CRACKLE

Back to Ignis and Gale, Mrs Jane had just completed the magic circle she was preparing, and at the same time, Ignis's body had tensed up as he took an unnaturally deep breath, even for his large size.

It was like his jaw had turned into a funnel of energy. The mana in the surroundings just kept getting pulled in more and more, and a bright orange glow was beginning to be visible within his chest, the brightness increasing with every passing second.

Within the swirling hurricane, Gale watched all of this with barely restrained excitement. How long had it been since he found an opponent relative to him? One he could go all out against without worrying about one-shotting them or getting one-shotted in return?

Osho hadn't come up with any elaborate strategies or unique commands for Gale to follow at the beginning of the fight.

In fact, Osho hadn't been doing that for a while now.

Gale didn't know the exact moment, but at some point, Osho just... let him do his own thing.

Not that he didn't care about what the bird did, but he finally seemed to realize that trying to impose rules on him acted in opposition to the path he followed. As such, he just stopped.

If Gale saw something that interested him and he wanted to check it out? He could. If he found something boring? He could bail.

Naturally, there were certain lines the bird couldn't cross, but they went lines Gale himself was fine with. He also didn't mind his slow progression through the ranks as, quite frankly, he wasn't that bothered by them anymore.

After all, ranks barely applied to him as it was, and after Osho finally granted him the freedom his existence required, it was as though a burden was lifted.

He loved Osho, that's for sure, but he still found many things about their arrangement limiting. So when Osho stopped limiting him, it was like, well, he'd gained wings.

The rate at which his concept worked was simply incomparable to before, and things like his domain and other special abilities had improved massively.

It was strange, really, that something as simple as allowing his beast to do what it wanted had such a profound effect, but concepts, especially abstract ones like freedom, were odd like that.

Anyway, as stated before, the reason Gale hadn't attacked this whole time was because he wanted to give Ignis time to prepare his attack.

Looking back, the Skyblight Harbinger was truly too weak. The power Ignis was displaying right now was more than enough to kill the thing dozens of times over, regeneration or not.

But why should that be surprising? It was an inferior product. Meanwhile, Ignis had been evolved by Osho personally, and every creature Osho evolved seemed to exist on a higher plane compared to its peers, which is what allowed them to bridge the gap between those of higher ranks in the first place with such ease.

And right now, since Gale and Ignis were two of such beasts, it was difficult to quantify their power normally despite their ranks, making them anomalies.

There weren't many creatures out there that Gale considered equals.

There was Bedrock, but, well, their fights weren't really fights but were more of Gale seeing if he could break through his defenses before he got bored.

There were also the beasts that the others from Osho's group had.

Sugil fell in a similar boat with Bedrock, but her overall defenses were weaker, Spectrum was simply too annoying to fight, and that was a lot coming from Gale.

Individually, Blackie and Lux weren't overly difficult to deal with, the issue arose the moment they started working together, as despite having opposing affinities, their synergy was truly terrifying, and Gale had to admit that he couldn't guarantee a win each time that happened.

Inagi was, unfortunately, what one would call a bad match up, as Gale's abilities countered his almost completely. After all, there wasn't much he could do if his poison couldn't reach Gale, and while his physical strength was impressive... Gale could fly.

The same applied to Ceru, Clyde, and Venom.

The moment Ceru tried to get close and obscure Gale's senses with his mist, well, his domain would light the creature up like a beacon, and Gale would have no issues defeating him then.

Clyde used sound magic, which was all fine and dandy... until you remembered that sound needs a medium to pass through, and Gale's powers revolve around controlling said medium.

Not that Clyde couldn't simply supplement the air with his magic, but as it was, Gale could very easily resist or dampen his sounds with his domain. Not that the fox was harmless, just... not harmful enough for Gale.

As for Venom, well, while him fusing with Kurt amped him to an unnatural degree, to the point where he could beat beasts that outranked him, Gale was simply too fast, and he had no way to get through several of his skills like his intangibility.

Now, it's a completely different story if they decided to jump Gale. Gale could confidenrly say that He'd lose if they decided to attack him at once. The combination of their abilities acting at once was too much even for the bird.

Which, if he was being honest, satisfied him a bit. He liked that they could still keep up with him somewhat.

That said, they all fought regularly, and there were typically no stakes between them. So after a while, it just became a routine thing as they all had a clear understanding of each other's abilities.

