## CHAPTER 32: FORTY FEET ABOVE
The clearing was a scene of utter devastation. Ben lay sprawled in the dirt, his pride broken alongside his ribs. He was knocked out cold for a moment, his vision swimming in a sea of red and black. To his left, Kael was little more than a frantic blur, his movements jagged and desperate. He was running in circles around the towering obsidian mass of the Rabbid, his breath coming in ragged, whistling gasps as he lobbed spheres of blue energy at the beast's impenetrable hide.
The energy balls struck the Rabbid's chest and shoulders, dissipating like soap bubbles against a stone wall.
*"Grrrrrrrraaaaaaaagghhhhhh!"*
The Black Rabbid let out a roar that seemed to vibrate the very moisture in the air. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated annoyance. It had grown tired of the buzzing insects circling its feet. With a speed that defied its massive bulk, the creature swung a tree-trunk-sized arm in a wide, horizontal arc.
"Ahhhhhhhhh!"
Kael's scream was cut short as the fist connected. The impact sounded like a battering ram hitting a sack of flour. He was launched backward, his body skipping once across the moss before slamming into a thick ironwood tree. He slumped to the ground, his sword falling from his nerveless fingers as he let out a final, pained groan.
"Now's our chance!" Zerav's voice cut through the chaos, cold and commanding.
Ben, barely regaining consciousness, dragged his head up to look at the "Ordinary." Beside Zerav stood Diane, her light pink hair windswept and wild. Her hands were pressed together, glowing with an intense, pulsing pink light that illuminated the dark clearing like a flare.
But then, to Ben's horror, Zerav didn't charge. He turned to his left and took off in a dead sprint, disappearing into the thick shadows of the treeline. He wasn't running toward the beast—he was running away.
"What's that coward doing?" Ben thought, a wave of bitter resentment washing over him.
"He's leaving her alone."
Diane didn't look back. She didn't hesitate. She charged the Goliath Rabbid head-on, her small frame a streak of neon light against the gloom.
The Rabbid's singular, massive eye swiveled toward her. It saw the approaching light and sensed a threat far greater than the two boys it had just discarded.
*"Rooooaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr!"*
The beast's roar was deafening, a physical wall of sound that pushed against Diane's momentum. It raised a fist the size of a boulder and slammed it downward, aiming to grind her into the silt.
"No! Stop! It's too dangerous!" Ben shrieked, finding the strength to push himself up, only for his mangled left leg to give way, sending him crashing back into the ground.
Diane was a blur of pink. She pivoted on her heel, the ground sliding beneath her boots as she dodged the descending fist by a hair's breadth.
*BAM!*
The impact was seismic. The ground heaved, and a localized earthquake rattled the trees. A massive cloud of dust and pulverized moss erupted into the air, swallowing Diane's light and plunging the area into a grey, suffocating fog.
Ben stared into the dust, his heart hammering against his cracked ribs. He looked left. He looked right. There was no pink glow. There was no sound of movement.
"Where is she?" Ben whispered, his voice cracking. "Diane?"
Silence followed, save for the heavy, wet breathing of the monster.
"No!" Ben screamed, the sound tearing from his lungs. "No! NOOOO!"
He clawed at the dirt, trying to drag his useless body forward. Tears of rage and self-loathing rolled down his cheeks, carving tracks through the grime on his face. He watched the Rabbid turn its head toward him, the dust settling around its hulking black shoulders. It began to move—one heavy, echoing step at a time.
"I'll kill you!" Ben yelled, but his voice lacked the power of his earlier arrogance. It was the cry of a broken boy. "I'll kill you!"
The Rabbid stopped inches from Ben. It stood perfectly still, looking down at the shivering noble with its unblinking, milky eye. Ben wailed, the image of Diane being crushed repeating in his mind. He felt the crushing weight of his own inadequacy. He had spent his whole life preaching the doctrine of the strong, looking down on the "weaklings" like Zerav, yet here he was—the weakest of them all.
"I deserve this," Ben thought, his breathing turning into jagged sobs. "I deserve to die. I am a disgrace to my family name."
He closed his eyes, his body trembling as he waited for the cold embrace of death. He accepted the hit. He waited for the darkness.
Instead, a flash of brilliant light burned through his eyelids.
Ben snapped his eyes open and looked to his left. A few yards away, a bright pink glow erupted from the base of the Rabbid's foot. Diane was alive. She had used the dust as a shroud, sliding under the beast's guard with the precision of a ghost.
Her hands were pressed firmly against the creature's ankle.
"Bestow onto you the power of lightness, defy the laws of reality and heed my command!" she chanted, her voice a rapid-fire blur of incantation. "**ZERO GRAV!**"
The effect was instantaneous. A ripple of pink energy surged up the Rabbid's leg, enveloping its massive torso. The beast raised its fist to strike her, but the limb didn't descend. Instead, it drifted upward. The monster's feet left the ground, its multi-ton weight suddenly rendered meaningless. It began to float, flailing its massive arms in the air as it lost its anchor to the world.
"You're alive... thank God," Ben whispered, a hysterical smile breaking through his tears.
But Diane wasn't looking at him. Her face was tight with concentration, her mana being drained at a terrifying rate to keep the beast suspended. Diane was different she held the power to manipulate, the mass of objects around allowing her to float, drop and even launch objects forward at high speed. That sort of rare talent was what got her to the school in the first place after nearly being abondoned by her family for being different. Since then she has always had a soft hatred for nobles which she was never allowed to show.
"Zerav! It's all up to you!" she cried out.
Ben's expression went dull. "Zerav?"
Then he saw it. High above the clearing, a shadow was moving through the ironwood trees. Zerav wasn't running away; he was ascending.
He was moving with a terrifying, predatory agility that no student should possess. He didn't use the branches; he conquered them. He jumped, twisted, and swung with the fluid grace of a jungle cat, his bare hands gripping the rough bark as he scaled the highest reaches of the canopy. His movements were animalistic, devoid of the stiff formality of academy training.
Zerav reached a massive, overhanging branch forty feet in the air, directly above the floating, disoriented Rabbid.
"I'm not going to miss," Zerav murmured to himself.
He gripped a higher branch and twisted his body, building a coil of tension like a massive spring. Then, he launched.
He didn't just jump; he thrust himself forward with enough force to snap the branch behind him. As he soared through the air, he reached back and drew the obsidian scythe. The blade began to pulse with a dim, ominous purple glow, releasing crackling discharges of dark energy that hissed against the wind.
The light caught the Rabbid's eye. Suspended upside down in mid-air, the beast swiveling its massive head to see the reaper descending from the heavens.
*"Grrooowwwllllll!"*
The monster let out a final, defiant growl and launched a massive fist toward Zerav, a desperate attempt to swat the hunter out of the sky.
The two forces—the falling shadow and the floating titan—were on a collision course in the center of the dark forest.