'I'm not done yet!' Lith abandoned his Tiamat form and switched to the Voidfeather Dragon in the hope that the instincts and abilities of the Divine Beast could offer him a solution.
Spirit Vision showed him how M'Rael and Solus now had the same energy signature and life force.
It revealed to him like the familiar energies from the different floors of the tower were now mixed to give birth to the uncanny power that had crippled in an instant two of the most powerful Awakened he knew.
The mystical sight also detected the constant flow of world energy and mass moving from the armor to the hammer, but all of those things only made him understand how desperate the fight was.
M'Rael exploited the temporary weakness in Lith's arms to perform an X-shaped attack with the Staff and Fury, leaving him no way out. In the case of a Blink, M'Rael would have simply followed, but not before throwing the hammer.
'The Fury will strike him from the front while the Staff will hit him from the back along with all the power I have accumulated this far.' The three gems and three eyes on Sage Staff's head burned with elemental energy, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed.
Lith breathed a burst of Void Flames from all over his body and turned himself into a living pyre. M'Rael didn't stop his attack, the world energy flowing through his weapons more than enough to resist the black flames until they ran out of strength.
His assessment was right and the pillar of fire was cut asunder from the slash but that was it. There was no one there.
Lith had used the Voidfeather Dragon's Shadow Step to escape. The Flames had elongated his shadow enough to overlap with the elf's and move to his back.
Unfortunately for Lith, the Eyes of Menadion knew that trick and the Sentries alerted M'Rael of the threat the moment he started to emerge from the shadows.
"Again with the Dragon? Are you that stupid or just that desperate?" The High Chancellor didn't even have to turn around to unleash the Frozen Wasteland stored in the Mouth of Menadion.
The anti-Dragon spell snuffed the breath of Origin Flames that was coming out of Lith's mouth and turned his body into a shivering mess.
'I'm just that desperate.' Lith looked at his allies, discovering that the time he had bought them had kept them alive, but they were far from recovering.
He then switched to his Abomination form, getting rid of the crippling cold as the spark of Chaos and the darkness fed upon the enemy mana.
"By the World Tree, you really are an Abomination then!" The amusement in M'Rael's voice raised countless red flags in Lith's mind. "That's great news. Dealing with an Abomination is much easier than someone who can use Spirit Fusion."
Another spell stored in the Mouth was released, the tier five War Mage spell, Cruel Sun.
A sphere of black flames engulfed both Lith and M'Rael, but it was only the Abomination who suffered from the massive amount of darkness magic that painted the spell black.
The intense heat, instead, made the air unbreathable, sealing an Awakened breathing technique and turning Lith's equipment into a searing furnace. Double Edge and the Voidwalker armor turned red hot, the heat weakening them enough for the darkness to creep in.
On top of that, in his darkness body there was nothing that stopped the pain that the clashing energies inflicted upon Lith. Darkness ate at darkness, making the Abomination flicker as it lost mass to survive and its huger soared.
Yet all went blank when the Sage Staff hit him, releasing the darkness element stored in the Balor's eye. Lith was sent tumbling with a huge dent in his breastplate and knocked out of his Abomination form.
He was down on his knee, gasping for air due to the trouble he had breathing. Even outside the area of effect of Cruel Sun, the air was poor in oxygen and his ribs were as cracked as his equipment.
"Thanks for your gifts, Lith Tiamat Verhen." M'Rael stepped in front of him with the majesty of a king. "I'll use your bones for the frame of my throne and I'll make sure that your name will be remembered forever for your unwilling contribution to my cause."
The elemental crystals on the Fury lit up with black, yellow, and red energy. Fire and darkness maximized its destructive power while air gave it the speed of lightning despite its humungous mass.
'No, no, no!' Solus tried everything she could but the orders from her new master bound her more strongly than any chain. 'I won't let you do that! I'm going to kill you with my own hands!'
Her fury was transmitted to her Soul Projection that until that moment had kept hammering at the imaginary metal between its hands. Solus' rage and fear overcame her obsession with her past and made her focus on her present.
The golden-scaled creature of the Projection snarled, hammering at M'Rael's head. The psychic weapon phased through his body without doing him any damage, but the same couldn't be said about his own Soul Projection.
The immaterial Fury struck its head with enough strength to make M'Rael falter and miss his step. He was using darkness fusion, but it couldn't stop the pain from a telepathic injury.
When the blow came down, Lith had barely managed to raise his arms in a weak guard. The real Fury struck in a short arc, too narrow to reach its original target, Lith's head.
Yet it was wide enough to reach Double Edge which was horizontally raised in front of his face. It was strong enough to shatter the blade into pieces and then do the same to War within.
The angry blade screamed in what could only described as agony while the pieces of black metal were sent flying around and the violet crystals on its fuller fell to the ground.
The impact sent Lith flying as well, ending belly down with his face in the ground.
He could feel War's pain through their blood bond, its strength fading along with the spells of the pseudo cores that formed its semi-conscience. The shock flooded Lith with adrenaline, clearing his head from the dizziness caused by his injuries.
'It's fine. War is not a living being and thanks to my paranoia, I always have a dimensional item with me. I can store War inside and keep it frozen in time until I get to Grandma and have her repair it with Creation Magic.' He thought, trying to convince himself.
He had to get out of there alive first, and without War, the next blow of the Fury would also be the last.
"Finish him!" M'Rael ordered the nearest elven unit.
They had moved away from the original spot, reaching one of the edges of the encirclement. The High Chancellor would have loved to deal the killing blow himself but Solus' Soul Projection kept hitting him.
'Stop it, you whore!'
'You can order me what to do, not what to think, you fucker!' She replied in hatred, hoping to draw his attention long enough for Lith to escape.
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