Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

Kaelus did not draw Requiem because he believed that he didn’t need a sword for an excavation.

He raised his right hand, his palm aimed directly down into the center of the massive crater.

The ambient temperature in the Ashen Forest, already chilly due to the lack of sunlight, plummeted to zero. The air visibly warped, the moisture instantly sublimating into thousands of floating, razor-sharp shards of black ice.

Kaelus did not gently dismantle the ancient wards or carefully peel back the layers of earth.

He channeled a sphere of glacial destruction directly from his core.

The sphere materialized in front of his palm, glowing with a blinding, icy-blue light that cast long, terrifying shadows across the petrified trees.

”Glacial Detonation,” Kaelus whispered.

He thrust his hand downward.

The sphere of ice shot into the crater like a fired cannonball. It struck the very center of the excavated pit, impacting the solid, rune-carved bedrock that served as the ceiling of the ancient cavern.

The silence that followed lasted for a single, suspended second.

KABOOOOOOOM!!!

The explosion was not made of fire; it was made of expanding, kinetic ice.

The shockwave was almost apocalyptic.

The entire Ashen Forest violently convulsed. The ground heaved, throwing several of the unprepared Fire Mages off their feet.

A massive, deafening geyser of pulverized rock, shattered ancient runes, and jagged shards of black ice erupted from the crater, shooting hundreds of feet into the bruised night sky.

The heavy iron drilling rigs were caught in the blast radius, torn to shreds and thrown through the air like discarded toys, crashing into the petrified trees with earsplitting, metallic shrieks.

Sir Boris braced his legs against the shockwave, his shield groaning under the impact of flying boulders and ice shrapnel. ”The Archduke is impatient tonight!” Boris grunted, a manic grin splitting his scarred face.

Leonidas, shielded by Captain Pyros’s hastily erected dome of fire, coughed violently as a cloud of ash rolled over them.

”YOU MANIAC!” Leonidas roared, furious and completely deafened. ”You just blew the roof off the containment vault! If you collapsed the cavern—”

Leonidas did not finish his sentence.

The cloud of ash and ice slowly began to settle, revealing the massive, gaping, pitch-black hole that Kaelus had just violently punched into the subterranean depths.

From the absolute, lightless bottom of that newly opened abyss, a sound emerged.

It was not a roar or a shriek.

It was a frequency.

It was a low, thrumming, base-heavy vibration that bypassed the eardrums and resonated directly within the marrow of their bones. It felt like the grinding of tectonic plates, mixed with the sickening, wet, tearing sound of a cocoon splitting open.

The air pouring out of the breach was foul. It didn’t smell of decay or rotting meat like the Trickster; it smelled of ancient, stagnant, suffocating age.

It smelled like dust that had not seen the sun in ten thousand years.

”Form up,” Kaelus commanded, his voice deadly calm, dropping his hand to the hilt of Requiem. The impatience was gone, instantly replaced by the cold, absolute focus of the Reaper. ”The anomaly is awake.”

***

From the darkness of the pit, two massive, glowing eyes ignited.

They were not the slit, demonic red eyes of the Trickster’s kin. They were perfectly round, featureless orbs of blinding, sickly, iridescent magenta. They looked like two dying, toxic suns rising from the center of the earth.

And then, a jagged, armored hand the size of a merchant’s carriage reached out of the abyss, slamming its horrific claws into the lip of the crater.

The stone cracked and splintered under its grip.

Slowly, hauling its colossal bulk up the terraced walls of the excavation pit, the monster emerged into the dim moonlight of the Ashen Forest.

It was a creature that defied biological classification. It looked as though the subterranean earth itself had grown malignant and formed a body.

It was massive, easily forty feet tall at the shoulder, walking on four thick, trunk-like limbs that ended in jagged, obsidian claws.

Its body was encased in interlocking plates of a strange, dark, metallic substance that resembled tarnished bismuth, shimmering with an oily, rainbow-colored sheen.

It had no distinct head, merely a hunched, armored carapace from which those two blinding magenta eyes stared out with ancient, mindless wrath. Jutting from its back were dozens of massive crystalline spikes that pulsed in time with its terrible, vibrating frequency.

