The group swiftly made their way to Caelarion Glade through the tree branches.
Dashing like a precise blur of feathers and light, Flint took the lead. Behind him followed five Dawnbind Nyxes: Theron, the antlered archer, silent and sharp-eyed; Berun, leopard-striped and calm, channeling elemental force with every breath; Jikku, a yellow-tailed macaque, swift and agile with twin crescent blades at his sides; Nima, squirrel-like and quick-footed, her chakram flashing with each motion; and Faela, sharp-eyed like an owl, her grip steady on a javelin always ready to strike.
The atmosphere of the forest shifted as they moved forward. Then they smelled it, thick and distinct, a sharp, metallic smell… Blood.
The group immediately stopped. Without saying a word, Flint moved forward, squatted down, and shoved a bunch of leaves aside. That's when he saw them… the bodies.
Six druids lay scattered across the grove, their robes torn, blood smeared across the moss. One was slumped against a root, his throat clawed open. Another lay sprawled beneath a fallen shimmerleaf, half his body missing.
"No…" Flint breathed.
He knelt beside one after the other, searching the faces. But none was Myri.
His feathers twitched. "Check the perimeter. Look for survivors."
They spread out. Faela looked at the pulse points. Jikku looked up at the treetops. Nima sniffed around in the brushes.
Berun nudged a twisted leg with his boot. "Whatever did this… didn't just kill. It enjoyed it."
Flint's eyes moved rapidly across the carnage. No signs of a beast's feeding. No clean strikes. Just fun slaughter.
Then something clicked in the air, a sudden drop in pressure, like the forest itself was holding its breath.
Then a scream.
"AAAGH!"
One moment Theron was scanning the upper boughs with bow half drawn. The next, only his antlers clattered to the earth.
Above, branches rustled as fine droplets of blood rained down.
"Sides!" Flint shouted as they fell into a defensive circle with their backs to one another, weapons out, and eyes looking in all directions.
The woods around them shifted, leaves rattling like the hiss of snakes.
"Watch the trees!" Faela snapped, her javelin spinning in hand.
Then a blur.
"Ugh-AEEEH! Help!"
A clawed black limb whipped from the fog, snapping around Nima's torso. She screamed as it yanked her into the air, fastand cruel.
"Please, help! I don't want to die!" she kept screaming.
"Hold on!" Feathers unfurling in a flash of light, Flint leaped after her.
He vaulted up to a branch and saw it.
In a glimpse, the creature's jaws snapped shut, tearing her in two midair. Her chakram spun free, clattering down to the roots below as blood splattered across the foliage.
A heartbeat later, only her lower half dropped from the canopy with a sickening thud.
Flint stood frozen, just for a second, then rage surged through his limbs.
He dove back down.
"RAIKO-TAHAL!!"
he roared, landing before the others as arcs of electricity cracked through his feathers.
At last, the beast revealed itself.
It was an Aeralith, corrupted, but not like any they had seen before. It loomed from the treetops, its body malformed and grotesque. Its feathers had molted away in strips, exposing sinew slick with black rot. Tendrils writhed from its back like smoke-fed leeches. Its mouth split too wide, full of yellowed bone and twitching muscle. Red eyes glowed with unnatural focus.
WRAAAAGH — the beast screeched, launching its next attack.
Berun charged first, roaring as his staff coiled low with bending Aeras, but the air strike barely scraped it. Faela hurled a javelin into its neck, the shaft snapped with a sickening crack.
Jikku flipped forward, shrieking, his twin blades flashing across its back, only for a tendril to lash him mid-spin, hurling him into a tree with a crunch of ribs.
"Keep it grounded!" Flint shouted, sliding under a swipe. "Watch the tendrils!"
The Aeralith let out another rasping cry. A tendril snapped around Faela's leg, yanking her into the air.
Flint lunged, slicing it clean with his talons as he caught her midair. Sparks flared where his claws struck.
"Berun, geo spikes, now!"
