The mist came from the south, rolled across the tree line at ground level, low and warm, and the temperature on the road climbed with it the way it always climbed when something very large and very hot was coming through.

Then Ares dropped through the canopy and the canopy said so, branches snapping and separating, and he hit the air above the road with his chest already cycling toward that deep volcanic red that meant the Inferno Storm was not something he was considering but something he had already committed to.

From the north, Shade simply appeared.

One moment the road was dark on that side and the next Shade was there, the corroding burst already building in the throat, the pale translucent compound gathering at the lips with that faintly iridescent quality it had before it found something to dissolve.

Shade released first.

The burst caught Egor across the left shoulder and the acid compound did what it did, eating through the jacket and into the skin beneath in a spreading pattern that looked like frost but behaved like fire. Egor's jaw locked. His shoulder dropped half an inch and came back up and he turned toward Shade with Render already moving.

He ran at the dragon.

Not away from it. At it, covering the ground between them in four strides, and Shade adjusted, the wings driving downward to gain altitude, the corroding burst building for a second release.

Egor left the ground before Shade cleared his reach.

The jump was not elegant. It was pure intent converted into vertical distance, and Render came around in a horizontal arc at the apex of it that caught Shade across the right wing joint with a crack that the trees on both sides of the road heard simultaneously.

KRACK!!

Shade banked hard left, the wing losing its geometry, the membrane pulling at the damaged joint, and the second corroding burst went wide, eating into the road surface where it landed and leaving a spreading stain that smoked at the edges.

Shade came back around.

This time lower, this time with the burst already released, and Egor rolled under it, the compound passing through the air above him close enough that the hem of his jacket caught the edge of it and began dissolving at the threads.

He came out of the roll and hit Shade's neck with an upward strike that the dragon absorbed by twisting away, the scales deflecting the hammer's face, and the VPT compression that Egor had loaded released into empty air beside the neck and the road surface six inches from the point of contact cratered from the displaced force.

Ares descended.

The Inferno Storm beam came down like a column of geological decision making, red-white at the center and orange bleeding outward, and the road surface beneath it began to soften before the beam even touched it, the heat arriving ahead of the light. Egor moved left and the beam tracked him and he moved right and the beam adjusted and he stopped moving and raised Render instead.

Both arms. The hammer's face between himself and the beam. The golden enhancement energy in the weapon running at a level that turned the air around the hammerhead into visible distortion, the energy eating the thermal force and dispersing it sideways in waves that scorched the undergrowth on both sides of the road in widening arcs.

Egor stood behind it and his boots sank into the softening road surface and his teeth were locked and his eyes were on Ares above him and he did not move.

The beam held.

Ares held it.

Egor held against it.

Blood ran from his right side where the beam's edge had found him on the first pass, soaking through what remained of his jacket, and his arms were shaking with the effort of keeping Render between himself and something that had been generating volcanic temperatures since before the fight started and had not run out of anything.

"I AM A DRAGON KNIGHT FOR A REASON!"

He threw Render straight up.

The hammer went through the Inferno Storm beam and the golden enhancement energy running through it met the thermal force of the beam and did not dissolve. It rode it, the hammer accelerating up through the column of heat, spinning, and it hit Ares in the chest at the point where the scales were densest and it did not matter because Egor had loaded the VPT into the throw and the compression discharged at contact and found the junction beneath the scales and drove through it.

Ares made a sound.

It was not a roar. It was deeper than a roar and shorter and it came from somewhere that had nothing to do with the throat, and the Inferno Storm cut off mid-beam like something had reached inside the mechanism that produced it and removed the necessary component.

Ares came down.

He came down the way something came down when the decision to stay up had been removed from the available options, not falling exactly but no longer flying, his body oriented sideways, the wings unable to generate the necessary purchase, and he hit the road and the tree line simultaneously and the impact traveled through the ground in a wave that knocked Werner off his feet again from twenty meters away and sent a crack running the full visible length of the road in both directions.

The red mist dispersed.

All at once, instantly, like a candle being pinched out, and the warmth went with it and the road went dark and cold in a way that felt wrong after everything the last few minutes had contained.

Render came back to Egor's hand.

He was standing in the middle of the road and he was bleeding from his shoulder where Shade's burst had found him and from his right side where the Inferno Storm's edge had caught him and from somewhere on his face that had happened during the exchange with Shade that nobody had tracked clearly because everything had been happening at the same time.

He was breathing like a man who had spent everything he had and was operating on the decision not to acknowledge it.

He looked at the two dragons down on the road.

Then he looked at Noah.

Still standing in the center of the road.

Still frozen.

Pip moved first.

He came off the ground the way he had come off the ground after every single thing that had put him there tonight, slowly and with effort and with the particular stubbornness of someone who had decided that staying down was a category of option he was not interested in. He got to his feet and his face was a record of what Egor's hammer handle had done to it and he walked to the space between Egor and Noah and stood there.

His chakram was still in his hand.

Then Nami.

She came along the road on her hands and one knee and one foot, dragging the destroyed leg behind her, and she covered the ground between where she had fallen and where Pip was standing with the slowness of someone for whom covering that ground was the entirety of what they had left. She got upright against Pip's shoulder, one hand on him for balance, and stood.

She spat on the ground.

Mostly blood. Very little else.

Pip looked at Egor coming toward them and looked at the hammer in his hand and looked back at Egor.

"I was really starting to like riding dragons," he said.

Egor stopped.

Something moved through his face that was not doubt and was not hesitation but was something adjacent to both, something that lived in the space between a man's conviction and his humanity. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Pity," he said.

He raised Render and threw it.

The hammer left his hand spinning, the golden enhancement energy trailing off it, aimed at Pip's chest with enough force that the impact would settle the question of the evening once and for all.

And then Noah was there.

Between Pip and the hammer, his hand up, catching Render mid-flight with both palms around the handle, and the force of stopping it traveled outward from his hands in a wave that carved twin furrows into the road behind him and flattened the undergrowth on both sides in a ten-foot radius and sent a crack running from his heels backward along the road surface like the road itself was registering its opinion about what had just happened.

He lowered the hammer.

Looked at Egor across the road.

"I'm the one you want," he said.

====

Author's Note : (Please read. This is not to ask for gifts or anything, I promise)

Writing has become considerably harder as we venture deeper into the story. Could be because of all the components the story now has or something else. And to make matters worse, lately, I've

been sick, slightly unmotivated and depressed seeing the book regress in some ways. I no longer get the support I used to which honestly, I can only blame myself for. A Book is only as good as the Author makes it. But I owe it to everyone who has followed me and this journey this far to finish it and finish it right. Because you've invested your time and hard earned money into a project of mine with no idea where it's gonna lead. So thank you all. And I promise to do my best to keep you entertained and thrilled and feel free to call me out on any BS I might be doing.

I love you all, however few "you all" may be. You keep me going!