It didn't take long for Keilan to find Vanis and the others. With the help of the wind and the massive crimson lightning storm sprouting across the sky in the distance, he was able to pinpoint their location.

  He found them in the midst of a swarm of Aveanii, holding them off as they corralled fleeing civilians into moving land constructs.

  Vanis, as always, was an unmoving bulwark of metal and death; he barely moved, taking and delivering hits from a single position. And wherever his bident couldn't strike, his lightning did.

  Crimson lightning lunged out from him, flickering out in different directions like a tentacled monster. Dozens of Aveanii were struck down at once by those crimson bolts, their beaks clamping down hard as they were brought close to death.

  Keilan searched for Huiron and didn't find him, but what he did find were pockets of space made open by the sudden disappearance of an Aveanii. He was like death itself, unseen as he rampaged across the field, leaving corpses and empty spaces in his wake. His blade struck clean and true, dispatching Aveanii's left and right in a single strike.

  His prison of darkness was another terror on the battlefield, nightmarish tentacles lashing out and dragging squawking winged warriors back into its abyssal prison, adding another terror-stricking silhouette to its number.

  Sareina was the easiest to find. She hovered above the field, burning orange wings beating fiery death into the teams of Aveanii attacking her. Behind her hovered a rotating halo of burning flowers, each layer swirling in a synchronized counterclockwise formation.

  Keilan remembered the last time he'd seen her like this, hovering above the ground, with circles of flowers rolling like a moving halo behind her. Petals fell from those flowers, falling upon the Aveanii like missiles. And wherever they touched, it was like the hand of death suddenly made itself manifest.

  There weren't any signs, no injuries. Just agonizing screams and bodies collapsing onto the ground, each with burned-out eyes.

  Unlike their lady, the warrior maidens who followed Sareina were a blur. They moved constantly, their staffs blurring into beaks, heads, and limbs, leaving wet squelching thuds behind.

  Their defense wasn't strictly restricted to the ground. They formed a cordon around Sareina, dispatching the majority of the Aveanii before they could overwhelm her.

  Keilan joined them, his signature tornado preceding him, and together they managed to dwindle the numbers of the bird people hounding them.

  It took half an hour of constant beatdowns before the Aveanii got the clue and fled, squawking back into the distance. Keilan knew they'd be back soon, with a much larger number. Hopefully, they'd be gone before then.

  “Let's pick up the pace,” Vanis called to one of the warriors assisting with the train of civilians. He lumbered in his huge armor towards a piece of rock, lifting it with a single hand and stepping aside for the people who now began stepping out from the hole beneath it. “They will be back, and with more numbers. I intend for us to be out of here before they do.”

  Keilan stared as the scared and terrified people were ushered into waiting vehicles, metallic constructs in bulky rectangular shapes. From what he knew, they relied on a distant mechanism, a mothership, so to speak. Like a hive mind, they were all controlled by a single construct, kind of similar to Gray.

  “Hello Keilan, I see you're doing well,” Vanis said as he approached.

  Keilan nodded with a tight smile. “Yeah, I am. Though not without some pain.”

  In the distance, the figures of the War Titans towered above the city. Around them flew flocks of Aveanii, who pestered them like mosquitoes, mosquitoes with giant missiles sprouting from their hands.

  A Titan staggered forward as an explosion spread behind its right shoulder. Before the construct could right itself, the culprit capitalized on it and an equally titanic bird man appeared behind it.

  Sharp talons raked across the back of the War Titan, drawing sparks and a loud shrieking sound. Luckily, it missed the spine, only getting the arm.

  The Titan turned around just as the back of its arm slammed into the bare-chested Aveanii, and the earth trembled as it staggered back.

  Like the entire body, the head of the war Titan was made of black metal. There was no mouth on its face, only a thin, crimson, glowing, triangular shape which, as Keilan continued to watch, grew brighter and brighter until a beam of red energy erupted from it, carving a path right onto the chest of the Spirit King.

  On the surface of its chest, a burning red core, slotted into a cavity, dimmed.

  A ginormous firestorm spread across the sky, and a deluge of inferno poured from it, and like a waterfall, it bathed the mechanical construct in fire.

