As Matthias waded into the tide of bodies before him, Antionette flew Peter onto Matthias’ back.

  “Is here alright?” she asked as she placed Peter near an edge, but far enough in that he would not fall off if he stumbled.

  “Here should be fine,” Peter observed. “I should be able to carry out the ritual to summon my circle. You should be off. You have other things you must attend to.”

  Antionette did not answer as she turned and activated her abilities. Her lesser ants began to boil out of the wet soil, climbing up Matthias’ legs in a churning black tide. Their task was simple: nothing climbed the Father of Monsters without being eaten first.

  Once orders were given, Antionette launched west. It was the more dangerous front. She could feel it in the mana currents—thicker, hotter, louder.

  The Devourer was already in its berserker state.

  Heat poured off its colossal body as its metabolism climbed to obscene levels. Rain never reached its scales. It vanished in hissing steam before contact, and a heavy fog rolled outward in suffocating waves. The air tasted metallic and sour even from a distance.

  The Devourer did not fight.

  It fed.

  A dragon attempted to dive-bomb it, folding its wings tight in a spear-like descent. All of the hydra’s heads snapped upward in unison and unleashed a roar that was more force than sound. The shockwave struck like a battering ram. The dragon’s eyes burst in its skull. Wing joints inverted with wet cracks.

  In its final moments of consciousness, it detonated the magic within its body.

  The explosion tore the fog apart. Fire and pressure rippled outward. The Devourer barely staggered before turning back to the endless press of bodies before it, heads plunging down to seize prey. The tide was not an army.

  It was meat.

  The blast scattered the acidic mist that had evaporated from the hydra’s blood. Creatures caught within it screamed as their flesh sloughed from bone. When the fumes dispersed, the monsters surged forward again as if nothing had happened.

  They always surged forward.

  Far behind the Devourer, the forces of Winter and Fall held their battle line well out of its frenzy. Their focus was simple: nothing slipped past the hydra’s feeding ground.

  Fey dedicated themselves to art in all forms. So when the archers loosed their volley into the storm, it was flawless. Arrows cut through wind and rain as though the elements had politely stepped aside. Every shaft found a throat, an eye, a seam in scale.

  Antionette allowed herself half a heartbeat to appreciate it.

  Then she moved.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  The manticore and wyvern remained on the southern front. She would handle the western skies.

  Rain and darkness concealed her matte-black form as she closed on her first target. She struck at the base of a wing. Her limbs blurred, carving into scale, burrowing through muscle. Heat and blood washed over her as she tunneled inward.

  Sinew. Bone.

  She calculated angles automatically. The fastest way to sever lift. The cleanest way to prevent detonation.

  Mana surged.

  The world went white.

  She awoke inside one of her prepared cocoons. She tore free in seconds, chitin cracking as she forced herself out. The western sky still burned with expanding light.

  The dragon had chosen death over falling.

  Irritation—not fear—tightened her chest. They were learning. Or perhaps they were simply desperate.

  Lightning split the heavens.

  The Spring Court began guiding it down with surgical precision. Bolts as thick as towers hammered into dragon forms. The strikes were not merely elemental—they were punitive.

  Antionette launched again.

  She selected a dragon banking wide, clearly attempting to regroup rather than dive. Its eyes tracked the battlefield with wary intelligence.

  This one was thinking.

  As she closed, its slit pupils snapped directly toward her. For a single instant, recognition flared.

  She accelerated.

  Her strike landed where skull met spine. Bone ground like boulders under tectonic pressure. The vertebrae shattered cleanly. The dragon went limp without releasing its mana.

  Efficient.

  It fell.

  The Devourer leapt and caught the carcass midair, shaking it like a hound with prey. The massive body became a flail, scattering smaller creatures. Half the hydra’s heads tore into the dragon while the others continued feeding. Ribs snapped free. Blood sheeted down in steaming torrents.

  The Devourer did not rage.

  It consumed.

  Antionette moved to the next target.

  None of them sensed her. She was not a spellcaster. Her mana signature was minimal, nearly nonexistent. In a sky full of magical conflagration, she was a shadow with teeth.

  One dragon hovered, weaving a complex spell. The Devourer’s heads snapped toward it and released another concussive roar. The spell matrix shattered mid-formation. A guided bolt of lightning struck moments later, cooking the dragon from within. The smell of charred flesh cut through even the acidic haze.

  The number of fliers thinned rapidly.

  Satisfied, Antionette angled south.

  The storm had been blown away there, revealing what lay beneath.

  It was not a battlefield.

  It was a butcher’s yard.

  Broken bodies carpeted the earth in layers. Mud no longer existed—only churned meat and liquefied soil. Rivers of blood flowed in sluggish channels toward the sea, carrying fragments of bone and scraps of flesh like grotesque flotsam. The air was thick with copper, bile, and burned scale.

  The Horrorpede erupted from beneath the gore in an explosion of viscera. It latched onto the leg of a low-flying dragon, its segmented body coiling with brutal leverage. The dragon shrieked as it was dragged from the sky.

  It detonated.

  The blast scattered the Horrorpede into wet ruin.

  Chunks of it struck the ground.

  Then those chunks began to move.

  Segments convulsed, mouths opening and closing as they consumed whatever lay closest—dragon, soldier, monster, it did not matter. With every mouthful, new flesh knitted itself together. Another segment formed. Then another.

  Antionette felt something twist low in her abdomen.

  An explosion rocked the far edge of the carnage as a massive wyrm unleashed a breath attack that tore a trench through corpses. Seconds later, blade spiders swarmed it, prying open its skull with methodical precision.

  The sounds were constant—wet tearing, bone splitting, the dull percussion of detonations. There were no war cries. Only feeding.

  Antionette turned away.

  For the first time since taking flight, she felt the edge of nausea. Not from fear.

  From understanding.

  As she rose back toward the western sky to ensure the last of the fliers were dealt with, her father’s words finally settled fully into place.

  This was not a battle.

  This was a feast.

  This was predation.

  This was a story of violence that would define the future of the world.

  She only hoped she was strong enough to remain herself once the feeding stopped.