Hiral, Yanily, and Right followed immediately behind Nivian and Left, the two giants crashing into the giant Raze with the force of planets colliding. Just that initial impact was enough to send the already ruined, volcanic landscape around them rippling outward in a wave of rising rocks and splashing magma. Dangerous as the terrain had just become, it did nothing to slow the three, speeding damage dealers. If anything, it helped them.

  A smile on Hiral’s face, he bounded between the building-sized rocks lifting into the air. A dive and a spin shot him under an arching fountain of lava, before three more bounces got him back and behind the Raze.

  One of the cannons on the thing’s back seemed to be ready for exactly that, its barrel already spitting a payload of death and destruction in Hiral’s direction. He hardly paid it any more heed than acknowledging it was coming before he activated one of the abilities of the Twinned Blade. Just like that, he swapped places with the other blade—Exchange making it even smoother—to sprint past the river of energy.

  As for the floating blade he’d left behind, the energy blast passed harmlessly through the weapon, its spectral form safe from attacks like that.

  Smiling at just how useful that could be—and releasing a shower of clones at the same time—Hiral snapped his left hand out and ahead. Following the motion, one of the other Twinned Seeker’s Unmakings spun around like it was connected to his fingers by a string to slash across the backside of the Raze. Not quite as powerful as the original weapon, the copy still gouged the crystal out in a line tracing the swing, leaving black flames in its wake.

  Another blast came in Hiral’s direction, and then a second without any pause, in the direction of where he’d originally Exchanged from. The Raze clearly expected him to swap places with the same weapon. It was a good plan. Showed the giant construct was paying attention and learning. Too bad for it, Hiral swapped spots with the blade that’d just exited its back end.

  As soon as he appeared in this new location, Hiral hit Rejection hard, reversing his direction compared to where he’d been going in the first place. In both hands, the true Seeker’s Unmaking pulsed with terrible power, black lightning and holy, white energy exploding along the blade to join the flames he’d borrowed from Seena.

  Even before Hiral swung, the sudden, drastic increase in gravity fractured the ground beneath the Raze’s legs as it struggled to hold itself up. That just lined it up perfectly for a certain, purple-glowing double to erupt from the damn ground itself like he’d burrowed the whole way there. For the uppercut that lifted him straight up and came like a thing out a legend.

  If Right ever got a tattoo named after him, this punch would be the inspiration. With tens-of-thousands of Str—along with a whole lot of anger—Right’s small, Auroran-Conqueror-covered fist lifted the whole back half of the crystal construct right off the ground, despite its size and the multiplied gravity.

  Fissures spread through the crystal back, legs spasming and twitching from the shocking impact.

  That was only the start of the bad news for the Raze, because that lift lined up the construct for two other attacks coming from above. The first was, of course, Hiral and his Seeker’s Unmaking, the blade coming up, over, and down in a powerful, two-handed slash. And, this wasn’t Hiral’s normal blade—if the Seeker’s Unmaking could ever really be called normal—but instead a hundred-foot-long, seventeen-foot-wide sword.

  With the blade came the might of the Edicts, all their rage and desire for revenge on behalf of the Avatar of Time fueling the frightening power. Time should’ve been with them. One of them. Part of the family. The Raze had tortured and imprisoned him instead.

  The Edicts would have their pound of flesh. Or, in this case, crystal. And definitely more than a pound.

  As for the second attack coming down on the Raze in time with Hiral’s strike, that could only be Yanily. In his Spear of Punishment form, his Skyfall was a terror to behold. The tip of the falling lightning bolt roared in the shape of a dragon’s maw as it came, dark energy trailing its murderous eyes. All around it, the ionized air glowed a blue-ish purple, while small channels burned ahead of the coming calamity.

  When Hiral and Yanily hit the back-half of the Raze, the crystal simply couldn’t stand up to the forces. Hiral’s blade cleaved through everything before his blade, at the same time Yanily and Right shattered their sections. The resulting devastation left the Raze with just four of its legs, but Hiral and Yan weren’t done yet.

  Both twisting in midair, the world went monochrome as the spheres of energy spiraled in front of them. From Yanily’s maw, an orb of utter darkness sprang into existence, any white forming with it getting sucked up and into Hiral’s blooming attack in front of his Seeker’s Crown. Likewise, the black energy Hiral’s Seeker’s Annihilation normally generated got sucked down to massively empower Yan’s Dragon Breath.

  As for Right’s contribution to all this? The double passed perfectly between the two, building, finishing moves, and he twisted in the air to face the Raze even as his momentum took in him in the other direction. Raising his hands, he gave the Raze a pair of twinned finger pistols.

  “Death-beam-duo,” Right said, like Hiral and Yan needed the introduction. Then he winked.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Not that the Raze was likely to hear that, with the aforementioned death beams erupting in rivers of torrential energy. Each easily ten-feet wide, the black and white beams pulled on each other like they had gravity, entering a tight spiral before slamming into the back of the unaware Raze.

  With a torso made of tougher stuff than the back-half had been, apparently, the construct didn’t simply fall to pieces, but was instead hurled forward between Nivian and Left who seemed to step out of the way. As to why they didn’t try to stop the Raze’s momentum, that answer came in a stampede of fifty-foot-around roots tearing through the ground in its direction.

  Like a huge school of dolphins, the roots breached the scorched ground before diving back under, only to reappear further ahead. More than that, the entire time they moved like this, the fresh, vibrant green of new life quickly blackened, as if an internal fire consumed them from the inside. Following that theory, the roots were little more than blackened charcoal within another second, before a fresh root shattered the ash to continue the charge.

