Depthless Hunger

It was as if Zae Zin Nim had awakened again. Fear gave way to a savage joy as she fought alongside Kai and she pushed herself to greater heights, channeling all that she had learned and cultivated against her father's sect. They wanted to take her back like some errant little girl, but she wasn't that girl anymore.

Whenever she looked at Kai she felt another surge of warmth. He had changed - his body seemed to be shifting, flickering with a monstrous shadow every time he attacked. Yet he was still the man she loved and she didn't really care if he swept her up in those unnecessarily large hands or these new claws. Either way, she would be safe.

Even Omilaena fighting alongside them didn't disrupt their shared techniques, and in fact she maneuvered between them with surprising ease. In a strange way it felt right for her to be there, adding her piercing strikes to Zae Zin Nim's flow and Kai's ferocity.

That should have been strange, but she didn't let it distract her. They needed to defend Ceryyn, who was grievously injured, and that wasn't easy with opponents like Lilaetiel around. At least the demoness seemed to have been seriously hampered by trying to absorb the elven glamour - she staggered with dimmed eyes, still feral but less aggressive.

A horn sounded from the east and for a moment Zae Zin Nim was baffled. She saw troops marching toward them, wearing the lacquered armor of the Flaeren Dominion. Why were they attacking now? Were they threatened, or had this always been the plan?

"We need to move!" Omilaena called. She was right, they needed to get north and escape like Ceryyn had hinted. Hopefully she meant there was a hidden totem, powerful enough to allow them to escape the Commonwealth altogether.

Kai knelt down and threw Ceryyn over one shoulder to retreat north. Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena moved to defend him as they angled away from the advancing army, but the Brightwind cultivators weren't about to give up. There were still four of them, pushing Zae Zin Nim to her limits deflecting all of their qi attacks.

"Loose!" Someone shouted even over the sounds of the battle and Zae Zin Nim heard arrows take flight. She turned just in time to see one of them cutting through the air towards Kai's back.

She struck the side of the shaft with her palm and flinched. Her blow knocked the arrow away, but she felt a line of pain across her palm. Somehow the arrow had been imbued with an enormous amount of chakra, enough that it could be dangerous even to someone of her strength.

And there were a lot more of them. She saw that the Flaeren Dominion was advancing a line of chakra-armored warriors with archers behind them. The vast majority of the arrows had been aimed at the demons... not just Anaelina and Lilaetiel, but more who were pouring out of the city. Whether this was coincidence or just taking advantage, it seemed both sides intended to do battle now.

If they could have run north in that moment, they might have been able to escape the battle entirely. But her father's cultivators remained in the way, still focused on capturing her no matter what wars broke out around them. There was no way to break through them quickly enough.

"Loose!" In the time they were held there, the cry ran out again. This time the arrows soared like a flock of skeletal birds, briefly shading the plaza as they arced downward.

Zae Zin Nim took a deep breath, ready to deflect as many as she could. She didn't think she could stop them all and could only hope those that got through weren't lethal.

Except at that moment Kai unleashed his Void Gaze. He had much of the plaza in his sight, halting many of the fighters and freezing a set of arrows in place overhead. Zae Zin Nim was frozen as well, but she didn't try to resist, just let herself be fixed by Kai's burning gaze.

He swept her and Omilaena along with him and arrows tumbled behind them as they passed out of his sight. They collectively leapt over the Brightwind line, which was too shaken to counter-attack just yet, and reached the other side. They should have been home free.

Except that, on the northern edge of the plaza, she saw that the Commonwealth army was closing in. Golden armor, demonic arts users, and more... her personal battle was about to be swept away in a war that didn't care in the slightest about any of them.

.

..

.

In a fair fight, Omilaena would have bet on herself over any of the Brightwind cultivators. She would be doing her best to make the fight unfair in her favor, so she would also give herself good odds against almost all the demons who were joining the battle. But now that both the Commonwealth and Dominion armies had arrived, things were about to devolve into a chaotic melee where no one was safe.

Kai had gotten them away from the heart of the fighting and those clouds of arrows, but they had to skirt around the Commonwealth army and there were demons everywhere now. She followed the others even though she doubted they could get out so cleanly.

Clearly, this was more than a squabble or a vendetta. Both sides had brought their armies planning to fake peace and then wage war. She wasn't even sure that their fight had been the spark that lit everything off: she could sense other battles in Traeton, including trying to strike the First Crest to disrupt power. The Flaeren Dominion army took significant time to prepare all their chakra armor, so they couldn't march on a heartbeat and they must have been planning this.

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Omilaena smirked as she realized that almost all of them might be irrelevant in the calculus of the war. It was even likely that Lilaetiel was the real target: she was one of only thirty true demons and one of the stronger among them, so taking her out while she was hunting might tip the balance.

"Enough!" The Brightwind cultivators streaked overhead, leaping from flying swords to land in their path again. "Mistress, these barbarians are mad, please come back home with us!"

"No." Zae Zin Nim prepared to fight again, but Omilaena was more concerned about how she had been tracked.

Here on Rosemount they couldn't pick out her qi so easily as on Deadwaste, but they had clearly been able to track her through the battle. Most likely if Zae Zin Nim awakened her chakra she would be able to hide from them for good. Barring that, they would need to use more intensive methods to escape this time.

Kai glanced at her and tilted his head north, suggesting further retreat. Omilaena nodded in response and drew in a deep breath. While Zae Zin Nim was still wasting the enemy's time arguing, Omilaena exhaled a vast cloud of poisonous smoke, forcing the Brightwind cultivators to retreat.

