When you started something, you had to finish it.
Damian took two massive trunks in each hand, the wood sinking into his grip as if eager to serve his purpose. Mana flooded into his legs, filling muscles and bones and blood with power that screamed for release, and he leapt from the mountain with a force that cracked the stone beneath his feet.
He took to the air in an extremely high jump that defied everything normal cultivation should have allowed, his body arcing upward and outward with the trajectory of a thrown spear, the wind screaming past his face as the ground fell away beneath him.
He looked like a Primal Beast.
He looked like something that shouldn’t exist, a creature of legend made flesh and given terrible purpose!
His single leap took him curving over the tribe far below, his figure that had arced across the sky causing utter astonishment from the eyes of the Tribesmen who had been working on their defensive walls moments before.
They stopped.
They stared.
They watched the Tokoloshe fly!
Even Grandmother Essun had her jaws open wide when she saw this, her gnarled stick frozen mid-swing as she tracked the impossible trajectory of the young man she had held while he wept just hours ago. The same young man who had seemed so broken, so lost in his grief, now soared through the air like vengeance given human form.
"Ancestors preserve us..."
She breathed the words without realizing she was speaking.
Damian’s body crashed onto the stones right outside the tribe with an impact that sent cracks spider-webbing through rock that had endured for ages, his legs absorbing the force through Mana-reinforced muscle and bone that bent but didn’t break.
The moment he landed, he made another jump.
He leapt out toward the fleeing Warrior, his eyes tracking the running Bone Tempering woman through the Mana-perception that the inscription on his heart had granted him. She was fast, faster than any normal Second Circle cultivator.
But she wasn’t fast enough.
While he was in the air, at the apex of his second tremendous leap, Damian drew back his arm and threw one of the trunks he carried toward the direction of Lady Morgana with all the force his body could produce.
...!
BOOM!
The log screamed through the air, a blue-white streak of Mana-hardened wood that covered the distance between them in heartbeats.
In the far distance, the shocked and horrified figure of Morgana felt something through her unique power, a warning that screamed through her serpentine perception with urgency that transcended conscious thought. Her body reacted before her mind could process what was happening, twisting to the right with desperate speed born of pure survival instinct.
The thick trunk passed her and grazed her left arm.
Grazed.
Such a small word for such devastating contact.
The Mana-hardened wood caught her limb at an angle that should have been a near miss, but the force contained within that projectile didn’t care about angles or near misses. Her flesh tore open instantly, skin and muscle parting like wet cloth before a blade. The bones of her forearm and elbow shattered, pulverized by the glancing impact into fragments that would never heal properly even with the best remedies the Vassal Tribes could provide.
The log continued past her and hit the ground ahead, and upon impact it released all the stored force that the near miss hadn’t depleted. The explosion of Mana and splintering wood created a shockwave that caught Morgana’s already-damaged body and flung her in the opposite direction like a leaf caught in a storm.
She bellowed out in agony as she flew through the air, her scream cutting off when she smashed into the stones nearby with force that drove the breath from her lungs and cracked ribs that had been tempered through years of cultivation.
When the lands stopped spinning, when she could focus her serpentine eyes on something other than the red haze of pain that consumed her awareness, she looked at her arm.
It was gone.
Not cleanly severed, but torn, the flesh ending in ragged strips somewhere around her elbow, the bone visible and splintered, blood pumping from vessels that her body was desperately trying to close through Mana-enhanced healing that couldn’t possibly keep up with the damage.
And embedded throughout her torso and remaining arm, she could feel the shrapnel.
Splinters of wood that had been hardened by Mana had inserted themselves into her body upon the log’s detonation, dozens of fragments ranging from the size of needles to the size of fingers buried in muscle and organ alike.
She had to move!
She had to run!
She began to force herself up, her one remaining arm pushing against stone that was slick with her own blood, her legs trembling with shock and blood loss as she tried to make them obey commands they could barely receive.
If she could just get moving, if she could just put distance between herself and whatever monster was hunting her, maybe she could survive long enough to-
BOOM!
From the skies, as if he were a tiny Primal Beast descended from the realm of legends, the figure of a terrifying young man smashed into the stones a few meters from where she lay.
The impact cratered the earth beneath him, cracks spreading outward from the point of landing like the web of some enormous spider. Dust and debris flew upward before settling around a form that seemed to glow with inner power.
Thick rivers of Mana wrapped around his body like living things, tendrils of blue energy that flowed across his skin and crackled through the air surrounding him. He carried one last log in his hand, the wood already beginning to harden under his touch as Mana flowed into its fibers.
His eyes shone a deep hue of blue, the color of a sky just before a storm breaks, the color of ice that had formed over water so deep that light couldn’t reach its bottom.
When he breathed out while looking at Lady Morgana, tendrils of Mana leaked from his mouth like smoke from a fire that burned too hot to be contained. He looked utterly regal at this moment, a being that belonged on thrones rather than in the wilderness of Unbound territories.
And utterly terrifying!