Empires | Arc 3 | Chapter 2 | Back Against the Wall

It is a little past noon over the sprawling grasslands separating Titan City and Royal City. The sun hangs slightly to the west, casting its harsh light from the Royal City side.

Beneath the shade of a massive tree, the food preparation has finally concluded, but the peace is entirely absent.

Leon and Lesca are fiercely fighting over a prime cut of meat—undeniably ripped from the hind legs of the wingless griffin. Nearby, Jarrod is methodically packing their bags. As they established earlier, they cannot afford to linger in an open area from a fresh graveyard. Hovering a few meters above the ground, Friling conducts aerial reconnaissance, his Raphael’s Wings spread wide, the silver feathers catching the fallen sunlight.

Maven stands between Lesca and Leon, desperately trying to de-escalate the situation.

“You fucking asshole you ate it” Lesca screams.

Leon scowls, completely unapologetic. “What the fuck am i supposed to do huh?…..It was right there its not like you said anything”

“You idiot which lady does such a thing?” Lesca snaps back.

Leon scoffs loudly. “Lady? When did you ever acted like a lady?”

Maven steps in, her tone authoritative but exhausted. “Calm down you two. Leon say sorry. You wanna be the best right?” She looks deep into his eyes for a moment and say “The first step to be the best is to avoid petty squabbles.”

“You can’t trick me…..when did you two form a gang….this is harassment……” Leon roars, pointing an accusing finger at both women.

Jarrod, having finished packing the bags and entirely done with their petty squabbles, suddenly freezes. He senses a distinct, heavy shift in the air currents.

“Shut up for a moment you guys, I hear something.” Jarrod shouts.

Friling drops down from the sky, landing heavily on the grass. A cold bead of sweat rolls down his forehead. “Griffins! A pack of them are directly coming towards us.”

Lesca crosses her arms. “What……why now?”

“Maybe there are shifting territories or they are running.” Maven says, stepping forward.

The moment she finishes her sentence, the eerie, rhythmic fluttering of thousands of massive feathers drowns out the wind in the valley. The pack of griffins breaches the horizon, flying in a tight, desperate formation: three in the front, four in the middle, three trailing, and a final beast at the tail end.

Eleven stallion-sized predators, possessing wings twice the width of their bodies, blot out the sun. For a few terrifying moments, it feels as though night has instantly fallen.

Leon, Lesca, and Friling stare up in absolute awe. They are city folks; they have never witnessed ecological majesty on this scale. Jarrod and Maven remain hyper-alert, holding their breath and waiting for the swarm to pass.

“They don’t look like coming towards us.?” Jarrod whispers, tracking their trajectory.

“This speed they are fleeing from something.” Maven confirms.

The first three groups pass smoothly overhead, soaring on the wind blowing east toward Titan City. But the final griffin at the tail end halts.

It hovers directly over the tree the group has been resting under, its piercing eyes locking onto the humans below. For a few agonizing seconds, it simply stares. Then, it throws its head back and unleashes a guttural, ear-splitting screech—

SCREEEEE.

The sound is so sharp and agonizing that the group violently covers their ears. The screech forces the other ten griffins to halt mid-flight. They look back, following the 11th’s gaze directly to the humans hidden in the grass, under the tree.

Operating on pure, displaced aggression, three of them instantly banks, followed immediately by the rest of the pack. They dive back toward the tree. Because the grass is only waist-high, the group’s cover is useless against a flanking aerial assault.

Jarrod steps forward, his voice a commanding roar. “Guys stick together and do not…..absolutely do not kill any of them.”

Lesca leisurely stands up, wiping the dirt from her back. “That’s a mood killer. they would have looked good under my command.”

“Fuck you sissy. I am not your bitch. If they are coming for me I will slaughter every one of them.” Leon roars back, aggressively marching toward the frontline.

Jarrod steps into his path, deeply frustrated. “Leon you won’t! We don’t wanna disturb the ecological balance of this land.”

