

But Magnus had already shifted.

In less than a blink, he sidestepped with a flash of wind myst beneath his boots, the air splitting with a sharp gust as his form blurred. The sword missed by inches, crashing into the stone below, erupting into a geyser of shattered earth. Shards of obsidian-like rock jetted upward from the impact like deadly confetti, and yet Magnus weaved through them effortlessly, twisting his body midair like a ribbon caught in a storm.

He retaliated with a horizontal slash—precise, fast, silent. Wind compressed into a blade’s edge, nearly invisible to the eye.

But Einar wasn’t caught off guard. Roots erupted from the cracked ground around his feet, twisting in a defensive spiral that caught the edge of the slash. The bark-black vines hissed and splintered, some snapping from the pressure, others deflecting the force just enough for Einar to step back unharmed.

He answered with a brutal stomp.

A shockwave pulsed through the stone street, sending jagged spikes erupting in a line toward Magnus like the ridged spine of some subterranean beast. Each spike burst from the earth with deadly timing, tracking Magnus’s movements in real time.

Magnus flipped backward, wind blasting from his heels to launch him into a spin. He soared over the stone teeth, twisted midair, and threw a burst of cutting wind downward like a whip. It cleaved through the final spike just before it reached the civilians who had fled mere seconds before.

He hit the ground in a three-point landing, boots skidding across the debris.

But Einar was already on him.

The Warlord came in fast—too fast for his size. His blade swung in a wide arc, and as it did, the very earth behind it surged forward, mimicking the movement. A wave of stone chased the steel, like the land itself sought to devour Magnus.

Magnus ducked under the sword, letting it pass inches over his head. But the wave—he couldn’t dodge it all.

He slammed both palms into the ground and released a pulse of wind myst in a perfect circle. The barrier rippled out from him, dispersing the stone wave in all directions. Rubble exploded around him in a halo of dust and air pressure.

Then he was airborne again.

Magnus twisted into a corkscrew spin and dove toward Einar, blade-first. Wind wrapped around his sword like a cyclone, amplifying the force of his descent. He came down like a falling star—too fast to block, too powerful to deflect.

Einar’s roots shot upward in response—dozens of them, thorned and armored like spears, trying to intercept Magnus mid-strike.

But Magnus rotated, just slightly, adjusting his angle in midair. He didn’t strike down through the roots.

He skimmed between them.

His blade cut a narrow channel through the twisting wall of thorns, slicing clean through three, nicking the fourth, and missing the fifth by a hair. In the next instant, his blade met Einar’s raised sword.

The clash sent out a shockwave so violent it shattered every window within two blocks. Lightning didn’t flash—but the air looked like it should have. The pressure buckled the nearby buildings, pushed rubble aside, and made the street cry out in protest.

Locked in the bind, their swords grinding against each other, Magnus’s eyes narrowed.

Einar’s grin never faded.

"You’re quick," Einar admitted, pressing forward. "But speed isn’t everything."

With his free hand, Einar drove his gauntleted fist toward Magnus’s ribs. At the last instant, vines spiraled from his wrist, forming a coiled drill-like strike meant to pierce, not punch.

Magnus reacted instantly. He released his sword with one hand, forming a micro-shield of compressed wind against his side. The punch landed—but the barrier held, cracking slightly as Magnus used the rebound to twist away, disengage, and regain his distance.

He flipped backward, landing on the side of a crumbled building.

Then he launched.

Wind erupted beneath his feet, and Magnus shot forward like a missile. He struck with rapid, short slashes—left, right, upward feint, then a real diagonal slash down the shoulder. Each cut was laced with slicing wind that burned with a faint azure hue.

Einar blocked and parried, his body shifting like stone turned liquid. His blade sang through the air, deflecting Magnus’s strikes with ruthless efficiency.

Then Einar retaliated with a twist of his wrist—and his blade extended.

Nature myst warped the weapon, roots growing out from its hilt and stretching the blade mid-swing. The sudden extension caught Magnus’s shoulder in a shallow cut—not deep, but enough to draw blood.

Magnus grunted, spun backward, then sent a powerful gust from his palm.

Einar was blown back several feet, sliding across broken cobblestone. He planted his sword into the ground to halt his motion, and as he did, the ground shifted.

From behind him, massive stone fists rose—two giant arms made of interlocked rock and bark, driven by his dual affinities. They slammed down on Magnus from both sides like a divine hammer.

Magnus didn’t dodge.

He pushed his myst to the limit. Wind exploded outward from him in a dome-shaped blast, detonating the incoming arms into dust and shrapnel. The explosion rocked the street, a cloud of smoke engulfing both warriors.

And out of the smoke—

Einar lunged, blade poised like a scorpion’s sting.

But Magnus was already spinning low, sliding under the slash and slicing at Einar’s legs. The warlord leapt, narrowly avoiding the sweep, and countered midair by twisting his body and dropping a meteor punch, laced with stone myst, aimed at Magnus’s chest.

Magnus crossed his arms and blocked—but the hit sent him flying into the side of a wall. The stone cracked on impact. Magnus dropped to one knee, coughing.

Einar landed smoothly.

"You’re skilled," he said, pacing forward, dragging his sword across the ground as if it weighed nothing. "But you can’t last forever. My myst is self-renewing. Earth. Nature. I am the battlefield."

Roots coiled beneath Magnus’s feet again, and the wall behind him trembled—preparing to collapse inward.

Magnus smirked through bloodied lips.

"Cool story."

He exploded forward again, sword first. But this time, he was faster. Sharper. A ghost on the wind. He zigzagged midcharge, kicking off floating debris, wall fragments, and air platforms formed from sudden gusts. He came at Einar from the left, vanished, then reappeared from above.

His blade came down with a howl of wind.

Einar blocked it.

But the sheer force slammed his feet several inches into the stone. The impact bent his knees. His armor cracked.

And Magnus didn’t stop.

Slash after slash after slash. A hurricane of steel and pressure. He was everywhere—flickering like a mirage, each movement guided by perfect precision, wind currents bending to his will.

Einar parried high—Magnus struck low.

Einar tried to root his feet—Magnus swept them away.

The final strike was a full-bodied spin, blade wide, aura blazing white-blue.

The impact sent Einar flying through a stone pillar, cracking it in half.

Magnus stood breathing hard slightly, sword low, eyes fixed.

And then—

Einar rose.

Bloody. Smiling.

"Now that’s more like it," he growled, cracking his neck. "Let’s keep going."

And they surged at each other again.

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