Tunde stepped out of the tunnels of the guardian of lightning, his footsteps echoing ominously down the passageway as he emerged onto the platform within the chasm. His eyes locked onto the figure standing beneath the burning presence of the master realm grand Ethralite, its harsh Ethra radiating against him and the very chasm they were in.

  Gone were the chains that once bound the Ethralite in place; the very walls now devoid of any runes, their power spent. He avoided the gaze of the Ethralite, who stood in human form with immaculate green robes, tanned features, and luminous green eyes that betrayed none of its true insectoid and jade crystal nature.

  "Isn’t this a tense situation?" the jade tyrant said with a chuckle. "Cultivator and true beast, both eager to tear each other apart. It almost brings tears to my eyes. Almost."

  Tunde stared into the cold, rage-filled eyes of Heito, noting the dead look the true beast gave him. He was resolved to settle this with bloodshed, that much Tunde could see, yet he couldn't help but feel weary, trying to muster his own anger at the true beast.

  "This is pointless," he began. Heito remained silent, much to the amusement of the tyrant. "There is nothing to be gained from this, only the amusement of the venerable master here," Tunde added.

  "Somehow," the grand Ethralite cut in, "I can’t help but feel those words were meant as an insult."

  Tunde bowed while shaking his head. "I beg the master’s forgiveness, but never so," he replied. "I merely intended to state to the cultivator in front of me that fighting to the death would not serve either of us."

  "Will it not?" Heito finally spoke, his voice filled with menace. "Would tearing your feeble heart out of your chest and biting into it right before your eyes do nothing but give me pleasure?" He continued, ignoring Tunde’s silence. "My sister died by your very hand."

  "Again, I had no—"

  "I do not care!" the true beast roared, his wings spreading wide, igniting with red and orange flames as wind Ethra swirled around him. "She was worth a hundred, no, a thousand of you! You and your feeble humans think you can come and take what is ours by birth? I will tear you limb from limb and paint these very walls with your blood!"

  "Who decides how much we’re worth?" Tunde asked softly. Heito paused, confused. "What?" he asked, not understanding.

  Tunde cracked his neck with a sigh, flexing his fingers. "How much we’re worth, who decides it?" he asked again.

  Heito still seemed perplexed. Tunde continued, "You come here, raging and shouting that true beasts and creatures of the wastelands are better than humans. Who told you that? Your superiors?"

  "Interesting," the tyrant said, watching with fascination. "A cultivator who challenges the way of power."

  "I was told Corespawns and true beasts were vile and evil. You were told the same about humans. I've killed my fair share of the denizens of the wastelands, and you have done the same," Tunde said. "Tell me then, Heito of the Blazewing clan, who was right? Those who send us to battle in their names, or we, the weak, who die in senseless battles to climb the blood-soaked path to power?"

  Heito shook his head, laughing loudly, his eyes burning with malevolence. "This was your plan? To talk me into sparing you? Pathetic," he snarled.

  "No," Tunde said, shaking his head softly. "I merely wanted to show you the truth. As much as I didn't want to kill your sister, she wanted me and my friends dead. I simply couldn’t agree with her."

  "Then I will take your severed head back to them. Black Rock, was it?" Heito said softly, red and orange Ethra bubbling around him. "I will show them, just as these walls lay in ruins, I will find them one by one and present their bloodied corpses to the king himself," he snarled.

  "Beautiful!" the tyrant cried out, his aura flashing as Tunde winced. Beside the master, two crystal swords took shape—plain green yet magnificent. Their edges glinted with a sharpness Tunde could only attribute to sword Ethra, or perhaps the Ethra of sharpness itself. He couldn’t say.

  One sword dropped in front of each of them. Heito glanced at the tyrant questioningly. "Let it not be said that I failed to uphold my promise," the tyrant said, floating higher. Heito picked up his blade, as did Tunde, grateful for the opportunity not to summon his relic again, at least not yet.

