"WHAT THE ACTUAL HECK IS THAT?!"
Vane cursed under his breath, his eyes widening to the point of tearing as he snapped his gaze toward the source of the scream.
He froze.
Descending upon the white stone of the Great Barrier was a maw of sheer nightmare.
It belonged to a grotesque centipede, easily two hundred meters long, its colossal bulk casting a sickening shadow over the defenders.
As the maw snapped shut around a Tamaskritian soldier, the crunch of armor and bone echoed loudly.
The soldier was instantly shredded, pulled into a grinding abyss of thousands—perhaps millions—of tiny, razor-sharp rotting teeth.
The creature's body looked ancient, resembling the infinite, corrupted root of a diseased plant.
But it wasn't wood that propelled it forward. It was thousands of legs.
Pale, jagged legs constructed entirely from rotting Elven bones, clicking against the stone in a mechanical, rhythmic nightmare.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The beast was encased in an armor of foul-smelling, necrotic flesh that pulsed with dark veins.
Fuck, Vane thought, the stench of decay hitting the back of his throat. As if the war was a bed of roses until now.
He scrambled up from his meditative posture, his grip tightening around his great bow.
"It's… it's just a large caterpillar, right? Right?" he coughed nervously, the dark humor a flimsy shield against the terror creeping up his spine.
"Soldiers, hold your positions!" Vane roared, his voice cutting through the panic. "We need to send this insect back to whatever hellhole it crawled out of!"
Drawing his bowstring taut, the air around him began to warp and whistle.
He was funneling high-pressure wind magic directly into the shaft, aiming to shatter the carcass armor of the disgusting centipede.
"As you command, Your Highness!"
The swordsmen charged forward in a unified scream, locking their shields together to form a desperate barricade of metal against the descending maw.
Behind them, the archers let loose a volley of arrows.
The steel tips struck the centipede's rotting flesh but simply scraped uselessly against the hardened necrosis, snapping like twigs.
The sensory overload—the wailing of men, the metallic clang of useless arrows, and the putrid stench of the beast—was suffocating.
I have to make it quick, Vane thought, his muscles straining as the wind gathered into a tempest around his arrow.
I'll take it down in one shot. The army needs my help to call upon the thunderclouds, or else we burn.
His jaw clenched as he noticed the dim, shallow shadows shifting slowly across the battlefield below.
The lunar eclipse was entering its final phase. Time was running out.
He let the arrow go.
Time seemed to dilate. The arrow tore through the air, screaming with the force of a hurricane.
It struck the opened, grinding maw of the centipede just as it descended upon the rattling shield-wall.
The impact was deafening.
The pressurized wind detonated, shattering the maw and obliterating the entire upper chunk of the disgusting creature.
Chunks of rotting carcass and splintered bone rained down violently across the Great Barrier.
"YES!" Vane exclaimed, pumping his fist.
The surviving soldiers erupted into cheers, praising the Wind Prince.
"Yes, yes, I know how great and handsome I am," Vane played it cool, dusting off his shoulder and soaking in the limelight.
He rarely received this kind of adoration—and really, was it his fault?
How was he supposed to shine when standing next to monsters like Aurelius and Ignis? He sighed contentedly.
But before the smirk could fully form on his face, the cheering abruptly died.
Vane turned.
Rising from the massive crater the beast had carved at the foot of the Barrier was the remaining length of the centipede.
It was elongating.
The grotesque wound he had dealt it was already bubbling and shifting, a brand new, tooth-filled maw tearing itself open from the severed neck.
He was a second too late. The shadow of the new maw swallowed him.
"FUCK!"
Vane groaned as the beast lunged. But before the teeth could sink in, a heavy force slammed into his side.
A Tamaskritian swordsman shoved him violently out of the way.
Vane hit the white stone hard, rolling just in time to hear the sickening, wet tear of human flesh.
The swordsman who had saved him was instantly reduced to pulp, his sacrifice buying Vane his life.
The soldiers shrieked in sheer terror as the centipede flattened them, its massive bulk crawling seamlessly over the indestructible white stone.
In an instant, the entire rear-guard of archers and swordsmen was gone, severing the aerial support for the Tamaskritian forces below.
Vane gasped, trying to push himself up, but a blinding flare of agony shot through his dominant arm.
He wasn't completely unscathed. A few of the creature's millions of rotting teeth had grazed his fingers, piercing the skin.
He looked down in horror. It felt as though his hand was dissolving.
The flesh around his fingers was rotting in real-time, turning to ash as a thick, black venom visibly surged up his veins toward his heart.
I have to cut it off. Or else I'm going to die agonizingly.
