ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 377: The Green Calamity (12)

The moment Magnus’s fingers curled fully around the hilt of his sword, the very air changed.

The wind around him didn’t just howl—it screamed.

A violent storm burst from the pillar he stood on, spiraling upward and outward like a cyclone made of knives. Stone cracked beneath his boots. Dust and debris scattered like frightened birds. His eyes burned with focus now, his myst no longer suppressed but unchained—eager, wild, unrelenting.

Across from him, Einar grinned. Not a cocky grin or a mocking one.

It was the grin of a warrior who knew the opening move of the true battle had just been played.

He slammed his black sword into the root platform beneath his feet, and instantly, the earth responded. Vines, stone, and hardened bark wrapped up his legs, across his waist, encasing him in living armor that pulsed with green and brown myst. A crown of woven roots curled back from his shoulders like thorns eager for blood.

The ground beneath both warriors cracked.

Magnus moved first.

A blur. A streak of silver and blue wind exploded from the pillar as he launched—straight at Einar, low and fast. His blade swung in a wide arc, trailing compressed air so sharp it split stone before it touched it.

Einar pivoted, roots bursting from the ground to intercept. Magnus’s blade clashed with them—and severed them like silk.

He kept moving.

His follow-up strike was a flurry—three cuts in a blink. Chest. Neck. Knee.

But Einar matched each with elegant brutality. His own blade roared to life, carving through the air with earthen weight and natural fury. Sparks erupted as steel met steel. Every block from Einar sent miniature tremors through the battlefield, the ground quaking beneath his footwork.

They disengaged.

Magnus backflipped away, landing midair on a gust of wind—then dove down again with a diagonal slash aimed for Einar’s shoulder.

Einar parried and countered instantly—his sword dropped low and exploded upward in a geyser of jagged stone, the tip trailing behind like a comet.

Magnus twisted midair, dodging by a thread. But a sharp vine followed up behind him, aimed for his throat.

He ducked, grabbed it mid-spin, used it to slingshot himself back toward Einar like a wind-blade comet.

His sword became a blur.

The two clashed in a blinding storm of movement—Magnus fast and fluid, his strikes like gales made solid, cutting with devastating precision. Einar, slower but heavier, every swing of his blade causing craters, walls of stone, explosions of root and earth to erupt around him.

When Einar slammed his foot down, pillars rose beneath Magnus, trying to impale him from all directions like a spiked cage.

Magnus didn’t evade.

He shattered through them—spinning, slashing, riding the current of his own windstorm until he blasted a tunnel through the assault and came out with a mid-spin overhead slash. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Einar raised his blade—but Magnus feinted. At the last second, his sword split into three clones of condensed air. One struck high. One low. One curved sideways.

Einar roared, slamming his sword into the ground and triggering a pulse—an earthen dome erupted around him. Two wind blades broke on contact.

The third clipped his shoulder, slicing through his armor and drawing blood.

Einar’s eyes flared, but he didn’t scream. Instead, he smiled.

He launched forward, surging from his dome like a beast of stone and bark. His blade sang a devastating arc that cracked the ground in a trail behind it. Magnus blocked—but the impact launched him across the street, smashing through two broken walls and a half-collapsed spire.

He crashed to the ground, flipping to his feet mid-roll.

Then he grinned.

The wind exploded behind him, and he vanished again.

This time, Magnus danced through the air itself. He created airsteps—small, invisible platforms that popped into existence only when his foot touched them—allowing him to attack from impossible angles.

He came from above, then below. Left, then reversed to the right.

Einar deflected each with increasing intensity, now forced to adapt to the unpredictability of Magnus’s mobility. Roots whipped around him like tentacles, forming shields and blades alike, but Magnus was too fast.

Then the Weapon Master flicked his hand.

Dozens of wind spears formed behind him, all hovering—then shot forward like guided missiles.

Einar’s eyes widened.

He slammed both hands into the ground.

The earth erupted, forming a titanic wall of stone laced with metal ore and hardened bark—a fortress in an instant. The wind spears struck it with shrieking fury, detonating in rapid bursts, chipping away the surface.

But it held.

And from behind it, Einar came charging.

He broke through the wall with a roar, shoulder first, sword drawn back in a wide, winding arc.

Magnus didn’t flinch. He lunged forward at the same time, and the two collided mid-street.

The shockwave flattened the ruins around them.

Glass turned to dust. Stone burst into clouds. Craters formed beneath their feet.

And neither of them fell.

They both staggered back, breathing hard—but eyes locked.

Magnus wiped blood from his mouth. "You hit like a mountain."

Einar panted, gripping his blade tighter. "You cut like the sky."

Then—no hesitation—they clashed again.

And again.

And again.

Each strike now sent waves of myst through the city. Stone warped. Air screamed. Trees burst from the ground, only to be sliced in half. The battlefield was becoming unrecognizable—a cratered, mangled battleground split between air and earth, destruction layered over chaos.

Einar roared, his blade glowing a deep green as he unleashed his full myst.

A colossus of stone and nature burst behind him—an avatar of his strength. Towering, monstrous, shaped like a beast of bark and boulders with glowing emerald eyes.

