The scent of a deity was as unmistakable as the silhouette of a mountain on the horizon. Liselotte felt the subtle pressure of the god's presence from the first instant, heavy against her senses as it mingled with the stench of the demons at her feet.

The figure stepped from darkness into dying light, his tattered midnight robes drinking in what remained of the sun. The patterns etched across grey skin pulsed with their own rhythm, writhing like captured smoke beneath flesh that flowed in time with his unhurried strides. Behind him, shadows held shapes that might have been Bhutava, might have been worse. A casual gesture sent them melting back into formless dark.

Liselotte's talons dug furrows in blood-soaked earth as she straightened. Purple stains spread outward from the crossbow wounds in her shoulder and thigh, and her once-white feathers dripped with a dozen shades of ichor. Every part of her hurt, but her gaze didn't falter from their adversary's face.

"You." The word emerged in a low growl, a promise of agonizing death to come.

The god favored her with a smile, his eyes showing only darkness beneath their dusky folds.

Beside her, Ryelle gathered her own diminished power, silver flame guttering low around hands and forearms. If she felt the searing wrongness of the space where he stood, she gave no sign, merely bracing herself for whatever might come.

Liselotte glanced at the harpies around them—at survivors standing, leaning, even kneeling among the battlefield's tumbled stones and tangled limbs.

"Mesyori, gather the wounded," she said, her gaze never leaving Xellos. "All of you, return to the aeries. Now."

Mesyori's protest died in her throat as Liselotte's wings snapped open. The gesture sent wind howling through the clearing, rattling branches already heavy with demon ash. Gwynelle tried to raise her injured wing, managed half an extension before agony forced it closed again.

"This is not your fight," Liselotte spoke without turning. "GO!"

The surviving harpies launched themselves skyward in ragged formation. Some flew straight, others spiraled drunkenly as poison worked through their veins. None faltered, however. None dared disobey. Within moments, only three figures remained in the devastated clearing.

Ryelle's eyes tracked their ascent, and Liselotte saw the strain of her own exhaustion mirrored there. "You too, godling. Fall back. Replenish your strength."

"I can still—"

"You can barely stand." The statement emerged flat, colder than Liselotte intended. She forced a breath through tightened lungs, found her next words softened by concern. "Your fire gutters like a dying candle. When I need you, I'll call. Until then, recover."

Ryelle's fingers uncurled from fists she hadn't realized she'd made. Silver flames flickered once more around her hands before dying to nothing. The earth where she'd walked bore char marks in the shape of clawed feet, her draconic nature bleeding through exhaustion. She backed toward the treeline, keeping Xellos in sight.

"I'll be nearby," she said. "Don't try to be heroic alone."

The corner of Liselotte's mouth quirked upward. "Tell me. Is he stronger than Ebonheim?"

"About as powerful as Ebonheim was when you first fought."

"Perfect." Liselotte's lips peeled back from teeth designed for tearing. "It's been too long since I killed a god."

His expression didn't change, but shadows at his feet deepened. Without visible prompt, they began to flow outward, staining the ground where they passed.

"It would seem I have your attention after all, Harpy Queen." The Lesser God inclined his head, just slightly—the barest acknowledgment of Liselotte's rage. "You may call me Xellos. It's so much more civilized than 'you' and 'him' all the time."

"Scum," Liselotte said, her gaze sharpening into a predator's focus. "Filth. Worm."

He shrugged, utterly unhurried. "Bland insults for a bland mind. Truly, you embody your people's grace."

"We Lords of the Eldergrove have dealt with your kind before." She spread her wing-arms wider, displaying the span despite the crossbow wounds. "Lesser gods prowling our territories, thinking us mere spirits. Easy prey Quintessence harvest. I've torn three of your kind apart over the centuries. Their screams were... sweet."

"You know nothing of what I am." His voice carried new harmonics, undertones that made the air itself recoil.

"I know you're weaker than a young goddess who's barely a decade into her divinity." She feinted to one side, saw the shadows shift in response. "How... pathetic."

Xellos moved mid-word.

Shadows erupted from the ground like spears of crystallized night. They punched through space where Liselotte had stood, seeking flesh that was no longer there.

Her laughter rang across the clearing as she swept above him. Her left wing-arm ached, her wounded leg screamed at the sudden stress, but her eyes never left the god below.

