A terrible screech filled the air, and Leon’s blood boiled in response. Pain wracked his body as his magic flew out of his control. The three giant banshees, their awful visages trained directly on him and his team, swiftly descended upon them from the black clouds above.

With gritted teeth, Leon raised his hand and summoned Iron Pride. The power of his sword and the Universe Fragment within steadied him even as the banshees continued to shriek. Tiraeses was forced to his knees and Mari’s Ulta suit locked up, leaving Leon the only one able to act.

And act he did. He forced his blood to calm, sending bolts of silver-blue lightning coursing through his veins. Then, in an instant, a torrent of magic flowed from his heart, down the length of his arm, and into Iron Pride. The Iron Needle picked up on his intent and added its power to his, and more than a hundred bolts of lightning erupted from Iron Pride’s blade.

This storm of silver-blue lightning raked across the leading wraith. They’d only descended about halfway when the first of Leon’s bolts struck, and the leading banshee let off a different shriek as its descent was arrested. It had the equivalent of ninth-tier magic, but despite that, and the fact that it clearly couldn’t be judged entirely on human terms, the shroud of darkness that veiled the creature melted away before the Thunderbird’s lightning.

From within his soul realm, Leon could sense the pride the Thunderbird had in witnessing her power tear through such a dark creature, but she remained silent. This wasn’t the time to distract him by talking.

Unfortunately, while the first banshee was turned back by Leon’s display of power, it wasn’t meaningfully harmed, and the other two descended even quicker. Leon swung his blade and let off another hundred lightning bolts. The ground shook with the tremendous clapping of thunder, while the hills around them were illuminated like they hadn’t been since the sun disappeared behind the omnipresent black clouds. The two other banshees had to pull back from their dive, though, like the first, neither were fully fought off.

Their shrieking ended, however, allowing Leon’s teammates to recover—Tiraeses shot back to his feet while Mari’s suit unlocked, the magic powering it allowed to flow once again.

With hardly a moment to stop and think, Mari launched herself into the air so powerfully that Leon and Tiraeses were consumed in a dust cloud in her wake. Twin blades of blue light erupted from the wrists of her suit, and she dove straight into her chosen target’s mantle of darkness, slicing and gouging all the while.

Tiraeses, meanwhile, raised his arms to his sides, and what must’ve been thousands of motes of light gently drifted off of his body, as if he’d been secretly carrying around countless fireflies and was now letting them loose. These motes of light circled him and Leon, their light coming close to matching that of the lightning that continued to stream out of Leon’s sword, and then blasted toward the closest unengaged banshee with immense speed. The banshee hardly had an opportunity to react before Tiraeses’ light ripped into its veil.

Seeing Tiraeses and Mari engaging the two low-flying banshees, Leon glared at the first one, still higher than those two and still kept at bay by his lightning. Leon continued to let his power flow through his arm and into Iron Pride, fueling his continuous attacks, but at the same time, he carved off a bit of power that flowed through his other arm.

Leon took a deep breath and used a single tiny bolt of the Thunderbird’s lightning to aid him in clearing his head. He was strong now, and knew for certain that he could obliterate the monsters that he’d grown up fearing, having done so multiple times to retrieve the Iron Needle. However, that visceral terror that had so often gripped him as a child when hearing their distant shrieks in the Forest of Black and White was hard to shake, and reared its ugly head now that he was confronting three gargantuan examples of the twisted creatures.

But Leon was also much older now, with much more experience, power, and faith in that power. He banished that fear from his mind and focused only on what he wanted. His power resonated with his desires, seeming to take on a life of its own, and silver-blue lightning began to spark around his left hand. Those sparks coalesced into the image of a small bird, but it grew rapidly as more of Leon’s power was concentrated within it.

In only a few seconds, Leon found himself holding a bird the size of a large hawk made entirely out of silver-blue lightning. With only the barest hint of a command from Leon, that bird took off, shooting straight into the sky directly at the first banshee.

Leon didn’t have to keep giving it orders; the bird acted almost entirely on its own. He only had to keep in mind what he wanted it to do, and that was to do as much damage as possible to the banshee he’d sent it after.

The lightning bird did exactly that, diving and tearing into with beak and talon the banshee’s black shroud. Tendrils of darkness shot out to swat at the bird, but the darkness melted away on contact with Leon’s power, leaving his summoned creature unblemished. It shrieked again, and Leon’s blood went into turmoil once again, causing the near-continuous stream of lightning from Iron Pride to temporarily cease, but the lightning bird he’d conjured was unaffected and kept attacking. It had no mind of its own, it was merely an extension of Leon’s will, and so mental attacks had no effect upon it.

