Chapter 504: The Baying of Hounds

ARTHUR LEYWIN

"There, get it!”

One of the young phoenixes let out an animalistic crow as he sent a fiery shape like a bird of prey scorching through the trees. A large mana beast with a green and brown mottled hide bolted from where it had been concealed within the undergrowth. The phoenix’s spell curved in the air, flew in between the beast’s six powerful, churning legs, and burned straight through its muscular chest.

The mana beast bellowed as it crashed to the ground, but the sound was short-lived. After a single twitching jerk of its powerful limbs, it went still. The creature had a long face with large eyes on either side of its head beneath the antlers, each of which had twenty or thirty prongs that spread out in a wide antenna from its skull.

Riven Kothan and one of the other basilisks hurried to the corpse alongside the phoenix who’d struck the blow. “A clean kill,” Riven announced, gripping a prong of the beast's huge branching antlers and twisting its head around so I could see it more clearly, revealing a third eye staring blindly from the middle of its head. “A beautiful ah’tule. Well struck, Orrin.”

The phoenix who’d killed the elk-like mana beast grinned. “It’ll feed us all this evening. Maybe I’ll prepare its hide and offer it to your sister as a courting gift He suddenly grunted as Riven struck him on the arm, making everyone laugh.

Riven looked around for his sister, who had come as one of the four basilisks representing Clan Kothan, but she was elsewhere on the mountainside. “You’re lucky Romii didn’t hear that. You’d be wed before we return to Featherwalk Aerie.”

"Unlikely,” the other basilisk said, still laughing. “Until Arthur claims one of these women as his wife, none of them will spare a glance for any other man.”

Regis gave a bark of laughter as he and Boo searched the forested mountainside dell for any other signs of movement. “He’s always had a way with princesses. Don’t take it personally.”

Beside me, Ellie’s lips pressed into a thin line as she struggled not to laugh along with the others. I gave her a gentle push, and she snorted and swatted my hand away."So, that beast was not our prey?” Chul asked, frowning as he watched the phoenix and basilisk work together to begin dressing their kill. The rest of us continued on up the slope.

"We’ll know it when we see it, apparently,” I answered. My senses were extended outward beyond the limits of my physical body, feeling for every disturbance in either aether or mana.

Chul’s brow furrowed in concentration as we walked.

Sylvie was with the other dragons, about half a mile back. Vireah, representative of the Intharah clan, walked with us instead. She stayed at Ellie’s side, keeping up a constant litany of advice and instruction. Most of the phoenixes and basilisks were nearby, but Zelyna had taken the leviathans up a separate path through the dell.

Ahead of us, the mountain seemed to keep climbing endlessly.

"I forgot to ask, but did you and I leaned in close, speaking so only Chul could hear me. “Did you and Mordain hash things out?”

Chul grunted, looking at me in confusion. “What does this mean? To ‘hash’ things out?”

I felt myself frown. “I just meant, did you clear the air? Get on the same page?” I hesitated, realizing I wasn’t helping. “Come to an understanding?”

Chul made an ‘ah’ face as he finally understood. “He faced the woman who wore your lady love’s form to save me. He needed me home to get the full measure of you. He sent me away because he trusted me and knew it was what I needed. He explained this as I healed, and I felt foolish for doubting his motivations.”

I blinked at him, still stuck on the “lady love” part of what he’d said. Slowly, my mind caught up with the rest. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Well…that’s good.”

Ahead of us, there was a cracking like breaking wood, and the ground gave way beneath one of the phoenixes. Naesia shouted, and the ground seethed. Five trees closed in like the fingers of a giant fist. Phoenix flames and soulfire leapt into the boughs of the trees, bright orange shot through with black.

I flashed forward, pressing out in every direction with a bubble of aether to push back the curling trees. Naesia jumped into a black pit in the ground, grasping a writhing root at the hole’s lip to keep herself from plummeting into the bottomless dark. Flames flashed within the hole, then the fallen phoenix reappeared, arcing through the air as if tossed. Naesia reappeared just behind him, flipping out of the hole to land on her feet. ŗᴀNοβĚʂ

I shoved outward, expanding the aetheric barrier. The trees shattered with a noise like cannonfire, bone-white kindling exploding in every direction.

