"Sorry?" he scoffed, spurting a bit more blood onto his robes. "Yes. I'm sorry that you fell prey to his honeyed words and lies," Ryfon said, still not meeting Halsek's eyes.
"What lie did he tell? Huh? All I've seen, all I've ever known until he saved me from the oppressive heel I've been under since birth is that you have all lost your collective grasp on reality. You have no point of reference, no knowledge of what goes on beyond the council, and yet here you are after a thousand years trying to lecture me that he's the deceitful one," Halsek sneered and spat a wad of blood toward the ground.
Ryfon watched as it landed on the ground before him, and lifted his head to meet Halsek's eyes, who shuddered at the sight of the rage hidden just beneath the surface of his otherwise placid expression.
"Thank you for the answers, Halsek. I will relay your words to the others and ensure that changes are made. I will let you live, but like I said before, those foul beasts you've brought with you will not see the sun set on this day," Ryfon rose and stared down at Halsek imperiously. "Changes," Halsek scoffed, hacking up another mouthful of blood.
Just as he did so, there was a ripple of ambient mana that tore through the forest from the portal the others were fighting at, prompting Ryfon to look in their direction momentarily. "Do not show your face before me as an enemy again. If you do, I will erase you from the annals of the Twilight Sea. I swear it," he said, sending a connecting tendril of pure white mana to Halsek's core.
Halsek, wounded as he was, couldn't resist the fear that latched onto him when he realized Ryfon had meant every word, as proven by the binding vow that writhed around his core. "D-Damn you," he hardly managed to say through his clenched teeth. "Go and tell your master that I'm waiting for him as well. When the time comes, I will meet him on the battlefield not as my pupil, but as a mortal enemy, and I will show no quarter," Ryfon said before leaving a broken Halsek, branches, and a cloud of dust in his wake.
As he approached the portal, the palpable smell of blood, entrails, and steel permeated the air before the portal, as hundreds of piled corpses nearly blocked the entrance entirely. Atop one of the piles was Taegin, wielding his blade and spells with expert precision and an efficient brutality that made it difficult for the other creatures to simply climb up to get him. Bernar, however, was little more than a bloody, lurching figure as he moved from target to target.
Even for all his ability, Bernar moved with such speed that even Ryfon found it a mild challenge to keep up with him.
Erumon wasn't lying when he said Bernar was like a young drake unleashed, but I want to give him the wings of a dragon, Ryfon thought with a mild look of surprise on his face.
Bernar moved to his next group of Thran, each one with a crude, yet massively oversized weapon raised in challenge toward him. With a wolfish grin, he watched as they all swung their weapons, each aiming for a different part of his body. He chuckled as his eyes shifted from their golden glow into that of a deep scarlet just before disappearing entirely.
The group's weapons struck the ground, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust, roots, and rocks high into the air. "Thanks for making that easy," Bernar jeered from behind them. As they turned to look at him, their heads collectively fell from their shoulders and landed on the ground with a unified thud in the blood-soaked earth.
They didn't even feel his strikes? I guess I'll have to pick up the pace as well, or my own grandson will end up surpassing me, Taegin thought, having watched the situation unfolding below out of the corner of his eye.
His eyes glowed more intensely than before as a group of over fifty Thran scrambled over their kinsfolk's corpses to reach him. In less time than it took to blink, he'd reached the bottom of his macabre high-ground, leaving a score of fresh corpses suspended in the air around him. With a stomp of his foot, he sent platforms of earth soaring into the air to launch several Thran high above him.
He jumped, reaching the first platform and severing one of the creatures in half before jumping through the freshly made mist to reach another platform. Each bound was a fatal strike against the airborne creatures, but when he reached the end of his platforms, he suspended himself in the air and began to bend mana to his will.
From his high point, the platforms broke and split to carry the airborne halves of the thran, but he wasn't going to stop there. He reached down with his left hand and pulled the earth beneath his pile of bodies, lifting it entirely. Many of the Thran at the entrance noticed the display, but had little time to react before the dismembered limbs, weapons, and stones from the earth pierced them at astonishing speeds.
How the fuck is he doing that? Bernar wondered momentarily, as each projectile left a sonic boom in its wake.
While only a handful of creatures weren't hit by the initial barrage, the ones that did manage to get out of the way were swiftly dispatched by Bernar, who slaughtered them with ease.
To answer your question, I've marked each one I've killed with earth and wind attribute mana. Why do you think I was staying in the same spot the whole time? The best defense is a good offense, after all, Taegin asked as he launched the last claw in his pile of corpses at another Thran, piercing its brain just before he landed back on the ground.
