Garin’s guardian was surprisingly fast for a creature of its size. The three flying guardians shot through the sky like falcons, cutting their way through the clouds with astonishing speed.

Alaric’s curiosity mounted as he noticed a few odd things about their flight. On their journey to the Tower, he’d heard the wind screaming in his ears the faster they flew, however, now there was nothing.

Just the eerie silence of flight, interrupted by the methodic flapping of the giant stingray’s wings. At their sides, the majestic lion and black unicorn darted forward, the lion’s feet tucking close to its body while the unicorn galloped with an odd dusty trail of aether scattering in its wake.

‘The wind…’ Alaric thought to himself, ‘A spell?’

[It could even be an ability of his guardian. Who knows?] Alia shrugged.

Alaric pondered on this for a little while longer before shifting his attention to something else. They were travelling faster now and while that only barely boosted his confidence, he took some solace in the fact that they were making good time.

Sighing, he turned his attention to the others. Darla and Finn had both gone quiet, “Are you guys okay?”

Darla spared Alaric a small smile, “Yeah.”

This was a facade… but Alaric wasn’t about to call her out on this. He turned back to the three teenagers seated in the back seats. The girl with short red hair, Red, beamed a smile that he returned in earnest.

The girl with long raven hair, Black, smiled a bit before turning away from him quickly. Aiden, on the other hand, was still not paying Alaric any attention.

‘Is he still sulking? Did I get the wrong impression of him?’ Alaric thought to himself.

Earlier, he’d tried taking several jabs meant to throw the boy off but Aiden had gracefully taken it all in stride and continued to pester them like it was nothing.

[What do you think of him?] Alia wondered.

[I thought he was a fighter. I thought he wouldn’t give up on proving his superiority simply because you’re S-class] Alaric argued.

[He denied your abilities… and yet he was proven wrong. Anyone would take a step back after getting such a wake-up call. Cut him some slack] Alia whispered into the boy’s mind, [Besides, is he really the one you should be worried about? I haven’t seen the sun in a while.]

Just as Alia said it, Alaric looked around and came to the same realisation. A tight knot formed in the pit of his stomach.

SwiftWind glided forward with the two majestic flying guardians flanking him on both sides. The three riders, however, had gone silent, just like their guardians.

Garin and the two guards kept their eyes forward, indifferent expressions on their faces. At first glance, one would think the three Slayers had simply run out of things to say to each other.

To enunciate the point of their bored indifference, the man on the unicorn gave a wide-mouthed yawn that made his chin peep out of the bottom of his white helmet.

Alaric had more reason to believe they were everything but indifferent though…

That feeling of dread hung in the air like a wet blanket of doom, sucking the happiness from everything around them.

The fields far on the ground were empty as well… In a little over fifty kilometres in the distance, the fields came to an end, revealing a large forest thick with greenery.

Out here in the fields, there was no barrier to protect anyone from demons. Those were reserved for towns and villages and as a result, farmers and other workers that worked outside these barriers had systems set up in place to protect them from the demons and so without slayers to fend off the demons or at least mages strong enough to put up such barriers to work with, farmers would have to stay away from their fields.

Alaric looked around, trying his best to keep his breathing even and his mind calm. It became increasingly hard to focus when his senses fired off warning signals and demanded that he go into defensive mode… a decision that would most certainly get him killed.

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SwiftWind dashed forward with incredible speed… the fields below them blowing past just as fast and yet, the feeling of danger didn’t lessen.

The clouds… they looked, wrong. Normally clouds covered the sky and stayed out of reach to the grounded human, like a blanket shrouding the heavens on gloomy days.

These ones, however, hung unusually low, pulsing with the light of weak lightning flashes but no thunder. Not only that, they moved oddly fast for clouds, the bulbous hilly masses of evaporating water inching closer with each passing second.

Alaric could easily have guessed what the scene would look like from some far off. A stingray, a lion and a black unicorn getting chased by a mass of ominous storm clouds.

