A loud crunch split the din as Alex’s enormous anchor slammed home into the Herdmaster. Already damaged carapace shattered beneath the weapon and it dug deep into the center of the monster in a spray of blood.

Alex slammed feet-first into the monster, landing just a foot away from his anchor, an instant later. A powerful vibration raced up his legs and rattled the bones in his body from the force of his impact.

A furious, pained scream rose up from the boss. It grabbed at Alex, but he dropped to the ground just before it could catch him. Claire slammed into it an instant later. She drove one of her hands into a wound on the monster’s back, tearing a chunk of flesh free in a spray of blood before biting down on it.

Yells rose up from all around the room as Crimson realized what they were doing. Alex didn’t dare look back to judge the situation. The boss hadn’t died from their initial salvo. It was on its last legs, but it was still alive.

He darted to the side. A flash of light lit at the corner of his vision. Alex threw himself to the ground and the chain connected to his wrist snapped taut, bringing him to a sharp stop as it nearly tore his limb from its socket.

The ground just an inch away from Alex exploded. An enormous arrow lodged itself inches away from his face, sending huge chunks of grass and stone that had been buried beneath it flying in every direction.

Hot pain burned Alex’s arms as the fragments carved through his skin, slicing clean through his clothes. They fortunately shattered against his bone mask, sparing him from even further wounds.

Princess’ magic kicked to life, but there was no time to wait for it to finish its work. Alex activated the Singularity Core. He yanked his hand back and tore the anchor free from the Herdmaster in a spray of viscera.

Unfortunately, that meant the anchor was now hurtling straight toward him in a blurred streak of white death. Alex threw himself to the ground at the last second. The huge weapon screamed over his head.

There was a wet crunch a second later. Then Alex found himself torn off his feet and yanked behind the anchor for the second time in a few seconds. The room spun around him before he slammed to yet another forced halt, the chain pulled taut.

He scrambled to his feet, only to find himself completely surrounded by Crimson. A man was pinned beneath the anchor to his side.

Ah, shit.

The men charged. Several of them drew on their magic. Alex didn’t wait to see what it would do.

He yanked on the Singularity core again. Instead of just pulling the anchor toward himself, Alex tried to shift the direction of the weapon. He pulled it in an orbit, dragging it at a diagonal rather than just straight forward.

The anchor tore free from the ground. And, this time, Alex didn’t release the core. He kept pulling on it with all the strength he could muster. Something within him stretched. Like a rubber band being pulled in two different directions, strain erupted through his entire body.

But the Singularity Core remained active. The anchor screamed through the air in a wide loop around Alex, the constant pull from the core keeping it from tearing him off his feet. It smashed through the unsuspecting Outworlders, forcing them to either throw themselves to the ground or get obliterated.

Alex managed to maintain his hold on the core for just long enough to spin the anchor in a full circle.

Then the band of tension deep within him snapped. His control of the core vanished as it forcibly shut itself off. The anchor, which had now picked up speed from a full orbit around him, tore off into the distance — and it took Alex with it.

His curse was lost to the wind as he arced through the air. Spells raced through the air where he’d been standing and the brilliant crack of an arrow slamming into the ground only barely managed to make it to his ears.

Alex didn’t get a chance to right himself. The room blurred by him so fast that he couldn’t even tell where he —

The wall met his face with a crunch. Darkness exploded at the edges of Alex’s vision and he felt himself drop, only for his arm to jerk him to a halt. The anchor had embedded itself somewhere in the wall beside him. He swung from it like a failed trapeze artist, gasping for air as the world swam all around him.

Some distant voice in the back of his mind screamed a warning at him. Alex reached for the Singularity Core, but his mind was coated in sludge. Thoughts came at half the speed they normally did.

Something slammed into Alex’s chest. It drove him back into the wall, slamming his head against the stone once again with a loud crack, and all the air exploded from his lungs. Pain followed the immense force an instant later.

Stolen novel; please report.

A tsunami of crashed through Alex’s system. His eyes snapped open as he felt an immense drain on his magical energy. He looked down, the dizziness draining away from his mind as pain replaced it, to find a massive arrow lodged in the center of his chest.

Brandon had pinned him to the wall just below his anchor — and the leader of Crimson was now drawing another arrow, aiming straight at Alex even while the battle against the Herdmaster raged on. It seemed he was fed up with all of Alex’s interference.

Shit. Move! Move!

Alex grabbed the arrow in his chest. With a roar, he tore it free. Black sludge sprayed from the wound. His magical strength was draining at an alarming rate. Brandon had done an immense amount of damage to him. He couldn’t take another hit like the last one.

Gritting his teeth, Alex, yanked on his Singularity Core. It resisted him for an instant before giving in. Then his anchor tore itself free from the wall and hurtled by his side in a streak.

