Unbound

Pit dove under the body of the monstrosity, but the thing moved faster than before. It burst free of the Lurkwood Crawler’s tendrils and rippled across the field, it’s every undulation trailing that liquid magic. A bulbous club caught him across the side, and Pit felt the dull explosion of ribs snapping well before the pain settled in. He shrieked and rushed forward anyway, aiming for the centipede-thing’s legs.

The second strike came faster than the first, but this time Pit was ready. He evaded it, barely, spinning his long body and flexing his left-side wings hard, bashing into the club-arm and throwing it wide. Pit kicked out, slashing into its exposed underside. The blow was devastating—a vicious disembowelment that spilled chunks of obliterated stone onto the torn field. Finally, the monster staggered, as if it were feeling something approaching pain.

“Take that you—” Pit trailed off as glyphs formed across the stumbling centipede-thing. “What?”

The glyphs flashed, filling with the same light that shone from the monster’s limbs, and from all around them rubble began to move. It rushed toward the beast, slapping into its open wounds, filling the gaping holes where Pit had shredded its form. Even some of the larger blocks that had fallen on the nearby tents were dragged, like iron towards a magnet, fast enough that Pit had to dodge out of the way. Soon, the roots wrapped around them tightly, binding them together.

The fortress is fueling its body, Pit realized. I need to get it out.

Before he could move, the thing’s severed arm gleamed with liquid Mana. Glyphs shone and pieces of rubble and root grew at its shoulder, forming two new scythe arms, each one bigger than the last.

“Oh no.” Pit backed up. His attacks weren’t doing anything if it could just regenerate from the rocks around them. He frantically flipped through all the tactics and combat strategies he’d read, grasping for something, anything that could stop it. I could wake up Felix…no. Not doing that. He’s busy. What do I know? Pit juked left and then right, ducking beneath the creature’s threshing swings. The monster responds to threats by evasion. Maybe…if I use ranged attacks I can control its movements.

Ouranic Dominion!

Pit flew backward on a burst of wind Mana, out of range of the creature's attacks. It blurred forward, but he didn’t waste time either.

Volley after volley of icy spears launched from the Mana Gates in Pit’s outspread wings, until the air was filled with the chill of its magic. The first dozen hit the root centipede head on, bursting into tiny electrical storms that ravaged the greenery of its hide, and the second dozen fouled its frantic footing. With a hiss and lunge, the monster avoided the rest, its long body twisting around the impact of the first few volleys.

It advanced again, but Pit fired again.

Again.

The root centipede twisted over and under the projectiles, but always to the left until Pit started walking. Then the ice spears shot closer and faster, burning through his immense store of Mana but pressing the beast backward.

Forcing it toward the open wall out of Fortress Fenwald.

Stone burst and glyphs shone, repairing all the damage Pit managed to inflict, but it was working. It roared, but it couldn’t get around Pit anymore. Not until he ran out of Mana, at least, and he had plenty to spare.

Just a few more steps you stupid, giant—!

The monster surged forward, scythes and club twisted upward as it brought the fight directly to Pit.

Dawn’s Advent!

Four gleaming golden crescents whipped forward from Pit’s wings, each angled slightly different, and they took out three of the monster’s legs—but the thing wasn’t aiming for Pit. It leaped over him and slammed into the far wall, where it skittered up the sides of the fortress to the battlements. The conscripted soldiers who, up till now, had merely gawked at the monster, now found themselves face to face with its gnarly fury.

Three were sliced clean through before Pit could act.

“Tempest Fugit!” Pit screeched, and unleashed a torrent of ice spears. The impacts blasted across the monster’s back, tearing fresh holes in it and grabbing its attention once more. “That’s right! Face me!”

The creature turned and roared out its defiance, trembling with a strange, incoherent anger. It leaped from the wall, angling itself toward the keep entrance.

“Beef!” Pit warned.

A chitin barrier met the thing’s massive body, but it was too heavy and shattered through it—only to meet a second, smaller barrier with a resounding crash.

"Get off, bug!" Beef hollered, just as Hallow—who had gotten huge somehow—tackled the thing’s tail. The centipede monstrosity bucked, twisting itself up and over to attack her.

Ouranic Dominion!

Pit burst into motion, air Mana surging beneath his four wings and the sound of a storm growled in his wake. He slammed into the centipede mid-twist, catching its wriggly center between the stumps of ruined legs—and flew straight up.

INTRUDER.

It fought, curling onto him and driving its sharp root legs into his shoulders and back, but Pit screamed through the pain. The bone scythes shaved feathers from his wings and the club caught him across the elbow, but he was just a touch too small—and the creature a touch too big—for it to reach him fully.

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Pit screeched again, pushing his Skill harder and harder as he lifted more than he'd ever lifted before.

INTRUDER.

The fortress fell away beneath them both as Pit climbed past the highest point of Fortress Fenwald.

VIOLATION.

The moment they sped higher than the turret’s roof, the creature went crazy. Its two faces spun on its humanoid torso as liquid light poured from its face, its eyes, mouth, and the rents in its body.

EXTRACTION ATTEMPTED.

AUTHORITY REJECTED.

—ERROR—

TERRITORIAL MEASURES ENABLED.

A song of throbbing rot surged from below and Pit barely had the time to clock it before the inner bailey was overcome by a tidal wave of foul liquid. The swamp rose up, sweeping away the Lurkwood Crawlers before erupting into the sky—straight into Pit.

WARNING!

Your Health Has Dropped Below 20%!

