Upon the arrival of the first drone bus, its payload cascaded forth in a dynamic swarm that plunged deep into the shaft. The drones' cameras captured a startling sight, a slumped beast at the bottom, its long, furred arms wrapped tightly around itself as if for comfort.
"Roy, look at this thing. Check the Allphone," Harmony urged.
Roy retrieved his phone, tapping the feed notification. A single eyelid briefly flickered open the second the feed came up, a glint of indifference flashing before it closed again. Roy's pulse quickened momentarily. If it didn't care, fine, he thought, better not to push it. "Make it quick," he whispered.
The emitter drone's core flared. A ripple of invisible force, then the detectors below lit with chatter. Harmony narrated like a surgeon calling vitals. "Reading is good. Mesh converging. Dungeon geometry aligned."
Serenity picked it up immediately. "Data received. Adjusting specifications. Constructing missile chain."
With a touch of dramatic flair, Roy rose from his seat. "Script ninety-five, adapt it to the situation and then read it to me." He stepped forward to the edge of his box, his voice, amplified by his personal comm routed through the projector drones' speakers, booming across the stunned stadium. "Distinguished leaders! Terrified onlookers! Please, calm yourselves," he announced, arms spread wide like curtains parting. "You see a catastrophe. I see a stage begging for spectacle. This dungeon requires a firm, decisive hand, and I, the humble Captain of the Nightshatter, will provide it with a fraction of my power. One act. No encore. I will clear this threat in a single sweep. The marquee reads extinction tonight."
A confused, disbelieving murmur swept through the crowd. Lynder looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Orden stood as close to the stage as possible, marveling at Roy's performance.
Harmony's voice slid into the private channel, light as a fingertap. "Swarm is set. Mesh is clean. Beginning the pulse."
Serenity kept the public feed polished while the work happened offstage. "Projection stable. Design scaffold standing by. I will populate once Harmony locks geometry."
Roy let the persona breathe, chin lifted, smile easy. Under it, the real orders moved. "Pull our scouts off the rim," he whispered. "Fast path west."
"Already routing," Serenity said.
From a crystal balcony high above, a voice cut through the air, sharp with silk and entitlement. "Lies. There is no 'single sweep.' He is bluffing for applause. Throw him out of here."
Perfect. Roy's smile found a new notch. "Serenity," he murmured, "queue up a miniature. Keep it clean and safe."
"Ready," she answered. "Flash charges. Ten missiles. High over the stadium."
Harmony returned with an update. "Pulse through. Returns are strong. Spans and load paths resolved. Model converged."
"Feeding now," Serenity said. "Fabrication suite is live."
Roy kept his gaze on the projection, as if admiring his own image like any born showman. In the privacy of the line he added, soft as a thought, "Good work, ladies."
"Thank you," Harmony said, pleased.
A pulse of sound burst from the speakers and the room went quiet. Roy raised his hand slowly into the air, letting the hush ripen. He tilted his head, gaze sweeping the expectant faces before lifting to the sky above. "Doubt," he declared, his voice a low thrum that vibrated through the silent crowd, "is a habit. And I am here to break it. Prepare yourselves, for you are about to witness a mere fraction of what awaits your so-called nightmare."
With that pronouncement, ten points of light detached themselves from the unseen, ascending with an almost deliberate grace. They formed a silent ladder against the velvet black, pausing at a zenith directly over the arena, where they hung like baited stars. Then, as if on an unheard signal, their casings peeled away. From each core, rings of flash charges unfurled, precise and luminous, each chasing its predecessor across the night sky. Each bloom of radiance answered the last a heartbeat later, a celestial pulse that settled deep into bone and banner alike. A collective gasp rippled through the stands. Hair lifted and teeth chattered. The very air itself seemed to press in, delivering steady, rhythmic hammerstrokes, a drumroll that swelled and grew until every voice in the arena simply ceased.
Faces turned up and stayed there. Roy noticed a child's sugared pastry slip from his sticky fingers and patter down the steps. Even the battle-hardened knights, usually stoic and unyielding, blinked against the fierce, golden glare, their hands instinctively rising to the brims of their helmets and the narrow slits of their visors, shielding their eyes from the otherworldly light. A small, nervous clutch of mages, their robes rustling softly in the stillness, drew quiet, protective sigils over their chests, their lips moving silently in incantations against the unknown force. The fiery reflections made the crystal panels of the royal boxes appear to tremble.
