Even steeped in pure Aether, their core still stank of the Eldritch Gods, like swamp rot under silk.
As long as these wretches served the Eldritch Gods, Crimson Fire was their nemesis, a hunter’s flame. Aphelia wielded it like her own arm; her warcraft outstripped any servant’s tricks, like a blade outpacing shadow.
Then a chill crawled her spine, a winter gaze pressing from nowhere. She snapped her head up, Crimson Fire coiling around her like a burning cloak, the frost ebbing—yet the kill slipped away like ash on wind.
“Val—ky—rie!!!”
The torn shadow ballooned, a storm cloud swallowing the sky. Eldritch stench roared outward. Giant talons, scale-plated hide, and seams like molten rivers—too familiar, like a nightmare revisited.
“A Daemon Beast?!”
It was the very Daemon Beast Aphelia had just felled; its corpse still lay by the lab, warmth not yet gone. Yet here came two more, mirror images, rising like revenants under a red moon.
Soldiers stared, stunned. They weren’t Aether-wielders like Aphelia; they were ordinary humans, windblown reeds before a flood. In common minds, a Daemon Beast was an unkillable terror.
That was why Aphelia and Violet slaying one had seemed a legend told by campfire. Only a few Daemon Beasts had appeared at first, and for a long span, nothing changed. The world, even the United Government, drifted into a comforting illusion.
The Daemon Beasts were finite.
But now two identical monsters loomed at once, twin storms breaking the same coast. Once, one was enough to break men; twice, their combined dread pressed down like mountains, and the soldiers couldn’t even rise.
As humans, they were brittle glass before Daemon Beasts of iron and storm.
Aphelia bit down, silver teeth flashing. Crimson Fire raced up her arms like climbing roses. Her Bracer Gauntlets flared open, folding into full arm-guards—her body snapping into battle like a bow drawn.
She feared not the two beasts so much as the strange “people.” It wasn’t just the two shapes above; six attackers writhed within the fire below, like eels in a blaze.
As worry took root, the fireline boomed. Blood-red light flared. Several Demonic Spears smashed into the towering eldritch shadow; pure Aether collided and burst into blinding noon.
“You still got room to worry about others?!”
The dragon-shaped Daemon lunged, a nightfall shadow sweeping overhead. Its speed defied its mass, like lightning riding a mountain. Aphelia’s pupils shrank; she struck on reflex. Crimson Flame surged up as a wall, a cliff of fire to check the dragon’s charge.
It wasn’t enough. Aphelia faced not one storm, but two.
A massive shape shot up from below, faster than even she could read. It slammed into her with raw force, and when strength met strength, she lost the contest—like steel bent by an avalanche.
Impossible. Was this the same “fragile” Daemon Beast?
Before thought could knit, the dragon seized her, jaws clamping like an iron trap. It shot skyward at brutal speed, sonic booms peeling from its bulk. The twisted shadow vanished from the crowd like a star swallowed by cloud.
With one beast’s pressure gone, the onlookers staggered upright, breath scraping like rust. Their weapons were gnats on a storm; the dragon’s casual movements wrecked more than human heavy fire ever could.
Violet wanted to break off and engage, but the six “humans” were worse than the Beast, like thorns woven into a net. Individually, they weren’t strong—maybe a hair above an average Valkyrie. Together, their twisted limbs worked in concert, and her scalp prickled like frost over stone.
There were Enforcers to protect. Violet grit her teeth, iron ringing in her chest. She might shrug off humans with her tongue, but if a Daemon Beast ravaged a war zone while Valkyries faltered, the Elders’ plans would jam like gears full of sand.
That she would not allow. But Aphelia had been yanked off the board, and her strongest ally was now a distant ember.
A blood-red Demonic Spear drove the warped limbs back. Violet sneered, crimson Aether flowing up her arm like fresh wine, fusing with the spear till blade and blood were one.
“Violet, lose your head here!”
Six twisted cultists rushed her like a dark tide. They felt the shift and offered no room to breathe. They aimed to pin her down, their favorite targets the Enforcers at her back—lambs under a storm.
Violet laughed, lips a blood-red curve, a scarlet crescent under firelight.
“You petty vermin—come try me.”
Another scarlet spear bloomed in her hand, a thorn from a crimson rose. Wild spearwork and blood Aether wrapped her in a scarlet gale, clashing with the incoming limbs like storm against reef.
High above, Aphelia fought to break free, every muscle a tightened bow. Two maidens in ornate robes flashed in beside her, blades seeking the dragon’s vital seams—yet this dragon’s strength towered beyond their charts, like iron under jade.
“Can’t pierce? How’s that possible!”
Aphelia flooded Crimson Fire, pounding at the dragon’s twin jaws, trying to pry them like iron gates. Her ever-victorious flame met its match, tangling with a twisted black aura like vines strangling vines.
The dragon didn’t resist; it let her strike. Its eldritch breath formed teeth like a cage, locking around Aphelia’s body. It didn’t wound, but it bound—iron bars around a burning heart.
“Why struggle? You can’t stand against the Eldritch Gods.”
“That doesn’t mean I’ll bow.”
She snorted, frost over ember. Her current posture blunted her warcraft, but Crimson Fire was protean, a river finding its path. She refused to believe no way existed—yet reality dragged her upward, the dragon carrying her past the painted sky.
She could survive extremes, but the thinning air made her brow crease like a cut in stone. Old memory from this borrowed flesh whispered—she was about to breach the “atmosphere,” clouds giving way to cold void.
She didn’t fear harsh environments. She feared the unknown beyond the world, the Eldritch in the black sea. She didn’t know their depth. In this shackled state, she wouldn’t gamble on a fight that could cost her life like a candle snuffed by wind.
“Don’t you want the truth? About the ancient civilization. About you Valkyries called the Elders. About you in particular, Valkyrie. Or rather, a visitor from another timeline?”
The voice seeped from within the dragon’s body like echo from a cave.
Aphelia’s strikes wavered for a heartbeat, then steadied. She sent the robed maidens to hunt for the dragon’s killing seam like hawks circling a boar. Truth mattered—but not fed to her in chains by a mortal enemy. She would carve the Eldritch down first, then look into the abyss with her own eyes.
The dragon seemed to read her heart like script on silk. Twisted black vapor rose around it, shoving the two maidens away like driftwood off a wave. The voice returned, a strand of wind.
“Aphelia, do you feel fear?”
“Fear? Of course. I fear death, so I don’t stop.”
She curled a cold smile, calling the maidens back behind her like sparrows to a sleeve. She poured power into her Bracer Gauntlets till they sang like heated iron. Repeated strikes couldn’t breach the dragon’s hide; she needed a wager with fate.
She would not fall into the infamous hands of the Eldritch Gods.
“You fear the truth, don’t you?”
The voice from its skull turned ethereal, bell-clear, nothing like the monster’s iron shell. Close your eyes, and you’d think a pure maiden spoke from a moonlit lake.
That heartbeat of daze, and the dragon’s speed spiked, its vast body taking fire like a comet. Its twisted flesh tore under the rush; eldritch aura fought the strain, yet the meat obeyed physics, not dreams.
“In the end, still a human body. With what you have now, you can’t break the limit...”
The airy voice sounded like regret, a soft lure like warm wind through bamboo. Even Aphelia drifted for an instant, a leaf in current. Lucky for her, Crimson Fire was near to her soul; when she slipped, it stabbed her mind like a red-hot needle.
Pain lanced, and clarity snapped taut. Aphelia’s eyes flew open. She’d left the blue planet behind. What greeted her first was endless darkness, a sea of ink without shore.