The banshee shrieked again and again, with less and less power every time. Leon struggled to maintain his control over his power, but he still fired off two hundred more bolts, shredding the last of the banshee’s armor of darkness, leaving its wrinkled and desiccated body bare for all to see.

It tried to physically attack Leon’s conjured bird, but it was far too slow to catch the nimble lightning-based avian. And without its shroud of darkness, it began to fall from the sky, shrieking all the while. Leon’s bird ripped and tore into its flesh, easily cleaving through the monster despite the vast difference in their sizes. First, an arm was severed, and then a leg. The other leg followed, and the remaining arm only a moment after. The bird then punched several holes through the monster’s torso before darting back and, with an earth-shaking clap of thunder, severed the banshee’s neck, cutting it off mid-shriek.

The banshee fell in many pieces, hitting the ground only a couple hundred feet away.

In this short time, Mari’s suit locked again as the three banshee’s wails filled the air again—growing weaker with the felling of Leon’s chosen target, but not vanishing entirely. She dropped from the sky, hitting the ground with teeth-shaking force. The banshee above was hurt, as the glowing wounds it had sustained from Mari’s blades of blue light testified. However, it was still airborne, and still a tremendous threat. It shrieked as dozens of tendrils of darkness formed from the shadow cast by Mari’s own suit, binding the enormous suit to the ground.

Leon could hear the young woman screaming colorful curses within it, so he knew she wasn’t gravely wounded, so he concentrated instead on her opponent. That concentration was all his conjured bird needed to dive after its second victim.

At the same time, light flashed as Tiraeses augmented his motes of light with bright rays of brilliant white light that carved off whole sections of smoky darkness from his banshee’s form. Unlike with Leon’s lightning, however, that darkness quickly returned, though not quickly enough to protect it from all of Tiraeses’ follow-up motes of light.

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The banshee took damage, rapidly accumulating tiny cuts, but not enough to immediately impair its combat potential. As Tiraeses kept up the pressure, his shadow bent and grew, until it reached out with hands that were almost physical and pulled his arms back, restraining him. His motes of light didn’t vanish, but he ceased to make more…

… at least until light shone from his eyes and underneath his skin, and he ripped himself free of the dark restraints. He growled incoherently as this inner light seemed to concentrate around his head, banishing the darkness around him, and he resumed his attacks upon his banshee with redoubled effort.

Leon’s conjured bird, meanwhile, busied itself ripping into the second banshee. It shrieked and shrieked, but Leon was already growing used to it and was more and more able to resist its dark power. He grinned behind his helmet, the thrill of facing down such a terrible foe of his childhood so terribly realized and empowered, and still finding it wanting was intoxicating. His golden eyes flashed a darker color for just a moment as he glared at the monster, Iron Pride extended toward it, and one massive lightning bolt exploded out at it.

The silver-blue bolt hit the banshee about as instantly as it possibly could have, immediately tearing away all the smoky darkness it had been cloaked in and shattering its body. It fell in even more pieces than the previous banshee had a moment before.

Leon’s summoned bird then turned and focused on the remaining monster while Leon took a second to recover from the exertion.

But he only needed one second before his lightning was added to Tiraeses’ light, and together, the two carved the banshee like a cake, and a battle that had taken barely more than two minutes left three ninth-tier equivalent beings smitten on the hills around Leon’s team.

With their shrieks silenced forever, Mari’s Ulta suit unlocked once more, and she forced it back to its feet, cursing all the while. Leon wasn’t sure if there was some translation issue or if he just lacked the cultural context to understand, but he was certain she said something about ‘rotten cheesy dicks’ in regard to the banshees. At least he was confident she wasn’t badly hurt if she could still run her mouth in such a way.

They didn’t get much of a chance to stop and relish their victory, however, as purple lightning flashed in the clouds above, and the darkness magic in the air seemed to grow thick.

“The Black Veil!” Mari suddenly shouted, fear dripping from her voice. “This was just the opening bit! It’s callin’ for reinforcements! We have’ta break it!”

Leon needed nothing more than that and launched himself down the hill. They’d tried to bypass the Black Veil out of caution born from their glimpse of one of the banshees. There was not much reason to show that caution now. Besides, now that he knew what to look for, he could still sense the Black Veil preventing them from continuing into the Mandian Lands.

So, he sprinted for the low stone wall surrounded by decayed corpses over which hung the black curtain looking like an oily waterfall. He ignored everything else, focusing so intently on destroying that stone wall that his conjured bird sped past him and slammed into it like a meteor. Leon slowed for a moment in surprise as the conjured bird exploded, smashing a hole right in the center of the wall and bathing the curtain of darkness in lightning.

The curtain survived about as long as one made of mundane cloth would and dissipated.

“Get through it!” Mari shouted. “Before more of the rotten shits arrive!”

