The forest's sudden, absolute hush was not merely an absence of sound; it was a physical presence, a predatory vacuum that choked off the cheerful birdsong and the drone of insects, pressing down with the weight of a held breath. Erik felt the air grow cold and thin, the Battle Sense rune on his forearm beginning to pulse with a faint, insistent warmth, a silent alarm that resonated not in his ears, but as a low, thrumming vibration in his very bones. Something ancient and wrong was near.
A frantic cloud of sparrows erupted from a copse of trees just ahead, their flight a chaotic burst of terror, not a natural startle but a desperate, panicked fleeing. Something had flushed them from their roosts with profound malice.
"There!" Erik hissed, pointing Erythrael toward the brush where the birds had fled, his knuckles white on the haft.
The silence that followed was a stretched, agonizing heartbeat. Then, it was shattered by a screech that ripped through the air, a sound of pure, predatory malice so sharp and piercing it felt like a physical blow, promising a bloody end to their journey.
The beast that exploded from the trees was a behemoth, a twenty-foot-tall mockery of nature torn from a madman's nightmare. The very foliage seemed to wither and blacken as it passed. It was a walking plague, an avatar of the Abyss's corruption given horrifying form. Patches of its scaly hide were blackened and weeping, oozing a foul, black ichor that sizzled and steamed where it dripped onto the damp earth, burning the very soil. Its eyes, a constellation of burning, malevolent red embers, fixed on them with an intelligent, calculating hatred.
"By the gods, a corrupted razorclaw!" Darius shouted, his voice tight with a rare, undisguised shock.
The monster sprang, not with the lumbering weight of a physical creature, but with an unnatural, gliding momentum that defied its immense size. Its primary scythe-like forelimb, a weapon of sharpened bone and jagged chitin, came down in a blur. Darius barely had time to plant his feet and roar with defiance as he met the blow with his tower shield.
The sound of the impact was not a clean clang of metal, but a deafening, bone-jarring CRACK that echoed through the dell like a thunderclap. The sheer force sent the veteran knight staggering back three full steps, his boots carving deep furrows in the road. His entire shield arm went numb from the shock, and when he looked, three deep, sizzling gouges were carved into the Blackstone steel. The abyssal venom wasn't just a coating; it was a corrosive agent, actively dissolving the enchanted metal with a vicious hiss that was audible even over the creature's snarling.
"Spread out! Don't give it a single target!" Erik roared, the tactical command a desperate attempt to create order from the impending chaos. He and Darius broke apart, their movements a frantic scramble to present multiple threats from different angles, creating a wider front.
Finn was already a blur of green and brown leather, darting to the creature's flank, a tactic that had served him well against lesser beasts. "Hey, ugly! Over here!" he yelled, lashing out with his twin daggers, aiming for the thickest part of its thigh. The sharp steel, which could flay a man in an instant, screeched uselessly against the beast's thick, unnatural hide. The sound was like nails on a slate chalkboard, and the creature seemed to barely notice the pinpricks. Annoyed by the insolence of the gnat buzzing at its side, it spun with astonishing agility, its massive hind leg kicking out with the force of a battering ram. The blow caught Finn in the ribs, not with its full force, but enough to send him tumbling head over heels into the underbrush with a sharp, choked cry of pain.
From the other side of the clearing, Lyra, seeing the beast's attention on Finn, raised her staff, her holy symbol glowing with a desperate, brilliant light. "Purge!" she cried. A bolt of pure, white sunlight shot forth, striking the creature's side.
This, the monster felt. It shrieked, a high, piercing sound of genuine agony, as the holy energy seared its flesh. The ichor-weeping scales smoked and blackened further, the scent of burning corruption filling the air. Enraged, the razorclaw forgot the downed rogue and spun back toward the center of the party, its malevolent red eyes fixing on Lyra. It saw the source of its pain.
With that same impossible, gliding speed, it charged her. Its massive scythe-like arm swept down, aimed to obliterate her.
Lyra reacted on instinct, throwing up a hastily woven Bulwark of Light. The shimmering, golden shield materialized a fraction of a second before the claw struck, but her spell was rushed, her footing unsure. The claw shattered the divine shield like glass and continued its deadly arc. It wasn't a direct hit, but the force of the blow, a physical shockwave of displaced air and raw power, slammed into her, lifting her from her feet and throwing her against the trunk of a massive oak. She crumpled to the ground in a heap of white robes, a pained cry escaping her lips as her head struck the hard wood. The holy light from her amulet flickered and died.
The razorclaw loomed over her, its beak-like maw opening to deliver the finishing blow.
"NO!" Darius roared, his voice a sound of pure, paternal fury. He threw himself forward, no longer a tactical commander, but a guardian protecting his charge. He slammed his tower shield into the creature's leg, not to wound, but to shove, putting his entire weight and desperate strength into the blow. The behemoth stumbled, its killing strike going wide, its claw gouging a deep furrow in the earth where Lyra's head had been a moment before.
Darius didn't press the attack. He planted himself over Lyra's unconscious form, his battered shield raised, his longsword held in a low, defensive guard. His face was a granite mask of grim determination. He had become a living wall, a fortress of one, his every focus now on a single, sacred duty: protecting the woman who was like a daughter to him. He would hold this line until his last breath.
The battle devolved into a grueling, punishing stalemate. Erik found himself in the frustrating position of being the single greatest threat on the field, yet unable to land a decisive blow. The razorclaw was preternaturally aware of Erythrael, tracking its every movement, its entire fighting style shifting to a defensive, evasive posture whenever Erik was near. It would meet his furious charges with blindingly fast, shallow jabs from its secondary claws, forcing him to parry, keeping the devastating main blade of his axe at a distance. It danced around him, a frustrating, lethal ballet, its caution a testament to the raw, inherent power it sensed within the ancient weapon. He was a walking deterrent, but a deterrent was not a killer.