  He faced Heito, who waited for the tyrant to speak, while Tunde gathered his Ethra, his eyes imploring the true beast to see reason. Heito did not. Somewhere within Tunde, the cultivator accepted the inevitable outcome of the battle, his relaxed form shifting into a stance as the solid grip of the crystal blade remained steady in his hand, the light dying from his eyes.

  "Good," Heito said, "fight in futility."

  Tunde gave no response.

  "Begin!" the tyrant’s voice echoed from above.

  The cultivator and the true beast met in the air, beneath the glowing chasm walls radiating green with the jade aura of the tyrant, each breath they drew tasted of murder. The first impact of blade against blade was a metallic thundercrack, their Ethras tearing their surroundings apart, clashing and burning in the shadows of their respective forms.

  Heito swung through the air, and the crystal blade shrieked, its edge glowing with a raw fusion of Ethra and aura, but Tunde was gone, twisting away, soaring higher. Heito beat his wings, giving chase, enraged by his own inefficiency in striking the cultivator.

  It was like fighting a shadow. Each time he closed in on Tunde, the cultivator rolled aside or furled his body and dropped away. Each missed swing of his sword, each failed grasp with the biting edge of his blade, resonated inside Heito’s skull like a splash of acid.

  The rage from his sister’s death fueled his strength, but it also punished him. Now more than ever, the rage bit with the sound of Yumar’s urgent command, ordering the cultivator’s death.

  Tunde dived low, swooping toward the ground, and Heito followed. Projection Ethra techniques from both fighters stabbed at them, lancing and filling the air around them. They flew through flame projection techniques that blackened Tunde’s robes and stung his skin; void orb explosions that damaged the true beast’s wings and honed his hold on his rage.

  Closer, he came. Closer. Heito could smell the sweat on the cultivator’s skin. He could hear the drumbeat of his blood. He could taste the sweetness of his soon-to-be-accomplished revenge.

  Tunde sensed it, veering away with a grace Heito could not hope to match—a testament to his aerial lessons with Varis. Arresting his dive, a slash of Ethra-laced swing ripped across Heito’s face, cutting into his eyes. There was no scream of pain.

  The true beast experienced pain as others might feel grief, trauma, or frustration: to him, it was a helplessness, a wound within. It was something that could not and would not be tolerated, something that could only be overcome with the spilling of the cultivator’s blood and his head in his hand.

  The injury regenerated as he swung his blade in blind rage at the fleeing form of the cultivator. He could see again, dull and dim for a few moments, then with a clarity that defeated the bubbling aura and Ethra swirling in the air. At that moment, he didn’t see as a human would see. Heito saw the dark red colour of blood, and his prey flared brightest of all.

  When they met again, it was in a killing embrace. The true beast tore Tunde from the air, clutching him in his claws, bearing Tunde down, who grabbed his throat in surprise. They fell, and fell, and fell, crashing into the platform with a thunderous crack.

  They struck the floor in a roll that would break any disciple’s or adept’s bones, their tumbling bodies obliterating the beautifully etched carvings on the platform. This would have been a sacrilege at some point in history, but neither fighter noticed. Ethra and aura clashed again, and the walls lit up as if the runes that once sealed the tyrant again existed. Neither of them noticed that, either.

  Heito got a clawed hand around Tunde’s head. He beat Tunde’s skull against the floor once, twice, thrice, cracks webbing out along the platform in stone-splitting veins; a fourth time, a fifth—

  There was weakness then. Perhaps it should have been pain as well, but it was most definitely weakness. Heito’s grip slackened, his entire arm obliterated in a moment, literally burning away from the shoulder down, and the true beast was thrown back as the cultivator rose. In Tunde’s hands was a technique burning dark grey, a fusion between an imbuement and a projection technique—a thing of incineration.

  Tunde cancelled it and took to the air with a burst of speed, diving right at the true beast, leading with his crystal sword. Heito raised his own blade, feeling the flow of the incoming blows like whispered promises in warning, catching each of the cultivator’s attacks before they could impact against him.

  Crystal ground. Sparks sprayed, arcing out from the meeting blades, hypnotic in their falling beauty. For a moment, just a moment, Heito was with his sister in the Plains of the Burning Sands again, camping rough beneath the pale moon, watching fireflies play above the banked campfires of his gathered army.

