Chapter 12

  With a cry that sounded more like snarling iron than a human voice, I charged forward. I didn't swing my blade with a fencer’s finesse, but like a massive club. I put the entire weight of my armor and the pent-up rage of the last few days into this one blow. The blade struck the Earth-Veska with a massive broadside directly on the head.

  The sound was deafening—like the splintering of an old oak in a storm. The dry wood of its jaw shattered into a thousand sharp-edged projectiles that whistled through the undergrowth. The force of the impact was so immense that the ton-heavy creature flew two meters to the side, slamming into the trunk of a massive tree with an ugly crash.

  It howled—an unnatural, wooden screech—but none of us had time for pity. Pity was a luxury for those who weren't fighting for their survival in the Black Woods.

  While the Veska was still trying to sort out its disoriented limbs, Vin struck. She was a fusion of shadow and nature. With a fluid hand movement, she commanded the ground beneath the beast to rise. Thick, thorny vines shot like snakes from the earth and coiled around its legs, tightening more and more until the rough wood of its skin began to crack under the pressure. It was pinned, a defenseless target.

  Maira didn't hesitate for a second. She raised her hands, fingers bent into claw-like shapes, and unleashed her dark gift. A deep black cloud formed above the Veska, from which a bloody rain of concentrated acid poured down. Where the drops hit the beast’s wood and mud, green steam rose with a hiss. The acid ate through the protective layers with terrifying speed, exposing layer after layer of the unnatural body.

  But then Arik did something that made even me pause in the middle of the fight. It was a demonstration of power I had never seen before—a magic that lay beyond what we learned in the academies. He used neither pure mana nor the Tainted Mana of the Lower Realms, nor any energy source known to me.

  Instead, something disturbing happened to his own body. His hands began to dissolve up to the forearms, crumbling into fine, dark grey particles that danced in the air like living soot. From this ash, two massive hammers solidified, hovering around him without any visible connection to his body.

  With a mere effort of will, Arik brought these kinetic monoliths down onto the Earth-Veska's wooden torso. Each strike hit exactly where the magical core pulsed beneath the bark. The dull thud of the impacts made the ground tremble beneath my feet.

  I almost felt sorry for the beast... but only almost. In my head, Gravor laughed at my burgeoning sentimentality. “It would rip the heart out of your living body, Luken. Strike before it learns that it is more than just wood!”

  I followed his advice. I raised my blade again, but instead of a physical strike, I concentrated on the dark energy Gravor lent me. I fired red energy pulses from the tip of the blade—unstable projectiles of rage.

  But the Veska wasn't finished yet. In a desperate reaction, it unleashed its own nature magic. A bright, emerald-green light flooded the clearing, and in the next moment, a transparent green barrier appeared. My projectiles slammed against the shield and vanished in harmless sparks. With a massive jerk of its torso, the beast emitted a shockwave of earth power that sliced through Vin’s vines like dry straw.

  Now we stood facing each other. The beast crouched behind its shield, its body scarred from the fight. Its green eyes glowed with hatred through the transparent barrier as it breathed heavily—a sound like a bellows in a forge.

  We didn't attack again immediately. We waited.

  Why? Well, we were aware of our superiority. With a second wave of attack, the fight would probably last less than a minute. Maira’s acid had done its job; the pulsing core on the beast’s chest lay completely exposed in a fist-sized spot—a glowing, vulnerable target. Arik’s hammers had likely given it a serious concussion, as the Veska swayed slightly in its defensive stance. And Vin? Vin was already standing ready, fingers twitching, prepared to trap it back in a prison of roots in seconds.

  But we weren't just here to kill. We were here to learn. The Black Woods were new territory for us, and this Earth-Veska was the perfect test subject. The shield proved to us that these creatures had more in store than just their raw physical power. It was an intelligent use of environmental magic.

  I observed the beast closely. How stable was the shield? How much mana did it consume? Would it try to flee or dare a final, suicidal charge?

  “It’s gathering energy,” Gravor warned, his tone suddenly turning sharp. “The green beneath its skin... it’s flowing downward, into the ground. It’s not just defending itself, Luken. It’s preparing something.”

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  I squared my shoulders and gave the others a signal. The time for waiting was almost over. We wanted to see its abilities—and it looked like the Earth-Veska was about to deliver exactly what we asked for. The last stand of a dying legend.

  I felt the ground beneath my boots starting to warm. The green light of the shield was now pulsing in the rhythm of a racing heartbeat.

  “Get ready,” I growled, gripping my sword with both hands again. “It wants to show us why people fear this forest.”

  And so it did. The Earth-Veska had us exactly where it wanted us. It was no primitive animal running blindly to its death—it was an ancient part of this forest, a construct of mud, stone, and malevolent intelligence. The green glow in its interior, which had previously seemed calm and pulsating, now swelled into a blinding, poisonous emerald hue. The air around it began to shimmer, as if the heat of an invisible forge-fire were distorting the forest.

