Behemoth remembered.

The Titans had co-existed together since the dawn of the world. Over the course of aeons, their relative influences had waxed and waned. Behemoth reigned supreme in the early days along with Phoenix, when magma flowed in rivers across the surface of the world, and new mountain ranges erupted high enough to pierce the heavens.

Ages passed. The elements moved in cycles. Catastrophes of frost and flood altered the landscape of the world. Organic life emerged from the cosmological alchemy of existence, nurtured through the perennial shifting of the seasons. With the creation of life came the birth of death, and with the concept of death came conflict.

In this new phase of the world, Leviathan prospered.

It was impossible to say the original cause of enmity between the Titans. Such judgments were irrelevant. There were only memories of violence that churned the seas and tore continents asunder. Countless lifeforms perished when a sacred land flooded; countless lifeforms perished when oceanic volcanoes spewed pyroclastic death that later formed into islands.

According to the tenuous grasp on the situation that Cyril’s mind was able to comprehend, the Titans currently existed in a rough equilibrium. Millennia had passed since the last time they had converged on the same location. That encounter had left Behemoth with the colossal gouge in its shoulder that later housed the city of Fissure, and Leviathan had lost several of its many eyes.

The intensity of the memories rooted Cyril in place. He recalled the world shattering, and cataclysmic storms that left devastation as far as the eye could see. The scale of their conflict, transmitted through the stifling weight of Behemoth’s attention, was like nothing he had ever imagined.

Cyril swallowed. Rage built up in his chest, white-hot, and he realized it was not quite his own anger. Like the burning resentment he had felt when Hosjin’s symbol tried to subvert his Destiny, or even the outrage at Hunger-Made-Alive. The Titan did not wish to waste time on such petty conflicts; they were mere distractions that forced Cyril off the true path.

As flippant as Cyril had been with Lanazael, he was surprised at how much the idea bothered him. He still thought of himself as a distinct entity from the Titan, one that benefited from their symbiotic relationship. That was not quite true.

After all this time, Behemoth had sought out a Vessel. It had spent aeons wandering the world, clashing with others on occasion, content to maintain the balance. Now, it wanted something that required Cyril. The worst part was that Cyril was not quite sure what it sought--maybe even the Titan did not realize the purpose behind its actions.

Cyril’s attention returned to the real world as cerulean qi surged within the hut. A trio of jagged icicles, long as spears, pierced through the door in a burst of wooden fragments. They shattered against Cyril’s bronze armor; a fragment of ice broke off and slid across his cheek, failing to even break through the skin.

Cyril felt like he was watching from the back of his mind as he lifted his arm. He knew it was him doing it, that it was his desire and responsibility, but he couldn’t help but feel like a passenger in his own head. Gravity qi surged through his body, exploded out in a formless conflagration he hadn’t bothered to channel through a Pressure Cantrip.

The hut warped outwards, wooden slats creaking, then the entire edifice disintegrated as if it had been struck by a hurricane. Cyril observed as the cultivator cowering inside was shredded apart, resisting for mere moments before becoming a spray of crimson within the vortex of debris. A human life ended because of him. A member of the Cult of Leviathan, but another human, all the same.

Fragments clattered to the ground in a brief rain. A massive gouge had been plowed through the oasis in front of him, no sign remaining of the hut or anything for twenty feet beyond it. The technique must have drained at least a quarter of his core, but it had refilled instantly. The weight of Behemoth’s attention threatened to crush him, to unravel his lacking foundations. Cracks formed within some of his smaller channels, and he could taste blood in the back of his mouth.

I should have captured that person, Cyril told himself--told Behemoth, if there was any difference. He stared, eyes wild, at the destruction he had wrought. They were too weak to harm me.

The amount of death energy lingering in the air was no more than he would have acquired from a few monsters down in the Underdark. Likely, the cultivator he had annihilated had been a novice, some outer disciple of the cult that was probably younger than Cyril himself. The thought should have bothered him--how couldn’t it--but the realization left him feeling empty.

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There were many excuses. Those who followed the path of cultivation risked their lives, locked in a constant conflict with the heavens as well as their own mortal enemies. The cultivator had launched a lethal assault on him first with their icicle technique. But the reality was, he didn’t care about any of that.

Leviathan had no right to lay claim to the desert. The cult’s presence on his lands was an unconscionable offense. Worse, the convergence of two Titans on his homeland would spell disaster, just as it had for countless other sites of calamity they had caused before. If the Cult of Leviathan was not torn out by the root, it was inevitable that they would clash, like always, and spell doom for all that called the desert home.

