The stillness that Corrin felt upon seeing the colossus seemed to last a lifetime, but in reality, it was only a moment. The wind picked back up—furious, unrelenting. Banners across the formation bent on their poles, flapping wildly as the movement through the grass went on, unpaused.

“He is small,” the captain said, a mad smile on his face.

“Small?”

“He does not make the world itself tremble, nor does he blot out the sky. This colossus is weak.”

Corrin glanced towards Wyn, meeting his eyes.

He grinned.

On the outskirts of the formation, battles raged on all sides, and many wouldn’t have even seen the monster they faced. But as its terrible head rose over the top of the karst, Corrin felt the flow of mana, the unceasing river that had flowed only in one direction shift abruptly. It flooded towards his left, so violently he almost fell.

The colossus’ head gazed out over the assembled forces with mild interest. But it didn’t make a move, and it didn’t roar. After all, the ants heading towards it could surely be no threat. They were like all the other creatures that had gathered—

A beam of white light shot forth from the skiff. It shrieked across the mile-long gap in an instant, tearing the air with a brief, shrill whistle before colliding with the eye-less face of the colossus. There was a heartbeat of silence.

Then light, and heat. An explosion lit the sky like a second sun, and Corrin had to avert his eyes as the air grew uncomfortably hot around him. As the light faded, he looked towards the stone forest, the site of the blast.

A crack like lightning rang out, and the force of the blast washed over him, following the light and heat by a few seconds. It forced his eyes away once more, and the grass for a mile flattened at the top. Veldstriders across the formation dipped with the level of the grass, letting out their own deep rumbles as their ability to hold onto it was tested.

When the sound finally subsided, he could see the impact. Or rather, he couldn’t. The karst had been completely blown away, any trace of it gone. With its perch destroyed, the Colossus had fallen into the grass. Corrin couldn’t see it, but he heard its body hit the earth hundreds of feet below. The beast finally let out a cry—a scratchy buzz, like a cicada, and Corrin winced from the noise.

“Spirits…” Wyn whispered as its scream subsided. “What a spell, and for it to still be alive…”

Corrin had no response, nor did Jeffers. But Ven wasted no time. He tapped a quick, frantic rhythm and Siensa lurched forward, speeding through the sea faster than Corrin knew she could move. They were heading towards the stone forest, moving into battle position where they would encircle the colossus.

At the colossus’s cry, horrors attacked from above and below. And the battle began in earnest.

Spells lit the sky as flocks of monsters swooped low, burning by the hundreds. Drakes leapt from the grass, and Corrin met them with his blade.

“Jeffers! Get to the front!” Wyn yelled, sweeping his sword in a wide arc around Ven as they tore through the sea. It was a race, they had to reach the stone forest and complete the encirclement—most of the weapons couldn’t hit from as far as the grand spells on the skiff.

Ash burned in Corrin’s channels as he drew on more and more power. His blade swept through the air, rending flesh with each strike, over and over. A drake struck at his side and he caught it on his mantle, not bothering to defend as he cut the beast down. A razorbeak dove from the sky and he sidestepped its grasping talons. It flew out over the sea before one of Ven’s arrows took it in the neck.

A whip of fire thrashed around the saddle, snaring monsters as Jeffers held an end of it, face etched with concentration. And Wyn held two swords aloft, one wooden, burning purple as he used it to block before retaliating with steel.

Corrin fell into a rhythm, sword and mind becoming one as he fought, and the spires drew nearer, until they had almost reached them. The battle was going well. Spells, arrows, and firestones swarmed into the sea where the colossus had fallen, scorching the grass for hundreds of yards.

And the vanguard was holding, keeping the weaker monsters on the outside of the formation. As they drew closer to the colossus, Reiss had warned them that the creatures gathered would grow stronger and more numerous. The barrage of spells would likely be clearing out any hordes right on top of it, but they wouldn’t be rotating again. The stronger teams were expected to be closer to the center where the fighting would be harder.

If they kept up this pace though, they could win.

A red flare burst above the center of the formation, and Corrin’s head snapped towards it. Red meant danger in the extreme. He looked towards the area of the sea where the bombardment was slowing. For the first time he realized something important.

“Where’s the Colossus?” Wyn asked a second before he could.

