The lead skeleton let out a mysterious screech from the core of its head. The vibrations were awful enough, but apparently the humans had to cover their ears to protect from the horrible noise.

  It might have just been the trauma my ears were going through, but it didn’t sound nearly as debilitating to me.

  While Indena was trying to regain her focus, the skeleton made its move against us.

  *Swipe swipe* went its sharp claws, just barely missing her as she dodged them, flames jetting her around with haste.

  “Shrimp!” she shouted to me. “Use fire to push yourself around faster!”

  I got a taste of this power while sparring, but now it was time to apply it to a real battle.

  “Right!” I announced, focusing my flames at my feet. “Here I go!”

  A little explosion burst under my feet and shot me upwards. “Woooah!” I forced a second burst of fire to propel me forward toward the lead skeleton.

  It was hyper focused on Indena at that moment, so I came in with a right sweeping back kick across its neck, enhanced by magical flames. My force was enough to shove it, but it didn’t waste any time getting back to the action.

  The metal skeleton was very posable without any sort of flesh to restrict it. Its lead limbs swung wildly around, finding crazy ways to evade our attacks, and retaliate with even more wild swipes with its razor sharp claws. Worst of all, its thin structure gave it a significant edge in speed over us.

  The Bronze Dragon Style prided itself on speed, but even Indena and all her young mastery over it couldn’t best the skeletons rush.

  “This should help!” Amanda finally overcame the paralyzing effects of the screech and lifted her scepter up, aiming it at the two of us.

  A green aura appeared over our bodies, completely covering us in some cool, ethereal wind. A feeling similar to a sugar rush caused my arms to jitter and my mind to race. A single step felt like I'd cleared two steps worth, as if I were moving much faster.

  I took a few more steps around to get a feel for the enhanced movement. My body took that one step further and quickly accounted for the bonus, reaping me all the benefits with none of the tripping over myself, like Indena...

  “She buffed our speed!” I commented, overjoyed and encouraged at her help. “Thanks a ton!”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot…” Indena grumbled with a bruise on her forehead from landing on the floor.

  “Thank me when this is over!” Beads of sweat were dropping down her face while she concentrated on channeling the spell. “Defeat that thing quickly!”

  With her boost, we dodged swipes left and right with ease. The lead skeleton’s attacks became more intense to try and match, but we were ahead enough that they were trivial.

  As it began to realize how fruitless its wild actions were, it stopped attacking completely and jumped backwards to get distance. Among the collection of bones across the floor were a pair of legs that it gathered and stuck to its own hip bone.

  “What the heck is he doing?” I questioned, watching the lead thing squat down on four legs and hold that position for a moment.

  Suddenly he sprung forward, propelled by the force of four feet. He swiftly passed us by, slashing across the air as he passed.

  Indena and I leapt out of the way, not expecting his true target to have been Amanda the whole time. She didn’t have a chance to evade!

  “No way!” I shouted, flying in at top speed with flames pushing my wings. More fire erupted around my foot and I quickly struck the skeletons head, sending it flying toward the ground before he could lay a lead finger on our supportive queen.

  The lead skeleton landed on the ground and broke apart into a pile of many bones, but quickly reformed like a model kit and rose back up. While he assembled himself, Amanda climbed up to the stands and took cover there where it was slightly safer.

  The skeleton was back at full strength, but now augmented with several new appendages acting as extra arms. The random bones he was using didn’t match by any means, but somehow stuck together anyways and gave the impression of more hands.

  Lead Skelly paused to glare at me with glowing gold eyes. Those once sharp blades of its bone fingers shrunk down to half their size, but that didn’t mean nearly as much now that he had four hands to tussle with. He held them up like a four armed bear ready to claw an opponent to death.

  Its claws struck forth to rake my left side, but I flapped my wings to the right, narrowly escaping the first set of five sharp nails. Next came another batch of hands to swipe at me, but I ducked, watching his arms get a little tangled up in each other.

  “Get him in the ribs!” Indena shouted, advising me of an opening.

  I launched a flaming right fist up from my crouched position, hitting right in the center of Lead Skelly, shooting him upwards.

  Once he was in the air, Indena jumped over me and flipped once, using the momentum to send her flaming foot down on Lead Skelly’s back. He came crashing down again, but this time he didn’t break into bits.