"Wood wights,” Riven mused, looking down into the pit as Naesia bent down to check on her companion.

My own gaze followed Riven’s; the pit was no longer black, and no deeper than ten feet to the soil-and-root covered bottom.

"Suck you in and trap you,” Riven continued, turning away from the hole. “Then slowly digest your mana. Nasty way to go.”

Ellie gave the pit a wide berth as she caught up. “That was crazy. It happened so fast.”

"The mountain has many ways to kill the unwary,” Naesia said, standing and pulling the other phoenix to his feet.

He ran dirty fingers through his bright orange hair, chagrined. “Sorry Naes. Should have noticed,” he mumbled.

Novis’s daughter rolled her citrine eyes. “At least you didn’t forget not to fly.”

We continued on, eventually catching up to Zelyna where her leviathans had brought down an enormous titan bear. The serious leviathans—a trait more related to their proximity to Zelyna and not necessarily their race in general—were in good cheer following what they said was a “battle worthy of many campfire tales to come.”

When we reached the point where the forested dell gave way to rocky slopes pocket with snow, Naesia called an early afternoon halt. Cook fires were lit, and meat from the Epheotan beasts that we’d hunted throughout the day was prepared and spitted. Soon, the entire mountainside was rich with the scent of fire-charred meat.

I found a mossy rock in the sun and took a seat, enjoying the sounds and smells as the asuras cooked.

"It is a pleasant reprieve,” Sylvie said, arriving to sit next to me and share my thoughts. “I can see why these rituals have survived the test of time.”

"They are a necessary outlet,” Zelyna said as she approached from the direction of the other leviathans. She had a scratch on her neck that looked almost healed. In both hands, she carried a wooden tray laid out with fresh cuts of salted meat. “No, it is not the titan bear,” she said with a smirk, catching my look.

She laid down the tray between Sylvie and me, then took a seat herself on the other side. “Without a way to challenge ourselves, the asura would wither. Or worse, go to war with each other.”

Ellie bounded up and flopped into a thick patch of grass at our feet with a jaw-cracking yawn. “Ugh, I’m still exhausted from that climb. Am I the only one who feels like they can’t breathe up here?”

"I don’t know how things like that work in Epheotus, but in our world, the higher you climb, the thinner the air gets.” I took a deep breath and considered. “I don’t feel it yet, but

"But you’re not normal,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes. She rested her hands behind her head and kicked her heels against the soil. “Although, I guess if I’m the only normal person here, then that makes me the weirdo.”

"Sorry to break it to you, El, but you’ve always been the weirdo,” I teased.

"The oxygen does grow thinner here, but so does the mana.” Zelyna scanned the forest as if watching the motes of elemental manic flow around us. “The aether replaces it. We asura feel this like a tightness in our chest.”

"So…we’re back to Arthur being the weirdo,” my sister said after a moment’s thought. “Good.”

Nearby, Boo was chomping on the leftovers of a mana beast carcass, which he’d been gifted from one of the asura. He looked up from where he gnawed his lunch a healthy distance from the rest of us. There was a pause, and then the great bearlike guardian beast let out an almost human sounding guffaw.

"Thanks, Boo,” Ellie said, smiling at her bond. “I knew you’d have my back.”

Boo snorted and stuffed his face back into the carcass.

Regis appeared from the undergrowth, turned in a circle, and then plopped down next to Ellie, resting his chin on her shoulder. “I hope Mama Leywin’s okay with all those asuras. It feels kind of weird that we just left her down there with no protection.”

"She’s as safe with the Avignis clan as anywhere else,” I said. “More safe than with us, definitely.”