Since going beneath the grass, the beast hadn’t reemerged, though he hadn’t noticed under the intense rain of spells and explosives. If the flare was red though…

Ahead of them, an enormous stinger broke the surface of the grass, piercing straight through a veldstrider and lifting it into the air. As Corrin watched in horror, the crew fell from the saddle, screams echoing across the battlefield as they fell into the sea.

In retaliation, another beam of light shot out from the skiff, down into the sea. The grass evaporated, and the colossus screeched again, but by the time the light cleared it was already scurrying deeper into the forest, its gargantuan form slinking behind one of the other karsts and out of sight.

Jeffers paled. “How the hell do we avoid that?”

“Corrin! Mana-sight!” Wyn barked.

“Right!” Corrin channeled aura into his eyes, glancing in the direction of the colossus for a moment, between that and the flow of mana…

“Head further right!” He yelled at Ven. “It’s between the two nearest pillars on the left!”

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Ven crouched and tapped, Siensa diverting her course.

And the battle slowly shifted. Next to The Grass Sentinels, a warrior on another strider got pinned beneath a drake. Without him to defend, their mage was dragged into the sea by some sort of snake-monster. Their formation fell apart as they were quickly overwhelmed in an instant. The sentinels flung spells and arrows into the horde, but it was too late. The veldstrider was dragged down by the pack of drakes, bleeding from cracks in the shell.

“Damn it!” Wyn spat, pointing towards the empty spot in the formation with his burning sword. “Get us besides the Sentinels! We’re taking that spot!”

Siensa let out a low bellow as Ven urged her on and their pace increased even further. All around them, groups began to fall.

They drew up besides the adventuring team, who had already changed their course as well.

Reiss turned his head when he saw them, firing off two shots in rapid succession before he yelled. “Glad to see you’re still alive! The southern mage core’s strider is injured! Pull in to cover them!”

Corrin cut another monster from the air, glancing towards the nearest group of mages, packed in between the layers. They were the key point of the operation, only they and the siege striders had the firepower and range to attack the colossus head on. Sure enough, their strider had slowed, moving awkwardly through the grass. A ring of striders tightened around them as Ven and the other captains covered. Meanwhile, the mages shot volley after volley into the battle. Most headed towards the colossus, but a few mages were dedicated to breaking up hordes of flying creatures, casting wide-spread spells to kill them en masse.

The colossus raged below the sea, spearing strider after strider with its tail as the barrage resumed again. It screeched again as it seemed to realize it couldn’t hide from the most powerful of the artillery, and its attacks ceased as it dashed away from an empty patch of ground where the grass had been burnt away. Then it began to climb back up onto a karst.

“What’s it doing?” Jeffers cried in alarm.

Now fully visible in the burnt grass, the beast's full form could be seen—with four legs, its two mantis arms, and an enormous barbed tail, like a scorpion’s. Much of its armored skin was burnt or cracked, showing signs of the bombardment that had taken place, but it still moved freely as it reached the top of the karst again. Its stomach began to swell, and its head tilted back, mandibles grasping wildly.

Reiss seemed to realize something a moment before the rest of the right flank. “Shit! It has a breath—”

The colossus’s head jerked forwards as its stomach contracted, and it spit a lake’s worth of black liquid out towards the formation to the left of their side.

Around the skiff, a dome of red light flickered up, deflecting the spit as it returned fire. No one else was so lucky. Dozens of striders took the brunt of the attack head on, and the black sludge landed atop them. It steamed and hissed as they began to scream in pain, acid melting through even the veldstriders’s toughened shells.

Reiss only paused for a moment before bellowing a command, his voice strained and raw. “Head for the rocks!”

The colossus’s stomach began to swell again as its head turned. The monster’s gaze swept over the whole army, but its head stopped, staring at the southern side of the formation. Its lack of eyes was unnerving, and even without them, Corrin could feel it staring at them.

“Mages!”

Another beam of light hit the side of the behemoth, knocking its maw just off course as the wave of acid spilled forth towards them.

Around the formation, spells were cast. Shields of mana gathered to block the acid directly, wind blew it off course, and fire burnt it away. Most were unsuccessful, and the acid fell upon the army—not as devastating as the first shot, but still burning through flesh and shell. As always, fortune favored the prepared.

