“Interesting... how could someone like that belong to this age?” Aphelia’s gaze locked on the pillar of light spearing the sky. Hunger burned in her eyes, edged with a predator’s bite.
On the distant battlefield’s heart, the elf Isaac flicked blood from his longbow. He didn’t look at the light. He faced away and spoke to the blood-soaked blond man behind him. “Vice-Captain, is it time?”
The masked Vice-Captain gave no answer. He only stared into the glare. His face hid behind steel. No telling what lived there.
“Hmph. Got it. Then we wait.” Isaac snorted. His figure blurred and vanished, leaving the air warped in his wake.
In the great command tent at the border city’s center, a woman behind a screen let out a light sigh. No emotion rode it, as if the breath had nothing to do with her.
“Fate...”
In the next heartbeat, Hercules woke.
A flood of memory crashed through his skull. The Aphelia who fought the ghoul legion in those memories fused with the figure before his eyes. Only now, she lacked that overwhelming strength. Now, she wrestled a towering Ghoul King alone.
Her robe was long since shredded by its claws. To call it a Ghoul King felt wrong; it moved like a werewolf stuffed with a tyrant of souls. A pack of death-banshees had found this ghoul king’s carcass somewhere. They stitched their broken souls together and seized the flesh.
Even so, its power was not something Aphelia could face alone.
Common ghouls are remade from humans. They rarely top two meters, built on human bone.
This one was different. For the Dark’s lowest infantry to evolve into a lord who could stand against vampire or werewolf dukes said enough.
“Giant’s blood... A legend walking the human world. What a sight.”
Aphelia roared and sprang. The Ghoul King’s twin bone claws, chariot-large, scythed through where she had been. They carved trenches in the stone. How tall was it? Three meters? Four? She couldn’t tell. The thing loomed like a moving cliff.
She had hunted more Dark creatures than she could count. Queen of Hunters wasn’t a title she gave herself. The great families and their hunters bowed to her record.
Even so, she had never seen a ghoul this tall. Half a castle high, at least. Those so-called giants a mere half-head taller than men? She had slain plenty. This Ghoul King, though, was a rare TITAN in the Dark.
Damn it. Are the Twelve Trials for human heirs, or for the Dark? It’s only the third, and something like this walks out. Unless our ancestors were strong enough to meet such monsters head-on...
She pushed off a rock wall and vaulted wide, slipping past the chariot-claws. She didn’t even dare draw another weapon, afraid a slow twitch would leave her a corpse. The Ghoul King hounded her, prickling her scalp numb.
If the Twelve Trials aren’t built to kill their takers, there must be a way through. But this is a nest of monsters. No special Rune glows here. No ancient weapon waits to bite. To break something this big, you’d need the Southern Union’s Gorgon Fleet to run a blanket strike. Or the Gospel Church’s chariot phalanx rolled out in force.
This is a frontier backed by wasteland. The Southern fleet can’t sail onto dirt. These creeks can’t carry warships. Even if their commander wanted to do her a favor, he couldn’t. As for the Gospel Church...
Hunter clans guard mankind in the dark, but we harvest the Dark for parts, and we use forbidden means. To the Church, that’s heresy. Some hunters still run because they chose the “crooked path.” Counting on the Church is a joke.
And water far away won’t douse a nearby blaze. With this much noise, the Heller family must have heard. They should be moving to help. Aphelia didn’t buy it. She had slipped in earlier through a gap in the barrier with a secret art. Expecting them fast was wishful thinking.
That thought cost her. In the sliver she drifted, spears of bone stabbed for her face. Her saber snapped across their flanks. She refused to meet them straight. She knew too well the force riding attacks thrown by bodies that dwarfed men.
All she could do was rap the incoming spikes to bend their paths. Then the bones, iron-hard a breath ago, burst into a spray of deathly white splinters.
Already ringed by bone, Aphelia’s eyes flew wide. Reflex reached for her defensive Rune. Too late.
Needle-fine bone shrapnel detonated, like shells hidden in the larger spikes. It shredded toward her from head to heel. Even if the Rune had fired early, could it have held against a bone-needle volley like this?
She cut as fast as nerves allowed, hacking the hail from every side. It barely mattered. Even Aphelia could do little before a storm this dense. In heartbeats, red lines latticed her skin. One spike even punched through her arm.
Pain like white fire poured from joints and marrow. Her mind fuzzed under the shock. She couldn’t count how many holes now riddled her. At least she had saved her eyes. She dragged in a breath. Her saber knifed into the rock wall. A slim steel chain trailed the hilt and coiled her forearm tight.
The blade bit stone. The chain snapped taut and checked her fall. A heartbeat later, a chariot-sized claw swept in from the side.
She hung in midair with nowhere to plant. She had to take it. The hit blanked her mind. The force was monstrous, like a war chariot slamming full-tilt into her ribs. It swatted her from near the floor, flung her hard, and drummed her across the ground.
She only knew she rolled like a rag doll for several turns. If the bone needles were lightning-bite pain, this blow turned her skull to fog. What kind of joke was this? She knew many secret arts, yet she was still human. Flesh and blood against a charging chariot is suicide.
Her right arm took the brunt. It snapped. She felt the forearm bone threatening to punch through skin. Then her body sang with pain everywhere. With so much of it roaring, she forced herself up, mapping pain to bones by feel. She tried to stand. A stab from her ribs tore a hiss from her teeth.
Organs... a shard may have found them.
How deep, she couldn’t tell. The blood on her lips said if this lasted, she’d be meeting the ancestors soon. She staggered upright. Her back began to go numb. That terror made her bite down. She chanted quick. Runes and fine threads knit along her spine, hauling her up like a stringed puppet.
A monster like this lies beyond human hands. If the third of the Twelve Trials looks like this, then unless there’s a relic or secret method ahead... Aphelia dashed for a narrow fissure. By chance, she saw where she had hidden Hercules. He stood there dazed, eyes throwing off blinding light.
Damn. The answer’s likely on Hercules.
Thinking that, Aphelia’s teeth ground at the Heller family. Afraid of leaks and unwilling to risk their own talent, they had deliberately kept it hidden.
