The desert wind lashed at Mike's face, carrying with it the sting of sand and the scent of heat-scorched stone. The palace gates closed behind him with a weight that felt final, cutting him off from the safety of its walls, from the faint warmth of Kelsey's hand, from Maymun's aura of tempered command.
What remained was the open horizon and the weight of Bahamut's voice coiled deep in his chest.
"You are no longer prey, hatchling. You are the storm that hunts."
Mike's hands flexed unconsciously. The whispers inside him had grown quiet. The weight of his goal pressed down on him like gravity. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward the horizon, where the desert blurred into haze. He didn't need a map, or Maymun's council to tell him where to go. The pull was instinctive. A titan was near. Their essence bled into the world like a drumbeat he could hear.
He inhaled slowly. The breath had a taste edged with fire, when he exhaled, smoke curled between his teeth.
The shift began at once.
Crimson aura ignited around his body, laced with threads of molten gold. His bones creaked as though some ancient rhythm inside them had been waiting for this exact moment. His spine arched, ribs straining, skin hardening into scales that shimmered black and red in the sunlight. Fingers curled into talons, his jaw lengthening into a maw as heat rippled off his body in waves.
The ground beneath his feet cracked when his wings unfurled, vast, leathery, and edged with a red glow. Each beat of them sent tremors rolling through the palace steps.
The dragon's roar that tore from his throat shook the desert to its foundations. It wasn't Mike's voice, nor Bahamut's, it was something new. Something born of both.
Sandstorms spiraled outward from where he stood, his presence pushing the sand outwards.
Mike's eyes, burning with gold and crimson fire, locked onto the horizon. The titan's presence pulsed there, colossal and unrestrained, a living mountain stirring in the distance. Its aura clashed against the sky, the kind of presence mortals would mistake for the wrath of gods.
"Good…" Bahamut's voice rumbled with satisfaction in his mind. "Now hunt."
With a single sweep of his wings, Mike launched from the palace steps, the desert howled beneath his wings, dunes scattering into storms as he cut through the sky. The pulse of titanic essence guided him towards the titan. Mike felt the excitement of confronting a titan build as he continued toward.
But before he reached it, another rhythm emerged. A sound he hadn't expected.
Marching.
The earth trembled with it, thousands of synchronized steps pounding against the sand.
Mike's gaze cut downward, and there they were. Legions of giants. Not the scattered, feral brutes but soldiers. Organized. Armored. Their shields rose in glimmering phalanxes, their spears raised like forests of iron, and their movements were organized.
Their essence rolled upward in disciplined waves, crashing against his senses.
Mike slowed, wings outstretched as he hovered above them, heat rippling from his scales. The nearest rank stopped, heads tilting upward in eerie unison, their eyes glowing faintly.
They didn't break formation. They didn't panic. One among them, a giant taller than the rest, helm crested with broken bronze raised his spear skyward. His voice boomed in a tongue Mike didn't know but somehow understood, as though the meaning were pressed directly into his skull.
"You stand in the shadow of Koios, dragon. Turn back, or be trampled beneath his army."
Mike's jaw flexed, smoke curling from his teeth. His instincts screamed to unleash fire, to tear through them, to consume. But Bahamut's voice rumbled low in his chest, restrained but sharp.
"Not yet. These are no rabble, hatchling. These are the giants who once stormed Olympus itself before they were cast into Tartarus. They are soldiers of the old war. Test them and you will know what kind of army guards Koios."
Mike's talons curled, wings beating once against the air as he steadied himself. The titan was still ahead, but his army blocked the path forward. An army between him and his prey.
His lips curled into something between a smile and a snarl.
"Fuck off," he growled, his voice rolling across the dunes like thunder.
He folded his wings and dove, fire igniting around him as the first ranks of giants leveled their spears.
The first ranks braced as Mike plunged, spears flashing upward like a forest of steel. Their formation tightened, shields locking, their voices rising in a guttural war-chant that seemed to shake the dunes themselves.
Mike hit them like a meteor. Fire rolled out in a wave, melting bronze and searing flesh, his claws scything through shields like paper. Giants screamed, their massive bodies scattering across the sand. But for every one crushed under his talons, two more pressed in.
They moved with precision. That was the part that caught him. He'd fought giants before, feral, raging, blunt instruments of destruction but this was different. Here, every step was drilled, every maneuver flowing like water. One rank locked him down with spears while the next surged around his flank. Shields rose against his flames while others hurled weighted chains, trying to drag him from the air.
For a moment, the clash resembled war on Olympus itself, the discipline of an army bred for gods' blood.
Mike's scales sparked and hissed under their strikes, but the divine essence he'd consumed burned in his flesh now. Where once their bronze might have pierced him, it glanced harmlessly. Blades that bit deep into his wings cut only shallow, scales knitting themselves shut almost as quickly as they opened.
He roared, a sound that split the dunes and sent half the formation staggering back, yet they reformed.
One giant slammed a warhammer into his side; it felt like a heavy slap, nothing more. Another's spear scraped his chest, leaving a faint line across the scales. They were hurting him but barely. The power seethed through his body, armor of living fire.
Mike seized one giant in his jaws, lifting the soldier like prey and hurling him into a rank of shield-bearers, scattering them like bowling pins. His tail swept low, shattering spears and breaking bodies. Still they advanced. Still they pushed.
Bahamut's voice rumbled within him, pride laced with warning.
"Good. Let them break themselves against your scales. Feel what divine essence has made of you. But remember this is Koios' vanguard. If his soldiers are this disciplined, then the Titan himself will not be caught unprepared."
Mike tore through another phalanx, claws raking through bronze and flesh alike, fire cascading from his maw in torrents that melted sand to glass. Giants screamed, the dunes running black with ash and blood. Yet even as the frontlines burned, the next wave stepped over the bodies of the fallen without hesitation, shields locking, spears braced.
Mike acknowledged the legion and the relentless discipline to attack him in organized waves. An army forged in war, beaten down into obedience, and remade by Koios into a weapon. They were much more formidable than the demon legions he had faced before.
His crimson-gold eyes burned, fire dripping from his teeth as he reared back over the battlefield, wings spread wide.
"Your lines and shields will not stop me!" he snarled, his voice shaking the sand itself. "I'll burn your order to cinders. And then I'll take your master's head."
The giants bellowed in reply, an army's defiance echoing across the wastes.