[???]
Guinevere's silhouette vanished in an instant, a sharp crack rupturing the air in her wake. A streak of black lightning lanced down from the skies at the same time, colliding violently with the spot she had occupied seconds ago.
Upon contact, the lightning exploded outward in a flash of thunderous impact. The ground beneath the impact site convulsed, before collapsing inward. A crater gouged itself into the earth, dirt and stone flung into the air like pieces of shrapnel. Spiderwebbed fissures splintered outward, crawling across the area with unsettling speed.
Guinevere's figure materialized several paces away, a low hum slipped past her lips, though it lacked any amusement.
("It's adapting faster than anticipated…") she thought, eyes narrowing toward the massive form before her. ("And now it's begun resisting larger-scale spells. I'll need to rely on smaller, more refined ones.")
Her thoughts barely finished when the air above them howled, a sonic shriek that made the sky scream as Typhon descended, a streak of burning magenta energy. The dragon's head snapped upward at the incoming threat. Its pupils dilated, red irises glowing brighter for an instant as its instincts flared.
And then it simply moved.
The dragon's massive body, which by all logic should have been far too colossal to maneuver quickly, twisted. In a single fluid motion, it lurched sideways, its vast wings unfurled with an explosive gust, casting a massive shadow as it bounded away from Typhon's deadly descent.
Its claws gouged deep into the earth with a thunderous scrape, marking twin trenches into the fractured soil as it landed roughly. Its bulk absorbed the impact, the wings folding with a snap.
Typhon, meanwhile, passed through empty space, his trajectory unbroken by impact. His magenta energy dissipated gradually as he halted his descent midair, adjusting. And then the Divine Beast twisted his body and lowered himself to the ground beside Guinevere. His legs absorbed the force, energy slowly dimming.
He had missed.
The dragon stood now, wings half-furled, its chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. Its red eyes were locked onto Guinevere—not with rage, but with something sharper, caution.
Guinevere met its gaze, unphased.
("It's learning more,") she mused inwardly, her fingers flexing by her side. ("Not blindly reacting. Observing me as much as I observe it.")
The reality settled into her bones yet she did not flinch.
("Facing something on par with a Greater Dragon was always going to be difficult... but this—") Her eyes sharpened, her frown deepening. ("—this thing is evolving with every passing moment. Every clash we have, every mistake it makes—it learns from them. If this continues…")
She exhaled through her nose, her hand drifted to Typhon's mane, smoothly her palm glided over her comrade.
("If it continues growing at this pace... even I may be hard-pressed to contain it.")
Despite the grim prognosis, she didn't waver.
Power alone meant nothing.
Not when faced with something greater.
"Pure force only serves the fool who swings it without clarity," she whispered under her breath, barely audible even to Typhon, who stood beside her. "No, brute strength won't win this. Not against a mind that sharpens every second."
A soundless pulse radiated from the earth beneath Guinevere's feet. The dust and ash at her heels lifted, suspended. In front of her, space rippled folding inward and then it bloomed. A colossal glyph, spinning, unfurled before her like the petals of a flower. Its lines were etched in lilac, the magical circle stretching several stories high, radiating light.
Across from her, the dragon stirred. A deep growl reverberated in its chest. Its wings lifted ever so slightly—tensing—its claws flexing. It didn't snarl, it didn't roar.
It simply responded.
The earth beneath it fractured, steam hissing from the fissures. The air behind the dragon folded in on itself, a mass of black threads twisted into view, coiling and twisting until they knit into an immense and black glyph.
The two glyphs pulsed once—then unleashed hell.
Twin waves of mana erupted from their circles and collided mid-air, the impact was immense. The sky above them trembled as a detonation of color and sound exploded outward—lilac and black mana tearing at one another in the space between. The earth beneath the impact zone quaked, great slabs of stone rising and falling.
The backlash roared across, winds screaming as boulders and chunks were flung like shrapnel. Typhon dug his claws into the earth to anchor himself, mane of magenta fur rippling violently in the gale. Guinevere held firm, one arm raised to shield her face as her hair whipped around her.
She would not be idle, behind the dragon—two new glyphs snapped into existence. Circular and far smaller, they hummed with mana but they did not fire.
The dragon, sensing something, leapt once more, wings slamming downward with an audible shockwave, launching its enormous body into the air with unnatural velocity for something so large. Its tail cracked the ground as it ascended—
And that was the exact moment Typhon struck, the Divine Beast didn't roar, he just appeared.
A magenta comet—he rammed into the dragon's exposed flank with a force so tremendous it folded space around them, a sonic boom splitting the clouds above. The dragon's body lurched sideways, its massive frame wrenched from the sky, flung like a meteor across the battlefield.
It crashed into the cliffside beyond with a soundless burst of debris, stone thrown into the air like confetti. Chasms split open where it landed, great plumes of dust exploding outward. The ground sank beneath it from the pressure of its weight.
Before the debris had even settled, Typhon roared—a sound that pierced through all else.
