??? [Perspective: KiAera]

  When I saw Gilbud evolve without me being in his proximity, I smiled. My heart brimmed with warmth at my big ol' bud's transformation; I had no doubt that he was more than enough to finish off the Burscarpurg.

  "You got this, Gilbud! Show that bastard the might of a Terrelepun!"

  ??? [Perspective: Gilbud]

  Gilbud grinned. "Yo. Burdrel, you're looking slightly intimidated from here. Don't shy away now."

  Clack! Clack! Clack! The Burscarpurg responded by clapping his pincers. He screeched, charging toward Gilbud.

  Gilbud expression soured into a scowl. Lowering his head, he barreled forward, leading with his shield-like head, tusks spinning rapidly. He clashed with the Burscarpurg. The ground shuddered from the impact.

  Burdrel shrieked as Gilbud struck the creature's remaining arm with his tusk. The tusk spiraled, drilling into the limb until it shattered into fragments. The lower segment fell, where the pincers were located, and Burdrel howled. With one arm, the Burscarpurg was left to swing with what remained.

  Gilbud's eyes glowed with psionic fire, and his [Flabbergast] was cast.

  Burdrel lurched, his many eyes widening as the spell took hold.

  His remaining arm stopped short from colliding with Gilbud's head.

  "Yo. Apologies. Burdrel," Gilbud addressed the faltering Burscarpurg. "I'd like to end this. I know your true nature. You won't leave us be till we are all devoured."

  Burdrel snapped his mandibles, his gaze shifting from Gilbud to Saptal. Burdrel's mouth dripped with saliva, his eyes bore on him with insatiable hunger.

  ??? [Parallel: Saptal]

  Time slowed as Saptal watched Gilbud rise from the earth as a majestic titan. He felt warmth spreading through him once more, roots quaking with renewed vigor.

  "Gilbud!" Saptal roared, straining to rise, his voice filled with an unshakeable belief. "Ya arrived at a good moment!"

  Grush plummeted from the sky, now sprawled like a pile of bones scattered on the earth.

  The sight satisfied Saptal as he witnessed the terrible skull-menace left in such a rumpled condition.

  But he was one to talk. Unable to rise, Saptal stared back and witnessed Burdrel scuttling past Gilbud.

  That was the Burscarpurg's greatest mistake.

  Burdrel the Burscarpurg had found a new target to pester, which was Saptal himself.

  Saptal felt sorry for the monster's poor initiative. Not really. Gilbud struck Burdrel's back with a swing of his trunk like it were a boulder-derived flail.

  Burdrel's crashed headfirst into the crystalline earth, his mandibles snapping for a good minute, his eyes gluttonous with rage.

  Those eyes stared Saptal down with a dark glint that extinguished when Gilbud's hooves stomped down on Burdrel's torso. The earth detonated beneath the tremendous force of their combined {Psionic} and {Terra} power.

  Saptal blinked, expecting to get submerged by the debris. Instead, to his disbelief, he saw a barricade of stone curved in front of him. He found himself unharmed from the devastation.

  Gilbud must've elevated his position before the collision. He sighed in relief; Gilbud had always been a kind kid.

  Although the contrast was hilarious, Burdrel lay buried beneath the rubble like a blighted seed.

  ??? [Parallel: Gilbud]

  The ground trembled with the weight of the battle, and Gilbud knew Saptal was struggling. The thought fueled his transformation. He would not let his friend fall, yo!

  With a swift burst of energy, Gilbud dug into the earth, breaking through the surface in a whirlwind of dirt and stone.

  "Yo Grush!" Gilbud shouted. "You think you can terrify us in our own turf? You'll find we are not so easily broken!"

  ??? [Parallel: Grush]

  The skeletal general turned, momentarily distracted from piecing his arm back into its socket. His hollow gaze caught sight of the odd construction before him. The grotesque amalgamation of the terrain's minerals being manipulated into a fortress baffled him. A wave of fear washed over him, a fear he thought he had long conquered.

  The construct could bury him!

  "I will crush you, boy!" Grush hissed, the rattling of his bones barely masking his unease. "You should have stayed hidden in the soil!"

  He slammed his bony palms against the earth's surface. The result was immediate. Several gravestones that could dwarf the greatest towers of DreaGoth surged from the ground. These monuments were his last line of defense to protect himself from the incoming landslide.

  He had a plan. He would hide within one of the gravestones, strike down the Terrelepun, and end the miserable existence that was Saptal the Saploom. Lord Grimgore Warlock would be pleased with his victory. It would elevate him to the rank of Warlord and allow him to replace the recently slain Maelvo.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He cackled at his own devious plot. He only needed to survive this round. Burdrel was a fool to fall so early in the match. No worries; the beast was mere cannon fodder.

  Grush heard the first wave of psionic-manipulated rubbish crash against his fortifications. He skeletal maw twisted into a grin.

  His hollow sockets glinted with dead-fire when the gravestones cracked. He didn't expect the very wall in front of him to shatter into fragments. He saw why. There were roots coiled within their foundation.

  Not his.

  He turned, and realization hit deep. Damn it. The accursed Saptal had jeopardized the structures's integrity with vines that twisted the very essence of the earth. It was a trap, a clever ruse designed to collapse in on him from within.