Ellie sucked her teeth thoughtfully. “I bet she’s lounging in the hot springs drinking some spicy phoenix brew. I swear, everything they make smells like cinnamon

A cacophonous braying drowned out the end of Ellie’s statement.

We all froze, each of us staring in a different direction. The sound had seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if a thousand ghostly hounds suddenly filled the mountain woods.

"Our prey!” Chul shouted, bounding toward us from the direction of the phoenixes’ cooking fire.

I knew he was right. I didn’t know how, exactly, but every instinct in my body burned with the certainty of the hunt.

The braying came again, louder and more condensed. All our heads turned simultaneously in the direction of the noise. “Go!” I barked as I jumped up and bolted out of the clearing. Chul, Sylvie, Ellie, and Regis were right behind me.

"The hunt is on!” Riven shouted from somewhere behind me. In an instant, the mountainside was alive with the sound of excited calls and bodies crashing through the undergrowth.

The thundering howls shifted to the right, leading us back down the mountainside. King’s Gambit and Realmheart glowed with golden light as I empowered them both. Time seemed to slow as the overlapping layers of my consciousness searched for any and every sign of our quarry.

The mountain dell was alive with noise and mana. Threads of asuran spells crisscrossed through the air ahead of me as each of our twenty-strong hunting party sought our prey. Among these spells, I felt Ellie channeling her beast will, her connection with Boo bright between them.

The source of the braying focused as King’s Gambit helped me push through the echoes and noise-swallowing effect of the forest.

It sounded as if all that noise came from a single point.

Without slowing, I scanned the undergrowth for any sign of movement. The howls were so loud that it was difficult to tell exactly how far away their source was, but I knew it had to be within the range of my sight.

Movement in my periphery drew my gaze briefly to the right: Zelyna was sprinting parallel to me, a shortsword held in each hand. Her storm-blue eyes met mine for an instant, and one corner of her lips turned up. She planted her left foot on the stump of a fallen tree, sprang into the air, pushed off a different tree with her right foot, and flung the sword in her right hand.

It cut the air with enough force to leave a visible ripple in its wake.

Through a gap in the undergrowth, I saw a flash of white. The sword was going to strike—

But the next instant, the sword impacted the ground with a dull whump, sending up a shower of soil.

The braying was suddenly off to our left and moving away at impressive speed.

As our hunting party turned to pursue, Naesia and Vireah ended up in front. Boo and Ellie were flagging behind, so Sylvie slowed to stay with them. Chul’s heavy footfalls shook the ground with each step as he sprinted beside me, smashing through the thick undergrowth and the occasional fallen tree like a rampaging spiked aurochs.

More spells and attacks flew, but I never saw more than white flashes in the green and brown.

The mountainside blazed orange, and a wall of fire engulfed the slope ahead of us. I slowed, every sense focused on the braying.

Just ahead of me, two bushes moved aside. A small white creature sprinted through the gap. It had overly large ears, a pointed face, and a huge, bushy tail. Fur mixed with scales to cover its body, while white feathers grew from wings that were pulled close to its back. Its clawed, webbed feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as it ran.

Its sides pulsed in time with the cacophony of howling and braying, which seemed to be issuing not from the beast’s mouth, but from inside its body.

Time seemed to slow, constricted by Sylvie’s aevum aether arts, as Chul’s round-headed maul swung down at the tiny creature. The very ground shattered, toppling nearby trees, but the braying was behind us now. Spinning around, I watched as if in slow motion as the creature sped between a startled Ellie’s legs. Boo swiped at it, but it was as if the guardian bear was moving in slow motion while the little beast continued to run on unabated.

The aetheric pathways lit up in my vision, calling out the course I needed to take to meet the little beast. A glowing violet sword was clenched in my fist, but I hesitated to strike. Something felt…wrong, and I hesitated. The river of time surged forward again at normal speed.

The asuras, already swinging around, flashed past me at incredible speed, Chul among them. Regis held at my side, quivering in anticipation of the chase. ‘What are we doing here, chief?’

