Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

The beast was vibrating. It was straining.

The thick muscles beneath its oily carapace were bulging, twitching, desperately trying to complete the downward motion of its strike.

But it couldn’t.

It was as if the creature had been suddenly encased in a solid block of invisible, unbreakable diamond.

Kaelus stepped back, slowly lowering Requiem, his violet eyes wide with shock.

He looked at the beast, then looked at the surrounding terrain.

He felt... nothing.

There was no magical signature, no holy light descending from the heavens, no intricate, glowing runic array binding the monster to the earth.

But as Kaelus focused his incredibly sensitive, highly trained aura-perception, he realized that there was nothing.

There was a heavy absence of something.

The space immediately surrounding the beast felt incredibly dense. It felt like the gravity in a thirty-foot radius had been suddenly amplified by a factor of ten thousand.

The air itself felt thick, syrupy, and suffocatingly heavy.

It was a sensation Kaelus recognized. It was the exact same, crushing, gravitational pressure he felt whenever he stood near his daughter when her emotions spiked.

But this wasn’t a spike.

This was a calculated chokehold.

”What... what is happening?” Sir Lucas gasped, stepping forward from the perimeter, his sword lowered, staring in awe at the suspended titan.

”The beast is immobilized!” Gallahan shouted, running toward Kaelus. ”Your Grace, did you cast a stasis ward?!”

”No,” Kaelus whispered, his heart suddenly hammering a terrifying rhythm against his ribs.

He knew that feeling.

He knew that heavy, pitch-black, invisible weight.

But Seraphina was in the Emerald Crown. She was asleep.

He had literally watched her swallow the draught.

She was miles away, protected by wards and stone. She couldn’t possibly be here.

Her physical mana signature was nowhere to be found; he couldn’t trace the origin of the gravity.

The colossal beast let out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek of pure strain. It tried to pull its claws back. It tried to step backward.

It could not move a single inch.

The invisible, crushing weight around the beast began to tighten. It wasn’t just holding it still; it was actively compressing it.

CRRRK.

A sound echoed across the silent crater.

It was the sound of the beast’s impenetrable, magical-reflecting bismuth carapace, armor that had easily absorbed and reversed the combined might of fifty elite mages, beginning to buckle and crack under the invisible atmospheric pressure.

”By the Gods,” Captain Pyros breathed, having left the unconscious Leonidas to stare at the impossible sight. ”Something is crushing it. Something we cannot see.”

Kaelus looked up at the bruised, orange sky. He looked at the empty, petrified trees.

He didn’t see her. He couldn’t sense her physical body.

But he could feel her.

He could feel the furious, protective, utterly offended wrath of a six-year-old girl who had woken up from a nap, realized her father had lied to her, and decided to exact vengeance by remote-controlling a black hole across a dimensional distance.

’She is awake,’ Kaelus realized, a mixture of profound, overwhelming awe and pants-wetting terror washing over him. ’She woke up. She found out I left. And she is currently astral-projecting her dark mana to strangle an ancient anomaly because she is mad at me.’

The realization was terrifying.

It meant her power was evolving at a rate that defied all known magical theory. It meant she could project her influence without a physical tether.

But more importantly, it meant he was in so much trouble when he got home.

CRACK!

SNAP!

The invisible pressure intensified. The massive, crystalline spikes on the beast’s back began to shatter, exploding into useless, glittering dust.

The monster shrieked again, a sound of genuine, pathetic agony as its thick, trunk-like legs began to bow inward, slowly being forced down toward the abrasive ash by a weight it could not fight.

It was a brutal, slow, utterly humiliating display of absolute dominance. The ancient, world-ending terror of the Ashen Forest was being forced to its knees by an invisible, untraceable phantom.

Kaelus did not waste the opportunity his daughter had so graciously, furiously provided.

The Reaper of the North stepped forward.

He did not rush. He walked with the slow, deliberate, arrogant stride of an executioner approaching the block.

The beast, completely immobilized and rapidly being crushed, could only stare with its glowing magenta eyes as the tiny, dark-clad human approached its massive head.

