His tablet vibrated to announce the reception of a quest. They'd all get it, being in the vicinity. Monsters like this were called 'boss monsters'. Seemed redundant, common sense that an alpha among beasts would be a 'boss'. But not every adventurer had the senses of Tyr, or so Girshan claimed, and not all 'boss' or 'elite' targets were so easily identified.

It came down the side of the ravine that had served as their battleground with a roar full of rage and pain. The loss of its kin and mates, padding the ground and dragging its impressive bulk down the rocky wall with an agility that belied its size. Huge, crimson furred, with a silver stripe marking the fur on its back. A kind of king of the jungle, at least in this region, something that hadn't been challenged in a very long time. It's near black skin beneath all the fur patterned with countless scars. A life of struggle.

It observed Tyr only briefly before charging forward in a mad rush. To it, he was a mouse, and he was the only enemy present – and his troop was dead. Worthy of respect and wariness, but not enough to cause the alpha to feel any reticence. It huffed, grunting in the way their kind did to announce challenge.

High and fast, the thing moved like a lightning bolt, shattering a tree effortlessly in its wake as it bore down on Tyr. He was still and calm. Girshan said this was a problem. Tyr had not actually struggled to win a fight that many times in his life. Perhaps eight or nine. Much more than most, but he often relied too much on his ability to regenerate and this made him careless. Girshan and Abe alike said this had given him bad habits. Tyr was proud, so he shook himself from the apathy of facing a beast that could not devour him, dragging a pair of daggers from his dimensional ring. Wicked and curved things, over a foot long of the same glittering black-gray steel of the spear he'd given to Jura. The best items he'd managed to get thus far.

Tyr ducked the first blow, a wind swing that nearly bowled him over just from the air pressure it let off. He wanted wipe the mocking look off Girshan and Jura's faces by showing them just how different Varinn's art truly was. Something he could not allow anyone to refer to as inferior or even equal to the path of a blademaster. Pivoting, he drew his leg up and stepped behind the beast, slamming the reverse gripped daggers into the spot just below its ribs. The beast spun to smash at the ground, but he was already gone. Blurred to the rear of it to do the same thing, following the circular patterns of the singer rather than the geometric motions of the master.

At no point did he stop in his march. The monsters skin was the consistency of hardwood, not something he could cut through effectively with such light weapons, but that wasn't the point. Tyr drew a circle, and kept the monster within it. A domain in which he would only become more dangerous so long as he kept moving. Again and again, he'd step, slice, and blur outside of its reach. Dozens of wounds patterning its torso and thick legs, flying into a rage at the mouse that ran away instead of slamming heads like those of his kind would do.

That was one of the weaknesses of the song, at least for him since he didn't have any phenomenal techniques or talents like Girshan. It took time to build up, rarely reaching its crescendo with any haste. Panther style movements helped it along, but they weren't a solution. Surrendering the self to become one with his environment, it took time for him to open himself to that realm and start seeing the watercolor patters splashing all around. One with his enemy, one with the biological need to live. To clutch and hold with his strength on the thread connecting his life to the world he walked on. Giving himself up, surrendering to the tempo of it.

All while the others watched from their hiding position. Tyr had spoken of it, but never displayed the true art, none of their fights lasted this long. He spun and danced with a grace and beauty that could not be elaborated in words. It was a feeling, a heat spreading out all around him. Not of the elegant, sharp perfection of the ballet, but something wholly unique. Harsh, hot, and primal, igniting something inside of them that they hadn't thought was there. Unbeknownst to them, Tyr was pushing further than he ever had, until it hurt and he felt like he was going to explode at any moment.

Even when the gorilla tore a tree from the ground and began swiping wide swathes through the undergrowth, Tyr did not pause. His eyes closed and breath steadied, no armor to burden him with even the slightest amount of weight. His dance completed with a beat, a roll of tolling felt in the breasts of all living things.

