Chapter 6: A Hero's Sacrifice

Titanoboa ran in long strides down the opposite end of the corridor from which he'd come, leaving behind the bodies of the Trainees. He checked over his shoulder and gave Ronan a look that seemed to suggest a deep regret and disappointment, and Ronan tried to offer a silent agreement that while the fallen could not be saved, if there were survivors, he and Titanoboa would need to save them.

"What are these things?" Ronan asked, fighting to keep pace with Titanoboa. The two dodged debris as an explosion struck at the wall to their right. Amazingly, the sharp stone missed the two.

"I don't know," Titanoboa confessed. "But they are in great numbers and are immune to our magic."

Ronan was stupefied at this information, and Titanoboa had to grab the Trainee by the shoulder to get him moving again. At the end of the corridor was a staircase leading down to the dining hall, and the large, magically sealed doors to the library. Right at the tip of the stairs, Titanoboa collapsed to a knee.

"Master Titanoboa!" Ronan shouted, planting his hands under the man's large arm to try and help him up. But the veins around Titanoboa's wounds were turning black, as was his blood. With his one good bloodshot and strained eye, Titanoboa looked at Ronan in complete shock and awe. Titanoboa dropped his Nightblade sword.

"It's their weapons," Titanoboa said, his brow bent in agony. He pressed a hand to the dark sludge emitting from a slash across his chest. "Their weapons must poison us somehow."

He clutched Ronan's shirt so hard that it ripped at the chest, and Titanoboa struggled with the words, "Don't get hit by their black metal weapons. Run, Ronan. Run."

From the end of the corridor they had come from, a dozen giants strode towards them, and in the staircase Ronan heard the echo of clanking armor rushing up the steps.

"I'm not leaving you," Ronan said determinedly, holding the short sword out in front him. The sizzling from his serpent mark grew stronger, and the tip of the sword started to spark with embers.

"No, go!" Titanoboa insisted. Using the blade of his sword, Titanoboa forced himself to a standing position. "I'll hold them off for as long as I can."

The veins of Titanoboa's body were protruding, black, and disgusting, but the man still forced both of his hands together to the army of giants striding towards him and the young Ronan. With a shout that was a mixture of a dying man's desperation and a warrior's fighting fury, Titanoboa cast an enormous fireball that knocked Ronan off his feet so that he landed by the loose stone to the library.

Titanoboa's fire filled the corridor, and for a moment, he thought he had annihilated the enemy force.

But the metal-clad giants continued their march with weapons drawn, and didn't so much as accumulate a scratch from Titanoboa's magic. Titanoboa raised his sword at the giants, but his arm gave out, and he fell to the floor face first.

Ronan shifted the loose stone and pushed as hard as his fractured ribs would allow him. Ronan's sweaty palms pushed and pushed against the cold stone, but he was unable to move the stone to the library's hidden section. More giants came up the stairs to his side.

Just as Ronan shoved the stone forward in a lunge that made him holler, he saw his own blood drip to the floor in front of him.

It took a second to feel it, but a black crossbow bolt had been lodged inside his lower stomach. Then the pain hit, worse than anything he'd ever felt before, and he gripped the large crossbow bolt with both hands and looked out in fear at the giant by the staircase who had shot him. Enemies continued their approach from both directions.

Titanoboa sprung back up. He swiped his sword one final time, slicing off the shaft from the bolt in Ronan's stomach.

"Get out of here while you still can," Titanoboa coughed. "Only you can fit."

Titanoboa stuffed Ronan's tall frame through the hole to the library, and Ronan crawled inside.

He heard Titanoboa grunt through exasperated swings of his sword. The strikes rattled pathetically against the giants' armor.

As if reading the young Nightblade's mind, Titanoboa shouted, "Don't stop, Ronan! Keep moving!"

Ronan's bloody fingers scratched against the frigid passageway as he scampered along. Had Titanoboa not cut the crossbow bolt, Ronan would never have been able to squeeze through.

Moving out of pure instinct and adrenaline, Ronan replaced the stone in the hole and slammed an empty bookshelf over the small passageway, feeling guilty that he had left Titanoboa behind, but grateful for the brave man's sacrifice.

Ronan observed his injury. The tip of the crossbow bolt remained in him, and he feared that its black metal would infect him with the evil magic that Titanoboa had succumbed to. Ronan quivered as he heard the pounding at the library door, and he hoped that the magic sealing the door would hold.

What he would do with the time the magic door granted him, he was unsure.

Bleeding, Ronan limped into the library.

Yvette emerged from the study quarters with one of her elegant hands holding her neck.

Blood trickled between her fingers, and the same black magic that had overtaken Titanoboa began to seize her beautiful face.

"Ronan," she said, tripping over fallen books and grabbing onto a desk with both hands for support.

Ronan saw that her neck had been hacked into. Through twitching eyes, Yvette placed both of her hands around Ronan's head. She pressed her forehead to his and said, "You must warn the other Nightblades. Tell them that the Hellsworn Army has come."

She repeated herself, almost in complete disbelief, "The Hellsworn Army," then added, "Only you can do this."

The silver snakes on each of her forearms glittered and glowed, and behind the Serpent Sorceress appeared a magical tear in the very air itself, as if she had cut through the library and created another area altogether. Ronan knew from his readings that she was casting a portal, though how or to where he didn't know.

The next thing Ronan saw was black. It was a black that was deeper and darker than his loneliness, or any nights he'd spent starving under his cold sheets.

It was a blackness of pure and unknown evil.

As if he'd fallen out of the highest tower in the Temple of the Serpent, Ronan landed in the bright and sunny streets of a town that was only just waking to the cock's crowing.