Boundless Evolution: The Summoning Beast

Kieran didn't move when he said it. He let the words hang like a trip‑wire: "You forgot something."

"Don't be so sure," Kieran spoke with a calm look and a slight smirk as he wiped blood with a knuckle, "You forgot something."

Eryndor's gaze stayed on the glint of Kieran's daggers for half a beat longer than a careful man would have allowed.

The air between them felt tight as a drawn wire; even the fire in the broken oil bowls seemed to listen. Behind that line, ash sloped away into a ragged comb of rocks and roots. And from then, from blind side of the field, Bennet came up the ridge without sound.

Metal aether hummed low along his tendons; he shook it off the surface like a smith flicking filings so the ground wouldn't whisper.

Dust curled at his boots and didn't rise. He took thin, measured breaths, keeping his chest still and the ash quiet.

The heat between them wavered. No steps yet—just eyes drawing lines, hands loosening on hilts.

"I forget nothing," Eryndor replied, "Everything here is mine to count."

"Then count again," Kieran said.

Ash kicked as Kieran then burst forward and Eryndor met him in the same beat—steel flashing—while the Netherbreed lunged and Vasa dropped like a black bolt. The raven knifed through furnace breath and snapped onto Kieran's shoulder as he feinted at Eryndor's favourite line; steel rang—once, twice—as Kieran shaved along the guard and Eryndor stole the angle a finger‑width right.

As they fought, Bennet crept even closer, carefully muffling his steps, as he mapped the kill‑lane for his attack.

Vasa skimmed the beast's brow lattice and knocked its lunge a hair off course; claws tore ash where Kieran had been.

Sparks stitched the fog. Heat slammed the air. Steel rang—once, twice—as Kieran shaved along the guard and Eryndor stole a finger‑width of angle.

For three hard heartbeats they blurred in close: tail scything, feathers flashing, breath rolling like a furnace blast. Kieran slid past a claw and Eryndor's pommel brushed his jaw; Vasa clipped the lattice and skittered free.

Then Kieran rolled out and Eryndor let the line go. The Netherbreed reset with a low snarl as Vasa wheeled back overhead.

Distance opened by a pace. Both men squared again, breathing hard. Heat roped the space between them; ash drifted in slow spirals. Hands eased on hilts; shoulders dropped; the line rewrote itself in breath and angle. Kieran shifted a toe; Eryndor tilted his blade a hair.

"Why keep this up?" Eryndor's mouth twitched, "A thief's stall."

"Or a clock striking," Kieran said.

Eryndor's gaze flickered, a brief confusion cutting through his calm; for half a beat his focus slipped, the weight he kept on the air thinning as he searched the line for meaning.

He began to adjust—blade tilting to reclaim the centre—only to realize too late the "clock" wasn't a quip at all but a cue.

At that moment, Bennet had the lane measured and the ground on his side: long ash band underfoot, the lightning‑split pine five paces behind Eryndor, a rain‑cut trough ready to take a body. Angle the hit so the earth finishes it.

Understone!

The ground rose under Eryndor's lead boot—traction vanished for a blink. Authority tried to press; Bennet pressed harder.

No call. No warning. Heat packed down his arms until steam ghosted his knuckles—dense, obedient.

And then, he went.

This time, instead of fire, wind aether braided along his blade, coating over the fiery glow of the metal with a translucent blueish green that left a trail of the same colour in the air with every movement.

Slipstream Veil!

The world bent: heat shimmer pulled into a tight ribbon, ash streamed backward, motes hung a heartbeat then snapped forward as sound died to a hush and a pale wake trailed the edge. Shoulder, hip, ground in one line; the flat slid through air like glass and slammed square into Eryndor's ribs.

Eryndor moved only a fraction—blade tilting to catch the blow.

Boom!

Steel met steel with a shriek as the driving force crushed down his arms; his sword stood as the single bar between him and a clean cleave. The guard bowed, wrists jolted, breath ripped out of him—then the world let go beneath his heels.

Impact turned into flight. Eryndor left his feet—no stumble, a throw—his cloak cracking like a flag.

