"Hold!" — I shouted to the knight on the left.
This was no strategy. This was resistance — the kind that has no plan, only the refusal to yield before the enemy does.
The two Urskra collided against the Chimera as she advanced at full force — locking her momentum with the combined weight of two colossi that had waited thirteen days to do exactly that. Mine brought his claws down like hammers. Scales split. Flesh opened. Black blood exploded in the air and fell smoking onto the cold ground.
Behind the line, Morgana was precision incarnate.
Arrows found eyes. Mouths. The gaps opened between the natural plates the Urskra had exposed with their claws. At the same time, green magic pulsed beneath her feet — sustaining the crushed lancers, forcing bones back into place, inflating lungs that had collapsed. Mounted on the smaller Urskra, she moved like a shadow, always at the boundary between useful range and safe distance. The Mother Urskra formed a wall of flesh before her and her cub.
Nothing would get through.
Then the caprine head flared.
A burst of black fire tore through the air — not ordinary fire, but something denser, that the eye registered as an absence of light before registering it as flame. Aimed at Morgana.
The Mother Urskra turned her body at the last second, stepping into the path of the magic. The flames collided with her side. The fur burned. The flesh crackled — and her cry was more rage than pain.
But she didn't fall.
The great Chimera brought her paw down crushing the lancers as one crushes a cockroach.
"Stay standing!" — Morgana intoned.
The ancient words echoed with the weight of something used in battles I hadn't lived. Green light ran across the ground, climbing through the bodies of the crushed lancers — bones forced back into place, lungs forcibly inflated, bodies reconstructed while still gripping their lances. When the lance finally broke against the Chimera's chest, they drew short swords and advanced without hesitation — destroyed on one side, rebuilt on the other.
The Chimera understood what was happening.
And responded with fury.
The serpent turned toward me. Its fangs sought my throat with the precision of something that had identified where the Lord was. They missed by centimeters. Found the Urskra instead — the teeth sank into thick hide, venom poured. My Urskra roared. Then turned his neck and bit the serpent.
A brutal snap.
He tore the head off.
Venom burned his muzzle. The skin smoked. His cry was primitive and terrible — not of pain, but of something beyond pain.
To the left, the situation was worse. The lion's head had sunk its teeth into the knight's Urskra and in the same motion torn the man apart. Human blood and beast blood mixed on the ground.
"Lancers… Now! Together!"
The lancers advanced along the flanks — small blades, positioned with precision at the points the Urskra had exposed. Between the ribs. In the soft underside. The only vulnerable point. Without the serpent. With the goat occupied by Morgana. With the lion pinned by both Urskra.
They executed like soldiers who had already accepted death and chosen to do something useful with the time that remained.
Striking.
Striking.
Striking.
Morgana seized the moment. Arrow straight through the goat's eye. Deep. Precise.
The Chimera screamed.
But then the caprine head began to glow. Not fire — it was dense energy, compressed, accumulating before releasing everything at once. Morgana felt it before any of us.
She didn't hesitate.
She abandoned the healing. Channeled everything — every reserve, every fragment preserved throughout the entire battle — not for us, but for the Chimera. A seal. Inverted. Not to heal: to anchor, to lock, to prevent the energy from finding release.
Green light enveloped the caprine head.
The creature froze.
One second. Just one.
My Urskra rose on his hind legs. And crushed the caprine neck with the weight of everything he still had to offer.
The sound of bones breaking was dry.
The glow died.
The head fell.
Only the lion remained. It wanted to flee — to drag what was left of the body out of the territory. It tried to move. With two Urskra holding it. With arrows embedded in its face. Bleeding from everywhere.
"Damn… it's going to escape!"
If it escaped, it would regenerate. It would learn. It would return — stronger, crueler, with a complete map of my weaknesses. Chimeras didn't forget.
I leapt from the Urskra. Used his back as a springboard. Drove the sword into the creature's back.