Ah... Tyr almost cried out with joy, the pain was on him but he loved every second of it. Well worth the suffering if it meant he could see in all of these colors. Like it knew him, the world, and it loved him – forgave him for the things he'd done. Accepted him for everything he ever was and ever would be, like nobody else ever had. It didn't try to control him, manipulate him, it never lied, it just watched and sang alongside him.

The fire dance. Replacing the daggers with his shamisen, a momentary inspiration, he began to play as rapidly as he could. Chords he'd never known, it told him where to pluck. Unable to replicate them even if he'd been asked seconds later. A steely sound of struck silk as he picked through the progression and dazzled the gorilla. He didn't know why he hadn't simply stabbed it in the neck, or something more simple, but the song was like that. Tyr simply obeyed, and if it asked he would give himself over to the noise. He would leap, waiting for hands to catch him, and it always would – the world would answer. Something would answer, and it was no god.

As for the gorilla, it froze under the pressure of his song. A half domain formed around Tyr, but it wasn't the violent domain of a killer. It was cool and gentle, almost serene. A stilled pond just above the point of freezing, everything was still. A song of reflection.

Something that reminded the gorilla of his childhood, to reflect on his life and weep at the loss it had been forced to endure after centuries of retaining its post as alpha. Children, mates, troop members beyond counting. Dead and gone. Bonds he would never feel again, all because the high masters in their tower that lorded over them. Forced them to be. Always moving and always hunted by one thing or another, there was no peace for them and the gorilla had hated that.

But this was an end to hate for the beast, nothing else mattered anymore - the elder spirit had shown him this. Finally and blissfully given irrevocable rest.

Tyr wept for him, for it. What the gorilla saw and felt, he shared. Another downfall of the song. It allowed him to see, the heart or the soul he didn't know. One of the reasons he'd always refused to view these beings as other people did. This was no monster. It was a living thing with a family, who only wanted to be left alone. He saw the good in it. The purity of purpose. Felt the way it had loved and cared for its kin for so long, unquestioning his place as their protector.

It made him want to stop it, to flee from this place and leave this ancient beast in peace. To give it a second chance, to allow it to live and breathe and feel for a while longer.

But it was already done. The fire dance completed, spira threaded through the shamisen, woven with mana in the way that only shaper magic could. Finished. And so was the gorilla. “I'm sorry.” He whispered, striking the final note. At first, things were still. The light began to dim ever so slightly, and it looked at him. Staring at the motes of light all around, the fury left its eyes and all that was left was a gentle nod. A farewell to a worthy opponent, to a friend who had taken these burdens from him and promised him rest.

It had nothing left to fear, beasts were in tune with the world in a way that human beings could never be. It was natural. The end had come, and it was time to go. When to wander off into the jungle and accept their fate, because their instinct was selfless. To depart before their corpse could bring pestilence to their pack, family, troop, whatever the case.

It was aware, it knew, and it knew who Tyr was on a deep level, their souls entwined together. This creature, so small and yet so powerful, was the herald of the worlds truth. A keeper of the balance, here to bring both he and his family to the better place, to see his ancestors and greet them with a story to tell. That it was okay. But it wasn't okay. Tyr was wracked with a choked sob as he reached out to the gorilla. As before, he'd let his pride and those nails fill him with lust to bring an end to something that moments ago hadn't been anything to him. The alpha was at peace, but he was full of rage. Ready to scream and tear at his own flesh, to fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness. A monster, there was one of those in this clearing and it wasn't that alpha.

Girshan furrowed his brow, staring intently at the young man. His movements had been crisp, clean, and efficient. Not a lick of the drama that his exhibitions had possessed in the past. All was an intent to destroy. To kill and to see things ended. There was a strength in that, but he couldn't understand why Tyr was weeping so. The fight was not over, and Tyr's hand was clasped to the tip of the gorilla's finger, the beast no longer wroth. Now, the creatures face was serene. A soft smile on its wrinkled lips. They looked like two friends who'd known one another for a lifetime.

