The ground visibly quaked as, from almost a hundred feet up, the lion king’s prodigious bulk landed on the flat of the grasslands proper.

  A low, rumbling growl reverberated from its deep chest, easily as wide around as she was tall.

  Thunderous.

  Like the dark promise of storm clouds just cresting the far horizon. The demon beast slowly padded its way forward, moving with a disconcerting grace. Its amber colored eyes locked exclusively on her.

  Eleanor maintained her ready stance, feet firmly planted, buckler and short sword held aloft. And all the while she was trying very very hard not to tremble under the sheer intensity of its gaze.

  No attention was given to the lacerated bodies sprawled out at its feet.

  And no grief shown in its regal posture at the death of its entire pride. Only a keenly felt affront, a regal outrage at this blatant provocation. At its subjects’ wholesale butchery. Not for their sake, mind you. More the willful subversion of its rightful authority.

  Around two hundred paces out, the lion king’s form suddenly rippled, and from its slowly padding figure, two more of itself emerged—leaping out, and to either side, to lope apace with their progenitor.

  Although, where the previous demon beasts’ mirage avatars had been translucent, unreal things of etheric blue, these appeared to be mirror copies of the towering monarch, on a one-to-one scale.

  From its glorious mane, down to the yellowed tint of its dagger like fangs.

  Copies which then duplicated themselves in turn. And so on and so forth, until nine such lion kings made to surround her on all sides. Eleanor gulped, resisting the urge to tighten her buckler.

  And then, for a time, they merely stood there, quietly observing her.

  Eleanor felt a bead of sweat trickle down her brow. When the attack finally came, it came suddenly and all at once. An overwhelming onslaught of slashing claws and snapping fangs.

  Outright ignoring the dozen meters still separating them, dozens, if not hundreds of the ephemeral attacks crossed the open, grassy landscape in a flash. Lunging forth to savage her, to tear into her soft flesh with savored relish, and paint the grasslands with the bright red of her life’s blood. Swiftly ending the fight before it had even really begun.

  Or at least, she was sure that had been the intent at any rate. At just shy of two hundred thousand ruby petals under her command, however, the projected attacks barely made it a scant few feet before they were completely shredded into nothing more than residual wisps of energy.

  The force of their violent dispersal ruffling her hair ever so slightly, from where she stood at the heart of the red maelstrom, though ultimately, achieving little else.

  Eleanor let out a sigh of relief.

  Her faith in this ability validated for the umpteenth time that week. She really needed to give Jun a proper thank you when next they were reunited.

  Now then…

  Eleanor cracked her neck, trying to work out any lingering tension. It was time to go to work. She only had about eight minutes left before she was as defenseless as a newborn babe, after all.

  Eleanor swung, delivering a lightning quick slash.

  The swarm of ruby petals practically leapt to obey her command. Two thirds of her full complement shooting forward in a glittering crescent, while the rest remained by her side—a swirling screen of prickly protection.

  The rift spawn roared, all nine of them. Each directing a debilitating series of vibrations. Reverberations which threatened to burst her eardrums, rattle her bones, cripple her very soul. Eleanor swooned, staggered, nearly fell to her knees.

  However, much to the lion kings' likely chagrin, her petals were otherwise unaffected. They raced forward undeterred. And, in the moments before contact, she could have sworn she even saw its many eyes go wide. The lions dodged, copies or the real thing, she couldn’t tell which, as the expansive scythe of blades advanced.

  Most of them got out of the way in time. One… was not nearly so lucky.

  With a yowl of palpable rage and frustration, the mirage clone was brutally torn apart.

  Bursting into nothing but rippling waves of heat and distortion. Leaving her with only eight more to contend with. Eleanor pushed past the waves of disorientation that plagued her. Capitalizing on the fleeting element of surprise while she still had it, she pulled out the second such trick to grace their little engagement.

  Still being guided by the impetus of her first swing, Eleanor promptly swung her blade a second time. The crescent of petals rushed to obey. Splitting evenly down the middle. Changing their trajectory on a dime, to chase down the two rift spawn they’d so narrowly missed.

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  Still, that was only two out of the eight now fully occupied with evasion. Leaving the other six free to pursue her directly.

  Or so they likely thought. She smiled. Third surprise time.

  As the rest moved to flank her, to retake the initiative, so too did Eleanor move to impede them. Splitting off from the main contingent, she urged a segregate mass of her attacking petals to swarm to her aid. Now wielding four crescents simultaneously, she multitasked. Three meant for attack, the other purely for defense.

  The six kings converged, likely sick of ineffectually nipping at her from afar.

  Eleanor danced.

  Deftly keeping their advance at bay.

  She seamlessly flowed from blade stance to blade stance, executing sharp turns and finely tuned corrections, as if working through the forms of some martial kata.

  Her petals followed suit, orchestra to her conductor.

