Chapter 33: Evolved Hestia Class Entity
Mark reached them at a dead sprint, chest heaving, gauntlets still sparking faintly from the fight he’d abandoned mid fight. "What happened? What did you two do?!"
"Nothing!" Eleanor’s blade of flame still hovered at her side, eyes fixed on the wounded Hestia in front of them, which had gone rigid. "We were about to finish it, and then it just... stopped."
"Same thing happened on our end," Mark said, breathless. "Ours just up and abandoned a fight it was losing. That’s not normal beast behavior. That’s not normal at all..."
The wounded Hestia in front of Lucas and Eleanor threw its head back and roared again, much louder this time, and from across the battlefield its counterpart answered in kind as it ran towards them as well...
Then the second Hestia moved.
It didn’t run toward them. It launched itself, an impossible, arcing leap that carried its full, still-uninjured bulk clean over the heads of Mark’s position, crashing down directly against its wounded twin in an explosion of displaced earth and flame.
"What the—" Mark stumbled back a step, and Lucas felt his own stomach drop as he watched what happened next.
The two creatures didn’t fight. They merged — flesh and fire folding into each other with a horrible, wet, grinding sound, the wounded Hestia’s injuries sealing shut as its mass poured into and combined with its counterpart’s, fur and muscle reknitting right before their eyes until what remained was no longer two separate beasts but something else entirely. Larger. Denser. A second set of eyes blinked open along its brow, malevolent and lidless, and two additional tails lashed free from its, each one wreathed in the same living flame as its mane.
[Warning: Hestia Class entity: Evolution detected.]
"That’s not supposed to happen," Eleanor whispered, horror plain in her voice.
The newly merged Hestia roared, the sound alone staggering everyone within fifty feet..
Then it lunged.
It moved through the nearest cluster of fighters like they weren’t there at all. A man Lucas had spoken to only that morning practical, quiet, one of Colt’s old guards who’d followed him this far died in a single sweep of one massive paw, burnt to ash before he’d even finished raising his weapon.
Another fighter, further back, was caught by one of the newly grown tails and flung twenty feet through the air, landing motionless in a wet thud and crimson pool...
Lucas’s eyes snapped to the system window blooming in front of him.
[Survival probability: 51%]
’Shit! It dropped!" The number hit him like a physical blow. ’Whatever this thing became, it’s not the fight we trained for anymore.’
"Everyone! Regroup! Fall back towards the Gateway!" Eleanor’s voice cracked with the effort of staying commanding through her own visible fear, and the fighters still standing scrambled to obey, the ordered formation from earlier dissolving into something more like organized retreat.
Lucas threw himself forward anyway, [Ignition] roaring around both fists, driving between the beast and a cluster of fleeing civilians who had nowhere to run fast enough. "Get behind me...Move!"
The Hestia’s tail lashed out, faster than anything that size had a right to move and Lucas barely twisted clear, the flaming tip catching his shoulder hard enough to spin him into the dirt.
"Shit!"
Pain screamed up his arm, skin blistering even through the protection [Ignition] usually granted, but he forced himself back up anyway, back into the beast’s path, because the alternative was watching more people die in the gap he left behind.
"Lucas!" Eleanor’s voice came, sharp with fear, water lashing out to buy him even a moment of space.
"I’m fine. Keep them moving!"
Mark slammed his gauntlets against the creature’s flank a moment later, [Bastion’s Oath] humming moments later, absorbing a retaliatory strike that would have crushed anyone else outright.
"Elle, Lucas, whatever this thing is, we can’t let it corner the others!"
"Working on it!" Lucas choked as he stumbled to his feet.
The three of them fought in a desperate, shifting formation...
Lucas drawing attention with bursts of flame, Eleanor lashing out with water and earth to buy openings, Mark absorbing every blow the creature aimed at anything smaller than himself and for several brutal minutes it was enough, barely, to hold the line while the rest of the Faction streamed toward the Gateway’s twin spires.
Then the Hestia, cornered and furious, threw its full weight sideways into the nearest spire.
The impact shook the ground. Blue energy arced wild and erratic along the spire’s fractured surface, and a system window bloomed bright and urgent in front of every single person on the battlefield.
[Warning: Gateway structural integrity has been compromised]
[Collapse imminent.]
[Successfully Pass through the Gateway]
"Move! everyone, now!" Eleanor’s scream cut across the chaos, and the entire column surged forward at once, survivors sprinting the last stretch toward the crackling threshold between the spires.
The Hestia turned, saw its prey fleeing, and reared back, jaws parting as flame gathered deep in its throat.
"What the fuck!" Mark shouted.
The beast unleashed a torrent of fire directly at the fleeing column, wide and merciless and Lucas’s heart stopped in his chest, certain for one terrible second that dozens of people were about to die in front of him with nothing anyone could do to stop it.
However, Eleanor moved first.
Water erupted from the ground at her command, a solid wall rising between the flame and the fleeing survivors, and the two forces collided in a violent burst of steam that swallowed the battlefield in white mist.
The fire hissed and died against her barrier, and when the steam cleared, the column was still moving, still alive, still streaming toward the collapsing Gateway.
"Oh no you don’t!," Eleanor snarled, both hands still raised, control absolute even through visible exhaustion.
The Hestia roared in fury, charging directly at her now, and Lucas didn’t hesitate...
He threw himself into its path, flame roaring hotter than he had managed before, driving both fists into the joints on its legs.
"Mark! I need you!"
Mark slammed into the creature’s other side at the same instant, gauntlets crashing into the wound Lucas had just opened and Eleanor’s water lashed around its legs, freezing solid on contact, anchoring it in place for one precious, decisive second.
"Now!" Lucas shouted, and the three of them struck as one...
Flame, force, and frozen water all converging on the same weakened point and the Hestia’s furious roar cut off into a strangled, final scream as its massive form crashed down at last, motionless in the churned, smoking earth.
Silence, except for the Gateway’s spire groaning ominously overhead and the ragged breathing of three exhausted survivors.
[Hestia Class entity Evolved form has been defeated.]
[Survival probability recalibrating: 60%]
Lucas glanced at the system and scoffed. ’Yeah, there’s no way we’re ever beating that thing again...’
"Gateway’s still collapsing," Mark gasped, already turning toward the crackling threshold. "We need to move, right now!"
Lucas didn’t need telling twice. He grabbed Eleanor’s arm, and the three of them ran, side by side, toward the rapidly collapsing light...
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