Rory didn’t get a chance to actually appreciate the monster before them. The moment during its rise, his old mind had simply been struggling to compute the sheer scale of their enemy. When it had finally drawn itself completely aboveground, they had decided it was time to hightail it out of there before they turned into monster-chow.

That said, the brief glimpse Rory did get was more than enough to brand the impression of inconceivably monstrous Otherworlder deep in his brain.

The Corebeast was a quadrupedal creature, built like an unholy mix of a crocodile, a Komodo dragon, and that giant three-headed dog supposedly guarding the underworld in some old myths, all of it blown up to gargantuan proportions. It was easily the size of a football stadium. Curved, red spikes twisted slightly in the air at its elbows and shoulders, while livid fire blew out of the gaps in its scales all over its body.

“Let’s go,” Viv shouted.

Just as the forwardmost head of the Corebeast opened its toothy jaw wide to let loose another volcanic roar, its mouth glowing as though it was about to belch fire at them, Viv’s crimson lightning flashed. Rory closed his eyes as he disappeared.

They reappeared next to the destroyed wooded area the monster had passed through underground. Rory staggered when he found his footing again. Fires raged around them, smoke clogging every inch of air so that he was forced to cough to clear out his lungs. To top it all off, the ground was unstable too. Rory felt like he’d fall through the cracked forest floor and crash down into the tunnel the Corebeast had carved out on its passage to the lake.

Speaking of the monster, Rory turned around to find it again. The mouth that had opened its jaws at them was now belching a condensed stream of fire and magma at the hillside they’d been on a second ago. Brilliant white flames and cloying smoke washed the wooded land, turning it into a burning hellscape in a fraction of a second.

Then he caught sight of the elf.

“Arelland!” Rory shouted.

The elf hadn’t teleported along with Rory and Viv. Maybe she had missed him, maybe he had been too distant, or maybe he had simply reacted on instinct at seeing the potential danger from Viv’s lightning and avoided it. After all, he hadn’t known what Viv’s intention was. Either way, he was still back on the old hillside.

The very hillside that was being destroyed by the Corebeast’s ravaging breath.

Arelland was fast, but it didn’t look like he’d make out of there alive. The undergrowth was too dense, the trees before him providing uncompromising barriers to the full efficacy of his rollers. He’d be caught in the flames and lava any second now.

“We need to help him.” Rory shouted, turning to stare at Viv imploringly.

She was, thankfully, already on it. “Arelland,” she shouted, summoning more red lightning on her Thunderclaw arm. “Don’t run this time.”

The volume of her voice made Rory’s ears clamp up on their own. He kept his eyes focused on the event before him, however. If the elf heard Viv, he gave no indication of it. He was still too focused on navigating his way through the thicket of trees. Viv didn’t care. She raised the intensity of her crimson lightning, then threw a red bolt at Arelland.

At the same time, Rory repeated Viv’s warning with a shout as well. Arelland didn’t evade it this time. He reached out for the red lightning this time, desperation fuelling his movements.

As soon as his metal-covered fingertips connected with Viv’s lightning, he disappeared. Rory blinked as the elf appeared a foot in front of him and Viv with another lightning bolt crashing down in front of them. Incredible how much Viv’s powers were progressing.

“You’re safe,” Rory said, letting loose a big sigh of relief.

“Am I, in truth?”

Arelland had already turned back to watch the hillside. Rory followed his glance, then grimaced.

The Corebeast had continued to blast the hillside with its destructive fires. Everything was now aflame, spewing a thick column of smoke into the heavens. But as the fire-spewing head slowly turned towards their direction, its burning stream blistered past the hill’s peak before beginning the climb up the larger hill behind that.

The same hill that held Belcourt Palace.

“Oh no,” Viv said, voice a breathy whisper.

Thankfully, the Safe Zone held. When the Corebeast’s fiery blast struck it, the golden barrier turned brighter and opaquer. It was hard to tell from their distance, but it didn’t look to Rory as though any of the fires or magma had penetrated within the Safe Zone’s boundary.

“We need to pull its attention away from the Safe Zone,” Rory said. “Arelland, I thought you said I was supposed to be the target?”

The elf still hadn’t looked away from the monster. “I think you are.

Rory was about to ask how he could tell when he spotted it too.

Both of the Corebeast’s other two heads were swivelling towards Rory’s direction. His very spirit seemed to blanch under the creature’s unscalable regard. The twin heads considered him, all four eyes pinpointing Rory’s exact location without difficulty. Apparently, small as he was to it, the Corebeast still had no problem detecting him.

