The shadow-threads resisted, darkness trying to consume life as fast as life grew. But Ryelle poured more of herself into the working, dragon-essence and divine nature mingling in ways Ebonheim had never taught because Ebonheim had never known to teach them. Silver fire ran along the vines like blood through veins, protecting them from entropy's touch.

A Bovikara managed to tear free, its four arms ripping shadow-threads like rotted rope. It stumbled forward, confused, then fled into the forest. Another followed, then a third, their confused bellows echoing through trees that still stood beyond the entropy field's reach.

"Clever," Xellos said.

His Bhutava arm swept toward her. She had no weapon to block with, only instinct that screamed dodge. Fire erupted from her left foot, spinning her clear by a hairsbreadth, but she couldn't control the maneuver. She crashed to earth in a shower of soil. Got to her feet just in time to dive aside again.

"Too clever to live." His jaw distended, the better to show those shark-like teeth. "Maybe I'll consume you too."

Eldritch beams fired from six points along his torso. Purple energy carved through her barrier of plants, leaving smoldering trenches. But where the beams passed, new growth erupted from scorched vines. The vegetation redoubled its attacks on the shadow-threads.

Liselotte moved despite her crippled wing-arm. Wind howled as she called it, not to fly but to spread Ryelle's seeds of chaos. Burning fragments of thorn and vine scattered on her artificial gale, each ember carrying the potential for new growth. Where they landed, fresh eruptions of aggressive vegetation burst forth.

The forest floor became a writhing mass of predatory plants. Xellos found his footing compromised as roots erupted beneath him, seeking to entangle his legs. His shadow-wings beat hard, trying to lift him above the threat, but thorny vines had already found purchase on his multiple limbs.

"Annoying," he growled, the harmony of absorbed voices breaking into discordance.

The entropy field pulsed outward. Plants touched by that grey sphere didn't just die—they aged to dust in heartbeats, leaving perfect circles of sterile earth. But Ryelle poured more power into the growth, and Liselotte's winds carried more seeds. For every section he cleared, two more bloomed with violent life.

The Bovikara he'd been consuming broke free of their dissolution, shadow-threads severed by the interference. They stumbled away from their would-be devoured, four-armed forms trembling with the memory of unmaking. One looked at Ryelle with something like gratitude before all three fled through their portals, which snapped shut behind them.

"You cost me resources," Xellos said, real anger entering his voice for the first time.

He moved faster than his bulk should have allowed. The Bhutava arm swept through her plant barrier like a scythe through wheat. Before she could react, stone fingers closed around her throat. He lifted her off the ground, those Shadaksha eyes beginning to glow with eldritch power.

"Let's see how well you grow things with your head removed."

Fire erupted from every pore of her body. It burned hotter than ever—silver so pure that it became a shade of white reserved for stars and suns. Where fire touched Xellos, tiny rootlets burst from his flesh, drinking divine blood as they grew. He roared and hurled her away.

She hit a tree hard enough to crack the trunk, bark exploding outward in a shower of fragments. Her vision swam, but she saw Liselotte moving, talons extended. The Harpy Queen drove them deep into Xellos's back. Wind blades followed, slashing through his shadow-wings in rapid flurries. He stumbled, tried to reach the new wounds with multiple limbs.

"Your transformation's failing," Liselotte called to him, and Ryelle could see the truth of it. The grey entropy field flickered like a dying candle. Some of his shadow-wings had begun to droop. The Shadaksha eyes blinked out of sequence, their eldritch glow dimming.

"All transformations have limits," he replied, but sweat beaded on his malformed brow. "The question is whether yours will fail first."

Ryelle pushed herself to her feet, body still burning.

He was right. Ryelle felt the drain of channeling so much power, of forcing dragon fire and divine essence to work in harmony. But the thought of surrender didn't cross her mind.

"Let's see," she growled, then charged.

Xellos's shadow-spears manifested sluggishly now. She dodged one, took another through her shoulder, and kept going. When she slammed into him, a wave of silver fire preceded her, burning away his protective darkness, and a second carried him airborne.

They grappled in the sky, and it was almost a fair fight. His limbs matched her draconic strength, his jaws snapping as those shark-like teeth sought purchase on her throat. But for every wound he dealt, her fires burned, and his flesh smoked at the contact.

Below, Liselotte moved in tandem, a symphony of violence that didn't need words to coordinate. When Ryelle rolled to expose Xellos's back, the Harpy Queen was already moving, talons flashing in a wind-powered slice that laid his ribs bare to the air.

