The field before us was unrecognizable. There was no resemblance to the rest of the Blooming Expanse.
Several hundred meters of grass were burned to cinders, revealing what appeared to be the corpses of dozens, if not more than a hundred ants. If my eyes didn’t betray me, not much remained of the ants spread across the burned field, leaving nothing but molten exoskeletons, blazing black flames engulfing what remained of their crimson-shimmering bodies that were larger than they had any right to be.
Towering at shoulder heights of half a meter to a full meter, they would have been a scary sight to behold under other circumstances. But not now, not when a massive creature with black hide and a blazing black mane towered above the tallest ant, its paw crushing into the ant’s thorax, flames consuming it slowly.
“Great, a Fiend in a tug of war with Terror Ants,” Daniel cursed softly.
Sophie grunted, fingers pointed at the tall ant the Lionaer Fiend was crushing with its paw. “That’s the queen. No wonder the workers and soldiers are going crazy.”
They had to be fighting for a while, and I highly doubted the fight would end anytime soon. Not with more crimson Terror Ants emerging from the mound in the distance. I located five entrances to the ant mound, but there had to be more as dozens of ants emerged at a time.
“They won’t all fit into my storage,” Daniel muttered, the corner of his lips curling upward.
“I managed to sneak into a larger storage ring.” Sophie waved him off. “My parents were scared about all the other stuff, but the Camp’s guidelines about spatial storage were rather loose, so…” She shrugged lightly.
“I don’t want to be the party pooper, but I think we have to kill that thing first before we can store anything,” I added, pointing at the massive beast that resembled a lion, yet not really. It had a thick, black hide instead of fur, a mane of black flames, and eyes so dark it felt like they consumed me with a mere glance. Then there were the horns; a deadly pair, straight and pointed, jutting from its forehead. The fiend impaled a pair of Terror Ants with a flick of its head when the beasts rushed to their queen’s rescue, ending their mission on short notice.
Looking at the beast, my earlier confidence was nowhere to be found. That fiend was a damned menace. One of its paws continued to crush the Terror Ant Queen’s thorax as it snapped at the Terror Ants surrounding it. Several died even before I registered their charge, but that was just the start. The Lionaer Fiend tore through the Terror Ants, biting their heads off, clawing its way through their thorax and abdomen with shocking ease, and burst out pitch-black flames into its surroundings in a burst when too many ants closed on its position.
The Terror Ants were far from weak. If I wasn’t wrong, even the smallest Terror Ant was an Awakened beast. Sure, they didn’t appear to be the most intelligent beasts, but their raw strength and resilience were off the charts. They survived several seconds even as the horrifying flames melted their exoskeleton. But…that was it. They stood no real chance. Not even the taller Terror Ants, the soldiers, could do anything against the Lionaer Fiend, even though they appeared to be Evolved beasts.
Not even the reinforcements were strong enough to force the fiend into retreat.
“Ten seconds,” Scott called out suddenly, sending my mind blank.
My head jerked to my friend, but if he noticed me and the terror in my eyes, he didn’t show anything.
“A-Accelerated Regeneration and Boon have been applied,” Fabienne called out quietly as a pulse of power struck. It reverberated through my body, forcefully diverting my attention back to the terror unfolding before us.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the seconds trickled, and just as I thought the timer wouldn’t end, ten seconds were up. Sophie dashed to the side, a familiar sizzling following the area she passed through. Scott moved forward, followed by Daniel, whose war axe and armor crackled with lightning. He rushed past Scott and closed in on the beasts, all while the tides on the battlefield shifted.
The Terror Ant Queen somehow managed to twist its melting body to strike the Lionaer Fiend. Her mandibles snapped toward the fiend’s leg and snapped closed. A sickening crunch resounded, followed by a burst of black flames that consumed the queen temporarily. When the flames disappeared, the queen’s mandibles were unrecognizable. Molten and crushed.
The Lionaer Fiend’s head plunged down faster than any one of us could react. I had a bad feeling about this, but my lips barely opened when the fiend tore the Terror Ant Queen’s head off, separating head and thorax way too effortlessly.
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A lightning bolt struck the fiend beneath the right eye, and it turned to see Daniel and the others. Yet, instead of reacting, the Lionaer Fiend crunched on the queen’s head unmovingly. A wall of black flames erupted, blocking both our team and the Terror Ants from engaging in melee.
As the flames died down, the fiend was nowhere close. It was atop the Terror Ant mound, its mane flickering in the wind as flames of even greater darkness spilled to the ground like liquid.
“The flames around its neck are growing thinner. It’s activating—” I shouted the moment I realized what was going on.