  Blocking and deflecting. Disrupting their momentum, isolating stragglers, always being sure to keep her opponents on their toes. Weaving a deadly field of shifting currents and whirling eddies, the monarch visibly hesitant to get anywhere near the glittering, serpentine swarm.

  With three decisive cuts, the two she’d sent an attack swarm to waylay, were swiftly cornered and summarily executed.

  Death by several hundred thousand cuts.

  It irked her that neither of them turned out to be the original, and yet the sudden influx of petals, now freely at her disposal, most certainly did not.

  She almost wanted to laugh.

  And it was then, just as she was truly beginning to feel confident, to feel just the tiniest bit cocky, that the entire fight was flipped on its head.

  A tremendous weight descended upon her shoulders. The heavy hand of a Monarch’s Decree.

  KNEEL

  Eleanor tried. She really, truly did.

  But as the gravity bearing down on her soon doubled, then tripled, and finally quadrupled in quick succession, she was left with no other recourse.

  Her body simply gave out.

  She kneeled.

  And just like that, practically at the drop of a hat, her swarm of petals, nearly half a million strong, abandoned her.

  Worse, it was as if they’d actively turned against her.

  She felt the cold shock of betrayal as all control was suddenly wrenched from her hands. As the entirety of her arsenal, the totality of her petal storm, abruptly, and without warning, went eerily still.

  A creeping malice she’d never felt from them before now radiated from the glittering cloud. The monarch and its clones took several cautious steps back, unsure as to what was happening. Eleanor couldn’t blame them. She felt much the same.

  What had Jun said again? Be elegant in all things? That her life might depend on it?

  She hadn’t really understood what that meant. Not until now. And now she had this sneaking suspicion that kneeling before an enemy did not fall within the general purview of excellence.

  Eleanor froze, her stomach doing a flip, eyes locked on the floating array of petals. In that way, she was the first to notice the change. When, as a whole, they slowly began gravitating towards her. The menacing migration made all the more terrifying, given the fact they were doing so under their own power, not hers.

  “Shit.”

  All at once, the petals descended.

  Panicked thoughts flashed through her mind a mile a minute. Her body’s instinctual need to react in some way, strong and overly compelling. She wanted to scream. Wanted to flinch back. To cry out. Anything! In the end, though, she did none of those things. And that, in and of itself, was likely what saved her life.

  A single bead of blood trailed down her throat, from where a petal had lanced forward, broken the skin, and then stopped.

  Where it even now hung suspended, a shallow line of fire, halting just an inch shy of severing her jugular. Another petal hung a fingernails width from her eyeball. It was a trend that repeated itself across every inch of her body.

  Eleanor took a shallow breath, making sure to keep them slow and even.

  Flicking her gaze down to her blade, she tightened her grip around the handle. Pain lanced through fingers that’d been trapped beneath the weight of a sword somehow afflicted by four times gravity. She didn’t let it show on her face, not a twitch marred her expression. The petals stayed where they were.

  Good. That was good.

  Then, Eleanor tried to raise the blade. Immediately, the strain of lifting it was immense. Too much for her to manage with only one arm. The petals pushed inward by a scant few centimeters. Eleanor froze. A decent amount of blood now trickling down her throat. She took another steady breath, then focused.

  Focused on her body. On the explosive strength she knew she harbored.

  Having feasted on rare treasures all throughout this campaign, some of which she’d bought, most of which she’d found, she knew her potential for explosive power was great. Unfortunately, what she needed right now wasn’t explosive strength, but instead a more controlled sort of power.

  Eleanor searched for the azure furnace she knew she housed somewhere deep inside of her, and, feeling like she was taking a leap of faith, stoked the fires high.

  Within seconds steam began to vent from her very pores. And then, with a sudden conflagration, her entire body was wreathed in azure flame.

  Though, contrary to her expectations, the flames did not harm her.

  No.

  Instead, they seemed to do the very opposite. A newfound sense of strength roared through her in waves. Like this, she quickly found it simple to raise her arm up high, blade in hand. Then carefully, ever so carefully, pull herself to her feet. The array of petals shifting to accommodate her movement.

  She could instantly feel that they still weren’t quite on board with fully relinquishing control. So, with a shrug, she simply took it, as was her due. It was her weapon after all, not the other way around. The petals, for whatever reason, seemed to approve.

  With petals firmly in hand, she turned back to this supposed king. And, with a single swing of her blade, consumed the monarch and all five of its clones in an avalanche of glittering red.

  After which followed a rather long and drawn-out game of cat and mouse, wherein the lion king abused its Circle of Life ability over and over in a futile attempt to escape.

  Transferring any injuries it received onto another rift spawn within a rather large radius, so long as that rift spawn fell under the umbrella of prey.

  Considering the fact that this monarch had, until just recently, stood at the very top of the food chain, and, well. You can see how it made for quite the tedious fight. Eventually, after what felt like hours spent chasing the cowardly feline, the monarch both ran out of potential prey, and places to run.

  With a single downwards slash, ten million rose petals descended, ending the great lion king’s reign, once and for all.