The Shadaksha eyes opened, started charging. Ryelle drove a finger into the nearest one, felt the lens give way and collapse under her touch. She held on, driving fire down the eye's channel, seeking its seat of power.

It exploded, ejecting her through smoke and sputtering purple beams. She lost track of up and down for a few terrifying moments, silver fire the only steady thing in an off-kilter world.

When her brain righted itself, she found Xellos pinned to a cliff face, Liselotte standing atop him and raining down blows that drove stone shards into demonic flesh. With her wounded wing, she couldn't maintain flight while doing so, but that didn't seem to stop her from using wind to amplify the impacts anyway.

Xellos snarled, Bhutava arm sweeping up to knock her aside. It was a powerful blow, but without the destructive strength behind it. His demonic enhancements were starting to fade, Ryelle realized. She'd interrupted the process at a crucial stage. While he hadn't collapsed into impotent shadows, neither had he gained the power he sought. He'd come out diminished.

"You've interfered enough," he growled. "I'll have your quintessence and more."

His remaining Shadaksha eyes flared.

Purple beams sliced the sky, each one tracking her. She dove aside, feeling the unnatural heat as they passed mere inches overhead. More came, and more, the eyes firing in continuous streams. They surrounded her in a cage of death, leaving only one path open.

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Toward Xellos.

Ryelle felt something cold settle in her stomach.

Not fear—something more practical. Recognition that they'd moved beyond any advantage skill or tactics could provide. This was going to come down to raw power, and he'd just claimed more than both of them possessed.

But she'd learned something from Liselotte these past days. Sometimes the dragon way was the only way.

She charged.

Fire erupted from her in shapes that had no names—dragon-breath mixed with divine growth, creating burning forests that existed for seconds before consuming themselves. Where her feet touched earth, crystalline flowers bloomed, petals reflecting the eldritch purple of her surroundings. The air around her became a storm of burning seeds that sought flesh to take root in.

Xellos met her charge with the Bovikara arms, their thick muscles forming a bulwark of demonic flesh. She ducked the first, took the second across her ribs with enough force to crack bone. Pain flared white-hot, but she used it, channeled it into the fire that erupted from her palms.

The flames hit him point-blank, burning through demon bulk to scorch divine skin. Tiny roots of silver fire burrowed into his flesh, trying to grow, trying to transform him into fuel for their existence. He tore at them with shadow-wrapped fingers, but more kept coming, an endless tide of aggressive life.

Liselotte struck while he was distracted. Talons raked across his eyes, blinding him with four slashes that made even his warped flesh scream. Wind propelled her behind him, and the same talons opened his shadow-wings, separating him from his power of flight.

Divine flesh parted under her strike. Not deeply, his enhanced resilience saw to that, but enough to reveal the wrongness beneath. Where god-flesh met demon-flesh, the boundary writhed with rejected integration. The demons hadn't merged with him—they'd been forced into coexistence, held together by will rather than nature.

"Found your weakness," she hissed, dodging the retaliatory strike that would have removed her head.

Multiple eldritch beams fired, forcing her to leap aside. But Ryelle was already moving, having seen what Liselotte had revealed. She gathered fire in her throat, compressed it until her chest felt like it might explode, then released it in a focused stream at those unnatural seams.

For a moment, Xellos glowed like a stained-glass lamp, fire lighting him from within. Seeds of divine fire rode the flames, seeking those gaps between what was Xellos and what he'd stolen. Where they found purchase, they bloomed into burning lotus flowers that fed on the conflicting energies.

He screamed again, this time in genuine agony.

The entropy field fluctuated wildly, expanding and contracting without rhythm. Parts of it intensified until even light couldn't escape, while other sections thinned to almost nothing. His control was slipping.

"Impossible," he snarled, crushing burning flowers with fingers that bled shadow. "I am evolution itself! I am—"

"You're a thief," Liselotte interrupted, having gained enough height for another attack run. "Stealing power you can't properly digest. Did you think we wouldn't notice?"

She dove again, this time releasing a barrage of wind blades aimed at every seam she could see. Most were deflected by his thrashing limbs, but some found their marks. Divine ichor and demon essence leaked from the wounds, refusing to mix even in death.

Ryelle pressed the advantage. Fire bloomed from her hands in time with Liselotte's blades, burning flowers taking root where wind sliced deep. Xellos tried to shield himself, but his multiple limbs made for an unwieldy defense. They tangled with each other, leaving gaps Ryelle exploited with increasing frequency.

His scream came in two discordant strains—divine anguish mixed with demonic wrath.