I didn’t know. I resumed the chase, but without the fervor of a moment ago.

Sylvie and Ellie, previously at the rear, were now leading the chase. Although Ellie held Silverlight in one hand, she didn’t attempt to use it. Instead, condensed rings of bright white mana were opening up one after another in the creature’s path. It zig-zagged around them even as it dodged bright arrows of phoenix fire, thrusting black spikes, and the whip-crack strikes of a water whip. Every time a spell seemed about to strike its target, the beast would melt into the undergrowth only to reappear nearby, never once interrupting the ear-splitting chorus of bestial howls.

More spells began to bombard the forest ahead of our party as the more of asuras began to catch up.

Our prey bounded from spike to spike as the ground erupted in a field of blood iron. A fiery hawk descended on it, but when the bird vanished in a flash of bright yellow, the fox-like creature was twenty feet away, dipping beneath a spiralling bola conjured of watery chains. Vines and branches wrapped around its legs, but it slipped through at the last second.

The sky darkened as Vireah conjured down hundreds of bolts of pure mana. Trees toppled, and the ground ruptured under the force of the spell. Our entire party was forced to halt as the spell swept forward like a stormcloud, tearing a path across the dell.

And yet, when the spell faded, the braying continued from behind us.

Piercing through the cacophony of noise was a thin, high-pitched squeal.

Beside me, Ellie gasped, her face distorting in concentration. “I—I’ve got it!”

Running up a tree, Naesia held herself aloft on the trunk by gripping it between her feet. She drew her arms as if pulling back the string of a bow. Flames sprang up between her hands in the shape of a bow and arrow. Just as quickly, she released her conjured arrow.

Time seemed to slow again as I watched the arrow of fire draw a bright orange line through the intermittent shadows. The little beast was just visible, its leg bound within the halo of Ellie’s mana. It flipped and twisted manically, its thin cry just audible beneath the louder roar coming from within it.

The arrow struck home, piercing it behind the left shoulder—a perfect shot.

I felt a queasy turn of my stomach as I watched the small white shape tumble end over end before falling still.

Our hunting party stayed still, listening. Disconcertingly, the noise of a thousand yipping, barking, and howling beasts didn’t cease.

Nervous energy built inside of me. Regis, Chul, Ellie, Sylvie and I gathered together. The other asuras began to move, circling around the braying corpse, but still keeping well back.

Ellie looked over and up at me, her eyes wide. “I tethered, it

"I saw,” I answered, not taking my eyes off the body. I squinted, watching the sides carefully. It was almost as if—

The scale-covered flesh of the beast’s side distended suddenly, as if something were pushing out against it. A cry went up from several of the asuras.

"Hold your ground!” Naesia called. Instead of the fiery bow, she held a spear in both hands, only the spear was broken into three separate pieces, with each piece connected by a small length of chain. Yellow flames raced up and down her arms and along the length of the weapon. “I don’t like the sound of that thing.”

Even as the words left her, blood spurted from the small corpse as the flesh of its side gave way. Claws ripped out of the beast. Long, scaled limbs followed. In moments, a creature several times the size of the small, fox-like beast was standing over the ruins of its body. The same haunting braying issued from the new creature’s distended belly.

It twisted and spun like a fox cornered by wolves, but this new creature was no fox.

The monstrosity was like nothing I’d seen before. It had a broad, reptilian body with a bulging stomach, around which sprouted a variety of mismatched limbs. Clawed arms, slithering, blade-tipped tentacles, and thin, bare limbs ending in talons supported its weight between four outstretched wings, two large wings above a smaller pair. Its hide was a grotesque mixture of yellow fur, green and blue scales, and wrinkled pink flesh.

A long neck slithered back and forth like a snake, pure white eyes staring out from the elongated, bone-covered head. Its toothy maw snapped and hissed, dripping bright green saliva that sizzled and popped wherever it landed.

Chul roared and leapt forward, his maul carving a bright line of fire through the air.

