A presence lingered behind the Beast King’s gaze, wearing its body like a throne. The creature’s beak curled slightly, in sothing disturbingly close to a smile.
Whatever inhabited the Beast King allowed just enough of its original senses to surface. Just enough for instinct to recognize blood. Just enough for pain, urgency, and rage to bleed through.
The Beast King roared.
The sound tore across the world, a thunderous cry that carried for leagues, bending the air itself. Forests shuddered. Beasts cowered. Lesser creatures fell silent as the roar stamped itself into the land like a declaration of war.
With a single, titanic flap, entire stretches of forest were obliterated. Trees were torn from the earth and hurled like debris, the resulting gale flattening everything unfortunate enough to lie beneath its shadow.
The mountain-sized bird rose.
Another flap carried it higher, its massive form piercing the clouds, vanishing into the churning gray above. The world shrinking beneath it.
Then it roared again, louder, sharper, filled with purpose.
Its course was set.
Guided by the echo of its child’s presence and by the unseen will riding within it, the Beast King turned its beak toward Osita’s kingdom.
Back in the forest, the mage who had hurled the fireball stared at the empty space where the cub had been only monts before. Residual energies still clung to the air, fractured traces of space folding back into itself. His expression hardened as recognition set in.
A space talent.
And not a weak one.
He reached for his ear, fingers brushing the rune embedded there, and opened a direct connection to the surveillance network. His voice was steady, but urgency cut through every word.
"We have a huge problem on our hands," he said. "A large cub, likely the offspring of a Beast King with confird spatial talent has entered the forest. Lost visual on first contact."
He paused, eyes scanning the trees, senses stretched thin.
"I strongly recomnd all personnel imdiately move to secure the Queen and the Princess and bring them to safety."
Another pause, longer this ti.
"At the sa ti, begin preparations for the appearance of a Beast King. It will not be far behind now that its child is lost."
The connection faded.
The mage exhaled slowly, then turned toward the group of won huddled nearby, their faces pale, bodies trembling. They had seen the explosion. They had seen the cub.
And they had felt the fear.
"You need to leave this forest," he said firmly, urgency bleeding into his voice despite his composure. "Now. Head away from this place, any direction that puts distance between you and here. Relay this warning to anyone you et along the way."
He t their eyes, one by one.
"Do not co back."
With that, mana gathered around his feet, wind spiraling upward as he was lifted up, prepared to take to the sky when sothing moved.
Too fast.
A thick, gnarled root burst from the undergrowth like a living serpent, coiling around his legs with crushing force. Before the mage could react, the root yanked hard and slamd him into the ground.
The warlock did not stay down.
The mont the root tightened around his legs, flas erupted from his body. Fire raced along the vine, consuming it in an instant as it shrieked and recoiled, collapsing into blackened ash. He struck the ground with his fist, magic surging outward in response.
The earth answered.
Flas burst from the forest floor at a distance, tearing through soil and roots as a massive hand of fire erged, fingers curling around a figure caught mid-motion. Heat warped the air as the burning grasp closed tight.
The figure trapped within it laughed.
A female demon was revealed, her form tall and unnatural, skin marked with sigils that pulsed like open wounds. Most unsettling of all were her two faces: one gazing forward with sharp, calculating eyes, the other mirrored on the back of her head, twisted in a restless, half-aware expression.
This was i.
She had been the statue holding the chained box.
She could have remained in her stone state longer, allowed suspicion to pass her by but the mage’s fireball had struck her directly, shattering her disguise and forcing her out in a cascade of rubble. With the cover broken and the cub released, the second phase of the plan activated imdiately.
Her task now was simple.
Buy ti.
Ti enough for the Beast King to arrive.
At the sa ti, when she had shed her human guise completely, the voices vanished. The screaming pressure that had gnawed at her mind since entering the kingdom ceased all at once. The surveillance remained, watchful, probing but it was no longer unbearable. She had revealed herself fully.
There was no more hiding. The price of that revelation was she found peace again in her mind and at the sa ti was forced to face sothing she previously avoided.
The second face was a mutation, a consequence of their last dealings with dark gods, an affliction she despised. Even now, she could feel it stirring, its awareness growing slowly, patiently. It was eager. Curious. Alive in ways it should not have been.
She would deal with it later.
For now, she had a warlock to occupy.
The flaming hand clenched tighter and i held by it, burst apart into shimring bubbles, the illusion popping harmlessly as her true body reappeared several strides away. Her hand was already raised, sigils snapping into place as lightning scread from her palm, tearing through the air toward the mage in a blinding arc.
The forest shook as the first true clash of power erupted.
The sa horror unfolded throughout the forest.
One by one, the statues began to crumble and wake. Stone cracked and peeled away as i’s companions were forced out of concealnt, their disguises collapsing under scrutiny and violence. With the loss of their statue forms ca the loss of restraint.
And with it, revelation.
Among the first group, the sa knights and mages who had confidently shattered the statues stood the man who had been screaming monts earlier. His cries cut off abruptly.
Silence.
Then his chest burst open.
Flesh tore apart in a wet, explosive rupture, blood and fragnts raining across the forest floor. Several knights staggered back on guard, others frozen in place as sothing stepped forward from the ruin of a human body.
A two-legged humanoid stood where the man had been.
Its fra was serpentine, elongated and coiled with unnatural grace. Wings, leathery and ridged unfurled from its back with a hiss of displaced air. From the base of its spine, where a tailbone should have been, erged a living snake, its body twisting independently, head lifting as if tasting the air.
The creature’s eyes were distant, unfocused not empty, but divided.
It was the newly mutated appendage i companion got and like i, it could feel it, the snake was not just an extension. It was becoming a ware. Slowly. Patiently. Learning what it ant to exist.
The mages and knights stood transfixed.
There were no records of such a being. No bestiary, no old text, no whispered legend they could call upon. Their spells hesitated, not out of rcy, but ignorance.
The creature blinked.
Then, the first word it spoke echoed through the stunned clearing.
"Fuck."
The word carried no malice. No threat.
Only profound, aching relief.
i’s companion exhaled shakily, shoulders sagging as if a weight long carried had finally been set down. With its true form revealed, no longer hidden, no longer pretending, the unbearable tornt of the kingdom’s surveillance lifted.
The screaming pressure was gone.
The voices were silent.
Whatever ca next would be violent, terrifying, and likely fatal, but for the first ti since entering Osita’s domain, they were themselves.
And across the forest, as more statues broke and more truths bled into the open, the hunt ceased to be a hunt at all.
The creature took in the gathered group before it, eyes flicking across armor, sigils, and half-raised weapons. Then it snapped its fingers.
The forest erupted into motion.
Thick, green poisonous smoke burst outward, rolling across the clearing in choking waves. The air burned, lungs scread, and vision vanished in seconds. At the sa ti, its wings stretched wide, muscles coiling as it launched itself upward, cutting through the haze toward the sky.
It almost made it.
A shield tore through the smoke, spinning end over end as it hurtled toward the airborne figure. The creature twisted mid-flight, dodging it with ease.
Only for the shield to vanish midair.
In its place ca a massive blur of steel and muscle.
A large, burly knight slamd into the creature from above, tackling it out of the sky with brutal force. Both bodies crashed into the ground below, earth splitting on impact as trees shuddered from the shockwave.
The forest exploded into sound.
Steel rang against claws. Spells detonated against bark and stone. Roars, shouts, and screams overlapped as battles ignited across multiple fronts. Sensing the violence tearing through their ho, the forest’s creatures reacted instinctively, so froze in hiding, others fled deeper into the woods, retreating from places that were no longer safe.
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