Brandon loosed the arrow.

The anchor yanked Alex down, pulling him to the ground in its wake. Brandon’s arrow smashed into the wall above Alex with a booming crash. He didn’t let himself pay it any mind. Alex was a bit too preoccupied with the ground accelerating toward him.

He banished the anchor, freeing his wrist from the white cuff, and tucked himself into a roll. Alex landed with a painful thud, rolling forward and staggering to his feet beside several stunned Crimson members.

One of them lunged at him, a massive broadsword accelerating for his neck.

Alex stumbled. There wasn’t enough time to get out of the way, and he didn’t have the magic left to fight. He was out of methods to stop the sword from meeting its mark. That didn’t stop him from trying.

He twisted, desperately trying to pull himself out of the path of the sword. It wasn’t going to be enough. Alex knew that much. But if he minimized the damage, there was a chance that Princess’ magic would have enough left to draw on to—

A ringing clang rolled through the air. The broadsword spun to the side and fell in a patch of bloody mud with a squelch. Surprise flashed through the Outworlder’s eyes.

Then his head vanished in a spray of bloody mist.

Derek stood behind him. His eyes were as red as the blood covering his body, and his teeth were bared in a wolflike snarl. He held a huge warhammer in one hand and a massive black sword in the other. Both weapons were soaked with blood and had various bits of armor and flesh still stuck on them.

They stared at each other for a brief instant.

Then Derek blurred. A nearby Crimson member didn’t even get a chance to scream before his skull found itself embedded in the center of his chest, crushed like a spent soda can. Then he was gone again, charging toward the next nearest enemy.

Awe prickled Alex’s thoughts. Derek was terrifying. This was the power of an Incarnation. Then he tore his thoughts back to the present. Derek’s power made him faster every time he took a fatal blow. The sheer speed the berserker moved with made it clear he’d already been dealt a number of them.

They were on the ropes.

Alex forced his legs to move. He broke into a sprint, racing past the stunned Outworlders who were still completely focused on Derek, and raced toward the Herdmaster and Claire. The monster was on its last legs. It had lost many of its legs and wept blood from multiple massive wounds. But, as badly weakened as it was, it was far from dead.

All of this would be pointless if they couldn’t land the last blow. But they were running out of time. They needed to kill the Herdmaster, and they had to kill it now.

An Outworlder lurched to stop Alex. A loud crack split the room. A streak of blue slammed into his shoulder, sending him spinning to the side. Alex didn’t see where the shot had come from, but he didn’t need to.

Wess was covering him.

But he wasn’t sure if that was enough. He barely had any strength left. One of Glint’s blades wasn’t going to be nearly enough to finish the boss off, even as weakened as it was.

That wasn’t going to stop him from trying.

Alex let out a yell. He drew on all the magic he had left, launching him up the Herdmaster’s side and thrusting his hand toward its neck. Mirror blades carved out from his palm and drove deep into a pre-existing wound. They lodged deep into the beast —

It batted him out of the air with the back of a hand.

Alex slammed into the ground with a pained wheeze. His vision exploded with sparks and the world twisted above him. The Herdmaster looked down at Alex, fury burning in its eyes as it raised its hammer.

And then Claire was above it, her massive black wings stretched wide like the shadow of night itself passing over the monster. Her face was completely covered in blood like a scene from some horrible slasher movie. She slammed down on the top of the Herdmaster’s back. Her hands stretched out, clawed fingers curling in like a puppeteer tightening the strings of her dolls.

Her voice cut through the ringing in Alex’s ears like a knife through butter.

“You have no arms,” Claire snarled.

Then her hands clenched into fists.

The Herdmaster went stiff. Then its hammer slipped free from its grip, pitching to the side to land with a deafening crash several feet away from Alex. And, as Alex watched on in disbelief, the monster reached up.

Not to grab for Claire, but to grasp its own head between its palms. The monster’s muscles bulged.

Then, with a loud, wet crunch, it pulped its own skull.

“No!” Brandon screamed, the fury in his words practically palpable. “Are you fucking kidding me? Again?”

Freezing energy raced into Alex with enough intensity to make his eyes flutter. Words scrawled through the air, but he barely even noticed them. They were nothing more than distant flashes of light.

The Herdmaster pitched forward. Claire turned into a gray streak. She leapt from the monster’s back, her wings snapping out as she swooped down. She grabbed Alex by the shirt and yanked him off the ground and into the air with her.

Streaks of color flashed by. The room melted together into a blob of shapes and colors. Alex gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stay awake with every scrap of willpower he had remaining.

He couldn’t tell where he was anymore.

Something cold drove into his lungs. A flash of reddish-purple energy swallowed his consciousness with a roar.

Then there was nothing but darkness and silence.