  Instead of giving us more of an advantage, he caught himself on the ground like a crab and swiped a foot at me. I was caught off guard when his left foot split apart and caught my side, latching onto me like a claw.

  “He’s a little crabby now!” I shouted, trying to break free of his foot pincer. But his long, sharp toes were locking on tight. He then twisted to pick me up and throw me. I was sent a few meters up, stopping only when my wings deployed.

  While I focused on catching myself, Lead Skelly’s jaw fell open and a small black hole-like orb formed in his mouth. He fired it my way. I tried to fly up high and evade, but the orb tracked me like a hawk snatching a mouse.

  A burst of power exploded around me, shocking me with a nova of light and dark energy. All that energy sank back into a singular point, dragging me in along with it. The singularity then exploded again, launching me down into the stands around the arena.

  *CRASH!*

  I landed hard on a pile of candles, crushing them and making a mess.

  “Are you alright?” Amanda came over to assess my condition.

  “Pft!” I spit out a candle. “I think we’re in some hot wax now…”

  The sensitive structure shook at my collision. Tiny rubble tumbled down to the ground from above, further ruining this ancient place and threatening a full collapse.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I heard Amanda shout some sort of warning of our impending doom, but it was drowned out by the rumble.

  Indena took an opportune attack on Lead Skelly while he focused on me, slamming her blazing right foot into the back of the lead creature's cranium. The fruits of her effort were a fantastically small crack in the metal, and a bruised big toe.

  Instead of staying out of the fight, I powered up my wings, this time with wind magic and propelled forward fast. Slightly faster than with fire even. Once I was near the stunned skeletons, I traded my wind element for fire, migrating the energy across my skin with a pulse of orange light, stopping it at my fist and slamming it into his forehead.

  The strength of the metal was rough on my hand, but I was built of a material infinitely stronger than lead.

  Once again, all I had to show for that punch was a crack in the lead surface. Nothing significant enough to call this battle a win.

  While still within attacking range, I spun in air and brought my foot down on the skeletons skull, slamming it down hard on the floor with fire fueling my motions. Its arms raised backwards to try and force me off, but I rejected its attempts with a few slaps of my hand.

  With a warning call, Indena ordered me to move as she unleashed a powerful inferno on the downed skelly, a heat hot enough to melt its lead surface.

  The skeleton's body turned red hot and it skittered and scratched the floor, trying to process the sheer devastation Indena was forcing out. We thought we had it finished, preemptively cheering for its demise, but it boosted itself back upwards.

  Its rib cage broke off from its sternum and twisted around while in a near molten form. Hot lead spikes launched out of the sharp bones, infinitely being replaced by new ones.

  “Woah!” I took to my wings and shoved Indena out of the way. “Watch out!”

  The spikes were sharp enough to act like 50 cal bullets to the rocky walls of this structure. They tore right through it!

  I feared those hits would be enough to cause the place to collapse, but we got lucky again.

  We both rolled once we hit the floor, trying to evade the spikes as best we could. His ribs were firing off shots in rapid succession. To get him to stop, I spawned out a rod of stardust and threw it at him. Immediately he scurried over like a rat and started munching on it.

  “I didn’t want to do this, but I have to use the mana cannon!” I shouted. “It’s the only guarantee to kill him, like with the golden bull!”

  Uncle would have preferred I captured one of these guys, but we didn’t have much of a choice now.

  “No! You’ll bring the whole place down around us!” Indena argued.

  That was true. Just those spikes piercing the walls was enough to rock the temple.

  If I couldn’t use the mana cannon, there weren’t many other options available other than keep trying to take it out with magic based attacks.

  “Indena, we'll have to combine our attacks somehow,” I said. “If we both use fire at the same time, we might make something hot enough to burn that guy up.”

  Indena’s brow furrowed like she had a deep thought. “Wait, you’re onto something with that.” She brushed the feathers of my wings. “Hey, you got wind magic now, yeah?”

  “Yes,” I nodded.

  “Ever heard of combination arts? It's where two elemental powers combine to make new effects.”

  Oh? That seemed really useful here.

  “Can two people really combine magic like that?” I asked.

  “They have to be touching,” Indena said. She grabbed my hand and held it tightly. “You know how to pulse energy into things,” she started. “Share your wind magic with me, and I’ll share my fire magic with you.”

