From the heart of the lingering smoke, lightning laced with violet and gold tore through the dust- and the cult leader erged.
Walking slowly through the thinning smoke, past fallen bodies and shattered ground, until she ca upon the two remaining cultists- wounded and trembling.
She stopped before them, her gaze burning into their skulls.
"What happened here?" she said coldly, her voice like cracking ice laced with venom.
The first cultist staggered forward, bowing his head in sha as blood trailed down his hand.
"We... didn’t expect it," he spoke, his voice undertone with disbelief, "That creature- the hyena- it deciphered the runes mid-battle. It found a way to manually detonate the runes on us..."
He looked up, eyes haunted, "He turned our sacrifice into a weapon."
Hearing that, the leader’s jaw clenched as she processed their words, disbelief and fury twisting across her face. Her eyes narrowed into slits as she turned her head towards Ash.
Her voice rose, echoing with aether, dripping with contempt.
"Those runes were carved from the bones of high ranked summons, powered by lives willingly given- and yet you, so summoned mongrel, shattered them like they were chalk."
At this, her initially composed and arrogant tone took a different twist. Her eyes then shifted to Bennet, shimring with sothing darker- sothing twisted between hatred and envy.
"Hahahaha... What divine hand keeps favoring your bloodline while the rest of us claw for scraps in the dark?"
Then, slowly, she raised her arms skyward, aether crackling violently around her form. Her presence grew heavier- denser. The air scread with distortion as her power surged as she began to trace symbols in the air with her fingers in an arcane motion.
Aether in the air twisted...
Rumble!
It writhed around her like a living storm. The ground trembled violently, fissures spidering across the earth. Weapons and debris floated into the air, suspended by an invisible force.
"She’s using Primal Union," Bennet muttered, his body imdiately growing tense as he hurriedly stood up and turned to face his summon.
In that instant, a silent ssage was sent as Bennet charged forward, rushing to et her head-on with a roar that echoed across the battlefield. Mid-sprint, his lion surged beside him, and as their hearts aligned, a flash of blinding light erupted between them.
Sovereign Resonance!
Aether shimd around them in a twin spiral- one of fla, one of wind- until the boundary between man and summon dissolved. Fur bled into flesh, eyes rged, instincts aligned. In a blaze of radiant fusion, Bennet and the lion beca one being- taller, fiercer, cloaked in both armor and mane. He was no longer fighting with his summon- he was the summon.
From the side, Ash’s eyes widened. He froze mid-step, instincts flaring as he felt a new sense of danger and sothing unique. It was the first ti he had witnessed such a fusion.
"That’s the next stage of Synergy Veil," Seraphina said as her body seed to relax the smallest bit when she saw Bennet enter that form.
In that sa mont, the leader vanished from where he had been initially standing.
Shing! Clang!
The cult leader struck first, erging from the veil of warped aether like a specter born of ruin. Bennet was ready, his blade rose to et hers in a resounding clash that shook the ground beneath them.
Sparks erupted as cursed steel t forged resolve, and for a heartbeat, the battlefield stilled- locked in their first exchange.
Then the leader surged forward, a tempest unbound, pressing the attack with unrelenting force.
Their blades danced through dust and fire. Sparks scattered in every direction as Bennet and the cult leader stood locked in a deadly rhythm- neither gaining ground, neither giving an inch.
Their blades collided again, and this ti, it was her who reeled back a step, eyes narrowing as she realised he was not the sa man she’d faced monts ago.
She bared her teeth in a twisted grin, "You think this changes anything, Valen? You’re just a fla waiting to die. The brightest flas die the fastest."
Bennet’s eyes locked onto hers, calm but burning, "It may be... But not this ti, I’m the fire you won’t be able to smother."
"Tch, you’re still just one man standing in the way of fate."
In that mont, Bennet deflected a vertical slash, then countered low.
His blade grazed her side as blood sprayed, earning a hiss from the leader. She staggered but recovered quickly as her grin stretched too wide.
Their gazes clashed- her madness against his clarity as she was forced back another step.
Still, she pressed on, refusing to yield.
Around them, the battle raged on- but here, within this circle of fury, the two warriors stood as matched titans.
It was a standstill.
But for the first ti- it leaned in Bennet’s favor.
And the cultists knew it.
"Ash!" Bennet shouted, breath ragged as he could see the cultists preparing to find an opening to enter the fray to triple team Bennet.
