Chapter 14 - Light Against the Void
The skeletal monstrosities lunged with unnatural speed, their jaws snapping like bear traps against the shields of the royal guard.
Adrian’s warhorse was struck down by a massive sweeping tail of calcified bone, throwing the young king hard onto the frozen rocks.
"Adrian!" Ella cried out, leaping from her mount and landing gracefully beside him before a beast could crush his skull.
She brought her silver blade down with all her strength, severing the monster's neck vertebrae and shattering it into splintered shards.
Adrian rolled to his feet, coughing a spray of blood from his bruised chest, but his eyes remained blazing with relentless fire.
"I am whole, Ella! Take the altar stone while I hold the perimeter!" Adrian yelled over the din of clashing metal.
Around them, the remaining fifty royal guards formed a circular shield wall, locking their rims together against the ravenous skeletal horde.
Nathan surged up the slope with his surviving vanguard, his armor dented and bloodied, hacking through the rear of the undead ring.
"Go, Your Majesty! We will hold the path with our dying breath!" Nathan roared, burying his axe into a monster's skull.
Ella sprinted toward the glowing black altar stone positioned before the great threshold of Winterwatch Fortress.
A dozen shadow legionnaires intercepted her path, their black halberds lowered in a lethal hedge of iron.
Ella did not slow her pace; instead, she focused her mind upon the memory of her mother’s voice that had whispered to her through the Blood Codex.
She stomped the right glass slipper firmly onto the frozen permafrost, unleashing a cascading wave of incandescent solar fire.
The shockwave tore through the earth, obliterating the halberdiers' weapons and throwing them violently into the stone ramparts.
She reached the base of the altar stone, which was carved with blasphemous runes and covered in dark, coagulated blood.
At that moment, a colossal weight plummeted from the battlements above, crashing down between Ella and the altar with ground-shaking force.
General Morvath rose from the crater, brandishing a massive two-handed greatsword that dripped with corrosive green venom.
"Did you truly believe an uneducated kitchen girl could unravel the dark magic of the Void?" Morvath sneered beneath his horned visor.
"I survived twenty years of torture in your shadows, Morvath, and came out forged in light," Ella answered, raising her blade with perfect balance.
Morvath swung his greatsword with terrifying velocity, a blow heavy enough to split an oak tree from top to bottom.
Ella ducked beneath the whistling arc of the blade, the venomous edge shearing a lock of her brown hair as she spun.
She retaliated with three lightning-fast thrusts, but the warlord’s heavy armor deflected each strike with a shower of sparks.
Morvath backhanded her across the face with his armored gauntlet, sending her skidding violently across the jagged ice.
Her lip split, and the taste of metallic blood filled her mouth as the warlord towered over her with his sword raised for the execution strike.
"Your kingdom burns today, little queen," Morvath hissed, plunging the blade downward with all his demonic strength.
A flash of midnight-blue steel intercepted the venomous blade with an ear-splitting shriek of clashing metal.
Adrian had thrown himself between the strike and his beloved, holding the warlord’s massive weapon off with his crossed blades, his muscles straining to the breaking point.
"Not while I draw breath, monster!" Adrian ground out, veins bulging along his neck as he fought the downward crushing weight.
"Adrian!" Ella cried, rising from the snow with newfound fury blazing in her hazel eyes.
She looked at the glass slippers on her feet, seeing them resonate with brilliant, blinding golden light as her royal bloodline awakened completely.
She realized the slippers were not merely defensive armor, but the ultimate catalysts of Eleanor's celestial lineage.
"For Eleanor! For Eldoria! For our people!" Ella proclaimed with a voice that echoed with the thunder of ancient gods.
She drove both heels down together into the ground at the base of the profane altar stone.
A pillar of divine, purifying celestial light erupted from the glass slippers, piercing straight through the stormy purple heavens like a fallen star.
The blinding radiance engulfed the entire plateau, instantly vaporizing the black altar and burning the necromantic barrier to absolute ash.
Deprived of his dark magic, Morvath’s venomous blade shattered into brittle fragments under Adrian’s counter-thrust.
Adrian spun fluidly, driving his ancestral sword straight through the warlord’s dark breastplate, piercing the black heart within.
Morvath gasped, his glowing violet eyes dimming into lifeless gray as he collapsed heavily onto the frozen stone.
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The celestial shockwave spread outward across the mountains, shattering every remaining skeletal beast and blinding the shadow soldiers.
Witnessing the death of their invincible general and the miraculous light of the Queen, the remnants of the Shadow Empire broke their ranks and fled in utter terror into the wild north.