With his jaws parted, six spheres of radiant magenta energy began to coalesce around him. They formed in perfect formation, orbiting his head. In the next instance the orbs streaked through the sky in blinding arcs, trailing magenta afterimages. They closed the distance between it and the dragon in the blink of an eye—
—only to be met by a resounding crash of wings.
The dragon, still grounded but rising from the crater it had left in the cliffside, had brought its enormous wings in front of its body, overlapping them like a shield. The blasts slammed into the surface of its wings, detonating one after the other—each one a sunburst of force.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The third and fourth blasts forced its heels to dig in, craters forming under its talons.
The fifth sent blood spraying from between its wing joints.
The sixth—cracked one of the scales clean in half.
And yet, it endured, the wings held.
A low snarl slipped from the dragon's throat, deep and furious, smoke rising from its nostrils. It lowered its wings at last.
"It's growing. Even now, even after that..." Guinevere noted. "I still need to sever the physical form… and secure her soul before it fully disappears into the primal rage of the beast. If it sinks too deep… I may never reach her." She thrust her palm outward.
Glyphs in the air flared again, but this time a different resonance responded. From the ground beneath the dragon, the earth exploded outward. Dozens of black chains, thick as trees, shot out from the ruptured stone. They twisted through the air, shrieking as they homed in from all directions.
They curved around debris, twisted through smoke, and adjusted mid-flight, all to ensnare the dragon. It's pupils constricted as it leapt.
Wings snapped open with a detonation of wind, and the dragon shot into the sky. The chains missed, several of them snapping in frustration, colliding into each other midair and wrapping around themselves in vain. Others slammed into the ground and walls, causing bursts of debris and mana.
"It's not enough…"
Before the dragon could climb higher, before it could ascend beyond her reach, an explosive roar shattered the clouds overhead, Typhon was already in the air. There was no buildup this time, just a flash of magenta.
Typhon was upon the dragon in an instant, the two forms collided mid-flight with a sound that bent the sky, the force of their crash sending shockwaves outward that rippled the clouds in all directions. Typhon roared, fangs bared, his claws flaring out as he attempted to drive the dragon down. The dragon thrashed violently, wings flapping and its tail lashing through the air.
But Typhon had momentum.
Together, they spiraled downward, a blur of magenta and white scales crashing back toward the ground. But the dragon twisted.
At the last moment, just as impact seemed imminent, it rotated midair, powerful muscles coiling as it broke Typhon's angle. The dragon used Typhon's own speed against him—its body corkscrewing beneath his bulk, slamming the Divine Beast into the ground instead.
BOOM!
A shockwave flattened everything nearby. Rocks, and debris were launched skyward, Typhon's body gouged a ravine into the terrain.
The dragon's wings flared as it landed sending out a burst of dust. Its claws tore into the earth to brace itself, skidding to a stop as it took control of its own descent.
It had adapted further.
Guinevere could feel it now—the change. Its movements were growing tighter. Not faster, but smarter. Less beast, more warrior. It was learning. Evolving.
Now it almost looked weary but it steeled itself for another attack. It raised its wings in defense—but then—
CLANK.
A metallic snap echoed across the area. Then a second. Then dozens more.
From the space behind the dragon, then to its left, then to its right, and above and below—black chains exploded into form, wrapping around its legs, its wings, its torso, its tail, and neck. In the span of a breath, they had wrapped the colossal dragon, forcing it to lurch back, its legs buckling under the strain.
The dragon's wings beat once, trying to escape.
But they barely moved.
The dragon let out a startled roar—short and clipped—not from pain, but from confusion. Its neck twisted as far as the chains allowed, its eyes burning with a question it could not articulate.
How?
How had it not sensed them?
There had been no summoning chant.
No glyph.
No mana surge.
No preparation.
Just—
Sudden, absolute confinement.
Guinevere slowly lowered her hand, her fingers parting the air. She exhaled slowly, walking forward now. Her heels crunched over scorched stone and mana-burned earth. Typhon, still recovering from the impact, stood a distance behind, his chest rising and falling, growling softly in support—but not interfering.
This was her moment.
"You sensed every buildup of mana. Every glyph I carved into the world." She paused. "You dodged every formation that required even a second to breathe. You reacted to all of it."
She stopped just within range, the dragon thrashed, trying to wrench its limbs free. The chains screeched as it twisted, but the black metal refused to budge.
"You knew how we fought. And you adapted." Her eyes narrowed. "But this… this you didn't see coming, did you?" Guinevere raised her hand again, and around the chains, a second layer of black filaments glowed faintly in the air. They weren't magical lines. They weren't new constructs. They were…
...residue.
"Mana particles," she said gently, tapping her temple with one finger. "Not from me. Not even from Typhon. From you. From us. From all of us."
She gestured around the battlefield—at the destruction, the smoke, the rifts carved into the earth by spell after spell, the ruptured clouds, the air still thundering from Typhon's last collision.
"You knew how to sense structured mana signatures—glyphs, chants, incantations, the way we prepare our spells. So I gave you nothing to sense. I gathered what was already here."
Another link of chain clicked into place.
"The afterimages of magic."
She took another step forward.