  “Look out!” I bellowed, but the warning was drowned out by the thundering roar of the earth splitting open.

  In the next moment, tall, heavy, and lethally sharp pillars of rock shot out of the ground. They reminded me of black monoliths driven upward directly from the depths of the underworld. With a sound like the tearing of solid steel, they pierced through the earth's crust. Maira and I dove to the side with desperate leaps; the rush of air from the passing stones tore at my armor. Vin reacted with the speed of a predatory cat, creating a solid wall of thorny vines in a split second that slid in front of her like a living shield. Arik, on the other hand, simply dissolved—his physical form disintegrated into a swirling cloud of ash that glided between the stone lances and only reconstituted into his massive shape once outside the immediate danger zone.

  We had hoped to use this moment for a joint, coordinated second wave of attack. We wanted to encircle the beast, overload its defenses, and finally shatter the exposed core. But that was not to be.

  The ground beneath our feet began to tremble—no longer the localized shaking of the pillars, but a deep, tectonic rumble that made my teeth vibrate in my jaw.

  “What the hell...?” I squeezed out.

  Suddenly, the earth beneath us literally tore open. It wasn't a collapse; it was a targeted fission. The forest seemed to open its maw to swallow us. Each of us—Vin, Maira, Arik, and I—was separated by the rapidly spreading fissures. We fell separately a few meters deep into dark, root-overgrown crevices that the creature had created in the blink of an eye.

  Before my head disappeared below the edge of the earth, I saw it. The Earth-Veska stood unshakable amidst the devastation, and I could have sworn I saw a malicious smile on its distorted face of wood and mud. A cold, calculating expression of triumph. It had isolated us. It had broken the group.

  “An amusing trick for a pile of dirt,” Gravor growled in my consciousness. His rage burned hotter than before. “Don’t let it laugh at us, Luken. Tear it apart!”

  “You’ll be losing that smile soon enough, bastard,” I muttered grimly.

  I hadn't even hit the bottom of the crevice when I activated the mechanism on my back. With a mental impulse and a surge of hot, dark energy, I unfurled my wings. They expanded with a powerful beat—a mixture of tattered leather and shadowy substance—and instantly braked my fall.

  Before the Veska could even realize that its trap hadn't snapped shut on me, I shot upward like a projectile. The wind whistled past my helmet as I catapulted myself out of the earth fissure.

  The beast growled in surprise. Its head jerked up, its emerald eyes widening in fury. It immediately tried to reach me with more stone barriers that thrust up from the dirt like surface-to-air missiles. But I was faster. I beat my wings, using the updrafts of the magical discharges, and flew almost up to the canopies of the ancient Black Woods.

  Up there, in the relative safety of the height, I remained unscathed. The Veska's stone pillars reached their maximum height far below me and collapsed back into themselves with a crash.

  But the relief was short-lived. I circled over the clearing like a hawk and recognized my tactical disadvantage. I was out of reach, but I was also practically trapped in the air. As long as I stayed at this height, I had no chance of attacking the beast effectively. My ranged attacks would be too inaccurate from this distance, and I lacked cover for a dive attack.

  The Veska had adjusted its strategy immediately. It kept its green shield raised and stared at me with an intensity that made it clear: the moment I committed to a dive, it would pluck me out of the air like an unwary bird with a concentrated charge of its earth power.

  I looked down at the torn earth. The fissures were deep and dark. There was no sign of the others.

  Where were they?

  Maira had the shadows, Vin the plants, and Arik his indestructible toughness, but they were separated. In a forest like this, isolation was a death sentence. The Veska only had to pick them off one by one while it kept me in check above.

  I felt the pressure of the situation. The silence of the forest was only interrupted by the heavy breathing of the beast and the distant rustling of the treetops below me. I was the only one who still had an overview, but I couldn't act without risking my life.

  I saw the Earth-Veska begin to move again. It turned toward one of the fissures—the one Vin had fallen into. It raised a massive paw of stone, and the green glow concentrated in its claws. It wanted to bury her down there.

  “Not on my watch!” I screamed against the wind.

  I had to distract it. I had to force the beast to turn its attention fully back to me, even if it meant becoming the target. I drew my demon blade and let the red energy flare up as brightly as possible.

  “Hey, moss-face! Look over here!” I shouted and began a steep spiral dive downward, knowing full well that I was flying straight into a trap if my companions didn't show a sign of life soon.

  The Veska paused. Its eyes fixed on me. The earth around it began to churn once more. I was the bait. And I prayed to the gods that the others would find a way out of their prisons before the next hail of stones tore me to pieces.