Back in the gap between the south and southwestern stronghold, Draco surged forward, a blur of verdant scales and potent musculature.
His speed, born of his newly awakened ability, was immense.
The air shrieked in protest as he tore through it, closing the distance to Mors in the blink of an eye.
His claws, previously flexing at his side, now stretched, each point a dagger honed by wind and will, aimed directly at Mors's chanting throat.
Interruption was paramount; the rising tide of malevolent energy radiating from the fractured crystal was anathema, a poison to the very fabric of existence, and it pulsed with ever-increasing strength within Mors.
"...from the root of life and offer it to the malevolent deity,"
Mors's voice concluded the first verse, a guttural hum vibrating through the air, even over the thunderous beat of Draco's wings.
Thrum!
The oppressive wave intensified, a palpable pressure that felt like being submerged in tar.
The red, corrupted essence surged from the crystal, not just sinking into Mors's skin but erupting from it, forming intricate, pulsing veins that snaked across his exposed flesh.
His tattered clothing seemed to melt away, revealing a body that was already beginning to contort.
His muscles, though still defined, seemed to contract, pulling taut against bone.
Wrinkles, fine as spider silk, traced sharp lines around his eyes and mouth, deepening even as his power surged.
His eyes, already turning dark, now glowed with an internal, malevolent crimson like miniature suns of corrupted blood.
This was the first gate.
Mors's body, though visibly shrinking, tightening, became a conduit for an unnatural vitality. His movements, already blinding, sharpened to an impossible degree.
Draco's claw strike, aimed at Mors's chanting throat, was met with a sudden, jarring emptiness.
Mors had simply vanished, a phantom of motion.
Draco overshot, his talons gouging a trough in the already scarred earth.
Before he could recover, a bone-jarring impact slammed into his side.
WHAM!
The force was immense, far beyond Mors's previous physical capabilities.
Draco, despite his resilience, grunted, stumbling sideways.
He twisted, exhaling a compressed burst of wind as he spun, creating a miniature vortex that ripped through the air where Mors had been a moment ago.
Mors, however, moved like smoke, reappearing on Draco's other flank, a dark, low-slung missile.
"You're fast, little dragon," Mors rasped, his voice now deeper, more resonant, the words tinged with a dry, aged quality despite his renewed vigor.
His hand, still clenching the fracturing crystal, swept in a brutal arc.
Draco parried with a forearm, his scales scraping against Mors's hardened fist.
The impact sent a jolt up Draco's arm, a painful vibration that hummed in his bones.
This was not the Mors he knew, not the Mors who relied on pure speed and evasion.
This Mors hit with the weight of a meteor.
'His physical strength has surged, but at what cost?' Draco thought, his eyes tracking Mors's impossible movements.
The visible changes, the slight shrinkage of muscle mass, the deepening lines on his face—these were the tell-tale signs of the spell's terrible price.
Mors was literally burning away his own life-force, potentially sacrificing decades for mere moments of devastating power.
Draco retreated, a powerful beat of his wings lifting him just above the ground.
He didn't want to give Mors an easy target.
He needed space, not just for his wider frame, but for his elemental magic.
With a roar that vibrated the very air, Draco unleashed a series of concentrated wind blades. These weren't mere gusts; they were razor-sharp, invisible projectiles, capable of shearing through solid rock.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
The blades whistled, crisscrossing the desolate field.
Mors, no longer needing to dodge with careful precision, met the onslaught with a terrifying, almost casual disregard.
He weaved and ducked, his movements fluid and unpredictable, but occasionally, a blade would connect.
A thin crimson line would appear on his skin, only to be instantly absorbed by the pulsing red energy beneath.
The crystal in his hand pulsed, growing brighter, the red essence feeding the wounds faster than they could form.
"My, my, you're quite the showman," Mors chuckled, a mirthless sound that echoed across the barren land.
He lunged again, a blur of motion.
This time, he wasn't just fast; he was explosive.
The ground beneath his feet cracked and shattered with each push-off.
Draco met him head-on, no longer able to give ground.
His claws, as sharp as any blade, raked across Mors's chest.
The sound was like stone grinding against iron.
Mors grunted, a shallow cut opening momentarily before the red energy consumed it.
But the attack had forced Mors back, giving Draco a precious moment.
Draco inhaled deeply, his chest expanding, pulling in vast quantities of air.
The very atmosphere around him seemed to thin, drawn into his powerful lungs.
Then, with a guttural roar, he exhaled a focused, destructive wind cannon.
It wasn't a blast, but a dense, concussive wave of pure air pressure compressed to an unimaginable degree, capable of pulverizing anything in its path.
BOOOOM!