  Grush's eyes widened, disbelief washing over his bony face.

  From his perspective the failure felt intimate, like a betrayal of bone and earth alike. He had raised those monoliths with practiced certainty, packed tight with necrotic will and centuries of battlefield instinct. He had hidden within them before. It was how he survived dragons, siege engines, Oni who thought fire solved everything.

  But the soil here was wrong.

  Not dead. Not fully.

  Saptal's roots had sunk deeper than Grush realized. Not just into the stone. Into the idea of it. They were threaded through the foundations long before the walls rose, drinking what little memory of life the arena still carried. Grush had felt resistance when he shaped the terrain, a subtle drag, and dismissed it as fatigue.

  That arrogance cost him.

  The gravestone around him cracked inward, not outward. Roots constricted like ribs closing around a heart. Bark burst through carved names, splitting them apart. The necrotic wards sputtered as green light pulsed through the fractures.

  "No," Grush hissed, clawing at the inside as the stone folded. "This soil answers to me!"

  Above him something massive shifted.

  Gilbud's construct did not crash down as Grush expected. It stopped short. Suspended. Held.

  Grush looked up through the splitting stone and saw it. Saptal was no longer merely towering. He was anchored. His roots had wrapped around the falling mass, slowing it, shaping its descent. Not destruction. It was placement.

  A builder's fall.

  Grush felt something cold settle where fear used to be.

  They planned this.

  The graveyard was being repurposed around him, stone by stone, root by root.

  Grush tore free of the gravestone just as it disintegrated, bones scattering across the ground. He reassembled mid-stride, blade reforming in his grip as he charged forward.

  "I will not be buried," he roared. "I am the one who buries."

  He swung. The blade never reached Saptal.

  Gilbud's trunk struck the flat of the graveblade from the side, not to stop it, but to redirect it. {Psionic} force wrapped the impact, turning Grush's own momentum against him. The blade sank into the ground at an angle, pinned.

  Roots surged instantly, coiling around the weapon and Grush's arm alike.

  Saptal moved then.

  His massive hand closed around Grush's ribcage, fingers digging between bones.

  Grush thrashed, necrotic fire flaring as he tried to force regeneration, but the roots drank it down. Converted it. Neutralized it.

  "You don't get it," Grush snarled, struggling. "I don't need land. I don't need life. I endure."

  Saptal leaned closer. His voice was quieter now, tired but steady.

  "Aye. Ya endure. That's all ya ever do."

  He pressed Grush downward.

  The ground beneath them opened

  The roots of Saptal's power surged forth, cracking the gravestones that had been intended as his sanctuary. With each passing second, the earth seemed to rumble with the laughter of the forest, and Grush sensed the inevitable closing in around him.

  The ground quaked, and as Grush staggered back, he caught sight of the emerging terrors that had been hidden within the earth.

  Burdrel's body, partially swallowed by the remnants of the earth, began to writhe beneath Gilbud's relentless assault.

  Grush heard the echoes of his own fear bounce back to him, amplified by the insatiable hunger of the Burscarpurg, a predatory reminder of his own mortality.

  "No!" Grush roared, cursing the very roots that would bind and constrict him from all sides. "I am not some mere prey to be hunted! I am the dread that thrives in the void! You will perish, sapling and beast alike!"

  His skeletal fingers clawed at the earth as he unleashed a wave of necrotic energy, dark tendrils snaking through the ground around him.

  It was a desperate but calculated move. The raw energy ruptured the ground, bitter and black like spilled ink, shattering Saptal's vines and revealing the skeletal remains of ancient warriors buried beneath.

  But Gilbud was not one to be outmatched so easily. The beast redirected his energy, summoning a surge of psionic force that wrestled the necrotic waves back, pushing back against the darkness that inspired fear.

  Grush recognized the blasphemous skill. Damn it! It was [Cleanse]!

  "Yo! You don't get to dictate this fight!" Gilbud shouted. "We won't be snuffed out so easily, yo!"

  Grush watched as his foe surged forward, a towering force of nature, bursting ahead to crash into him with the weight of the earth behind him.

  As Gilbud collided with him, Grush felt the ground shift beneath him.

  There was a pit carved deep into the earth, and Grush plummeted into its depths.

  Gilbud had carved it earlier, instinctively, while fleeing Burdrel. A containment chamber reinforced with psionics and Terra flow. Not a grave.

  Grush hit the bottom hard. Roots snapped shut above him, sealing the chamber. Stone flowed over it, smooth and seamless, etched not with names but growth rings.

  "No! You think you can bury me?" he shouted desperately, anger choking his words. "I will rise, and you will become a mere shadow beneath my bones!"

  But as he turned to climb, the ground beneath him erupted in a riot of greens and browns. Saptal's roots reached skyward like the curled fingers of a thousand hands, grasping at Grush's very essence with a ferocity that sent shivers through the skeletal carcass.

  The roots coiled around his ribs, splintering through the spaces where marrow lay and twisting into his existence.

  "No! NO!" Grush roared, his voice echoing hollowly in the vast expanse of his newfound tomb.

  A cry echoed from a distant part of the field. "Saptal! Gilbud! Now! Strike together!" KiAera's voice fused through the air, an anthem that called upon the very heart of the earth.

  For the first time since his awakening, Grush could not rise.