  How peaceful that night had been, even with the thought of the coming war to be waged in the name of the king himself. How peaceful that one night was before the Kugan tore him away from his sister’s side—the sibling of his heart and not the created blood bastards that were the Corespawns—leaving her to fight alone, leaving her to die, leaving him to face this lonely existence and—

  Tunde impaled Heito as the true beast roared in agony, the memory violently cut short. The crystal blade stabbed into his side with biting rage. The two fighters were face to face—one a visage of bloodied true beast perfection, the other bearing a cold, dead look of absolute human rage, a rage made manifest without a single word.

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  As close as they were, despite the changes to Heito’s burning vision, he saw the weariness etched on Tunde’s features. The faint cuts and scratches from battles with the guardians marked Tunde’s flesh indelibly. This battle had rendered the lord ranker weak.

  “Die,” Tunde whispered, almost pleadingly.

  Heito’s lips peeled back with rage. He tried to speak, but words were difficult—not because of the burning pain in his side or the blood welling up in his throat, but because, in that moment, he was no longer a creature for whom speech was natural or necessary. Speech was a luxury he would not afford the cultivator; he would answer only in slavering roars and the death of his foe.

  Tunde saw this with clarity of mind. He saw the way Heito’s face twisted, trying to remember how to form words, blinded by rage. He saw that the true beast was, in fact, not dying.

  “Authority keeps this one alive!” the tyrant cried with unrestrained glee from above.

  The true beast moved with blurring speed, but Tunde was faster. He tore the blade free and leapt upward, taking to the sky. Bleeding and laughing, the true beast followed.

  They swooped between the cracks of the chasm, weaving through the conjured crystal columns manifesting around them, courtesy of the tyrant above. They broke into open air. Tunde was slower in the open, but he had prepared for this; he moved with a grace born of the few aerial trainings from the Highlord of the Talahan clan. Heito, with the unreal strength of beast muscle, was a gargoyle chasing a hawk. Tunde weaved, soared, and dived out of the true beast’s attacks, and—

  “Kill him.” The tyrant’s voice boomed from above, shocking Tunde as Heito’s maddened gaze widened into a smile.

  The true beast flared his wings in a blaze of raw Ethra and aura, the latter seemingly shaping into the visage of a crying bird, his sword leaving a trailing wake of burning bright Ethra.

  They raced low to the ground, hardly an arm’s reach from each other, a shrieking cry of power echoing within the chasm. Heito swung his crystal blade, releasing another Ethra technique that also took the shape of a crying bird. The effort made him cough blood, the price of unleashing such power.

  Without warning, Tunde climbed into the air, soaring as he unleashed his dominion technique.

  “This is your chance,” the tyrant’s voice boomed from above. “It was what you wanted, was it not?”

  Heito ignored the tyrant’s goading. He sensed Tunde tiring and saw it in the flicker of his Ethra. His opponent’s body rippled with the desperate sweetness of exhaustion. The first fight with the tyrant, the continuous battles with the guardians—yes, the prey’s strength was running dry.

  The true beast gathered speed, flying toward Tunde with the glee of a predator about to take down its prey. Tunde wove aside at the last minute from the jade crystal column that shot out of the ground. Heito, far less manoeuvrable and too eager with the scent of blood, crashed into it and went through it.

  “Do not fail me, Heito,” the now deadly calm voice of the tyrant said from above.

  Heito was close, close enough to raise his blade hand and reveal another technique that burned with harsh flame and wind Ethra. As they circled each other in a choking sphere of power, the true beast roared. The sound was exultant and instinctive, unfiltered emotion reeking more of triumph than rage.

  Heito’s mouth was still open when the crystal blade, hurled from Tunde’s left hand, struck. It tore through the other hand and chest of the beast. With segments of the true beast’s spine reduced to chunks, Heito fell—boneless, stunned—from the air.

  The cultivator twisted mid-air and followed the true beast to the ground.

  Heito hit the platform with the shattering force of an explosion, his impact breaking the platform around him. The tyrant above cheered just a little, almost as if embarrassed.

