Eres charged forward, as her Avatar’s shield weathered the flurry of mountain destroying strikes that greeted her. Her baleful lance of black and gold pierced partially into Humbaba’s chest, despite its immunity to sharp wounds, despite its immunity to Bane.

  The Avatar pulled the lance out and tried to strike again, but Humbaba slapped it away. The giant struck around Eres’ shield with its other hand, and Banda knocked it off balance with a thunderous punch. Small cracks burst across the side of its face, but they rapidly healed in no time at all.

  Eres rushed past Banda as the giant stumbled. Humbaba had become more skilled in body and thought than ever before. Its movements sharper, it’s strikes more cruelly aimed. But Eres in contrast, and become more inexplicable.

  Her movements and attacks flowed with neither rhyme nor reason. Some strikes she blocked with the avatar’s shield, some she opted to dodge at a hair’s breadth to land a better strike of her own.

  Banda lunged at the openings inbetween, to wound Humbaba or protect her, but Eres continued to fight as though no one else but her resided in this world.

  Her smile grew wider as did the madness in her expression and the ecstasy in her eyes, and her skill grew with it. Iridescent spiritual cracks split over her form, but she paid no mind to the threat to her very existence.

  More and more, she gained supremacy in her battle against the giant, and more and more she wounded him. An ever victorious dance on the boundary between life and death.

  Banda landed on the ground with the two of them in his sight. He wondered why her plan wasn’t to kill Humbaba herself, but if she had said otherwise in spite of this then she must know the chance wasn’t high.

  His memory was hazy after Humbaba landed that strike. It always was after he went into a trance. But if the red giant wasn’t broken by that form, then the normal limits of his might wouldn’t be enough. It was foolish to waste any more strength on wounds that would just heal. He needed to kill the giant in a single strike.

  Banda crouched in his upright stance. The shimmer of Mountain flowed over his body and he delved deeper into his power. His feral body turned more beastial still, his face truly that of a monstrous savage. Divinity surged out from him, as he channeled it all into his fist.

  Humbaba’s focus jolted towards Banda, to the cataclysmic cracking of the Thunder spell swirling around his clenched hand. But the thrust of a lance and the unexpected pummeling of a shield forced him to back to his current foe.

  Eres struck and battered and deflected and blocked and danced with her giant opponent as Banda poured his divinity, struggling to keep the raw power contained within the spell.

  With a burst of desperation, Humbaba broke free of Eres, allowing her lance to pierce its skull on the way. But no paltry wound could tear it from its single minded charge. Banda cracked the stone ground beneath as he leapt in the air towards the charging giant.

  Humbaba raged in response and held back its massive arm for a strike more mighty than he had ever thrown since this fight began. And a lance pierced through the wound still in its skull and out through its left eye.

  Humbaba faltered for a moment, and Eres grinned wide in triumphant bliss, her avatar still in the stance it had thrown its lance from. Humbaba turned its gaze back towards Banda but it was too late.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The Savage of Cedar Forest slammed down his fist on the giant’s skull with the greatest thunder, fracturing it completely and shattering the fractures. Humbaba’s crown of horns fell in broken fragments and the giant fell with it for the last time.

  Banda landed on his feet, more exhausted from battle than he could remember, and Eres jumped into his embrace. She held his face close to hers, smiling down at him with the purest of madness and joy. Banda found himself once again frozen before her, as though his very body did not want to look away.

  “This is only the beginning~”

  Holy light drained down around her in his silent gaze from a large stone gate that opened with the void of space at the roof of the cave, but still her light was supreme. Banda’s eyes darted down as he began slowly floating off the ground towards the light, and saw the same was true for Eres.

  In the midst of his wariness, Eres softly let go of him and pulled out a crystal jar from thin air and raised it high. “And the first step~” The tone of her words almost music in the throes of bliss.

  A terrifying storm of divinity surged into the small jar like the currents of violent rivers, and that all powerful might started to wrap itself around Eres. Banda stared in awe at the woman before him, and she stared back with pride. And the terrifying face of Humbaba appeared besides them both with an ominous presence.

  Their focus jolted to the giant in shock. And in that opening, Montu snatched the jar from Eres’ hands. It took her a split second to realize what had just happened, but it was a split second too late. Montu held out the jar, and a river of their divinity surged out from them both into it.

  “I am sorry for the added loss, my lady.” Montu spoke calmly behind a diplomatic smile. His severe injuries nowhere to be seen. “But I can’t allow you to chase after me just yet. Even now, I’m not so confident I can defeat you both. You are… after all… guided by fate.”

  Eres’ expression swelled with rage and venom, too great for her to even speak a curse. A pain that could only come from the sting of a betrayal of this magnitude. And Banda let out a roar that filled the cave.

  The relief of hard fought victory. The confusing intoxication in someone he didn’t understand. All of it forgotten in the face of his waning power. Banda thrashed his intent, desperately pulling what was his back within him through sheer will.

  “Truly a monster…” Montu spoke without restraint. “But there’s no point in wasting your effort here.”

  The last vestiges of their divinity was pulled from them, and the crystal jar shattered. A pillar of divinity erupted around Montu like a blazing white flame, shrouding him within.

  And in mere moments, the pillar dispersed. The power that dwarfed even Humbaba’s presence now a soft glow around the man that had now advanced into a stage beyond that of a mortal.

  White arms of holy light shot out from the gate in an instant and latched onto Montu who did not resist. The hands pulled him faster towards the gate, as though they rejected his very presence.

  Montu smiled down on Eres as he ascended, his eyes baring modest contempt unlike any look she had ever seen of him. “Best not to act rashly, my lady. You have a long journey ahead.”

  Eres grit her teeth but delayed no longer. The winged amulet floated up from around her neck at her will, and the two vanished from the cave, reappearing under the same murky sky they found when they entered the Tower. There she stood, solemn and grim, and a killing intent buried everything around her.

  Immense rage beyond what Banda could bear rampaged within him. Never before had this happened to him. Never had his power been stolen. Never since the days he first opened his eyes had he been so weak.

  “This is your fault!” Merciless bloodlust stormed Eres with his words. He could not kill her, for her life was his own. But even so, such was his hatred that he was struggling to restrain himself from trying. “You took me from the forest! Your human stole my power! One you told me to spare!”

  Eres looked over at him, weathering the bloodlust as if it didn’t exist. Her own mood was somber and intense, the look in her eyes now jaded with burning resolve. A cold fire that threatened to burn all but herself.

  “Stop whining after a single setback.” Eres chided. Her eyes cold and sharp, her expression firm. “The path ahead will bring countless more.”

  The two glared in their tense standstill, neither wavering against the other. A mortal beast and a failed queen alone in the middle of an unfamiliar forest.