Unity V / Ames Nori

“Nultereo omes pelyosti saffa!” Shina swung an arm underhanded, and a thick sheet of ice coagulated across the floor, curving onto the bottom of the wall to form a ramp-like path.

For the second time today, I crouched to let her onto my back. Then, lifting her with me as I rose, I stepped onto the nearly frictionless ice.

“Ready,” I said, turning to face Kerne.

He conjured his shield and pressed it against my chest. “On the count of three?”

I nodded. “Three… two… one… loablis anfuniosor!”

“Osnesor!”

“Anfuniosor!”

One powerful repulsion spell fused with two potent wind incantations to blast my body across the ice at lightning speed. Arcing upward with the shape of the ramp, I soon shot high into the air. My sense of direction disintegrated as I flew further through the sky, leaving me with no choice but to rely on my intuition to execute the final step.

“Anfunios!” I fired a spell off to the side, swerving our bodies horizontally. Once my shoes scraped across the flat stone of the academy’s outer walls, however, I breathed a sigh of relief. “See, Shina? It worked! I even timed it perfectly.”

“I’m never doing that again,” she moaned as I lowered her back down.

“Hopefully, we’ll never have t—”

Another roar sliced through the atmosphere, far louder than before. As my eyes darted to the origin of the sound, I finally spotted it, bursting through a patch of low-lying clouds while curving around the cliffside.

Two colossal, winged arms extended from a chassis that appeared larger than my entire dorm room. Its neck stretched the length of two or three full-grown adults, and its maw was easily wide enough to swallow a family whole. Even the hind legs, comparatively small next to the rest of its frame, could pulverize a person or two in a single stride. In its wake, a long tail, twice the length of its neck and capped off by a second, smaller jaw, formed a massive trail in the sky, whipping with its movements as it twisted its route.

It looked so familiar, yet so foreign. Even though I had fought variants of this creature countless times before, I stood frozen in awe as I beheld the stature of the great beast.

“It’s… huge…” Even hundreds of feet away, I couldn’t help but gape at the sheer scale of the monster. Shina had described it to me once before, but my imagination had been incapable of truly grasping its majesty.

“Everett, I think it’s about to swoop down!” Shina cried. “Give me some space!”

I leapt to the side, surveying the movements of the Anomaly Beast as I landed.

Shit!

“Mara was right! I think it’s going for Vandan!” I was sure Shina had already drawn the same conclusion, but I couldn’t suppress my panic.

She, however, stood unwavering as she conjured her staff and pointed it toward the beast. “Rosate nantis rosato ablis amest pelyosves!”

A glacial mass crystallized in the air in front of her, jaggedly expanding outward from the core until it swelled to be several times the size of her body. A moment later, an invisible force launched the cluster forward, sending it soaring off the edge of the wall.

Sure it’s big, but will that really be precise enough to—

Suddenly, the boulder of ice shattered into hundreds of thin, needle-like spikes that enveloped the skyline, the shards descending downward as a vast curtain that would leave nothing in their vicinity untouched.

Even the Anomaly Beast, cruising ahead at a remarkable velocity, had no means of avoiding the hailstorm that blasted past it, peppering it with countless icy blades along the way.

Shina and I both knew that this attack was akin to hurling a handful of pebbles at it, not a devastating blow that would turn the tide of battle. But if there was one thing I knew for certain about this creature…

… distracting it’s a cinch!

The wyvern roared in fury and flapped its wings, spinning in an arc to hunt a new set of prey.

Shina was panting, but a huge smile was plastered on her face. “I did it! What did you thin—wah!”

In an instant, I zipped over and scooped her into my arms, propelling us several yards away. Mere moments later, something massive crashed into the area she’d been standing in.

“That thing’s insanely fast,” I muttered, half to myself.

“S-sorry for not paying attention,” Shina said as I lowered her onto the ground.

“It’s okay.” I tried to keep my voice calm as I turned to face the cloud of mortar and crushed stone thrown up from the impact. “But back up as far as you can.”

I couldn’t stop my limbs from shaking as an enormous silhouette darkened amid the smoke, my field of view unable to even capture the creature’s entire frame. The air I sucked in grew thick and heavy, morphing into a sludge that clogged my windpipe as it crawled deeper inside.

Am I really crazy enough to fight that thing?

As the monster’s spiked skull pushed past the floating debris and into my sight, I staggered backward, barely maintaining my balance.

What the hell was I thinking!? I can’t…

My brain shut off entirely. Even if I could process its size from a distance, up close was another matter.

One arm smashed into the ground ahead of me as the beast stabilized itself, sending a shockwave throughout the entire structure. Lurching forward, it lifted its weight out of the crater it had formed and onto flat stone.

Many things scared me, but rarely were my fears borne of tangible threats. Faced with a true, physical terror, the likes of which I had never encountered before, my mind and body crumbled under the pressure.

“I can’t…”

“If we work together, this time, we’ll do it. We’ll win for sure. For them.”

“You can count on me.”

“It’s a promise, then.”

“Yeah, a promise.”

I recalled a conversation I’d had quite some time ago.

Dammit. It doesn’t matter if I “can’t”.