Panting heavily, Vane ripped off his helmet.
He turned it upside down, planting it firmly on the stone, leaving the razor-sharp metallic edge facing upward.
He positioned his elbow joint directly over the rim.
"It's going to hurt like hell," he muttered, his vision blurring.
He brought his arm down with all his remaining strength.
"AAAAAH!"
Vane screamed until his throat tore. Blood gushed in a torrential spray from the severed stump.
He fell back onto the stone, clutching his ruined arm.
He didn't even have time to lament the loss of his hand—which had already disintegrated into a pile of black powder that blew away in the wind—because the clicking of bone-legs was already returning.
The grotesque creature, having shredded the last of the soldiers, was slithering directly toward him.
Vane tried to kick his bow up, but it was useless.
Without his dominant hand, and bleeding out rapidly, he couldn't draw the string with his teeth—at least, not in the three seconds he had left to live.
He desperately pushed himself backward, his boots slipping on his own blood.
"Hey! Hey, wait! Don't eat me, I'm not tasty, I swear!" Vane babbled, staring into the infinite rows of teeth.
"Eat Eris! She's an Elf who just betrayed her kingdom by killing her husband! She pledged her loyalty to the crown, she'll happily sacrifice herself for me, I'm sure! Isn't that right, Eris—?"
He glanced over his shoulder to where the Elven woman had been sitting mere minutes ago.
Empty stone. She had fled the moment the beast appeared, like any sane person would.
"That bitch!" Vane cursed.
He let his head fall back against the cold stone and sighed.
That's it. This is the end. I'm going to die a virgin.
He closed his eyes tightly, bracing for the agonizing sensation of being munched into a fine paste.
CRACK!
A blinding blue beam flashed against his closed eyelids. The temperature on the Barrier plummeted instantly.
Vane snapped his eyes open to see the centipede's maw frozen solid mid-strike, followed by a localized earthquake as something massive slammed onto the Great Barrier.
"Darius! Kyanos!" Vane yelled, a hysterical laugh escaping his chest.
Darius didn't waste a second.
Coated in thick, earthen armor, the massive prince lunged at the frozen maw, swinging a fist with the force of a falling meteor.
The centipede shattered into countless frozen crumbles. Its rotting teeth posed absolutely no threat to Darius's reinforced obsidian skin.
Beside him, Kyanos stumbled forward.
The Ice Prince looked terrible—his skin was heavily blistered and burnt from the methanol fires raging on the battlefield below, but his eyes were locked onto the hole at the foot of the Barrier.
Kyanos grunted, raising his trembling hands. "Glacial Permafrost."
The atmosphere screamed as the temperature plunged to absolute zero.
Kyanos directed the entirety of his core energy into the crater.
The ice ripped through the centipede's remaining body, freezing it so violently that the corrupted flesh simply disintegrated into nothingness.
Darius instantly slammed his hands onto the stone, shifting the earth to seal the massive breach with impenetrable obsidian rock.
Kyanos collapsed against the parapet wall, completely drained, his breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps.
"We... we did it," Kyanos rasped, offering Vane a shaky smile and a trembling thumbs-up.
"Vane, hurry... make it rain heavily. The methanol fires are burning our forces alive down there."
Vane nodded, ignoring the agonizing throbbing of his stump. He closed his eyes and channeled his remaining mana. "Bolt Influx."
The pressure in the air spiked. Blood began to drip from Vane's nose as he forced the atmospheric currents to violently collide.
Above them, thick, black thunderclouds swirled into existence, rippling with electricity.
A second later, the skies opened up. A torrential, heavy rain began to fall, drenching the Great Barrier and the burning battlefield below.
Vane let himself collapse onto his back, letting the cool raindrops wash the blood and sweat from his face.
A genuinely content smile graced his lips. "Thanks, brothers. For making it here just in time."
Darius dropped his earthen armor, looking utterly exhausted but wearing a massive grin. "Well, we came for other reasons, but whatever. I'm glad we reached you."
He looked at the obsidian seal. "What the hell was that creature anyway?"
Vane propped himself up slightly, a proud gleam in his eye. "I don't know what it was, but I have already named it."
He paused for dramatic effect. "The Root-Bound Scolopendra!"
Dead silence.
Darius and Kyanos stared at him, utterly speechless. Kyanos slowly sat up, looking at Vane as if he had just woken from a coma.
"What? Why are you guys looking at me like that?" Vane asked, narrowing his eyes.
The two brothers just slowly shook their heads in profound disappointment.