Although the size of a moon ox, the creature moved with the speed of a silver panther. As it darted aside, its tentacles lashed out, their bladed tips flicking across Chul’s flesh in half a dozen places all at once.

I shot a glance at my sister; she nodded in response, then jumped on Boo. The two fell back as Ellie started to channel her supporting spells.

God Step glowed over my spine, and the aether pathways pulled me in.

Violet lightning raced along my limbs as I swung a conjured blade toward the base of the monstrosity’s neck. It writhed, and I caught one of the smaller wings instead, sheering it from the body. A tentacle whipped toward my leg, and I reversed the direction of my swing, blocking the strike and slicing the tentacle off in the same motion.

The forest lit up with blue and yellow, black and white. A dozen different varieties of spells bore down on the newly birthed monstrosity. I deflected a tentacle strike, stepped back as a wing slashed out at me, and burst forward into position to strike again at the neck.

Zelyna’s crossed shortswords got there first. The two blades shot sparks as they slid past each other, closing like sheers to sever the long neck from the bloated, deformed body. The monstrosity slumped, its wings twitching feebly as the severed neck coiled in on itself like a dying worm.

Sylvie’s thoughts confirmed that she and Ellie were fine, and a cursory glance suggested no life threatening injuries on Chul.

‘So how do we make this thing shut up!’ Regis thought to me, pacing side to side as he watched the fresh corpse, from which the wild braying continued to issue.

I jumped back as the distended side split open and something inside ripped free of this second corpse.

Weapons and spellfire crashed against the horror that emerged.

This new monstrosity was three times the size of the previous, easily as large as a young transformed dragon. Three heads, each one slightly different, screech from atop their long necks.

Phoenix fire and waves of pure mana rolled over dark scales, hardly seeming to mark the creature. A spike of blood iron struck it in the chest, but the spike shattered against the hide.

Zelyna’s swords, bright with her infused mana, struck one of the three necks, scoring a thin line that welled with dark red blood. One of the heads snaked around to face her. The jaws opened, and an amethyst beam of pure aether erupted from it.

Again wreathed in aetheric lightning, I appeared in front of her. A wall of my aether formed between us and the beam like a shield, and the two opposing forces crackled and sparked against one another. The scent of ozone filled the air, then the beam faded.

Chul was near the monstrosity’s haunches, slamming it again and again with his burning maul, flames leaping through the fissures of the round head with each swing.

Shackles of mana snapped up from the ground to bind the many mismatched limbs and each of the three long necks. With a single beat of its wings, our foe shattered my sister’s spell, and its grotesque form was lifted off the ground.

Concentrating my aether, I Burst Stepped straight upward. The aether blade sliced through the tough scales at the base of its throat but didn’t sever the neck. As my momentum shifted and I began to fall again, I took the blade in both hands, pushing aether into it to make the blade grow both longer and thicker.

The neck twisted, bringing a hideous, skull-like head around to face me, the amethyst light of aether radiated from its maw.

Swinging down with all my strength, my blow landed along the line of Zelyna’s earlier cut. My blade caught for a moment, then slid through scales, flesh, and bone. The head fell free, slithering in the air as it plummeted.

The middle head whipped around, and a gout of superheated water burst like a geyser into my face. The attack scoured away my protective aether and the flesh beneath it even as I God Stepped away.

Appearing back on the ground, I had to wait a moment for my sight to correct itself as my eyes and lids healed. King’s Gambit moved the branch of my consciousness that was focused on the pain far to the back of my awareness.

Zelyna stared at me with horror, and then wonder, as my wounds healed, but I paid them no more mind. Above us, our foe had become the center of a swarm of spells. A net of bright white mana tangled in its wings, a crackling storm sent bolt after bolt of lightning crashing into it, and finger’s of fire were prying under the scales and into the eyes, mouth, and nose of the two remaining heads. Bolts and bullets of different elements peppered its underbelly, and weapons of pure mana, not held by any physical hand, stabbed and cut at the limbs, necks, and wings.

