Chapter 31 - Second phase.
Silence hung over the clearing.
Occasional gusts of wind tore leaves from the branches of the giant trees, while inside the knights' helmets the breathing came hoarse and drops of sweat fell from their chins to the ground.
Bernard tightened his grip on the haft of his axe, while Alistair built up the shell of energy along his body and his blade, and Edith stood beside them and did not take her eyes off the beast-god.
Aren bent his knees and put his hands out in front of him. Blue energy covered his fingers all the way to the palms and drew out into long sharp claws.
Ursus moved its muzzle from one man to the next.
After Edith's discharge its regeneration had stopped, so that dark blood seeped from the open wounds in its hide.
A torn leaf came down to the ground between them, and in that same instant Ursus gathered its front legs under it and drove forward, while a battle cry went up among the warriors.
The beast-god's front paw swept horizontally through the line and forced the knights apart. They let the limb pass between them and closed again under Ursus's belly, cutting at the joints and pulling back at every movement of the huge body.
Ray, Elen and the archers of the Forest Watch stayed at the treeline and sent arrows into the neck and the back of the head from different points.
Edith rose above the clearing, and electrical discharges gathered along her arms and filled the air with a crackle and the sharp smell of a storm.
"FALL BACK!"
The warriors recoiled from the beast while a spear of lightning thickened in Edith's hands. She threw it into Ursus's forehead, and the discharge went straight through the head.
The beast-god convulsed with a roar that shook the branches over the clearing. When the lightning died away it threw its muzzle up and swung a paw at Edith, but Alistair stepped in to meet the limb and drove his greatsword into the claws.
The blow carried the beast's attack aside and kept it off the Queen.
The knights ringed Ursus again and attacked only when it turned toward another opponent.
Aren stayed out of reach and waited until the beast-god turned its head toward Alistair.
He threw himself at the middle legs and drew his claws through both joints, then dug into the flank and climbed. One cut gave way to the next until a bloody net showed across the dark hide.
Ursus reared onto its hind limbs, and the ground went out from under Aren and left him holding on to the fur at the withers.
Bernard and Alistair came around the beast on opposite sides and struck at the tendons of the hind legs together, so that Ursus swayed.
Aren ran up its back to the head and laid the muzzle open with his claws along the right eye.
The beast-god tossed its head, but Aren had already pushed off and landed on one knee with a dull pain in the joint; the heavy body came down on its back and threw up a cloud of dust.
He got up beside Bernard while the warriors around them kept their swords up, and the archers held their strings drawn on the beast-god hidden in the dust.
Inside the cloud a huge mass shifted.
"ARCHERS!" Edith shouted.
Arrows sank into Ursus's body from every side.
It turned onto its side and tried to get up, but the cut tendons gave under it and left it sitting with its back to the men and its head down.
Aren shifted his weight onto his front foot.
"This is our chance!" he said.
"ATTACK!" Edith shouted.
Another battle cry rolled over the clearing, and the whole line drove forward.
Aren gathered speed with every step, and over the last few meters he pushed off the ground and drew the clawed hand back over Ursus's spine.
Suddenly every one of them heard and felt the deep beat of another creature's heart.
One heavy pulse rolled through the whole body, and a wave of magic broke out of the beast-god.
The warriors were swept off their feet, and Aren was thrown into the trunk of a tree several dozen meters from Ursus, dragged through the branches on the way, and the dust went up over the clearing again.
Driven into the trunk, Aren tore himself free and dropped to the ground.
His legs gave under him as he landed, and for several seconds he could not draw a full breath.
When the air finally came into his lungs he raised his head and saw the beast-god's outline, barely visible through the risen wall of dust, begin to change.
A thick dark aura drew in around it, and over that a new energy shell gathered, red in color.
The growl dropped to a low guttural hum, and from under the hide came crunching blows one after another. Bones shifted and pushed the fur up, wounds drew closed with a hiss, and the edges of torn flesh met without a mark.
