The war had only worsened in their brief pause. Sharp winds tore across the battle, eviscerating men. Spears of crystal erupted beneath charging beasts. Generals screamed commands no one could hear over the books of clashing Awakened. Entire formations collapsed, reformed, then vanished beneath waves of sand.
And at the center of it all, the Great Demon fed.
It plunged its snout into a brigade of soldiers and came up with blood spilling from its jaws. Quills launched from its back in murderous volleys, skewering anything that moved too close. Its ears twitched constantly, greedily drinking in every cry and roar.
"You know," Mahoraga said, "for someone who claims to think before acting, this plan feels suspiciously insane."
Dharma sniffed. "The finest plans usually are."
"So what do I have to do?"
Dharma gave him a flat look.
"You are the bait — draw that Demon's attention onto yourself…" He pointed a claw toward the thickest stretch of carnage below, where hundreds of soldiers and Nightmare Creatures were locked in a sprawling melee. "Then lead it there."
"That sounds considerably easier for the Demon than for me. How, exactly, am I supposed to do all that without dying?"
"I don't know," Dharma said with an irksome shrug. "I'll do what I can, but my role in this is minor. The plan stands or falls on you… and your understanding of your Aspect Legacy."
Mahoraga's expression tensed up.
What Dharma was asking of him was not simple use of his Aspect, but mastery of it, something that demanded a depth of understanding and refinement he did not yet possess. The plan itself was sound. For Mahoraga, however, it bordered on impossible.
And so, in the end, everything came down to a single fact.
Adapt… or die.
It was the oldest law there was.
Every creature that had ever crawled from mud, taken wing, grown claws, venom, fangs, armor, speed, cunning, had done so for one reason alone.
The world changed and they responded.
Those that answered poorly became fossils.
But those that answered — truly answered, not just endured but transformed, reshaped themselves around what the world had become — they were the ones that remained.
The weak did not vanish because they were hated.
They vanished because they were static.
The strong were not always the largest, nor the fastest, nor the most savage. They were simply the ones willing to become something new when the circumstances changed.
Adaptation wasn't merciless.
It was honest.
It cut away what failed and built what was needed — and whatever version that couldn't make it through simply stopped, so something better could take its place
Mahoraga's gaze settled on the Great Demon above.
A creature born from that same law. It had become vast because vastness served it. Blind because sight was unnecessary. A monster shaped perfectly for slaughter in this desert.
But, Mahoraga was the most adaptable of all.
Where other beings were carved once and left to weather the world as they were, he had never been finished. His Aspect was built around an impossible standard — perfection — and he knew that.
There would always be another flaw to shed.
Another weakness to flesh out.
Another limit to break.
But unlike him, the Demon had grown stagnant — not through weakness, but through satisfaction. It had become something formidable, then settled comfortably into that shape, forgetting to keep surpassing itself.
It had reached a peak and mistaken it for the summit. It had grown enormous, lethal, unquestioned, and in doing so had surrendered the only trait that truly mattered.
Change.
Mahoraga's grin slowly widened.
That was the difference between them.
The Great Demon was a finished thing.
He was not.
Could he adapt into something capable of standing against it?
Probably not.
But humans had always possessed a strange fondness for impossible odds.
Me against a Great Demon? Mahoraga thought with a grin, Sounds fantastic!
…
Mahoraga landed near the battlefield, expressionless at the fact that he might be heading towards certain death.
Around him, chaos reigned in every direction.
Sides had long since ceased to exist. Whatever banners had once divided the armies now lay trampled beneath corpses and shattered weapons. People fought beside strangers, against allies and enemies alike without realizing it. Nightmare Creatures tore through knots of soldiers, only to be killed by ensuing attacks from their human counterparts.
Which led to a single conclusion — no one wins in war.
And since no one had the luxury of asking who belonged to whom — the moment Mahoraga appeared, everyone chose the simplest answer.
Enemy.
A spear came first.
He tilted his head and let it pass his cheek, catching the shaft and ripping its owner forward into the jaws of a lunging hound-like abomination. Before the beast could finish feeding, Mahoraga drove his heel through its skull and kept moving.
Three soldiers rushed him next, eyes wild with panic and battle-madness.
He struck the first in the throat, elbowed the second across the jaw, and seized the third by the wrist, hurling him into an incoming mass of flesh and jaws.
"To your left," Dharma said lazily.
Mahoraga ducked. A hooked blade whistled over his head.
"You're being remarkably calm," Mahoraga muttered, wrenching the attacker's arm backward until it snapped.
"I already explained my role is mostly observational. I love having a support ability."
"What exactly is the plan now?" Mahoraga asked, ducking beneath a sword stroke and headbutting the wielder unconscious.
