Nic skidded down a slope, Peacemaker drawn. The beast who had completed their Aleph set was a massive, quill-back bull with skin made of bronze. Fire snorted from its nostrils as it stamped its glowing hooves.

Crushed underfoot was a blue-necked heron, its blood staining the sand.

Clearly he’d arrived just as a battle was ending.

The bull turned, its body covered in scrapes and scratches. The heron had unleashed fragments of ice across the battlefield, which were now slowly melting under the sun, forming pools that vanished into the dunes.

It snorted, and lowered its head.

“Good. I was afraid you were gonna be peaceful…” Nic grinned.

Demon Bull of Sambation. E-Class // Pandemonic Sapient. Born from a river of stone that divided worlds, this bull has stony, resilient flesh and fiery blood. Its demonic talent is the refining of precious stones within its guts, for which greater demons often hunt its kind.

The battle didn’t take long.

The bull was wounded, and its strength required a firm footing. Nic simply robbed it of that, collapsing the sand underfoot into a sinking mire. As it struggled and bellowed out jets of flame he unleashed a breath of Primordial Mist, sinking into its flesh to rob it of strength, youth, and life.

In moments there were only black bones of rusting iron littering the sand.

On a wind of flickering, lightless flame, the runes rose from its desiccated body. Six in all. Five clustered together, a complete set, while the sixth floated off to the side like a satellite.

Nic reached out-

And the buzzing drone of wings filled the air.

Six flying sand devils dropped out of the sky, landing crouched. They had the jet black shells and red, ominous eyes of the Ascended…

Six of them.

Nic didn’t pause, because he didn’t have time to pause. In the first instants of battle…

He went all out to score a kill. His feet stomped into the ground with such force the sand turned to glass. His skin burned, the Internal Sacrifice Cauldron’s Technique flaring in his chest as he shot forward, mouth opening to shout-

DIE.

They were young creations. Barely days old. Their bodies were born iron-strong, but their souls? Their souls were fragile and nearly shattered under the force of Nic’s killing voice.

His blade ignited, cleaving through the air with a deafening whistle, the sound of the sky and earth being cut in two by the blazing edge of Peacemaker. That edge ripped down from head to tail across one unfortunate devil as it stood stock still, frozen by the soul-rending attack.

Its yellow guts toppled out as it was splint in two.

Nic teleported, flickering to the next foe. They were starting to move now, starting to react. It managed to lift its arm to block as Peacemaker came piercing upwards from low at Nic’s hip. The long point of the great saber stabbed through its arm and into its chest-

Nic heaved and the devil was thrown overhead, landing in the sand behind him.

One lunged at him. He’d forgotten how fast they could be, matching his own speed, and the black hand reached into his vision to try and claw his eyes away before he could move. Nic dropped the sand under his feet away, ducking under and coming back up atop a wave that carried him past the creature, Peacemaker spinning, cutting through its hip, sending it toppling to the ground in pieces.

He had needed to end things quickly, to kill them before they could take advantage of their numbers.

He had half succeeded.

The remaining three fell into formation, each grasping a talisman of carved bone. In unison they crushed the tokens in hand.

Black energy unfurled from each of their bodies. The strands reached out, grasping each other, and all three of the Ascended devils were combined into one whole.

A massive, pitch-black scorpion with a luminous green tail emerged, its body half-translucent, a projection of energy rather than a creature of flesh. The three devils were visible within, one in each claw while the third rose into the air to join with that poisoned sting-tail.

It was a battle formation.

A runic illusion that joined the strengths of multiple warriors into one massive being.

Nic had never seen one in the real world, but he’d practiced as part of one in the dream realms where he’d trained to join a legion. They were powerful, and especially practical for defense, as any attack had to pierce the joined auras of every combatant in the formation to harm their flesh-bodies. But they were restrictive, too.

A wrong step or a movement out of time and the combatants would slip out of the formation, leaving everyone vulnerable.

Nic smiled. There was a moment of pause, of hesitation, the Ascended speaking to each other in their strange clicking bug-language.

Then the scorpion moved forward on its iron legs. The sting shot out-

Nic was ready. He teleported aside, and the sand burst up into tendrils, closing like a trap as the sting smashed into the earth. He’d reinforced the sand trap with sticky, adhesive tar, but it wasn’t enough. The poison in the sting was actually eating through his aura, stealing his control of the sand and rendering it totally inert.

It ripped free before he could make more than a single attack, Peacemaker cutting a thin slash across the tail that quickly vanished.

The claws moved in. Where the tail had gained speed, they had gained power. They crushed down, and Nic wove between them, relying on his lightning-fast legs and agile body to slip away as the first claw snapped shut like a guillotine.