The portal was entirely congested with disfigured, bloodied bodies, which forced the incoming Thran to scramble over their fallen kin. "Back away from the portal. This has gone on long enough," Ryfon muttered, prompting Bernar and Taegin to look at him. "Oh, you're back! I have more competition now," Bernar said over his shoulder with a grin.
"Competition?" Ryfon asked with a curled eyebrow as he watched Bernar ready himself for another round of attacks. He closed his eyes and began channeling an incomprehensible amount of mana that caused both Bernar and Taegin to flinch. He raised his hands out beside him and turned his palms upwards, bent his arms toward himself, and placed his hands on his chest at an angle.
The air surrounding them became entirely still, but a resonance flowed through it that could only be described as the bow of a violin tracing along the spine of a thin metal plate. The pitch reverberated through the forest at a low hum that gradually increased in volume to rumble the ground beneath their feet. Both Bernar and Taegin watched in awe as a hyperdense sphere of mana was being compressed at the height of Ryfon's mouth.
Move! Taegin sent Bernar urgently, dashing away on instinct as he gave him a warning glare.
As if time itself had come to a crawl, the creatures that still scrambled over their comrades' bodies some were even suspended in the air as Ryfon's gaze shifted from the orb in his hands to the mountain of corpses before the portal.
His mouth opened wordlessly as his elbows quickly tucked in at his sides when he leaned forward. A bright flash of light emitted from the orb a fraction of a second before a beam of pure, white mana, roughly as thick as a Myrdinian tree trunk, seemingly tore through the space between its origin and the portal.
The beam of light, coupled with the amplified bow-like sound, completely obliterated anything and everything in its path. The portal, however, collapsed in on itself to a point, then exploded outward with a blast of Leech mana that nearly reached the peaks of the Rhydian Mountains.
"What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?" Bernar asked breathlessly, feeling a bead of sweat race down his cheek, and a fearful chill roll down his spine. "I thought you said it was a competition," Ryfon shrugged to Bernar, whose mouth would have buried itself in the dirt if it could have dropped any further. Bernar chuckled nervously, his eyes widened in astonishment.
"I said it was a competition, not that you were supposed to tear through the veil of the fucking universe," Bernar shouted, gesturing toward the town-sized crater in the earth. "You're right, and I had to defend my position as your superior, though I suppose your mother might put up at least a decent fight," Ryfon chuckled, leaving him even more befuddled than before.
"Are you saying Mom learned this technique? She never told me that," Bernar said with a decent amount of incredulity, prompting Ryfon to raise an eyebrow. "Did you forget who my daughter is?" he asked with a wry grin, prompting Bernar to look at Taegin, who could only shrug with an upturned lip.
"Thoma's going to throw a shit-fit when he hears about this," Bernar chuckled and shook his head. "I wouldn't be disinclined to teach it to you, but you'll have to promise me that you'll only use it in the circumstances I call for," Ryfon said, but as the words left his mouth, Bernar was already kneeling before him. "I swear on my life and core that I will follow your teachings and guidance," he said reverently.
"Get up; there's no need for showmanship," Ryfon said, picking him back up with a chuckle. "When this is over, I'll personally train both you and Thoma to use it. I wouldn't want my future grandson-in-law to feel left out," he continued with a toothy grin, causing Bernar to shudder.
Thoma, I swear on everything that if you end up breaking Ysevel's heart, I'll kill you myself, Bernar thought, using every ounce of his willpower to hide the thought, but to no avail.
"I already know he won't, and the same goes for her. In fact, once this situation is dealt with, there is someth-..." Ryfon trailed off, his head immediately flicking to the northeast with a worried look. Bernar and Taegin felt it as well, their eyes widening in astonishment at the dense ripple of Leech and Tyrant mana passing over them.
"H-How far is that from us?" Bernar asked, not that he couldn't tell, but he needed to confirm his suspicions. "It's coming from the Gramm Isles," Ryfon said, his voice immediately growing dark and grim. "What is the meaning of this?" Taegin asked, looking up and around to see if he'd accidentally missed anything.
Ryfon immediately backed away from them, his mana surging around him as he grew to his full size and extended his pale wing down toward them. "Get on, we have to go now," he said in his full voice. "Where?" Bernar asked.
Please don't be what I think it is, he hoped, swallowing dryly as he held on tightly to the shimmering handholds that formed when he got into a seated position.
"He's here," Ryfon said, using his full strength to beat his wings and send them into the sky.