ShadowBound: The Need For Power-Chapter 381: The Green Calamity (16)

The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was heavy.

Barbara’s expression didn’t twist into rage, nor did she rush to retort. She simply stood there, the weight of Mystica’s words washing over her like the quiet after a thunderstorm. Her eyes—still wild, still glowing with that eerie hybrid gleam—narrowed as her lips curled into something different now. Not amusement or mockery.

But recognition.

Then she chuckled—low and husky.

"Well damn," Barbara murmured, gripping the handle of her axe a little tighter. "I knew there had to be a fire under all that elegance. Guess I finally found it."

She rolled her neck, the bones cracking audibly. Lightning flickered across her tattoos once more, flowing down her shoulder and wrapping around her forearm like a coiled serpent.

"But you’re wrong about one thing," she said as she pointed the axe toward Mystica. "I don’t hate you because of rumors. I hate you because I see it now. All that pain? All that loss?" She stepped forward slowly. "You wear it like a crown—and you still choose to fight like this. Pretty. Flashy. Dressed like you’re walking a ballroom instead of a battlefield."

She scoffed, bitterly.

"You’ve suffered—and still chose to act like your pain makes you better than the rest of us. Like you’re the only one with ghosts in your past. Like that gives you the right to stand taller than those of us still crawling through the mud."

Her boots crunched the broken stones beneath her as she closed the distance, green lightning sparking off the ground with each step.

"I don’t care how many elements you’ve mastered. I don’t care if you’ve been to hell and back. You’re still soft to me."

Mystica didn’t flinch. Her chin stayed high, her posture regal despite the blood trailing from her brow and the exhaustion creasing her eyes.

"You call me soft," she said quietly, summoning a blade of glimmering mystic light to her palm. "But you still haven’t put me down."

Barbara grinned again.

"Oh, I’m going to. I just wanted to hear that pride crack first. But now..."

Her voice dropped into a growl.

"Now I want to break it."

She surged forward without another word, the ground exploding behind her from the force of her sprint. Lightning trailed her like a second shadow, her axe raised in a spinning arc of green light and earth-born fury.

Mystica didn’t move until the last second.

Then—shift.

A flash of wind twisted her body just out of range, the axe cleaving through the air beside her in a screaming rush of momentum. She retaliated instantly, her myst blade slicing upward toward Barbara’s midsection.

Sparks flew.

Barbara twisted, catching the strike with the flat of her axe. The collision sent a blast of energy outward—a shockwave that shattered the windowpanes of buildings still barely standing around them.

They moved like blurs now—like two forces of nature colliding in an endless storm. Every strike from Barbara came with the weight of titans, her muscles rippling with hybrid power, her axe screaming with lightning that scorched the air. Mystica met each blow not with strength, but with elegance—spells folding around her like a second skin, turning her body into a dance of elemental control and precision.

Barbara swung low—earth magic flaring from the ground, sending jagged stone spikes bursting upward.

Mystica responded with a downward wave of her hand, flooding the terrain beneath her with freezing mist. The stone froze mid-rise, and she leapt from its surface, backflipping through the air before launching a wave of sharpened water spears toward her opponent.

Barbara spun through them, deflecting some with her axe, letting others slice across her skin with shallow cuts. Her grin didn’t falter. She thrived in pain.

Mystica hit the ground and immediately twisted her fingers into a sigil. A dome of glowing runes snapped into place, pulsing with layered myst—light, wind, and water. A defensive fortress.

Barbara didn’t hesitate. She charged.

And with a savage roar, she brought her axe down in a crackling overhead strike that carried the force of a collapsing mountain.

The dome held—but the impact split the street in a spiderweb of fractures. The air screamed with pressure.

Inside, Mystica clenched her jaw. Her body was trembling. Her myst reserves—still vast—were draining faster now under the constant pressure of both offense and defense.

She looked up at the silhouette above her. The woman who called herself a savior. A hybrid filled with hatred for waste. For beauty. For softness.

Mystica’s eyes narrowed.

Then, slowly, she rose inside the protective dome. Her form glowed brighter—calm, focused.

"Let me say this," she said, her voice carrying through the crackling barrier, clear as bell-silver and thunder-backed. "You don’t get to dictate the value of my power. You don’t get to judge how I carry my past."

The runes around her flared, spinning faster.

"I didn’t come here to prove myself to you. I came to protect this city. I came to fight for those who can’t."

Her hands spread wide—and the runes detonated outward in a sphere of pure force, blowing Barbara back through the air like a leaf in a gale.

Mystica hovered up from the ground, her aura now shining like a second sun, her voice cold and unrelenting.

"And if you’re so desperate to see what happens when I stop being pretty and start getting serious..."

She snapped her fingers.

"Then you’re about to find out."

The sky above Tynoon rippled—not with clouds, but with power.

Mystica descended slowly from the air, her eyes glowing brighter than ever. Her violet aura thickened into a visible cyclone of light and myst, trailing behind her like wings of living energy. No flourish. No beauty. Just raw force made manifest.

Barbara stood amid shattered debris, her axe still in hand, her grin a little tighter now. Blood streaked down her temple from where she’d struck a stone pillar, her breathing heavier—but her eyes? Still wild. Still hungry.

"Heh," she muttered, spitting crimson onto the cracked street. "There it is. There she is."

Mystica didn’t answer.

She moved.

With no warning, the air around her folded. A momentary warp in space as Mystica snapped forward in a burst of light-speed motion—teleporting inches from Barbara’s face. Before the hybrid could react, a stream of pressurized wind blasted from Mystica’s open palm, slamming into Barbara’s gut like a cannonball.

