The dark tunnel wasn’t dark for very long, with the proverbial light at the end very much present.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I reached that light. Monsters, mostly. Some epic challenge involving combat, danger, and a liberal use of my powers. The usual.

  In hindsight, it should’ve been obvious.

  Featureless, devoid of walls, floor, or a ceiling, and as white as can be.

  The same room that was always there at the end of every trial.

  Except this time, lacking a godlike projection of Dominion smiling down upon his chosen, promising Blessing and Boons.

  It was just me, alone.

  “Um… hello?” I said.

  A message flickered into existence.

  Do you wish to begin your Convergence Trial?

  I drew in a slow breath and confirmed mentally.

  Commencing Ascension Trial.

  The white walls were quickly replaced by blue skies and puffy white clouds. Far below, an ocean stretched to the horizon.

  For a moment, I worried I’d fall—that the Trial would commence with me surviving the ordeal—but in the next second, a floating island materialized beneath my feet.

  It was like the world was building itself from the ground up.

  First, there was only rock, and as more of the island materialized, it became obvious I was standing on a cliff of some kind, attached to a taller peak.

  Soil and dirt were next. Saplings sprouted and shot upward, and the whole left half of the island became a forest. The other half morphed into grassy plains and small ponds that peppered them.

  Behind me, the mountain my cliff was attached to became a volcano, with molten lava spewing from its peak.

  The transformations seemed to end, leaving me alone in this space.

  “Interesting,” I muttered. “Now what?”

  Was this a puzzle of some kind? Or…

  The answer came in the form of rippling air and the materialized form of a dragon in the distance.

  A very familiar-looking Obsidian Dragon, wings flapping as it hovered in place.

  That was more like it.

  I cracked my neck. “Well, then. I’ve taken you down twice before and I can do it again. Bring it.”

  I didn’t doubt the Trial would get tougher later on, but as far as starts went, this wasn’t bad at all. I was getting pretty good at mincing these motherfuckers.

  And then another dragon appeared, right next to it. Identical in every way that I could tell.

  “Alright…Two, then.” A bit more of a challenge, but still doable. This was more like the Trial I’d expected.

  And then came the ice serpent. The very same Leviathan I fought in the Cataclysm Dungeon. The thing was so big, it occupied most of the plains on its own.

  As if that wasn’t enough, Cyrus appeared right after, commanding an army of 5,000 frozen undead.

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  My prior optimism had vanished without a trace, replaced by dread.

  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I whispered, mouth going dry.

  All of them? All at once?

  Yeah. I was fucked. Sure, I might be stronger now, and sure I’d fought and defeated all of these guys before, but that was with Aerion, Richard, and let’s not forget the human sledgehammer that was Eskil.

  How the hell was I supposed to take them out alone?

  My mounting panic was cut short when the dragons spotted me, making a beeline to my location, their roars informing the whole island of my presence.

  If Cyrus and his army hadn’t known where I was before, they certainly did now.

  As did the damned snake.

  I barely had time to make it to a boulder before dragonfire melted the air and everything else around me.

  Even behind the rock, the heat was unbelievable, and experience and instinct alike told me that unlike Galia’s flames, if those touched me, I was as good as dead.

  I gritted it out with clenched teeth. I’d fought them all before, but never like this. Never stacked together, and certainly never with no one at my back. I’d almost forgotten how much I’d come to rely on Aerion for backup.

  That said, I had more power than ever—soul aura, siege bolts, my combat awareness sharpened by countless battles, and I wasn’t exactly idle as the dragons pelted me.

  I fired off a siege bolt core high into the sky like a mortar shell. The cylinder sailed upward and fell back to the ground on the other side of my boulder.

  It missed, of course. Hitting aerial targets wasn’t going to be that easy. But it did get the dragon to dodge, canceling its attack.

  That bought me time enough to roll out from cover and fire a handful more siege bolts in a spread.

  All of them missed, and the glow of fire in the dragon’s throat was enough to send me scrambling back behind my boulder.

  “Wait, dragon?” What happened to the other… Oh shit!

  I looked up to find the other dragon hovering above me, about to rain hellfire down on my little hidey-hole.

  Too far for a soul attack to do any damage, I launched a handful of siege bolts on instinct, barely even taking the time to aim.

  The dragons weren’t as stupid as I’d thought, because it clearly recognized the cores as dangerous, aborting its attack to veer out of the way at the last moment.

  The cores all sailed through the air and impacted the mountain, cracking it with lethal sonic deadliness.

  In our prior encounters, the dragons had been forced to fight head-on. They’d stupidly chomped on the siege bolts, but I now realized that was more because they had no other option. On the ground, they were ungainly and slow.

  In the air, they were like penguins in water. They’d dodge everything I threw, circling until exhaustion or panic claimed me, and then they’d strike.

  I couldn’t let this continue. Not only was it a losing battle, it was giving Cyrus and the serpent time to close the distance. I didn’t stand a chance against all of them working together.

  At least if Aerion were here, I could’ve distracted them while she leapt onto their backs.

  But I wasn’t Aerion. And even with my Grace, one mistake meant a fall to my death.

  And I somehow doubted the Trial was forgiving of mistakes.

  Besides, even if I killed one of them from midair, gravity would still finish the job. This was going to be harder than I’d thought.

  My boulder was growing redder and redder by the moment and making cracking sounds that didn’t sit well with me at all.

  It didn’t help that the fuckers were working together as a team, alternating their fire, halving the window I had to strike back.

  “Overgrown lizards,” I muttered, waiting for the fire to die out. The timing was tight, but this was my only chance.

  I hadn’t been twiddling my thumbs waiting them out, though. The ground was littered with pebbles, and I’d shoveled handfuls into my inventory. Siege bolts might not have been precise enough to hit them in the air, but precision didn’t matter if I could just get them to explode.

  They weren’t bullets. They were bombs, and close was good enough.

  The moment the flames stopped, I broke cover. The dragons shrieked at me, as if sizing me up.

  Too confident, too slow.

  I launched a dozen siege bolts like a machine gun. The dragons banked, but not enough to escape their blast radius.

  I followed up with a volley of rocks and pebbles, firing in a wide shotgun spread.

  Most missed. Several struck. That was more than plenty.

  One bolt exploded against the dragon’s wing, vibrating it apart. Another burst against its belly, tearing a hole through it. The dragon shrieked, lost balance, and plummeted, smashing into the ground below.

  “See ya,” I muttered, watching it shatter like glass.

  As tough as obsidian was, it was brittle as hell. These dragons weren’t just figurative glass cannons—they were quite literally exactly that.

  With one down, I turned my attention to the other, expecting a blind rush of rage.

  Instead, it climbed higher, vanishing into the clouds. Out of sight and out of range.

  “Fuck.”

  Now I’d have to watch my back for when it inevitably dropped out of the sky.

  Nothing I could do about that, though. I had bigger fish to fry—the Ice Serpent had reached the base of the mountain, dragging its enormous body up to my location.

  The enemy army wasn’t far behind.

  If I let them encircle me, I was dead meat. My only advantages were my position and mobility, and I’d be damned if I didn’t exploit that to its fullest.

  I was not going to die here.