I held back my own attacks.

Each time this horrible beast was killed, a stronger version was birthed from its bloated carcass. Even now, the baying of a thousand ghostly hounds drowned out almost every other sound. Would the cycle simply keep repeating until it was too strong for us to kill?

Another thread of thought focused on the monster itself. Its features were an unseemly, almost senseless melding of dragon, phoenix, basilisk, and leviathan. Aether and mana both burned within it; it was no coincidence that it had manifested with an aetheric attack. This monstrosity had been birthed specifically for this trial. The prey was a reflection of the hunters.

But this thought was trivial in the moment. It didn’t help me learn how to kill it. Striking it down without destroying it would only result in another, stronger creature.

Regis, to me.

Sensing my earlier discomfort, Regis had so far held back. Now, he leapt toward me, becoming incorporeal as he did so. His body vanished into mine. Our thoughts intertwined.

‘Let’s do this.’

Above, the monster was thrashing against the continual bombardment. Gouts of superheated water—a fusion of water- and fire-attribute mana—rained down on the asuras from one mouth, while black clouds of soulfire issued from the other.

Taking a breath to steady myself, I stepped into the aetheric pathways revealed by God Step.

Regis and I appeared in the air twenty feet in front of our foe as it bore down on us. Both heads locked in instantly, and the streams of mana boiling from its mouths redirected toward me as Regis flowed into the aetheric blade already gripped tightly in my hands.

A platform of pure aether hardened behind me. I pressed my feet against it and channeled aether into every muscle, tendon, and joint. Dozens of small explosions of aether projected my body forward in a single, near-instant step.

The violet flames of Destruction danced along my blade as it carved through the air. Following the Burst Step, aether sparked in exact timing along my shoulders, back, and arms, driving my strike forward. Blade met beast at the joint between the two remaining necks. Only the heightened senses of King’s Gambit allowed me to remain aware of my own passage through space as I passed in a blur beneath the flying, three-headed monstrosity.

I spun in the air, far beyond the end of the creature’s tail. Scarlet blood was raining down from the bulging belly, which had been split open from one end to the other by my strike. Even as I watched, the thunderclap of my passage boomed, sending the red rain spraying in a halo down on the forest.

Destruction danced in the wound, devouring the blood as it fell, hollowing out the grotesque beast. Its wings were flailing wildly as Destruction’s flames ate holes through them, and before the arc of my Burst Step began to turn back down toward the ground, the beast we’d come to hunt was crashing to the ground.

I caught myself on a treetop and sprang back toward the violet bonfire that was the monstrosity’s body. “Stay well back,” I urged, waving at the asuras. My own sister and bond had already moved away, both aware of what Destruction could do. For the others, though, this was their first time seeing such a thing.

Their awe and fear was obvious in their tight jaws and pale fales.

A head appeared from the burning, open belly, writhing back and forth on its undulating neck, its jaws wide in a silent cry. Destruction danced along the black scales and smoldered in its hateful black eyes. It was already burning, as had been my goal.

Destruction would feed and feed until nothing was left.

A second head followed, and a third, then a fourth. Each one was almost identical, like a dragon whose jaw split the face in the wrong direction, vertically rather than horizontally.

Destruction-wreathed talons dug at the ground, desperately trying to pull the rest of the now-enormous bulk free.

Too late, I saw the difference between burning and being aflame.

The four vertical jaws unhinged, and waves of purple fire spilled out.

Riven slammed into his sister, carrying them both out of the way. Sylvie, Ellie, and Vireah together wrapped themselves and three others in a silver shield that quaked under the onslaught. Naesia burst into orange fire like a candle, and great wings pulled her backwards, away from the conflagration. The ground ran like water beneath Zelyna’s feet, and she disappeared into it as the underbrush around her turned to ash, and then to nothing at all.

I gaped as the monstrosity finished pulling itself free. Beneath it, Destruction unmade the rest of its predecessor. But the Destruction did not feed on it.

And still, the hounds bayed.

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