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Outside, the storm's ferocity paralleled the urgency of their departure. The winds enveloped him, reaching, clawing, rising, howling. Within seconds, he was thoroughly drenched. The chaos matched the turmoil within Yves. Even he could now see the Vicha through second sight, a creeping obscurity against the backdrop of the night, sprawled across the distant storm-torn energies.
It had come this much closer in just a few minutes. He saw no witch and understood that neither did Midnight. That did not mean that they were safe. It just meant that if a witch was there, she was powerful enough to cross the Northlands and hide her presence.
The dark witch moon had just begun melting back into the horizon. It would take another six minutes for the witching hour to pass. Every act of magic beneath Teharun's domain held devastating consequences for the wizarding race; a truth Yves and Midnight could not afford to respect. They could not wait. With the narrow passage between the mainland and the lighthouse promontory now erased and overtaken by raging waves, Yves needed to conjure a bridge of shards. It was forbidden. The individual's defiance against the prohibition of magic during witching hour condemned generations of wizards, but Yves faced a more immediate threat. If a witch was trailing the curse, it would lead her right to the lighthouse. If she fed it to make it grow and speed up just at the right moment, it would block off their escape.
Fighting against the storm's fury, Yves pressed toward the edge of the rocky promontory, knowing that Midnight would follow. They rarely talked when travelling. There was no need to share questions like Are you ready?, or insignificant pleasantries like Be careful, they will attack as soon as I begin, or even personal philosophies such as Fuck this weather and I hate everything about this, let’s just go back inside. Most of the time, they understood each other without words. Also, with the current storm, Yves' voice would hardly travel.
In his final steps, Yves began to weave a bridge with glass magic, a transparent pathway suspended in the stormy abyss between the lighthouse ruins that provided the illusion of safety, and the desolate mainland that promised death. In seconds, shards wove into a lattice extending high above the raging sea, though wary not to transgress into the taboo realm of the dragons. Simultaneously, protective walls materialised, shielding the bridge against the battering winds and —
The onslaught began. Serrated fins of colossal creatures sliced through the water, as a twisted menagerie of grotesque sea beasts burst from the churning waves. A serpentine beast, its form distorted by arcane turbulence, surged upward and lunged toward the bridge. Obsidian scales glinted with a sickly luminescence, and cruel, blade-like spines adorned its back.
Yves conjured shards, layers of protective walls blocking and breaking the momentum of the beast's assault. As the serpent rammed into the barriers, shattering them with one ferocious attack, he retaliated with a condensed energy disc that expanded its diameter in flight, cutting through the serpent and splitting it from head to tail. The bridge quaked as the massive body crashed into the raging sea.
With the second serpent came the galebiters, ferocious sea creatures with grotesque avian features. Their elongated fins doubled as wings for gliding long distances, and their hard beaks tore through stone and shards. Hundreds descended on the first serpent’s remains, and an equal number targeted the intruder that was Yves and his magic.
He decapitated the second serpent while shooting down galebiters with condensed shard projectiles. Their sheer number and agility demanded rapid successions of strikes; the air hummed with tension. Yves found an odd satisfaction in the slaughter, a momentary diversion from the ice-cold water creeping under his skin and all impending consequences. As Yves continued his rampage, he and Midnight traversed the transparent bridge, the floating travel chest in tow. Focusing on the killing, he ignored the realisation that he fed the witch moon, pushing aside hesitation to advance.
They had no time to spare. The serpents and galebiters were just the beginning, frantic creatures lured by the first traces of foreign energies. They were the ominous heralds — harbingers of greater, more formidable beasts that waited to be stirred by unleashed magic.
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The galebiters kept coming in ever greater masses, breaching his projectiles, assaulting the bridge, crashing into the structure and breaking the shard fragments with their beaks mid-flight. The structure quivered above the roaring sea. Yves, relentless, turned the bridge into a weapon. Shards shot out of the beams, walls and roof, piercing the massive fish in layers, a macabre defense against the onslaught.
Elongated shards sliced through the air, striking the opposite cliff where towering crustacean beasts emerged, each several meters tall. Their grotesque forms were amalgamations of the morbid, all claws, rows of feet, and layers of impenetrable carapace. Defying Yves' attempts to pierce them, they blocked the path to the mainland.
