Aether Chronicles: Birth Of A Legend-Chapter 346: Something Like That

Raegar watched as the ribs exploded outward in a wave of bone shards and green lightning. Nivara appeared beneath the beast, getting ready to cast her strongest spell: Shadow-Lancs. She vaulted, spun, stabbed upward through the exposed heart-cage. ''For every soul you swallowed, DIE!''

Her lances detonated inside the creature. It's heart, a pulsing core, cracked. Raegar landed on the central post and caught a chain swinging nearby. Aether surged down his arms, gold and crimson braiding into the links. He yanked, causing the leviathan to stagger dragged forward by its own lasso.

Moments later, he spun the chain overhead, then slammed it into the beast's cracked skull, letting out a loud boom, echoing across the arena. Glass sand became a storm of golden shards. The leviathan's roar became a death rattle. Drusilla's black sun imploded, sucking the corruption inward.

Nivara's runes flared, carving the heart into fragments. Raegar leaped, and when he was mid-air, he crossed his blazing daggers. He fell blades first into the leviathan's core.

Aether detonated. A pillar of gold-crimson fire punched through the arena ceiling, scattering dust and centuries of ghosts into the sky.

The Leviathan shredded bones to ash, chains to rust, and corruption to nothing. Raegar landed in the crater, falxes dissolving into sparks that danced around him like fireflies.

Drusilla collapsed to her knees, gold hair spilling over her shoulders, breathing hard as he finally relaxed.

Nivara leaned on her knees, tail still, grinning through blood. ''Show's over.''

Following that, Raegar noticed the arena torches reignited, pure white. Just then, the gates sealed with a bang. The central post crumbled to dust. He looked at the women, at the ruin, at the sky visible through the shattered ceiling, and spoke. ''Let's claim Galahad, he should be around here somewhere.''

They walked deeper into the arena, only to see the Green Knight lying still in the center, as Arthur and Shadow appeared beside him. The Blue Knight turned to him, speaking. ''Claim him, my king.''

Raegar knelt beside the fallen knight, the scorched earth still warm beneath his boots. Galahad lay motionless, his armor cracked and blackened, the proud white surcoat reduced to tatters. For a moment, Raegar hesitated, the weight of what he was about to do pressing against his ribs like a second heart.

Then he extended his hand, palm open, fingers steady. The Fusion Powers answered. A low thrum rose from Raegar's chest, a vibration that rattled the buckles on his gauntlets and sent ripples across the puddles of rainwater nearby. Emerald light, veined with molten gold, poured from his skin in slow, deliberate streams.

It coiled in the air like living smoke before sinking into Galahad's breastplate, threading through the fissures, seeking the spark of life that had nearly guttered out. Galahad's body jerked once, then again, harder. His mailed fists clenched; the plates of his greaves scraped stone as his legs twitched.

A sound escaped him, half gasp, half growl, as though the power were dragging him back from the edge of a chasm by the scruff of his soul. Nivara turned away, shielding her face with the edge of her cloak. Drusilla hissed a curse in the old tongue and pressed her forearm across her eyes, the green glare painting the inside of her lids even through closed lashes.

Raegar alone kept his gaze fixed on the knight, watching the light burrow deeper, watching the color return to lips that had gone grey. Minutes stretched, the glow intensified until it became a second sun pinned to the ground, washing the ruined courtyard in verdicts of jade and viridian.

Shadows fled to the corners; every crack in the flagstones, every splintered beam of the broken gate, stood out. Then, abruptly, the light folded in on itself. The glare collapsed into Galahad's chest with a sound like a blacksmith quenching steel. Silence rushed back in, broken only by the drip of water from a shattered gargoyle overhead.

Galahad rose in a single fluid motion, as though invisible hands had lifted him. His armor gleamed anew, the dents hammered out by raw power, the white of his surcoat restored to blinding purity. A faint aura lingered around him, a haze of soft green that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

He inclined his head, the gesture formal, almost reverent. When he spoke, his voice carried the resonance of cathedral bells and the low thunder of distant surf. ''My Fusion King,'' he said, the words ringing clear across the arena. ''It is good to be back.''

