Chapter 933: What Matters (2)

The Mordcoil she had been holding back slipped beneath her wing with terrifying speed, its body flattening against the stone and then springing past her like a released blade. Raven snapped after it, claws catching the tail but not stopping the full strike. The viper’s hood opened as it surged toward Celia, fangs wet, venom dripping in thin strands that hissed wherever they touched the ground.

Celia’s body moved too late.

Her sword lifted, but not enough. Her feet slid against the damp rock. The Mordcoil crossed the distance faster than thought, its jaws already angling for her upper body.

Then, flame streaked down from above in a spiraling descent.

Liam dropped through the ravine air with fire roaring beneath and behind him in controlled bursts, his body turning with the momentum instead of fighting it. Both daggers were already in his hands, each burning with Inferno Edge. He came down between Celia and the Mordcoil so fast that she saw him only in fragments: dark hair tied back, red eyes narrowed, twin arcs of flame crossing.

The daggers cut through the viper’s neck together.

One blade took the upper seam beneath the hood. The other carved through the opposite side in the same motion. The Mordcoil’s head separated cleanly before its jaws reached Celia, venom spraying past Liam’s shoulder and splashing against the stone behind him. He landed hard, one boot cracking a wet shelf, then turned the falling momentum into a pivot that carried the severed head away from Celia before it could tumble into her.

The body thrashed once.

Liam dismissed both daggers into Void Storage.

Raven dissolved at his command, her damaged form pulling back into shadow before the remaining venom could eat deeper into her. Then Liam stepped into Celia’s space, caught her around the waist and under the legs, and lifted her before she found words.

Her eyes widened. "What are you—"

"Asher," Liam called.

Across the ravine, Asher turned while blue flame wrapped around both arms. The moment his eyes caught the active anchor’s glow, his grin turned sharp.

"Done?" Asher shouted.

"Done," Liam answered. "Leave."

Liam did not wait.

He drove a powerful fire blast beneath and behind himself, shielding Celia against his chest as the force launched them upward. The flame roared against the ravine floor, strong enough to crack the nearby stone and send fragments skidding into the dark water below. Heat rushed past Celia’s boots and along Liam’s uniform, but he angled his body so the worst of the blast never touched her. The sudden ascent crushed the breath from her lungs. The ravine blurred into wall, fire, shadow, and stinking air.

Below, Asher finally stopped restraining himself.

Blue flame erupted through the ravine in brutal, focused releases. He did not scatter it randomly. He drove it into the walls where vipers emerged, into ledges already weakened by venom, into the channels where metallic coils rushed after them. Stone ruptured. Water flashed into steam. Several Mordcoils burned through in sections before their bodies fell into the channel. Others were caught as Asher blasted himself upward, using flame propulsion to launch from wall to wall while leaving violent blue impacts behind him.

The ravine began to collapse.

A shelf broke loose and slammed down over three converging vipers. A wall section split where venom damage and blue flame met, sending a heavy curtain of stone crashing into the water. The dark flow surged upward, choked with debris and thrashing bodies. More rock followed, shaking free from the layered walls and pounding down into the pack that had gathered below. Not all of them died. The ravine was too large and too infested for that. But the immediate pack, the one that had converged around the anchor and chased their heat, was buried, burned, scattered, or crushed beneath its own collapsing territory.

Liam cleared the upper edge with Celia held tight against him.

He landed far from the ravine’s lip, hit the ground hard, and slid several paces through loose dirt and grass before stopping near a cluster of low trees. The landing was rough but controlled, the kind that sent force through his legs and made his breath leave in a short, quiet hiss. Celia’s arms had locked around him sometime during the launch. Her fingers dug into his uniform with enough force to wrinkle the fabric.

For a moment, neither moved.

Behind them, the ravine groaned as more stone fell.

Liam looked down at her.

"I would like my ribs back."

Celia blinked.

Then awareness crashed into her face all at once.

She released him so quickly she nearly stumbled when her boots hit the ground. Heat rose across her cheeks, tangled with anger, embarrassment, relief, and something she refused to examine. She stepped back, straightened as if posture alone could erase the fact that she had been carried out of a collapsing ravine, and pointed at him.

"How dare you just grab me like that?"

Liam stared at her. "You were about to die."

"That does not mean you get to pick me up without warning."

"The warning was the viper."

"You know exactly what I mean." Celia’s voice sharpened as she found more words, perhaps because stopping would let the wrong feelings catch up. "No permission. No explanation. No basic decency. One moment I am standing there, the next I am being hauled around like baggage because apparently asking is beneath you."

"You would have preferred a discussion?"

"I would have preferred not being manhandled by a dark mage with the social grace of a cracked door."

"That sounds inefficient."

"It sounds like common courtesy."

"You can file a complaint after breathing."

"I am breathing fine."

"You were clinging to me."

Her face went redder. "That was instinct."

"I assumed."

"You assumed too much."

"I assumed you wanted to survive."

She opened her mouth, ready to fire back again, but then, Liam’s head turned sharply past her shoulder.

Celia felt it at almost the same time: a distortion behind the brush, a wet metallic pressure moving too fast through the undergrowth. Her irritation vanished. Liam’s hand moved to open space beside him, and his longsword flashed out of Void Storage, dark metal catching the light as he prepared to move past her.

He did not get the chance.

Blue flame cut through the air.

The Mordcoil burst from the brush with its hood open, venom already gathering at its fangs, and then Asher arrived like violence wearing a grin. His blade, wrapped in blue flame, struck three times before the viper crossed half the distance. The first cut opened the hood. The second took the neck. The third split the remaining body as he passed through it, scattering burning sections across the grass before the venom could spray cleanly.

The pieces hit the ground and twitched.

Asher landed nearby, blue flames still curling around his weapon and shoulders, expression full of obnoxious pride.

"The extras have been saved," he announced. "Hold your applause."

Celia stared at the dead Mordcoil, then at him, visibly furious that she had been saved in the middle of complaining about being saved.

Liam lowered his longsword slightly. "You were late."

Asher’s grin widened. "You were being hugged. I gave you privacy."

Celia’s eyes sharpened. "I was not hugging him."

"You were wrapped around him like a frightened scarf."

"I was not."

Liam dismissed his longsword into storage. "You were close."

Celia turned on him. "Do not agree with him."

"I did not. I corrected him."