"Be loud," Dharma replied.
Mahoraga frowned.
"That's the plan?"
"That is the beginning of the plan. Honestly, must I spoon-feed every revelation?"
Mahoraga seized a broken spear from the ground and drove it through the chest of a leaping creature. Then he ripped it free and slammed the butt against a bronze shield hard enough to split it.
The clang rang across the battlefield.
Again.
Again.
And again.
Each strike thundered over the surrounding carnage
He roared with it, his voice cutting through the bloody battle and causing everyone to wonder the same thing — who in the actual hell was he.
Far above the slaughter, the Great Demon's ragged ears twitched.
Then turned.
Its blind face slowly angled toward Mahoraga with a cruel smirk.
"Welp, he noticed you. Good job," Dharma's happiness was almost audible in his mind, leaving him speechless.
The Great Demon's wings spread.
The battlefield dimmed beneath them — a vast, creeping shadow that swallowed the dunes in every direction. Around him, the fighting slowed as soldiers and creatures alike registered what was coming and arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
Run.
They scattered. Friend and foe, human and beast, all them dissapeared in an instant as the Great Demon's bulk dropped from the sky.
Except for one particular shadow who stood straight against approaching death with a brave smile.
Vibrations, he reminded himself. Sound. If I can somehow manipulate my sound, he'll be dancing to my tune.
Mahoraga moved a second before impact.
The Great Demon struck where he had stood, its colossal mass smashing into the battlefield with enough force to hurl men, beasts, and sand skyward. The dunes buckled. Bodies vanished beneath the shockwave. Broken weapons spun through the air like leaves in a storm.
Mahoraga was already up and running.
He skimmed over the fractured ground in a sharp diagonal, his steps were light, then heavy, then they were silent — uneven and arrhythmic.
Behind him, the Great Demon's ears twitched violently.
Its head snapped left.
Then right.
Then left again.
"Oh?" Dharma murmured, surprise slipping into his tone. "You're not entirely hopeless."
Mahoraga ignored him.
He leapt onto the back of a dying beast, kicked off its spine, landed atop an siege tower, then dropped to the sand while throwing the broken spear to the Demon's left, distracting him from his real movement.
The spear clattered across stone.
The Great Demon reacted instantly.
Its head whipped toward the sound, jaws crashing down hard enough to shatter the dune where the weapon landed. Sand erupted in a towering plume.
But Mahoraga was already elsewhere.
He rolled beneath the legs of a charging beast, came up with one hand on its flank, grabbing it's back and flinging it straight towards the bat.
As expected, the oversized rat was eaten without resistance.
Behind him, the Great Demon shrieked in frustration. Its ears strained, searching through the battlefield's chaos for the one pattern refusing to stay still. Finally, after a long game of marco-polo, the Demon seemed to grow tired.
He screeched and in the same breath its spine rippled. The forest of obsidian quills along its back rose as one.
"Down," Dharma said flatly.
Mahoraga dropped instantly.
The first volley tore overhead with a sound like a thousand blades being unsheathed. Humans, beasts, siege weapons, all were punched through in the same instant.
Then the second volley came.
Then the third and the fourth.
The battlefield ceased to resemble war and became execution.
Quills bombarded down from the sky, turning the battlefield into a rain of murderous oversized hairs. Whatever strategy either side had went completely off the rails, partly cause of Mahoraga — but who was keeping count.
"Pleasant stroll," Dharma remarked.
"I hope you die alone."
"Eh. Wherever I die, you'll be there."
Mahoraga sprang over a trench filled with bodies and landed atop the wreckage of a broken siege ram. For one moment, Mahoraga earnestly allowed himself to hope the damned bastard had finally run out of fur.
But, his quiet wish was broken with Dharma's blood-curdling scream.
"Beside you!!"
Mahoraga twisted.
But the Great Demon already reached him.
Somehow, impossibly, the colossal beast had pin-pointed him through the wails of the dying men, the screech of the ungodly beast and located him.
Its wings were drawn tight, its colossal bulk skimming low through the haze of dust and slaughter. Its milky, sightless eyes, incapable of expression, somehow seemed to gleam with delight as both claws came crashing down.
In that brief instant before the Demon's claws reached him, Mahoraga finally realized the truth: the volleys of quills had been meant to force his hand. Every dodge had handed his location straight to the abhorrent beast.
"Awe fuck."
_____
A/N - Sorry for the disappearance y'all, even though I got discharged I was still sick as fuck and couldn't get outta bed. After I overcame that, I had a heck of a lotta projects to finish but since I'm lazy as hell I only finished one. I'm cooked chat. I'm going to upload 2 chapters today... Probably. The second one will come out in a few hours... Maybe.