The ground erupted.
A crater formed instantly where Mors had been, chunks of earth and rock disintegrating into dust.
A colossal plume of debris shot skyward, momentarily obscuring the horizon.
But Draco knew.
He felt it.
Mors wasn't there.
He reappeared behind Draco, closer than ever.
"Too slow, dragon-boy," Mors whispered, his voice dry, aged, yet full of power.
Draco pivoted, unleashing a powerful tail whip.
His tail, thick and scaled, moved with a devastating arc, carrying enough force to shatter reinforced steel.
Mors ducked, the tail whistling just inches over his head.
But as it passed, Draco unleashed a localized burst of wind from the tip, creating a miniature sonic boom that slammed into Mors's back.
The unexpected secondary attack caught Mors off guard.
He stumbled, grunting as the invisible force slammed into him.
It wasn't enough to stop him, but it bought Draco another fraction of a second.
"...Through withered vein, and fractured bone, I tear the years that I have sown. Let power bloom where life has fled, and raise the ghost among the dead," Mors chanted, his voice gaining a chilling resonance, each word carrying a faint, ethereal echo.
His movements remained relentless, but the chant continued, a sinister counterpoint to the explosions and roars of battle.
Thrum-Thrum!
The second verse concluded, and the effect was immediate and horrifying.
The red essence from the crystal intensified, pouring into Mors not like liquid now, but like molten light.
His body briefly contorted violently, his muscles contracting further, tightening around his skeletal frame.
His skin, burnt and wrinkled, turned a papery, almost translucent white, stretched taut over prominent bones.
His hair, became brittle and sparse, streaked with grey and white, falling out in small clumps with each jarring movement.
This was the second gate.
Mors had aged years, perhaps decades, in an instant.
His form was now gaunt, almost skeletal, but the power radiating from him was terrifying.
His speed was no longer just blinding; it felt like he was teleporting.
His strength was no longer just immense; it felt like he could shatter reality.
The very air around him seemed to crinkle.
Draco felt a cold dread seep into his heart.
Mors had truly sacrificed his very being for this power.
This was a man who had stared into the abyss of his own mortality and willingly offered it up for destruction.
'Isn't this situation a bit similar to our last battle, only this time I am not the one powering up' Draco thought upon observing Mors changes.
However he didn't get much time to think.
Mors attacked again, no longer bothering with words.
He moved, and then he was simply there, his fist aimed at Draco's skull.
Draco, reacting on pure instinct, threw up a wind barrier.
Not a simple gust, but a rapidly rotating sphere of compressed air, designed to deflect or blunt any incoming force.
CRACK!
Mors's fist connected.
The wind barrier cracked, groaning under the impossible pressure.
A spider-web of distortions spread across the invisible shield.
Draco felt the shockwave reverberate through his entire being, his scales rattling.
The barrier held, but barely.
He felt Mors's chilling power.
It was like a force that vibrated with the emptiness of a thousand stolen years.
"Unbelievable," Draco hissed, his voice tinged with genuine surprise and anger.
No mere physical attack should have strained his wind barrier like that, especially from a being whose physical form was visibly degrading.
Mors pulled back, his mouth curled into a ghastly grin, his teeth now too sharp, too prominent in his shrunken face.
He didn't speak, but his crimson eyes conveyed a message of absolute, unfeeling malice.
He moved again, not just striking, but phasing.
He seemed to shimmer, his form flickering in and out of perfect focus as he attacked from multiple angles simultaneously.
Draco was forced onto the defensive, relying purely on his enhanced senses and unparalleled reflexes.
He spun, his heavy tail acting as a counterweight, generating powerful winds that buffeted Mors. He unleashed a torrent of tiny, hyper-dense air bullets, each one capable of piercing steel.
RAT-A-TAT-TAT!
Mors danced through the barrage, some bullets glancing off his skeletal frame with sparks of red light, others deflected by subtle shifts in his body.
His movements were so efficient, so utterly devoid of wasted motion, that he seemed to predict Draco's attacks before they even formed.
One of Mors's attacks slipped through Draco's guard.
A claw-like hand, impossibly fast, raked across his chest scales.
No visible wound formed, but Draco felt a searing pain, as if something vital had been torn from within him.
His spiritual connection to the world around him, his very essence, felt momentarily bruised.
'This isn't just physical damage,' Draco realized, his breath catching.
'His attacks are imbued with the same destructive energy as his spell. He's draining not just life from himself, but any living thing he touches'
Fueled by rage and the primal urge to survive, Draco pushed back.
He roared, a sound that tore through the air, carrying gusts of wind that ripped at the very fabric of the landscape.
