"Let's try again," I whispered.
This time, I would not play by her tempo.
The Chimaera reacted with brutal elegance.
Dozens of mana arcs burst to life around her—each crackling with lightning, their edges sparking like miniature comets. She was preparing a barrage. And not just any barrage—this was a calculated, high-speed curtain of destruction, the kind that forced even me to pull back, up in the skies. I hovered sixty, maybe seventy meters above the ground, and even I felt the pressure.
But spells like that came at a cost.
Time. Focus. Mana.
I could feel the elemental distortion in the air. So I didn't wait. I forged my own counter—hundreds of wind-infused needles, miniature arcs of compressed slicing wind—and fired them all at once.
Her reaction was immediate.
She blurred. Lightning cloaked her again, supercharging her muscles and reflexes. Afterimages fractured through the forest as she zipped across the swamp's surface, leaping between trees, vaulting off protruding roots and branches. She was dodging every single needle I fired as small explosions erupted like a meteor shower.
Her speed was staggering.
Years—no, decades—of refined battle instinct guided her movements. She wasn't just strong. She was supposed to be injured. But she isn't. And that was our mistake.
Lucius and I had assumed—hoped—that this Ex-Alpha had come to us with some lingering wound, some fault line in her strength after losing the position of Alpha against a rival Chimaera. But no.
This was a prime Chimaera, at least it felt like it. Youthful, intelligent, overflowing with mana—and far more dangerous than we'd been prepared for.
And then, mid-motion, she made her move.
She stopped.
Right on the swamp's surface.
Then… she let go of her mana-walk.
And dropped.
Submerged beneath the thick, dark waters.
No!
My wings beat down hard, accelerating forward. The second she vanished, I knew what she was doing. The swamps—already hell on our mana senses—would cloak her completely. But not herself. She could still see me with her own blueish sets of glowing eyes.
It was one of her innate gifts—submerged sensory awareness. She could track movement and mana signatures while remaining undetectable herself inside the swamps, an advantage her own habitat has provided.
She was hunting now.
I darted left, then jerked hard right.
Zzzzt!
The first lightning arc surged up from below—pure precision.
Another followed.
Then another.
Each came with less and less delay.
Soon, an entire web of lightning began firing from under the surface, timed perfectly with my evasive pattern. Each arc sliced through the air with whip-like speed, reading my trajectory as if she'd predicted every shift.
'How the hell is she maintaining this?!' I snarled aloud. So much lightning— so much mana. Lightning was one of the most draining elemental affinities, even for beasts—yet she flung them like they cost nothing.
I stayed aloft. Barely. Fighting to maintain flight against the turbulent air, spending mana just to stay stable while also raining down wind-based bombardments.
None of my shots landed. Not one.
She was submerged too deeply. Or too fast, or near a particular corner. Or all of them, changing her position as she switched from one place to another.
And slowly, doubt crept in as I was now barely able to keep up against the never-ending electrical barrage.
Should I retreat? Should I break off and search for Lucius? I still couldn't sense him. His mana… it was gone. Like he'd turned to mist. A ghost.
Or maybe…
Maybe he left me.
The thought punched through my chest harder than any attack I had faced till now.
But… even if he had, I couldn't blame him... No, I simply couldn't just.
This wasn't his fight to begin with, he didn't sign up for this, not this exactly, anyway. Not really.
This was my fight.
As that bitter thought began to fester, threatening to consume my focus... His voice suddenly ripped through the chaos.
"PRAISE: ULTIMA, THE CRIMSON FLAMES!"
The words were clear.
A chant.
A technique.
My head snapped around just in time to see it—
A small orb of condensed fire mana, no larger than a tennis ball, perhaps smaller, flared like a newborn star at the tip of his extended left hand, as he stood above a half-shattered tree with one leg kneeling down.
He fired it straight into the swamp.
The impact point?
Exactly where I'd been hammering for the last five minutes.
BOOOOOOM!
The explosion was blinding.
A roaring pillar of flame erupted from the murk, carving through water, mud, and swamp gas like a divine judgment. The air ignited. The surface detonated. Shockwaves punched outward, sending mist, lightning and debris flying in every direction.
And then—
CRACK.
The Chimaera's body exploded out of the swamp, screaming as she took the hit directly to her neck—the region near her gills.
She smashed into the base of a massive tree. The wood shattered beneath the force, splinters flying like shrapnel. Her body convulsed as flames still clung to her fur, burning in blotches across her scales and mane.
My jaw tightened.
Lucius.
That loyal one-eyed bastard!
Just when I was about to break, he returned.
With fire.
And vengeance.
Lucius didn't stop.
His extended hand shifted slightly—just the fingers, twitching with restrained command. For a brief heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
CRACK—WHHHHRUMMM!
The massive tree the Chimaera had crashed against snapped, not just falling, but plummeting as if something pulled it down. An unseen force, deliberate and oppressive, slammed it onto the beast with far more weight than gravity could offer alone.
The impact sent a shudder through the swamp. Muck and water erupted outward, the Chimaera's agonised shriek ripping through the air.
Lucius leapt.
Crimson Ultima in hand, his body blurred forward, closing the distance at an unnatural speed, feet gliding just above the swamp's surface. The beast writhed beneath the shattered remains of the tree, still twitching, discharging arcs of wild lightning from its scorched body as it tried to rise, to breathe, to kill.
But something was still pinning it down.
As if the tree carried the weight of an invisible world.
Another force? Another entity?
No time to dwell, as long as we live, questions will be answered.
"Not so soon!" I shouted.
Wind slashes erupted around me—dozens of them, whirling into formation and slicing downward like aerial guillotines. Lucius responded in kind—his mana arcs fewer, weaker, but accurate, relentless. Our barrage rained down in harmony, forcing the Chimaera deeper into the swampbed.
Lightning flared against her skin—defensive discharges, violent and untamed.
I felt my mana pool plummet. No matter.
This ends now.
I dove, wings folding behind me, becoming blades of compressed wind. All my speed, all my remaining strength, poured into this descent. Lucius did the same—his blade glowing white-hot with condensed raw mana, slicing the very air with its pressure.
The Chimaera was bleeding, her scales cracked open, her skin burnt away in patches. She tried to lift her tail. Tried to charge one last spell.
Too late.
Lucius was a single step from her, blade ready to stab her head, moments away from ending this nightmare.
Then—
My eyes widened as realisation hovered above me, along with something else.
... I wasn't alone up here.
Something above me moved. No rustle, no warning. Just a shift in the atmosphere. Like a presence that hadn't been there…until it chose to be.
My breath caught mid-flight. Something was watching us.
No! Something was descending, fast...