Magnus responded in kind.

His aura ignited. Wind swirled around him in a cyclone, then shaped itself into a seraphic form—a massive, winged spirit of air, translucent but blindingly fast, its limbs extensions of Magnus’s will.

They clashed once more—avatar against avatar.

Fists met claws. Wings cut through stone arms. Windstorms met earthquakes.

And in the center of it all, Magnus and Einar never stopped moving—never stopped striking, dodging, predicting, countering.

No wasted steps. No hesitation.

Masters of their element. Masters of their art.

Their battle wasn’t just a duel anymore.

It was a war of gods.

***

The battlefield was no longer a city.

It was a war-torn scar carved into the world—every street collapsed, every structure either burned, buried, or broken beyond recognition. Sky and ground alike groaned beneath the clash of titans, air and stone woven into the carnage like threads of a tapestry unraveling in real time.

And at the heart of it stood two giants, still locked in motion, still breathing... still fighting.

Magnus stood with his storm avatar crackling behind him, the ghostly wind-seraph with jagged wings spread wide, twin blades made of rotating cyclones gripped in each spectral hand. His body hovered just above the fractured ground, lifted by invisible airstreams, wind howling with every twitch of his fingers. His aura was no longer just intense—it dominated the sky. Birds wouldn’t fly near. Clouds split away. The battlefield itself tilted toward him, as though pulled by the gravity of his rage now unchained.

Einar stood across the ruin with his earthen colossus at his back—twenty feet tall, eyes glowing molten green, thick bark-flesh reinforced with plates of black rock and vines that pulsed with life. The Warlord’s own body had begun to change, his skin cracked with myst scars, moss crawling along his arms, and his feet fused with the ground, feeding off the planet like a living conduit.

They both knew.

The end was near.

Einar lunged with a roar that split the air. His colossus moved in tandem, slamming down a massive fist toward Magnus like a hammer of judgment. The air around it warped, a vacuum forming in its descent.

Magnus didn’t flinch.

With a single gesture, the wind-seraph mimicked him. One of its wings folded inward—not to block, but to redirect. The colossus’s fist struck the folded wind wing, and in that instant, torque met raw momentum. The impact twisted sideways mid-swing, the massive fist diverted into the dirt where it detonated, launching a crater the size of a fortress into the earth.

Before Einar could react, Magnus was already there.

He exploded forward, a straight-line bolt of slicing wind. His real body trailed behind the avatar’s ghost form, both moving as one.

His sword swung—not just with speed or skill, but judgment.

Einar raised his own blade to meet it.

But it didn’t matter.

The collision wasn’t a clash. It was a dissection.

Magnus’s sword passed through Einar’s block like air parting before a gale. A crescendo of wind surged from the blade, carving through Einar’s weapon—shattering it at the base. The sound was like a scream swallowed by thunder.

Einar’s eyes widened.

The avatar followed up immediately.

The wind-seraph raised both its spectral blades and brought them down in an X-formation. Einar’s colossus tried to block—but it was too slow.

The twin blades tore through it.

A blast of compressed air detonated from the impact point—like a sonic nuke—the colossus’s chest caved in and then exploded, bark and stone flying in every direction.

The shockwave leveled the last standing buildings for miles.

The pressure flung Einar’s body backward—bleeding, broken, and weaponless—skidding across the cracked battlefield like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane.

But Magnus wasn’t done.

He landed lightly, barely touching the ground, then walked forward—calm, composed, deadly.

Wind curled around him like a cloak.

Einar coughed blood, forcing himself onto his knees. His armor had collapsed inward around his torso. A chunk of his own sword was embedded in his shoulder. His eyes flicked up—still glowing, still proud.

"You... really are... a god of blades," he spat.

Magnus stopped a few feet away. His blade hummed with power, but he didn’t raise it yet.

He looked down at Einar—his eyes no longer burning with anger, but carrying something colder. Deeper.

Respect.

"You were never weak, Einar," Magnus said, voice quiet over the wind. "You fought with everything. You stood your ground. You didn’t run. But this..."

He raised his blade slowly, leveling it at Einar’s heart.

"This is why I didn’t go full power from the start."

A burst of wind spiraled upward around Magnus, forming a tight cyclone that gathered into his blade—condensing, spinning, humming with destructive resonance.

Einar smiled, despite the blood dripping down his chin.

"I figured," he muttered. "Guess I should be honored."

Magnus nodded once. "You should."

Then, in a flash of motion—

He struck.

The blade came down in a vertical arc.

And everything split.

Not just the air—not just Einar—but the ground beneath them cracked in two. The wind blade extended beyond the steel, forming a cutting wave that stretched across the battlefield. Buildings in the distance collapsed. Trees were cleaved. The sky shuddered.

Einar didn’t scream.

He simply knelt, split from shoulder to hip in one clean, precise line.

His body trembled, then collapsed sideways, crumbling like dust.

Magnus stood over the fallen warlord, the wind slowly dying around him, returning to silence.

He knelt down, closed Einar’s eyes with two fingers, and spoke softly.

"Rest now, Warlord. You died like a warrior."

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