Fenara's eyes locked onto Lucy and Tara with a feral intensity that pierced straight through them. Her stare was unwavering, pupils constricted to dangerous slits within pools of molten amber. Her bared fangs gleamed with a cold promise in the fractured moonlight: she was done playing.
But neither Lucy nor Tara flinched.
They met the beast's gaze head-on as she approached, each of her footsteps pounding like a war drum across the blood-soaked obsidian. The rhythmic impact sent tiny ripples through the pooled blood at their feet.
Lucy's grip tightened around the hilt of his sword, the leather wrapping creaking against his palm. The tremble in his fingers wasn't fear, it was adrenaline singing through his veins like liquid fire.
Beside him, Tara dropped into a low stance, claws outstretched and glinting with residual mana, long brown hair whipping in the wind that carried the metallic tang of battle. Her body was coiled like a spring, every muscle taut beneath her skin, eyes locked on Fenara with predatory focus.
The tigress general didn't slow. She advanced with the casual precision of a predator toying with its prey, unshaken by the resolve before her.
Her tail slashed the air behind her, cutting through the smoke that hung like a shroud over the battlefield.
Then she vanished.
Lucy blinked, and she was gone, with not even a blur of movement to track.
All he saw ahead was the shattered battlefield: obsidian glistening red with blood like some terrible mirror, the silhouettes of Ithriel's elves standing in formation as their commander loomed above, calm and commanding, as if the war was already won. Their spears glinted coldly in the distance.
'Death?'
It hit him—not a blow, but a scent.
It wasn't the corpses littering the field or the blood soaking the ground, filling his nostrils with its coppery presence.
It was him.
The stench of his impending death was a primal, unmistakable, cold whisper against the back of his neck that made his hair stand on end.
Every nerve screamed to move, dodge, but his body didn't know how to react. Not until he felt it.
'Behind me!'
The realization came too late, awareness dawning with sickening clarity.
He could sense Fenara's silver mana-charged claws descending toward his neck—silent, lethal, inevitable. The air crackled with power at his nape, raising goosebumps across his skin.
Death was here.
But Tara wasn't done yet.
In a blur of motion too fast for his eyes to follow, she lunged. Her claws met Fenara's in mid-air—mana against mana, silver against silver, power against power.
The resulting collision sounded like a mountain collapsing. A thunderous crack that seemed to split the very air.
The shockwave tore through the battlefield, deafening and brutal, carrying with it tiny shards of obsidian that stung his face like needles.
Lucy, too close to the clash, took the full force of it. The blast slammed into him like a runaway train, stealing the breath from his lungs. His knees buckled, and he collapsed hard onto the obsidian with a thud that rattled his bones.
It wasn't the shockwave alone that dropped him, but the toll of his wounds.
His skin burned from a hundred cuts, each one a line of fire across his flesh. Blood loss blurred his vision, turning the world into smears of red and black. His limbs refused to obey, heavy as lead and just as useless.
He lay motionless on the sticky, blood-slick stone. Eyes open. Body paralyzed. The coppery smell of his blood mingled with the acrid tang of spent mana.
He couldn't see the battle.
He could only listen and pray.
A hiss rang out; It was Tara, sharp and pained. Followed by a guttural growl which belonged to Fenara, deep and triumphant.
The clash continued, punctuated by the scrape of claws against stone and the heavy thuds of bodies colliding.
Judging from the sound of it, Tara was struggling, her breath coming in ragged gasps, but she wasn't losing, at least not yet.
'Come on, move! I won't die here,' he thought, teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached.
But his body didn't care. It lay there, betraying him with every heartbeat that pumped more precious blood onto the dark stone beneath him.
Then, above the chaos, he caught the strained voices of the two generals, speaking low through the tension of battle, words carried to him on the smoke-laden air.
"So we're using our abilities now?" Tara asked, breathless, almost mocking, though the strain in her voice was unmistakable.
Fenara's reply came ragged, wet with the blood from her stomach wound. "I wasn't going to hold back forever."
Something shifted.
Lucy couldn't see it, but he felt it—a change in the density of the air, the pressure dropping suddenly like before a storm. He heard Tara's feet sliding, listened to the scrape of claws against stone as she fought for leverage, the sound sharp and desperate.
The fight had just escalated.
Tara and Fenara's struggle was just feet away.
If Tara slid back even a little farther, she'd crash into Lucy—maybe stumble, or worse, she would crush him beneath her weight and the force of Fenara's assault.
The thought hit like ice water in his veins, shocking his system.
'Not like this.'
Not crushed beneath someone else's fight.
Not another corpse on this field of meaningless death.
Not like the thousands already strewn across the obsidian, their eyes staring sightlessly at the smoky sky.
Not like the civilizations that had vanished into ash and blood, forgotten as if they'd never existed.
'Damn it move!' he screamed inwardly, every muscle trembling with effort, every nerve pleading to respond. His body hummed with frustrated energy that found no release.
But his body still refused to listen, heavy and still as the stone beneath him.
The screech of claws on stone grew louder, sharper, like nails on glass but a thousand times worse. Tara hissed and groaned through gritted teeth, fighting to hold back the raw force of the tigress, her resistance faltering with each passing second.
Closer.
Closer.
He could feel it now, the pressure bearing down, the storm of power directly above him. The air compressed, hot and thick with mana. Tara was inches away from slamming into him, and all he could do was lie there and wait to die, counting the frantic beats of his heart.
Rage clawed at his chest.
Not fear—fury. White-hot and consuming.
'This war means nothing,' he thought. 'A cosmic game for gods too spoiled to settle for limitless power. They want it all—dominion, obedience, worship. And we die for it.'
He hated them.
He hated that people were forced to kill for these so-called divine beings. Hated that even he-summoned, used, discarded—was no exception—just another pawn in their celestial chess game.
'I swear on myself, if I survive this, I'll kill all of you.'
But death didn't come.
Instead, the stone beneath his face began to recede. Slowly, steadily—he was rising, the pressure against his chest lifting.
His limbs dangled uselessly below him. His weight vanished. He was floating, drifting upward as if gravity had decided to release its hold.
Light as a feather, he drifted away from the clash of monsters, the sounds of battle growing distant.
For a heartbeat, confusion flickered through him, his mind struggling to make sense of this impossible salvation.
Then it clicked. "Llarm!" he shouted, voice cracking over the battlefield's roar—over the screams, the blasts of elemental energy ripping through the air above, the thunder of collapsing stone.
He couldn't lift his head, couldn't even shift his fingers.
But the world below drifted by as he floated—fifty feet, maybe more—the combatants shrinking to toy figures before he finally touched down, gentle as snowfall, on a ridge of obsidian overlooking the fray.
Then something else happened.
The manual.
It opened.
Not physically, but in his mind. The pages of Llarm's wind magic unfolded fully before him, knowledge rushing in like a cool breeze, as if waiting for this exact moment of need.
And just like that, he understood.
The wind was his now, a living force that whispered secrets in his ear, promising power if only he would claim it.