Finn, meanwhile, had recovered from his tumble, his ribs a symphony of angry bruises. He darted from the undergrowth, his usual bravado gone, replaced by a tense, predatory focus. He no longer tried to inflict damage, but to gather information. He became a high-speed distraction, a hornet buzzing around a bear, his daggers probing for purchase in the softer hide of the joints. Again and again, his blades would skate off the thick hide, but he was learning. He saw how the chitin plates overlapped, how the creature favored its left foreleg after Erik's initial charge, how the muscles bunched an instant before a strike. He was mapping the beast, one failed, stinging attack at a time.
But they were being worn down. Darius, dedicated to his vigil over Lyra, was a purely defensive force, his shield a mangled ruin. Erik's arms burned with fatigue from chasing a foe that refused to meet him. And with Lyra out of the fight, their most effective weapon against the creature's corrupt nature was silenced. They were losing. They needed a miracle.
The miracle arrived not as a prayer answered, but as a whisper on the wind.
A single, black-fletched arrow streaked from the shadows of a high ridge with no sound, no warning. It wasn't aimed to kill. It was a test, a question posed in steel and wood. It struck the ground at the razorclaw's feet, kicking up a spray of dirt. The creature flinched, its head snapping up, its red eyes scanning the trees, momentarily distracted from its dance with Erik.
It was all the opening Erik needed. He roared and charged, closing the distance while the creature's attention was diverted. The razorclaw whirled back, barely bringing its claw up in time to deflect Erik's furious swing.
The dynamic of the fight shifted instantly. A mysterious new player was on the field. A second arrow sang out from a different position along the ridge, this time striking a tree trunk to the creature's left. As the beast turned its head toward the sound, a third arrow skipped off a rock to its right. The unseen archer was a phantom, a conductor of a deadly orchestra, herding the behemoth with sound and motion. She wasn't just firing arrows; she was controlling the battlefield, breaking the creature's defensive posture and creating the chaos Erik needed to press his attack.
Under the cover of this relentless harassment, Erik finally began to connect. He slammed Erythrael into the creature's hip, the runes on the axe flaring, causing a spray of sizzling black ichor. The razorclaw shrieked, a sound of pain and outrage, and swung wildly, forcing Erik back. But the damage was done. It was wounded.
The razorclaw, now enraged and harried from all sides, made a fatal mistake. It reared up, ignoring the stinging arrows and the distant, recovering cleric, and focused all its murderous intent on the one true threat: Erik. It brought both claws down in a devastating, all-out assault, a final, desperate attempt to annihilate the source of its pain.
From the ridge, the unseen elf saw the opening she had been waiting for. "Strike now!" a clear, sharp voice, female, and ringing with an otherworldly authority, cried out.
As the creature committed to its attack, its flank was completely exposed. Erik, instead of meeting the attack head-on, roared as a fire ignited in his veins. The Berserker's Rage rune flared, a searing silver brand on his forearm. The world bled into shades of red and black, his focus narrowing to a single, burning point of violence. He dropped low, his tower shield taking the brunt of the impact with a sound like a collapsing building, and drove Erythrael forward in a powerful, upward thrust, aiming for the creature's exposed shoulder joint.
He channeled his rage, his desperation, his very soul into the weapon. Power Strike.
The axe struck true.
There was a hideous, sizzling shriek that was not just of pain, but of something being fundamentally unmade. Where Erythrael's glowing runes touched the creature's blackened flesh, the tissue didn't just bleed or tear; it dissolved. It unraveled like rotten cloth, a cascade of decaying flesh, steaming ichor, and absolute nothingness spreading from the wound. The very strings of corrupt magic that held the creature together were being erased, leaving a gaping, smoking crater in its shoulder that reeked of ozone and decay.
The weak point was exposed.
Finn saw it. His eyes, wide with a mixture of terror and a manic, desperate energy, locked onto the festering, unraveling wound. His thrown knives were useless. He had to get closer. A thought, not of tactics but of pure, selfless instinct, seized him. With a cry that was more sob than war cry, he surged forward, his speed a blur. He scrambled up the creature's back, a desperate, frantic scramble for purchase. He ignored the tough hide, vaulted over its convulsing spine, and drove both his blades deep into the center of the decaying wound, burying them to the hilt in the corrupted flesh.
He had no idea what he was doing, no plan, no concept of the energies at play. He only knew he had to do something.
No one could have predicted what happened next. The moment the steel of Finn's daggers, mundane tools of a common rogue, plunged into the raw, otherworldly tissue of the wound, a catastrophic reaction occurred. It was not an attack he made, but something that was made of him. The strange, negating energy of the wound collided with the raw, chaotic abyssal energy that animated the creature. It was like forcing two positive poles of an infinitely powerful magnet together.
A violent, silent explosion of pure, white-hot energy erupted from the wound, the daggers acting as catastrophic lightning rods. The razorclaw convulsed, its massive body seizing up as the internal backlash of its own power coursed through it, stunning it into paralysis, every muscle locking rigid.
At the same time, Finn was thrown clear, a scream torn from his lips as the volatile energy surged back through his daggers and into him. He was flung through the air like a broken doll, landing in a heap twenty feet away, unconscious before he even hit the ground, his body smoking and twitching.
His desperate act had worked, but at a terrible, unknown cost. The razorclaw stood, stunned, grievously wounded, its body a canvas of smoldering decay, for three precious, quiet heartbeats.