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Chapter 35 - A Desperate Gamble

The Guardian's molten eyes locked onto Elara, and the ambient roar of the fire was subsumed by the sound of its focused rage—a deep, grinding rumble that vibrated through the floor. It raised its colossal obsidian fist, magma dripping from the knuckles, preparing to bring it down and erase the insignificant gnat who had dared to touch its prize.

Elara was frozen, her face a mask of terror in the flickering firelight. She had saved the Echo, but in doing so, had signed her own death warrant.

Kai saw it all in a horrifying instant of clarity. His body screamed in protest, his arm felt like a dead weight, but there was no time for pain. He pushed himself off the pillar and charged, his mind a maelstrom of desperation. He couldn't block that fist. He couldn't survive another impact. He had to do something else.

"The thermal shock!" Ben's voice screamed from across the room. "The acid created fissures! The integrity is compromised!"

Ben was right. The acid hadn't dissolved the obsidian, it had weakened it, creating a network of hairline cracks around the Guardian's head and shoulders. A weakness.

The Guardian's arm began its descent.

Kai changed his trajectory, no longer aiming for the creature's center mass. He slid across the ash-slicked floor, the heat from the ground scorching through the knee of his jeans. He was aiming for the Guardian's leg, specifically a large, acid-etched fissure near its knee joint.

He came in low, under the creature's notice, a gnat at the feet of a god. As the Guardian put its weight onto that leg to deliver the killing blow to Elara, Kai thrust his saber forward with every ounce of his remaining strength. He wasn't aiming to cut; he was aiming to plunge the cold steel of the old cavalry saber as deep as he could into the superheated magma core through the weakened obsidian hide.

The tip of the saber hit the fissure. The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.

It was not a clang of steel on rock, but a violent, explosive hiss. The cold metal hitting the molten core created a thermal shock far greater than Ben's fire extinguisher ever could. The obsidian around the point of impact didn't just crack; it shattered.

The Inferno Guardian let out a shriek that was a thousand times worse than its roars of anger. This was a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. Its leg buckled, the obsidian shattering outwards in a spray of razor-sharp fragments. Magma gushed from the wound, sizzling and hardening as it hit the cooler air.

The massive fist, which had been plummeting towards Elara, went wide, crashing into the marble floor with enough force to splinter the stone and send a tremor through the entire chamber.

The Guardian was crippled, brought down to one knee, its molten lifeblood pouring onto the floor.

"Now!" Kai roared, wrenching his superheated saber free.

Ben didn't need telling. While the Guardian was consumed by its own agony, he broke cover, his lab coat flapping behind him. He sprinted across the open ground, snatched the glowing book from the floor, and clutched it to his chest like the most precious thing in the world.

"I have it!" he yelled, his voice triumphant. "We have to go! The entire structure is unstable!"

As if to punctuate his words, the domed ceiling above them gave a deep, groaning crack. A massive chunk of stone and plaster, the size of a car, broke free and plummeted to the floor, crashing down exactly where the Guardian was kneeling and raising a titanic cloud of dust and smoke.

They didn't wait to see if it was dead. Kai grabbed Elara's arm, pulling her back from the center of the room. "This way! Back the way we came!"

Together, the three of them ran from the chamber of the Inferno Guardian, leaving the wounded behemoth to its fate. They plunged back into the burning halls, the roars of the enraged, wounded monster echoing behind them, now joined by the scream of a building tearing itself apart. The escape was not over. They still had to get out of the library before it became their tomb.

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