That made sense. His Sigil of Knowledge was elatedly informing him that its eyesight was equivalent to that of an eagle’s. Very helpful knowledge. Maybe the Sigil would inform him of its mating habits next.

Both heads started opening their jaws. They didn’t belch fire like the last one had done. The one on the left had dark purplish vapour swirling out of its gullet in a twisting cyclone. Meanwhile, the right head had red lightning like Viv’s flickering over its teeth.

“That doesn’t look good,” Rory said.

“We need to move,” Arelland said. “I can lead the way. Follow me.”

“Wait, where are we going?” Viv asked.

There was no time for Arelland to explain. With one last warning for them to get moving, he dashed off on his rollers, charging straight through the flames and jumping over fallen debris.

He was right. As Rory turned to see the Corebeast spewing a cloud of its twisting purple vapour and a scarlet thunderstorm, Viv had summoned her own crimson lightning to make them both teleport away from danger once again. Just in time, too. Rory was sure he felt the impact of the monster’s attacks land with an incredible thump.

They reappeared over a pile of manmade debris this time, close to the shattered street. Arelland was slow to catch up. Fast as he was, he couldn’t math the speed of teleportation.

In those few moments where the elf reached their location, Rory stared at the new destruction the Corebeast was wreaking where they’d been a second ago. The purple vapour had spread around like noxious gas to blanket the entire area like swamp gas. If Rory’s eyesight wasn’t lying, everything within that vapour cloud was dissolving to nothing. Trees rotted to dust, earth turned to ash before vaporizing to nothing. The flames and smoke were long gone.

When the lightning storm landed, it caused a massive detonation whose shockwave forced Rory and Viv to their knees. Chunks of debris rained upon them like an apocalyptic meteor shower.

“There is no time to waste,” Arelland shouted as he neared them. “Prepare to move.”

“But where?” Viv yelled back. “Where are you taking us?”

“Somewhere we can kill two birds with one stone.”

This time, as Arelland swung past them, Viv didn’t move. Rory once again appreciated that she was his wife. After all, her thoughts were much the same as his.

Arelland took a moment to notice that they weren’t following. The tires under his mech suit’s feet screeched as he brought himself to a halt, then he started backtracking towards with a confused, and slightly annoyed, expression on his face.

“What are you hesitating for?” he asked. “Is it because you wish to ascertain where we are truly going?”

“Destination, Arelland,” Rory demanded. “Where are we taking out two birds with one stone?”

“The Imps’ base, of course. They sought to unleash the Corebeast into the world. They must be made to feel the consequences of their actions.”

“And when we’re finally there?” Rory asked. “I can’t take on that thing. Neither can you. How do you exactly expect to stop it?”

“What do you think stops a powerful monster?”

Rory frowned. “A Sigil that’s just as powerful? I don’t have—”

“No,” Viv said. There was a strange look on her face, like she was afraid of what she was saying. “An even more powerful monster.”

The real answer came to Rory a little too quickly then. “The Invigilator? But what would Arkone be doing at the Imps’ base?”

“Certain investigations have led to certain answers that have caused a confluence of sorts. But there is no time to explain. Move.”

The reason for the elf’s urgency became apparent a second later. Rory turned as the sky darkened behind him, the land shaking violently. The Corebeast was approaching their position. Its gigantic legs had lifted as it thumped back onto shore, setting off a severe earthquake in the entire region. All three of its heads were pointed at Rory again, once more brimming with their destructive effluents.

Arelland was right. Somehow, for some reason, the Corebeast was targeting Rory specifically.

Viv reacted quickly. Her red lightning flashed out, and Rory was again teleported away from his current position. He found himself on an intact rooftop this time. They had travelled about four hundred feet, the monster still looking gigantic despite the distance.

“It’s still coming straight for us,” Viv said.

Arelland was faster to catch up. “Of course, it is. It will not rest until its target has been killed, and even then, rest is a foreign concept to a Corebeast. We must destroy it before it destroys the world. Follow me.”

The elf blitzed past them, apparently glad to be on solid ground once more. Hillhard continued to shake with tremendous earthquakes as the Corebeast charged forward. Buildings and houses collapsed under the weight of its feet if they hadn’t been shattered to nothing by its destructive breaths before already.

There was no point in waiting for anything. Now that they were sure it was moving away from the palace, Rory’s main job was done. For the rest, he’d have to put his faith in Arelland’s plan.

He and Viv teleported away again just as the monster was preparing to throw another heavy, devastating combination of breaths at them. They continued moving. Fast as their teleports were, the Corebeast didn’t pause either, not even when it was attacking them with its powers. It would catch up to them if they took more than a few seconds to rest. Rory, therefore, had no time to get a hold of his disorientation.

