Ant reached for Mahkir without thinking about it, the same instinct that had put him on his knees beside Maren and Axel a moment before now pulling him toward the light instead of away from it. The white glow surrounding Mahkir moved the instant Ant's hand closed on his fur, spreading out from Mahkir's shape and onto Ant's own, climbing up his arm and across his chest until neither of them could be seen outside it anymore.
It was blinding. Fighters on every side threw an arm up against it, several of them looking away outright, and even from inside it Ant had to squeeze his eyes shut against the brightness pressing through his own eyelids. He couldn't see Mahkir anymore. He couldn't see his own hands. There was only the light and the low pressure of it against his skin, building for a handful of seconds before the pressure stopped building and simply held there instead.
Ant could feel the energy entering his chest, a warmth spreading out from the center of it as the light completely engulfed both of them.
Thirty seconds, maybe more. Ant lost the exact count somewhere in the middle of it. Then, slowly, the light began to fade, the pressure easing off first, brightness fading from the air around them until the battlefield came back into focus one detail at a time.
Mahkir came into focus with it, and he wasn't quite the same shape he'd been a minute ago. His size had increased, coming up to Ant's shoulder now, wider too, every part of him built bigger than before. His fur, once red and soft, had hardened into something closer to scales, protecting the skin underneath. The colour had deepened as well, darker at the edges than the red Ant knew. Fire spread across his entire body now, a red aura that never stopped moving. His eyes were still the same amber they'd always been, but he looked older somehow, almost wiser. The last change was the pressure. Mahkir gave off a constant weight now, and the Kithren nearby were visibly struggling under it.
Text scrolled across his vision before his eyes had even finished adjusting.
[Evolution criteria met: 2/2. Kithren Evolution complete. Kithren has reached Evolution Rank 2.]
[Strength +20, Agility +30, Magic +30, Endurance +30. HP +100, Mana +100. Kithren level reset. Mahkir — Level 1.]
[User has established a magic soul. User may now access additional schools of magic: 3/6.]
[User and Kithren bond enhanced.]
[User's attributes have increased. Strength +10, Agility +10, Magic +50, Endurance +20. HP +100, Mana +250.]
Ant blinked at it, the messages still rolling past faster than he could properly read them, and pulled up both stat screens at once out of pure reflex.
[ANT — Level 17. Strength 71, Agility 82, Magic 133, Endurance 89. HP 247/247. Mana 685/685.]
[MAHKIR — Level 1. Strength 70, Agility 92, Magic 100, Endurance 72. HP 215/215. Mana 255/255.]
He stared at both of them longer than he had time to spare on staring. Mahkir's level had reset to one, which should have felt like a loss and somehow didn't, not against numbers like that sitting under it.
Level one. Mahkir's voice came through the bond quieter than Ant expected, none of his usual dryness in it. I don't feel like I'm level one.
"You're not, not really. Look at the rest of it."
I see it. A long pause followed, long enough that Ant felt it clearly through the bond. I don't know what just happened to me.
"Neither do I." Ant meant it as reassurance. He wasn't sure Mahkir believed it any more than he did. Ant's own mana pool alone had nearly doubled. He didn't understand the half of what had actually happened to either of them, not yet, not with a battlefield still burning around him and a man with a promise still standing thirty feet away. It could wait. Everything else couldn't.
Full HP and full mana, both restored at once. He triggered Restore on Maren without a second thought, the skill answering instantly where it had refused him minutes before, and watched the worst of the damage close over in front of his eyes, colour returning to her face all at once. She gasped and sat up, hand going to her side out of habit before finding nothing there to hold.
The skill wouldn't fire again. Ant felt that much clearly, some limit on it already spent and not coming back tonight. Axel was still down, still hurt badly, and Ant had no second use of Restore left to fix that too. But Axel had a real chance now in a way he hadn't a minute ago, Rowan's full attention no longer split between two people who both needed it, and Maren herself already turning toward her own Kithren the second she had her feet back under her.
Ant turned back to Kris.
He felt it before he'd finished the turn, strength sitting differently in his own limbs, stronger in a way that had nothing to do with adrenaline. Mahkir felt it too, Ant could tell from the bond alone, a fresh readiness moving through it that hadn't been there thirty seconds ago. He triggered Attribute Sharing again without a second thought this time. Three more minutes on the clock, and this time the numbers behind it were nothing like what they'd been the first time around.
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Natalia and Garrick pulled back the moment Ant and Mahkir moved forward together, neither of them needing to be told twice. This wasn't theirs to finish anymore. Mahkir peeled off toward the elephant again without needing to be told, same as before, leaving Kris to Ant alone.
Ant drove a Flame Fist through Soul Render's edge, and Kris met it the way he'd met every one before, ice forming fast around his forearm to catch it. This time the ice didn't hold. It shattered outright the instant the flame touched it, gone before it had finished forming, and Kris took a full step back to reset his footing, the first ground he'd given up all fight.
He tried again. It broke again, faster than the last time, Ant's magic simply overpowering whatever Kris was putting into the ice to stop it. Ant pressed forward without letting up, one Flame Fist after another, each one costing less of his own reserve than it should have and landing harder than any of them had landed before. Kris raised a wall, a blade, a second wall behind the first, and none of it slowed anything down for more than an instant before the next strike found him anyway.
