My ex-mother slammed into an invisible barrier of force conjured by the Erudite, who had appeared in front of me, lazily spinning his staff in one hand.

The matriarch staggered back, thrown off by the fact she hadn't just ripped through whatever force was in her way, and the Erudite's voice rang out.

"That is enough. You will not come into my home and make war."

Instead of the calm, almost lazy and uncaring tone he usually held, his voice was firm and cold, like the ether crystal that made up his throne. I staggered back as his presence seemed to practically bleed ether. I'd seen him teleport before, and spoken to him countless times, but there was a power and dignity in him now that I'd never seen before. My own ether pool started to restore itself faster, by the sheer dint of being near such a powerful source of ether.

"No!" the matriarch said, and this time, her voice had lost all of its dignity. It was an almost bestial roar. "He. Is. Mine. Children, take the Kindling back! Bring him to me."

In a flash, the two eldest of the Dreki who had been near her on the platform appeared next to me, having circled around the Erudite's force wall. They reached their hands out, only for an angelic blue and silver energy to throw their hands back at the last moment.

Professor Caeruleum strolled out of nowhere onto the sands behind and to the left of the Erudite, their amulet held in one hand. Professor Alydia, who I hadn't seen in the fight thus far, stepped up to the right of him, her wand's tip held aloft. The Erudite planted his staff in the ground, looking at the matriarch.

"Matriarch," he said, and his voice was measured and respectful. "I understand you are upset. I am willing to transport you back to the Isle of Dreki, and overlook this faux pas."

The matriarch stared at him for a long moment, then thrust her hand in the air and shouted a word I didn't know. It wasn't in the bloodline language of dragons, nor was it the words of power that were needed for magic, and yet it had parts of both in them.

"I take what is mine!"

All across the arena, my ex-siblings, cousins, and other members of the Dreki family burst into pillars of smoke as their bloodlines activated in unison. Their power flared brightly as it began to stream into the matriarch of the Dreki.

The eldest two, who stood opposed to Caeruleum and Alydia, slammed to the ground, dead, their bloodlines torn out of them entirely. I felt something in me, trying to rend my bloodline from my body and send it into her, but unlike the others, she was not my mother. She might have laid my egg, but she was not my mother.

I'd made that clear in the eyes of the law. I'd announced it to the world for Magyk to hear. The only thing I hadn't done was fully separated myself in my heart. There was still a part of me that viewed the members of the Dreki family as, well, family.

But this woman was not my mother. And she never would be.

The pull on my bloodline shattered, and something in it seemed to morph and shift.

In the same instant, the matriarch screeched, and her voice had even less humanity in it. "Mine! Mine! MINE!"

Her last mine was a thunderous tear that split the ground beneath us, sand exploding out in every direction. Wings ripped from her back, showering the entire area with blood.

Not the wings of a dragon, but bony, skeletal things, with eyes on the tips, wriggling and pulsatile masses of red flesh instead of membrane, and bands of dark metal that looked like iron rust mixed with gold running through the cracks.

The Erudite's eyes went wide, and his voice rang out over the entire arena.

"Aberrant! Sound the alarm!"

I'd known my ex-family had many of the warning flags from the very first day I officially learned about the Creep and the creation of the Aberrants, but… I somehow hadn't expected this.

The matriarch continued to transform, her eyes rolling out of their sockets and affixing themselves to strings of the same metal. Instead of looking human, they formed the scalene pupils of a dragon. Six more eyes bloomed from her head, also on stalks of metal.

She opened her mouth, and her teeth warped into wriggling tentacles, each one with a metallic tip at the end, like a wicked barbed fishing hook. Her neck elongated and row upon row of the tentacle teeth began to spread down her throat.

Her body was swelling and growing, and within moments, she'd rapidly ballooned to the size of a two story home, with six sets of limbs, each one a warped amalgamation of human, dragon, and something… other.

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Though it wasn't obvious to most, the most terrifying part to me was the shift in her bloodline. After consuming the power of all of my siblings, her power had swelled to a height that would have let her match or exceed the Divine King of Shen Long, with his immense mix of powers. But it had still been draconic, still the same, familiar power, just in a different magnitude.

Then she'd begun to transform into an aberrant. Her bloodline had gotten even stronger, until I was certain that she'd have been able to defeat the Divine King of Shen Long, but it had also become warped. Just like her body had been transformed into a horrifying amalgam of blood, flesh, bone, and metal, her spirit had transformed into something completely other.

And, as all aberrants did, she opened the way for demons. I recognized chrysaors like the ones I'd summoned in class, rot demons like the ones I'd faced with Wesley, musclebound humanoids like the one I'd killed with Salem, but they weren't the only demons summoned. A dozen or more other varieties, ranging in strength from weak enough for me to be able to crush without magic to strong enough to have killed Gerhard twice over, began to fill the arena.