Raegar studied the reborn knight for a long, quiet moment. Galahad stood straighter than before, shoulders squared beneath the restored white surcoat, the faint green corona around him pulsing like a heartbeat. When he flexed his hand, the air shimmered, and the scorched earth beneath his boots sprouted a single blade of grass, impossibly green.

Raegar's mouth curved, not quite a smile but close enough. ''You wear it better than I expected.''

Galahad dipped his head. ''The power remembers its shape, my king. I am merely the mold it chose this time.''

Nivara snorted, wiping blood from her lip with the back of her wrist. ''Less poetry, more walking. My legs feel like wet parchment.''

Drusilla pushed herself upright, blonde hair tangled with ash. ''Seconded. If another leviathan drops from the ceiling, I'm letting it eat me.''

Raegar turned toward the tunnel mouth yawning at the arena's far end, now just a ragged hole exhaling cool, damp air. The gates that had slammed shut behind them were gone, hinges melted into slag. Even the central post had surrendered to dust, leaving only a shallow depression where the leviathan's heart had burst.

He took the lead. The others fell in without discussion: Galahad at his right, Nivara scouting shadows to the left, Drusilla trailing, already muttering minor cantrips to knit the worst of her bruises. The tunnel curved downward, roots punching through stone like blind fingers. Torches here had never burned; instead, pale lichen glowed the color of moonlit bone.

Their footsteps echoed strangely, as though the passage were hollowing itself out ahead of them, swallowing sound and giving nothing back. Half a mile in, the air changed. It lost the iron tang of blood and gained the scent of wet peat and distant woodsmoke. Raegar slowed. The glow brightened, revealing a splinter of daylight ahead, real daylight, thin and grey, the kind that leaks through storm clouds over marshland.

They stepped out onto a low ridge of broken flagstones. Below them lay Hollowfen Village. Or what had been Hollowfen. The Old Ones' realm was gone. No jagged obsidian spires, no sky of writhing green auroras, no chains of captive souls dangling like wind chimes. The entire pocket dimension had collapsed inward, leaving only the village itself.

Timber houses sagging but intact, thatched roofs patched with fresh straw, the central well standing proud where a gibbet of bone had once loomed. People moved between the cottages. Children chased a three-legged dog through puddles that reflected ordinary sky. An old woman hung laundry on a line, humming a tune Raegar almost recognized.

No one looked up. No one screamed. The absence of terror was louder than any battle cry. Nivara's ears flicked once, then stilled. ''They don't even know what almost ate them.''

Drusilla exhaled, a sound halfway between laugh and sob. ''Or what just saved them?''

Galahad rested a hand on the pommel of a sword that hadn't been there a moment ago, simple steel, no runes, no glow. ''Freedom tastes of turned earth and chimney smoke. I had forgotten.'' 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Raegar felt the weight of the moment settle on his shoulders like a cloak made of silence. He had expected ruins, or worse, gratitude that would demand speeches he didn't know how to give. Instead, Hollowfen simply was a village waking from a nightmare it couldn't name. He started down the slope. The others followed.

A boy no older than ten spotted them first. He froze mid-dash, ball of twine clutched to his chest, eyes wide at the sight of four battle-stained strangers, one trailing green light, another with horns and a tail, a third whose hair shone like molten gold. Then the boy's gaze snagged on Raegar's falxes, still flickering with dying sparks.

The child's mouth formed a perfect circle. ''Are you the storm?'' he whispered.

Raegar crouched, bringing himself eye-level. ''Something like that.''

The boy considered this, then thrust the twine forward. ''Mama says storms bring rain. Rain makes beans grow. You want some?''

Behind him, Nivara choked on a laugh. Drusilla hid a smile behind her sleeve. Galahad's eyes softened. Raegar accepted the twine. It was rough, sun-bleached, smelling faintly of marsh grass. ''I'll treasure it,'' he said, and meant it.

The boy beamed and bolted off, shouting for his mother. Doors opened. Villagers emerged, cautious but unafraid. Someone pressed a clay cup of small beer into Drusilla's hand. Someone else draped a patched shawl over Nivara's shoulders. A grizzled blacksmith studied Raegar and offered, gruffly, to sharpen it ''For the trouble you've clearly seen.''