Chapter 14

  The Earth-Veska, a being that usually represented the undisputed pinnacle of the food chain in this primeval forest, was now truly in a bind. The roles had been reversed: the hunter had become the prey.

  High above it, I, Luken, circled with wings spread wide—a shadowy predator seeking the moment for the killing blow. Below me, Vin and Maira had positioned themselves behind it like two mismatched goddesses of fate. It was a fascinating spectacle viewed from a bird's-eye perspective. While I used the thermics of the magically charged air to remain stable, a realization hit me that made me pause for a moment despite the mortal danger.

  “Magically, we have two absolute opposites in our team,” I murmured softly into my helmet as a gust of wind rattled my visor. “Life and death. Growth and decay. And they fight side by side without any rivalry.”

  It was more than just cooperation; it was a perverse but highly efficient synergy. Vin, the elf, embodied the wild, untamed vitality of nature. She swirled her arms in a rapid dance, and a dense, shimmering cloud of pollen shot from her palms. This dust settled like a sticky veil over the Veska’s glowing green eyes, clogging the cracks in its wooden skin and robbing it of any chance of visual orientation.

  Simultaneously, Maira wove her dark thread into this web. She cast a complex spell of necrosis that did not attack the plant itself, but rather the air around it. The oxygen in the immediate vicinity of the Veska was decomposed, transformed into a heavy, violet gas that attacked its internal organs of wood and mud from the inside out with every breath the creature took. Vin’s pollen held the gases directly against the beast’s body—a deadly trap made of bloom and blight.

  “Are you actually going to do something at some point?” Gravor asked suddenly. His voice in my head sounded bored, almost yawning, but there was no real anger in it. Rather the impatience of a spectator who finally wants to see the action he paid for. “Or do you want to wait until the ladies have turned the dirt-mutt into compost?”

  “I’m happy to fight,” I replied joyfully, grinning beneath my visor. Adrenaline was boiling in my veins now, fueled by Gravor’s dark energy. “Time to burst the bubble.”

  I tucked my wings tight against my body and went into a dive. Gravity yanked at me, and the wind howled in my ears as I raced out of the sky like a black projectile. The Earth-Veska, blinded by Vin’s pollen and dazed by Maira’s gases, only noticed me when it was too late. It tried to reinforce its green protective shield, but the creature’s concentration was broken.

  I rammed my demon blade into the very center of the emerald shield with the full force of my fall and the kinetic energy of my armor. The resistance was brief—a burning crackle of magical friction—then the barrier popped like a soap bubble. The sound was deafening, a shattering clink of pure energy that made the surrounding trees tremble.

  The Veska let out a howl that shook us to the bone. It was no longer an animalistic roar, but a scream of pure indignation and agony. A massive magical impulse discharged from its body—a shockwave of earth power that hurled Vin and Maira several meters back. They rolled to a stop; the beast’s magic was still powerful, even in death.

  I, however, stood my ground. My wings beat powerfully, creating a counter-pressure that held me in place and stabilized me. I hovered just a few feet in front of the beast’s shattered face.

  The Veska raised its massive head. The slits of green fire that served as its eyes fixed on me with a deadly intensity. And then something happened that I hadn't expected despite all the wonders and horrors of recent years. The creature spoke. Not with sounds, but with a telepathic force that nearly breached Gravor’s mental shields.

  “You are even worse than the Houses with their goddamn Golems,” its voice echoed angrily and hatefully in my mind. “The humans of Caleon use dead stone and iron to hunt us. But you… you bring the corruption itself into our home. You are the truly impure ones!”

  “We are what is necessary to survive,” I countered mentally, but the Veska gave me no time for a moral debate.

  With a hateful growl, it stamped one of its massive paws onto the ground. The earth responded immediately. A row of rock barriers—sharp, pitch-black granite lances—thrust out of the dirt. They moved in a rapid chain directly toward Maira, who was still on the ground.

  It happened faster than I could physically react. My human reflexes were too slow, and the full demon form, which would have multiplied my speed, was not yet activated. I felt Gravor already preparing the chitin plates and scales within me, felt my flesh begin to burn to transform—but it would have been too late. The first rock lance was only a meter away from Maira’s chest.