Leon simply smiled at the effect of his power, and together, the three of them tore through the hole punched through the Black Veil, and burst into the Mandian Lands.

The Mandian Lands were even worse than the Plains of Paradise and Many-Flowered Hills; the air on the other side of the Black Veil was choked with darkness magic, and the landscape was black as pitch, with nothing growing anywhere. The remains of settlements pushed out of the blackened ground like weeds, while Leon saw wispy-thin trails of darkness swirling about the ground. The air was so thick with darkness magic that he could barely breathe.

“Keep going!” Mari insisted as her Ulta suit blasted past him.

Leon followed, trusting in her experience, and Tiraeses followed on his heels. The three ran as fast as they were able, leaving the broken Black Veil behind. Only after they’d traveled for several miles did Mari finally start to slow down, eventually coming to a halt on a shallow hill with a decent view of the surroundings.

“Shit, fuck, shit,” she muttered.

“By the gods…” Tiraeses added. “Those creatures… awful… We have done the universe a great service in ending them, thank the brothers of war, Valiant Ashatar and Strong Ashagon.”

“There’s more where those fucks came from, trust that,” Mari spat. “There’s always fuckin’ more.”

“We still made it through,” Leon said. “These are the Mandian Lands, aren’t they?”

“Not anymore,” Mari cynically stated.

“These lands will always belong to Mandious, Lord of All in Heaven,” Tiraeses argued.

“Open your eyes, old man. Ain’t no gods around these parts no more! Hasn’t been one here for a while!”

Tiraeses opened his mouth to continue arguing, while Leon was about to jump in to end this before it became more heated—though he quietly agreed with Mari—when all three of them spun around to face something new: a disturbance in the darkness magic surrounding them, which took the form of a cultist wreathed in shadow. This one, however, had two human-sized eyes glowing red beneath the darkness enshrouding their body.

Curiously, though, Leon couldn’t sense a single speck of killing intent—or much power of any kind—from the shrouded figure.

“Interesting…” they murmured, their voice warbling and changing in pitch between each syllable, further disguising who they might be. “You… I don’t know…” they said as their red eyes turned to Leon. “You must be another interloper. But you…” Their eyes turned in Tiraeses’ direction. “You… I do know. Have you finally come to meet the Red-Eyed One? I can play that role for you, if you wish…”

Leon snuck a glance at Tiraeses and saw that the old monk wore an expression of deep confusion.

“Who in the name of the gods are you?” the orange-skinned man demanded to know.

“The Hand of Just Helior,” the figure replied, “come to render his judgment upon all of the universe.” The figure turned once more to Leon. “Those who sent you will fail. You will die here in vain. But this need not be. The truest of gods wishes to send you home. You have tried to leave before, have you not?”

Leon scowled behind his helmet as he felt the gazes of Mari and Tiraeses fall upon him.

“Why remain here, fighting for those already lost? Return to your home, return to your life, be free of the troubles of this plane. You need only agree, and you will be on your way.”

The figure raised a hand and a black sphere with a core of dark blue light appeared next to it.

The entrance to a spatial tunnel. One that might send him back to Aeterna.

Might.

Leon almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Instead, he brandished Iron Pride at the figure and fired a bolt of lightning at them.

The bolt passed through the figure harmlessly; they were only a projection and not physically present.

The figure audibly scoffed. “Not even the strength of a Universe Fragment will save you, now, interloper.” The spatial sphere next to them vanished as they lowered their arm. “Taking on the problems of others will only get you killed, you know?” The figure turned again to Tiraeses. “Your influence, no doubt. You always were stubborn.”

“Who are you?!” Tiraeses roared.

The figure chuckled and disappeared, leaving only one last statement floating upon the breeze.

“The voice of the one true god, who will usher a new era upon the universe…”

The darkness surrounding the group thickened even further, and Leon could almost feel his mind being squeezed by the pressure. He flooded his system with silver-blue lightning and spared a bolt for Tiraeses, who gave him a grateful look.

Mari, who seemed unaffected, said, “We should keep movin’. If them fuckers know we’re here…”

“Agreed,” Leon said. “Just… where are we to go from here?”

“Doesn’t matter. Walk and talk,” Mari advocated, and without argument, all three got moving again.

And yet, Leon felt no better for it. They had reached the Mandian Lands, but with the darkness pressing in around them and the knowledge that they were now apparently being tracked, he felt more tracked than before. It wasn’t a position he enjoyed, and he found himself musing on it as he glanced at Tiraeses.

The old monk looked like he was thinking about as hard as he could be while keeping pace, but their encounter had clearly shaken him.

Leon could understand why. This wasn’t the time to ask Tiraeses any questions, but he vowed that that time would come before the day was done…