The gates of Xathia groaned open like a wound being remembered.
Squad 2 stood at the threshold, understandably anxious. Vayrik read the Queen's orders aloud, his voice flat, eyes unreadable.
"Alright everyone. Got a field day for you knuckle heads. You are to negotiate a contract with the beastmen of Druira. Peace terms. Trade routes. Cultural exchange. All that jazz."
Tamura's mark hummed softly. Then still. Vayrik seems off. More than usual.
Mugen adjusted his cloak, shadows twitching like they were listening. Aylin sniffed the air, tail flicking with unease.
Kael cracked his neck, a grin came across his face. "This could be fun, considering the route."
"Why does it have to be us?" Mugen asked. "Why squad 2 specifically?"
Vayrik didn't answer.
He just turned and walked.
"By the way... I won't be going with you. I'll meet you in Druira." He said without looking back.
Mugen thought out loud. "That's a little odd don't you think? Even for you."
Tamura stood up. "Alright, let's head out everyone. Time to venture through the Deadlands."
---
The Deadlands wasn't just a mass of land. It was a scar left as a punishment for the world and the actions of previous eras.
Once a thriving region of Serekhal, the land had been scorched by failed pacts and betrayals of mortals to the gods above. Mana storms had ripped the sky open. Corruption bled into the soil. Now, it was a shifting wasteland. Its climate unstable, terrain untrustworthy, and memory unreliable. Days seemed like weeks once inside.
The first few days were deceptively easy.
The air was dry, the path clear. Squad 2 moved in formation, trading quiet jokes and half-hearted complaints. Aylin sketched the beastman language into her journal. She wanted to connect with her kin once in Druira. Kael and Mugen would argue with each other about simple things to keep themselves from focusing on the grueling journey. Mugen drifted ahead, shadows trailing him like smoke.
Tamura kept to the rear, eyes scanning the horizon. His mark flared faintly when they passed old ruins. Pillars etched with sigils that pulsed like they remembered him or something within him.
"You ever think about what we're walking into?" Kael asked.
Tamura didn't look up.
"That's a negative mindset to have when faced with unknowing missions. It keeps you tense and in a fight that's a bad habit. I think about what we'll walk out of."
Kael, now seemingly annoyed, "Oh my mistake, I forgot you were king of positivity ever since that girl came around."
Tamura glared at Kael. "The hell is that supposed to mean?" Mugen couldn't hold his laughter bursting out into tears. Then, their moment was cut short.
The wind changed.
The sky turned dark. The terrain around them began to pulse. The stone breathing, trees twitching, a green sigil glowing faintly in the dirt. The temperature dropped, then spiked. The air grew thick, like it was trying to choke them slowly.
Tamura's mark flared. Aylin's ears began to twitch.
Kael stopped walking.
"Something's wrong," he muttered. "I think there's something coming toward-"
The ground beneath them cracked. A hum rose from the earth. It was low, discordant, like a choir choking on its own song.
Then it emerged.
The ground split open beneath the squad, and the False Hydra rose pale flesh slick with mana, heads twitching in and out of existence. Its hum wasn't sound. It was pressure. A psychic weight that made the squad's thoughts stutter.
Kael charged first, blade drawn, boots pounding across cracked stone.
"Anyone got eyes on the core?" he shouted.
Tamura tried to sense the creature's life source but to his horror he couldn't sense anything.
The core wasn't there.
His blade struck one of the heads only for it to vanish mid-swing. Another head appeared behind him, jaws wide. Aylin lunged, claws slashing, but her beastform faltered. Her aura flickered erratically, reacting to the creature's distortion.
Tamura unleashed a burst of flame, his mark flaring violet. But the fire bent mid-air, swallowed by the creature's hum.
"This thing is warping our mana!" Tamura shouted.
"It's not just dodging, it's rewriting the outcome of this fight every attack we take!"
The Hydra's heads snapped forward, one grazing Kael's shoulder, another slamming Aylin into the ground. She coughed, blood staining her teeth.
"Hey Tamura, do you think you could go beserk now?" she asked with fear rattling her voice.
The squad regrouped, breath ragged, blood dripping. The terrain around them had changed again, pillars that weren't there before, runes glowing in languages no one recognized.
Tamura's mark flared violently. He saw the monster's core, although it was only just for a second, pulsing behind its heads, then vanishing again.
"It's moving the core," he said.
"Until we can find a way to lock its core down, our chances of surviving will keep going down."
Kael threw an explosive to the ground, one of Vayrik's designs. It detonated with a burst of light mana, shredding the air and attempting to blind the monster.
The Hydra's heads screamed out, but not in pain. It was mocking them.
The creature twisted, one head elongating unnaturally, wrapping around Kael's leg and slamming him into the ground and shattering his ankle. Kael screamed out in pain. Aylin leapt onto the monster, biting into the flesh, but her teeth passed through the creature like smoke.
Mugen tried to cast a binding spell. His shadows flickered, then collapsed.
