The golden sun was already fallen behind the horizon, and in its place was a shimmering canopy of starlight and an enormous silver moon that hung in the heavens like a mute sentinel. The sky itself was ablaze with molten gold and bruised indigo, so that the world below was bathed in surreal shadows and shimmers.
Buzz Windbreaker was in a state of ecstasy, and was riding the swirling air currents with the mad grace of a drunken bard on a flying carpet. His transparent wings buzzed in mechanical delight and his antennae swayed in time to his inner monologue of delight. He hummed a tune which, to his own ears, was a hymn of triumph, but to the rest of creation, was the whining agony of an aerial chainsaw.
"My sting is the king, it pierces everything, I fly through the sky like a bloodsucking ring...!"
His singing was a catastrophe, all right, but his spirits flew higher than all disgrace. The memory of Tenebrisilk's naive generosity still sent waves of smug satisfaction through his thorax. He had changed. He had swindled a talking spider. And, to say the truth, he might have found a friend.
But other plans were in store that night.
When the moon came fully up, its light streaming through the heavy canopy like melted frostlight, the forest changed. The leaves no longer spoke with the breath of life, but moaned under the stifling silence of hunters moving. Guttural and savage howls pierced the darkness. Feral laughter came out of invisible mouths, and vertical eyes opened out on the branches, flashing like cursed rubies in the dark.
Buzz's wings abruptly stilled midflight, an instinctive lurch of his predator-honed survival sense freezing him in place. His compound eyes flicked back and forth and his antennae twitched.
The world around him had erupted with heat signatures. Massive, sinewy monsters slinked through the foliage, claws digging into bark and jaws leaking slime. Others, smaller and quicker, darted like daggers in the underbrush. Dozens, no, hundreds of living beings were converging into the same vector of territory.
"What in the rotting thorax of a fire-drake is going on here...?"
He had been in this godforsaken death maze of bark and teeth for days now. And never once had he sensed this density of predators swarming in one place. It was as if the forest itself had cracked open a dimensional portal to hell and screamed, "Dinner's served!"
Just then, a signal blazed across the landscape, slicing through the noise like a blade through silk. Buzz flinched, his proboscis shivering as his "Lifespan Sense" screeched in alarm. Something was glowing within the spectrum of vital energy, something so dense and ancient it made his other targets look like stale crumbs.
The glow pulsed like a nuclear furnace. It wasn't just bright. It was arrogant.
Buzz stared into the heart of it, and every nerve in his newly evolved body screamed the same message:
Run.
His instincts seized control of his limbs before thought could catch up. He rocketed upward, not caring what direction he flew as long as it was away from that obscene concentration of soul force.
---
In another part of the forest, striding with intent which pierced the night like a blade sharpened in revenge, was a young man in glittering gold. His name was Jack Velcrast.
The motifs on his armor were sun-shaped, his shoulder plates were carved in the shape of rising phoenixes, and a rune-covered sword gleamed in his gauntlet. The blade was hot, its burning sigils throbbing with spells held by fire and sun power.
Every step he made left the ground a scorched clay. His breath glimmered in the moonlight, and followed him in golden mist. But there was anxiety and sorrow behind that firestorm facade.
He had waited. For days. To look to his teacher.
And got nothing.
Until now.
"This is where it ends," Jack muttered, his voice a low vow that rumbled with the weight of suppressed rage. "I know you're here, Teacher. Your mana signature lingers still."
When that thought crystallized, he felt it.
Faint.
A murmur of a sound.
But unmistakable.
"Teacher... I—"
He bolted.
His armored form smashed through the brush like a meteor of the gods, trailing orange flames of his sword. Beasts fled in his path, some could not run fast enough and were burnt up in his wake.
Then the signature twisted.
It was not new, no, but... wrong.
The trace he followed wasn't his teacher's.
It was not so big. Weaker. Laughably insignificant.
A tsetse fly.
And it was attempting to get away.
Jack's blood turned to ash. His teeth grated together so violently that sparks flew between them.
It must have been a single reason.
His teacher was killed.
and this vermin bore the last traces of his nature.
"YOU DARE?!"
He swung.
A crescent arc of flame howled through the night, pursuing Buzz in the vengeance of a sun god denied his vengeance.
Buzz almost crapped his thorax.
"Is that a human?! USING-MAGIC?!"
His panic was absolute.
Before his cognitive centers could even recover, his body was already surging with spells.
Blood Infusion! Robust Iron Frame!
His frame bulged with unnatural vitality, legs thickening like bronze-coated spears, carapace flashing with chrome-gray plating. His vision sharpened. His speed multiplied.
He dove, weaving through trees as branches exploded in fire behind him.
But Jack was not a man easily evaded.
"You won't escape me, parasitic shit stain!"
He roared again, and this time he didn't just conjure fire. He summoned a sea of it. A rolling tide of incandescent flame spread across the forest floor, chasing Buzz like an infernal tsunami.
Buzz shrieked.
"I didn't kill your damn mentor, you lunatic pyromaniac freakshow!"
His wings beat faster than ever before. But he wasn't fast enough.
The fire touched his forelegs.
And then came the pain.
Not discomfort. Not a sting.
Agony. Raw. All-consuming. A pain so vast it hijacked all reason.
SssssssSSSSSSKCHHHHH!
Buzz's legs blackened, his screams like a thousand harmonics of misery compressed into an aria of pure despair.
He would have passed out if not for the fury of his survival instinct roaring louder than the pain.
But it was clear.
He was prey.
And the predator wore gold.