He stomped his foot, and the cracked earth shuddered, fissures spreading outwards like spider-webs.
He spread his wings, and the air around him became a maelstrom, a localized hurricane that threatened to tear Mors apart.
The wind tore at Mors's tattered clothing, what little remained, but his gaunt form stood firm, an anchor of malevolence amidst the storm.
He plunged his hand into the ground, pulling up a jagged shard of rock that had been ripped from the earth by Draco's power.
The rock, infused with the red essence from Mors's hand, glowed dully.
With a horrifyingly powerful throw, Mors launched the glowing projectile.
It wasn't just a rock; it was a missile imbued with immense kinetic and curse energy.
Draco met it with a spiraling vortex of wind, a miniature tornado designed to shred anything within its grasp.
The rock slammed into the vortex, not disintegrating, but grinding, groaning, resisting the immense forces.
The vortex buckled, strained, but ultimately shattered the rock into glittering dust, which then dispersed into a red mist.
As the mist dissipated, Mors was already there, having used the projectile as a distraction.
He was practically on top of Draco, his withered hand reaching for the crystal still clutched in his other hand.
"...With final breath, and fading light, I claim the depths of endless night. Let mortal coil become its pyre, and darkness grant unholy fire, FINIS OPTIMA" Mors chanted, his voice now a dry, rasping whisper, yet impossibly loud, permeating Draco's very soul.
The final verse was delivered with a chilling certainty, a complete embrace of oblivion.
Thrum-Thrum-Thrum!
The crystal, fractured beyond repair, pulsed with a final, blinding burst of red light, then shattered, dissolving into a cloud of malevolent crimson dust that swirled around Mors.
The very air seemed to scream in agony as the third gate opened.
Mors's transformation was complete, and it was grotesque.
His body, already emaciated, withered away completely, shrinking to a horrifying parody of his former self.
His skin, once translucent, was now a dusty, brittle grey, like ancient parchment pulled tight over razor-thin bones.
His muscles had vanished, his limbs impossibly thin, yet the joints moved with inhuman grace. His eyes, sunken deep into his skull, were now pure, unblinking crimson voids, radiating cold, eternal hatred.
His hair was gone, his head a smooth, bone-white dome.
He was less a man, more a living skeleton, animated by a malevolent, stolen power.
But with this final degradation of his physical form came an apotheosis of power.
The red aura that had been seeping from the crystal now erupted from Mors, a maelstrom of energy that ripped at the very air, turning it heavy and cloying.
He was no longer just fast; he was ubiquitous.
He was no longer just strong; he was almost unstoppable.
Draco felt the full weight of the unleashed spell.
The ground beneath his talons groaned.
The distant roars of the city were silenced, swallowed by the oppressive silence that now reigned in Mors's immediate vicinity.
This was a realm of pure destruction, and Mors was its emperor.
"You've sealed your own fate, Mors!" Draco roared, his voice trembling with a mixture of fury and desperation.
Mors had sacrificed everything, risking potential annihilation, for what?
To kill him?
Draco wouldn't let that sacrifice be worth it.
Draco lunged, not with strategy, but with the might of what he could muster.
He condensed all the air around him, creating a vacuum in his path, then propelled himself forward with a devastating thrust of wind, his entire body a living weapon.
His claws, imbued with green magical energy, glowed with an emerald light.
His jaws opened wide, ready to unleash a breath of compressed, superheated air, capable of melting stone.
Mors simply shifted.
He wasn't dodging; he was momentarily ceasing to exist in one spot and reappearing in another. He was a flicker, a phantom, too fast for even Draco's enhanced senses to fully track.
Draco's attack tore through empty air, carving a trench so deep it exposed the barren subsoil, between the surface and dungeon.
In the same instant, Mors was behind him, a skeletal hand striking Draco's spine.
SHAAATTER!
Draco roared, a sound of agony.
He felt a vertebrae crack under the impossible force.
The pain was excruciating, searing through him, momentarily paralyzing his lower body.
This was not the brute force he had faced moments ago.
Every strike delivered by Mors now carried the weight of the lifespan he had consumed, making it not just physically damaging, but corrosive.
Draco fell to one knee, a wave of dizziness washing over him.
He felt his connection to his own magic waver, threatened by the intrusion of Mors's cursed energy.
'I cannot let him touch me again!' Draco thought, shaking off the pain with sheer willpower.
He knew he had to end this, now.
No more calculated attacks, he needed to squeeze any ounce of power, even one beyond his current means.
With a furious burst of strength, Draco screamed, channeling all of his magical energy into a single, devastating spell.
The air around him shimmered violently, compressing, twisting, and radiating an immense green light.