The cracks throughout Cyril’s spiritual network sealed over, reinforced, stronger than before. Behemoth’s simple regard reforged his body. For the first time, he truly sensed the Titan looking out through his eyes, and though he knew he couldn’t truly see the same way it did, the world had never looked so clear, so simple.

It took over ten minutes for the other cult members to realize they were under attack. Cyril waited patiently, spear on his shoulder, as a man and a woman in elaborate blue robes rushed over from the oasis in the distance.

Both of them had the pale skin and long blonde hair characteristic of westerners. At least they were not Cyril’s people, though their intrusion on his ancestral lands made him bare his teeth. No doubt they had seeded this part of the desert with their oases, spreading the plague of their ill intentions.

He had to make sure his family knew of this. They had never involved him much in the way of politics before, but they would have mentioned western emissaries encroaching into the desert. This was an affront to the sovereignty of the tribes.

By the time the pair of cultists came within shouting distance, a half-dozen Flickers raged in the sky over Cyril’s head. The woman had summoned a water elemental in the shape of a young nymph; it floated at her side, a humanoid wrought from pristine liquid, with bands of ice around its wrists and slender throat. It looked pathetic in comparison to his Flicker Cantrips alone.

“Young master!” called out the woman, her voice strong and sure. “Declare your intentions! We cannot sense your core, but you must be at least in the Middle Foundation Stage to shrug off our scrying techniques. Are you so shameless, to slaughter an initiate of the Sect of Sacred Tears?”

Cyril clenched his spear and resisted the immediate urge to destroy them. His voice was cold, hard. “The Cult of Leviathan, you mean? By what right have you stepped foot upon my desert?”

The woman looked like she meant to respond, but the man interrupted, goaded by the challenge in Cyril’s words. His voice trembled with poorly-concealed rage. “By the divine mandate of Leviathan’s will. Consider this blasted wasteland fortunate that we come bearing peace and alms instead of conquest. Not that any of that matters. That was my nephew you dared to kill.”

Cyril chuckled hoarsely to himself. The man was the slightly more powerful of the two. With Behemoth’s focus, the secrets of their spirits lay bare to him. They were both in the Early Foundation Stage, judging by the viscous oceans of qi churning within their navels. Both were probably bonded with Late or Peak djinn. Their qi was unsettled, sluggish--they feared him, and suspected he contained a spirit far beyond them. Neither of them would have dared to consider he could possibly be Behemoth made flesh.

The man started forward, clearly upset over Cyril’s mocking laughter. They hoped to intimidate him with their false confidence, to invoke the backing of their cult as a deterrent.

Light and heavy energies played throughout Cyril’s body as he drew back his spear. It was so easy, so natural, to harness, now that he was acting in accordance with Behemoth’s intent. He may not have understood it intellectually, but these concepts were part of the Titan’s very existence. Shifting his Mass felt as natural as breathing.

With an explosive shout, he released the spear of rusted iron and rotten wood, throwing the full force of his body behind it. Ethereal purple qi surged along the length of the weapon, whispering rotational mysteries that turned it into a blur of whirling force. Foliage and loose soil formed a spiraling trail in the spear's wake as it ate up the distance between them.

The water elemental flung itself in the path of the spear. It evaporated into a mist of cerulean qi and was dispersed far and wide by the winds of the weapon’s passage. The man threw himself into its path, shoving his partner behind him and erecting a multi-layered bubble of water qi.

His barrier popped. To Cyril’s surprise, the velocity of the spear slowed enough for the man to catch it by the haft, his hands wrapping just behind the blade. The man was flung off his feet, then an instant later the horizontal cyclone of force and Gravity qi caught up and tore him apart into spirals of gore.

Cyril frowned. No sign of the woman. He glanced around, and noticed a fine mist of cerulean qi surging in the direction of the lake. Each individual mote was so tiny that he would have never noticed them without Behemoth actively enhancing his spiritual vision.

It took him a few seconds to realize it was an advanced movement technique. The woman had dissolved herself into a mist and was heading toward the body of water. No doubt one of Leviathan’s cultists would show their true worth when surrounded by their preferred element. So far, he had engaged all of them on his domain. While he had inherited Behemoth’s disdain for the Titan of Water, there was no doubt Leviathan was a true equal. However, these lowly initiates were not Cyril’s.

Cyril charged in the direction of the mist, intending to intercept her path to the lake. His Gravity domain spread out wide around him. He was too far away for it to affect her much, but it slowed the particles long enough for the Flickers to swoop in, radiating mirage-like heatwaves. Their combined assault burned through the motes of cerulean qi until the woman was forced to abandon the movement technique, coalescing back into her original form.

Blood poured from her eyes and ears. Hatred poured off of her as she turned toward him, trembling.

Cyril lifted his hand. “Now, I have some questions I’d like you to answer.”