Lynder stepped forward on the stage, looking up at the box containing the Exarch, voice carrying clean. "This boy means the city no harm. What you are seeing is proof, not peril. I stake my life on it."
That settled the panic the way a lid settles on a pot, steam still hissing at the edges. Awe did not move. The pattern taught itself: ring, pause, ring, then quicker, then rapid, the final volley blooming so bright the stadium seemed underwater for a breath. Darkness fell back into place like a curtain, and the echo rolled away into the harbor.
Roy bowed his head as if accepting applause from the night. "Consider that the whisper. The dungeon receives the sentence."
In Seranovia's harbor, the Nightshatter appeared as a play of light and shadow. Its launch ports, one by one, irised open, unleashing a barrage of missiles. A fiery stream stitched the air as one, then two, then five, ten, twenty, fifty, and finally a hundred missiles arced eastward in crisp succession. Roy allowed the crowd to witness the escalating rhythm before saying a word.
"Mark the count," his amplified voice rolled over the tiers, warm as velvet and twice as smug. "Every light you see is a promise kept!"
Across the sea, Otherrealm's sirens clicked alive. Serenity's voice rolled through every quarter, steady as a metronome. "Emergency notice: a minor ground tremor is expected from a controlled operation far from the city. Remain calm. Step away from loose shelves. This is routine." Stall-keepers set jars on the floor. A baker eased a tray back into the oven. Children looked up, then settled when their parents did.
In the stadium, drones layered in a low, physical rumble, a scored thunder that would rise and fall in time with the real detonations. On the canvas the view plunged to the distant shaft and then split into many different feeds. Points of light slid down the shaft like a spilled constellation. Side-firing warheads vanished into stone in perfect timing bands.
Roy lifted his chin and gave the night its flourish. "Raise your throats to the chalice of dead suns while my calliope sings in isotopes and sirens. Witness… Nuclear Magic: Perditious Crown of a Thousand Thorns."
The first ring answered. Then another. Then ten at once. Bursts climbed through the earth like a metronome gone mad, a one-minute implosion stretched two miles deep and a mile wide. Floors failed in order. Pillars folded along their lines. Cavities pancaked and flowed. Seranovia felt only the staged sound. Far away, Otherrealm rode the moderate shiver it had been promised and nothing more.
When the glare bled down, the returning drones put the bottom back to view. Ash drifted. The dungeon was no more than a throat of ruin. But…something moved.
A limb, freed from its plaster prison, squirmed, fur matted and clinging. Then another, jointed at a grotesque angle. It rose, slow as the turning of a grave tide, eight limbs unfurling, feathered arms where wings should have been, and a face that writhed, refusing to coalesce into anything a sane mind could comprehend. Dust, like the ash of burnt memories, cascaded from its form. It inhaled the air, a slow, deliberate drawing of dread, before unleashing a sound that tore through the very fabric of reality around it. A shriek that curdled blood and promised an eternity of nightmares. Then, it turned, seemingly drawn towards Otherrealm.
Roy's smile thinned. "Hit it harder," he said under the noise, voice lowered to the private line. "Bigger shot."
Serenity answered without heat. "The collapse just dropped nearly two miles of structure on target. No injury apparent. To kill it likely requires five plus megaton-range. Detonating that ten miles from Otherrealm will drive ground motion into dangerous bands."
His tongue clicked against his teeth. "So either we let it walk, or we break the city to stop it. This may have been a bad idea."
Silence filled the channel for a heartbeat.
Then a voice in his skull whispered. Do I have permission to feed on you.
He froze. "Serenity, did you hear that?"
No reply. Only systems breathing.
Do I have permission to feed on you.
"Who is this?"
Viperael.
A relieved breath escaped him. "My little friend! This is new."
Do I have permission to feed on you.
"That is… not a comforting sentence," Roy muttered, keeping his posture easy for the crowd. "Feed on what?"
Mana. Slow before. Starving now.