Amidst The Grass Sentinels, Melanie saw the attack coming and threw a small white gemstone to the saddle, shattering the brittle crystal beneath her foot. The shattering pieces of the stone swirled together like snow and gathered into a shield of ice above their heads. It sizzled and spat under the acid, but held long enough for them to get out from under it.

Jeffers screamed out a brief incantation as the acid fell, holding his webbing of string aloft. The thread caught fire, burning in his hands for a moment before the mage collapsed, blood leaking from his nose. Above the strider, a net of fire caught most of the spit and burnt it away. Only a few drops fell through, one towards Corrin which he caught on his mantle and destroyed, and another towards the unconscious mage. Wyn shielded him with his body, taking the drop of acid onto his cloak which he immediately threw into the sea. It burnt quickly though, and he winced as the bit that had touched him ate at his skin.

The mage core had defended against the attack as well, leaving them unscathed, though their defenders had been weakened. The only saving grace was that the horde’s attack had slowed for a moment—the creatures of the sea were just as affected by the acid, and had burnt away in great numbers as well. The battle raged across the rest of the formation, but on the flank, in the pocket of soldiers that had formed up, there was a moment of calm.

The calm gave Corrin time to look around, his breath loud in his ears. As he did, he saw adventurers and soldiers groaning in agony as flesh and armor melted. Almost no strider crews were without injuries, and several of the groups had been devastated, losing almost all their members. On the fringes, he even saw several striders breaking the formation and fleeing into the sea, their crews trying to escape in the lull.

“Weak…” Corrin chuckled to himself. “What’s weak about that?”

He felt it now, nothing he could do could possibly harm the colossus, the gap of power was absolutely insurmountable. His goal, and his role in this fight was different. The thought didn’t bring him despair, just acceptance. The deaths of those he didn’t know didn’t mean much to him—this was a battle, death was expected. And though he was tired, he still had plenty of power to burn.

He could hear mumbling around him, voices, cries.

“How can we fight that?”

“We’re dead.”

“It’s too much.”

No… wait, that’s wrong. He thought. That was never our goal.

It was like the attack had clouded everyone’s mind. No one amongst them, not a single one had fought a colossus. They hadn’t understood its power, and such a reaction—an instinctive, primal fear, was natural. But for Corrin, it had only brought clarity. He’d been in a much worse situation before. We can’t stay still. We have to regroup. Damn it! Why am I the only one paying attention?

He looked to Wyn, but his friend was checking on Jeffers, who’d passed out after casting his spell.

So instead, he turned to the next person he trusted to make a decision, and probably the person with the most sway over the nearby adventurers.

“Reiss?” He called across the gap, towards the older man who was looking out grimly across the grass. “What’s the call? We need to move!”

The veteran glanced his way. His eyes cleared as they met Corrin’s own, and his expression firmed.

Then, he shouted across the smaller pocket of them that had formed on the flank. “We continue towards the karsts! They’ll give us cover from the acid, and we’ll be able to reconsolidate! Mages prepare defensive spells! Everyone else, form up around them! We’ll take advantage of that monster thinning the hordes for us! Grass Sentinels, charge!”

Their veldstrider charged out ahead, cutting down the few monsters that tried to challenge them, forging a path towards the edge of the stone forest; they were only a few minutes away.

After a moment’s hesitation, a rallying cry went up on the flank. The surrounding striders—Corrin’s included—followed in their wake, racing towards the shelter the karsts could provide.

But there was one thing Corrin hadn’t noticed—one member of their group had grown quiet.

Across the saddle, Wyn was breathing heavily, laying Jeffers’s body onto the saddle with care. The mage was alive, and it seemed he’d recover, but he was out for the time—in a battle such as this, he’d likely die. Wyn rose to his feet, and he too looked around the formation, seeing the devastation that the colossus had wrought. His eyes, burning with spirit fire, somehow seemed dark. Death surrounded him again, it always did, and he was sick of it.

He whispered a single word, a name. “Eia…” And it was enough.

A single spirit, a silvery bubble, drifted up from below the grass, and somewhere else across the formation, a veldstrider grew just a little bit heavier. The spirit began to swim through the air in circles just above his head.

The first to join his crown.