Slowly, the serpentine neck snaked in my direction. The Blood Wyrm flared his neck scales, a low, warning growl vibrating in his chest. Daemon immediately stepped into his line of sight, uttering sharp commands of peace. I tightened my grip on my wand, ready to cast a shield, but it proved unnecessary. These beasts truly possessed a dark, ancient intelligence. Caraxes glared at me with those molten yellow eyes, weighing the scent of my magic against his mended wounds, before ultimately snorting and turning his massive head away.
He then shifted his attention to Lily, leaning down to take in her scent. The dormant Valyrian heritage mingling in her bloodline seemed to placate the beast; Caraxes offered a soft, curious trill as Daemon formally introduced her. Exhausted by the ordeal, the great dragon finally let out a heavy sigh, resting his massive, horned head gently back onto the ash-covered cobblestones.
Before I could even begin to think upon which direction we should head back to a massive quake began to make its way from the center of the city. This time it was far stronger than the previous ones. Caraxes rose flaring its wings attempting to cover Daemon and Lily while I ran in their direction.
"The quake is coming from the center of the city we need to get farther back before it swallows the ground beneath us." I yelled at them.
Lily nodded before instructing Daemon. Daemon then touched Caraxes speaking to him likely telling the beast what to do. They then nodded towards me as I cast homenum revelio as faint traces of human concentrated together entered my vision.
"Maria is retreating west we need to follow in her path. Claudius and Agrippa will care for the legions in the south" I instructed before signalling and walking in the direction where I sensed Maria.
Caraxes slowly stood up while Daemon and Lily followed in his shade. The quakes began to get stronger as whole building collapsed around us.
Before I could even begin to decide our route of retreat, a massive tremor ripped outward from the centre of the city. This quake was violently stronger than the previous tremors. Caraxes rose with a rattling growl, flaring his heavy wings in a desperate attempt to shield Daemon and Lily from the falling debris as I sprinted toward them.
"The epicentre is the inner city! We need to pull back before the ground swallows us whole!" I roared over the grinding of shattering stone.
Lily offered a sharp nod, relaying the urgency to Daemon. The Targaryen pressed his hand against the dragon's bloody snout, speaking in hurried, rhythmic Valyrian. I didn't wait for them to finish. I raised my wand, muttering, "Homenum Revelio." Faint, glowing auras of concentrated human life bloomed in the periphery of my mind's eye.
"Maria's legion is retreating west; we will follow her path," I instructed, my voice leaving no room for debate. "Claudius and Agrippa will secure the southern vanguard."
I signalled with my wand and began marching in the direction of the glowing auras. Caraxes forced himself upright on trembling legs. Daemon and Lily followed closely in the protective shade of his massive wings.
The seismic shuddering only intensified as we moved, the ancient architecture of Qohor finally giving way. Entire manses collapsed into the streets around us, filling the air with a choking, blinding dust. The journey became a brutal crawl. We navigated the winding alleys while the earth heaved beneath our boots. Caraxes, despite his severe lacerations and exhaustion, proved invaluable. Whenever the tremor brought a stone archway or a timber roof crashing down toward us, the Blood Wyrm thrust his massive, armoured bulk into the path of the debris, letting the rubble shatter harmlessly against his Valyrian scales to protect his rider and my sister.
We were halfway to the western perimeter when the deafening roar of the quakes reached a terrifying climax.
A sound unlike anything I had ever heard—the simultaneous splintering of thousands of tons of bedrock—echoed from the east. We stumbled to a halt, turning to look back over the ruined rooftops.
The entire centre of Qohor was gone. The sprawling plazas, the towering manses, and the grand temples had completely caved in, swallowed into the impossibly deep, subterranean caverns beneath the city. A massive cloud of dust and ash plumed upward from the newly formed abyss.
Then, the true horror emerged.
From the depths of the sunken crater, a colossal, pitch-black tendril of pure shadow erupted. It shot upward with the velocity of a siege bolt, a spiralling pillar of dense, suffocating darkness that pierced the bruised clouds and towered over the ruined city as if reaching to strangle the pale moon itself.
The air pressure dropped so rapidly my ears popped. But the pillar of shadow did not rise unchallenged.
Flying directly alongside the towering black tendril was a blazing, blinding sphere of emerald light. Even from this distance, the suffocating, ozone-heavy pressure radiating from that green star was unmistakable. It was my father.
From my vantage point in the ruined streets, I watched in sheer, paralyzed awe as the Light of Rome engaged a god.
The emerald sphere darted through the sky with impossible speed, spiralling around the massive black tendril. Blinding flashes of raw, concentrated magical artillery erupted from the green light, slamming into the shadowy pillar. Arcs of devastating lightning, torrents of white-hot magical fire, and concussive blasts of pure force bombarded the dark construct. The shockwaves from the aerial duel rippled across the sky, blowing the storm clouds apart.
Under the relentless, god-tier bombardment, the towering pillar of shadow began to falter. Massive, jagged cracks formed along its pitch-black surface, glowing with a sickly, bleeding red light from within.
With a final, catastrophic blast of emerald magic, the pillar shattered entirely.
The shockwave rained dissipating shadow over the city like falling ash. But the destruction of the pillar did not end the battle. Suspended high above the sunken ruins of the city centre, hovering effortlessly in the freezing night air, was the entity the shadows had been protecting.
It was a nightmare of bronze and blood.
The manifestation stood easily twelve feet tall, possessing the chiselled, impossibly muscular physique of an ancient gladiator. Its skin was forged of deep, metallic bronze, gleaming ominously in the moonlight. In its massive hands, it gripped twin, wickedly curved harvesting sickles, the blades dripping with a dark, necrotic mist.
But it was the creature's head that anchored it to the foul blood magic of Asshai. Its face was a grotesque, elongated fusion of man and beast—partially goat-like, crowned with thick, rounding horns that curled wickedly toward the sky. Its eyes were two burning pits of dark, liquid red, radiating a malice so ancient it made my blood run cold.
Thick, writhing black shadows curled and whipped around its towering bronze form, keeping the monstrous deity aloft.