Nothing to lose

Clinton returned to the battlefield, his body still partially inserted into the golem was protected from the warlocks attacks by the stone giant. The remaining ents took care to get him out of the rocks.

'Bah! These monsters are useless.' Clinton complained.

The battlefield was chaotic; there was little left of his army. His golem was destroyed; there was barely enough miasma around him to keep two ents moving. Clinton was already turning around to return to the depths of miasma when an ice arrow came out of his chest from the back. Clinton turned around.

His skinny body, his gray skin, half of the bones of the skull exposed, and his empty eye sockets made Gaelion and Amelia make a face of disappointment as they gasped, trying to recover their breath.

'What do you think you're doing?' asked Clinton in a condescending tone.

A new spear of ice stabbed his face. The ents threw themselves onto the masters; two ice spears stopped them; the ents froze, and the ice broke, making them fall into pieces.

'Master Telman, glad to see you alive.'

'Fuck off, Gaelion; once we are done with that thing, we will settle the scores with the dynasty.' The master still had some fragments of his ice armor covering his body.

Telman raised his left hand, pointing towards Clinton, who was getting up. The scarce miasma of the atmosphere was powring into the wounds inflicted by the master's ice attacks; Clinton regenerated at a speed visible to the eye.

'Stop doing that; it's useless,' he said as he tried to gather magic fire energy without success. "What's going on? Why doesn't my fire magic work? Wait, that parasite played me! I need to make some time."

Telman and Gaelion attacked Clinton again.

'I told you that ain't going to...' Clinton could not finish his words; his body got covered in flames.

'If ice doesn't work, how about a little fire?'

'Finally, it was about time for you to join the party, Lydia.'

'Because of this idiot, almost the whole court is dead, the army is finished, and we have lost our titled magicians and masters.'

'Speak for the dynasty; Pelana and I are still alive,' said Telman a few seconds before a giant steel arrow clung to his back and pushed him several meters forward.

'What have you done?' asked Gaelion.

'What was necessary!' cried Lydia. 'Pelana is also dead; we cannot lose all our titled magicians and leave those of the other kingdoms alive. We have to think about the future.

'But not yet! Clinton is still alive; the miasma is still a problem,' Amelia protested.

Lidia smiled. 'Not really; the warlocks of the dark court found something interesting; it turns out that our friend Clinton has merged his life with the Chaos and the All Father, which makes him almost immortal, but in exchange, he turned into the core of the Chaos. Right now he is weak; he will not be able to return to Miasma; we can kill him here and now; kill the dog; the fleas are gone.'

As the flames went out, Clinton started laughing like a maniac. The miasma had ceased to advance in all directions and had formed a column that stretched from the main mass of myasma to reach Clinton, who had been reduced to a skeleton with calcined remains of meat by Lydia's fire magic.

"If the elemental energy had not been so unestable, he would be dead by now, but the next time, I won't fail." Lydia was sweating, and her breath was agitated; gathering elemental fire energy in that environment was a mammothetic task.

'I see, so that's your plan. Clinton's voice was coarse; the miasma had barely recovered part of his musculature. The miasma column that reached Clinton was getting thicker every second. 'But your plan has a problem, Lydia. Clinton started laughing. 'Van Vatnik was right: elementary magic and miasma have the same origin; they are united; if I die, miasma disappears, and with it elemental magic. Your beloved magic will disappear; tell me, Lidia. What are you going to do now?'

Lidia, Gaelion, and Amelia were frozen in doubt. Clinton was not to be trusted, but all his theories about arcane magic proved to be real. The three magicians imagined themselves without the power of magic as normal and ordinary people.

'I will not believe your lies,' replied Lydia.

'Go on, then, Lydia, do it; condemn the whole dynasty to failure. Without magic, even those savages of the southern kingdom could attack the dynasty, especially now that it has no army.' Clinton reminded her. Every second, he became stronger. "Kill them all," said a voice in his head, causing him confusion. Clinton found himself advancing towards Lydia as if he were a zombie and stopped. "What's wrong with me?"

A new column of fire covered Clinton; the intensity of the flames was much greater than that of Lydia. The three magicians of the dynasty looked to the left. Uruk was approaching, walking with difficulty because of his multiple wounds.

'No, stop!' cried Lydia.

Uruk's fire was still burning when Clinton started laughing like a maniac again, and the miasma column grew bigger and bigger. 'Im going to kill you all.'

A zombie dragon carrying two men behind his back caught everyone's attention; a few seconds later, it landed next to Clinton. The miasma was sufficiently dense around him to keep the dragon active. The other two dragons remained in the dense part of the miasma without being able to move forward.

'Xavier? No, the All Father' Uruk's eyes opened in surprise, while the magicians of the dynasty were panicking.

With the arrival of Xavier, Delfin, Uruk, and that zombie dragon, the situation had turned against them. They looked at each other, and their sight had a clear question: "What do we do now?"

'You have grown up very well, Uruk,' said the All Father with a smile.

'Now that you are here, we can end Clinton and rebuild the world of dragons,' said Uruk with tears in his eyes.

'I am afraid that will not be possible. If Clinton dies, magic disappears' the All Father denied.

'I will kill them all!' cried Clinton. His body, now naked, had completely regenerated, and his gray skin, full of tattoos and scars in the form of runes and diagrams, looked like a grotesque attempt at sadistic art.

