The lifelong, unseen barrier within her snapped. Power, hot and violent and immense, poured through the breach. Sel'dor shrieked at her wrists, then shattered, its acid evil no match for the blazing strength of her magic. She threw back her head as the magic rushed to fill her. It didn't feel as she had expected it to. It wasn't black and evil and twisted as her mother had always raised her to believe magic would be. It wasn't sickly sweet and corruptive like what the Mages wove. It was electric and exquisite, glorious and frightening all at once. She reached out for more, drawing it to her effortlessly until she felt as if her body was gone and she was living flame.

She was an infant goddess who had just discovered that she could do more than merely rail against those who had wounded her. She was a young tairen who had just discovered the purpose for the venom in its fangs. She was magic, pure and hot, endless and deadly.

Her mother was gone. And the Eld were to blame. She would destroy them.

With a roar of fury, Rain swung the heavy, deadly swords in his hand, gutting his two opponents, then whirled to fling searing Fire at a knot of ten more trying to get to Ellysetta. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Primages turn towards Gaelen, blue-white Mage Fire gathering in his palms. The snarled and plowed a rumble of Earth beneath the Solarus floor. Floor tiles buckled and shifted. The Primage staggered. The globe of Mage Fire veered sharply left, scything through half a dozen Eld. Blackened, half-consumed corpses dropped to the ground.

Without warning, a blast of power slammed through Rain, so fierce and so raw it made him stagger. From half a continent away, he heard the savage, triumphant roar of the tairen in his mind, and an instinctive echoing cry tore from his own throat.

Ellysetta. He spun to face her and froze in his tracks.

Power crackled around her like a nimbus. Her long, fire-kissed hair blew back away from her face on an unnatural wind and her eyes blazed like twin suns as she faced the Elden warriors.

"Shei’tani," he whispered. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes as her incandescent form rose up into the air.

"YOU WILL DIE FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!”

Her voice was a crack of thunder. The Solarus's crystal chandeliers shivered a delicate cry of warning a bare instant before the ground shifted violently. Glowing with angry green Earth, soil erupted into the room and a giant fissure opened up in the marbled Solarus floor. Shrieking, several Elden warriors tumbled to their deaths. Massive chunks of plaster, glass, and stone rained down from the dome and ceiling, crushing indiscriminately.

Lightning seared the air. Through the shattered roof, Rain glimpsed roiling black clouds, marbled with blue, white, and red lines of power. In mere seconds, Ellysetta had summoned a raging tempest in the sky. Violent fists of wind tossed grown men like matchsticks, flinging bodies through the air. Torrential rain poured down, vaporizing into mist as it touched the fiery aura surrounding Ellysetta.

A barrage of barbed sel'dor arrows darkened the sky. The Eld soldiers had recovered from the shock that momentarily gripped them all.

"Don't harm her, you fools! The master wants her alive!" The shout came from the Mage battling Bel and the remaining members of Ellysetta's quintet. He sent a blast of blue-white Mage Fire to intercept the arrows. The Mage Fire consumed over half the arrows, but the rest continued on their deadly course.

Rain flung a shield around Ellysetta, but the protective bubble collapsed inward as soon as it formed, absorbed into Ellysetta's glowing aura.

She swept one arm forward, and a fiery five-fold weave of magic shot from her fingertips. The arrows disintegrated instantly. Another five-fold weave seared the air, this one aimed directly at the Mage standing beside the Well of Souls.

"Ellysetta! Nei!" Rain flung out his own weave to weaken and misdirect hers, but his magic fell away from hers like tinder curling back from the heat of a blaze. He could only watch in horror as Ellysetta's weave sliced through the air with lethal accuracy.

The blazing shaft incinerated the Primage's shields as if they were paper. In slow motion, Rain saw the large, charred black hole appear in the Mage's chest as the five-fold weave burned through him, saw the look of disbelief on the Mage's face as he realized his prey had slain him, then saw the man's flesh bulge outward as Ellysetta's magic ignited the concentration of power held within the Mage's body. Rain barely managed to shield his eyes before the Mage exploded in a violent blast of light, heat, and vaporized flesh.

Rain waited for the agony, waited for Ellysetta to shriek in horror and pain as the death she had just caused claimed her own life and then his.

The pain never came, nor did its corresponding deadly price.

The Mage's final scream still echoed amid the din of battle as more tendrils of Fire shot out from Ellysetta's fingertips and scorched through Elden warriors. Bodies flamed like kindling. The Elden warriors who had rushed in with such triumph scattered in fear and confusion, screaming as tongues of Fire and a hail of red Fey'cha rained down on them, decimating their numbers in seconds.

Dozens fell before Rain heard the remaining Primage cry, "Retreat!" The Eld invaders fled back into the black chasm that had spawned them, leaving half their number dead and dying in the ruins of the Great Cathedral's Solarus.

Ellysetta's hand shot out. The red-robed Sulimage leapt for the Well just as a sizzling bolt of power incinerated the spot where he'd been standing. The remaining Primage wasn't so lucky. Rain shattered his shields and cleaved him in two with one savage blow. Demons howled and swept out of the Well, circling and consuming the Mage in seconds. Shredded blue Mage robes and the jeweled sash that had circled his waist fell in a small heap to the floor.