“We’re nearly there,” Arelland said after several more teleports. “I believe you called the building a market?”

From what Rory remembered, the Imps had set up their base at the biggest market in Hillhard. When they paused for a few seconds once more, he was able to see the large, wide building with its top half walled with glass panels in the distance.

They were still too far to tell what the Imps were up to there. It made Rory wonder what the rest of the monsters in Hillhard were doing. The Corebeast was a creature that didn’t seem as if it cared for other monsters around it. Everything else might have evacuated at its rise.

That would explain why they had such luck with travelling free from monsters, considering the enormous armies they had dealt with

“We’ve reached as far as we can travel freely,” Arelland said after another couple of teleports.

Rory and Viv had come to a halt next to him, on the street this time.

“How do we proceed from here, then?” Viv asked.

Rory looked back to see the Corebeast approaching just as fast as before. If they were supposed to proceed any way, it had to be forward and away from that monster.

But then the monster stopped. Its heads started swivelling around in other directions as though multiple Rory’s had appeared in the area. There seemed to be some kind of momentary confusion, before the Corebeast launched massive roars from its gullet in three different directions.

“What’s going on?” Rory asked.

“We’re buying ourselves some time,” Arelland said. “This should allow us to get what we came for from the Imps.”

“There’s more going on here that you aren’t telling us, isn’t there?” Viv asked.

“Absolutely. But perhaps it would be best if you found out naturally.”

The elf didn’t bother explaining what that could mean. Instead, he rushed forward and left Rory and Viv to catch up. They hurried after him, staying on foot without using Viv’s teleportation this time.

It didn’t take long for the first Imps to accost them.

“Halt,” an Imp with a trident in its arm said. It was a strange mix of green, brown, and icy blue-white. A Tundra Imp. “This is the Imps’ territory. Trespassers will be punished by death. State your business or depart.”

“We’re here to negotiate regarding the arrival of the Corebeast,” the elf said.

Rory and Viv decided to stay a little back, observing the exchange from a safe distance. If the Imps saw them, they would likely suffer negative feelings that would badly impact whatever deal Arelland was attempting to strike.

They hadn’t reached the market yet. It wasn’t far, and Rory could see its roof and highest floor above the nearby buildings. But they were still just within the Imps’ territory.

That explained why he wasn’t seeing more of the monsters around. They had to be worried that the Corebeast was headed in their direction, and as such, Rory had expected to see them all buzzing around like a disturbed beehive. Maybe they were all freaking out inside the market. That thought brought a little smile to Rory’s face. They were the ones who had started this mess, after all.

“What sort of deal?” the Imp asked.

“I have no need to explain myself to a grunt. Go call your masters so that we can discuss quickly. Tell them that I know what is causing the Corebeast’s rampage, and I can help stop it from destroying everything. If you don’t cooperate, then we will allow it to destroy your territory.”

The Tundra Imp looked furious at Arelland’s words. Rory was starting to think he had held himself back for no reason. If Arelland was going to rile up the Imps that way, they surely couldn’t get any angrier simply at Rory’s presence.

“You have great nerve to speak to me that way,” the Imp said. “Have you no—”

“There isn’t time.” Arelland approached, and Rory could feel the promise of violence threatening to burst from the elf. “There are only bare minutes before the Corebeast resumes its charge in this direction. Do you wish to be the one responsible for allowing everything you’ve worked towards to go to utter waste?”

If anything, that made the Tundra Imp look even more furious. However, the monster simply performed an about-turn before heading back towards the market. Arelland moved out of Rory’s view, though he supposed the elf was somewhere nearby.

He was getting anxious at the time it took for the Imps to return. Rory turned back to where the Corebeast had stalled its rampage. It was still stomping around to send tremors coursing through the area, making the nearby buildings shake and threaten to topple. Its destructive breaths blasted out all over Hillhard, though none came in their direction. The Otherworlders were doing a good job of keeping it busy.

But that made Rory worry about how many of them were dying or suffering at its hands. Fast as the elves were in their mech suits, the monster was just too enormous to easily evade.

“We should call the others and let them know,” Viv said.

“Good call.” Rory was pulling out the walky-talky from his jacket when he paused. “Uh, no pun intended.”

“Intend your puns, dear.”

She held out her hand and Rory gave her the walky-talky. As she began calling the others, Rory looked back and found not the Imps, but a different group of people coming in.

He sighed. “Why am I not surprised…”

“What’s going on?” Viv asked distractedly.

“We’ve got guests,” Rory said, nodding ahead. “Homeworlders.”