Leon raises a clenched, trembling fist. “Ohhh really?” His teeth gritting “Fuck balance! If they hurt us that will disturb my mental balance. Which is also important to me.”

“Enough! They are coming” Maven commands.

The pack of griffins dive-bombs, leading with razor-sharp eagle talons.

Friling steps up, activating his Archangel’s Wrath. The dual pairs of black and silver wings erupt from his back, and he flaps them violently from the ground, generating massive, concussive gusts to disturb the beasts’ landing trajectory.

Beside him, Maven channels her Holy Blades of the Divine, manifesting five blades over each shoulder. She sends them streaking toward the pack, grazing their wingtips and embedding into the dirt exactly where they attempt to land. Subconsciously, both are following Jarrod‘s non-lethal mandate.

Jarrod thrusts his palms forward, using Push to violently repel them.

Maven, Jarrod, and Friling hold the frontline. Behind them, Lesca stands comfortably in the rear toward the west, her hands buried casually in her pockets as she serenely watches the chaos.

Leon, however, is violently torn. His feral instincts demand slaughter, but the entire group is fighting to preserve the beasts. More infuriatingly, the current formation makes it look like he is being protected—an insult his ego cannot stomach.

“Fuck it all. Weapons of Doom: Axe” Leon growls.

The moment he channels the Axe stance, his musculature violently shifts into a 90-percentile strength and 10-percentile speed distribution. His upper torso swells, becoming visibly dense and wide, tapering down to a leaner waist and legs—mirroring the heavy, top-weighted geometry of an dual head axe.

He abandons the group, sprinting dead into the center of the swarm. With devastating, bone-shattering force, he punches three griffins squarely in the chest. The sheer impact launches the massive flesh-and-blood creatures backward, knocking them completely unconscious.

But his lack of speed leaves him exposed. The two largest male griffins bypass his strike and flank him. One rakes its talons across his back and violently stabs his shoulder with its beak.

“Arhguh” Leon roars.

His internalized Heat drastically increases his durability, preventing fatal lacerations, but the searing pain sensors in his nervous system still fire perfectly.

Exploiting his momentary stagger, the second male uses its immense, lion-like strength to execute a brutal takedown, driving its head and neck into Leon and hurling him several meters away to the northeast.

Leon crashes heavily into the dirt, physically unbroken but needing a precious few seconds to regather his focus.

Struggling to hold back the swarm with his Push, Jarrod glances over his shoulder. “Little help…..Lesca.“

Lesca simply shrugs. “You said no killing. And I am basically Goddess of Death…..Your choice…..Chief.”

Jarrod looks at her, utterly perplexed.

Seeing Leon thrown, Maven‘s calculated composure snaps. For a fraction of a second, raw fury takes over. Abandoning her deliberate misses, she drives four of her blades directly through the wings of the two massive males. The blades pin them to the earth, rendering them unable to fly as they screech in agony.

Maven immediately breaks formation, sprinting across the grass to reach Leon.

Sensing the gap in the frontline, one of the griffins pushed back by Friling‘s gusts suddenly banks, locking onto Maven‘s unprotected back and diving into a lethal pursuit.

Realizing the defensive line has collapsed, Jarrod makes a desperate choice.

“Ahhhhhh fuck it all” Jarrod roars.

He violently cuts his forward Push and slams both palms directly toward the ground.

There is no immediate visual explosion.

First comes a deep, rhythmic vibration—dhum dhum dhum dhum—echoing from the absolute depths of the earth.

The tremors multiply, shaking the very bedrock of the grasslands.

The vibration grows so violent that Lesca drops her casual posture, forced to grab the massive tree trunk just to stay upright.

Friling is forced to abandon his gusts and take to the sky to escape the shaking earth.

Within a several meter radius around Jarrod, the soil violently ruptures.

Massive, jagged chunks of earth—each half the size of Chaos’s meteors—rip themselves free from gravity and levitate into the sky, leaving deep, black craters in the ground.

Seven or eight of these colossal boulders float ominously above him, surrounded by thirty to forty smaller, jagged rocks. Thick, ancient tree roots dangle from the floating earth, carrying the heavy, damp stench of soil that hasn’t seen sunlight in centuries.