  But before the first stone could pierce her, the air in front of her exploded.

  A massive ash-hammer shattered the tip of the first rock barrier in a cloud of dust and sparks. In the same breath, the gray cloud dissolved, and Arik formed directly in front of Maira. He had appeared out of nowhere—a bulwark of ashen shadows and unyielding will.

  The remaining rock barriers slammed into him. Normally, such an impact would have torn a man to pieces, but Arik was no ordinary man. The sharp edges of the stone hardly injured him. Instead, something amazing happened: it seemed as if Arik’s physical substance absorbed the kinetic energy and even the mass of the stone itself. The stones didn't just splinter against his chest; they seemed to sink into him, their force simply swallowed and neutralized by his unnatural body.

  He stood there, immovable, arms crossed, while the dust of the crushed rock barriers danced around him. He didn't even look at the Veska; his gaze was fixed only on the safety of the group.

  Impressive, I thought, as the transformation within me now reached its peak. But enough with the foreplay.

  I felt my skin burst beneath my harness, my bones elongating, my fingers cramping into claws. Spikes grew from my shoulders, and my visor was shattered by the growth of my jaws. My scream mingled with the metallic screech of Gravor’s hunger.

  The Veska had played its last trump card. Now it would learn why you'd best not pick a fight with a Paladin who carries a demon of wrath in his mind.

  -

  The rock of the Earth-Veska was hard, cold, and drenched in ancient mana, but to my form, it was little more than dry dust. I didn't feel the impact of the stone lances against my chest as pain, but as a kinetic rhythm that my essence simply absorbed. The ash I consisted of hungered for matter.

  I stood firm between Maira and the writhing monstrosity. Behind me, I heard the heavy breathing of the cleric as she struggled to her feet. Before me, the beast reared up—a furious god of wood and mud whose world was currently collapsing.

  But my attention was diverted by a sound ringing out above me. A tearing noise, like splitting wet leather and hard metal simultaneously. I stole a quick glance upward. Luken.

  I had only truly seen his demon form once before—back in the icy caverns when Luken had struck a final pact with Gravor. Something he had only reported in fragments. It had been a terrifying sight then, but nothing compared to what was unfolding over the clearing now. I had missed the actual showdown against Reyn, the moment when Luken must have revealed the true, staggering depth of his damnation. At that time, I had been busy breaking myself out of a goddamn cell.

  What I saw now was no longer a mere transformation. It was an escalation.

  Luken seemed to grow, not just in size, but in presence. The air around him began to boil, his skin burst open, and pitch-black chitin plates thrust forward from beneath—sharp-edged and gleaming like obsidian. His wings, previously somewhat ethereal, became massive, leathery pinions armed with bony thorns.

  Impressive, I thought coolly. But we still have a monster to finish.

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  I turned back to the Earth-Veska. The beast hesitated, unsettled by the Paladin's transformation, but I gave it no time to recover. I spread my arms. The ash forming my forearms began to rotate violently, a whirlwind of gray dust spreading rapidly. I tapped into the heritage of the Ashbloods—that gift that had made us the perfect soldiers of the ancient wars.

  “You want stone?” I murmured, my voice a dry rustle. “I will give you the dust of the ancestors.”

  With a fluid motion, I unleashed my attack. The ash cloud split into hundreds of fragments. Within milliseconds, these fragments solidified into weapons. They weren't ornate swords, but functional, murderous tools: short spears, jagged axes, throwing stars, and heavy bolts—all forged from the unyielding, dark-gray ash of my body.

  I bombarded the Earth-Veska with an incessant volley. The weapons rained down on it like projectiles from a repeating crossbow. Each time an ash weapon slammed into its wooden skin, it didn't behave like normal steel. Upon impact, it exploded back into a cloud of fine dust that ate into the wounds, encrusting the creature’s green mana and further slowing its movements.

  I was a one-man regiment.

  While my hail of ash kept the Veska on the defensive, Vin and Maira didn't let up. They had long since regained their footing. Vin was a shadow on the periphery. She used the distraction of my bombardment to manipulate the ground once more. This time, she didn't create simple vines. She forced the surrounding trees to use their own roots as whips. With every crack of these wooden tentacles, she tore chunks of mud and bark from the Veska’s body. She was surgically precise, seeking the joints and the spots where the wood had already splintered from Luken's first strike.

