A horned hare progressed alone in the vast cavern. Ceiling so high, cracking under the tremors, with debris falling down and breaking hanging stone ramps in their wake. Burning rocks on the walls and pillars struggled to keep the place alit.
Their furious lights were warped by anti-magic.
So the humanoid hare had gone from a run to a stride, down to a walk. The glass blades at his hands proved heavier. Anti-magic was draining him of all strength.
Yet this was more desirable than the hundreds of feral monsters battling around, that escaped this area of death.
Few remained to block his path, but he struggled to perceive the realm beyond just a dozen meters. His head was dizzy, his senses blurred. Black blood stuck to the heavy fur on his chest and shoulders, trickled down the rest of his scrawny body.
So a tenacl saw him and charged.
This one was blinded by rage. The striped gazelle rushed and saw the glass blade scrape the ground, extract a plume of dust and with that, the hare was gone from sight.
A second, then another and both blades cut through the beast's flesh. The monster tried to scream, had no strength for that and reared silently, opening its belly where the weapons struck once more.
This was the hare's art, to trick his enemies' perception and get out of focus entirely.
But for now he could ill afford a lengthy fight, yet needed any drop of mana he could find. So the monster held his enemy up and licked the blood that flooded down his blades until the weight and struggle forced him to break off.
His foe fell to the ground, squirming, but to finish him off would have been too much effort. This was a hard-learned lesson of the mana-deprived realm, that lethal blows could expend more energy than there was to salvage from a carcass.
So he let the wounded beast behind and kept walking forth, toward the center of the cave.
Three greyhounds chasing each other passed him just meters away and missed him completely. They could have struck him and trampled his body: the hare would not have been able to react.
Because the environment was so hostile, to perceive far was too taxing.
But his friend intervened. The red beak was flying behind, as high as he could, all four wings deployed but offering little lift. That crow-like beast had himself to care for his life, yet fought back the overwhelming mayhem to provide that humanoid hare with his own senses.
For as disorientating as that was, it let him close his eyes and navigate from someone else's sight. And even just that gave him more strength to keep going.
With enough beasts away from him, the anti-magic receded, giving him some reprieve. Unbeknownst to all, the skeletal wyvern lurking below was taking his distance. The cave return to a semblance of stability.
It reeked of death, filled with screams of rage and agony.
Surely this was far enough? The horned hare could not really tell. The walls seemed far away, the pillars distant. Only mounds of rock broke the large open area before him.
So he stopped, fell to his knees and brought both blades high, ready to strike.
"Don't you dare!"
The wyvern's voice had rumbled from below. The hare failed to understand his words, failed to even realize this was a monster's voice. It had felt too primal for that and had clutched his pulsing heart too tight.
Not far enough. Not yet the middle of the cave.
He carried in his blade a merged spell that would awake the rage of Alunra, cause the collapse of the entire underground. For this, close enough would not cut it.
But the hare still held his blades high, trembling. He knew his own limits too well. He knew that getting up and walking further could break him. Just to strike now felt almost out of reach.
And the beasts were coming back. Fighting each other as they did, feral creatures seeking black blood. He had no time and no hope of reaching any further. It was now or never.
"You will stand up, fiend!" The voice devoured his heart. "You carry too much to stop here."
Easy words to say!
To strike now, when he could, or keep going and falter. For the horned hare this was about how far his pride could carry him. The price to pay to push just a little past. And as he considered that, he picked the part he would sacrifice.
One blade pierced his flank.
Yes, this would weaken him further, but it would also keep him awake and let him push what magic kept pulsing in him toward his limbs, away from such useless things as a monster shard.
Black blood dripped from his muzzle, making him grin.
Teeth clenched, he got back up, reeled and walked again.
The blade was still in his flank. To take it out would spill more blood than he had to spare. So he held it there and held himself up this way.
Two greyhounds were fighting in front of him. One, with green crystals growing from his rocky shoulders, was losing to the other lizard not for lack of potency but because the anti-magic had drained him harder.
They were circling one another, lashing out and retreating to turn and strike again. He walked right into them.
He walked in the middle of them both while they were circling, skimmed one and barely dodged when they leapt on each other. He walked past their bout and the rocky lizards were none the wiser.
This art required having as little mana as could be sustained. In his situation, the hare could truly be like a ghost.
He stopped. His other blade had fallen on the ground.