Ash’s thoughts pulsed outward, as he turned his gaze to Seraphina’s serpent.
’Can you hear ?’ he ntally spoke to the summon.
The serpent curiously turned its head towards Ash in response, its gaze full of questioning as it waited for Ash to continue.
’If we take them on, one each, it will take too long. We need to team up. I’ll send you instructions on what to do. Can you agree so that we can help Bennet as soon as possible?’ Ash’s ssage reached the serpent, crossing the space between instincts and will.
The serpent nodded.
Ash, in that mont, felt the serpent’s response like a gust of wind on still air- alert, poised, ready. The serpent turned its gleaning eyes to him, the link shimring between their minds as Ash could tell that Pack Instinct had activated.
In that instant, Ash sent a focused ntal ssage, precise and unwavering.
The serpent’s coils tensed, its tongue flicking once in understanding.
Then they moved-
With a slam of her tail, the feline struck the stone, kicking up a thick veil of dust, sending a small burst of wind to blow the cloud towards the center of the battle.
From that swirling cloud, movent burst forth- three Ashes darting through the fog, their silhouettes flickering like wraiths. Alongside them, the serpent charged with a sharp hiss.
On the other side, the cultists surged forward with reckless abandon, their feet pounding against scorched earth as chants ripped from their throats. Madness burned in their eyes, their formation ragged but desperate. Both sought an opening but just as they reached the edge of the dust cloud-
The serpent exploded forward, barreling straight toward the first cultist. Two Ashes flanked the second.
The first cultist braced to attack and sent an uppercut that was infused with earth energy as a thick stone like scale covered his arm. But instead of eting the attack, the serpent simply coiled lightning-fast around his arm as it yanked, lifting him off the ground and flinging him like a boulder straight toward his comrade.
In that sa breath, a third Ash- standing at the border of the cloud- activated Umbral Bind. Black tendrils erupted around the second cultist, imdiately snaring his legs before moving further upwards.
The cultist stumbled, off-balance, but managed to keep his balance as he swung wildly, keeping the tendril from moving further upwards.
The other two Ashes followed in a blur, launching twin Eclipsing Fangs. The cultist, sensing it just in ti, twisted, barely dodging one- but the second skimd his shoulder. He retaliated with a vicious overhead strike, cleaving through one. But in the instant that he cut through the hyena, it dissolved into a mist of shadow, revealing that it had never been real.
Snarling, the cultist turned to Ash- only for a body to crash into him.
From the side, the serpent uncoiled itself like a spring and launched Ash with a burst of wind-charged force.
Erging from the dust, at the mont he was launched, Ash activated Shadow Sprint, blurring into motion at a speed beyond the human eye’s fluid tracking.
The first cultist had slamd into the second, caught mid-motion. They collapsed in a heap, winded and stunned.
"Gahh!" the second cultist let out a desperate breath of air as he tried to gather oxygen as the two of them scrambled to their feet. He could not falter now, fighting through the pain, the cultist turned to the other Ash, once again.
The hyena, a blade’s width away from them, was grinning.
The second cultist froze mid-swing. Sothing felt wrong.
He turned his head slightly and his eyes widened as he spotted Ash streaking towards them with terrifying speed. And that wasn’t what scared him the most, it was the aether that he could see that was coiling around Ash’s paw.
In front of him, the first cultist was still off-balance, back turned.
"Behind you-!" the second cultist tried to warn, voice strangled with panic.
Too late.
Ash’s paw struck first, encased by focused aether. It seed to tap against the first cultist’s back-right over the spot where the rune would be engraved and the energy pulsed straight through.
And right in the next mont, Ash’s full montum drove him straight into the man’s spine, launching him like a battering ram into the second cultist.
Both were hurled backward in a violent crash. One slamd into the stone ground with a thunderous crack, bones shattering as the breath was torn from his lungs once again. The other, entangled with him, struck a crumbled wall, the impact caving it in.
And then- the rune on the man ignited.
Aether sparked violently across their skin. Their mouths open in silent screams as the unstable magic reaches its limit.
A heartbeat of stillness as fear filled their eyes at what was about to happen to them.
Then ca the blast.
BOOM!
A wave of searing crimson light tore through the field, followed by a concussive boom that rattled through the broken earth and shattered pillars. Fragnts of all sorts sprayed into the sky as their bodies were obliterated.
The battlefield shook.
’Now there’s only one left.’
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