“My clucking tailfeathers!” Niko cried out shrilly as he felt a slice cut through a portion of his thick, gorgeous tail-feather fan. With an unsteady wobble, no less assisted by the emotional damage just done to the Az-Phorus, Niko managed just barely to bank hard enough to slap his talons against a building side to correct. The action shattered the wall and blasted it inwards with the force of his momentum, but it wasn’t the first, nor last, building to suffer from the chase between the tier five warlord and the tier three flying Az-Phorus.

“Dive low, then hard right!” Skye shouted, ignoring Niko’s continuing lamentations. He himself did as she instructed, even as a low, mournful, long ‘screee’ loosed itself from his beak.

“Just die you damn overgrown chicken!” The warlord screamed out behind him, frustration and apoplectic rage having long overtaken the cooly calculative goblin that the dawr once held. After drawing him around for several minutes over, around, and through buildings, Niko couldn’t blame him for being absolutely furious. Niko had burned through enough essence that any other tier three combatant would be bone dry, and had still more to burn. If it weren’t for Alterra and Venris’ blessings, he would have definitely been out of the fight and dead by now. Instead, blood energy coursed through his veins, infusing muscle and tissue with hearty vigor. Essence flowed in his half-real pseudo body that existed ever closer to his real flesh – growing closer with every tier up – and further reinforced his strength.

The mixture nearly made him indefatigable, and even Skye was benefitting from the overflow of energy. He wasn’t positive why she could use it and the others couldn’t, but it likely had to do with the connection between them. That had… concerning connotations, but it was definitely a plus right now.

He dove down hard, using his Particle Wing pattern to pull up with a burst of fire beneath him. Skye gripped onto the saddle hard, and even with her own pattern at full, he felt her torso impact his back. She didn’t complain, only sucked in a sharp breath and directed him through their mental connection. With all the built up speed he had, he banked once more and smashed his legs through a support column to get the full turn off into a hallway between two buildings. Wide archways barely allowed him to fly between them, but between the impact and the disturbance his passage caused, several of said archways had crumbled behind him.

The sounds of crashing stone and mostly harmless shrapnel blasting past him notified Niko that the warlord remained in hot pursuit. He cawed with annoyance, “Are you getting tired yet!?”

A moment later, Niko slid completely to the floor on reflex, some part of his senses registering the projectile that tore through the walls of the building to the right. The flying-spear shot through the brick and mortar work like a railgun and kept going, shooting straight over their heads and into the building adjacent in the hallway.

“Ten archways ahead, break upwards, then go left through the building as fast as you can! We’ll be back at the field!” Skye shouted, doing everything she could just to remain in the saddle as Niko sped forwards.

“Got it!” Niko called back, counting archway after archway. Behind them, the warlord finally broke through the debris fully, and even from so far away, Niko could feel the tingle of essence on his skin.

He sprang upwards, doing his best to angle such that Skye wouldn’t be taking the brunt of the impact in hitting through the roof. With his Wyldstrider pattern and Sharp Strike patterns, his beak and body became a shredding battering ram. That much was necessary as he smashed into stone and wood, sending splinters and brick work showering outwards with the explosion of his passing. Just below him, a stream of blade-light ripped through the hall he and Skye had just been within, devastating it and sending cleanly cut and shattered stone, tile work, and wood through the hole he’d made.

The warlord appeared just beneath the hole, but Niko had only glimpsed that before he’d taken off again, blasting heat behind his wings and propelling him farther forwards.

His current surroundings looked like some kind of trade house, with the section they found themselves in filled with row after row of shelves with records upon them. Most of them were paper, but some were just solid chunks of crystal and stone. Niko hated to do it, but using Particle Wing was the only way he was going to get ahead of the warlord under the best of conditions.

A jet streak of flame plumed beneath Niko’s wings as he manipulated the heat, improving rapidly in control as he used it again and again. He groaned at the aches pains in his body as he did so, the phantom pains of the spear penetrating his body and his continual over pushing of his muscles taking a toll on his mind. Still, he pressed on. Pain and discomfort were only a passing phase; he would heal the damage, but he certainly couldn’t heal from being dead.

The warlord shouted with rage, bursting upwards from the floor beneath, widening the already significant hole he’d made to a swath of destruction. Niko flew straight forward, seeing a large window that Skye had likely been directing him to.

Skye gripped onto his back and made herself as prone as possible just as Niko smashed through the glass, his own eyes closing as he shattered it. He pulled up with his wings, predicting where the warlord was going to attack, and felt a wave of force carve through the building side below him. It was directed downwards, and as he leveled out, Niko saw that the paved road that extended forwards had been shredded to pieces for tens of meters. The strike had covered less range than before, but Niko couldn’t tell if that was from him growing tired, or conserving power for more shots at him.