  Maira stood firmly on her feet again, her hands glowing with a poisonous green. She intensified the infection she had already planted in the soil. Wherever the Veska stepped, the earth beneath it liquefied instantly into black slime. She stripped away the very foundation of its element. Every time it tried to summon new stone pillars, Maira countered with a surge of corrosive energy that caused the stone to crumble into porous sand even as it formed.

  We formed a circle of doom around the creature.

  The Earth-Veska roared in frustration. Its green core, now clearly shimmering through the destroyed wooden breastplate, pulsed irregularly. It was a dying god in a forest that was beginning to reject it. It tried to turn, to hit me with a tail-swipe of massive wood, but I simply dissolved my torso into clouds, letting the blow pass through empty air, and reformed seconds later elsewhere to continue the fire of my ash weapons.

  “It's holding out longer than I thought,” I noted.

  Despite the synergy of Vin and Maira, despite my unceasing bombardment and the looming presence of the transformed Luken above us, the creature possessed sheer endless endurance. It was as if the entire Black Wood was still feeding it small trickles of energy—a last desperate attempt by nature to keep its guardian alive.

  The Veska lashed out wildly. One of its wooden claws grazed the ground, tearing a deep furrow that immediately filled with Maira’s black acid. It spat green fire—a raw discharge of mana—which Vin only narrowly avoided. The heat scorched the leaves of the trees to ash in seconds.

  I looked up at Luken. He was now almost completely transformed. The mana he emitted pressed physically upon the clearing. The birds that had still lingered in the distant treetops now fled in panic. Even for me, carrying an unstable physical form, the presence of Gravor in this shape felt crushing.

  Luken hovered there, massive claws clamped tight around the hilt of his now-altered sword. We held the Veska in place. We were the anvil strikes wearing it down, while Luken was the hammer yanking back for the final blow.

  A hail of another fifty ash spears bored into the beast's right flank. It groaned, a deep, wet sound, and its head sagged lower for a moment. It was at the end of its strength, exhausted by the poison, the rot, and the incessant bombardment.

  “Now, Luken!” I shouted, my voice sounding like metal grinding on stone.

  The Veska looked up, directly into the face of the demon, and in its eyes, I saw something for the first time that wasn't rage. It was the realization of its own finitude.

  I concentrated my remaining ash into a single, gigantic hammer directly above the monster's head, ready to force it to the ground should it try to rear up one last time. Vin and Maira took a step back, their magic still active, ready for the coup de grace or to flee from the energy discharge that would now inevitably follow.

  The forest held its breath. The thumping of the green core grew weaker, drowned out by the hammering rhythm of Luken’s demonic heartbeat.

  -

  It was a rush. An absolutely godlike, all-consuming rush.

  I was no longer merely floating in the air; I commanded it. Below me, I saw the chaos my companions had wrought, and for the first time, I felt no concern for them. I felt pride. Pure, dark euphoria pulsed through my new, chitin-armored veins.

  My vision had changed. The world was no longer divided into colors, but into flows of energy. I saw the flickering, fading green inside the Earth-Veska like a dying light in a storm lantern. I saw Maira’s violet rot gnawing at its roots like a ravenous shadow, and the nimble, green threads of Vin’s magic holding it to the ground like a net of steel vines. And Arik... Arik was an unshakable pillar of ashen destruction, an incessant hammer beating the beast into submission.

  “Do you feel it, Luken?” Gravor whispered, and his voice was no longer a growl, but a triumphant laugh that merged with my own heartbeat. “This is what we were created for. We were created for the end.”

  I did not answer with words. I answered with action.

  I kicked off from the air as if it were solid rock. With a single beat of my wings that bent the treetops within fifty meters like blades of grass, I shot straight down. I was no longer a man wielding a sword. I was the execution.

  My demon blade had changed along with me. It had grown longer, jagged, and from its core pulsed a light as red as the blood of a dying star. I didn't just drive it into the Veska; I unleashed everything that Gravor and I had dammed up over the last few days—every ounce of frustration, rage, and suppressed power.

  The impact was not a sound; it was a shiver in reality.