"It's eating our spells too," he muttered. "This whole situation is just all sorts of wrong."
Tamura unleashed a full cardinal flare, crimson fire roaring from his arms.
It hit, burning the abomination.
But the Hydra just laughed. They threw all they had at it and it just laughed.
---
The battlefield was chaos.
Kael's arm hung limp and his legs in condition to move either. Aylin's beastform was flickering uncontrollably and her instincts screamed at her to run. Tamura's mark was burning through his skin. He was approaching his limit. Mugen stood still, his shadows began twitching like they were afraid.
The Hydra's hum grew louder. The ground began to shift again. The team was exhausted and gravely injured.
Tamura turned to Mugen.
"We need to fall back!"
Mugen didn't move. "There's nowhere to fall back to."
The Hydra lunged at the brothers, six heads at once. Tamura threw up a flame shield. Aylin tackled Kael out of the way. Mugen stepped forward, hands shaking.
"I can't bind it," he said as blood began to drip from his forehead into his eyes.
"I can't see it."
The Hydra's core pulsed, just once. A wave of mana slammed into the squad, knocking them back.
Tamura hit the ground hard, blood flooding his mouth as he began to choke. Kael groaned. Aylin didn't move.
Mugen stood.
And something inside him shifted
---
The Hydra loomed, heads twitching, core pulsing erratically. The squad was scattered. Tamura was bleeding out, Kael left groaning, Aylin was unconscious.
Mugen stood alone.
His shadows curled around his feet, flickering like they were waiting for permission to act from something. The Hydra turned toward him. Its hum faltered.
Mugen didn't cast. Didn't speak.
He just stood there.
And something inside him stirred.
A pulse, not mana. Not a glyph. Something older. The Hydra hesitated. Its heads twitched. Its core shifted backward.
Mugen's eyes flickered, not glowing, not flaring. Just changing. The whites in his eyes darkened. The irises sharpened. His pupils thinned into slits.
Tamura blinked from the ground.
"Mugen…?" The Hydra lunged. Mugen didn't move.
His shadows surged inward. They wrapped around his spine, his ribs, his throat. Not to bind. To anchor. His aura began to shift into an ominous purple color. His presence was welcoming but filled with malice at the same time.
The Hydra's heads stopped mid-lunge. Its hum began to crack.
Kael sat up, eyes wide.
"What in the hell is going on?"
The air changed around them, but they could all tell that it wasn't changing naturally or even from the Hydra. This was coming from Mugen alone.
The temperature dropped almost to zero. The pressure of the air felt more heavy than any weight training the group had ever had to deal with. But something else was in the air. A third element.
Instinct.
The Hydra recoiled.
Its heads twisted, searching for a threat it couldn't see. Like it was fighting against itself.
Mugen's aura expanded, not violently, but inevitably. It didn't scream. It felt completely opposite to what Tamura's cardinal state felt like. It was chilling and didn't care about weakness or strength.
The creature backed away.
Aylin stirred, eyes fluttering open.
"Why is it… afraid?"
Tamura's mark flared in response. It was not in pain, but in recognition.
"That's not Mugen," he whispered.
"That's something else."
---
The Hydra twisted, its heads shrieking in broken harmony. Its core pulsed erratically, shifting faster, panicking.
Mugen stepped forward.
His shadows didn't lash out. They weren't even playing a part in this outcome.
"Now then, who wants to play first?" His voice was distorted with something else as he looked up at the Hydra.
The creature screamed. And fled.
It didn't vanish. It escaped. Into the earth. Into the dark. Into whatever place could hide it from what Mugen had become.
The squad didn't move.
They just watched on in a mix of confusion, amazement, and horror.
---
The battlefield was quiet.
There was no hum. No shifting. Just the exhausted breathing of squad 2.
Mugen stood still, eyes dimming, shadows retracting.
Tamura rose slowly, blood drying on his cheek. His body finally started to heal.
Kael leaned against a broken pillar, blade forgotten in the chaos.
Aylin sat cross-legged, tail twitching.
No one spoke.
Until Tamura did.
"What the fuck was that?"
Mugen didn't answer.
He just sat down.
And exhaled.
---
They made camp in some nearby ruins. No one joked. No one sharpened a blade.
Tamura stared at Mugen across the fire.
"You didn't cast any secret move that you were holding out on me right?"
Mugen shook his head.
Kael downed his water like it was a world class vintage of wine.
"That thing was eating our spells. Nothing we did worked. Hell, not even 'Mr. Demon Spawn' and you just… stood there and it chose to run away?"
Aylin leaned forward.
"It was afraid of you."
Mugen didn't respond.
Later, Mugen sat alone on a broken wall, staring into the dark.
His shadows pulsed, not erratically. Rhythmically. They too had also gone under a change.
He felt it.
Not power. A presence.
Something inside him had opened.
Not fully.
Just enough to be recognized as either a welcomed potential ally, or a threat.
He whispered to himself, staring down at his hands.
"Just what exactly...am I?"