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The air was thick with the dragon's agonized breath, shuddering exhales and violent tremors, it seethed. The black chains coiled tighter around its colossal form. And yet even in its furious struggle, even as the dragon screeched and roared, there was something in those, blood-red orbs—
Anguish.
Not rage or even malice.
However Guinevere did not waver as she gazed upon the monster before her. Not a flicker of hesitation, not a tremor of fear.
"Typhon." The whisper was barely audible, a burst of incandescent light erupted. A being materialized within that light, its form carving through existence as though it had always been there, simply waiting for its name to be spoken.
Divine Beast Typhon.
The moment its feet met the ground, the air seem to tremble. Its form was fluffy yet almost jagged, its spiked mane rising high, its body a collection of deep purples, magentas, and glowing whites. Its red eyes locked onto the massive dragon.
It turned toward Guinevere, its massive body coiled for, its spiked tail flickering. Guinevere's hand met its mane, Typhon did not growl. It did not bare its fangs. It merely stood docile, awaiting his comrades order.
The dragon remained bound. Still trembling, still staring at her. Those eyes—those red, agonized eyes—bore into her soul, Guinevere did not look away. She stepped forward, her fingers still buried in Typhon's mane, her other hand raised toward the dragon as if reaching for something beyond her.
"You're still in there, aren't you?" A silence passed. The moment stretched on, the distance battles chaos a distant distraction compared to this.
The dragon did not answer, it could not. But it did not need to. Its anguish screamed louder than any voice ever could. Guinevere's lips curled, her fingers curling slightly in Typhon's fur, and she exhaled, her gaze never leaving those suffering, blood-stained eyes.
"I know you can't speak. But I can hear you anyway."
The dragon's roared once more, a sound so vast, so all-consuming, it felt as though the the desolate world quaked beneath its force. A cry not of mindless rage—but of torment.
And yet, the heavens did not answer.
There was no mercy in the sky.
No salvation.
"Let us save her, Typhon." In that moment a star ignited, not in the sky. Here. Now. On the battlefield.
Typhon moved.
The instant its form blurred into speed, the air howled. It did not simply run—it erased the distance between them, its body a blaze of violet, magenta, and force, the glow of its form stretching like a blazing arc.
A pressure unlike anything else exploded outward as Typhon slammed into the dragon's colossal frame.
A shockwave ripped the air apart, a explosion that warped the environment, the space around them distorting as the force of the collision bent light and twisted gravity, shattering the ground beneath them into fissures. The dragon—a beast vast enough to swallow fortresses whole—was sent hurtling through the air as the chains vanished.
Its titanic form crashed through the battlefield, skidding, rolling, ripping apart the land, gouging out a trench miles long before it could even attempt to halt itself.
Eventually it stopped, grounding itself.
Its white talons gouged into the fractured world, the heat emanating from its body melting the scorched terrain beneath it as it spread its massive wings wide, sending forth a gust so powerful it ripped entire boulders into the air.
Its glowing eyes locked onto Guinevere, something within them shifted. And then the magic ignited, five enormous, radiant glyphs spiraled into existence, each a titanic construct of white light, churning with mana. They encircled Guinevere and Typhon in an instant.
The air burned and then the flames came. This was absolute incineration—a force beyond conventional fire, a consuming white heat that swallowed the battlefield whole, bending the sky, twisting the air.
It surged—
It swallowed them whole, from within the raging fire, a single sound. A sharp, resonant click of the tongue.
The white fire stopped, the flames broke apart into a billion scattered fragments, for before Guinevere and Typhon, standing was a barrier. Guinevere exhaled softly, her lilac eyes half-lidded, untouched by even the slightest hint of fire or soot.
A gaze passed by Guinevere and Typhon, her comrade sensing the order roared. The sound that erupted from its fanged mouth was a deep resonance that bypassed physical reality and struck at the essence of the fire.
The fire died in an instance.
Not extinguished, not overpowered, but erased. The white flames simply ceased to be. A wave of foreign energy had dispersed them. Guinevere's lilac eyes gleamed, her expression unreadable as she watched the unnatural phenomenon unfold. A small, almost imperceptible smirk tugged at the corner of her lips.
Typhon's power… It was unlike any other, it did not stem from magic. Not from mana. Not from divine intervention.
It was something entirely unique, something that belonged to Typhon alone. She didn't question it, she never did. Because it didn't need to be questioned.
It was absolute.
The idle though passed her as, without warning—
The ground beneath her convulsed.
A deep, rumble surged from the ruined area, the debris stirred. Fragments of shattered land, crumbled stone, broken remnants shifted, trembled, then surged upward, they gathered. Beneath Guinevere, the land began to rise, something was forming, something enormous. The scattered debris, the debri caused by of destruction melded together, fusing, shaping and growing—
Until it stood.
A golem.
An enormous titan, its towering frame, rough and twisted yet, towering beneath her. Guinevere remained still, her arms still folded.
The dragon roared once more and with it—a storm was born.
A tornado.
A force so immense, it bent the sky, ripping apart the atmosphere, bending the world around it into an unrecognizable blur. The howling winds screamed through the area, tearing apart the ground, flinging shards of earth into the air.
Guinevere's hair whipped wildly around her face, strands obscuring her and yet, she did not move. Not a single step.
She stood as if the storm itself was nothing more than a passing breeze. The dragon's red eyes burned, its massive wings outstretched, fueling the hurricane that sought to consume all in its wake.
But then—
A fist.
A massive, earthen fist surged forward with powerful force. The golem—moved. Its enormous arm swung, carrying the full weight of its being and then—it struck. Directly into the dragon's face, the impact was seismic.
