Chapter 5: The General's Smile
The Glimmerwood, once a place of serene beauty, was plunged into a nightmare. The air, once sweet with magic, now tasted of ash and decay. The Kitsune warriors, their illusions at the ready, formed a defensive circle around the central tree, their faces pale but resolute.
The General took a step through the breach in the Thorn-Wall. Where its foot fell, the glowing moss died, leaving a patch of barren, cracked earth. It didn't rush. It moved with an unhurried, inevitable grace that was more terrifying than any charge.
"Hold the line!" Elder Nari commanded, her voice cracking like a whip. A wave of Kitsune magic erupted—illusions of massive, snarling spirit-wolves lunged at the General, while the very ground beneath the corrupted beasts turned to grasping, sticky tar.
The General simply raised a hand. The illusions dissolved into nothingness before they could touch it. The tar hardened back into inert soil. It was not breaking their magic; it was unmaking it, turning their spells into their component parts—into nothing.
"It's neutralizing their power at a fundamental level," Riven said, his voice tight with horror. "It understands the code of our magic."
Kaelen didn't wait. With a roar that shook the crystalline leaves, he transformed. His body swelled, his features shifting into a terrifying hybrid of man and massive wolf, rippling with primal power. He launched himself at the General, a silver blur of fangs and fury.
He was fast. Faster than Astra had ever seen him. But the General was faster.
It didn't dodge. It met Kaelen's charge head-on. A limb of pure shadow shot out, catching Kaelen by the throat and slamming him into the ground with earth-shattering force. The General held him there, its faceless head tilting as if studying a curious insect.
"Kaelen!" Astra screamed.
Riven was already moving. He didn't attack physically. He wove an illusion directly into the General's mind—a vision of the Fox-Fire erupting, of a cleansing wave of light scorching it from existence.
The General flinched. For the first time, it showed a reaction. It released Kaelen and took a half-step back, its form flickering. Riven's illusions, born of cunning and tied to truth, were harder for it to dismiss than raw magical attacks.
"It fears the Fox-Fire!" Riven yelled.
That was all the opening Lykos and the other Kitsune needed. A volley of enchanted arrows and bolts of concentrated magic slammed into the General. It staggered, dark energy spraying from its form like black blood.
Astra's mind raced. The Ember in her hand pulsed warmly. Purify minor corruptions. The General was not a minor corruption. But the bonds were.
"The beasts!" she shouted, running forward. "It's connected to them! It's drawing power from them, coordinating them!"
She focused on the nearest corrupted beast—a wolf with obsidian fangs. She didn't throw the Ember. She pushed her will through it, aiming not at the beast's body, but at the thread of darkness that connected it to the General.
A beam of pure, blue-white light shot from her palm. It struck the thread, and the light traveled down it like a fuse, straight to the corrupted wolf. The beast convulsed, the blackness boiling away from its body. For a single, glorious second, its eyes cleared, showing a flicker of its original, terrified self before it collapsed, free but lifeless.
It had worked. She couldn't save them, but she could sever the General's connection.
"Target the links!" Kaelen roared, surging back to his feet, his fury renewed.
A new strategy emerged. The Kitsune and wolves harried the corrupted beasts, forcing the General to maintain its connections. And Astra, with Riven and Kaelen flanking her, protecting her from the General's direct attacks, began severing the threads one by one.
With each thread she severed, the General grew visibly weaker. Its movements became slower, less precise. The void that composed its body seemed to thin.
It was working. They were winning.
The General, realizing its strategy was failing, changed tactics. It ignored all other attacks and focused entirely on Astra. It lunged through the battlefield, a spear of concentrated nothingness aimed directly at her heart.
Kaelen and Riven moved as one to intercept. Kaelen took the blow on his crossed arms, the force of it sending him skidding backwards. Rven, in that same instant, didn't try to block. He created a perfect, irresistible illusion right in front of the General—an image of Astra, holding the Fox-Fire aloft, ready to strike.
The General hesitated for a fraction of a second, its programming confused by the conflicting data.
It was all the time Astra needed.
She didn't sever a thread this time. She took the Ember of Fox-Fire, and with all her strength, all her will, and all the power of her woven bonds, she threw it not at a minion, but at the General itself.
The tiny Ember flew in a perfect arc and struck the General in the center of where its face should be.
There was no explosion. Only a profound, expanding silence.
Then, light. A silent, expanding sphere of blue-white radiance erupted from the point of impact. It washed over the General, over the corrupted beasts, over the entire Glimmerwood.
Where it touched the corruption, the blackness vanished, burned away into nothingness. The corrupted beasts crumbled to dust.
The General thrashed, a silent scream tearing from its formless void. It clawed at the light, but it was unmade by it. Its body dissolved, scattering into motes of harmless shadow that were consumed by the pristine light of the sanctuary.
The light faded.
Silence returned.
The General was gone. The corrupted army was destroyed. The Thorn-Wall was already healing, the blackened patch regrowing with new, vibrant thorns.
They had won.
A cheer began to rise from the Kitsune, a sound of pure, unadulterated relief.
It died in their throats.
As the last of the Fox-Fire's purifying light faded from the air, something drifted down from where the General had stood. It was a single, black feather, etched with a swirling, malevolent pattern.
It landed at Astra's feet.
From the high, crystalline branches of the Glimmerwood, a figure dropped down, landing with a soft thud. It was Corvus, the Aethon messenger. His stormy eyes were wide with horror as he stared at the feather.
"No," he whispered, his voice cracking. "It cannot be."
He looked from the feather to Astra, his face a mask of terror and betrayal.
"This feather… it is from the wing of Theron, our Chieftain."
The victory curdled in Astra's stomach, turning to absolute dread. The General wasn't just a creature of the Rot.
It was a corrupted Aethon Chieftain.
The enemy wasn't at the gates. It was on the throne. And they had just declared war on it.