Storm clouds rolled across the skies as the serpents summoned them. Lightning thundered in the air, heralding the destruction that was to come.

Darien used a short chain from one of his pockets to loop through the crossed tails of the metal serpents of the amulet. Hanging the magical item around his neck, he freed his hands. Turning himself weightless as he'd done during his visit to the tower of Balocen, Darien pushed off the ground with a burst of magically summoned wind, hovering eight feet above Lendus.

Reaching out both hands toward the serpents, he pulled on the amulets they carried, snapping the chains holding them to the serpents' head armor and pulling every one of the magic granting items to himself. The amulets spaced themselves at even intervals around Darien, floating in a rotating orbital ring.

With the amulets no longer in their possession, the storm clouds summoned by the serpents faded away to nothing.

"I would speak with you," Darien called to the serpents. He reached out to either side before pushing his hands slowly forward and down. The orbiting amulets returned to their former owners, and when Darien spread his fingers, the chains reformed, securing the amulets to the head armor and granting the serpents their powers once more.

"What are you doing?" Lendus screamed. "They were helpless!"

Darien ignored him.

"I have come seeking your help," Darien continued. "One of your kind has been imprisoned with a magical lock I cannot break. I need your help to free her."

"We didn't come here to help the serpents!" Lendus snarled in hatred.

"I did," Darien replied, bracing for the attack. He pushed with the wind and floated back to the ground to stand before his enemy. "I won't help you destroy another city like Balocen."

"How do you know about that?" Lendus questioned. His eyes narrowed and his scowl deepened as he realized the truth. "You had the amulet all along."

"Cordin gave it to me before he died," Darien admitted. "He told me to give it to his apprentice, but I held onto it for safe keeping."

"I never really cared if he lived or died," Lendus admitted. "I only wanted him around long enough to fulfill our dreams of conquest. He'd have dropped his guard one day or simply succumbed to age. Either way it didn't matter, the power would have been mine then, along with the world."

"In that case, I'm glad I never gave it to you," Darien replied.

"You've been in my way since you first arrived," Lendus growled through clenched teeth. "You killed Cordin before our plans could be realized. You jeopardized everything. I only kept you alive as long as you were useful to me, but that time has ended."

Lightning and flames shot toward Darien as Lendus chanted and threw his hands out toward him. Darien was prepared, a shield appearing between them to block the energy and fire. Pushing hard with both hands, Darien curved the shield until Lendus was sealed in a sphere.

The apprentice whispered magical words, and Darien couldn't contain the explosive blast of red colored magic Lendus called forth. The shield shattered, knocking Darien onto his back and tearing up the barren soil in a shockwave from Lendus' position.

Becoming weightless again, Dairen took to the sky, calling down a thunderstorm around him to strike at Lendus. As he's done during the scouting mission to the city of the serpents, Lendus quickly said the words and raised his hands to shield himself from the storm.

Chanted words and an outstretched hand to the ground let Lendus call forth a giant vine. It grew from the soil with impossible speed, rushing up into the sky to snare Darien by the ankle. Lendus pulled down on the empty air with both hands, and the vine responded according, retracting into the ground and dragging Darien down to slam hard onto his back.

Lendus continued his assault in an attempt to catch Darien before he could recover. A jet of fire spewed from both of Lendus' hands. Darien touched the ground and grabbed a handful of soil. Rolling away from Lendus, he magically pulled the ground with him, rolling dirt and stone around him like a blanket.

The fire struck Darien's hastily constructed cocoon, blasting away the outer layers, but they quickly reformed. Darien used his control of the ground to open a passage underneath him and dropped out of his stone and dirt shelter. He traveled through a subterranean passage he created as he went, emerging from the ground behind Lendus.

The sound of dirt and stone moving aside for Darien to emerge alerted Lendus, and the apprentice spun around chanting a lightning whip into existence in his right hand. Darien had very little time to dodge as the electrical weapon came down on him. Becoming weightless, Darien kicked off the ground and glided to his right, missing the lightning whip by a very narrow margin. Energy arced across the ground as if seeking a target on its own with glowing fingers of electricity.

