Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128087 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 640(@200wpm)___ 512(@250wpm)___ 427(@300wpm)
Gold Reaper slicing through her core should have been the death of her. But they all stood stunned as the terminal wounds she’d endured began to heal.
The mage was far more dangerous than his oracle and seer had predicted.
With the five of them still holding her tight, she struggled off her knees and began to tug at the bonds.
“Damnit! Hold her,” Zepharali yelled, pulling harder on his suns.
One of them had to get close enough to cut her head off her shoulders, but none could let go.
There went his minuscule amount of hope.
Lazaar
Lazaar clutched the bars of his enclosure tightly, watching the titans battle with his mother, that it flayed the skin from his palms.
His beloved and his brothers fought just as the storybooks described—graceful and fluid while launching seamless attacks—but his mother proved far more determined than they could handle.
She was on the ground, riddled with numerous wounds that were healing before their very eyes.
How in all the gods? What magic is this?
The words Dorema and his beloved told him shot to the forefront of his mind.
Embrace your darkness. The tribrid powers are your birthright. Don’t be afraid to harness them.
Lazaar had been praying to the wrong gods for help.
He fell to his knees and put his forehead to the ground, eyes to the Underworld, and prayed to Hades and all the evil deities who ruled with him.
His lips were pressed to the warm soil, his heart echoing through layers of darkness.
“Dark lords, I offer my body to receive your unholy powers, my mind as a receptacle to your corrupt wisdom.”
Smoky fog saturated the air around him, the scent of sulfur and death filling his nostrils.
“I am the forbidden tribrid. The prince of darkness. Grant me strength and power beyond all the worlds.”
Flames of hell flashed behind his eyelids, and instead of panicking, Lazaar prayed harder.
“I embrace your fiery shadow and pray that it consumes the darkest parts of my core.”
The gods of evil answered and began to whisper in a demonic language—spells of terror—into his mind.
Lazaar reached for it, welcoming it into the crevices of his soul not fused with his titan’s heart.
“My vampire soul offers a blood sacrifice, and may it bind me to the realm of the shadows.”
He reached for Myst’s talon and sliced it across his palm. He squeezed the wound and let his blood fall to the ground and seep into the depths of despair.
Lazaar barely had a chance to rise from his knees before the transformation surged through his body.
Adrenaline pulsed through him. He made sure to stay composed, knowing—as Elephaa swore—he could embrace and control it.
Fire boiled in his belly, and his eyelids snapped open.
Dark magic rippled under his skin and poured through his veins as his body transformed into a maelstrom of fire.
Lazaar had full consciousness. He could pinpoint every threat from the realm of the three suns to the edges of the worlds. He could sense his beloved in danger and its source.
His core told him the surrounding titans and titanesses were not his enemies.
“My love. Lazaar!” Zepharali yelled, but Lazaar didn’t respond. He was not his titan’s heart’s treasure at that moment.
He was the tribrid.
“No!” His mother thrashed.
“He is ascending, Lord Zepharali. Allow it to happen,” Theodor whispered.
Lazaar
Lazaar cocked his head at the King of Autumn’s correct observation.
Voices of the good and divine sounded distorted and confusing.
Lazaar could only hear languages spoken in the demonic tongue.
He no longer saw in color, the flames in his eyes causing the world to appear black and white, the life forms around him in shades of gray.
He could no longer see Theodor’s orange-and-red aura, but he could feel the weapon—Gold Reaper—he wielded because it was forged of hellfire. It had a pulse, and it called to him, revered him.
Lazaar’s arms and legs dripped with flames, his torso a molten core of dark madness.
He was a living embodiment of fire, shadows, darkness, and destruction. His vampire was the bringer of chaos and misery to any who dared threaten what was his.
“By the gods,” Boraleashe gasped.
“Your gods of purity are not here,” Lazaar growled. “My blessings descend from the dark and malevolent lords.”
Lazaar was the Defiant of the Gods of Light
He threw his hands out to his sides as flames twenty times hotter than all the realms erupted from his fingertips and disintegrated the indestructible cage around him into nothingness.
The blast sent the titans and their captor hurtling backward.
And that was only a minuscule burst of his power.
He was the Lord of Fire and Warrior of the Flame.
Lazaar reached behind him and touched his fiery hand to Myst’s broken wing, pleased when it mended and his raptor burst into her beautiful flames of protection.
A cloak of crimson fire enveloped Lazaar’s shoulders.
The billowing obsidian smoke circled him like a living entity.
He emerged through the darkness as his namesake: Master of the Shadows.