The leopard Nyx leapt, chanting his sigil from above, but the beast twisted, slamming him down with its shoulder. Berun hit the ground hard, coughing blood.
Flint rolled beneath it, slid between its legs, and came up with a slash into its exposed belly. Slashing it open as viscera spilled, but the monster didn't slow.
"You want to dance?" Flint snarled. "Let's dance!"
"RAIKO-SURGE!"
His feathers sharpened like quills, crackling with energy, and electricity exploded from them. He dodged with almost unfathomable speed, darting between the trunks in sudden flashes. Every time he reappeared, a booming kick slammed into the beast from a different direction, jarring its enormous body with dazzling bursts of force charged with Ether.
It staggered, shrieking in pain, but still refused to fall.
Then Flint soared above it, both hands clutching his dagger, blade aimed to the sky.
"Now this is your last dance…"
"RAIKO-SPEAR!"
A bolt of Ether-charged lightning cracked down from the sky, striking Flint's upraised dagger like a lightning rod. The blade surged with energy, overcharged and blazing. With a roar, he swung it downward, driving the full force of the storm through the beast's chest.
The corrupted Aeralith convulsed, letting out one final, broken wail before collapsing in a smoking, twitching heap.
There was silence.
Two were dead.
Jikku groaned, barely alive. Faela limped. Berun stood, bloodied and panting.
Flint alone seemed untouched, his chest heaving, eyes sharp and burning.
He turned his gaze west, toward Caelarion Glade.
"Myri…" he whispered.
Then louder, to the others: "We're not done. Move!."
-break-
The world blurred past Flint as he sprinted across the upper branches, his feet barely touching the barks. Trees whipped by, but his thoughts raced faster.
"You are meant to protect Skyland... you just Flint things up...Someone has to care."
Myri's words echoed in his skull relentlessly while his mind flashed images, her voice, her screams, her body still, her back turned and lifeless.
"I can't lose her too." he whispered.
They crested the last ridge. Below, Caelarion Glade stretched out and the sight was carnage.
Once tucked away among the roots of tall trees, the burrowed village was now ripped apart and desecrated. The woven reed doors of the dens carved into the bases of old trunks were smoldering and shredded. Bark and thatch shelters were burned to cinders or trampled underfoot, their charred frames protruding from the ground like shattered bones. In the mud, which was spotted with blood and ash, were fallen ornaments and strewn-about possessions. As though the forest itself held its breath in mourning, the stench of smoke and scorched moss hung heavy in the air.
Feathers flaring, Flint leaped from the treeline and landed hard close to the village's main spiral roots. As they darted between root-bound shelters, Kinitu warriors engaged in combat with shadowed creatures that lunged with eyes like coals and bone-hardened claws, while others dragged the injured into hollowed-out dens. Beside a broken statue, a druid's body was crumpled, his Ether sigils still flickering feebly. From inside a collapsed burrow, another screamed, but her cries were cut short when black limbs disappeared into the smoke-choked undergrowth.
A mother Kinitu crouched over two small kits, shielding them with her body as one of the beasts loomed above, grotesque and rotting.
Flint's eyes locked.
"RAIKO-KICK"
His taloned leg crackled with sparks as he launched forward like a bolt of sparkling rage. He struck mid-lunge, tearing the creature in half. The crack of bone and flash of lightning lit the moment like a sudden flare of day.
"Find shelter. Now." he said, crouching by the family, his voice low and firm.
Then he was up again, scanning the scene without pause. A trail of shattered huts and fresh corpses marked the path of the beasts.
Behind him, the rest of his squad arrived, battered, but standing. Faela limped, javelin in hand. Berun coughed blood. Jikku's blade arm hung limp, but his teeth were bared in defiance.
"Tavira! Berun! Hold that line. Jikku, look for survivors, get them support!" Flint ordered.
His attention was abruptly diverted to the left by a heavy thud. A body crashed into a split tree hollow's roots. Bloodied but upright, Tavira leaned against a tree. Near her, Rikuin, barely recognizable, used a broken spear shaft to ward off a snarling beast.