THUMP! THUMP! Thump!

He blew through the split pine in a burst of bark and ash, tore straight through a second trunk, and caromed into a third hard enough to shake needles loose in a glittering rain.

The ridge answered with a rolling crack-crack, and for half a breath his field slipped clean off the world. The air came back to its proper weight.

Bennet didn't smile. He heard the wet catch in the man's breath and filed it: left ribs gone, shoulder ruined. Pain would make the weight trick flicker—half‑beats, not lines.

The Netherbreed moved at the crack. The brow lattice surged; the beast pivoted so fast the plates in its shoulders clicked like teeth. It drove between Eryndor and the dagger men and set its foreclaws as a wall. Furnace breath swelled to flood the lane with a curtain of heat meant to make all plans stupid.

Vasa dropped out of the smoke and landed beside them, claws hissing in the ash. The raven flared its wings into a low, black shield at their sides; breath tore past above in a wash of heat, then slid off the feathers in shimmering waves.

"Ugh..."

A raw groan tore out of Eryndor as awareness came back in rough pieces. Vision doubled, then steadied as he saw the scene in front of him.

Varkul—the Netherbreed—was crouched between him and the blades, plates flared, heat rolling. He blinked grit and reached for his sword by habit, fingers closing on an empty grip and red-steel teeth scattered in the ash. The blade had shattered when he let it for as he hit the third tree.

For a breath, nobody moved. Fire hissed in the bowls. Pebbles clicked as cooling plates exhaled. Somewhere a burned leaf gave up and fell. It was the kind of small silence that shows who holds it.

A narrow smile appeared on his face, accompanied by the shame and pain that came with it, "I miscounted. Once."

"Once," Bennet said, "is how men die."

Eryndor did not answer them.

He said, soft to the beast, "Hold."

The Netherbreed edged close at his hoarse call, plates lowering to give him a wall. Eryndor planted a palm on Varkul's brow‑lattice and the other against the bark and tried to rise.

He bared his teeth, blood threading his lip.

"Do not mistake pain for surrender," he rasped—not to the beast but to the men across the ash, "We finish this."

Just then, his knees unlocked, then buckled; he caught himself on the beast, breath hissing between his teeth as the world narrowed to the grind in his left side.

The cough took him without consent.

A hard, wet bark—dark blood flecked the ash and striped the trunk. Iron flooded his mouth.

His field blinked in and out in mean, clipped beats; the dead rope of his left arm swung useless while the shoulder hung loose and hot. Every breath scraped across broken wicker where ribs should have been.

Bennet angled his blade low and spoke so the words carried without heat. "Left side first: three ribs at least, maybe four. One shard nicked the lung—that's why the cough comes wet and why your head swims when you pull air. Shoulder's gone—socket slipped or the collar torn—so the arm hangs like rope and your grip shakes on the recover."

"Your field of view should be in clips now, not a line. Every time you try to weigh the air, pain cuts your count in half. You lean to the right heel to spare the left, which drags your centre behind the beast. You can stand and you can order, commander, but you can't press."

"If you force a surge, you'll black out. If you send him, I take the seam under his left motor‑plates and you lose the leash. Step away now and live to count another day."

He let the diagnosis sit in the ash between them, clean as a chalk mark and just as hard to argue with.

Eryndor answered first with silence. His jaw set, a muscle ticking in his cheek as he swallowed copper. He squared his right heel, let the dead weight of his left arm hang, and blinked until the water in his eyes steadied.

A small, economical nod—recognition, not concession.

Bennet's voice came even, almost kind, "It's over, Eryndor."

"Tch. Over?" Eryndor's reply came clean, despite his heavy breathing as he turned his support from the Netherbreed to the tree. His mouth flattened as he turned to the beast.

"Varkul," he said, voice turned to iron, "kill."

The lattice flared from ember to forge. Plates rose; the skull-lattice locked. Furnace breath ballooned the air into a wavering wall and the foreclaws dug deep, dragging a furrow as the Netherbreed launched.

"Ignorant…" Kieran moved first.