Lemony didn't wait for the giant to finish his sentence. He spun on his heel and threw a desperate, heavy hook aimed straight at the wolf's snout.
Clack.
The sound of the impact wasn't flesh hitting fur. It was like hitting a block of solid iron. The blindfolded wolf didn't even flinch. He caught Lemony's fist in one hand, his long, grey fingers wrapping entirely around the cat's forearm. He squeezed, and Lemony felt his bones begin to groan under the pressure.
Pippin's eyes darted frantically. His Scholar's Eye was screaming. In his vision, the entire courtyard had turned a deep, bruised purple, stained with black lines that converged on the wolf. There was no opening. There was no weakness.
He's a monster. Everything I see is red.
The gunslinger scrambled back, his boots dragging through the blood-stained snow. He ignored the agony in his ribs and shoulder, his shaking hand reaching for his belt. He slammed a fresh cylinder of white tooth-bullets into his revolver with a frantic click.
"Who are—"
The gunslinger stopped. His finger froze on the trigger. He looked at the blindfold, the heavy military coat, and the blue insignia pinned to the creature's chest. His face went as white as the snow around them.
"Fenris..." the gunslinger whispered, trembling.
"Why are you here, General? You should be at the front lines... the war against the Xilix Empire is still raging, isn't it?"
Pippin's heart dropped. General? Zhan knows him? Was the gunslinger part of the Veridian Army before all this?
Fenris tilted his head, his snout twitching as if he were tasting the air. He let go of Lemony's arm, tossing him aside as if he were a piece of trash.
"Oh, Zhan. It has been a long time," Fenris said, smooth and terrifyingly calm.
"How surprising that we find ourselves in such a wretched place after so many years. Perhaps you can assist me? Do you know of a Skoll-Wolf residing in this domain?"
Ve, Pippin thought. He's looking for Ve. We can't let him near him.
The gunslinger stood his ground, though his legs looked ready to give out. He stared directly at the blindfold.
"I don't know any Skoll-Wolf here, General. This place is just a graveyard for scavengers. You're wasting your time."
"I see..." Fenris murmured. He turned his head slightly toward the horizon.
"A pity. But perhaps you can explain the creature currently making its way toward this location?"
The gunslinger's brow furrowed. He looked to the left, squinting through the falling snow and the dark pillars. He saw nothing. Not a shadow, or even a flicker of movement.
He can feel Malphas from miles away? the gunslinger realized. He's not even looking, and he knows.
"It is arriving now," Fenris said.
"What's coming, general?"
Fenris didn't answer. He gave Lemony a sudden, violent shove that sent the cat tumbling toward Fiji. Then, in a blink, the Umbral Marshal simply disappeared. He didn't use a portal. He was just gone.
Then, the sky split.
The thick, grey clouds above Fort Rib were torn apart as if by a giant hand. A massive, rusted metal ball, the size of a small house and wrapped in glowing, heavy iron chains, screamed down from the heavens.
WHAM!
The impact was cataclysmic. The ground shattered instantly, and the stone floor of the courtyard erupted upward in a wave of roughed debris. The shockwave hit Lemony and the others like a physical wall, throwing them through the air as the walls of the fort collapsed into dust in a matter of seconds.
Lemony felt the wind leave his lungs as he was tossed into the dark, the sound of the exploding fortress ringing in his ears.
Lemony's vision was a blur of gray and white. It felt like years had passed since the sky fell, but as he forced his eyes open, the massive metal ball was right there.
It sat in the middle of the ruined courtyard, cold and unmoving, with heavy iron chains snaking out from it like dead pythons.
He tried to move, but his body screamed.
His left leg was bent at an angle that made his stomach turn, and his fur was matted with a mixture of soot and fresh blood. Shards of stone were embedded in his sides.
I should be dead. How am I still breathing?
He began to crawl, his claws scraping against the shattered cobblestones. As the snowy dust finally began to settle, a figure stumbled through the haze.
It was the gunslinger.
He was limping, his duster torn to shreds, and he was carrying a limp, unconscious Pippin in his good arm.
"He's out. The pressure from the impact... his heart couldn't take it. I have to get him out of here through the portal."
The gunslinger snapped his fingers with a shaky hand, and a flickering blue hole tore open in the air. He stepped toward it with Pippin's unconscious body, but then he stopped and looked back at Lemony with a haunting intensity.
"Lemony, listen to me. Do not enter this portal. If you step through, you'll suffer a fate worse than death. You'll be torn apart before you reach the other side."