“Nature’s Tormented Echo” Jarrod finally roars, revealing his Heat name.

His arms shake from the sheer adrenaline and agonizing pressure of simultaneously lifting the pieces of ground.

He sweeps his arms upward, treating the floating earth as artillery.

Even now, his moral code holds. He launches the massive boulders in sweeping, upside-down U-trajectories, raining them down heavily around the pack rather than directly crushing them, knowing the sheer velocity of the rocks would instantly shatter their bones.

He only directly targets the griffin chasing Maven. He sends five of the smaller, jagged chunks like cannonballs, striking the beast mid-air. The impact forces the griffin to abandon the chase, banking hard to the east and fleeing into the sky.

Witnessing the terrifying shower of levitating earth, the remaining airborne griffins instantly break off their assault, fleeing towards the east.

Even the three Leon knocked out manage to limp away before taking flight.

But the chunks of earth have already altered the battlefield.

In the chaos of the falling boulders, the group’s focus shifts completely away from the two male griffins Maven had grounded. Desperate to survive the falling earth, the two beasts crawl silently into the tall grass on Jarrod‘s side.

Because of the sound of the continuous rain of rocks, nobody could hear or follow their movements as their eyes were busy following the flying ones.

Seeing Lesca in the back, alone and open, they enter ambush mode.

As the dust settles, the group is left stunned by the revelation of Jarrod’s Heat’s name and ability.

Hovering above, Friling‘s wings flap purely on muscle memory, his brain entirely short-circuiting. He has known Jarrod for a long time, but he never imagined his Heat possessed such apocalyptic, wide-area devastation.

Leon pushes himself up from the dirt, his eyes wide.

Maven, helping him to his feet, looks at the floating rocks with total, serene acceptance—she has either seen things far more terrifying, or she simply trusts his control.

Only Lesca breaks the silence.

“Hmph good power. But kind of tragically romantic name.”

Coming from her, it is the highest form of praise. She didn’t even use the word “good” when Taglia unleashed his 75% Primal Mode or when Leon shattered meteors.

Jarrod turns, giving her a flat “seriously” look, though his face clearly registers the gratitude.

Then, his eyes go impossibly wide. He stares directly past her shoulder.

“Look out!!!”

The two crippled griffins launch from the tall grass, charging directly at Lesca‘s back.

Utilizing their lion paws to move in dead silence, they had crawled through the waist-high grass and perfectly flanked her blind spot.

How did they get behind her? Where were they when I was throwing the ground?

These questions flash through Jarrod‘s mind, but time has already run out.

The ambush is point-blank.

Lesca doesn’t even have the time to turn her head to see why Jarrod is screaming.

Friling dives from the sky, but the math is impossible; he won’t reach her in time.

Leon and Maven are too far away.

Jarrod desperately tries to raise his arms to fire a Push, but the physical act of turning his torso is agonizingly slow.

Lesca stares at Jarrod, genuine, unfiltered confusion bleeding into her eyes. Her brain simply cannot process the sudden shadow falling over her. She gives him a look that screams, What?

Seeing this, Jarrod feels a crushing wave of hopelessness.

In that microscopic fraction of a second, he forgets that she is a Heat user. He forgets she can regenerate. All his mind registers is that she is about to be torn apart, and he has failed her.

The two massive griffins are suspended mid-air, their talons inches from Lesca‘s spine.

Then—a blinding, shadowless flash of steel cuts through the air.

Two flawless “Z” motions are carved into the space behind the griffins.

In a fraction of a millisecond, both beasts’ hind legs and necks are cleanly severed.

The strike originated from the Royal City side of the grass—a location where none of the members of the group were in.

Jarrod only registers the blinding flash of the blade; he doesn’t even see the silhouette of the person wielding it.

As the severed meat of the griffins crashes into the dirt behind a frozen Lesca, a completely bored, deadpan female voice echoes across the vast grasslands.

“There i got two of them….happy now.”