He wasn't just controlling the wind; he was becoming the wind, manifesting its destructive power in its purest form.
"TEMPEST'S WRATH!" Draco bellowed, his voice echoing across the city, carrying the force of a thousand gales.
A colossal vortex erupted from him, a tornado of pure, crystalline green wind, hundreds of meters wide, tearing into the landscape.
It was a maelstrom of hyper-pressurized air, laced with magical energy, designed to shred, crush, and obliterate everything within its reach.
The ground buckled, rising and falling like waves on a storm-tossed sea.
Rocks and buildings, large as boulders, were picked up and hurled into the churning green abyss, instantly reduced to dust.
Even the distant buildings of the strongholds to the south and southwest seemed to tremble under the sheer force of the unleashed magic, causing panic and fear amongst the on-looking civilians and adventurers.
Mors, the withered harbinger of death, was caught in the maelstrom.
He didn't try to escape.
He stood, a tiny, skeletal figure at the heart of the raging storm, his crimson eyes burning with an unholy defiance.
The powerful winds tore at his aged, brittle form, but he resisted, his gaunt limbs trembling, yet holding firm.
"Is that all, little dragon?" Mors's dry whisper, incredibly, cut through the deafening roar of the tempest.
"You think a mere storm can extinguish what I have become?"
He extended his arms, his skeletal fingers splayed.
The red aura around him intensified, pushing back against the green winds, creating a swirling vortex of clashing energies.
The ground beneath him, far from being ripped away, began to darken, absorbing the essence of the spell and Mors's own corrupted power.
Draco gritted his teeth, pouring more energy into the spell.
His muscles screamed, his scales felt like they were being peeled away by the strain.
He could feel Mors's resistance, the sheer, unyielding will of a being who had traded his life for this moment.
This was a battle of wills, of life versus death, of creation versus annihilation.
Mors began to walk forward, slowly, agonizingly, against the full force of Draco's ultimate attack.
Each step was a like an inch closer to death.
His shrunken form, impossibly light, seemed to draw the life out of the tempest itself, weakening its grasp.
Draco could tell that, this was Mors's final, horrifying move, a desperate gamble to take his opponent down with him.
'No. Not like this,' Draco thought, his vision blurring.
He was giving everything, yet Mors was still standing.
He needed to outlast Mors, no he needed to deal a devastating strike.
With a final, desperate surge, Draco squeezed and squeezed every morsel of magic lying within himself.
It was like trying to get that last drop of paste, from an empty tube of toothpaste.
Lucky for Draco, there was a drop in the empty tube of paste.
In that extremely tense, yet brief moment, Draco stretch out a claw.
He couldn't stand due to his damaged spine, so he could only attack from his prone position.
Squeezing that last drop into his outstretched claw, his green scales and claw tips briefly turned yellow.
And in that instant, a yellow bolt erupted, heading directly into the center of the tempest, following the shortest path towards Mors's chest.
It was a piercing lance of pure lightning, designed to not just destroy, but to disintegrate.
Mors's eyes widened, a flicker of something akin to surprise, or perhaps even fear, crossing his crimson gaze.
He had anticipated brute force, not such a finely tuned, piercing attack embedded within the larger storm.
He raised his skeletal arms, attempting to block the attacked.
The lightning bolt struck.
KRAKOOOOM!
The sound was less of an explosion and more of a shattering of reality.
The tempest roared, then imploded, collapsing inwards with a final, devastating shriek.
A blinding flash of green, yellow and red light consumed the center of the battlefield, turning the grey sky into an instantaneous, bright day.
When the light faded, a new crater, deeper and wider than any before, scarred the earth.
The air was still, heavy with the scent of ozone and something indescribably foul.
Draco knelt, panting, slumped over, his wings drooping, his body covered in fresh wounds.
The earlier cracks on his spine throbbed with excruciating pain.
He was utterly spent, his magic exhausted, his body screaming in protest.
In the center of the crater, there was nothing.
No body, no dust, no trace of Mors.
Draco remained motionless for what felt like a long moment, listening to the agonizing silence that soon turned into distant cheers.
Whether they were for his victory or something else, he couldn't tell.
The battle was over.
Mors, was gone, erased from existence.
But the cost... the cost had been immense.
Draco felt a deep weariness and sleepiness settle into his bones, a feeling he was now familiar with.
He looked up at the sky, the true sun now beginning to peek through the lingering haze. Somewhere, far in the distance, he could hear the clatter of footsteps approaching.
The victory felt hollow, as he couldn't muster the strength to even move, much less go to help his goddess in battle.
A knot of concern in his chest had been untangled, but a new, heavier worry had taken its place.