"Vane," Kyanos breathed, rubbing his temples. "If you miraculously do end up marrying someday... please, for the love of God, let your wife name the children."
"Hey! What is that supposed to mean?!" Vane exclaimed with mock hurt. "I have a great naming sense!"
"Yeah, that's clearly evident," Darius said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
For a brief, beautiful moment, the three of them burst out laughing, the sound of their brotherhood cutting through the grim reality of the war around them.
The moment was short-lived.
The indestructible white stone of the Great Barrier beneath Darius suddenly exploded outward.
"Darius, NO!" Vane and Kyanos let out a primal wail.
The creature had returned, bursting from the stone and instantly engulfing Darius inside its newly formed maw.
Down on the battlefield below the Whispering Hollows, the rain was a godsend.
Aurelius sliced cleanly through the neck of an Elven soldier, his dark mantle soaking wet.
He was grateful for the downpour—at least his army wouldn't burn to ash anymore.
But the relief vanished the moment a sickening, grinding sound echoed from above.
He spun around.
High atop the Great Barrier, he saw it.
The massive, rotting centipede had breached the stone, and clamped firmly in its maw was the struggling figure of his brother, Darius.
Aurelius's golden eyes narrowed. He felt a subtle shift in the magical currents beneath his boots.
Looking deep into the enemy lines, he realized what he had long suspected.
Hidden behind a dense concentration of flesh-eating plants and armored rhinos was a pulsing, seemingly normal sapling.
It was the anchor. The infinite root feeding the abomination above.
He had to kill it.
But jumping directly into a horde of armored rhinos and acidic flora was a death sentence even for him. He needed an opening.
His eyes darted across the chaotic battlefield until they locked onto Valerius, the Prince of Electricity, who was currently zapping a group of elves.
Aurelius blurred across the mud, grabbing Valerius by the scruff of his armor. "Hey, Valerius. I have a job for you."
"For me?" Valerius asked, blinking in surprise.
"Of course, for you," Aurelius said.
From beneath his dark helm, he flashed a cold, calculating smile that sent immediate shivers down the lightning prince's spine.
"What... what do you mean, brother?" Valerius laughed, a nervous, high-pitched sound.
The next thing Valerius knew, the world was spinning.
Aurelius had literally hurled him through the air, directly into the dead center of the rhino horde.
"I HATE YOU, AURELIUS!"
Valerius screamed, his legs turning into a blur of lightning the second he hit the mud, running for his life as the massive beasts turned their attention toward the sparking prince.
Aurelius ignored the desperate complaints of his bait.
With the horde distracted, the path to the sapling was clear.
He drew his broadsword, his Sun-aura flaring to life despite the rain, the atmosphere around him crackling with lethal, contained energy.
He stared down the remaining rhinos standing between him and the root.
"Come at me. All at once," he commanded coldly.
Back on the Great Barrier, Darius was thrashing wildly inside the pitch-black maw.
His earthen armor was hissing, beginning to violently crack and melt.
The beast wasn't using teeth this time; it was flooding the chamber with highly corrosive acid.
Darius roared, planting his massive hands against the roof and floor of the beast's mouth, trying to pry it open.
But every time he snapped a bone-leg or tore a piece of flesh, it regenerated instantly.
Outside, Kyanos was completely helpless.
His mana reserves were entirely depleted; he couldn't even lift a finger.
Vane, bleeding and kneeling in the rain, lifted his bow with his legs, pulling the string back with his teeth, blood dripping from his lips from the strain.
He fired. The arrow bounced harmlessly off the creature's thick hide. It was useless.
"Vane!" Darius commanded, his voice muffled and distorted from inside the beast. "Take Kyanos and run!"
"No! I won't!" Vane screamed back.
"Just do it, you bastard! I can't hold it for long!"
Inside the maw, the acid burned through the last layer of Darius's armor.
He stopped struggling.
He let his arms drop, a sad, accepting smile touching his face as the crushing jaws began to descend for the final time.
But the teeth never closed.
A sickening snap echoed across the valley. The massive centipede froze.
A second later, the rotting flesh, the endless rows of teeth, and the millions of bone-legs rapidly began to turn to gray ash, disintegrating completely into the rain.
Darius fell to his knees on the white stone, gasping for air as the acid washed away.
Aurelius had done it. He had severed the root.
Kyanos and Darius let out massive, shuddering sighs of absolute relief. They had survived the impossible.
But Vane didn't sigh.
He was staring straight up into the heavens, the rain washing the blood from his pale face.
The thunderclouds he had summoned were breaking apart, revealing the celestial bodies above.
The sky was no longer a haunting copper red.
"The lunar eclipse had concluded".