Her group plunged through, aiming to disappear into the city. But they hadn't gone far when a rope of qi lashed out, catching Zae Zin Nim's ankle. She stumbled, and even though Omilaena severed the rope the next second, it slowed them down.

"Did you think that would work?" One of the Brightwind cultivators strolled out of the poisonous cloud with a smirk. He and the others were surrounded by auras of shimmering qi. "We control the winds, harlot. Your tricks are useless against us."

That was an unfortunate surprise, but Omilaena wasn't worried... because Kai wasn't with them. The Brightwind cultivators prepared more ropes of binding qi, ignoring the smoke they thought was harmless. They should have been paying more attention, because black smoke roiled in a maw within.

When Kai exhaled, his Baleful Breath swept through the poison like a wall. It met the qi wind and rolled through implacably, flashing with red and yellow fragments of power. One of the cultivators was consumed instantly and the others retreated in panic, at least two severely burned. That might finally have crippled them, but they still had to escape the city.

Now they'd finally earned themselves a straight path down one of the outer streets. Yet Omilaena saw there was another demon watching from a rooftop. Worse, it was one of the leaders, with over 1000 Power. He was looking directly at them and there was no telling whether or not he would decide they were worthy prey.

Then an enormous suit of red and black armor launched itself against the side of the building. There was a man inside it, especially if this was who Omilaena guessed, but he was entirely invisible inside the lacquered metal. He swung a sword twice the size of an adult, slashing through the building in his attempt to cut the demon leader in half.

Somehow the demon caught the sword by the edge, but it still drove him backward. As the two began fighting, Omilaena got a better look at the armored warrior and confirmed who it was...

Name: Tormundon the Bloodclad

Total Power: 1071

Heart of Steel: Emerald Rank (530)

Scarmiglione's Steel: Level 5 (125)

Physique: D-7 (235)

Soul Level: 9 (81)

Bloodclad Armor (+100)

>

Tormundon the Bloodclad had been a well-known warrior of the Dominion when she had first fled Rosemount, and it seemed like he'd only grown more powerful in her absence. If the Dominion was adding warriors like him to the battlefield they were serious about this.

Not enough soldiers to launch a full invasion, but enough real powers to try to decapitate the demonic leadership. That was a worst case scenario for them, especially as a successful retreat seemed less and less likely.

.

..

.

So far Kai hadn't taken any serious injuries, and Behemoth's Heart prevented him from getting tired, but the battle was fatiguing him mentally. There were constant new threats from every side, with new powers, new abilities, and new motivations. If he'd been thrown into a battle like this when he first arrived in Rosemount, he would have been overwhelmed just by the chaos of it.

Of course he was the best choice to carry Ceryyn, but fighting with one arm tied while defending her was limiting. He wished that he could throw her into his spatial ring, but that would be harmful. At least they seemed to have left Zae Zin Nim's sect behind. When they finally reached a street corner of relative peace, they slowed to a halt by unspoken agreement.

"Ceryyn said to go north," Zae Zin Nim said. "Teleportation is our best path out of this."

"The battle isn't much better in that direction." Omilaena manifested her goggles and looked ahead before wincing. "The path of least resistance would be northeast."

"But we're limited, and we lost the crystal ship..."

"No, I got that." Kai gestured to his spatial ring. "I grabbed it during the fight at the plaza. But are you sure we want to be flying right now?"

There were others in the air, especially Commonwealth soldiers flying on marble slabs, but they were going down all around them. The Flaeren Dominion seemed to have highly dangerous archers and there were people who could used ranged chakra everywhere. On the streets they were hidden from the main armies, but anyone in the sky made themselves a target.

Zae Zin Nim sighed. "Alright, then we keep running north and hope-"

"Stop right there!" A group of Commonwealth soldiers marched down the street toward them, led by a demonic arts user. "All of you are wanted by high command for questioning!"

"You're doing this now?" Omilaena asked contemptuously.

"Stand down! If you resist, we will-"

Kai sensed the massive force when it arrived, but not fast enough to do anything about it. An enormous armored warrior he'd seen before crashed down into the street and swung an over-sized blade that swept through all of the Commonwealth soldiers as if they were made of paper. He hadn't even been targeting them, he just cleared them out like distractions.

"Who the hell are you?" A voice rumbled from within the armor. There was no visor, just a carved face of an ogre. His armor seemed to be no cheap gimmick he had purchased, it was power he had clearly built up himself through several different abilities. Earlier he had attacked the leader of the demon council and Kai had figured they would be fighting for a while.

Except his enormous blade was completely coated in purple blood. Had he actually won the battle?

"Answer! I am Tormundon the Bloodclad, bane of all demons, but are you their enemies or their pawns?"

Facing someone like that, it seemed obvious they should claim to be enemies. Was it possible that Tormundon knew about Kai's alliance with Gorutiel, or how Omilaena had spent months working with Troulon? Answering with a lie might be even worse, because trying to fight someone like this could be a problem. That armor was likely to repel direct attacks, so unless they could get poison through its defenses, this would be a difficult fight.

A flame lit in the chest of the giant armor, quiet and subtle. It almost seemed like it might be a new power until the man gave a choked gasp. The flame spread through his armor, red as blood. Tormundon the Bloodclad was consumed - body, armor, and soul - and then the flames faded away peacefully.

Across the fading embers stood a slender demon. Slightly tall but not towering, fit but not muscular, striking but not handsome. He lowered two fingers and the red flames died away there as well. As Kai saw his soul and for the first time witnessed a real power of Rosemount, he realized that this could only be one man.

Matiavel the Destroyer.