Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

’The spears don’t work. The blades don’t work. I can’t hit a moving target.’

So, she decided not to target him.

She targeted the entire room.

Seraphina slammed both of her small hands palms-down onto the obsidian floor.

She didn’t release the dark mana as projectiles but released it as a heavy, atmospheric flood.

A tidal wave of absolute, pitch-black shadow erupted from her hands, rolling across the floor of the grand hall in a massive, expanding circle. It moved with the speed of an explosion.

The darkness didn’t rise into the air; it clung to the floor, spreading across the stone, rolling over the piles of gold, coating the entire floor of the cavernous room in a thick, knee-deep layer of liquid shadow.

The Trickster, halfway through weaving his escape portal, felt the shadows touch his boots.

Instantly, the gravity in the room shifted.

The shadows weren’t just dark; they were incredibly heavy. It was as if the floor had suddenly become a giant, supercharged magnet.

The demon’s legs buckled under the immense, crushing gravitational pull. He collapsed onto his hands and knees, the breath driven from his lungs. The heavy shadows curled around his wrists and ankles, locking him to the floor like iron chains forged from collapsed stars.

”No!” the Trickster gasped, straining his ancient muscles, desperately trying to push himself up. The gravity was so intense it was beginning to crack the marble tiles beneath his hands. ”Release me! You insignificant, half-formed whelp!”

Seraphina slowly stood up.

She walked across the room, stepping smoothly over the layer of heavy shadows that did not hinder her movements at all. She walked past the horrific, blood-stained remains of the merchant boy, her violet eyes burning with absolute, uncompromising judgment.

She stopped three feet away from the struggling, pinned demon.

The Trickster looked up at her.

His mask of arrogant theatricality was entirely gone. His face was twisted in a rictus of pure, desperate terror, the black curse marks pulsing erratically.

”Wait,” the demon wheezed, blood dripping from his nose as the gravity threatened to crush his internal organs. ”Wait! We are kin! We are of the dark! You serve the Abyss, just as I do! Spare me, and I will take you to the High Court! You could rule them! You could be a Queen who rules over the dark!”

Seraphina looked down at the pathetic, begging monster.

She didn’t feel any kinship. She didn’t feel any temptation.

She felt exactly what Kaelus felt when he looked at corruption, the necessity of eradication.

”I already have a Papa,” Seraphina whispered, her dual-toned, echoing voice devoid of all mercy. ”And he says that the likes of you are to be extinct, vanishing from this world.”

She raised her hand, leveling her small palm directly at the Trickster’s head.

”However...” Seraphina made a brief stop between her words before she looked at the monster down on her feet with cold, merciless eyes that were devoid of any warmth. ”It’s not that I’m doing this for Papa’s sake; it’s because you truly disgust me.”

The dark mana in the room began to frantically swirl, compressing into a single, hyper-dense, blindingly violent sphere of pure annihilation directly in front of her palm. She didn’t need to throw it. She was standing at point-blank range.

The demon squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a final, pathetic, gurgling scream as the sphere reached critical mass.

And then, the heavy, iron-wrought double doors at the far end of the grand hall exploded.

They did not open or break. They detonated, and shattered into a million pieces of twisted metal and splinters by a concussive shockwave of dark, freezing mana that made Seraphina’s own power feel like a gentle breeze.

The temperature in the massive hall plummeted from freezing to absolute zero in a second. The remaining piles of gold frosted over instantly.

The very air around the room cracked and groaned.

Standing in the ruined doorway, wreathed in a maelstrom of catastrophic, world-ending killing intent, was Duke Kaelus von Nacht.

He had not teleported or used a spatial gate.

He had tracked the residue of the Trickster’s spatial magic across the city, followed the faint breadcrumbs of his daughter’s sudden disappearance, found the hidden entrance to the underground catacombs beneath the Verdant Gate, and had slaughtered his way through every magical ward, trap, and barrier standing between him and the grand hall.

He was breathing heavily, his dark canvas tunic torn and stained, Requiem drawn and dripping with the frozen, shattered remains of magical constructs.

His glowing, violent violet eyes swept the room.

He saw the cage of terrified children. He saw the horrific, blood-soaked remains on the dais.

And then, he saw Seraphina.

He saw her standing over the pinned, struggling demon, her eyes pitch-black and glowing violet, her hand raised, preparing to execute a high-tier annihilation spell. He saw the entire floor coated in her oppressive, heavy dark mana.

Kaelus froze in the doorway.

The terrifying rage radiating from the Archduke stuttered for a fraction of a second, completely derailed by the incomprehensible visual before him.

He had expected to find his daughter weeping in a cage, expected to have to carve the monster to pieces to save her.

Instead, he found his six-year-old child holding an ancient, high-tier demonic entity hostage, currently in the process of acting as its executioner.

’She... she caught it?’ Kaelus’s mind blanked entirely. ’She pinned it to the floor? My daughter is currently dominating a demon of the abyss?’

Seraphina heard the explosion of the doors. She turned her head.

The moment she saw Kaelus standing there, the familiar, towering, protective figure of the grumpy hedgehog, the feral, instinct-driven rage that had possessed her soul instantly snapped.

The adrenaline crashed.

The overwhelming, intoxicating ocean of the Supreme Dark Core violently retracted, slamming back into the tiny, dormant singularity within her chest.

Her eyes returned to their normal, dark brown color.

The heavy, gravity-crushing shadows coating the floor instantly evaporated into mist.

”Papa!” Seraphina cried out, her voice returning to its normal, high-pitched, childish tone.

The sudden release of gravity hit the Trickster like a physical blow. The demon gasped, filling his crushed lungs with air. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t look at Kaelus or at Seraphina.

With a desperate, frantic surge of his last remaining reserves of magic, the Trickster slammed his hand against the floor.

A spatial tear ripped open beneath him. It wasn’t a clean, stable portal; it was a jagged, unstable rip in reality. The demon practically threw himself downward, falling into the spatial tear just as the portal violently snapped shut, vanishing from the grand hall in a flash of sickly green light.

He had escaped.

Barely.

But Kaelus didn’t care about the fleeing monster.

The Archduke dropped Requiem to the floor. The legendary blade clattered against the stone.

He sprinted across the massive hall, ignoring the gold, the cage of children, closing the distance to Seraphina in a blur of motion. He dropped to his knees, sliding across the stone, and swept her entirely into his arms.

”Seraphina,” Kaelus gasped, his voice breaking completely, pulling her flush against his chest, burying his face in her hair.

He was shaking. The Reaper of the North, the man who had torn through the catacombs like a force of nature, was trembling uncontrollably.

He ran his massive hands over her arms, her back, checking frantically for injuries, for burns, for any sign of the horrific bloodshed that stained the dais.

”I’m okay, Papa,” Seraphina whimpered, the reality of the situation finally crashing down on her six-year-old nervous system. The smell of the blood, the terror of the cage, the exhaustion of channeling that much mana- it all hit her at once. She buried her face in his neck, her small hands gripping his torn tunic. ”I’m okay. He didn’t get to hurt me.”

”I have you,” Kaelus breathed, closing his eyes tightly, resting his chin on top of her head. He tightened his arms around her, forming an impenetrable, physical shield. ”I have you. You are safe. The Bastion is here.”

He knelt there in the center of the ruined, treasure-filled hall, holding his daughter, surrounded by the weeping, rescued children in the cage, as the heavy, panicked bootsteps of Sir Lucas, Sir Boris, and Sir Gallahan echoed down the corridor, rushing to join their Liege Lord.