  Tunde stood over him in silence, staring at the broken and bloodied form of the lord realm true beast. His body was bloodied and cut in various places, healing slowly, as if it was tired of constantly healing him through the endless battles.

  Ethra sight had worked throughout the fight, Tunde staring at the odd form of the burning essence flame within the true beast. It seemed to beat in tandem with his heart, but in that moment, it burned brighter. Tunde had a dire premonition that he should end the beast right there and then.

  And so, he moved to do so, Joran’s wrath manifesting in his hand as he brought it down on the skull of the bloodied true beast. A layer of jade Ethra stopped him, his eyes widening in surprise.

  “Oh no you don’t!” came the voice of the tyrant, much to Tunde’s irritation and fear. “Not when the best part is just about to begin!” he added with glee.

  Tunde, confused, turned his gaze to Heito, whose mouth opened in a wordless scream. A burst of golden yellow flame blasted Tunde back, raising the upper half of Heito into the air. Tunde felt the power from the essence flame that was not of the true beast, a sharp memory of Joran’s body rising to the air as well, making him wonder if Heito was another homunculus.

  But it didn’t feel that way. The power and something else that pressed down on him from the burning form of the true beast felt almost alive, like it was watching him. And above him came the cackling laughter of an entertained grand Ethralite.

  ***********************************

  Haruka, master realm cultivator and king of the wastelands, stared at the barrier formation as it cracked further, wondering just what the endgame of the Talahan master cultivator within the settlement was. His forces had gathered around the walls, adepts and lords, both Corespawns and true beasts alike, awaiting his signal to destroy the formation.

  And yet, Haruka couldn’t help but watch inquisitively as the points where the formations had been breached at times sealed up the moment a few of his forces passed through, hoping to find the source or sources keeping the barrier alive.

  The presence of his first claw at his side was a constant reminder of the heights he had climbed to, unseen before in these parts. His soulbound weapon in hand, the master ranker shouldered it, the mere action revealing the strength and force affinities imbued within the ordinary-looking weapon.

  “Heito?” Haruka asked, tamping down the authority in his voice as thousands of his forces threw techniques at the formation to no effect.

  He had been at their rank a lifetime ago, slavering away, asking—no, begging for a simple glance from a figure who had seemed larger than life. Now, Haruka couldn’t care less, not from the figure, not from those he had once considered allies, the clan that had left him to die within these wastelands he would turn into a paradise. Not even at the death of his contracted beast.

  He glanced at Yumar, who shook his head softly, eyes locked on the barrier, the Highlord seemingly uncaring. Advancing to the realm of master had taken something within him, something fundamental to his existence—or rather, his humanity.

  He hadn’t cared; some said that giving away a part of themselves during the crucible was to accept tainted power from Adamath. To Haruka, power was power.

  “Something bothers you,” he said to his first claw.

  Yumar gave no response for a few seconds, seemingly content with observing the scenes before them as he spoke. “Kugan’s death was unnecessary,” he said.

  Haruka said nothing, waiting for the Highlord of the Sandshards to continue. Unlike Kugan, the true Sandshard had not sired a single bloodline, at least not in the conventional way. Instead, he had spread his essence across the entire Sandshard line itself, from the weakest to the strongest on the edge of enlightenment.

  His was a generational strength he hoped to grow, a lasting lineage to rule the wastelands with. There, he and the former Highlord of the Blazewing clan differed. Where Kugan and his bloodline were the last of their kind within the wastelands, the Sandshards were close to the peak of the food chain and numerous.

  “He was… weak,” Haruka replied carefully, mulling over the words.

  “You said it yourself,” Yumar started, “that we face some of the strongest cultivators on this continent in the members of clan Talahan. Would you consider him weak for going up against some of the strongest of your kind, my king?” he asked.

  Haruka paused, thinking over those words before he spoke. “No,” he finally said. “His weakness, if we should call it that, was hubris,” Haruka answered. “Hubris that he did not need our strength to take them on. Even with the bulk of our forces at his command, he failed to take down one single Highlord.”

