"Messenger Of Destruction."
The name reverberated within Lucas, he finally understood it all. She was somehow related to the beast in one way or the other, and he would have to find out how.
Clara stared at the other members of her cohort get hit one after the other, she had a grim expression on her face, one mixed with courage, anger and sadness.
Her cohorts weren't dead as the amount of Ruin energy they emitted to compete with the energy of destruction that the World Eater was made of was insane and the only reason they were hit was because they were short on energy.
One of them raised his hand to signal down to her that they were doing fine. Clara grinned from ear to ear and then jumped, she climbed the building the same way a Gorilla would climb a tree.
She was exceptionally fast and agile, when she stood in from of the behemoth she looked like a speck of dust but her smile never wavered, she threw a punch coated in her Ruin, it connected, causing the beast's body to ripple like water.
The beast screeched, its wails shaking the ground causing another earthquake. Then it suddenly stopped, something fell from it, it seemed like pieces of debris from the buildings around it but these were different. They were dark blue in colour and seemed like it had died, Lucas knew what they were. They were pieces of the core that David had damaged. Naturally, the core would have an illustrious glow to it as it showed that it was unharmed.
But David only damaged the core, he didn't destroy it. Or did Clara actually destroy the core with that punch?
The World Eater went at her again, but she wasn't harmed by its touch, her entire body covered by Ruin, she held it in place and then swung it.
The creature flew downwards to the ground, Lucas saw that, his eyes wide:
"Get out of the way!" He screamed at the others as he took David's hand and dragged him to safety, flying away trusting the others to protect themselves.
Lucas dropped David back down, the young lad fell to one knee, he was bleeding from the nose, sweating and breathing heavily.
"You okay?" Lucas asked, his mind shifting back to Deborah's prophecy. He put the thought away and then looked at David who gave him a thumbs up and smiled, wiping the blood from his nose and the sweat from his face.
David got up, his weapon had been destroyed and it didn't seem like Deborah had any other weapons. Lucas searched frantically for Deborah and Karl, then he saw them. Karl using his back to hold up a giant rock that almost fell on Deborah, he was smiling at her and she had a surprised look in her eyes.
The World Eater nearly hit Karl but he covered his entire body with every bit of Ruin he had and just in time as it passed both him and the rock, Lucas ran towards them and helped Karl push the rock away. The pragmatic leader fell to one knee coughing up blood, he had clearly been hit but it wasn't severe.
Then they heard laughter from above and a loud noise almost immediately in front of them. It sounded like someone detonated an atomic bomb, dust rose into the air.
Standing there was Clara, her long flowing jacket moving with the wind. She stood between Lucas's cohort and the World Eater.
The wisp of smoke came together and formed something that looked like an egg. Lucas and the others stared at it for a while, then they realized what it was doing.
It was evolving, changing into a form that would allow it fight better, a form that would make it the perfect killer.
The egg exploded and out of it came a dragon, its wings were so wide that it almost covered the sky, it was taller than two skyscrapers put together and the most horrifying part was that it had seven heads or should have.
Lucas noticed this abnormality, the creature had six heads that were perfectly fine but the seventh head was missing, there was a neck but no head.
"Look at that." Lucas said to Deborah and Clara who were standing beside him. "It has only six heads, those six heads having dark blue orbs upon them."
"Its cores." Clara noted and then jammed her fist into her palm and grinned. "Time to run wild then."
"Hey handsome!" Clara shouted, clearly speaking go Karl, "What's your faculty?"
"Soul flame. I can burn the souls of my enemies and I can also heal my allies' souls with those flames." Karl replied.
Clara nodded and put her hand on her chin, her mind checking out different strategies as she stroked it.
The cores of a Cursed Creature were akin to a human's soul, the Dreadforms and Aberrants each had souls but those above had cores that store a piece of their souls. This World Eater having seven of them but David and Clara had already destroyed one of them.
"Target the shiny orbs on its foreheads.' Clara said. "Let's ride!"
She ran towards it, she ran so fast the others couldn't track her movements. Deborah brought out her crossbow Abeg them nodded at Karl who lit the tip of her arrows on fire. She aimed at the forehead of the one in the middle and then fired, the World Eater opened its mouth and a stream of fire came from it, completely destroying the arrow and the flames.
Their eyes widened in shock and devastation. This strategy worked before so why didn't it work now? When it was in its incorporeal form, the arrows were able to hit its cores but now that it's physical, the creature was more observant and protective. The flames that came out weren't normal, some sort of breath of destruction.
Lucas turned to Karl and then yelled:
"Just snap!"
Karl nodded and then started snapping his fingers, the flames appeared on the core that was on the head in the middle. The thing about Soul Flame is that the flames do not travel, they instantly appear on anything that Karl has set his sights on, but due to his rank as an Unmarked, the activation speed relies on his ability to snap before his opponent attacks and he wasn't able to affect two things at once. When it affected David during the fight against Ravencroft, it was due to collateral damage.
Clara jumped upon one of the heads to the far right of the creature, Lucas stood in awe of her feat, she had just jumped nothing less that four hundred meters and she did so easily. Thus was the power a Ruined could wield, their control over Ruin energy was exquisite, although each rank could control Ruin the disparity was clear.
Karl and David's control of Ruin could not be compared to that of Clara, she was abive them by leaps and bounds.
Clara stood on its head and then screamed:
"I'm over here foods!" Another one of its heads turned to the place where She stood and opened its mouth, and then unleaded the Breath Of Destruction upon her but she leapt out of the way. Lucas deduced her plans, she wanted to make the creature kill itself with its own flames but…
When the World Eater saw that there was nothing on its head it stopped the onslaught but the head that was covered in flames was completely fine. Lucas sighed, seeing that this would be an uphill task even for her.
She jumped from head to head until she reached the head in the middle. She looked directly at Karl who had been snapping all this time, burning up the piece of the soul stored inside the core.
"Stop snapping!" She screamed, Karl immediately ceased, he fell to his knees, tired. His Ruin energy was almost depleted once again.
Clara ran to the creature's forehead and deliver a devastating punch to the weakened core. It cracked, and then exploded, the head alongside it. Lucas stared at the spectacle with his eyes wide and his mouth agape. This was the strength Deborah's grandmother held, the strength to go toe to toe with a worldending threat.
Clara landed on her feet in front of them with a thump, causing dust to rise and her jacket to flow around like water, she was grinning:
"I'm just getting started."
She started laughing out loud, with her hands on her hips, and then she stopped and spotted a serious face.
"We go all out and destroy all the cores in one go." Clara declared, the members of her cohort dropped down to join in on the fight.
But they all stopped short, the creature was conforming again. Clara knew what it was doing all too well.
"Its second evolution.'