The Juggled Soul

“A little catgirl and a dead man, still burning with his own funeral pyre?”

Uetum—no, Serenya—didn’t answer with words. She raised Ars Caelus. “Nyaa.”

She brought the greatsword down in a single, deadly vertical slash with that one, gentle sound. From the sky came a hundred-meter-tall blade of focused, pure golden light that tore through the air.

It slammed into the Ruinhorn’s defenses. The beast had fifteen layers of shimmering, corrupt energy shields, but the golden blade tore through them like paper. Ten of the fifteen shields shattered instantly, the feedback sending a shockwave across the ruined courtyard.

The Ruinhorn staggered back a step, its arrogant laughter dying in its throat. A new, fascinating light entered its eyes.

“Fascinating,” it rumbled, a strange respect in its tone. “I suppose the Saint of Minilon has always been the strongest of her kind since many decades ago.”

Serenya lowered her blade, her expression now deadly serious. “Sir Nennoch, please help me get this monster to the barracks, nya!”

“As you command, Saint Serenya!” he roared, his voice full of a new, unwavering purpose.

“Nya nya!” Serenya smiled, a flicker of the old Uetum showing through. She then shot towards the Ruinhorn.

The Ruinhorn, an ancient and intelligent being, was having a hard time. It had retrieved the soul of its master from the fallen lich, but it was being pushed back, outmaneuvered by this insane, berserk duo. It was smart. It would not be lured by a simple trick.

But Serenya’s plan was anything but simple.

As Nennoch unleashed a massive, fiery explosion against the Ruinhorn’s legs, forcing the beast to focus its defenses downwards, Serenya saw her chance.

She shot upwards, using Ars Caelus, piercing the Ruinhorn’s chest to extract.

The beast roared in fury and confusion as the crimson soul fragment of Morvane was pulled from its body, encased in a shimmering, golden sphere of holy light in Serenya’s hand.

“Looking for this, nya?” she taunted, her voice echoing with divine power.

The Ruinhorn’s intelligence was instantly overwhelmed by a singular purpose: retrieve the Master’s soul.

Serenya shot off into the sky, flying directly towards the distant, smoking ruins of the knight barracks. Nennoch flew right beside her. The enraged Ruinhorn thundered after them, its only thought to reclaim its prize, following the Saint directly into the heart of her trap.

She looked back at the thundering, enraged Ruinhorn, a playful, incredibly insulting smirk on her face.

“Here, boy! C’mon! Follow me, nyaa!” she called.

The Ruinhorn let out a roar of pure, frustrated fury, but it followed.

“Sir Nennoch, catch!” Serenya yelled, and tossed the golden sphere to him.

The knight caught it effortlessly. The Ruinhorn, seeing the prize change hands, immediately altered its course, lunging for Nennoch.

Just as it got close, Nennoch tossed the sphere back to Serenya. They juggled the soul back and forth.

Finally, the Ruinhorn had enough. It stopped its pursuit, realizing it was being played. It turned and charged towards the city’s main gate, intending to flee back to the corrupted forest.

But its path was blocked.

Inwa, the guardian golem, now looking impossibly larger and infused with a vibrant, green life force, erupted from the earth directly in front of the gate. Atop its massive, wooden shoulder sat Ars Terran, still casually munching on an Aetrobia leaf.

Inwa drew back a fist the size of a house and punched the charging beast square in the face.

The Ruinhorn staggered back, stunned.

But its rage was absolute. It let out a furious bellow and retaliated, its own massive horn ramming Inwa.

Inwa, for all its newfound strength, was easily destroyed, crumbling into a heap of splintered, sacred wood and stone.

As the golem fell, Ars Terran simply stepped off its shoulder, hovering in the air. With the grace of a farmer swinging a scythe, she struck her own weapon, sending it crashing down on the Ruinhorn. The impact shattered three more of the beast’s remaining five energy shields in a deafening explosion of dark magic.

The monster panicked. Its escape route was blocked by a god. It tried to turn, to find another way out of the city, but its path was blocked again.

Four identical small, blue swords struck as one, a synchronized attack that tore through the second-to-last of its shields with a high-pitched shriek.

Now it had only one shield left. It was wounded, trapped, and vulnerable.

Serenya, holding the golden sphere, gave a final, triumphant smile. She continued her flight, heading directly for the one place in the city that was still standing strong: the knight barracks.

The Ruinhorn, now mad with desperation and rage, abandoned all thought, all strategy. The thirty-meter-tall beast, its many insect-like legs churning in a terrifying, high-speed fury after the Saint, following her straight into the heart of the trap.

High on the rooftop of the central keep, Ura watched the thirty-meter-tall apocalypse beast thunder towards her. The ground shook so violently that Olomyar and Baltram, legless and bound, were being rattled across the stone floor. They were screaming, their faces pale with abject terror.

Ura just smiled. Her mind flashed back to her first real briefing with Anna, many nights ago.

They were looking at a crude map of the barracks. Anna had tapped the drawing of the central keep. “Zebril called this place indestructible,” Anna had said, her voice a low,“Powered by a divine crystal from Orivaneia. If that's true, surely it can withstand anything, right? We should just let the crystal do its thing.”

At the time, Ura didn't understand. But now, as the Ruinhorn closed in, she finally saw the full, terrifying scope of Anna’s genius. Her job was to “secure the last resting place of the big bad.” And Anna had just sent the big bad right to her doorstep.

The Ruinhorn was almost upon them, lowering its massive, corrupt horn to ram the building. Ura acted. She raised her hand, and the very air around the beast solidified into shimmering, green walls of spatial magic, chaining it in place just meters from the keep’s wall.

From the reinforced windows below, the knights and nobles who had barricaded themselves inside saw her magic. “Save us, witch! Kill the monster! Save us!”

Ura looked down at them and gave a sweet, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry,” she called out, her voice echoing over the monster’s roars. “I will, okay?”

Then she flew straight up, abandoning her post. The knights screamed.

From the sky, Ars Caelus descended like a meteor. From the ruined earth, a larger, glowing Inwa erupted, its wooden form repaired and infused with Terran’s power.

The monster was slammed forward, its massive horn punching through the keep’s wall and making direct, sizzling contact with the colossal, pulsating Orivaneia crystal at the building’s heart.

Life erupted from the crystal. 

As the Ruinhorn's corrupt essence was sucked away and drawn into the heavenly relic, it started to scream in pain as tendrils of dazzling, golden light swung out and wrapped around it.

“CURSE YOU! CURSE ALL OF YOU WEAK, PATHETIC HUMANS!” the beast shrieked as it was pulled apart, molecule by molecule. “MORVANE WILL UNMAKE YOUR WORLD! HE WILL KILL YOU ALL!”

With a final, silent implosion, the last of the Ruinhorn was sucked into the crystal.

Ura, hovering upside down at a safe distance, watched as the crystal now glowed with a sickening, unstable mixture of gold and black energy.

She conjured a single, simple fireball in her palm.

“Pop,” she whispered, and flicked it.

The tiny fireball drifted down and touched the overloaded crystal. The result was a silent, brilliant detonation of pure light. Ura smiled broadly as the crystal, the central stronghold, the cowardly knights, and her two legless hostages were all incinerated in an expanding sphere of white, holy light.

Giddy with excitement, Ura laughed as she drifted in midair, observing the quiet, beautiful catastrophe she had just planned.

This isn’t like school at all! All that boring theory… this is the real application of dimensional physics and energy conversion! Why don’t they teach this?!