Miasma entered his body in large quantities, as if it were a sponge.

'Hey!' cried the All Father. 'Do you remember this?'

Clinton turned his head toward the All Father's left hand, who held the crystal with Clinton's beating heart.

'You want it, don't you?'

The image of his heart made Clinton regain control of his body, and the amount of miasma that entered him decreased.

'That's better,' said the All Father, as his hands began to tremble. He put his right hand behind his back and moved his fingers as an invitation.

Delfin approached Xavier and put his hand on his back. 'Nal canto a gaw,' said Delfin in a wispering voice. The flames in Xavier's eyes went out.

'The All Father and I are proud of your brothers,' said Xavier, looking into Uruk's eyes. 'They gave their everything at the last moment for a greater good.'

Meanwhile, in Xavier's mind, a conversation was taking place between him and the All Father.

'You... what do you think you're doing?' demanded the All Father.

'Did you really think I would let you do whatever you want with my body?' asked Xavier.

'Don't be foolish. Without me, the dragons will never return to their former glory. The sacrifice of your life will be useless.'

'Keep your lies for someone else; I know who you are. Just a parasite who managed to survive and escape the chaos, you contaminated the All Father. You used the dragons as an experiment; you made them dependent on you, and you used them to eliminate the giants because they were an inconvenience to your absolute control.

The All Father was trying to take possession of Xavier's body.

'Don't even try; only arcane magic can defeat arcane magic. The diagrams are in my body, under my control, and now, thanks to you, I know how to use spells without enchantment. You lost; go back to Clinton.'

The crystal in Xavier's hand was again covered with the colors of the different elements. Xavier approached Clinton and offered him the crystal. Clinton stretched out his hand and touched the glass.

"Damn, arcane magic!" thought Clinton, trying to pull his hand away from the crystal without success. 'You dumb parasite!' he exclaimed, feeling the energy of the great father trying to fight for control of his body.

Xavier started coughing, and Uruk threw himself into a jump with all his strength as the energy of fire in his chest increased. Uruk grabbed the crystal and shifted his direction against Clinton. Delfin pulled Xavier with all his strength, dragging him toward the magicians of the dynasty.

'Amelia!' yelled Delfin.

The dynasty's magician reacted immediately, and a small dome of land covered Delfin, Xavier, and the three magicians of the dynasty. When Delfin touched the wall of the dome, the elemental magic energy distorted a little more.

Outside the dome, Uruk fell to the ground beside Clinton's body with a smile. The crystal with Clinton's heart, covered by the colors of all the elements, was trapped between their bodies. Several images passed through Uruk's mind, and the smile on his face disappeared. At that very moment, a huge explosion took place, and Clinton's body, Uruk, and the Crystal disintegrated.

Inside the dome, the temperature began to rise. Gaelion used his ice magic to cover the dome with the thicker layer of ice that the instability of the elements allowed him to create. A few seconds later, it was all over. Master Amelia lost consciousness, and Gaelion was vomiting. The dome of earth collapsed.

Lydia, Xavier, and Delfin looked in front of them; a large crater surrounded them; only the area protected by the Amelia's earth dome had resisted the explosion. There was no trace of Clinton, Uruk, or the crystal. The miasma was dissipating slowly. In the distance, the zombie dragons lay on the ground.

'What happened?' asked Dolphin.

'I have been a thief, a fugitive, and a criminal for most of my adult life. Keeping my intentions hidden from a parasite who believes he is a god is not too difficult' Xavier began to cough; his mouth was filled with blood. He found it difficult to breathe. He fell to the ground, coughing and spitting blood.

While Delfin was helping him, Lydia raised her hands toward Xavier.

'Move away, Delfin; you are a good teacher and a talented magician; we could use a man like you in the dynasty.'

However, the scarce fire energy that Lydia had managed to gather in the last few seconds dissipated. Lydia's face turned pale.

'Hum! It seems that there is no more magic,' said Delfin, walking towards Lydia with a smile and his dagger in his hand.

'What are you doing?' asked Lydia as she walked backwards. 'Think about what you're going to do, Delfin; I'm a very important member of the royal court.'

Delfin stopped, and after thinking about it for a few seconds, he sheathed his dagger.

'Okay, but we'll have to negotiate some things.'

Lydia smiled and began to approach Delfin.

'First, we must take care of the remaining issues,' Lydia said, looking at Xavier, who was still sitting on the floor trying to breathe as he saw the situation develop.

'Of course.' Delfine threw himself towards Lydia, took her down, unsheathed his dagger, and stabbed her several times. The woman tried to resist without success, while Delfin's dagger filled her fat body with holes; a few minutes later, Lydia was dead.

Delfin stood up, covered in blood, and looked at Gaelion and Amelia with the eyes of a madman.

'We have nothing to do with this. Lydia's decisions are not ours; Gaelion apologized. Amelia was beginning to recover consciousness.'

Delfin cleaned the blood from his dagger, ignored them, and walked toward Xavier.

'Are you all right?'

'No, I'm dying.'

'I can see that.'

Xavier signaled Delfin to help him get up. Relying on him, they looked towards the world of dragons. The miasma ascended to the sky and dissipated, leaving behind a black, calcined, and sterile land. They turned around and began to walk towards the desert.