Lemony's mind flashed back to the dark, towering figure he had seen in the black realm.
He understood.
He wasn't ready to leave.
"I have to kill Malphas."
The gunslinger nodded solemnly and disappeared into the blue light. The portal vanished, leaving Lemony alone in the wreckage of Fort Rib.
Lemony gritted his teeth and grabbed his mangled leg. With a sickening pop, he forced the bone back into place. He let out a strangled cry, his vision going black for a second, but he forced himself to stand.
He needed his legs.
If he couldn't run, he couldn't kill a god.
As the last of the dust clouds cleared, the horizon was dominated by the nightmare. Malphas was there, a titanic, shifting mass of shadow and divine geometry that seemed to swallow the moonlight itself.
"I see... So this is Malphas."
Lemony flinched. The Umbral Marshal was standing right next to him, his hands tucked casually into his coat pockets. He wasn't even breathing hard.
"I've heard tales of this Divine Thread," Fenris murmured, his blindfolded head tilting toward the monster.
"A celebrity of the past. A weaver of fates that once tangled the threads of entire empires. To see him reduced to this... it's almost poetic."
The wolf turned his head toward Lemony, a thin, dangerous smile stretching across his snout.
"Do you want to see how a General of Veridian handles a god, little Manul?"
Lemony looked at the creature's blindfold.
"Are you... stronger than Lancelot?"
Fenris let out a soft, melodic chuckle.
"Yes, I am. Quite significantly. Speaking of the commander, I've already had my subordinates whisk his body away to the medical staff. The Rank 1 girl, too. It would be a waste of resources to let them bleed out in the snow."
Just how fast is this guy? He did all that while the dust was still settling?
"Now," Fenris said, his voice dropping into a low, predatory growl.
"Observe."
The Marshal didn't run. He simply ceased to exist where he was standing.
BOOM!
A sonic boom ripped through the courtyard as Fenris reappeared a hundred feet in the air, right in front of Malphas's central mass.
He didn't use a weapon.
He simply drove his fist forward.
The impact sounded like a mountain cracking in half. A shockwave of black energy exploded outward, tearing through Malphas's shadow-flesh. The god roared, a sound that vibrated in Lemony's marrow, and swung a massive, ethereal limb at the wolf.
Fenris moved like liquid. He pirouetted in mid-air, his heavy coat flapping like a bird's wings. He caught the god's limb with his bare hands, gripped the shadowy matter, and heaved.
The titanic creature was actually jerked forward by the sheer physical strength of the wolf.
Fenris followed up with a blurred sequence of strikes: left, right, a spinning kick that connected with the god's "head."
Every blow sent ripples of distorted space through the air.
Thwack-thwack-thwack!
Malphas tried to weave a defensive thread, but Fenris was too fast. He grabbed the glowing divine thread out of the air and snapped it like a piece of dry twine. He was dominating the god, A GOD.
He dived back down, his heels slamming into the god's chest, driving the massive entity deep into the ruins of the fortress.
"Is that all? I expected more from a legend."
Lemony stood there, staring at the crater where a god had just been pinned. He felt small. It wasn't just the size difference, it was the sheer weight of the gap between them.
This wolf could have ended the nightmare in a heartbeat. Lemony wasn't even a flicker of a candle compared to this guy.
Fenris let out a short, airy laugh. He looked like he was enjoying himself, but then the air suddenly curdled.
CRACK.
The ground beneath Fenris's boots shattered. The Umbral Marshal didn't just fall, he was slammed down by an invisible weight so heavy it sounded like a physical blow. He hit his knees right on Malphas's chest, his head snapping back as the pressure doubled.
What...? Fenris thought, his teeth grinding together.
He glanced down at the shadowy mass beneath him. The beast wasn't dead. It wasn't even tired. The aura radiating from Malphas suddenly spiked, turning into a physical force that felt like the ocean was trying to crush a single grain of sand.
This is insane. I see now. This is the true weight of a divine existence.
Fenris didn't wait to be crushed. He flickered out of existence and reappeared a few feet away, right next to the Manul.
I'll be safe here since the cat isn't fazed by it.
The moment his boots hit the snow again, the pressure returned with a vengeance.
Fenris was slammed into the dirt, his knees hitting the stone so hard they left indents. He looked up, straining against the invisible hand of a god, and his blindfolded face turned toward Lemony.
The cat was just standing there.
He wasn't kneeling. He wasn't shaking. Lemony was just looking at the monster with those flat, yellow eyes, his fur barely ruffled by the divine wind that was currently trying to liquefy a General's internal organs.
