The clearing glittered like a frozen dream. The Blood Beast was a frozen gigantic dome net, its tendrils encased in fiery azure soul ice, its sprawling dome cracked and brittle, an abomination turned sculpture. For a heartbeat, silence ruled.
Then I felt it—the faint, pulsing thrum of its corrupted core, still alive within that prison.
Felicity's whisper curled sharp in my blood. "Its heart of corruption still beats. If it thaws, it will regenerate. Master—we must end it now!"
My right eye burned with Glacial brilliance, my veins still ringing with the power of the Soul Wind. I clenched my fists, and with my will, the Embercoil serpent manifested once more. It's Embercoil flames merging with the Icey essence of the Glacial Soul Eye, igniting it in coils of twirling frost flame!
Unconsciouesly I spoke in Beast Tongue, "Threl Ruhn Orrak."
''Frost Flame Embercoil''
The evolved spirit beast Coiled around me, scales hissing with frost flame fire. It nudged against me lovelingly with it's snout. I had helped evlove the Embercoil spirit to it's next level, a legendary beast.
The serpent's molten glacial roar met the frozen silence. Fire and ice—two paths, opposed yet unified in me.
I drew in everything—every Firefly spark, every silver tendril Felicity marked, every drop of my Animus comprehension. The Glacial Soul Eye narrowed, focusing the storm, while the Embercoil serpent coiled tighter and tighter, compressing into a singularity of molten flame. My body trembled, feathers igniting with gold fire at the tips while my right iris blazed blue.
A hush fell over the world.
Then I unleashed it.
"FANG THREL TUROK!"
I exploded forward in a single, blinding motion, the serpent and storm merging into me. I became a hurricane of frost flame wind, sheathed in blazing blue flames, until I was no longer man, serpent, or storm, but a comet of frozen flame.
The impact split the night.
I struck the frozen Blood Beast dead-center, there was a terrific explosion of twirling jagged frost covered in blue Embercoil flame. Ice cracked like thunder. Flames roared like an inferno. The hybrid explosion was both collapse and eruption, imploding the beast's corrupted core and shattering its prison in one terrible instant.
The Blood Beast let out a final, warping shriek—then disintegrated. Disbursing into harmless mist that evaporated under the combined heat and cold. The spores that had choked the clearing burned and froze simultaneously, leaving nothing but clean, moonlit air.
From the crater a cold mist began to pull inward from all sides, as it travelled it extinguished the blue flames that lay scattered here and there. The mist converged in the center of the crater.
I exited from the Glacial Soul wind form, breath steaming, feathers scorched at the edges, my right eye dimmed from a bright glacial blue back to ember gold. There was no trace of the Blood Beast left, it had been totally consumed.
The forest was silent once more. Felicity's voice trembled in awe. "Master… that… that was not just Sovereign intent. That was… a King's annihilation."
I exhaled, steadying my breath, the glow of my Animus ebbing. "No," I said, a faint smile tugging at my lips as the moonlight caught on the frost and flame mingling in the clearing. "That was us. Together."
And with the Blood Beast's death, I knew—the plague would already be lifting from the clan's village.