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Determination brightened the Brute’s face.“He’s going to die anyway if we do nothing.”He headed resolutely towards the walkway leading to Simmons’s tank.

A metallic tang flooded Evander’s nostrils.His head snapped around.

Musgrave’s eyes flared with a corrupt, inky darkness.

Evander’s pulse stuttered when he detected crimson strands within the dark energy growing around the professor’s fingers.

Is thatBlood Magic?!

Musgrave raised his hands and released the torrent of vile magic directly at Viggo.

Evander cursed and barely managed to block it with a barrier of flames and ice.

Musgrave’s companions rallied and launched their own attacks at the Brute.

Relief sang through Evander when the forces they’d unleashed dissipated harmlessly upon contact with Viggo’s skin, his immunity to magic attacks rendering their assault utterly ineffective.

Fear flickered across Musgrave’s face for the first time.

Evander seized the moment and channelled his elemental powers as he advanced towards the professor.Fire and ice gathered in his palms, the conflicting temperatures creating a crackling distortion in the air.He unleashed the combined attack not at Musgrave himself, but at the walkway beneath his feet.

Though he wanted nothing more than to question the professor about “I,” he knew there would be no negotiating a surrender with the man.Musgrave was too far gone for that.

Musgrave moved as metal warped and twisted beneath him.It gave way before he could make his escape.He screamed as he lost his footing and plummeted towards the darkness below.

Evander cursed when his fall was arrested by a swarm of shadow creatures.The professor’s face was a mask of unhinged rage as he rose amidst them, his body wreathed in corrupt magic.

“Do you think I can be defeated so easily?”he snarled.“I have consumed the gift my master gave me!His power flows through me now!”

Horror twisted Evander’s gut as shadows streaked with crimson extended from Musgrave’s body and lashed out in all directions, striking Met officers and mages with devastating force.Two were thrown over railings, their cries echoing as they fell into the abyss.

Leon barely managed to snatch them with his wind magic, Griffiths and Shaw hanging on to him grimly where he leaned precariously over a railing.

Evander’s heart pounded heavily as he clocked the expressions of the officers and mages scattered around the laboratory.Though many were still standing and fighting bravely, they swayed and trembled from exhaustion from fighting the dark mages and their shadow creatures.

I need to end this!

The elements responded eagerly to his wish as they bubbled and strained inside his chest, begging to be unleashed in their full, devastating glory.The lid he kept on his Archmage powers strained under the violent pressure.

Viggo had reached Simmons’s tank and was taking it apart with his bare hands, metal crumpling as he dismantled it piece by piece.

Musgrave howled in outrage and sent shadowy tendrils converging on the Brute.

“Enough!” Evander snarled.

He released the restraints on his powers.

Magic surged through him with such force that it lifted him several inches off the ground.His skin glowed with an inner light, his eyes transforming into pools of pure elemental energy that shot out pale beams.The air around him began to swirl and crackle, the temperature fluctuating wildly as fire, ice, wind, and earth formed and reformed around his body.

The chamber trembled, dust falling from the ceiling and walls.

Musgrave’s eyes rounded in terror at this display of raw power.

“What—what is this?!”

“This,” Evander said, his voice echoing around the lab as it resonated with devastating elemental force, “is what a true Archmage can do.”

He brought his hands together in a thunderous clap.The resulting shock wave exploded outward, tearing through the chamber with devastating precision.Shadow creatures were obliterated in its path, their corrupt essence purged by the purifying force of Evander’s combined elemental magic.