A deafening crack echoed across the area as the dragon's massive form was sent reeling, its colossal frame forcibly thrown backward, the force of the blow causing a shockwave so immense it ripped apart the storm it had created, dispersing the tornado in an instant.
But before it could even attempt to recover—
Typhon was already upon it.
A second streak of violet and magenta tore through the battlefield, a comet of force. Typhon collided and a thunderous impact rang out. The dragon's body—already staggered—was thrown once more, skidding across the shattered earth, tearing through the ruined ground.
The world quaked beneath the force.
And Guinevere, standing at the heart of the devastation, watched. She merely watched as the dragon—her mother—writhed upon the shattered ground, its colossal form twisting, struggling, its body now burdened with pain and confusion.
Something that ached.
Typhon landed beside her atop the golem, its powerful form still ready for action. Its glowing eyes remained locked upon the fallen dragon.
Yet Guinevere's gaze was not one of triumph, not of satisfaction, not even of relief. She simply stood, and she thought.
Magic…
Magic had always been a beautiful thing in her eyes. It was not just a force, not just a means to an end.
It was art.
It was expression.
Magic was born into this reality, an endless array of possibilities, a battle of knowledge between the known and the unknown. It was neither good nor evil. And yet she despised it, not magic itself. But the way it was twisted. Contorted into something violent, disgusting and cruel. Turned into a weapon, into a tool for destruction.
Even now, as she stood upon this ruined battlefield, chaos, and suffering, she could not help but loathe what had been done to it. What she had done.
How many times had she seen it?
Magic—this wondrous, infinite force—corrupted, tainted, bent into nothing more than an instrument of war? How many times had she witnessed its beauty drowned beneath the blood and screams of the fallen? She had never sought power for violence. She had never sought strength for war. She had never desired magic for destruction.
Yet here she was. Standing atop a golem of destruction.
Standing upon ruin.
Standing above her mother's suffering.
Her fingers curled.
"This is not what magic is meant to be." Her voice was barely above a whisper, a soft murmur carried away by the winds, yet Typhon's ears flicked at her words, as if it had heard them all the same.
She breathed in. Slowly.
The scent of scorched earth, shattered stone, and lingering embers filled her lungs. This was the stench of war.
Of battle.
Of magic misused.
She despised it.
Not because it was beneath her. Not because she found herself above such things. But because she knew—deep within her very soul—that this was not how it was meant to be. She looked down at the dragon. At her mother.
The dragons enormous body twisted as it steadied itself. Its red eyes—once filled with anger and madness—now held something else.
Something… broken.
Guinevere's chest tightened.
Magic was not supposed to create suffering. Magic was not supposed to bring ruin. Magic was meant to be beautiful. A bridge between the mortal and the infinite possibilities.
Her mother had been taken it—twisted it, bent it and shattered it. And in doing so, it had twisted her in return.
She hated it.
Not her mother.
Never her mother.
But the way magic had been corrupted. The way it had turned into something so wrong. Her fingers uncurled, her breath steadied, her heart did not waver. She would not let magic be reduced to this.
"I shall use my magic to save you, mother." She declared, though she noted a sudden shift in the air. It shuddered, as if a great force enveloped all. Guinevere felt it, not through sight. Not through sound but through her being.
A tremor in the mana streams, a shift in the indivisible currents of mana, a disturbance so profoundly unnatural that her bones seemed to vibrate in warning.
Then in the next instance a flash.
A single blinding eruption of searing light, thick with mana, split the battlefield in two. And before her, burning its way into the sky itself, a glyph. It was vast, so perfectly constructed, so impossibly perfect that it should not—could not—exist within normal comprehension.
Yet it did.
Its form was unlike any magic she had ever seen, inscribed with writhing sigils that pulsed with a mana that felt… wrong.
Corrupted.
It seethed, the runes shifting and reforming in endless permutations, and from its core a wave of pure, condensed mana erupted. It was a tide of pure destruction, swallowing the debri around it. Turning it into nothingness, it raced her way like an intense wave, a shockwave following that sent the air screaming.
Guinevere's breath caught, her instincts screamed, she did not hesitate. Her hands moved—
An enormou lilac barrier roared to life before them, reminiscent of a flower petal. Its petal layers folding upon themselves in arcs of defensive power.
The moment the mana wave collided—
Her eyes widened, the barrier did not shatter. It rotted, like paper submerged in acid, like flesh consumed by decay, like time itself eroding all in its path.
Deterioration, the dragon had—
Adapted, Guinevere barely had time to react—
A single motion.
She snapped her body back, Typhon already moving in perfect sync, the two of them launching themselves away, just in time as the barrier collapsed.
And the wave of mana devoured all in its wake, the golem disintegrated, completely erased. A moment ago. Now, it was as if it had never existed. The battlefield screamed in response—vast portions of land blackening and warping into an even more unrecognizable wasteland, the essence of the terrain unmade by the magic's vile effects.
Guinevere landed hard, skidding against the ruined ground, heels digging trenches through the dirt. Typhon landed beside her, its massive body tensed.
The dragon's chest heaved, its body smoking with the aftermath of its own spell, it was evolving. Conventional destructive magic had not worked so it altered its destruction.
It was learning.
Guinevere exhaled sharply, forcing her mind to steady itself, forcing her body to still. She could not afford to falter.
Not now.
Not when the stakes had risen to something far beyond mere combat. Not when the thing before her was no longer just a dragon—
But an abomination of magic itself.
And her own mother.