Each hit made the rejection worse. The stolen demon parts were trying to return to their base nature, while his divine essence fought to expel the foreign additions. He was literally coming apart at the seams.

But dying gods were dangerous gods.

The entropy field suddenly collapsed inward, condensing to a sphere no larger than his fist. Then it exploded outward in a wave of absolute negation. Not death—erasure. The wave moved faster than thought, promising to unmake everything it touched.

Ryelle had a heartbeat to react. Not enough time to dodge, barely enough to think. But her body moved without conscious direction, diving toward Liselotte's position. She caught the Harpy Queen around the waist, poured more of her dwindling energy into a cocoon of silver-green fire.

The entropy wave hit them like the end of all things.

Fire met void, life met ending, and reality screamed at the contradiction. Ryelle felt her flames being devoured, layer by layer, each one buying seconds of continued existence. The divine nature within her reached for the earth, drawing power from deep roots she didn't know she had.

Growth exploded around them, all burning with silver fire, all dying to entropy, all being replaced faster than they could be destroyed.

When the wave finally passed, they knelt in a circle of ash that had once been verdant growth. The only color came from a few stubborn flowers that still bloomed with silver fire, their roots too deep for even entropy to reach.

Xellos stood at the center of the devastation, but the effort had cost him. The demon additions were actively rebelling now, trying to tear free from his divine core. Six arms fought against each other. The Shadaksha eyes fired randomly, no longer under his control.

"No," he gasped, shadow-blood running from every seam. "I won't... I refuse..."

More portals opened, his desperation overriding wisdom. A horde of mixed demons poured through—Bhutava, common Shadaksha, even a few breeds Ryelle didn't recognize. The shadow-threads lashed out wildly, catching them all, trying to add their mass to his failing form.

Ryelle stood, gathered silver flame, pouring every bit of power she had left into one last push.

She charged once more. "Liselotte!"

The Harpy Queen was already in motion. Her transformation had finally guttered out, crimson feathers fading to ordinary azure and white. But she didn't need the Skylord's Grace for what came next. She spread both wings-arms, even the broken one, and pulled.

Wind answered. Not the sharp blades or defensive walls she'd wielded before, but something primal. The mother of all storms, a hurricane constrained to a hundred feet of space. The remaining leaves were sucked in. Ash, pebbles, even larger rocks swirled into a maelstrom that Liselotte directed toward the struggling god.

"Together," they said in unison.

Ryelle released her dragonfire into Liselotte's wind.

Silver flame howled, taking root in every speck of plant matter. Where it touched stone, moss and lichen exploded into being, providing fuel to burn. It met no resistance from the still-forming demons, burning through their unready defenses as if they weren't there. In moments, the whole region became a vast inferno of green-gold destruction.

Fire that gave life. Flame that ate death.

"Impossible," he said, but the word was lost in the roar of wind and flame.

His form began to come apart. Not death—gods didn't die so easily—but discorporation, the careful construction of his merged body unable to maintain coherence. Shadow peeled away like old paint. Stolen demon parts dissolved, their essence fleeing back to whatever hell had spawned them. The grey skin cracked and split, revealing not flesh beneath but hollow darkness.

"This... isn't over," he managed, but his words lacked conviction.

Xellos and the demons disappeared in that inferno. Only the faintest outline of a god's silhouette marked where they'd existed moments before. Soon, even that was gone, burned to nothing by the combined force of life-fire and tempest. The wind died down, leaving a sphere of devastation behind.

When it was over, Liselotte and Ryelle stood panting at the edge of that space.

"Did we...?" Liselotte asked.

"We did," Ryelle answered. She felt empty, a vessel scraped clean, but there was a fierce satisfaction mixed with the exhaustion. She collapsed to her knees, then let herself fall onto her side. Every part of her hurt.

Beside her, Liselotte sank to the ground with considerably less grace than her usual landings. Her crushed wing-arm hung at an ugly angle, and cuts covered her from head to clawed feet. When she tried to speak, blood came out instead of words. She managed a half-smile, half-grimace.

Ryelle tried to say something reassuring, but only managed a weak croak. Not that words mattered anyway. They knew what the other had done, the costs they'd paid. Now, it was enough to lie in silence while the forest healed itself around them.

Eventually, the remaining flowers faded. The last sparks of divine fire flickered and died. Soon, there was nothing left to show for their efforts but two exhausted, wounded warriors, and the faint taste of ash on the wind. Ryelle dozed, images of draconic fire and divine growth twining in her mind.

When she opened her eyes again, Ebonheim knelt beside them.

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