He was about to desperately begin dodging again, when he spotted the widely spread out beasts and his own companions on the field, all looking in his direction. Niko grinned widely, before speeding towards them, “He’s right on my tail!”

“We can tell! Get all the blood energy you can! We’re going to need you to hit him hard, too!” Thorne shouted out tensely. Unquestioningly, Niko dove low, forcing his soul-brand to open up to the battlefield.

The forces they had left were all battered and bruised, and not a single one of them had much more than half of their essence reserves left, if he figured them right. They had perhaps fifty combat worthy combatants left, and from the far side of the battlefield, many times that in those too wounded to contribute to the fight, or drained utterly. They would be less than helpful against the Dawr Warlord, given that he would simply take any kills and convert them into more power. Niko approved of the tactic of dogpiling the warlord, even if they didn’t have as much firepower as he’d have liked.

Especially as their tier fours were could be counted on two hands, the rest were all tier threes.

‘We’ll have to make do.’ Niko pulled hard on the blood energy he could feel around him, even going so far as to reach out towards the distant and regrouping Dawr forces. They were severely reduced themselves, but they were also significantly lower on shamans. Niko pulled on the blood energy near them, and was shocked to find a significant amount that had been held on by the barest threads of will from the shamans. It made sense, though, considering how much they likely had to concentrate to hold on to so much.

It was probably even intended for the warlord, but… “Finders, keepers!” Niko trilled out mockingly, ripping a huge amount of blood energy from the field that hadn’t yet been claimed, and then from the shamans' weak grip. They tightened down on it a moment later, but too late to protect what wasn’t already encased inside of a Dawr.

The red energy soured upwards into his and Skye’s bodies like a tidal wave, just as Niko heard Thorne shout out, “Now!” from below.

The entire congregation of beast kin attacked the warlord all at once. Projectiles of force, varying elements, and even whatever materials were on hand flew at the Dawr Warlord as he slammed into the ground outside of the building. Momentarily caught off guard by the reception, the warlord didn’t even notice where Niko had gone.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He snarled, and Niko felt the world shift as the Warlord shouted, “On my battlefield, it is only Me and Mine!”

“What?” Niko blinked, feeling like suddenly the area around the warlord looked less like a city, and more like a ruined, corpse-strewn hell spawn’s playground. Blades and weapons, pitted, rusted, and ruined, lay all around, many embedded within one corpse or another. The thing was, Niko didn’t recognize many of them, as they were creatures and beasts that weren’t of the types he commonly saw in Riizen. More than that, plenty of them were Dawr themselves, with other humanoids scattered amongst them.

More importantly, of all of the attacks raining down towards the Warlord, dozens of them seemed to crack and fracture midair, almost as if the image that was superimposed on the world was providing an obstacle. In moments, huge amounts of the battlefield vanished, with weapons and bodies crumbling to dust. The warlord seethed, his teeth grit and body rigid as he roared defiantly, almost like a mountain was sitting on his shoulders.

A few strikes punched through, though, Thorne’s force projectile, Nivere’s glowing green bolt of power in the shape of a spear, and the winding thrust of a shadow-covered kama and chain, a combined attack from Dachna and Sasha.

Each of them struck the Warlord dead on, and the image around him winked out with the sound of screeching metal and a sucking chest wound. Blood energy swam around the Warlord’s new injuries: a nearly bisected head from Thorne, a shredded torso from Nivere, and tens of deep, shadow infested cuts across arms and legs all subject to the energy.

Then Niko and Skye descended, blood energy obscuring their forms before the dive like a bloody star. Niko pushed with Particle Wing as he reinforced and empowered his flesh with blood energy. Atop his back, Skye’s body became wreathed in pale wood with purple and red cracks running throughout, with long, spear-like claws reaching ahead through her gauntlets as the rest of her armor rooted her to the saddle. Blood energy encased her wicked claws, just the same as Niko’s beak and talons as Sharp Strike and Wyldstrider fully activated.

The warlord looked up to see Niko and Skye, his eyes wide for the first time since the battle started in what looked like panic. His spear swept through the building from behind him and affixed itself to his hands, his other blades unable to be held by his body alone.

‘So what?’ Niko thought with grim determination as the spear shot forwards, ‘I know how to play chicken. I won’t blink.’

Niko felt his blood pump as the warlord realized he wasn’t going to dodge in the slightest. The spear point was aimed directly at Niko’s heart, but every fiber of his being, instinct and otherwise, told him that in this moment, this was perfection.

And he trusted that instinct for battle. Even if he was wrong with that feeling of perfection, the decisive moment had come.