Pit screeched, wing’s faltering as the near-solid jet of water tore through fur and flesh, and his health dropped precipitously. The creature squirmed out of his grasp, kicking free and falling all the way back into the center of the fortress. It cratered the already wounded earth, rupturing the swamp-fed muck.

Immediately, it began to thrash and crawl out of the crevasse.

“No!” Pit cried out, flipping his body around as the water beam cut across his hip and tail. “No more!”

Bloody and sore, Pit burst free of the watery jet and dove.

More beams of swamp water shot at him, but he rolled around them, banking left and right without ever once giving up his gathering momentum. He flared Ouranic Dominion with everything he had left and stretched out his talons. He touched down with all the force of a bus-sized bomb.

A geyser of fetid water, mud, and sundered stone shot upward, as Pit speared through the monster’s back.

The chasm swallowed them both.

In the skies above Fortress Fenwald, Vess, Yintarion, and the Grim Nightshade fought. They were a blur among the expansive blue, separate from the struggles far below. Spectral, draconic wings spread from Vess's back as she dodged a salvo of elemental strikes from the small spirit. Yintarion wove a fluid dance amidst burning bolts of shadow, light, and fire as he beseeched the Grim.

"You must listen," Yintarion insisted. “Joining your power to ours is the only way we can match what comes! With the Green Wilds at our side, the Dragons can face down even the Ruin!”

The Grim Nightshade said nothing, its black eyes speaking of a vast and merciless world as it met Spear and spell without apparent effort.

Vess would not give up, however, not while Yin still saw a chance. She maneuvered, kicking off her own floating spears as she dodged the Grim's attacks while attempting to pin it down and drive it further to the ground. So high up, they had too much space to maneuver, and the Grim was too small and too fast—too powerful.

We must control the field! Yin, you—!

A large monstrosity careened past them, writhing atop the shoulders of a bloody Pit, and drew the lot of them to a standstill. A beam of water skewered upward, blasting them both before they plummeted back down to the fortress. The both of them crashed so hard Vess could feel vibrations through the air.

She gaped at the impact, fearful for her friend, and was nearly impaled by a shard of flaming ice.

"You are not enough," the Grim Nightshade said, the vestiges of Mana swirling around its tiny form. "None of you. You will see the sky blacken before the end."

A pulse of incandescently beautiful music poured from the Grim Nightshade. The music became more, manifesting around the Grim as an aura of liquid power chased by a solid, almost crystalline structure…before the entire mass of it plunged down into the fortress below.

On shaking limbs, Pit climbed back out of the flooded chasm until he sat on an island of torn grasses. His chest heaved, his ribs stabbing him with every breath. The creature before him twitched, its legs still moving, but it was broken in half.

“Take…that, jerk,” he muttered. He was too tired to gloat. His body felt wrung out and his ears rang with the force of his impact. Pit shook his head, flinging water in all directions. The ringing only grew louder, however. “What is—?”

Pit was smashed low to the ground as the world sang out in glorious, terrifying Harmony. It resonated around him, lifting water and clods of oily mud up into the air as grasses and weeds straightened as if straining towards the sun. The song crescendoed, until a bolt of power, liquid and crystalline at the same time, slammed into the chasm and the still twitching corpse.

"Oh, come on," Pit groaned.

Sigaldry swarmed across the monstrosity, its form highlighted by burning lights that set the swamp water to boiling. The fallen masonry around him lifted up, pulled toward the hole as before, only this time more rocks than ever crowded the watery chasm. Roots surged, binding the rocks into a new, larger body, and Pit slowly backed up as he ran through a hundred fruitless battle scenarios.

"How's it doing that?" Beef asked, coming up beside Pit. Much as the tenku, the kid was dripping blood from a dozen wounds, but he held his hammer high.

"It's doing what I did," Hallow observed with surprise. She was still surprisingly huge, easily twice Beef's size, having clearly absorbed quite a bit of the debris around them.

"Grab some of it," Pit ordered. "Absorb it."

Hallow tried quickly, but everything she grasped was pulled through her. Even when she tried to absorb it, it was yanked free, causing the homunculus a surprising amount of pain. "I cannot. The stone refuses to join with me."

The creature screamed as its body rippled and compacted, and now massive blocks of stone from the fortress, loosened by their wanton battle, pulled free from the walls. They dragged through the now-empty tent city and destroyed it as their dressed edges scraped through the swamp like brutal plows. The entire fortress groaned as it tore itself apart, piece by piece.

"Felix," Pit whispered, unable to tear his eyes from the growing monstrosity, "I think I need some help."

"What have you done?" Vess asked, horrified.

People were still screaming below, but most had made it into the keep. The monster that Pit had just smashed into the ground, the one he’d torn apart, was now crawling back to its feet. Beef was there too, facing it just as she had asked. She looked at the Grim and had to shield her eyes—so much power had crystallized around the spirit that it made him look like a miniature sun.

The Grim tracked her gaze. “The boy hoped to face the Ruin. Let him taste the Hydra first.”

Analyze!

Siva's Grace. Vess paled. She looked to the Grim, into its black eyes that devoured the light, and gripped her partisan. “What have you done, monster?”

“Amoral and ever-changing. The Green Wilds contain prey and predator both.” It bared its teeth, exposing unnatural fangs in its small jaws. "Which shall you be?"

Yin landed on Vess's back as they stood there in the sky, balanced atop her Spears. He snarled at the mouse. "Enough with your games, Grim. We end this. Now."

"So be it."

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