An extended talon traced idle patterns through the scorched air as she spoke. "The expenditure of power required to manifest my full glory quickly depletes what agre mystical energies are available. But do not think yourself freed from my auspices so easily."
Lylith flashed a mocking smile, revealing a mouth bristling with fangs that could have rendered a nightmare elental whimpering. "I shall be watching, my beautiful boy. And when next the veils part, you would be wise to have yourself ready to recompense for my...services rendered this day."
The demoness canted her head in an unmistakable challenge. But before Jaegar could respond with more than a tightening of his jaw, Lylith had pivoted on a wingtip with dizzying speed. A shockwave of force erupted from her powerful downstrokes, blasting outwards to stagger even the wizard montarily.
When he regained his footing, the Hell Queen had vanished into the ether as abruptly as she had appeared.
For a long mont, Jaegar simply stood amidst the devastated ruin of the battlefield's periphery, alone save for the severed head still gripped by its lank hair. The fury that had consud him seed to have burned itself out in the wake of its violent purgings, leaving him feeling...adrift. Numb, almost.
Realization ca trickling back in from that interluding lull, bringing with it a resurgence of purpose and clarity.
He rembered the words of Lylith and wondered what she ant by 'ready yourself.'
He shook his head, a thought for another ti.
As Jaegar resud his inexorable march into the heart of the blood-soaked conflict, a subtle ripple of unease spread through the fracturing remnants of Daikrimore's forces, still embroiled in the losing battle.
Tales and snatches of hushed rumour reached them in sporadic waves—of a wizard who had carved through their number like a force of nature unbound.
And in his wake there, now followed a ghostly quiet more terrible than the clash of arms, the silence broken only by the tronomic crunch of his boot falls... and the occasional drip of vitae from the severed head he bore as a grisly portent.
With the tide of battle inexorably turning in Wrescia's favour, Jaegar advanced into the heart of the conflict. His grim countenance and the severed head he carried as a macabre trophy preceded him, spreading hushed ripples of horror through the ranks of Daikrimore's forces.
Soldiers froze in their tracks at the sight of this implacable reaper striding through the lee, eyes wide with primal terror. Weapons slipped from suddenly nerveless grips as the helpless n shrank back, parting before Jaegar's path like the Red Sea before the wrath of an avenging spirit.
Kyra, holding the centre of the battlefield with her comrades, was utterly shocked by the scene unfolding before her eyes. The wizard she had allied with re hours ago now seed to have beco sothing... else.
An elental force of destruction cloaked in the unmistakable aura of vast magical power. Her lips parted, but no words ca—rely a choked exhalation of stunned disbelief.
Kaeso fared a little better, the seasoned warrior's eyes wide as saucers he watched Jaegar's inexorable advance through the ranks. But he rallied swifter than Kyra, sprinting forward to et the wizard with his blade bared—not in threat but an instinctive move to protect and ascertain his ally's state.
"Jaegar! What in the hells has happened? What is the aning of this?" He gestured wildly at the severed head, revulsion and dawning horror etched into his expression.
Any response Jaegar might have given was swayed by the commotion sweeping through the remaining Daikrimore troops like a shockwave. The severed head seed to act as so foul talisman, utterly demolishing their will to fight.
First in stuttering trickles, then great unchecked floods, the soldiers began throwing down their arms in surrender. Many didn't even wait for that basic capitulation, turning in blind routs to flee the battlefield and the implacable horror striding at the heart of the Wrescian forces.
For they had all been born witnesses to the great demoness's fury and slaughter before her abrupt disappearance. To see one who could so clearly defy even that unholy might while bearing her unmistakable mark of ownership—it broke what little resolve remained.
Within monts, the only remnants of the invading armies were scattered clusters of prisoners under heavy guard and the pitiful remnants of those who had simply fled into the wilderness, sacrificing pride and allegiance to preserve what little they could of their lives.
Jaegar walked towards Kyra and threw the head.
The severed head landed at Kyra's feet with a sickening thump, rolling slightly before coming to rest in a congealing pool of its own viscera.
Jaegar's expression was as inscrutable as chiselled granite as he t her shocked gaze unflinchingly.
"Their general," he stated flatly, the subtext clear.
Kyra stopped herself, getting more and more shocked, and steeled herself to act, She swiftly ordered her n.
Kaeso and others were utterly dumbfounded by Jaegar's powers. He had just brought the head of the enemy's general down like it was nothing and turned the war upside down in one single day. Regardless of how ridiculously strong a person can be, it was too unbelievable.
With their command structure decapitated as brutally as this trophy indicated, the will of Daikrimore's invasion force had shattered entirely.
And indeed, tales of the wizard's unstoppable prowess and subli butchery were already spreading like brushfire across the battlefield.
Within re monts, Wrescian flags and banners rose in defiant affirmation over the captured enemy camps as the last embers of resistance winked out.
Drasus had witnessed the entire episode from nearby, his body trembling uncontrollably as he stared at Jaegar with naked terror. This was a side of the wizard's power he could scarcely comprehend or control—sothing dark, primal, and soul-shakingly savage given his unbridled reign.
As Wrescia's battered forces steadied and reford their ranks to begin sorting out the grisly aftermath, word quickly filtered back regarding the fate of Daikrimore's king. The craven monarch yet clung to his fortified throne room, having rely committed his armies to the invasion while cowering behind his own walls.
For Jaegar's part, he simply nodded at the intelligence as if it rely confird his own expectations.
Tales of Jaegar's earth-shattering wrath and the infernal entity he had brazenly defied quickly seeped into the cracks of every campfire conversation.
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