His grip had somehow loosened enough to drop the blade and if not for his flying friend noticing it he would have missed that. So he tried to turn, stumbled a bit, walked back and crouched to pick it up. And he could feel all the while his every muscle burn.
Then the anti-magic grew again, reality warped and the rocks and the walls, the whole cave distorted, swirled at his feet.
There was no choice. Too many beasts were rushing back, fleeing from fights in that empty space to look for more black blood. Any more second and he would have been swarmed.
But now his body was being drained again and still he picked the blade, found the strength to get back up and walk again. With his friend's sight coming back he could still guide himself and he was sure it was not far, the place to strike.
A greyhound leapt on him.
It felt too much to fight. His whole body refused. With one weapon in his flank, the other hanging helplessly at his hand, the hare was not even sure what he could have done.
To his surprise, his enemy missed him, fell behind and limped, unable to get up. That beast had expended all it had for that attack and still was too weak to aim properly. He wasn't alone to reel, long past the limit of what a monster could endure truly.
So what kept him going now? Even the wound he churned had gone numb.
This was again the wyvern's doing. Anti-magic killed as surely as poison, but it was still magic in its own merit. And so he could filter just a little at great cost. That was what now sustained the hare. Anti-magic flowed in his body.
The whole cave shook.
Not just shook. That earthquake was such that the hare was lifted up and the ground below broke into pieces. For just an instant when his mind caught what was happening he wondered if someone had striked for him and caused the collapse, but no.
This was the fourth chain breaking.
Far away stood the humans' haven, chained to the cosmic ceiling by links so titanic as to defy comprehension. And with the monsters dying in the thousands, those tiny cuts combined with a change of magic balance had finally had their effect.
One link had ceded, causing the whole mass to break and fall.
Normally, this would have not even have been felt. But because the balance of mana had changed, those chains had become more palpable. As such, an inconceivable mass was crumbling down and shaking the realm.
The horned hare fell back and stood there crushed by repeated shockwaves. Walls broke and slid down afar, dragging the burning rocks and plunging whole parts of the cave in darkness. Likewise pillars crashed on themselves in a rain of debris that scattered around.
It was pure luck that the myriad of pulverized rocks missed him or like many, he would have been shredded.
But he could not get up anymore. His body was broken. Exhausted beyond anything sustainable. To just breathe was asking much. Dull limbs kept him on the ground among the tremors.
"Do you think yourself done? I said, get up!"
All he could do now was crawl, crawl just far enough to pick back both blades and roll on his back, arm on his open flank. He was feverish.
But there was still a part of him he could sacrifice to keep going and so, while the earthquake still lasted, he brought a blade to his head.
Up and past the muzzle, to his forefront.
There was so little strength left in him that he could not do it in one clean cut. So he slid to the side, then started to saw.
And feeling that burn was actually great! Because it was not numbness, and while it hurt, while it hurt like hell it was still life! While every monstrous nerve in him screamed to stop he could only hope this would last, he wanted to keep feeling that way for as long as possible.
The throbbing in his body, the sudden clear mind as his very essence was getting cut, was bringing him back to life.
He got back up, walked past the first crumbled rocks, all along a shattered ground where other beasts just as wounded were limping blind. Rocks still fell around but the warped reality had them divert away from him, or plain turn to dust.
His friend had gone blind and so the hare kept going in the darkness, guided purely by balance and instinct.
When that impossible clutch would leave his heart, then he knew he would have reached the spot.
Again he stumbled, again he got back and it felt like nothing now. His head was so light, the pain so vivid as to be agreeable. He could even lick his own black blood and feel more strength than he could remember ever holding in his life.
If only dying could feel so good!
Because by now his monster shard had practically stopped pulsing, only offering a lone beat every two or three seconds. But he hardly cared. The stumbling beast could not even think of his future, or of anything really.
He was counting the mere meters he had left.
Fighting had resumed all over the cave, even as mad tremors kept coming and breaking the stone apart. And he too was incensed by that bloodlust. The screams, the clashes, it was the only music his mind could like.
Two meters. One.
And there he was, on a shattered ground looking exactly like the rest, a spot he would never have found had that deep presence not loosened its grip.
So he fell there and brought the blades up.
As the fourth chain finished crashing and a construct of inconceivable size shook as a result, as the whole of the caves of Utopia felt those ripples he struck the ground, caused the spell to flare, the glyphs to activate and the realm to skip a beat.
Above, in the plains of Alunra, the last battle of the humans' glass fleet had never ended. Time magic unleashed it all at once.
And the cave turned to white.