Chapter 143: The Longest Odds

The Abyssal Urn woke with a scream.

A cold wind broke over the rampart as the cursed relic gave up what it had held for centuries.

Out of its narrow mouth poured thousands upon thousands of spirits, hideous, ragged, starving things, each one howling with the particular fury of a creature that had been sealed in the dark for too long.

The sound of them rang across the wall like glass breaking in a cathedral.They flung themselves at the Thorn Queen in a single black wave.

Even Morgwyn’s composure shifted at the sight of it.She snorted, contempt curling her lip, and snapped her whip.

A dense crimson radiance rolled off its length, and the first dozen spirits to reach her burst apart, shredded into scraps of cold smoke that dissolved on the wind.

The ones behind them did not slow.

They had no fear, and no memory of death.

They closed around her in a ragged storm and tore at her with claws and teeth, hundreds of them, then more, every one carrying the rage of a thousand sealed years.

They could not do much damage to a boss of her stature.

But they were everywhere, clinging to her arms and her hair and the folds of her gown, a horde of biting, shrieking vermin that could not be killed fast enough or shaken off, and the Thorn Queen began to snarl.

She lashed out in every direction, her whip a whirl of red. She loosed one skill after another, trying to blast the swarm away.

And Kael was not the only enemy she had.

A figure came down out of the sky like a falling blade.

Isolde, the Frostblade. She had cut her way out of Malachar’s reach, and now she dropped on the Thorn Queen in a streak of silver, her glacier-blue sword already swinging. It struck Morgwyn square across the chest with a clean, ringing crack.

The edge bit through the vine-woven bodice and opened a deep gash. A flood of pale cold followed it.

Translucent crystals of ice spread out along the wound in a blink, climbing over the Queen’s ribs and her whole left arm, binding half her body in a shell of frost.

Her health bar, which had barely stirred under the spirits’ gnawing, finally sank by a visible fraction.

And in that moment, Kael noticed something that stopped his breath.

Under the Thorn Queen’s name, where the bonding odds had never been listed, a figure flickered into life. It had been too small for the interface to bother showing.

[MORGWYN, THE THORN QUEEN] (Legendary Boss)

Level: 97

Status: Weakened

Bond Success Rate: 0.0002%

Kael stared at the number.

Two in a million.

A bold, reckless idea began to unfold in his mind.

The Thorn Queen was fifth among the Ten Great Bosses.

If he could bind her, if by some impossible stroke of luck the chain held, then everything would change.

He would own the fifth most powerful creature in the realm. Nothing he had built in this second life would compare.

The odds were laughably thin.

But a longshot was still a shot.

Stake a coin, win a kingdom.

The old gambler’s reasoning ran bright and wild through him. And what if the first throw lands?

His eyes burned. He did not hesitate. He reached through the bond to Lyra and released her, and a slot came free in his roster, the seventh space open for the first time since Valen.

Then he raised his hand and fixed the Thorn Queen in his sights.

Warden’s Mandate.

Bright golden light flared between her brows as the first stroke of the bond began to form.

It never finished the first line.

The sigil flickered, buckled, and collapsed into nothing before it could draw breath.

The first attempt failed, exactly as it was supposed to.

But the Queen had seen it, and she knew it for what it was. Her red eyes turned on him, and their fury was a living thing.

"You presume to bind me," she hissed. "You insect. You worm."She whipped out at him with all her strength.

MISS.

The ring on his finger flickered and the lash went wide. Kael laughed, a sharp bark of exultation, and stood where he was without so much as a flinch.

A boss of her class had reach that stretched hundreds of meters, and her attributes towered over his so far that no technique of his could make a difference. Dodging was pointless. Better to plant his feet and meet her squarely.

And he could afford it. The Undying Wheel had lives to spare, and the Ring still guarded him, and Valen stood close with the Threshold Seal at the ready. He could take many deaths before the well ran dry.

She could not kill him quickly. And she was not alone in this fight.

Behind her, Isolde sprang back into the air and raised the glacier-blue blade, her fingers shaping a pattern in the air. The cold in the sky deepened.

A dozen blades of crystalline ice, flawless and brilliant, took shape behind her in a fan, their edges so keen that the light split on them.

She brought her sword down.

The ice swords fell, a rain of death.

The Thorn Queen swore. She had no time to deal with the insect.

She flung herself sideways, shattering the frost that clung to her left half with a burst of strength, then raised her free hand to the sky and clenched it.

A great scarlet flower bloomed in front of her. Its petals spun and loosened, and each one became a throwing knife of living red, and they flew up into the falling blades in a roaring storm of steel and petals.

The sky filled with the clash. Ice shattered, petals flew like snow, and the two storms ate each other into nothing.

But before she could draw a breath, a flicker of gold appeared on her forehead.

Kael’s cooldown had ended.

The bond had come again, a second thread of light reaching for her, and a second time the Queen felt it close on her mind. It broke, as the first had. But the insult was grave.

"That wretched vermin."

Her rage was white-hot. She would have given anything to crush him beneath her heel and wipe the grin from his face.

But the situation would not allow it. Kael would not stay dead, and every blow she aimed at him went wide or merely cost him another life he could afford. And above her, Isolde was circling for a third strike.

A hundred meters down the shattered wall, Elara watched it all from the far rampart with Sir Gareth Thorne’s sword drawn at her side, her face pale and set. The Hollow Emissary stood at her shoulder, silent and attentive.

None of them dared to move. If the Queen’s attention turned toward them again, no guard or scythe on the wall would keep it from reaching her, and every soul within sight of that duel understood it.

It was a little after eleven in the morning, and the Bulwark of Ash was still standing, but only just.

She was bleeding power now. The spirits of the Urn tore at her every second, and the cold of the Frostblade’s sword gnawed at her bones.

Even at the height of her strength, she would have struggled to beat the guardian of the Bulwark. Weakened as she was, she began to lose ground.

Isolde’s attacks came faster. The Queen’s health bar sank, one slow fraction at a time.

And under her name, the number began to climb.

0.0003%.

0.0005%.

0.001%.