Chapter 146: Malice Rune Realm [ 11 ]
Raine’s POV:
Raine found herself well and truly in it. She charged the Endbringer in a frenzy, and the Endbringer didn’t flinch. She met her head-on with the same savage fury.
A malevolent slash of condensed darkness carved through the air toward her. Raine hit her knees and slid, not out of panic, but something closer to pure certainty. Close enough that she felt it pass. Close enough to cost her a few strands of hair.
She was back on her feet in an instant, a strike from the Endbringer grazing past her by a hair’s breadth. Her arm stretched, further than it had any right to, and she snatched the crown clean out of the air.
That was when it ended.
None of it was real. Raine was unconscious and had been from the start, struggling somewhere deep beneath herself to wake up.
She’d been stuck there for barely two seconds, but it felt like much longer.
Even so, something from the vision had settled in her quietly. It hadn’t shown her everything, hadn’t stretched far enough to reveal what taking the crown would truly mean, but she’d felt it regardless. The bone-deep confidence that the crown was their way to put the Endbringer down.
Debris and rubble rained down across where she lay. Her position was dicey at best. The castle was coming down.
Her fingers twitched against the rubble, a last-ditch effort to hold onto consciousness. She had to get to Leomaris.
Her body moved before she did, dodging debris on pure instinct by the narrowest margin. She barely registered it.
The Endbringer was already making for the throne. Raine ran, and her body moved the way it had in the vision, like it had done this before.
The attack came exactly when it should. She ducked clear, knees scraping the cracked floor, and her armour took what her body couldn’t, the clicking of it carrying sharply through the air.
The second attack came without pause. She avoided it the same way she’d foreseen, and then her hand was around the crown, yanking it from above the Endbringer’s head with everything she had left.
That was when she understood why the vision had ended the moment she took the crown. It hadn’t shown her what came next because there was no telling what came next.
She felt it at once. A tightening grip around her heart, crushing and immediate. It was enough to wrench her awake.
It felt as though the slightest movement could be the end of her.
Without the crown, the Endbringer dropped to her knees. Almost in the same breath, the black thorn crown dissolved into Raine’s hand and kept going, driving straight into her heart. Where it had all started.
Blood came up without warning. She hadn’t a clue what was happening to her.
Even so, the Endbringer rose again. The darkness around her had thinned considerably, and without it, she looked exactly as she had when Raine first clapped eyes on her.
She turned to Raine, but before she could take a single step, Charlotte was already there, closing the distance at impossible speed, her entire body alight with words.
A powerful strike to the armoured head sent the Endbringer crashing into the wall. Rubble hurtled toward Charlotte that same instant. She didn’t flinch, batting it straight into the Endbringer with a strike that crushed it on impact.
For a moment, Charlotte’s attention drifted to Raine. The agony on her face was hard to miss.
For Raine, pain was the wrong word entirely. The grip around her heart had softened, but her body was coming apart and remaking itself, and every moment of it was teaching her what the crown actually was.
It was an artifact, and going by what it had done to her heart, she had every reason to believe it was what had made the hollowed armour into an Endbringer. She’d never known such a thing existed. Then again, that was only a feeling.
As quickly as it had come, it ceased.
Charlotte was already there, helping her to her feet. The pain had gone, and the restructuring, whatever it had been, was done.
"I think something is off."
Charlotte said with a confused expression as she looked at Raine.
Raine felt it too, something off. She and Charlotte had always been much the same height, if not Charlotte the taller. Now she was looking down at her. A few inches, but enough to notice.
She was looking at herself with the same odd expression. Charlotte caught it and motioned to Raine.
"I am not talking about that."
One finger went up, aimed directly above Rains’s head.
"This," Charlotte added.
Just above her head, inches from her hair, something floated. It couldn’t seem to make up its mind. It was caught somewhere between a white thorn circlet and a gothic diadem.
The band itself was thin and white, ringed with sharp diamond-shaped spikes that pointed upward and white as crystal, floating close enough together to give the impression of a thorn crown. Nothing seemed to hold them in place. Magnetic, perhaps. Or magical.
It was the same as the crown she’d taken from the Endbringer. But white, where that one had been black.
Raine’s crimson eyes found Charlotte’s, and despite having no way to see her own head, she was curious about the crown. She wanted to see it properly.
Charlotte barely finished the gesture before something shifted in the distance. Raine’s body tried to move toward it. Her mind held her back.
That was when it clicked. Every movement she could see had a shadow behind it, a blueprint of what was about to happen. It was exactly like her foresight, seeing three seconds into the future.
But the realisation came too late. The Endbringer rose and dashed forward in the same motion, her sword already mid-swing, coming for Charlotte’s head.
Raine’s mouth fell agape. This was just as she’d foreseen it.
Instinct took over, and she booted Charlotte clear before the strike could land.
The foresight came through. She clocked the Endbringer’s movements before they landed and avoided them without breaking stride, then countered with everything she had.
The Endbringer blocked it with her sword, and it shattered on impact. The force didn’t do her any favours.
Raine glanced at her hand. Something had shifted in how she saw it. She was beginning to understand what the artifact was capable of, but she didn’t dwell on it.
Her sword was in her hand in an instant. She pulled Charlotte to her feet.
With a confident smirk, she spoke:
"Let’s end this, Charlotte."
Charlotte motioned positively. Then the Endbringer was on her feet and heading toward them again, without her sword.
Raine moved with precision and strength she hadn’t had before. She cut off the Endbringer’s limbs and removed her head, and Charlotte was already on it, snapping a barrier around her before she could drop.
She didn’t stop at one. Barrier after barrier, each one tight enough to restrict any movement. She wasn’t taking any chances.
"We should leave it as it is. Without its limbs, I do not believe it can move or escape, and I do not know how to kill it in any case. Even if we succeeded, the portal would appear, and that could allow Instructor Moon and Lucius to flee. We must go and assist Leomaris."
Charlotte motioned positively, and the satisfaction on her face said everything. Defeating an Endbringer had been her dream, and now, finally, it was done.
With a thought, the crown vanished from above Raine’s head, and she felt it settle round her heart, just as before. Only this time it didn’t hurt.
Charlotte frowned. "I am confused. What is that?"
Raine shrugged. "I am uncertain as well, but based on what I have observed, I believe this artifact enhances its wielder’s strength. The price is that upon the wielder’s death, it assumes control of their body."
She shrugged again. "This is only an assumption. I’m sure Leomaris will know the answer. We’ll ask him once we all get out of here."
The moment Raine finished speaking, their attention shifted to the hallway. Debris was still falling, but beneath it were footsteps. They were light ones, the kind that shouldn’t have been unsettling but were.
A lot crossed her mind at that moment. But what gnawed at her most was whether she was too late.
’Has Leomaris been killed?’