Finally, I made my move. I pushed toward the battlefield, ether flowing and my refined silvernit sword at the ready. A particular detail of our plan forced itself into my mind, and the corner of my lips curled upward as the liquid-like flames spread over the mound. The flames slithered like elemental snakes; they moved toward the entrances and surged inside, setting the ant mound on fire.
Crashing noises and desperate clattering were all I heard before a few more ants emerged from the mound. A handful of seconds later, a cacophony of explosions and the sound of a collapsing mine rang in my ears. Flames erupted from the entrances, searing the few Terror Ants that managed to make it out of the mound, and the tunnels collapsed. The mound, once resembling a small hill, collapsed in on itself.
The Lionaer Fiend leaped off the mound in time and turned away as if completely unbothered by the events unfolding around it. But it didn’t leave. Scott shouted something in the fiend’s direction, and the Lionaer Fiend actually turned to him. It roared and released a black firebolt at Scott. He leaped to the side, barely evading the swift projectile, and scrambled to his feet, his voice carrying farther.
“Delta!”
The fiend, seemingly enraged, jumped toward Scott, ignoring the incoming Terror Ants and the ruined mound.
While the Lionaer Fiend was busy draining its black flames to destroy the mound, we had gotten into position, following Scott’s callouts. I ignored the screams in my head, telling me to run as far as possible, and rushed toward my designated position. Calling upon the Earthen Aspect with Aureus’ support worked wonders, and I shifted my trait’s range of effect. Condensing the effect and pushing it into a single direction was a heavy workload for my brain, but it worked, and that was all that mattered.
My ether reserves were drained and reached a dangerously low level, but the ground beneath the Lionaer Fiend sank in regardless. Its injured leg disappeared in a small hole alongside its other front leg, and the fiend crashed head-first into the ground, which disappeared as well when a pulse of power surged through my bond with Aureus.
We need more!
I was in full agreement with Aureus’ sentiment and pushed further, emptying my core in a final burst. The Lionaer Fiend would recover quickly, but the sinkhole would give us a good second. A second in which Sophie appeared behind the Lionaer Fiend, her eyes filled with murder. The poisonous green shortsword in her right hand shot forward and pierced deep into the Fiend’s least defended spot – its butthole.
She didn’t show any restraint as her blade plunged deep into the target. Her blade flashed even more vibrantly as a burst of ether surged through it, and she pushed it deeper still. Liquid dripped from her other blade as well, burning into the ground with the perfect mixture of poison and acid her traits created.
A pained yet enraged roar resounded, and black flames engulfed the Lionaer Fiend before Sophie could retract her other blade. She cursed, and a pained scream echoed in my ears as tongues of flame surged forward, reaching greedily toward Sophie. Then she disappeared, and my heart twisted as I imagined the worst possible scenario. Sophie, engulfed in the fiend’s hellish flames, burned to cinder.
My head was reeling, my throat tightening, and all I could think of was death.
W-What happened? Where is she? W–...
A rumbling reverberated through my head, forcing its way into my disheveled mind.
Calm down. Plan!
Aureus was not beside me. He hadn’t seen the flames as they reached for Sophie, yet it felt like the Earthheart had seen it all. His voice was calm and reassuring in a way that made me believe he had seen what I’d seen and more.
My heart was still clenched, uncertainty gripping me, but oddly enough it was my itching eyes that gave me the final piece of clarity.
If something had happened to Sophie, Fabienne would have gone crazy already.
Fabienne maintained the spells applied to us. If one fizzled out, she would have noticed. But instead of crying or panicking, sweat poured down her cheeks as I caught a glimpse of relief. Sophie was alive!
My attention snapped back to the battlefield with that realization. Our plans were good, if a bit too risky for my taste, but when was hunting an Evolved fiend as a young Adept ever safe?
I was just in time to see Daniel arrive before the Lionaer Fiend. The beast had just pushed itself upward, escaping the sinkhole, when it caught Daniel clad in arcs of lightning. They were thicker than the regular currents Daniel conjured at will, and I was half-certain his armor was the reason behind it.
The Lionaer Fiend looked worse for wear. Its movements were a little sluggish, but it clawed at Daniel with surprising precision. Daniel managed to escape by a hair’s breadth. However, his expression twisted with pain as black flames licked his body. He pushed forward and discharged the condensed lightning arcs at once.
He reached top speed in a moment, moving faster than I’d ever seen him move before, and his war axe cleaved down. The fiend responded in kind. It snarled at Daniel as more flames surged toward him, but crackling arcs of electricity intercepted them. Even if it was only for a moment, the arcs blocked the flames, creating the space and opportunity he needed to ram the war axe deep into the fiend’s wounded leg.