I swore to her I would!

Without warning, the beast swung a set of claws at my frozen body, sweeping at an absurd speed for its titanic body.

But, as always, I was faster.

Kicking off the ground, I spun in the air to bend perfectly around its arm, landing flat as if I’d never left the floor at all.

Who am I kidding? I trained for this!

Refusing to shrink any longer, I returned its stare, and our gazes locked for the better part of a second.

And with that, the Inheritors’ battle against Ames Nori truly began.

The creature let out a furious howl before unleashing a flurry of vertical swipes with both arms, but I slid past each of the simple bombardments with ease. With no need to strike back, I could place my entire focus on evading its attacks.

The wall shook with each impact, but I maintained stable footing as I slipped in every direction to weave through the never-ending storm of talons, like an acrobat performing on stage.

Intelligent enough to understand the futility of its current approach, the monster opened its jaw wide and snapped down toward me. Caught off guard from the sudden change in behavior, I rolled beyond the range of its fangs a split second before they collapsed inward, and I tried to spring back to my feet soon after.

But it had other plans.

Just as I lifted off the ground, it twisted its neck, smashing its snout into my torso and flinging my body to the side. By the time I came to my senses after the daze subsided, I was already flying above open air, several feet from the wall.

Crap!

I desperately tried to scream an incantation, but every breath in my lungs had been knocked out of me, and all that emerged was a pathetic wheeze.

Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Cra—

Crk! My momentum suddenly stalled as I slammed into a flat surface.

What? How am I still alive?

The moment I felt a chill emanating from the floor beneath me, however, I put the pieces together.

You’re the best, Shina!

Ames Nori, unwilling to set me free, brushed one of its claws along the outer edge of the wall, sweeping upward in an effort to snap the thin beam of ice that connected the platform I’d landed on to the stable stone structure.

“Loablis Anfunios!” I propelled my body sideward, sliding against the sleet to hasten my trip. Narrowly slipping back onto the ramparts, my safety net shattered into a million particles as the beast’s arm made contact.

“Thanks for—”

“Pelyos!” Before I could express my gratitude, Shina hurled a chunk of ice at one of Ames Nori’s exposed eyeballs. The creature easily curved its neck to absorb the shot into its scales, but the reaction finally made something click in my head.

“Even if it’s mostly immune to damage…”

“… it’s super protective of its weak points,” Shina said, finishing my sentence. “If you only dodge, it’ll learn from your movements and just try new avenues of attack. If we want to stall, we need to force it onto the defensive, too!”

“Got it!” I dashed back toward the beast to ensure it couldn’t reach her and held out a hand, conjuring my sword. “Looks like I will need you, after all. Though it’s barely a toothpick to this guy…”

I sighed as Ames Nori reared its head back and roared once more, again heralding its intent to kill us all. But just as it was about to close its mouth shut…

“Pelyos!” Shina blasted another bolt of ice at the soft tissue contained within its maw, and it tilted its entire body to evade the one measly spell.

Eyes. Mouth. Those are the obvious ones, but I won’t be able to get up there easily. What do I…

As I pondered my options, it smashed another taloned arm into the floor where I’d been standing, an attack I sidestepped without trouble. But before it could lift its arm back up, I had a realization.

The wings!

Ames Nori’s wings were unprotected, likely because scales would make them too heavy for flight. The same applied to Fragments, but, before now, I’d never found it practical to strike at their winged arms. As the lightest and most mobile parts of their bodies, they made for elusive targets, so it was much simpler to just go for the torso or head and shatter their armor to expose their vitals. Plus, the monsters were just as deadly grounded as they were in flight, so the incentive was negligible.

But right now, any kind of weakness will do!

Bounding off the ground to reach its retreating appendage, I slashed at the sensitive flesh with every ounce of strength I could muster.

“Pelyosves!” In the same instant, Shina fired another projectile at its other wing, seeming to reach the same conclusion I had. And just as both of our attacks were about to land…

Hwump!

… I was blasted downward by a great gale, crashing hard into the wall’s surface.

Shit!

By the time I realized it had gone airborne, its huge tail was already swinging toward me, carving clean through the stone in its wake. There wasn’t enough room on either side to dodge without throwing myself off the wall, so I knew I needed to think of something else as I scrambled to my feet.

“Everett! Get down!”

Despite the fact that it would do nothing against the incoming assault, I followed the command without hesitation.

“Osnesortam!”

A high-pitched ringing resounded around me, and even after several seconds passed, my body remained unscathed. Looking up from the floor, my vision landed on the shield-bearing warrior standing in front of me.

“Y-you repelled something that powerful!?”

Kerne turned to me and grinned, just slightly. “I have been training too, you know.”

A barrage of footsteps erupted from behind me.

“Dude! That ramp trick was sick as hell! I’ve been wanting to talk about it this whole—”

“Akio, save it for later! We have a whole-ass Anomaly Beast to kill!”

I rose to my feet against the backdrop of some light bickering.

I turned my gaze toward Ames Nori, flapping its wings in the air.

Looks like you lost this first round.

I smiled, perhaps arrogantly.

Because if you couldn’t beat just two of us, you sure as hell can’t handle all six!