"How much?"
Half.
"Half!? Why!? You'd better promise me you won't drink again for days!"
If I feed, I grow. If I grow, I protect the city from ground shake.
"Hold on, how do you know what is happening? And how do you protect against a bomb-quake?"
I protect.
"What does that even mean…?"
I protect.
"Cool…how?"
I protect.
"I heard you, Viperael! But how do I know you can do it?"
Trust.
The words landed with the weight of a stone. "That's not fair, man... Alright, do it." He crossed his arms, a faint pout gracing his lips. "And here I am, trusting a talking snake. I'm sure that's never backfired on anyone before."
The sudden mana drain felt like a trapdoor springing open beneath his feet, stealing his breath and constricting his vision to a pinprick. He lightly swayed, fighting the dizzying lurch, a strangled cough burning in his throat as he forced it back down. "If this d-doesn't work, we're eating you. G-gonna have snake soup on the menu for a decade."
Tranquility chimed in, urgent. "Giant mana drop dete...oh god. Roy! Viperael has spontaneously grown. Like…alarmingly large. It now fills the entire outer wall. M-miles of body!"
"Fantastic," he muttered, a sarcastic laugh catching in his throat. "Just what the city needed, a colossal, neon-purple and obsidian serpent draped across its skyline. I'm sure the tourists will be lining up."
Viperael's voice, unwavering and firm, echoed once more. I protect.
Roy grit his teeth. "Yeah, I get it."
When the black coil rose from beyond the wall and kept rising, the first scream cracked the air, then the sirens spoke again, the same even tone filling streets and courtyards.
"Attention, Otherrealm. This is still just good ol' Viperael. Hold positions. Do not run. This is protection."
Feet stopped mid-flight in an instant, as if nothing had happened.
Where Otherrealm ended and the East began, Viperael gathered and rose, a living tower of scaled muscle and ancient malice. Its coils, each as thick as a great oak, stacked one upon another until its head, crowned with cruel, intelligent eyes, pierced the clouds. Along its back, sharp ridges began to stir, lifting one by one, a slow, deliberate unfolding. From each fin, a deep, bruising violet bled outwards, diluting the air like ink into water then shining a bright neon purple. Below, around Otherrealm, intricate marks bloomed as if pressed by the seal of a forgotten deity, rings nested within rings, lines that wove through pillars and gates, and sigils too dense, too runic, for the mortal eye to follow. The very air of the city, once bustling, now held its breath, utterly still.
Roy tipped his head again, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "Let there be an encore." On the vast canvas in the sky, observers watched in horrified awe as a heavy missile tore free of the Nightshatter, punching a violent hole through the clouds, and raced eastward.
As the monster continued its ponderous march, the royal boxes erupted in a frantic clamor of voices. Then, one cut above the rest, sharp as a blade. "Look at what you've done!" a crowned man shrieked, his face contorted in a mask of terror. "You have loosed the deepest creature upon this world!"
"Please," Roy purred, and at his single, dismissive word, the feed split. The left pane tightened on the monstrous horror festering within the crater, while the right revealed a vast, trembling horizon, pierced by a bright, searing spear. "A single legendary monster is trivial for the…" his fingertip rose, lingering, "…Starshard Cataclysm."
Light erupted first, a searing, blinding white that consumed the crater, devouring all definition and erasing the very concept of an edge. A breath later, sound slammed into the distant hills, a monstrous, concussive wave that rolled across the water, a low, guttural roar that rattled the very air. Outside Otherrealm's walls, branches whipped and thrashed like tortured limbs, dust exploded from the leaves, and birds, horrified, knifed to the ground, frozen in terror. Yet, within the city, even a single teacup remained utterly still.
When the infernal glare finally receded, the wide shot showed a column of smoke boiling into a classic, horrifying mushroom cloud. The monstrous cloud shouldered its way upward until it dwarfed the entire coast. Gasps broke around the stadium like a desperate wave of human terror. The tight shot held on the crater itself, the beast of the dungeon's final floor lay scorched and inert. Barely anything but bone and sinew. Its charred limbs were thrown around the crater like dropped scaffolding. Ash fell, thick and relentless, a shroud over the enemy.