  Keilan hissed as he stepped back. With a wave of his hand, he summoned a gust of wind that cooled the heated air. He expected the battle to have been done and the war Titan melted, but instead what happened was the construct striding out of the fiery deluge with a calm grace.

  It stretched a hand and a bolt of crimson lightning appeared in it. The Aveanii Spirit King was fast, but it wasn't fast enough. The bolt struck it and the land for miles around caved inward, a huge crater surrounding the Aveanii.

  When the explosion died down and the dust finally cleared, the Aveanii was no more. Fled or died? Keilan didn't know. The War Titan stood undaunted, with black spots and tears the only evidence of the battle that had just been fought. Of the other Aveanii pestering the construct, all were nowhere to be found.

  Keilan looked around. The other War Titans were also engaged in their own battles, and not all of them came out like the first.

  In the far distance, a beam of energy tore into the chest of a War Titan, shattering the core at its heart. There was no fanfare, no terrible explosions. The construct simply stopped moving as the light on its face went dead.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Vanis winced. “Solis is not going to like this. That War Titan cost more than the yearly budget of some major cities.”

  What the…

  Keilan knew the military budget of House Verrille wasn't cheap, but for a single Titan to cost that much was absurd. There were thousands of those things spread across the fleets of House Verrille. If a single War Titan cost this much, then how much was the entire military budget? Probably enough money to fund multiple lesser houses.

  “It's scrap now, right?” Huiron said, appearing out of nowhere. Keilan fought against his urge to throw him into the far distance. “You wouldn't mind if I took it off your hands, eh? Don't mind the favor,” he waved dismissively, “what are friends for.”

  Vanis eyed the Saulae scion for a bit, and Keilan could practically see the plan that was cooking in his mind. “Hmm, a good friend indeed. Fortunately, the War Titan is still of use. We only have to change the core. You wouldn't mind helping carry it back, would you? As a token of our great friendship.”

  Huiron winced and his lips pressed into a tight smile. “Um, uhh—”

  Power rose and a huge blade of wind tore the stationary construct apart, scattering its parts into the distance.

  Vanis' face fell and Huiron adopted a mock expression of confusion. “What Construct? I don't see anything.”

  “The Vehicles are full,” Sareina stepped forward, “we should begin leaving.”

  Keilan glanced at the line of vehicles. “I don't think It'd be safe for them to come with us.”

  “They won't be. They'll make their way to our cordon. Don't worry, the Aveanii won't attack them. The Rules of War m protects them.”

  Keilan frowned. “I don't understand. I know the rules of war protects civilians and low realm weilders from higher realm predators. But look around, the Aveanii have not exactly been subtle in their disregard of it. What's to stop them from simply attacking this convoy and carting away with the civilians?”

  “The Aveanii are already on thin ice with their casual disregard of the Cosmic Rules of War. They have a strike on their name for assaulting this world without first calling for a negotiation and surrender, as it should have been," Vanis explained. "The Civilians who have died here are those who suffered from the proximity to too many higher wielders battling. The ones that were carted away? These we failed to find before they encountered the Bird men, and I'm very certain surrender would have been demanded before they were taken. This bunch are already under our protection; attacking them would be another strike on their name.”

  “Uhh, I'm pretty certain my memory isn't faulty, but I've witnessed multiple instances on this battlefield alone where fleeing civilians under the Lese banner were ambushed and killed. Heck, one happened in space, right in front of us. Your assurances are not calming me, Vanis. These people deserve more than to rely on a faulty rule that isn't being enforced.”

  Vanis winced and opened his mouth to speak when Huiron interrupted. He stepped in between both of them and his black eyes met Keilan's. “Chill up, Kei man. Instead of useless arguments, how ‘bout solutions? Here's what, I'll send Ala with them. Hidden, she should be able to take down most threats that bar their paths. How does that sound?”

  Keilan took a deep breath and nodded.

  “Good,” Huiron said. “Now let's scram before those bipedal chickens come back. I don't know about any of you, but I'm not keen on being pecked to death.”

  Everyone chuckled at that. And right on schedule, the vehicles drove off a few seconds later, tailed behind by a moving patch of darkness.

  Keilan and the others moved on, taking short routes over collapsed buildings and mounds of rubble. They tried flying at some point, but the heated battles between the Aveanii Kings and the Lese War Titans quickly sent them fleeing for the ground.

