The air around me dropped almost forty degrees in an instant.

  The blast of frigid air was only inches above me as it tried to freeze anything it touched. Hail was mixed inside the snow-filled rush. Even without being touched by the attack, ice crystals formed on the ground as any moisture around us froze. The thing that amazed me the most was that my path to Finael was clear, but the rest of the ground around the two Elves was quickly covered in a sheet of ice. Tiny shards of ice the size of my pinky finger began to pelt the two Elves.

  The Earth Elementalist had pulled a large rock out of the ground to shield himself while Finael chose to rely on his magic barrier to shrug off the projectiles.

  That barrier was flashing every time it got hit. Ice was slowly beginning to grow over the shield, obscuring the mage’s view of me.

  A rock wall rose out of the ground between me and the mage, cutting off the direct path that was clear of ice. I hadn’t stopped moving, and the barrier didn’t stop that. When I juked to my right, the frozen ground instantly thawed, giving me another iceless route to my target. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Starna move from where she was behind me, rotating to her left to try to get an angle where she could hit the Elementalist.

  With the smarter of the two Elves occupied, I sprinted to close the distance. Finael had stopped casting spells, though I wasn’t sure if it was because he was trapped inside a white dome or if he didn’t want to cast blind.

  Instead of hitting the ice prison with the blade of my sword, I turned the blade away from the ice and slammed the butt of the sword in my hand into the popsicle. The ice shattered like it had been glass, revealing a very shocked Elf on the other side.

  I grabbed the end of his staff with my left hand and twisted my blade against his throat.

  “It’s over.” I nodded at the fight between the other two Elves. “Call off your man and your snake.” I spared a glance down the mountain at my brother. Both of them were bloody, but for now, it appeared that my brother had the upper hand.

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  “I will never stop.” Finael smiled. As he dropped his staff and spread his arms wide. “You can’t kill me!” His voice sped up as he began to rant. “If you do, you’ll give us all the justification we need to take Hepool back and reinstate true rulers back to power!” He smirked as he grabbed the blade of my sword, leaking blue blood down the blade. “Surrender now and I’ll let the basilisk kill you before I feed you to it!”

  I wasn’t sure how his mind was rationalizing things, but in this moment, we had been attacked by them. We were accused of a crime that we didn’t commit and even if we had, the two ambassadors were aiding in a coup. Even if you threw out who was the aggressor and who was only defending themselves, I had my blade against his neck.

  “How about this?” I dropped his staff and grabbed his shoulder, feeding the small gash on my thigh into him. He gasped as he started bleeding through his pants from a wound that he couldn’t see.

  “You call off that snake and stop trying to get revenge for a father who was part of a coup and I’ll let you walk away.” I tightened my grip on his shoulder to try to emphasize his position.

  There was nothing but bewilderment on his face. His mind wasn't computing that he didn’t have the upper hand. I knew that there were plenty of Elves that were masters of tactics, but this proud Elf wasn’t one of them.

  “How dare..!”

  I slit his throat, silencing his rant. I grabbed my sword with both hands as he fell to his knees in front of me and took off his head. With magic, even if someone looked dead, any small spark of life would be enough for a decent healer to heal their body. There was also a chance that they could come back as an undead, using their magic to give them a second existence in unlife. Which boiled down to the only sure way to be sure that a mage was dead was to separate their head from their shoulders.

  “NO!!!” The ground shook as the Earth Elementalist screamed at me.

  I readjusted the grip on my sword and pointed it at the crying Elf. “Same deal. Call off your monster..!”

  The basilisk roared, cutting off my offer. It slapped Vin hard enough that he flew twenty feet through the air before rolling a little, then jumping back to his feet.

  “You IDIOT!” The Elf was backing up, not bothering to try to fight us. “You’ve killed us all!”

  “Huh?” I was confused. “He said he wasn’t going to stop coming for me…”

  “Not that.” The Elf cut me off as he backed up towards the tunnel they had come through. “Finael took over as the basilisk’s Mage. You just freed his guardian.” He cast one look at us as he began pulling up rocks to seal the tunnel. “You killed everyone.”

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