  The blade sliced through the creature’s remaining shield like thin parchment. It sank deep into the wooden chest, directly into the glowing green core. In the moment the steel touched the magical center, there was a second of absolute silence before the energy exploded.

  A bone-chilling shriek escaped the beast, a sound so full of agony that it caused the magic of the Black Woods to grind to a complete halt for a moment. Then the Veska was torn apart from the inside out. Red bolts of demonic mana shot from its eyes, its maw, and the cracks in its bark-like skin.

  I felt the resistance of the wood give way. With a brutal jerk, I tore the blade to the side, splitting the monster's massive upper body down to the hip.

  The Earth-Veska collapsed. The once-proud, wolf-like beast disintegrated before our eyes. The green glow died out, replaced by the ashen gray of death and the black oiliness of Maira’s poison. What remained was a smoking heap of rotten wood, mud, and shattered stone.

  I landed in the center of the devastation. The ground steamed beneath my clawed feet.

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, I retracted my wings, but I did not shed the form. The chitin gleamed in the faint light that now filtered through the canopy again, and my eyes still burned with that eerie, violet-red fire. I felt awake. I felt alive like never before. The fatigue of the last week, the heavy miles on the road, the constant pressure of saving the world, the goblin hunt—it was all washed away.

  Maira stepped closer, wiping the black mud from her face and exhaling shakily. Vin let her vines retract, her shoulders sagging with relief as she regarded the destroyed Veska with a mixture of loathing and respect. Arik remained a statue as always, but the weapons of ash slowly dissolved and flowed back into his arms.

  The silence that now reigned was no longer threatening. It was the silence after a storm.

  “It’s over,” Vin murmured, her voice sounding exhausted but firm. “We’ve slain a true monster of the Black Woods. In record time.”

  I turned slowly toward them. I saw their faces—the relief, the exhaustion, but also the newly won spark of combat spirit. They looked at me, and I knew what they saw: a demon wearing the face of their leader. But they did not shrink back. They had seen what this power was capable of.

  I felt Gravor’s presence in the foreground of my mind. He was still there, greedy and satisfied, and I let him be. I enjoyed the sharpness of my senses, the coldness of the air on my scales. A smile stole onto my face—a wide, predatory smile that likely looked terrifying in this form, but in this moment, it was absolutely honest.

  “You know,” I said, and my voice was a deep, vibrating growl that resonated in my chest cavity. “I’ve been getting a bit bored this past week. All this sneaking, this hardship, this constant looking over our shoulders... it made me tired.”

  I took a step over the remains of the Veska, crushing a large hunk of wood under my foot. I looked in the direction where I suspected Sothar’s palace to be, deep in the heart of these dark woods.

  “But this?” I gestured vaguely at the destruction around us. “This has opened my eyes. We are no longer under pressure. We are the hunters. And I think... a little hunt would do our spirits good.”

  Maira looked at me searchingly for a moment. A spark of the same dark fire that burned within me was reflected in her eyes. She had felt the power of the Plague Father—the power to bring an entire ecosystem to its knees. She nodded slowly.

  “The hunt has only just begun,” she replied with a coldness that I liked. “Caleon will take much more from us. It is time we take what is ours.”

  Vin stepped forward and crossed her arms. She looked at her torn clothes and then at the defeated guardian of the forest. A dry laugh escaped her throat. “I still owe Thivan Sothar a visit. And if we have to work our way through beasts like this one to get to him... then so be it.”

  Arik, who had been silent until now, stepped to my side. His ashen-gray face was unreadable, but his presence was like a promise of infinite violence. “We are ready, Luken. Wherever the hunt leads us.”

  I laughed softly, a sound like rolling thunder. The euphoria within me grew. We were no longer a band of refugees. We were a warband, forged in the fire of an impossible battle.

  “Good,” I said, and I felt Gravor howl triumphantly in my head. “Then let’s clean up this forest. And then, we’ll take the head of the Lord of Shadows and Storms.”

  I looked once more at the shattered Veska. A small foretaste of what awaited Sothar and Reyn. The Black Woods might be deadly, but they had never seen a group like us. We were the synergy of life, death, ash, and demon rage.

  And we had only just begun to have fun.