Four of these colossal crustaceans confronted Yves, their enormous bodies scuttling around the bridge entry and their massive claws either hammering onto or thrusting into the narrow opening of the bridge, clipping its winding structure. Yves unleashed a barrage of condensed glass projectiles, now targeting vulnerable joints. The attacks plunged the creatures into a frenzied state. Amidst the chaos, Yves worked tirelessly to mend the damaged bridge and shields. His next array of shards threw the front crustacean off balance, providing Midnight an opening.
In a daunting display of speed, power and agility, Midnight soared past Yves, evaded the rampaging claws and leapt onto the mainland, where she attacked the creature from below. Darting back and forth, she ripped its elongated underside and legs with her claws and teeth, her movements borne from calculated ferocity, a symbiosis of raw power and deadly precision. Yves felt her anticipation for the enemies’ reactions before his own senses could catch up. He supported her aggressive maneuvers with temporary shields that intercepted the crustaceans' lunging claws and impeded the movement of their trampling legs. Together, he and Midnight orchestrated an array of precise attacks — Midnight targeting the weak points of the beasts, Yves unleashing shard projectiles with strategic precision.
With three giant leaps, Midnight retreated from the battleground, just as a pair of winged aberrations shot down from the sky. The clash that ensued was a battle of beaks and claws and storm, as the hookbilled Wyrren tried to snatch up the crustaceans. One avian beast succeeded in capturing the injured creature Midnight had been fighting, while the other was ripped out of the air by the combined onslaught of the three remaining crustaceans.
While the screeching beasts tore each other apart on the ground, Yves rushed forward, onto the mainland. Midnight’s instinct to wait, to remain sheltered below the bridge, hammered against his mind like physical pain. She was no coward; she understood the strength of beasts. Yet Yves knew that they needed to leave the bridge immediately, or even deadlier creatures would be drawn to the amassing energies. As he ran, Midnight followed.
They fought and ran and stumbled with the storm winds to gain distance from the cliffs. The remnants of the bridge dissipated into the ocean abyss, while ever more wyrren dove from the storm-laden sky to snatch up the emerging crustaceans and galebiters hurling themselves at the foreign energies. By then, the lightless lighthouse had already vanished from Yves’ vision. His illusions hid it equally well from second sight. With the promontory gone, there was not a single trace of the lighthouse’s presence. It was even more isolated than before, no longer offering unexpected shelter to the once-in-a-decade desolate wanderer, but only accessible by those who knew that it existed and risked their life to get there.
They needed to get away. Yves wove a tapestry of physical illusions and energy overlays, attempting to conceal himself, Midnight, and the floating chest as best as possible. It was an effort, nothing to rely on. His illusions only worked if he could tailor them to the sensory perception of his adversaries. He had scant experience with sea creatures and no noticeable practice deceiving beasts from the air, especially of this size. At best, his illusions might bewilder, but even that could provide unexpected salvation, if only to delay the first assault of a wyrren.
The avian beasts took no notice, but two relentless crustaceans pursued Yves and Midnight, unaffected by Yves’ illusions. They were too fast – Despite the danger that more energy brought to the fight, Yves needed to block their path with several shard walls.
Then the earth shook. Rocks and entire formations that had shaped the cliff broke and crashed into the sea, revealing an undulating, pulsating mass beneath. Deep under the rocky plateau lay a monstrosity covered with roots, rotten mosses and foul mushrooms, and littered with gnashing mouths that opened into seemingly endless abysses. Yves had faced giants, but they could not compare. This abomination was the land itself. Each swelling mouth exhaled a multi-layered, soul-chilling drone that shook the earth and scattered all birds and sea beasts. They were not fast enough. From within the mouths, hundreds of netted tendrils shot outward with such force that not even the storm could deviate their path, capturing everything within reach, tearing at crustaceans and galebiters, ripping wyrren from the sky.
Yves got caught, ensnared within the tendril’s sticky net. As the tendril recoiled into its gaping maw, the net constricted around him, strangled him, choked the air out of him, countless pores dousing him with their poison.
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