  On an inevitable collision course with the Raze, the plants unquestioningly followed the command of their Mistress. Floating above the roots, Seena—back in her Aspect form—glowed with the solar energy of fire, life, and rebirth around her.

  And… something else.

  Something the roots seemed to realize before she did, beams of light piercing out of the new-growth vines. Like the purest rays of sunlight, it was suddenly very clear what was both destroying the roots and bringing them new life.

  Seena came to the realization at the same time, her body exploding with even more power as an advanced class washed over her. Across the green of her Aspect-flesh, sunlight punched out in beams of powerful light, though they didn’t seem to cause her any discomfort. Then, all at once, much of her green body vanished in a release of her solar power.

  In its place, she was a sun given the form of a woman, her features recognizable despite being made of solar-plasma. At her back, the same six, lily petals still hung like wings, though they went through the constant life, death, rebirth cycle over and over, constantly burning to a crisp and regrowing with each second.

  On her shoulder, Li’l Ur’s dark robe glowed golden, as did his crown, and he placed his hands, palms together, in front of him.

  “Embodiment of the Eternal Sun,” Seena said, her words coming with steam billowing from the corners of her mouth. If the Raze had any inclination to question or wonder what that meant, it didn’t have the chance to ask, the constantly transforming roots smashing into its flying body with a crash that triggered a localized earthquake. Some hit with the strength of new growth, a vitality to overcome every obstacle. Others, those burnt to a crisp, struck with utter disregard for their own well-being. At the end of their lives anyway, they attacked with abandonment. Finally, the third—and newest—kind of root transformed into pure beams of concentrated sunlight, lancing and twisting with surface-melting intensity.

  Roots were destroyed or sheared off as the Raze’s crystal body tore through the first layers. By the fourth layer, it slowed. By the seventh, it stopped. With the eighth came a tidal wive of force crushing down on it and pushing it back in the opposite direction. Spike-like roots thrust themselves over and over again against he Raze’s body. Stronger than Tomorrow’s brass, or hotter than the final sun above, the attacks rained down like hammers at the same time the roots pushed the Raze back toward where it had come.

  Right into Left and Nivian who came at it from behind. Like they’d planned the move, the two came in with perfect synchronization, each slamming a shoulder into the small of the Raze’s back from either side. At the same time, their outside hands reached down to grab the crystal giant’s legs by the back of the knee.

  Then, with a titanic lift, the pair scooped up the larger construct. Up, and over, with their backs and legs arching to slam the back of the Raze’s head down with a perfectly bridged suplex. The ground cratered for a mile in every direction at the impact, while the stone directly beneath the Raze collapsed down to form a bowl nearly a thousand feet deep.

  With Left and Nivian rolling to the sides and sprinting away, the bell-rung Raze had to wonder just what was next. It didn’t have to wait long, with Seeyela appearing in the air directly above it.

  Lining herself up with the eclipse-shrouded final sun, the Daughter of the Last Sentinal held her Fangs of the Lady out to either side of her as she seemed to float in the air. Eight eyes glowing red in the center of the dark sphere, there was an ominous pulse of solar energy from her, before one dagger arced up, while the other arced down.

  Arms working in tandem, green lines carved through the air as her daggers moved, quickly connecting into a circle hanging there with her. Almost in slow motion, eight lines spread from the circle –behind the circle and across the sky?—like the legs of a great spider stretching from horizon to horizon. Seeyela, floating like an emblem on the belly of the beast, darkened, then seemed to drift backward until she vanished entirely from sight.

  Not that there could be any mistake thinking she’d left, the place where she hid suddenly collapsing in on itself similar to what Hiral had done with the small moon. What was different here, though, was the blackhole forming in accelerated time. An orb, no larger than a grapefruit, swallowing energy, matter, and even time itself, like an endless, voracious hunger.

  From its back—two of its faces still planted into the ground—the Raze slammed its arms and weapons down into the ground to brace itself. It wasn’t going to get sucked up into an attack like that a second time. It learned.

  Too bad for it, it didn’t learn fast enough. Seeyela’s attack wasn’t designed to pull the Raze up.

  She sent it down, instead, like a gift delivered from the heavens.

  Realizing too late what was coming, the Raze tried to roll to the side to get out of the way, but the pin-prick of darkness—compared to the size of the crystal giant—was just too fast. The tiny blackhole made contact about a fifth of the way in from the side of the Raze’s chest.

  Even Hiral winced as a circle of crystal simply vanished, carving a hole straight through the Raze before the giant managed to finish its roll out of the way. Behind, right where it had just lay, the drop of darkness continued burrowing down and through the ground, consuming anything within five feet of it. What looked like a drop of darkness had just proven to be one of the most devastating attacks the party had landed.

  When the Raze finally rolled and pushed itself to its feet, a huge chunk of its chest was missing—like a beam had passed cleanly through it—leaving a three-quarter-circle missing. The staggering step didn’t help the Raze portray an image of strength, either.

  The powerful roar that came after, though, along with the surge of expanding solar energy that sent spikes, whips, and blades of crystal tearing from the ground for a one mile radius, though? Yeah, that showed just how far the Raze was from being out of the fight.

  Thirty seconds until the end of the world.

  Wanna Support Rune Seeker? Check out the Ebook and Audio Here! Thanks for your support:

  Amazon:

  Audible:

  Rune Seeker, Vol. 1 by J.M. Clarke, C.J. Thompson, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble?

  Rune Seeker (book 1) Book By Jm Clarke,cj Thompson, (Hardcover) | Indigo

  If you wanna chat about the book? Come to discord!

  If you're already on that discord? Go to "Get Roles" and you can get Rune Seeker updates, if you want :)

  Note my patreon does not have Rune Seeker chapters.