‘A coup de grace,’ Niko felt something resonate within him, ‘The Perfect kill.’

‘No… not quite right…’ The feeling of perfection was there, but not for the kill. There was something else, something tantalizingly close to fruition.

But the time for thinking was gone. Niko and Skye crashed down like a dreadful meteor, and Niko felt his breastbone crack as the spear pierced through him. He felt Skye’s shock and anxiety through their link, but also felt the savage bloodthirst that raced through her. Her fingers cut into the warlord who desperately tried to move back, but to no avail. Immediately after, Niko smashed into him with a deep, machine gun screech that was wet from the blood within his lungs, bursting forth with violence in mind.

A tier five’s bones cracked and disintegrated beneath his talons and beak. The warlord that pursued him smeared across the ground, hardy flesh grinding through stone as he was pushed through a deep rivet in the stone and titanwood foundations of the city. A meter deep and tens of meters long, the warlord folded inwards on himself around the lancing talons, spear-point fingers, and Niko’s own cutting beak. With all of the power at his disposal, Niko shredded through his chest, and ripped out his heart without mercy.

He swallowed it, too, and seeing the terror and realization in the warlord's eyes, felt a grim sense of satisfaction as he realized he was not the predator any longer.

“You are prey.” Niko and Skye spoke, their minds somehow in unison at that moment.

Niko saw the caged star of essence within the warlord still for a fraction of a second then, mirrored by the expression of fear on the warlord’s face.

Then it exploded outwards, and Niko felt the image of the battlefield shift around them once more. He and Skye were blasted away, and he felt his bones and flesh groan from the force of it. The spear tip ripped from his flesh, and a river of gore flowed freely from Niko’s chest as he regained his footing, refusing to appear weak.

The warlord stood, blood energy rapidly dwindling to nearly nothing from the sheer damage he’d taken. He gestured to his weapons, wide-eyed, as they flew to his hands, and brought them up.

Then Skye twisted her arms, and Niko realized that much of the mass of wood was gone from them.

The warlord's flesh suddenly ruptured, with thorny wood and growths sawing through his tough flesh and then curling back inwards. Niko saw that as the last straw, the moment that the warlord's will to fight was utterly broken, with wood sprouting from his own body.

“The Forest Takes,” a low buzz resounded from Skye, but it felt incomplete, much like how Niko had felt. Whatever it meant, or whatever was happening, the warlord’s eyes widened and his pupils contracted. Essence built up within the warlord again, and with an agonized howl, he ripped the wood from his body, blades of light striking into his own flesh to rid himself of the deepest of them. The blood energy dwindled to dregs, and with one last burst, the warlord charged…

…past them.

“No, you—” Niko began shouting, before coughing up blood, and then staggering from his feet. Confusion reigned as he felt lightheaded, and then realized that his body hurt. Everything hurt, like he’d just been put through a tumbler with boulders.

“He’s getting away…” Niko said with confusion, looking after the retreating form of the warlord, hole still mending in his chest from where it’s heart once was and body wracked with damage in spite of the remaining blood energy in him. He was probably using it to run away, more than to heal. He didn’t have much left, Niko noted, and that caged star of essence within him seemed to be dim, perhaps even flickering…

Then Niko regarded himself, and dumbly said, “Oh.”

Not just his heart. The spear had scrambled his innards. His essence was almost fully depleted, the blood energy that remained was moving into his organs, but terrifyingly, everything seemed to be resisting the healing, doing so very slowly. Then he realized that the warlord had left him a gift.

Foreign, tainted blood energy forced the process to a halt, and Niko couldn’t help but wonder at how he’d done that.

“Niko! Niko!” A voice distantly spoke to him, and Niko felt like he’d been hearing that sound for nearly a minute now.

‘When did I lay down?’ Niko’s thoughts swirled, before he snapped onto the question, ‘I’m in shock. I know what this is. Focus, focus, focus.’

“You need to heal, Niko! Do that, only that! Focus!” Skye’s voice entered his ears, and he thought that she sounded desperate. Was she crying?”

‘Oh, she’s right. Focus on healing.’ Niko forced his eyes to stay open as he devoted his willpower to consuming the foreign blood energy. He started with heart and lungs, and then worked downwards. All the while, blackness appeared in his thoughts, making things very hard to actually keep going. It was only through stubbornness and having experienced death before that he resisted the subversive call of slumber, the relaxing nothing that eroded willpower like sugar in warm water.

Even so, he was only certain that he’d put together his heart and lungs, and mostly purged or converted the bad energy before his consciousness fully faded.

But, just before that, he could feel a relief and warmth through his mental bond with Skye. “Gonna nap… See you soon.” Was the last thing he managed, barely even feeling the half-elf’s hands on his head as he did so.