Ursus rose onto its hind limbs.
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Their knees bent backward while the front legs drew out and the claws on them grew to the length of a blade. The middle limbs pressed in against the body and shrank until they no longer reached the ground, and the ribcage widened. Two enormous horns grew out of the skull and pushed the fur apart at the base.
The beast-god straightened to its full height and turned its changed muzzle toward the men. A cold blue fire burned in its eyes, and nothing of the animal fury was left in it.
Several knights fell back a pace and took a firmer grip on their swords, while Edith stayed where she was with her weapon up.
Ursus let two thick clouds of steam out of its nostrils and dropped into a stance. The right front paw touched the ground in front of it, the left hind leg stretched far back, and the body leaned almost horizontal. It shut its eyes, and nobody dared come near.
Edith raised her hands, and electrical discharges gathered between them again.
"WARRIORS, CONCENTRATE AND ATT—"
Ursus's eyes flew open.
The beast-god broke from where it stood and took its claws through the whole line of knights in one circular movement. Armor reinforced with magic tore apart along with the bodies inside it, and six knights went across the grass in pieces.
Flesh was still falling when a rain of blood covered the survivors.
The warriors threw themselves at it with a shout to get back to attacking in turn, but Ursus jumped the front rank and came down behind them. Those who did not manage to turn were torn to pieces on the instant.
A spear of lightning struck the beast-god from the side, though it covered its muzzle with a front paw, held the discharge and then turned to Edith.
Alistair was already up in the air and coming down in a rushing attack on Ursus's back, but it did not even turn, and a sweep of its paw caught him and sent him flying deep into the forest.
The beast-god dropped into the stance again and drove at Edith.
The Queen pushed off with a flash of lightning and shot up as the claws sheared away part of the trunk behind her.
Ursus turned under a volley of arrows that broke against the red shell and left not a mark on it.
Aren kept his distance, watching every movement Ursus made and dropping his eyes now and then to the torn armor on the ground.
He's faster now. The shell is back, and he moves far better with it. And those claws...
The remains of six knights lay where a single sweep had cut through the line.
One blow and I'm gone. Damn... if I had a defense like that... A defense...
Aren looked over the clearing, where heaps of dead white-stone boars lay among the bodies of knights and Cortexes, and right at the treeline one of the carcasses moved a leg weakly.
He ran across the clearing at once.
"Aren! What are you—" Bernard shouted after him.
Aren stopped over the boar, whose deep wounds were running with blood, and saw that the beast was no longer able to cover itself in the white-stone shell.
He picked up a sword lying beside a dead warrior and drove the blade into the boar's body.
The boar's eyes went still, and then its body began dissolving smoothly into green energy.
Before Bernard's eyes threads of that energy drew toward the rune tattoos on Aren and vanished into them.
At the far side of the clearing Edith was getting clear of Ursus's attacks and using the trunks and the gaps between them. She pushed off a tree, but a claw caught her shoulder all the same and opened the skin, and a sharp pain ran the length of her arm.
A dark figure dropped from a branch above the beast-god.
"COME HERE!" Askir shouted.
Ursus turned and struck a paw out to meet the movement, though Askir passed along the claws within a hand's width.
"HA," he breathed out.
The axe under its coat of energy bit through the red shell and left a long cut across the beast's neck and forearm.
Askir landed behind it in a roll and cleared the way for Arswald and Armund, who swung at the hind legs from both sides at once.
Ursus suddenly pushed off the ground and leapt high over the clearing. When it came down again, the shockwave threw both warriors apart.
Armund rolled and braced a palm against the ground, but his knees had not yet straightened when the beast-god's shadow fell over him. The clawed paw was already on its way down, though a lightning strike knocked it off its line and made Ursus turn its head.
Edith stood off to one side, swaying with exhaustion, while blood ran from her nose.