“Transporting big shots is such a hassle,” Garin sighed.

Alaric didn’t comment on this… but knew it was a jab meant for him.

“Those aren’t clouds, are they?” Darla asked when her curiosity peaked.

“No, they aren’t… Gunther, what do you think?” Garin asked one of the guards.

Gunther was a lean man of exceptional build. He sat atop the black unicorn with a chilling presence that matched his menacing tusked guardian. Just looking at him was enough to make someone’s hair stand on ends with static electricity.

Gunther shrugged, “It’s only a matter of time before they reveal themselves. Know someplace nearby that would give us terrain advantage?”

Garin rubbed his chin… and just as his face beamed, Alaric tensed and shifted in his seat. His senses alerted him of a burst of mana to his right.

Instinctively, he called out, “GARIN!”

To their right, a rift cut through a cloud, revealing part of a black mass of teeth, claws and appalling cables of muscle hidden beneath a furry hide. Alaric didn’t get a good look at the creature before a feeling of weightlessness caught him off guard.

In the next moment, the large stingray tilted and descended into a nose dive. It happened so fast even for Alaric’s trained eyes. He did, however, manage to catch a glimpse of obsidian claws slash at the very spot he’d been moments after descending.

The ominous blanket of clouds tore like shattered glass to reveal a cloud of dark creatures of varied shapes and sizes surrounding them in a mess of teeth, claws, menacing growls and deranged gazes.

Demons!

The wind finally howled with the deranged shrieks of demons, the world lost all happiness, tension rose and a great chase started.

[Calm down, young prince,] Alia yelled into Alaric’s mind.

[Those are… actual demons,] Alaric hyperventilated.

[Make up your mind, Alaric. You either fear the beast that killed Jared… or hate it. You can’t do both,] the female guardian yelled into his mind.

Alia’s words made no sense… but oddly enough, those words were like a bucket of cold water. Alaric took a deep breath and steeled his resolve… This was not the time to freak out. He had work to do.

A moment later, he reached for his magic reserves… and got to work.

In the commotion that followed, as everyone struggled to grab onto their seats and stay aboard the diving stingray, Alaric turned to look back at the black swarm of abominations chasing them.

The world behind them was black…

How could so many demons have appeared out of nowhere? How had so many demons remained hidden for so long?

“Buckle up, kids… This is about to get bumpy,” Alaric heard Garin yell at the top of his voice.

Looking forward, he paled. The ground was quickly approaching and SwiftWind only accelerated. Alaric swallowed his aether back down and gripped his seat.

A second or two away from the imminent crash, SwiftWind pulled up, demonstrating a control over flight that Alaric had thought impossible for the gigantic stingray.

The creature moved through the air with so much ease and grace that it might have been a snake as opposed to the large pancake of a beast that it was.

SwiftWind might have been skilled in flight—a little too skilled—, but the same couldn’t be said for the demons pursuing them.

The black mass of abominations crashed into the ground, releasing a loud cohesive sound of breaking bones, menacing growls and pained shrieks.

It was then that Alaric got a proper look at the beasts pursuing them.

Now that they were gaining some distance, he noticed more than just their teeth and differences in shapes and size. He saw their similarities too. They all had relatively large ears, light wings sown to their forelimbs and menacing jaws.

They looked like the deranged cousins of bats but much larger, more deadly and grotesque. He didn’t get more time to take in their appearance as SwiftWind flipped and faced them, “Gunther, LionHeart, behind SwiftWind.”

The two guards did as they were told.

At the same time, the surface of the great stingray was starting to stretch and expand like an inflating cow’s stomach.

In response to this transformation, the seats began to shift and change, unlocking odd hooks and chains as they evenly spread out on the beast's inflating back.

It took roughly thirty seconds for the seats to spread across fully and in that time, they got separated by at least a metre to accommodate the engorged stingray.

SwiftWind had swelled so much that he currently looked like an over-inflated pufferfish.

Then… there was a loud SONIC BOOM.

…and DESTRUCTION followed.