"Bravo. You killed the monsters. Monsters that treated us better than this fucking city ever did. When my daughter fell ill, there was no Healer, because my fellow citizens drove him away." Each of the farr’s words was coated with venom and spite.
"My wife fell ill while taking care of the baby, yet no one did anything. I was forced to leave Maekosh on my cart, hoping to find a Healer before death claid them. I found the wargs instead.
"Can you believe it? Monsters took pity on
when even my own kin betrayed ." Lith could see the man’s life fading away with every breath he took, yet his hatred was stronger than death.
"They cured them. Cured
of my humanity, making us all stronger. Now they are dead and so are we. I regret killing those farrs, they had done nothing wrong. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong ti.
"When our alpha died, Etta and I lost our minds. The bond between wargs is sothing that a murderer like you could never understand." His breath beca ragged, his voice barely a whisper.
"The wargs just wanted food and shelter. Is that so wrong? To try to escape from cold and starvation? Did my family deserve to die just so that fucking Baroness could pin a dal to your chest?"
Lith didn’t reply. He had walked more than one mile in the dying farr’s shoes and knew that nothing he could say would matter to the man. Nothing would give the man his family back.
***
Free country of Lamarth. Beyond the eastern borders of the Gorgon Empire.
’Thank the gods I Warped both Xenagroshs outside my lab. According to an old saying, when two Guardians fight, maps get redrawn. Yet I believe the sa can be said for Eldritchs!’
The real Xenagrosh had the advantage of being able to shapeshift her body at will, the wisdom of centuries, and most of her magical artifacts. Unfortunately, the troll Xenagrosh still seed to be able to hold her ground.
Trolls were naturally attuned with the light elent and it was their inability to process the darkness elent in the surrounding world energy that had led their race to their fallen status.
Abominations, however, had a black core that was naturally rich with darkness and incapable of assimilating the light elent if it wasn’t leeched from other life forms. The Master’s experint had created a being with both the troll’s and the Abomination’s mana core, thriving together in a symbiotic relationship.
Their complentary nature had made the troll Xenagrosh into an almost perfect being. To make matters worse, by devouring her whole tribe, she had regained most of her original self’s mories.
Also, before making her appearance she had taken the precaution of "liberating" from Xenagrosh’s pocket dinsion all of the artifacts she could get her hands on. She had got the first choice of which ones to use for this battle, but unlike the real Xenagrosh, she didn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of each enchanted item.
The Master needed all of their energy and arrays just to prevent their battle from being detected from afar, since the destruction they caused had turned hills into plains and grasslands into barren lands.
The Master knew that unless one of them made a blatant mistake, their clash was likely to raze the entire country of Lamarth to the ground.
"Don’t worry, old friend." The Master yelled at Xenagrosh. "As soon as I finish setting up this array, we will take down that knock off copy, together!"
The troll Xenagrosh laughed at those words.
"How low have you stooped to need the help of a human? Even if you win, I would not lose. I always strived to reach perfection and now I know I’ve made it. Think about all the pain and effort it costed us to beco what we are now.
"Do you realize how much you are struggling despite your alleged superiority? You’re a relic of the past, whereas I’m what we were always supposed to be. Not a weak human but not a filthy monster either. I’ve achieved the best of both worlds."
She released two tier five Chaos spells at the sa ti, Flas of Absolution and Judgnt Call. The forr was Xenagrosh’s best attempt at imitating Origin Flas.
The black fire infused with Chaos magic filled the area within 100 ters of her, eating at all of the defensive barriers the original Eldritch had set up and also preventing her from Blinking away.
Flas of Absolution wouldn’t so much cleanse as they would corrupt, but they were still capable of making it impossible to perform the fine mana tuning that complex spells like dinsional magic required.
Judgnt Call was even trickier. It would conjure a twin stream of black lightning that would chase their prey leaving them only one of two options: take the damage in full or dodge them until the spell ran out of juice and leave the opponent plenty of ti to set up sothing even worse.
Seeing her prized spell combination used against her, the real Xenagrosh roared in outrage. She assud her true form, that of a Shadow Dragon so big that she could destroy the town of Lutia simply by sitting on it.
A jet stream of purple flas ca out of Xenagrosh’s maw, true Origin Flas, which consud Judgnt Call before unleashing their fury against the troll Eldritch.
"Not so cocky anymore, eh?" Xenagrosh said with a laugh. "Seems my little defective counterpart doesn’t rember much, but she’s right about one thing. This fight will prove which one of us is worthy of living." She said to the Master.
"If I don’t win on my own, it would be a hollow victory. If I need soone’s help, no matter the reason, then my whole existence would be a lie!" The Shadow Dragon roared her challenge before unleashing her most recent and powerful creation.
Tyrant’s Will severed the light elent from the surrounding world energy, turning all the other elents into Chaos magic. The hybrid could only conjure her best defenses as the whole Mogar beca her enemy.
The air she breathed was toxic, the humidity turned into acid as the ground beneath her erupted, trapping her in a pool of black magma. Her barriers shattered one after the other, forcing her to sacrifice so of her artifacts to escape from the clutches of death.
When the dust settled, the troll Eldritch was still alive.
"Not bad, ’sister’, but it wasn’t enough." She had lost most of her body in the assault, only part of her head and abdon remained. She had sacrificed the rest to make sure her twin cores wouldn’t suffer any damage.
"Trolls regenerate fast. A dragon is indeed sturdier, but how quickly does that massive body heal? How much energy does it drain? I bet that was your last card and it failed. Once I get my arms back, you’ll be a sitting duck until you recover from the exhaustion."
The Dragon Xenagrosh knew her other self was right, yet she still laughed her heart out.
"Well, what do you think I’m here for?" The Master used one of their arrays to completely seal the injured troll before throwing her inside the Dragon’s maw.
"How could she possibly be you and still believe all of that bullshit? If you really were unwilling to get help, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have taught
everything I know about Awakened and Abominations."
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