Flint lunged, feathers crackling, and sliced clean through the creature mid-air, dropping instantly.
"Flint." Breathing steadily but shallowly, Rikuin rasped. "You came..."
Flint grasped his arm. "Glad you're still breathing, little buddy."
He glanced around sharply. "Where are the druids?"
Tavira coughed, blood spotting her lips. "Some went west, near the old well. There was a girl with antlers helping pull survivors—"
She was in mid sentence when Flint was already gone.
Every corrupted Aeralith in his path was like another wall, and every fell by his feathers, blade, and lightnin, moving like an unstopable storm. Talons sparked, breath came ragged, and the Ether flared wild and unstable around him with each strike.
He saw her as he ripped through broken leaves.
Myri's arms glowed with Physio sigils as she knelt next to a fallen building. Through the snapped trunks and vines, green threads of Ether coiled. Slowly, she raised a broken beam by commanding the roots, releasing a shivering Kinitu child from below.
A shadow shifted behind her.
A larger, silent Aeralith crept forward. Its tendrils writhed along its back, its claws dripping blood. A permanent snarl twisted half of its face.
Flint didn't hesitate.
"RAIKO-DASH!"
With lightning blazing through the mist, he charged ahead. Flint struck the beast in midair with a spinning slash as it lunged, tearing it apart in a single, blinding blow. Its body exploded into pieces that dispersed like damp ash.
Panting, he landed next to her.
Myri's eyes widened as she looked up. "You… came?"
He gave a faint, sparking smile. "I'll always have your back, no matter where you are."
She exhaled, shaken, then nodded. "Help me. We need to clear the last house. There are still others inside."
Together, like lightning and thunder they moved.
While Flint fought, Myri stayed close, her Physio sigils bending nature to her will. Branches cradled the wounded. Roots lifted fallen beams. Vines sealed open wounds. Flint stayed beside her, a shield of lightning in motion, his talons and blade cutting down every threat.
The corrupted tide broke slowly.
The remaining Aeraliths shrieked, twitched… then scattered into the undergrowth, vanishing between roots and shadow. Silence followed, pierced only by sobs, coughs, and the desperate calls of those still searching for the missing.
Someone cheered weakly. Then another. Hope bloomed for a brief second, until a voice cracked through the air.
"No… no, no! Rikuin!"
They rushed to the cry. Tavira knelt in a clearing soaked with blood. Rikuin lay in her arms, what was left of him. One arm gone. One leg mangled. His face torn, barely recognizable beneath dried blood and ash.
Flint fell to his knees. "No.. Little buddy?."
Myri rushed to him, Etherlight already glowing in her hands. She dropped to her knees, pressed her palms against his chest, and whispered through clenched breath, "Please… just stay with me. Come on, come back…"
The Ether, however, would not answer. Like water slipping through trembling hands, her sigils flickered and faded.
Her voice broke as she whispered, "I can't reach him." "He's already fading away."
Rikuin's eyes fluttered open, glassy and distant.
"…Ellowyn…" he whispered.
Myri leaned in, voice shaking. "Don't speak… please, save your strength…"
"…El…lowyn…"
The name slipped from his lips with the last of his breath.
Tavira sobbed, clutching his ruined scarf.
"Rikuin! No!... That damn Eldian girl said she was his friend… She should've been here… He trusted her… "
Her voice cracked, rising into a shout.
"Where was she?! WHERE WAS SHE?!"
Flint got up slowly, his face set in stone, his fists clenched, feathers sparking.
"Eldians?... Eldian?.. Why would we need them?" he muttered. "All they care about is their own peace."
"Flint…" Myri reached for him, her voice soft and unsteady, barely holding together.
However, he turned silently and walked into the woods.
She caught a glimpse of it behind him, a single tear trickling down his cheek, catching the last of the Etherlight before disappearing into the dark.