Useless. The blade entered centimeters and was expelled. The Chimera advanced. Even dying. Heavy. Unstoppable.
Then a sound cut through the air.
Sharp. Ancient. Furious.
✦
He descended from the sky before I processed where he had come from.
Pegasus.
Forty centimeters tall. Dark feathers with the sheen of a creature born only days ago. And the expression of something that had watched the battle from the castle and made a decision without asking permission.
He landed on the mutilated face of the Chimera as though he knew exactly where it was most vulnerable. His claws drove into the eyes already pierced by arrows — not attempting, but executing, with the brutality of something primordial that didn't yet have the size of the essence I had seen in the bonding, but that operated with the same intent. The beak tore flesh. The sounds he released were of pure desperation.
The Chimera tried to react. Tried to rise. The body didn't obey.
Thirty seconds. One minute. Time compressing the way it compresses when every second carries different weight than the others.
And then she yielded.
The colossal body toppled. The impact arrived through the feet before it arrived through the eyes. The ground vibrated one last time — and then, nothing.
Silence.
The face was unrecognizable. Deformed. Torn apart — not by the accumulation of the battle, but by Pegasus. What our blades and claws had scratched, he had opened. The hard flesh. The protective plates. Everything that had resisted two Urskra and every arrow Morgana had to give yielded to the beak of a fledgling that simply didn't accept the size difference as an argument.
The Lord Slayer was dead.
I had won.
"Son of a bitch…"
I was drenched. Black blood mixed with red blood. My chest burned. My arms trembled at the frequency of muscles that had operated beyond capacity for too long.
Morgana was barely conscious — she had channeled everything into the seal, and everything had been sufficient for exactly the necessary time. Not one second more.
The Urskra weren't moving. Not out of stubbornness — the body had simply ended negotiations. The male still smoked where the venom had touched. The Mother female supported her weight away from the burned flank, with the specific dignity of something that had absorbed fire to protect another and didn't consider that grounds for complaint. The cub had lain down where they were, without ceremony.
Pegasus walked toward me. Small. Covered in blood that wasn't his. And released a sound almost childlike — of something that had done a great thing and waited for someone to notice.
I raised my arm with effort. Ran my hand over his head.
He nestled against my chest. Sank into it.
"Thank you, little friend… you can eat that big one as much as you want."
His eyes gleamed. And he advanced on the Chimera with the enthusiasm of something that had discovered victory had a flavor.
For the first time since the beginning of that war, I smiled genuinely.
Then the pain reminded me I was still alive.
It was enough.
✦
[ Territory clear. No hostile creatures detected. ]
The Chimera's smell would linger for days. No creature would approach while it lasted — involuntary protection from the carcass of what had tried to kill me.
Nobody had died. Barely. But barely counted the same as comfortably when the result was the same.
I silently thanked myself for having invoked Morgana. Not for the arrow through the goat's eye. Not for the seal that locked the explosion. But for the healing — for the capacity to reconstruct the crushed lancers and keep them alive before the line collapsed. Without that, the battle would have ended long before the first advance.
Then the notification appeared.
[ Your report has been acquired. Buyer requests update upon payment. ]
I had forgotten completely. Someone had bought the information about the Chimera — and wanted to know what had happened.
"Inform them that the creature has been neutralized."
Perhaps few would care. But someone cared.
✦
I stared at the stone for a long time.
Exceptional quality. Internal glow denser and more stable than anything I had collected before. The kind of resource that established Lords stored for decades.
But I needed structure. The battle had been costly in every dimension — towers, walls, soldiers, provisions. Nothing I had invested in produced anything. It only defended. And defense without production had a single result.
I needed farms. Reforestation. Advanced mining. Capital I didn't have.
The Chimera's flesh had helped — a delicacy of a quality I couldn't attribute to any reference. For one insane moment, I considered that hunting Chimeras might be a viable strategy.
Then the pain returned. And I recovered my lucidity.
"Zeus, put the Chimera's Exceptional quality Nectar up for auction."