Wind caught her wings as she climbed, each beat sending fresh fire through the puncture wounds. The poison burned cold beneath her skin, spreading its purple taint, but she'd endured worse. Three wingbeats carried her above the canopy. Four more put her where shadow-spears dissolved into wisps of nothing.

"Too slow!" The words tore from her throat, half-challenge, half-joy.

She folded her wings and dropped.

The world compressed into a single point—Xellos's upturned face, those depthless eyes tracking her descent. Gravity seized her, multiplied her weight, transformed her into a living spear. Her talons extended, seeking the soft places where grey skin met shadow.

He stepped aside.

Not fled, not dodged—simply moved like ink stirred by an unseen breeze. Her talons carved furrows through earth where he'd stood, but her right wing snapped out, catching him across the shoulder as she passed. Cloth parted. Divine blood welled dark against grey skin.

She pushed off hard, launching back into her element before his shadows could respond. The taste of his blood lingered on her wing-edge, copper and ash and something else that made her predator's heart sing.

"First blood to me," she called, already banking for another pass.

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Shadow erupted upward in a black geyser. She rolled left, felt the chill of its passage against her belly feathers. More shadows followed—not spears now but grasping tendrils that sought to entangle, to drag her down into his reach. She wove between them, using momentum and minute wing adjustments to thread passages that closed behind her.

From this height, she could see the battle's aftermath clearly. Demon corpses littered the clearing, their forms already beginning to dissolve. The thorny growth Ryelle had summoned still writhed with dying purpose. And at the center of it all, Xellos stood motionless, his bleeding shoulder the only sign her attack had landed at all.

She shifted tactics. Height gave her options, and she used them all.

The first wind blade formed between her primaries, compressed air given killing edge through will and fury. She flung it downward, watched it carve a line through shadow-shield and earth alike. Before he could respond, she'd formed three more, sending them in a spread pattern that forced him to move.

He flowed between the attacks, robes billowing. Where wind blades missed, trees split in half, their trunks groaning as they toppled. One ancient oak crashed across the clearing, its massive weight crushing several demon corpses into paste.

"Is that the best the mighty Harpy Queen can manage?" His voice carried despite the distance, each word clear as struck crystal. "No wonder Ebonheim bested you so easily."

Rage flared hot in her chest. She tucked her wings and dove again, but this time released a storm of knife-edged feathers ahead of her descent. They filled the air like horizontal rain, each one capable of punching through steel.

Shadows rose to meet them—not a shield but a writhing mass of darkness that swallowed her feathers whole. She pulled up sharply, using the momentum to launch into a rising spiral that carried her above his counterattack.

Pattern. Rhythm. Every fight had them, and she was beginning to taste his.

She varied her approaches—diving from the east, then south, then directly overhead. Sometimes she struck with talons, sometimes with wind, sometimes with the bone spurs of her wings. He met each attack with shadow, learning her timing, beginning to place his defenses where she would be rather than where she was.

On her seventh dive, he proved he'd been studying more than defending.

Shadow pillars erupted from the ground in a perfect grid, each one positioned exactly where her pull-up trajectory would carry her. She saw them coming, tried to adjust, but momentum had its own demands. The leftmost pillar caught her across the ribs, shadow given solid form that struck like a giant's fist.

She tumbled, managed to get her wings spread before hitting the ground. The landing jarred poison deeper into her wounds, drawing a hiss between clenched teeth.

"Your patterns are becoming... predictable." He hadn't moved from his original position, hadn't needed to. "Seven passes, seven failures. Shall we try for eight?"

Blood ran hot down her side where the shadow pillar had torn feathers and flesh. She spat to clear the taste of copper from her mouth, then launched herself skyward again. Let him think her predictable. Let him think her limited to diving strikes and wind blades.

She climbed higher this time, until the clearing below became a distant scar on the forest's hide. The air thinned, grew cold against her wounds. From here, she could rain destruction without entering his shadow's reach.

The first wind spear formed between her wings, compressed air given physical form through centuries of practice. She hurled it downward, watched it streak toward his position like a bolt from the heavens. He sidestepped, but she'd already formed two more, bracketing his movement.

One caught his thigh, tearing through robe and flesh. His first sound of pain—a sharp intake of breath that carried even to her height.

"What's wrong?" She formed another spear, larger than the first three. "Can't reach me? How limiting, being bound to earth like the worm you are."