”What in the Light is that thing?” Sir Gallahan breathed, his golden eyes wide with shock, his pristine sword drawn. ”That is not an Archdemon.”

”It’s an Elemental Behemoth,” Leonidas snarled, marching forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Kaelus, his amber eyes locked on the titan. ”A creature born of stagnant, corrupted earth mana. My ancestors must have disturbed its hibernation cycle. Kaelus, your bomb didn’t just wake it up. You actively pissed it off.”

”That’s good,” Kaelus sneered, drawing Requiem with a sharp, ringing SHING. The runes on the longsword flared with blinding, icy-blue intensity. ”An angry target is a predictable target. Vanguard! Mages of Valen! Suppressing fire! Bring it down before it breaches the tree line!”

”FIRE AT WILL!” Captain Pyros bellowed, raising staff.

The combined forces of the Southern Legions and the Northern Vanguard unleashed absolute hell.

Fifty elite Fire Mages stepped to the edge of the crater, channeling their combined mana into a massive, synchronized assault. A barrage of soaring, roaring, blindingly bright crimson fireballs, searing magma-lances, and twisting serpents of concentrated heat rained down upon the colossal beast.

Simultaneously, Sir Lucas swung his broadsword, unleashing a massive, crescent-shaped blade of razor-sharp wind magic aimed directly at the creature’s joints. Sir Gallahan fired a volley of blinding, armor-piercing light-spears.

The combined assault was enough to level a small city.

The barrage struck the beast dead-on.

The explosion of fire, wind, and light was blinding, consuming the colossal monster entirely in a roaring inferno of destructive magic. The impact shook the forest, sending another cloud of ash into the sky.

”Hold your fire!” Leonidas ordered, raising a hand.

The mages ceased their casting, panting heavily, waiting for the smoke to clear. They expected to see a charred, smoking, shattered carcass lying at the bottom of the crater.

The smoke parted.

The beast was still standing.

It had not even flinched. The massive, interlocking plates of oily, shimmering bismuth covering its body were completely untouched. There were no scorch marks or cracks on it.

And then, the crystalline spikes on the monster’s back began to hum with a terrifying, high-pitched whine.

The magenta eyes flared.

”Down!” Kaelus roared, his tactical engine instantly recognizing the catastrophic buildup of mana. ”SHIELDS DOWN!”

The beast did not cast a spell of its own. It didn’t breathe fire or spit acid.

It released the exact, identical magical energy that had just been fired at it, amplified by a factor of ten.

The monster possessed a perfect, catastrophic Magical Reflection Carapace. It absorbed the arcane energy, stored it in its dorsal crystals, and violently expelled it back at its attackers.

A massive, sweeping wave of crimson fire, compressed wind-blades, and blinding light-spears erupted from the beast’s body, tearing out of the crater in a 360-degree radial blast of reversed annihilation.

”BRACE!” Sir Boris screamed, slamming his massive tower shield into the dirt, stepping in front of Captain Pyros.

The reflected magic hit the Vanguard and the Fire Mages like a tsunami of death.

Boris’s shield groaned, the mythril actively buckling under the concentrated force of his own comrades’ reversed attacks. Several Fire Mages, slower to raise their defensive wards, were caught in the blast. They were thrown backward like ragdolls, their heavy crimson robes singed and tearing, crying out in pain as their own fire burned them.

The petrified trees of the Ashen Forest surrounding the crater were instantly obliterated, shattered into a million pieces of flying gray splinters.

Kaelus, standing his ground, raised his free hand, summoning a thick wall of glacial ice that absorbed the reflected impact, his boots sliding back a few inches in the ash.

The wave of reflected destruction passed, leaving the perimeter of the crater entirely decimated.

The beast let out another bone-rattling vibration, taking a massive, earth-shaking step up the terraced wall, closing in on the surface.

”Magic is useless against the carapace!” Lucas shouted, his arm trembling from the impact against his shield. ”It absorbs the frequencies and reverses the polarity! We cannot blast it!”

”Then we carve it open manually,” Leonidas snarled, rolling his shoulders.