A heavy emotion spread all throughout the jungle. Even the common animals that had not been warped by mana could feel it. Falling silent. Gathering, even, some distance away. Hundreds, and then thousands of them. Birds, monkeys, brightly colored lizards and frogs. Even insects. All here to bear witness to a grand orchestra of a death, a kings end. For those who could truly feel it, they hearkened back to the days before. When this world had not been torn from the rest, the spark remaining in it calling out to them.

Confusion settled on the adventurers, except for Yana and Abe. The more knowledgeable mages, who could feel the mana swirling through the air. Both of them weeping, falling to their knees, staring at the scene in tearful rapture. Girshan had seen Abe flayed of all the flesh on his back before, and the telurian hadn't made a single sound. But in seeing this, he seemed wracked with grief. Xavier and Jura looked between the two. One with abject concern, the other with something akin to anxious disgust. Stuck between wondering whether she should comfort them, or insult them for their weakness. Both were, in her mind, the actions of a friend – leaving her disturbed.

Only for a moment though, it happened fast. Tyr opened his eyes, two burning orbs of azure light, they'd been closed throughout most of the fight – but no longer. All around them came a sea of crimson fire, burning with such radiance that the shadows were thrown away from the clearing. Abe had known that Tyr possessed an inner strength, something he had yet to reveal, but this...

“Mana!” Yana snapped from the melancholy and realized the danger they were in. Rapidly, the opaque shield began to crack and wither under the firestorm. Alpha was turned to dust, Tyr in the center of it all, howling in mournful agony. Rage and will. A need to make everything in the vicinity fade from existence, including himself... “It's breaking!”

Abe burst into action, red face streaked with tears as he slammed his staff into the ground, throwing his body into overdrive. Rapidly expending his mana, all seemed lost as the effort to do so was crushed by the wild spira resisting his attempts to ward against it. Just as they considered the fact that they might truly die here, Jura and Xavier holding each other tight with wide eyes...

It ended. Billowing steam came from their frizzy hair. Left to gaze upon a perfect circle of thirty meters, completely bereft of life. The ground dry and cracked, all greenery burnt to fine ash beneath those flames.

Tyr remained still. Head high, looking up at the pale blue sky beyond the artificial clearing he'd made. For a brief moment, all was silent. Even the spot upon the ground that should have been protected by the array was simply... Dead.

“...Tyr?” Yana whispered. They were all close now, it had been over two months within the astral space since they'd met. But every time she thought she understood him, she found that she didn't know him at all. The shaking of his hands, her attempts to comfort him, Xavier's predilection for cracking a joke to relax the group, or Jura's bizarre way of speaking... Abe or Girshan, one of the two, would always shake their heads and warn them off. He was their friend now, but something was broken inside of him that could not be fixed so easily.

“Tyr?” Yana repeated, a bit louder this time. Girshan's mouth was a harsh line, staring pointedly at the man with an inscrutable expression. Abe stared dead eyed at the destruction all around them. His grimoire still held in his dimensional ring, taking no action to take note of the phenomena as he might've. Nobody knew what to say, for quite some time they all just stood there and watched.

“What the hell was that!?” Jura cried aloud. She'd never seen magic like that. Humans were capable of terrible things. Things worse than this, but Tyr was just a boy barely twenty years of age. Five years younger than her, and this spell... It existed far outside her understanding of magic. His only ritual was the dance, the humming, and strumming of his instrument. A silent, death, like the whole thing had been a part of some baleful funeral proceeding.

“Me.” Tyr replied softly, finger pressed into his chest. His clothes had burnt away beneath the pressure of his own magic. His bare skin wreathed with vaporous mist. Reforged in the fire, scalding away everything, even the tears. “Just me.”

A pile of items fell to the ground with a clamor, and before they had been given the chance to say anything more, Tyr was gone. Running as fast as he could from the phantom of that damned gorilla who wouldn't stop thanking him for what he'd just done. He could here it in his head, Tyr could hear them all - each and every one of him praising him as if he'd given them a great gift.