"What is the closing deadline for offers?"
"One day."
"The recommended period for high-quality item auctions is thirty days. A short deadline may reduce the final profit."
"One day."
I didn't have time for a thirty-day auction. I had growing consumption, devastated terrain, a territory fresh out of war. The price would be lower than the maximum potential.
But it would still be enough.
"When the auction starts, I'll be asleep."
I had asked Morgana to heal the mounts and the lancers — they needed it more than I did. But the wounds didn't negotiate, and I knew that trying to operate in the state I was in was a more costly mistake than any hour of sleep.
I needed to recover. As quickly as possible.
✦
At the center of the human territory, a wide hall.
Fifteen occupied chairs. Armor as political declarations. Rings worth kingdoms. The silent language of power accumulated long enough to become custom.
"Lords." — the old man at the head of the table had the voice of someone who had learned that volume was unnecessary when position already communicated everything. — "I called this meeting due to the appearance of a Exceptional quality Chimera stone in auction."
The silence lasted half a second. Then it exploded.
"Someone killed an adult chimera?" "That can only be a mistake."
The old man ran his fingers through his long beard, with the calm of someone who had anticipated exactly that reaction.
"My interest is in acquiring the stone. I request that you withdraw your bids."
The man in scarlet armor stood.
"Go to hell, you old bastard. You called us here to coerce us?"
The old man didn't change expression.
"I trust that everyone remembers that my territory is the largest supplier of resources for each of the Lords present."
"As far as I know," — a cold voice responded — "you only prospered because you're at the center of the belt. We're the ones who should be compensated for protecting you."
"Lords." — he continued. — "If you allow me to obtain this stone, you will be under my direct protection. My army is intact. And news from the east indicates movement from the Urukais — when they arrive at our gates, you will need a shield."
The man in scarlet armor laughed and left. One by one the others followed — irritated, distrustful, and in at least half the cases interested in ways they didn't want to show in each other's presence.
In the end only two remained.
The old man. And the woman standing behind him — larger than anyone else who had been in the room, with the quality of presence that doesn't need movement to occupy space. The upper half was that of a goddess — full-chested, sculpted with the precision of something designed to intimidate in a way different from brute force. The lower half was something else entirely — the body of a great black spider, eight legs supporting the massive abdomen with the naturalness of something that had been born that way and had never needed to explain itself to anyone.
"Lord… provoking the neighbors may not have been wise."
The old man smiled — slow, calculated.
"My dear Mifis… do you think I called them here to ask them to withdraw from the auction?"
She tilted her head.
"How many Lords do you believe are capable of killing an adult Chimera before it flees?"
Mifis was silent.
"I don't know, Lord."
"I do. No more than fifteen."
She raised her eyes. Fifteen chairs. Exactly the number of those present.
"Then you wanted to—"
"Find out who killed the Chimera. Yes."
"And?"
"The meeting brought me more doubts than answers. It wasn't any of them." — a pause. — "It's a new name. In the newcomers' quadrant."
"A newcomer?"
"It can only be."
"But if it is… doesn't that make them extraordinary?"
"Many have emerged like that. Few survived." — he leaned back in his chair. — "If they were closer… we could help them."
"That's a shame."
"Yes. It's a shame."
There was something in the tone — not conclusive, not closed. A door left open without announcing it was open.
He then opened the report he had received that same day. He was silent for a few seconds — the kind that comes when what is read is sufficiently grave for the nervous system to need a moment.
The letters were large. Irregular. And not human.
Mifis read over his shoulder. Went still.
"How long?" "Three weeks. Perhaps four."
He closed the panel.
"And the other Lords?"
He smiled — cold, without humor.
"This kind of information tends to leak."
Mifis smiled too. Saliva ran from her lips with the naturalness of something that no longer noticed it.
"Then they will be…"
"The lambs or the lions. I don't know and I don't care."
Both laughed. Not loudly. Enough.