Off to the side, Mahkir tore into the elephant without letting up, driving it back a full length with every exchange. He's not matching you anymore, Mahkir sent, not looking away from his own fight for a second. Keep pushing. He's just trying to survive it now.
Kris caught the pattern too. He stopped trying to block outright and started moving instead, weaving between strikes that would have taken his head off a minute earlier, giving ground in short, controlled steps rather than standing to trade. It slowed the damage down, but only slightly. Ant pressed anyway, driving Soul Render low and forcing Kris to commit to a dodge rather than a counter, and followed the opening through with a strike aimed at the same arm that had been blocking him all fight.
Steel found Kris's forearm this time, a real cut, deep enough that he actually staggered from it instead of absorbing it without reaction, as every other hit tonight had gone. He didn't have an answer ready for that either. His ice came up too slow this time, thinner than it had been, and Ant's next Flame Fist caught him square in the chest before he'd finished raising it.
He looked to the elephant. It wasn't there to help him. Mahkir was already on it, faster across the field than anything that size had any business tracking, strikes landing from angles the elephant couldn't turn fast enough to meet, the damage piling up with nothing coming back the other way. Kris had no one left to call on and nowhere left to retreat to that would actually help him.
"This is not over," Kris shouted, and behind him the air itself tore open, a portal edged in the same cold pale light his ice had carried all fight. He stepped back into it without waiting to see whether Ant had anything to say to that, the elephant crashing backward through the same gap a half-second later, and then there was nothing left where either of them had been standing. The portal closed behind them before Ant had taken a single step toward it, no trace of either of them left on the field at all.
Ant looked out across what was left of the battlefield. His clan had done well. It wasn't over, not by a long way, and people were still dying while he stood here catching his breath.
Kalsar reached him first, Xylock a step behind, both of them still half turned toward whatever they'd been fighting a moment ago. "What in the void was that." It wasn't really a question, more a demand for an answer he expected to get eventually and not right now. Duncan wasn't far behind him, Shelly lumbering to a stop at his side, and even from a distance Ant could see the same question on half a dozen other faces turning his way across the field.
"Later," Ant said. "I'll explain everything later. Right now we still have a fight to finish."
Nobody argued with that, not with the sound of it still going on all around them, but Kalsar's eyes stayed on him a moment longer than the rest before he turned back into the fight without another word.
Two minutes still sat on Attribute Sharing's clock. Forcing Kris to run had cost less than a minute of it, and Ant wasn't about to waste the rest standing still. He triggered Lightning Storm again, the evolution apparently lifting whatever limit had kept it to once a fight before, and he intended to use every second of that while it lasted.
Clouds gathered fast overhead, and every head still standing turned up toward them at once, no confusion in it this time. They knew exactly what was coming.
The first bolt came down twice the size of anything from the first storm, and the man it struck didn't get the chance to make a sound. That's stronger, Ant thought, watching it land, no doubt about it at all. Last time he'd cast this alone, without Attribute Sharing behind it. His own magic had sat at 83 before tonight. With Mahkir's added into it now, the combined total read 233, and the difference showed in exactly the way he'd expect it to.
He didn't wait to admire it. Both he and Mahkir went straight back into the fight, pushing the line forward while the storm kept falling behind them.
A high, ragged squeal cut across the noise to his right, and Ant turned in time to see it. Natalia's, Garrick's, and Andy's Kithren had all converged on Sunclaw at once, and Hexa finished it, one clean strike dropping the serpent where it stood. It didn't get back up.
That seemed to be the last of whatever fight Marigolds had left in them. They'd lost close to seventy percent of their number tonight, and the thirty percent still breathing had no interest in joining the rest of it. Weapons dropped and knees hit the ground, one after another, until there was nobody left standing who wanted to keep this going. The fight was over.
Natalia found him within a minute of it ending, Garrick and Kalsar close behind her, and this time nobody let him put them off with "later." Natalia's eyes went to Mahkir first, taking in the size of him, the levelled-down but obviously changed shape of him, before coming back to Ant. "Someone needs to explain what that was," she said, not unkindly, but not asking either.
"I will," Ant said. "I promise. Just not this second." He looked around at the four of them, at Duncan and Rowan drifting closer too, at Maren already back on her feet with Axel's head in her lap. There would be time for all of it. There wasn't time yet.
What was left was questions, and Ant had a great many of them himself.
The voice spoke for the first time since Mahkir's evolution, and Ant knew immediately that it had changed. Before, it had always carried a computerised edge under whatever else it said, a mechanical undertone sitting just beneath the words no matter what it was actually saying. That edge was gone now. It sounded, for the first time since Ant had known it existed, like an actual person talking, and it stopped him mid-stride.
"You have done well, and come a long way, Anthony," the voice said. "Having the pleasure of watching you grow this past year has shown me the Byrren line has lost none of its bravery and courage."
"Who exactly are you?" Ant asked.
The voice paused before answering. "Right now, I am part of the system," it said. "However, once, a very long time ago, I was known as Adran Byrren. Leader of Silverwing. Your ancestor."