  As she instructed, I sent a pulse of elemental wind energy her way, and she did the same with elemental fire magic to me.

  “Perfect. Our spirits are resonating enough…” she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What?”

  “It just means our spirits are compatible to share magic. The stronger two spirits resonate, the more powerful your connection with another person is.”

  The mechanics of resonating weren’t as important as the results right now, so I nodded and we both lifted our open hands up.

  Our auras fused together and became like a giant flame. Green energy mixed into the fire and turned blue.

  “Super Flamethrower!” Indena shouted, ejecting fierce blue flames out from her hand.

  “Super Flamethrower!” I joined in her callout and also blasted out blue fire from me.

  Both our jets combined together, striking the unaware skeleton and swallowing him in the refined rage of a blue flame.

  It let out yet another screech, but its lead surface quickly ended up succumbing to the heat. He turned into a puddle of molten lead.

  “That’s enough!” Indena quickly dispelled her aura and forced mine to disappear as well. “Too much and we’ll suck up all the air down here.”

  “Is it over?” Amanda called out, peeking over the railing of the stands.

  “I hope…” I said, turning around and seeing the molten puddle of lead. “Samael! Find anything up there yet?”

  “Ssss!” he hissed.

  “You figured something out?” I shouted. “Alright, I’m coming to get you!” I flew up and grabbed him from the vent. He returned my crystal heart.

  “Sss!”

  “Ooh, that’s right!” I said, holding out my hand and materializing the pair of keys we took off the guy from earlier. “I bet these would work!”

  I lowered back down to my friends, who both had hopeful faces that we were going to get out of here soon. The door did in fact have a hole for a key, but it was hidden among very intricate details.

  Just as I went to place the key in, we heard more rattling behind us…

  I turned, dreadfully seeing more bones rising up, this time forming about a dozen of those lead skeleton beings…

  “Oh crap!” Indena grit her fists and jumped in front of us. “Get out, now!” she called out. “I’ll catch up with you both!”

  “No way!” I argued. “We are not leaving you!”

  “You’re not getting away otherwise, so just go!”

  She didn’t stand a chance against a dozen of them. None of us did… Not like this…

  Was it time to use the False Theta form? I wanted to, I really did, but I’d used it so much already today. My body couldn’t handle using it anymore right now, it needed time to rest. But if it meant saving my friends, what other choice did I have?

  “No, I’ll…” Before I could finish speaking, haughty laughter interrupted me.

  “Oh, dear me!” announced an eccentric sounding woman from the entrance of the arena. “It seems you children have been backed into quite a corner, haven’t you?” The woman entered the room and came into full view.

  She was absolutely shining. A sharp, gold crowning headdress sat over her face, covering her eyes, but reminding me somewhat of the sun. The outfit over her seemed Kanai, similar to the outfit Indena was wearing in the dream world, but with accents of gold armour and a strange open skirt.

  “Rest easy, Indena…” said the woman, “because nobody is going to be sacrificed on this day.”

  “Ugh!?” Indena uttered in shock. “How…? How…?!”

  The woman confidently strutted in on a pair of ornate sandals, stepping right into the midst of each of the skeletons and making herself the main target. They screeched at her and ran in to attack.

  “Begone…” She snapped her fingers, sending out a heat wave that instantly vaporized all the skeletons at once, trivializing combat against these powerful fiends.

  What had just taken our entire combined strength was done with a simple hand gesture, in a snap no less. Her power was so amazing that I had to question her allegiance, as well as why she would have saved us so suddenly.

  “Now my precious children are safe,” she clapped her hands cutely and did a little dance in place.

  After her resounding success at taking out a dozen of those Lead Skelly’s, she made her way over to us as leisurely as if nothing had happened moments prior. All that energy she’d just expended didn’t seem to tire her out at all.

  “Indena, how many times do I have to tell you to stay out of trouble?” Her words were scolding, but her smile was reassuring. “I don’t believe taking Yalda to this place was your job, was it? Maybe you can refresh this memory of mine.”

  She knew Indena personally… Who was this woman?

  “Yeah, well…” Indena seemed flustered in her presence. “Things got rough, alright?” Indena folded her arms and turned away. “Besides, not like you’ve been much help up to now, Arch Priestess Sovereignty…”

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please support me, Taylor The Writer, here on Royal Road! :)