When Ursus brought its head back, it found an empty place where Armund had been seconds before.
Then the beast-god moved toward the Queen, but Alistair's greatsword came flying out of the depths of the forest and lodged in its front paw with a crunch.
The blade under its own shell tore itself out of the wound and came back to its owner, who stepped out between the trees with a marked limp.
Alistair was barely holding himself up after the earlier blow, with one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other pressed to his ribs.
The beast-god blew out through its nostrils, dropped into the stance and threw itself at him. The arrows of Elen, Ray and the rest of the archers broke against the red shell, and Askir, Armund and Arswald could not cross its path in time.
Edith's head came up.
"ALISTAIR!"
Sterling saw the claws thrown out ahead of it and coming straight at him.
An instant before the blow he looked at Edith, frozen in the distance with her eyes wide, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a brief smile.
The crash of the impact came together with the cloud of dust that rose over it.
When the dust began to settle, Ursus came out of it, still holding the position of the attack.
Edith could not believe that Alistair had been killed, but then she saw that the knight was still standing in front of Ursus, and the beast-god's claws had buried themselves in the ground beside him, turned aside at the last instant.
Between them stood a man in armor of white stone.
Cracks ran out across the whole surface of it with blue energy pulsing inside them, and black hair showed above the high collar.
Aren raised cold eyes to Ursus.
The next moment he sprang at the giant's muzzle — Ursus brought its paw back and swept it to meet him.
A white-stone shield grew on the outside of Aren's forearm, covered with an added layer of blue energy.
The claws landed in the center of the guard and threw him back toward the crown of the nearest tree, though in the air he put out the claws on his other hand and drove them into the trunk, and then pushed off it again.
Before Ursus could get its paw back, the white stone gathered around Aren's free hand and formed a massive fist that slammed into the beast-god's muzzle with the whole run behind it.
Ursus's head jerked aside, and the beast itself fell back under a blow that sent a short wave of energy through the air.
Aren sprang around behind Ursus and landed between the beast-god and the rest of them.
Ursus turned its whole body around and drew itself up to its full height.
"What, no more grinning?" Aren said.
The beast-god drove at him, but in the moment of the lunge Arswald and Askir struck at its hind legs. Ursus pitched forward and braced its front limbs against the ground.
Armund and Bernard sprang out from behind its shoulders and brought their weapons down on the skull at the same moment. The blades did not go in deep, but they held the head low enough for Aren, who met the lower jaw with the white-stone fist and threw the beast's muzzle up.
Edith was holding Elen's bow at that moment, lightning winding itself around the arrow, and the Queen loosed it into Ursus's left eye.
The beast-god let out a low roar that made them all fall back and take a breath.
The warriors gathered for another attack, though Ursus did not move after them.
Its breathing quickened, its body shook, and its claws dug deeper and deeper into the ground. The heart beat so heavily that every survivor heard it and felt the blows through the soil.
Ursus raised its head.
For one moment the breathing and the heartbeat stopped.
A red wave of energy broke out of the beast-god's body with a deafening roar, like an electrical discharge, and caught everyone within a hundred meters.
Everything inside Aren lost its footing.
The white-stone armor crumbled away, the blue claws scattered and his legs gave under him, as the warriors around him fell onto their knees and coughed up blood.
Only Elen stayed on his feet and looked at the others, with no understanding of what was happening to them.
"W-what's happening?!" he shouted.
Edith was down on all fours, and blood covered her lower jaw and her chin.
She turned her head to Elen with an effort and saw that the pulse had not touched him.
"D... damn..."
The Queen shifted her weight onto an elbow, but the arm would not hold her.
"Th... this is... Exdurum..." she got out, and dropped onto her side.
An icy cold spread through Aren, and his lungs answered every other time. He raised his head and saw Ursus rising on its healing hind legs and turning furious eyes on the victims who had been struck by one of the most terrible phenomena a magic-user can meet — Exdurum.