This creature... this Manul is still standing normallu. I am a Paragon. I am a Marshal of the Empire. And yet, I am pinned to the earth while a stray cat breathes easily. What kind of monster are you, Manul?
Then, as quickly as it had come, the pressure vanished. The air went still. Fenris slowly stood up, brushing the frozen dirt from his coat. He looked at Lemony with a strange, dark respect.
"You're an amazing Manul," Fenris whispered.
Then his face changed. The respect didn't leave, but it was joined by a sharp, lethal edge. The kind face turned into the face of a butcher.
This general is going to kill me! Lemony's instincts screamed.
Lemony jumped back, his fur standing on end. Fenris moved like a shadow. A punch whistled through the air, and Lemony barely twisted his torso out of the way. The force of the near-miss left a deep, purple bruise on his ribs, but his cat instincts had saved his life for one more second.
But he wasn't fast enough for the follow-up. He sensed the next attack coming from his blind spot, but his body was too heavy to move.
Lemony crossed his arms to block.
SNAP.
The sound of his radius and ulna shattering was like dry twigs breaking. Lemony let out a strangled, high-pitched yelp as his left arm went limp and useless.
"AHHH!"
Before he could even process the agony, another blow landed. His right arm took the brunt of it, and the bone splintered instantly under the Marshal's power. Both of his limbs were now dangling, ruined and bloody.
Fenris stepped forward to finish it, his hand raised for a final strike. But before he could connect, a massive, shadowy hand swept through the ruins of the fort.
Lemony felt himself being snatched out of the air. He was suddenly gripped by Malphas's cold, ethereal fingers.
I'm still alive... But I'm going to die if I don't get these arms fixed. I still have to... I have to kill... Malphas!
The god didn't wait. Malphas unhinged a jaw made of darkness and starlight. With a casual flick of its wrist, it tossed Lemony into the abyss of its throat.
What the hell!?
Lemony fell into the blackness.
He didn't let himself panic.
Lemony tumbled through the dark, the wet walls of the throat slick with a thick, viscous mucus. He tried to hold on, but his broken arms couldn't find a grip.
Every time he bumped against the fleshy interior, a sharp sting shot through his shattered bones.
Finally, he slipped, sliding down a steep incline before hitting a pool of stagnant water with a heavy splash.
Sploosh.
He gasped, struggling to keep his head above the surface. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a faint, eerie glow.
It wasn't magic.
It was a biological byproduct of Malphas' unique anatomy.
The walls were lined with bioluminescent polyps that processed the ambient mana trapped in the mountain air.
They filtered the energy through a series of translucent membranes, creating a dim, rhythmic pulsing of light that illuminated the cavernous stomach.
But the light only revealed a nightmare.
The "water" wasn't water at all.
It was a concentrated pool of gastric acid, a dark, bubbling soup of digestive enzymes designed to break down creatures. It was deep, and Lemony felt his fur beginning to sizzle as the pH balance of the fluid started to eat away at his skin.
He tried to float, kicking his legs frantically, but the liquid was too dense. He felt himself sinking.
I'm going to die here. Dissolved like a piece of meat.
Suddenly, a violent heave of the stomach walls created a massive surge. The gastric acid pulled him toward a narrow opening at the edge of the chamber. He was sucked into a tight, muscular canal and spat out into a dry, pulsating tunnel.
He lay there on the fleshy floor, gasping for air that smelled like ozone. His arms were useless, dangling by his sides like broken branches. He stared up at the ceiling of the tunnel, his yellow eyes glazed with exhaustion.
I'm hopeless. My arms are gone. I'm inside a god. There is no way out of this...
I'm finally going to die...
He started to crawl forward using only his chin and his legs, dragging his broken body through the tunnel.
It felt like an eternity.
The tunnel eventually opened up into a massive, hollowed-out space. It was darker here, the bioluminescence fading into a deep, bruised purple.
He entered the room, his heart hammering against his ribs. The space was filled with thick, red chains made of hardened, calcified blood.
They stretched from the floor to the ceiling, vibrating with a low, bass hum that shook Lemony's very teeth.
In the center of all those red chains was a massive, throbbing shape.
It was the size of a carriage, covered in pulsing veins and glowing with a deep, rhythmic crimson light.
It beat with a heavy, wet sound that echoed through the chamber.
Thump-thump.
It was shaped like a heart.
It felt like a heart.
Lemony stared at it, the realization hitting him harder than any punch.
He wasn't just inside Malphas.
He was in the sanctum.
He was staring at the heart of a god.