Barbara flew—lifted off her feet, smashing backward through a collapsed structure. Stone and wood burst around her in a storm of wreckage.

Mystica followed, her form vanishing and reappearing in midair above the debris cloud. Her arms moved in a circle—fire and ice spun together, forming a disc of superheated steam with razor-edged frost spirals. With a downward flick, she hurled it.

The disk sliced into the rubble just as Barbara emerged—cutting deep across her shoulder and collarbone in a sizzling, shrieking line. The hybrid snarled, electricity flaring instinctively in defense—but too late.

The fire-ice weapon exploded, throwing her back again in a cyclone of frostbite and blistering heat. Her scream ripped through the air as she hit the ground and rolled, steaming blood leaking from her wounds.

Mystica landed hard, both palms flaring again—this time with glowing chains of light. She slammed her hands into the earth, and from the stone beneath Barbara, those chains shot up, anchoring her limbs and torso with blinding speed.

Barbara struggled. Snarled. Her muscles bulged against the bindings, lightning coursing through her skin. But the chains pulsed with anti-myst runes, burning into her with every movement. Her tattoos flickered violently—fighting to regenerate—but for once, they lagged.

Mystica walked toward her, cloak shredded and billowing with wind.

"No more clever speeches?" she asked coldly, her voice like sharpened silk. "No more wisdom about how I’ve failed?"

Barbara spat blood again and grinned through her pain. "Oh I’ve got one more."

Then slammed her heel into the ground.

A surge of nature magic erupted from the earth—violent and explosive. Roots, jagged and twisted, burst from beneath, impaling upward. Mystica leapt back, barely dodging the ambush. The instant her feet touched down again, Barbara ripped free from the light chains with a roar of pain and fury, her lightning crackling into overdrive.

She charged, wounds still open, muscles torn—but rage and regeneration driving her like a beast.

Mystica cast a quickward—barrier of wind and water—but Barbara broke through it in one strike, her axe spinning in a vicious arc. Mystica leaned back, the blade narrowly missing her face, slicing a few strands of hair. She twisted sideways and flicked her hand—glass daggers formed from solid light appeared and shot forward.

They pierced Barbara’s side and thigh—each one detonating in tiny bursts of pressure. Barbara howled, staggered—but kept coming, bringing the axe around with terrifying speed.

It struck Mystica’s forearm as she raised it to block—a hastily formed shield of hardened water barely reducing the impact. Pain shot up Mystica’s arm, the shield shattering, and she stumbled back.

Barbara pressed forward. Two steps. Three. Axe raised again, crackling green lightning gathered along the blade.

Mystica clenched her jaw, twisted her body, and drove her boot into Barbara’s knee.

There was a snap—a wet, cracking sound—and Barbara buckled with a sharp gasp. Her leg bent awkwardly, blood spurting from the joint.

But she didn’t stop.

Mystica barely dodged the next swing—felt the wind from the blade graze her cheek.

She responded with a brutal point-blank burst of compressed air that hit Barbara full in the chest, lifting her off her feet and hurling her backward through a half-destroyed wall.

Mystica didn’t stop. She thrust both hands out—and the rubble Barbara had just hit collapsed inward, pulled by a gravity well of wind-infused myst. The stone and wood caved in, collapsing onto Barbara with a thunderous crash.

For a few seconds—silence.

Mystica stood there, breathing hard. Her body burned. Her arm throbbed from the blow she’d taken. But her focus was unshaken, her aura still glowing like a blade in the dark.

Then the debris shifted.

And Barbara erupted from beneath it in a scream of rage and defiance.

She was covered in blood now—her shoulder dislocated, her leg still mangled—but her body stitched itself together even as she moved. Her muscles twitched with overdrive regeneration, veins glowing faintly beneath the skin. Her runes now flickered red—a last-ditch hybrid override, forcing her body past its natural limits.

"You want brutal?" she snarled, limping forward, dragging her axe behind her. "Then let’s be monsters, sweetheart."

Mystica’s expression sharpened.

She crouched low, hands to the ground—and a ring of arcane glyphs spread outward in every direction. Multi-elemental. A Primordial spell matrix.

Barbara paused just for a beat—but that beat was all Mystica needed.

The glyphs erupted—sending dozens of jagged ice spears, columns of fire, shockwave blasts, and vacuum slashes in all directions. It wasn’t one spell. It was ten—cast simultaneously, layered, controlled like a symphony of destruction.

Barbara screamed, twisting and dodging—leaping over a wall of flame, sliding beneath an ice spear, deflecting a light blast with her axe. But the vacuum slash clipped her side, tearing a chunk of flesh from her ribs. A fire column caught her left shoulder, cauterizing as it burned. One of the myst bolts struck her thigh and exploded, blowing her leg nearly out from under her.

Still—still—Barbara fought forward, limping, wheezing, blood-soaked and furious.

Mystica stood in the heart of her storm, body glowing, face fierce with absolute focus. No more calm. No more glamour. Just wrath made flesh.

She formed a final spell—a lance of pure elemental convergence. Fire, ice, lightning, and wind spiraled into a screaming spear.

She hurled it.

Barbara screamed back and charged into it.

The lance struck her chest dead-on—exploded—and sent her body flying into the side of a shattered tower.

Stone cracked. Dust fell. And for a moment... the world held its breath.

Mystica stood there, panting, hand still extended. Her cloak in tatters. Her face bruised. Her fingers trembling.

She didn’t smile or celebrate.

Because she knew.

The fight wasn’t over yet.

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