  Hours passed as he and the others found and ushered Civilians into waiting vehicles. Keilan lost track of the numbers that were saved as they upended entire mountains of rubble and dug into the earth to rescue people trapped in bunkers underneath.

  Everyone was so focused on their task that they failed to address the elephant in the room, or more likely, they didn't know how to address it. Even Nalon, who was usually dismissive of anything that wasn't Lese royalty, sent strange looks Keilan's way, like he didn't know how to consider him.

  Keilan saw all this but kept quiet. His mind churned with what he'd done and what it signified: a Spirit lord killing a Spirit King. it was practically unheard off, an impossibility. No Spirit lord could generate enough power to kill a Spirit King, no matter how talented they were.

  Sure, a majority of the deed had been done by the Wind itself, but Keilan had been the one to direct it. Should he take full credit or admit to partial participation? He sighed. He'd deal with this when they got out of this hell hole.

  For now, he contented himself to dealing with the swarms of enemies that flocked to their location, all with the burning intent to end him.

  Nalon and the remaining warders staved away the Spirit Kings, cutting them off right before they could come near. The Spirit lords, on the other hand, were left alone.

  By the end of the fifth wave, Keilan's armor, which had withstood countless attacks, started looking weary, with tears and cracks running across its surface. The others weren't any better. Vanis suit of armor was close to falling into many pieces, Sareina's dress looked torn and haggard, with many patches shriveled from extreme fiery attacks. Huiron, probably due to his fighting style, was the only one who looked the best out of the lot of them. And even then, there was no difference between him and a street thug who just got out of a very brutal fight.

  Their rescue mission carried them into mid afternoon the next day. Keilan and the others were just at their limits, the only thing keeping them still in the field was the fear that people would die should they decide to take a rest.

  They all worked in silence, too tired to engage in pointless quips. Even Huiron was uncharacteristically silent, having devoted himself to prowling the area ahead of the group, invisible to everyone.

  The continuous swarms of attacking Aveanii had slowly died down, and Keilan was beginning to hope that they weren't going to encounter any more of them. But of course, trouble was never that easy to stave off.

  "It, it ate them!" A woman cried as Vanis helped pull her out from a hole in the ground. "Red e—everywhere!"

  Keilan frowned and looked around. The other people that came out after her had terror stricken expressions, like they'd just witnessed something their minds couldn't fathom. All had been stricken mute, their bodies moved on autopilot.

  "Ma'am," Vanis said gently, "I can't understand what you're saying. Can you explain?"

  The woman stared up at him with wide eyes, her hair disheveled and matted with sweat at the same time. "It's down there! Down there! Don't go down there, it'll eat you too! Please don't!"

  The ear piece in Keilan's ears scratched to life and Solis’s voice came through. “Van—”

  “Solis? Not the time, brother. Be quick.”

  His voice sounded distant, which made it all the worse with the static Interference. “Listen— me!”

  “I can't hear you clearly!”

  Keilan's grip tightened on his weapon. “Vanis.” He said slowly.

  “Solis, speak up!”

  “Vanis, run! You—get out of there!”

  “What's happening?”

  “Vanis,” Keilan repeated.

  “Solis, answer me. What's happening?”

  “Run! The world—gone!”

  “Vanis!” Keilan shouted.

  “What?!”

  “You really should get out of the call right now. We have company.”

  He jumped backwards, his spear whipping forward and slapping something out of the air. A double decked house exploded as what he'd slapped impacted it and Keilan's spine ran cold.

  That thing… that thing had been aimed at his head.

  The others whipped out their weapons in an instant. Without a word spoken they all turned their backs against each other, each person facing a separate direction.

  In the near distance, Nalon and Kiki, both of whom had been helping against the Aveanii Kings assaulting the War Titans, turned around and sped for them.

  A distant howl reverberated through the wind just as a cloud of shadows rose and swallowed them, both warders disappearing in a blink.

  Keilan barely had time to take that In before a sharp pain ripped through his arm. There was no sign of tear on his wrist, but when he pulled back the piece of arm guard covering it, there was a new tattoo now painfully inscribed on his arm.

  A masked figure stepped out of a patch of shadows and Huiron hissed. “Ahh, dammit, Shadow Hall.”