The second reached for him mid-air, moving with raw momentum that made it impossible to escape. Nic unleashed the Hand of Ash, using the shadowy trail that extended from his palm-strike to deflect himself out of the way. He hit the sand-

-rolled-

- and barely escaped the tail coming down again.

With a massive body and three minds to pilot, the scorpion took up a huge amount of space. Its attacks kept him dodging, weaving, trying to escape.

He was caught in his enemy’s momentum.

But with each step, Nic built his own momentum, feeding into the Mistwater Step. He was surrounded by illusions, by trailing dark mists that obscured his location. The longer the dance went on, the farther out those illusions spread.

Until one of the claws made a mistake. It shot out and crushed Nic in two- but the illusionary double only dissolved in its grip. In that moment, a window opened.

Nic opened his mouth and spat a roaring torrent of Primordial Mist, slamming into the claw as arms of sand reached up to immobilize it. The deadly mist ate into the battle-formation, robbing the illusionary ‘flesh’ of its energy at an alarming rate. Cracks spread across the chitin of the claw, and threads of mist poured in to reach for the devil inside…

With no choice, the devil stepped back. Instantly the claw turned translucent, fully illusory and without corporeal form, allowing him to escape the mist.

But not Nic.

Nic rocketed forward with his full strength, even as the tail rashed down to intercept him. He spun mid-air, drew his legs in, and smashed into the Ascended devil’s chest with a brutal double-barreled kick. He was sent flying one way, escaping the tail’s sting.

The devil was sent skidding and tumbling in the opposite direction.

They both rolled onto their feet, Nic teleporting in a flash of light to escape the second claw.

As he reappeared, he flung Peacemaker like a spear, sending it flashing through the air towards the devil’s throat.

It stepped aside and Peacemaker stabbed into the sand, shaking like a bolt from a crossbow.

The devil almost looked smug.

And then Peacemaker’s asura-form erupted out of the blazing handle, reaching up to snatch it the devil up by the throat and swing it overhead, crushing it into the ground. It was caught off guard- and it was dead in moments, the asura ripping, tearing, pulling, crunching through its armor with four blazing hands.

And like that, Nic had the advantage.

For all their speed and power, the remaining claw and the tail couldn’t cover the massive empty space of the missing arm. Nic wove into that blindspot, slashing at the scorpion’s legs, harassing it brutally. With only two combatants remaining inside the formation, it was no longer invulnerable, allowing him to cut deep with his resonant greatsword as sand swirled out from the hilt in the shape of a blade.

There was no choice.

With a shout from the tail, they abandoned the formation. The scorpion dissolved from existence in a rush of black energy, and the two devils came at him with force and fury, closing in a pincer-movement.

Nic wove backwards to escape, ducking their hands, dodging under their kicks. His sword scythed left and right. There had been a day when the Ascended could match him…

No longer.

The ‘tail’ unleashed its shards, sending waves of sharpened stone exploding outwards in a fan. The ‘claw’ followed up with a rippling blast of translucent force, catching Nic as he dodged the first wave and sending him flying through the air.

He teleported backwards, opening more space, keeping them from taking advantage of the momentary stumble. Stabbing the greatsword into the ground he drew out Hollowsong. His fingers plucked at the bowstring, sending talisman arrows flying towards them.

As they dodged he detonated the arrows mid-air. Bursts of light interwove with blossoms of flame, keeping them stumbling, off-guard, struggling to close the gap as he continued to dart backwards in long leaps that sent him skimming over the earth. The poison-mist snare closed around their legs, tying them down as the sand erupted to drag them under.

They were outmatched. An arrow pierced into the tail’s throat, and a split instant later, the detonation sent its head spiraling up into the sky.

The surviving claw let out a scream of defiance.

Nic’s next arrow shot through its skull and silenced it.

Panting with exertion, Nic lowered his bow. All lay dead before him. Putting it away, he gathered up the greatsword and Peacemaker, stowing the former in his bag and the latter around his shoulder on a leather strap.

He descended back into the valley of dunes where the bull’s skeleton lay. The runes had sunk back down into the bones.

He called them up again.

A set of five, the Regulus.

And a single rune by itself.

Without hesitation, Nic gave the Regulus to Peacemaker. Since he already had four of the five, she would gain the better benefit. As the runes sank into her blade and became ash-colored marks, a beam of light shot into the sky.

Shortly joined by another as Nic claimed his half of the prize, the Antares.

Seek shelter.

When the beacon ceases to mark your location, the System will offer its assistance in understanding this foreign Dao.

Nic didn’t need telling twice. With two beacons marking the sky, the vultures would be circling. If he was unlucky, some were already watching from the distance, held back by his show of force but waiting for their moment to strike…

He lifted his head towards the empty hills. “Come and try, if you think you’ve got what it takes.”

And then he took off, racing for the horizon.