Darien clapped his hands together once, and massive slabs of stone tore free from the ground on either side of Lendus, coming together to catch the apprentice between them. Lendus had an instant to say two words, throwing a hand out to either side. When the stones hit him, they shattered on contact with his open palms.

"Is that all you have?" Lendus sneered. He held up his hands and began another enchantment to call upon the magic around him. The lightning whip reformed, coiling into a tight sphere over his right hand. Touching the sphere with his left, Lendus continued whispering until he suddenly raised his left hand over his head. The sphere expanded, wrapping its energy completely around him. Holding both hands out to either side and closing his eyes, Lendus continued adding to the sphere's power.

Lightning tore at the ground, leaving scorch marks and gouging out holes in the dirt. The sphere continued growing in size and began tearing away everything around it. Lendus stood on a mesa as the rest of the ground was violently removed.

Darien knew if something wasn't done immediately, Lendus would tear apart the entire range of the Velacian Mountains. Darien reached to the skies and called upon the storm, clouds surging in at his command. He didn't try using any lightning as he suspected it would be absorbed by the sphere, perhaps amplifying its energy. Instead, Darien brought down the rain in a veritable waterfall.

As the raindrops fell, Darien controlled and shaped them, forming the drops into a watery snake. When the translucent reptile bit down on the lightning sphere surrounding Lendus, the energy was absorbed, channeled through the conductive body of the snake until the entire sphere had been completely devoured.

A gesture of Darien's hand picked up Lendus and hurled him against a giant boulder. Using what he'd seen Lendus do, Darien called forth a vine and wrapped it around Lendus' wrists and ankles, tying him to the boulder.

Before Darien was able to put anything over Lendus' mouth, the apprentice uttered a few words and spat flames like a dragon. The vines burned up, freeing him from the boulder. Chanting quickly, Lendus lifted the boulder and threw it at Darien.

Barely getting his shield up in time, Darien was staggered by the impact, his boots unable to prevent him from sliding backwards across the puddle covered ground. The boulder shattered, creating a cloud of stone dust and temporarily obscuring Lendus from view.

Darien waved a hand, and the wind ripped away the dust cloud, but Lendus was no longer there. He spun around, looking for his opponent. Darien knew he was at a severe disadvantage. Lendus had been trained while Darien was acting mostly on instinct from either what he'd seen other magic users do or from the books he'd retrieved from Balocen and hastily read. Despite holding his own, Darien knew one slip could turn the battle against him.

The slip came a moment later when Darien found Lendus crouched behind a rock, whispering into his cupped hands. The breath of the apprentice became cold, billowing out in clouds of frost and collecting in his hands. When Lendus stood, he threw out his right hand and sent a chunk of ice one foot in diameter sailing straight toward Darien.

Raising his shield as he'd done before, Darien easily blocked the frozen projectile. It shattered against his shield in an explosion of frost and shards of ice. He dropped the shield to counterattack, but he didn't see the trailing ice ball until it struck him full in the chest. Darien felt three of his ribs break on impact, and he was tossed backwards, tumbling over the ground. Each and every violent contact with the rock covered soil sent waves of pain exploding across his chest.

Darien's tumble was finally halted against the trunk of a dead tree. He could barely move. Pain filled his being to the point where he thought it was more present in his body than his own flesh and bones.

"You may have the power of the amulet, but I have years of study under Cordin Oakstaff," Lendus taunted as he raised his hands to administer the killing blow. "It's time for you to die."

Darien's desire for relief caused the amulet to magically suppress his pain, and the searing agony melted away from him. He still couldn't breathe effectively with his broken bones, so he worked on healing his ribs. The bones fused back together with incredible speed, but Darien's concentration was so focused on the repairs, he hadn't noticed Lendus' final attack.

As a scythe of red energy wrapped in an aura of smoky blackness appeared over Lendus' head, Darien knew he couldn't raise any kind of defense in time as the magical blade came plunging down.