Pressure waves followed the spears, invisible hammers of compressed air that cratered the ground around him. His shadows strained upward, trying to reach her, but dissolved into wisps as they climbed. Sunlight still touched the sky here, and shadows had always hated the light.

She settled into the rhythm of bombardment. Spear, pressure wave, wind blade. Vary the timing. Change the angles. Make him dance to her tune while she recovered strength, while poison worked its way through her system, while she catalogued every tell and pattern he displayed below.

His frustration showed in the way shadows writhed around him, in the increasingly violent eruptions of darkness that failed to reach even half her altitude. She laughed, and the sound carried all her contempt for ground-bound gods who thought themselves predators.

Then his form... shifted.

Shadows flowed up his body like reverse waterfalls, pooling at his shoulders. They spread outward, not dispersing but solidifying into shapes that had never belonged to mortal geometry. Wings, but not wings—appendages of pure darkness that defied the eye's attempt to define them.

He rose.

Not flew—nothing so mundane as that. He simply denied gravity's hold, ascending on wings that moved without moving, that beat in rhythms that hurt to perceive. Shadow trailed behind him like smoke from a burning city.

She felt her heart rate spike. Not fear—never fear—but something closer to delight. "Finally! A proper aerial battle!"

They met at cloud height.

His first strike came as pure shadow made solid, a blade of darkness that sang past her throat. She twisted, brought her wing spur around in a counter that would have opened him from collar to hip. Shadow parried bone with a sound like breaking glass.

The sky became their arena. They wheeled and struck, two predators testing each other in three dimensions. Where her wings gave her agility, his shadows granted reach. Where she had experience, he had adaptation. Each exchange taught them more about the other, each near-miss calibrated their next attempt.

She drove him toward a cloud bank, using the moisture to create a sudden wind shear that sent him tumbling. Before she could capitalize, he dissolved into shadow completely, reforming above her with those not-wings spread wide.

"Clever," he said, and darkness rained down like arrows.

She folded her wings and dropped, letting gravity save her from the barrage. Shadow-arrows pierced the space where she'd been, continuing onward to punch holes through innocent clouds. She spread her wings at the last second, pulling out of the dive just above the treeline.

Movement in her peripheral vision—

Three shapes rose from shadow-portals he'd opened while she focused on him. Shadaksha, but larger than any she'd seen before. Their six eyes each glowed with malevolent intelligence, and their leathery wings beat in perfect synchronization.

"COWARD!" The word tore from her throat as they surrounded her. "Face me yourself!"

His laughter drifted down like poisoned rain. "I am facing you. They're merely... extensions of my will."

Eldritch beams lanced from eighteen eyes at once, creating a cage of purple death. She twisted between them, felt one sear across her back, leaving burned feathers in its wake. Another caught her tail, setting nerves screaming.

No room for thought now. Only instinct.

She grabbed the nearest Shadaksha by its throat, talons punching through its hide. It screamed as she used its body as a shield against its companion's beams. The creature's death throes nearly pulled her down, but she released it in time to avoid a shadow-blade from Xellos above.

Her blood sang with fury. How dare he dilute their duel with these pawns?

Wind gathered around her without conscious call, responding to rage that demanded expression. Her feathers began to glow with their own light, crimson bleeding through white like dawn through clouds. The partial transformation came easier when fury drove it, when insult piled upon insult demanded answer.

She moved.

The second Shadaksha never saw the wind spear that bisected it. Gore painted the sky as its halves tumbled earthward, six eyes dimming to black. She was already gone, riding her own slipstream toward the third, leaving afterimages that confused its targeting.

It managed one beam before she reached it. The eldritch energy scored across her chest, but she'd accepted the hit to get inside its reach. Her talons closed on its leg, spun it in a half-circle that drove her wing spurs deeper into flesh. It screeched, tried to blast her at point-blank, but she didn't give it time.

Throw—

The third Shadaksha accelerated toward the ground, its own mass suddenly multiplied by her strength. When it hit, the ground shattered, sending shockwaves visible even at this altitude.

Three corpses. Three pieces of his power scattered to the wind.

Burns crossed her body in a webwork of pain. The poison from earlier had reached her heart, each beat spreading cold fire through her veins.

Xellos descended toward her, shadows writhing. "Impressive. You've earned the right to see more of what I am."

The world exploded into darkness and pain.

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