”You chose a poor night to awaken, beast,” Kaelus whispered, his voice carrying perfectly to the monster. He raised Requiem, the icy-blue runes blazing in the dim light.

He didn’t aim for a gap in the armor because he didn’t need to. The invisible, crushing gravity had already fractured the thick plates covering the monster’s face, creating a spiderweb of deep, vulnerable fissures.

”My daughter is waiting for me,” Kaelus said softly, his violet eyes glowing with lethal finality. ”And I am already late for my reprimand.”

Kaelus swung the blade.

With a single, flawless, upward strike, Kaelus drove the freezing mythril of Requiem directly through the cracked carapace, burying the sword hilt-deep directly between the beast’s glowing magenta eyes, plunging it straight into the creature’s brain.

He didn’t channel ice magic this time.

The physical destruction of the brain was absolute.

The magenta eyes flickered, dimmed, and instantly extinguished, turning a dull, lifeless gray.

The massive beast went completely limp.

The moment the creature died, the invisible, crushing gravitational lock surrounding it vanished entirely, popping like a released soap bubble.

The oppressive, heavy absence of mana evaporated, returning the night air to its normal, sulfurous state.

Without the invisible force holding it up, the colossal, forty-foot carcass of the Elemental Behemoth collapsed forward.

BOOM!!!

It hit the ash-covered ground with an earth-shaking thud, sending a final cloud of gray dust rolling over Kaelus’s boots.

It was over.

The ancient anomaly, the terror of the Valen ancestors, had been eradicated in less than ten minutes.

The Vanguard knights and the Fire Mages stood in stunned, breathless silence, staring at the massive corpse, completely unable to comprehend the effortless speed of the execution.

”Target neutralized,” Kaelus announced flatly, seamlessly pulling Requiem from the beast’s skull with a wet shuck, flicking the corrupted blood from the blade before sliding it smoothly back into its scabbard.

He didn’t linger to celebrate the victory.

He didn’t bask in the awe of the soldiers.

Kaelus immediately spun on his heel, his dark cape whipping around his calves, and began a rapid, power-walking march directly toward the uninjured warhorses tethered at the perimeter.

”Sir Lucas! Sir Gallahan!” Kaelus barked, his voice laced with a sudden, frantic, and entirely un-aristocratic sense of urgency. ”Load Leonidas onto a stretcher! Have the healers tend to his ribs immediately! Boris, secure the horses!”

”Y-Your Grace!” Lucas stammered, jogging to keep up with the Archduke’s rapid pace. ”Are we not securing the carcass? The alchemical components alone are worth a fortune!”

”Leave the carcass to the scavengers!” Kaelus snapped, grabbing the reins of his massive warhorse, swinging himself into the saddle with frantic, undignified haste. ”We are returning to the Emerald Crown immediately! At a full, forced gallop!”

”Is there another threat, Your Grace?!” Boris shouted, hoisting himself onto his own horse, sensing the Archduke’s palpable panic.

Kaelus grabbed the reins, his violet eyes wide, staring toward the distant horizon where the Verdant Gate lay.

He wasn’t afraid of another monster or of assassins that might appear from dark.

He was afraid of a six-year-old girl who was currently sitting in the middle of a bed, fully awake, fully aware of his betrayal, and actively preparing a lecture that would undoubtedly destroy his emotional stability for the next month.

”The greatest threat in the Empire is currently waiting for me in the guest suite,” Kaelus gritted out, spurring his horse forward with a violent kick. ”And if I do not arrive before she finishes formulating her argument... there will be no mercy for any of us. RIDE!”

As the terrifying Reaper of the North practically fled the battlefield in absolute, fatherly terror, leaving his injured rival and a confused army behind in the ash, he mentally prepared himself to face a wrath far more ancient and terrifying than the beast he had just slain: the righteous fury of a lied-to toddler.

The astral tether snapped back into physical reality with the forceful, dizzying elasticity of a rubber band returning to its original shape.