Page 19 of Harbinger

The oak tree unwound its cage and released him just as the Goddess somersaulted backward on one hand. She twisted in mid-air, kicked off a nearby pillar with enough force to dent the wood, and smashed Victor in the jaw with her left heel.

Bone cracked.

Morgan’s pulse stuttered. He caught a glimpse of her chest as she took the demigod to the ground and started squeezing his neck with her thighs.

Fuck!I was right!

Power surged through him from his replenished core. He shot toward the clashing pair, black wind and Dryad magic erupting around him in a violent storm.

“Victor, I think they’re being controlled by Elios! They seem to be after me and the Sword of Wind!”

Victor grunted where he was attempting to stop his attacker from choking him, his broken jaw visibly swelling. His eyes flared when he saw what Morgan had detected.

Something dark throbbed within the Goddess’s body. Something that looked eerily similar to what Elios had used to bind Boreas’s powers when he’d imprisoned him in the Sixth Hell.

A violent tremor rattled the hall, halting Morgan’s charge. His alarmed gaze found the first Goddess. His breath froze on his lips.

No!

9

The oak treesmaking up the pillars of the throne room were dying, their leaves and flowers turning black and their branches twisting into dry husks as the vile energy pulsing from the deity they had entrapped drained them of their life force.

Agony scored Morgan’s heart, the loss of the millennia-old entities echoing through his very marrow. He felt sorrow spread through the Dryads in the kingdom as they sensed the ancient trees’ demise.

The Goddess dropped down from her dead prison, her inky wings spread wide. The shadows swarming her parted for a heartbeat when her feet touched the ground, revealing the same black seed pulsing within her too. Her wrathful stare found him as her scourge levitated into her grip.

Morgan widened his stance and hoped he would see her blisteringly fast attack when it came this time. He concentrated his power into his blade, aware he would only get one chance to land a blow.

Dazzling arrows brimming with Dryad magic sailed through the jagged opening behind the Goddess as they launched toward one another with ungodly roars. Morgan recognized Hildur’s bolts.

Most of them missed the Goddess.

One pierced her left Achilles tendon and another her right pinion, slowing her by a millisecond.

Now!

Morgan dove beneath her swinging, brass-studded whip and spun as he rose. The Sword of Wind sang in his hands as it carved a deep slash in her flesh from her left hip bone to her right shoulder.

The Goddess shrieked. Her expression cleared, incandescent fury giving way to pain and awareness. Gold bloomed in her pupils. Her gaze landed on him.

Recognition flared on her distraught face.

“Iv—Ivmir?!” she mumbled, confused.

Shock reverberated through Morgan. A volley of viridescent spell bombs carrying the magic of the Dryad royal family and their mages smashed into her back and choked her breath before he could ask her how she knew his true name.

The second Goddess’s head snapped around. Gold pierced her dark eyes. She paled, wings drooping as her rage faded to alarm.

“A—Alecto?”She looked at her hands, disorientated.“What—what’s going on?!”

Blood drained from the first Goddess’s face, as if she were seeing her companion for the first time. “Megaera!”

Victor took advantage of the distraction, yanked his attacker close, and headbutted her viciously in the nose. Bone crunched. Megaera howled and stumbled back.

The demigod shoved her off him and regrouped with Morgan.

Galliad, Elwyn, Regina, and the Dryad royal family appeared through the breach in the palace wall. Though the plague was trying to attack them, it could not penetrate Atlanteia’s protection. They raised another barrage of magic attacks.

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