"The discarded dust of our spells—our last detonations, your last breath attacks, even just the pure energy left hanging in the air. All that chaos? That wasn't just debris. I was shaping it while we fought, subtly threading it together. You thought I was standing still—just watching and waiting."
A final smile touched her lips.
"I wasn't idle."
The dragon's eyes widened—recognition, perhaps. Or something else. The creature twitched, its breathing heavier now, as if some fragment of the soul within it understood.
"I wish I didn't have to do this." Her gaze lowered, flickering. "I wish there was another way. I do not wish to inflict this much violence upon you, mother. But I cannot let you remain like this. Not like this. Not as a beast of fury."
The chains pulsed once. Then again. Tightening.
The dragon bucked—struggling again—but it couldn't gain footing. Its wings were pulled down. Its claws couldn't reach the ground properly. It had no leverage. It was caged.
Guinevere extended her left hand to the side, her expression hardened.
"I will preserve your soul."
And then she whispered, with infinite care:
"But I will destroy the form you were forced into."
Beneath Guinevere's feet, the ground trembled as the wind ceased its howl.
An enormous glyph spiraled outward in concentric circles beneath her. The ground cracked beneath the metaphysical pressure it exuded. Each line of the glyph pulsed with aching light. Thin, threadlike filaments of soft light began rising, weaving upward from the glyph, hovering lazily.
It was a connection ritual—a direct, soul-linking bridge between the mortal realm and the Ninth Plane of Reality. This plane did not hum with life—it trembled with the quiet of things lost, where souls wandered in fractal currents, invisible to the waking world, seen only by those who had touched Death and survived.
Guinevere's lips parted ever so slightly, and her breath came in shallow wisps as she chanted beneath her breath. The words were not meant to be heard, not by mortals, not by the living—and yet she said them all the same.
("The souls of the living are connected to the Ninth Plane in delicate strands—like gossamer threads tethered to an ocean. The living, unaware, always drift alongside it. The dead, however…")
Her pupils dilated as she raised a trembling hand outward toward the writhing, struggling form of the chained dragon, its body now still save for the rhythmic rise and fall of its breath.
("The dead are claimed by it. Their souls are pulled fully into that plane, detached from flesh, from breath, from identity. But if I… if I impose a false Death onto myself… I draw closer. Closer to that realm. Closer to her.")
She had already begun. And the price had started to show.
Blood dripped down from the corners of her eyes, a single stream sliding past her lips, smearing across her chin. Red traced her cheekbones, she did not flinch. She did not cry out. The pain was irrelevant. It was nothing compared to the purpose.
She reached forward—not physically, but with her soul and will, stretching her awareness until color faded from her vision. The world around her blurred into meaningless hues, dissolving into monochrome silence.
All that remained were flickering orbs. Dozens. Hundreds. Some floating freely, some bound to flesh, some pulsing quietly in the far, far distance like stars.
She was perceiving it. The Ninth Plane.
And among those pale drifting souls, one burned with a devastating crimson light, bright enough to blind, and vast—terrifyingly vast—in presence.
It didn't feel like a soul—it felt like an anchor, a relic of divine magnitude.
Her mother.
Her mother's soul.
It had no shape. No voice. No form. And yet it was unmistakable.
She reached.
Gods, she reached.
Her fingers twitched, curling ever so slightly, as though the soul was already there, already within her palm. Magic coiled around her—gentle, not to destroy, but to touch, to cradle, to free. Her presence began to wrap around the crimson orb with agonizing tenderness, as if fearing even the softest grasp might break it.
("I can do it,") she whispered in her heart. ("I can feel it… she's within reach… I can rip her free from that cursed shell. I can bring her back—")
Sudden pain.
A jolt.
A scream within her nerves.
"!?" Her eyes widened— her soul recoiling like a hand burned.
The connection shattered, a backlash of force erupting outward—not as heat, but as a rejection of presence, an existential slap that hurled her backwards through the air.
Her body tore across the area in a streak of black and then—impact. She crashed—not into the earth—but into something warm and fluffy.
Typhon.
The Divine Beast had caught her, folding its body around her protectively as it took the full brunt of her momentum. She lay against its chest, coughing, blood flecking her lips, her limbs heavy with failure.
Slowly and painfully, she lifted herself, hand pressed against Typhon's fur. Her breath came ragged and rattling, as she wiped the blood from her chin, her fingers shaking.
("I… awoke something.") Her thoughts came sluggishly. ("This wasn't a resistance. This was a countermeasure. A defense not against my magic, but against me—against anyone trying to reach her.")
Her eyes lifted and what she saw chilled the marrow in her bones.
The dragon no longer thrashed, no longer growled. It stood still, its eyes glowing brighter—hotter—than ever before, as if lit from within by a mind older. Its body had stopped trembling, not because it was weakened—but because it was now aware. The chains around it dissolved as if fearful of it.
It was aware of what she had done.
Its head turned toward her.
And then, it spoke.
"You dare…"
The words echoed across the area.
"You dare to actually touch my soul, mortal?"
The voice was not her mother's.
No.
This was something else entirely.