The Erudite, Caeruleum, and Alydia were already moving into action. The Erudite was booming out a spell with an incantation so complex and multilayered that it gave me a headache just to hear it. Magic struck down at the aberrant that had once been the matriarch of the Dreki family, and both of them were gone.

Caeruleum was weaving their affinity and bloodlines to form barriers, locks, and seals across the crowded arena stands, magical barriers that would allow people to pass through, but stop summoned demons from escaping.

Alydia was doing something with her own magic, and spinning circles of golden sparks appeared in my vision, outlining the clearest path through one of Caeruleum's seals and out of the arena. The spell was even complete with timing that I needed to follow to escape, continuously updating as the battle shifted.

The rest of the arena wasn't idle either.

Fable had begun conjuring up portals all over the arena, each and every one of them leading into his shop's small sitting area. The area seemed much bigger than I'd ever seen it, with couches and chairs I'd definitely never seen before. The moment a portal was created, Fable would vanish, appearing near another crowd of people and tearing open a new gateway to the shop.

Charm, on the other hand, was bounding between boxes and through the air, his true silver destiny marks shining with radiance, his sword releasing rippling waves of song that split demons in twain. He landed in front of a bug-like demon that wore shimmering armor of quicksilver and released bounding sprays of frost that were about to kill some of the now-powerless Dreki in the stands. The demon smelled strong enough to have matched the ember-roc in power, but with a single swing that blazed with sound and silver, Charm cut the demon in half. Then he was off again, leaping up a row and to another box.

Professor Toadweather was letting out a hag's cackle, loud enough that I heard it over the transformation, and began calling up creatures of her own. Elemental forms lashed out at demons, demons of her own joined in the violence, and angelus formed out of spun glass and light took to the fight, tearing through demons with wanton abandon. She seemed to be summoning stronger and stronger creatures with every flash of her wand, and I managed to catch a moment of her summoning a fire elemental that smelled of heat so intense that he would have been a match for Gerhard on his own.

Shé Rui had already drawn a blade and swept out, cutting at nearby demons while standing in front of Yushin. His partner, the tall wizard woman, was slamming her staff into the ground and chanting something, while Yushin, Jackson, and Salem grouped together, each striking out at demons and pushing their way towards the exits, letting Yushin's guardians battle stronger demons like a massive, oozing being made of mushrooms and black mold that attacked out at them. An immolation spell was mixed with a sweeping arc of life-enforced wind, and while the demon didn't die, it grabbed the monster's attention long enough for my friends to slip past.

The high priest of Effervesce's church was exploding with gold and silver energy as he transformed into a sunbeam and appeared in the box of spectators, where I caught a glimpse of him blocking the blow of a massive, muscled demon that held a whip of dark flame and venom in his hand. Power lashed out as the pair began to duel, the elderly priest channeling his god's power to drive away the forces of darkness from innocent people.

Professor Emir and his husband, the Seven Sword Knight, were acting in harmony, blades and black flame cutting swathes through the demons, protecting many of the foppish aristocrats. The High King's part-giant bodyguard was dueling against a demon that resembled a spider with the upper half of a human, only with four arms instead of two, and still complete with eight eyes. Each of the spider demon's arms held a sword that spun with incredible speed, but the bodyguard was matching her.

To my surprise, the king himself leapt into the fight against the spider demon, proving the power and valor that had seen him elected through so many moots. A crown shaped mark on his right bicep glowed with the too-perfect bronze-like color of orichalcum, and he seemed to be drawing on it to infuse his words with power, though I couldn't hear him. Each word seemed to slow, stagger, or confuse the spider demon, and his bodyguard was able to cut off one of the demon's hands.

The noble from Shen Long was dancing through the fight with speed and elegance, her smooth movements almost reminding me of Shé Rui, though perhaps even more intense. A higher grade perpetual core, perhaps, or even a nascent immortal. She found herself facing off against a serpentine demon within moments, and whipped out with strikes of water from daggers that seemed to leap into her hands.

Professors Careuleum and Alydia, both of whom were still on the sands with my dead eldest siblings, shifted into action. Caeruleum was still unsteady, tired by the effort of conjuring such an absurdly powerful seal, but they still began to chant a healing spell, one that was designed to cover a truly massive area judging from the feelings I got out of it.

Professor Alydia, on the other hand, rose into the air and conjured a ball of light the size of a horse over her head. It began to send scouring arcs of hungry, devouring light into the crowd, seeking out the defenders who were locked in battle with powerful demons. No one strike killed, or even seriously wounded, any of the demons, but it tilted the scales in the favor of the defenders, and she was doing it across the entire battlefield at once.

But all of the powers being thrown around inside the arena paled in comparison to the battle in the sky.

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