  “A Highlord close to advancing to the realm of master, my king,” Yumar said as Haruka inclined his head. That was a disturbing fact. His attack, imbued with his essence flame and aura, should have obliterated the Highlord. Then he felt the rumblings of a heaven’s crucible, the power of Adamath descending onto the physical realm with savage wrath. His attack wouldn’t have worked at that point, not even with the master ranker who stepped out to protect the Highlord.

  Haruka was about to speak when he felt the rumblings of power coming from the distance behind him. Pausing, he glanced at his sprawling territory in the distance, Yumar doing the same. The first claw gripped his blade with seeming caution. “My king,” he said.

  “Yes,” Haruka replied. “Master realm,” he added.

  With deft manoeuvrability, he pushed his aura into the distance, locking in on where the powerful presence came from. He froze, feeling his authority waver as it unleashed in the distance. Yumar became a blazing pillar of golden brown aura and Ethra, preparing for the worst as he waited on the wasteland king.

  “Heito,” he said. Haruka gave no response, simply tapping into the borrowed authority he had bestowed on the lord realm true beast, seeing through his eyes the sight in front of him.

  *************************************************************

  Tunde stared at the burning half-body of Heito, golden flamed eyes of the lord with golden yellow veins glowing all over his face. Heito stared at Tunde for a few seconds, as if unsure of who he was, before turning his gaze to the air above him.

  “You are the master ranker,” he said into the air with a terrible, harsh voice that exuded power. The laughter of the grand Ethralite preceded its presence as it descended nimbly, a green aura billowing around it.

  “And you are the master who calls himself king,” the tyrant replied.

  Both powers stared at each other, locking eyes. Tunde found it hard to breathe, his eyes watery as he swayed on his feet before dropping to his knees. “Your affinities,” the presence that had taken over Heito’s form asked. “Jade Ethra, what are you?”

  “The world is too old and you too young a cub to ask the likes of me what I am,” the tyrant said mildly. “And yet, I find myself fascinated by your presence, so I will tell you before I hunt you down and kill you,” the tyrant continued.

  If the presence, who Tunde strongly suspected was the wasteland king himself, was surprised by the tyrant’s words, he gave no response, simply blinking. “I am one of the four masters who called this place you now call a wasteland home. One of the subordinates of the last of the sky drakes, the guardian of the Spine-Touched Valley. You may address me as the Jade Tyrant,” the grand Ethralite finished.

  The king nodded, Heito’s head responding with a crackling noise. “Very well, Jade Tyrant,” he began. “I have no idea how you have existed beneath my gaze, but I will suffer no relic of the past in my domain,” he continued, and Tunde saw the gaze of the tyrant darken in rage.

  “I will come for you when I’m done handling what little business I have right now. And if anything happens to this vessel of mine,” he said, pausing before turning his gaze to Tunde, who shivered unconsciously, “then not even dust will remain of your existence,” he finished, the light dying out.

  Along with it came the regeneration of Heito’s body. From the waist down, in a flare of bright fire that burned like a miniature sun. When it was done, Heito breathed heavily, floating in the air, eyes wide as he stared at his restored body.

  The tyrant cackled with glee, as if not believing his eyes. “Good!” he boomed. “Now we can start anew!” he said.

  Tunde could only watch in shock.

  *****************************

  Haruka severed his connection to Heito, leaving him with just enough essence flame to heal his dying form. The lord he had seen, with the surprisingly dark features typical of those from the Crystalreach continent, had been the one who killed Jana. He could sense it. But it also made him wonder just what ties this lord had with the Jade Tyrant.

  Haruka doubted they were working together, but the thought of another rival in his territory steadily irritated him.

  “My king,” Yumar said, drawing his attention to the barrier that now gathered cracks all around its form, growing larger.

  “Take some of our lord realm Corespawns and head in the direction of the Broken Ridge Mountains,” Haruka commanded.

  “And the master ranker?” Yumar asked.

  “Find his domain, and call on me,” Haruka replied. “One more master is nothing,” the king of the wastelands declared.