Twelve Seconds

Nickel had arrived. 

'Five seconds...not bad.'

The wraith clicked his tongue. 'Too slow.' 

It was incredibly fast but at the same time, it might not have been enough. Twelve seconds was not much left to work with. 

So Noble did not waste what she had. The rain of metal was actually the collected swords from soldiers who could no longer make use of them. 

The small nick in Counsel's hand that Noble had made had given her an idea. The tiny wound was not much and wasn't bleeding due to the protective black covering, but it did mean that his skin was not impervious to attack. 

What one nick couldn't do...perhaps a thousand could.

Under Noble's direction, Nickel had shot the weapons into the air like a deadly hail. 

The first flying sword was easily blocked by the Master. The blade flew in an arc before aiming back to its original target like a homing device. By then a second and a third had joined the assault. 

Drawing deep into her reserves of essence, Noble guided each of the swords toward Ender's dark form. 

'Here goes nothing.' Noble's eyes swirled. 

As Noble rained the attack down on her opponent, she found it was both similar and vastly different from any telekinesis she had done before.

The closest she had ever come to trying this particular skill was when painting a wall years ago. Like the brushes, each sword needed to move independently as well as in tandem for maximum effectiveness.

In an extra layer of difficulty, all the blades had to hit the right spot on the moving target to do any damage at all. 

The task nearly splintered Noble's mind with all the calculations and adjustments, but with clarity, she pressed through the pain and remained focused. 

If Counsel could order Nightmare Creatures around, she would respond with a small army of her own. 

'And stop him before he gains control of more minions!'

Already the abominations were stirred into action by her attack on their master. Only a wave of fire stopped them before they could close in and distract Noble from her goal. 

But even withouth the creature's assault, the mental strain was too much. Being a quick study was not enough for so many blades.

Almost immediately Noble released five of the weapons from the aerial attack. The amount of essence she was burning through coupled with her unfamiliarity with so many moving parts, made the floating Awakened have to limit herself to only twenty piercing blades whizzing through the air. 

Each hit was more vicious than the last, and Ender could not block them all. He stubbornly protected his chest as the mundane blades hacked at his onyx protection. 

Small chips of black rock fell to the ground like shavings around the man's body. Ender took a step back with a grunt. But it was no use, the swords were there to greet him in his retreat. 

Despite the lack of elegance, Noble persisted in her quest to finish off the traitor before her. 

"Sarai, get ready!" Noble signaled her friend. 

The redhead raised her spear and waited for an opening while still keeping Counsel's thralls back from the fray. There wasn't much time left. 

'Five. Four. Three...' Noble hoped silently that the Tyrant would be late. She wasn't ready! 

Then it happened. With a sword heading straight for his eye and no way to step back, Ender raised his arm to swat the blade away like a troublesome fly. 

"Now!" Noble screamed, putting all of her effort into the barrage of attacks. 

Sarai's spear flew from her hand directly at the bulge in Counsel's chest. The tip was lit with incandescent flames, ready to burst through the weak spot and destroy the source of Ender's power. 

"No!" Counsel turned his back, willing to risk another cut across his back rather than open his chest to her fury. 

But the spear disappeared into a rain of sparks before it ever hit Ender's body. It had been a feint. 

A sharp tip plunged into Ender's chest and he came face-to-face with a third attacker. The dark-haired man had been waiting for his exact moment. 

He glared at Counsel mercilessly. "There you are! Did you miss me?" Nick mimicked the man's sing-song voice back at him. 

"Derik?!" Ender gasped as recognition dawned in his eyes. "You're supposed to be dead!" 

"That won't stop me from killing you," Nickel replied. "Hope we never meet in the afterlife."

Lightning and thunder happened simultaneously. The ground, which was cracked and battered, shook violently and finally gave way. 

As Noble had predicted, the southern half of the kingdom began to sink. Before their eyes, what had been a glorious expanse of Crestfall became the chasm Noble was all too familiar with. 

Ender's Deep had formed. 

After making sure Sarai was safe, Noble turned to see Nickel twist the knife before removing it. The dagger dripped with purple venom of its enchantment. 

The stolen heart of the Tyrant broke with a soft tinkling of glass, sending wisps of tenebrous mist into the air like forgotten dreams.

Counsel screamed as he tried to stem the loss of power with his hands. 

The black shell coating his skin shattered, allowing each and every cut and nick to ooze with blood. 

"Rot in the Abyss," Noble sent all of the swords at the dying man. Rather than bounce off, they dug deep, creating a grotesque pin cushion. 

Ender tumbled backward before falling into the bottomless chasm. 

Noble felt his emotional signature be snuffed out once and for all from this world. 

She released a breath that she didn't know she had been holding. 

A short way off, Nickel dropped to one knee. "That was for Kosi." 

Since Noble didn't get the notification from the Spell, Nickel's venom must have gotten credit for the kill. 

That was just as well. 

She only hoped the poison was as painful as what he had inflicted on the innocent Symncus. 

The rest of the kingdom continued to shudder as more of the world was consumed by the forming gorge. The falling rocks whispered as they fell, calling more things to follow in their stony footsteps. 

The Tyrant continued to descend as well. Even with Kraai's catastrophic lightning strike, the massive creature had not slowed his speed. Perhaps he could not, or simply didn't want to. 

Thankfully, it seemed to still be after Ender... or what was left of him. 

After sheering off the top of the palace with one of its legs, the Lord of the Mountain continued into the deep before crashing into the south wall of the chasm. The impact compromised the integrity of the stone, sending a second avalanche to follow the first. 

The Lord's six legs pushed off of the falling debris as its huge wings blew away the dirt free from the creature's hulking body. 

One of his large feathers fell from his back, floating down as he took to the air once more. 

The Tyrant was so huge that it would take a moment before it could turn to make another pass at the humans. As it circled over the field of the southern plan in a wide arc, Noble, Sarai, and Nickel stood on the precipice with grim expressions. 

"What do we do now?" Nickel shook his head. "We've lost the poison and the bait..." 

Noble looked at the sky then behind her toward what was left of the city-kingdom. The battle was raging as the smell of death wafted toward them. 

Her face was solemn. 

"What do we do? We do what we came to do. We kill the Tyrant. We save the Kingdom. And We conquer this nightmare. There is no other option."