However, whenever Gale met an opponent he wasn't used to fighting against that could match him?

... Heh.

The temperature around Ignis had gotten utterly absurd, and the space around him, specifically his mouth, was being burned away into an odd dark sludge that faded out of existence as soon as it appeared.

Above him, Mrs Jane's magic circle had completed itself. Hundreds of complex characters intertwined and linked together to create an elaborate formation.

The thing had three layers stacked on top of each other, each one serving a specific purpose.

The first layer made it so that whatever passed through it would be condensed as much as possible, increasing its potency.

The second layer acted as a force amplifier as it simply increased the power, making it synergize with the first layer.

And the third layer increased the penetrative power of the attack.

All of these sounded simple, and they were, in principle. However, when applied, the result was truly terrifying.

Gale could see that whatever the resulting attack would be would utterly trump anything Ignis had released thus far and then some, and that only made him more excited.

Ignis finally stopped inhaling, and his chest looked like he had swallowed a star with how bright it was glowing. The position of his body had changed as well, as his back was to the ground while his underside was aimed upwards.

The air stilled.

No one moved.

Then, with a sound that could only be described as the sky itself cracking, Gale moved.

He didn't launch himself, he fell, intentionally. The very instant he folded his wings, the world seemed to warp around him.

Every current of air, every trace of wind from miles around, was pulled inward along with his descent.

His domain, normally vast and all-encompassing, collapsed inward, condensing itself into his body until there was nothing left outside him but stillness.

The weight of the sky pressed into him. Every particle of air that once obeyed the planet now obeyed him.

From above, his body blazed silver and pale blue, feathers trailing streams of condensed mana that twisted into miniature jetstreams.

The atmosphere screamed as he broke through it, faster than thunder, faster than logic. Astorm condensed into flesh.

Below, Ignis finally exhaled.

A beam of molten radiance erupted from his maw, wide enough to swallow a fortress.

It wasn't simply fire, its was energy turned liquid, a core-meltdown given life and fury.

The circle above him flared thrice, each layer activating in perfect sequence.

Condense.

Amplify.

Pierce.

The beam narrowed into a needle of destruction, its edges vibrating at a frequency that tore holes into the artificial space itself.

What should have been sound turned into silence, the kind that only existed where the laws of the world could no longer function properly.

The moment Gale entered its range, it was like time split in two.

To those watching, it looked like a comet of light descending upon a burning spear.

Gale twisted his body slightly, all 6 wings wings folding halfway as his talons flared with compressed air so dense it shimmered like glass.

He looked almost weightless, but every bit of movement carried the force of collapsing skies.

His eyes were wide, alive, as the fire met the storm.

And then...

CRACKLE.

The collision was not a boom, nor a roar.

It was everything shattering at once.

The sound couldn't decide what it wanted to be. It started as thunder, became metal scraping against itself, then devolved into a low vibration that could be felt in bone and blood.

The beam and the gale met at a single point suspended mid-air. For a heartbeat, the clash was silent, a perfect sphere of stillness surrounded by veins of energy.

Then it exploded.

The entire pocket space convulsed.

Colors bled into one another, the azure canopy of the forest dimming to gray as if reality was struggling to render itself.

Shockwaves tore through the earth, flattening the trees for miles as chunks of glowing bark and molten soil rained upward instead of down.

Gale's cry echoed from within the maelstrom,

not one of pain, but of glee.

He pushed forward, feathers dissolving into streaks of silver wind. Each flap of his wings shredded through Ignis's flame, peeling the beam apart layer by layer.

Ignis, undeterred, braced his body and poured more of himself into the attack. The once crimson glow of his chest turned white-hot, and cracks spread through his scales from the sheer thermal pressure.

"Push it!" Mrs. Jane's voice broke through the storm, her spell circle expanding as she channeled her own mana into Ignis'.

The circle's sigils flared bright enough to leave after-images that almost etched themselves into reality itself.

The blast intensified, and the sphere of collision imploded inward.

For a fraction of a second, gravity itself folded. Everything, fire, wind, light, collapsed into a single, blinding point.

Then came the release.

A supernova of elemental mana erupted outward, a ring of fire and vaporized air expanding faster than sound and light.

The shockwave erased the nearby terrain, turning trees into powder and rock into vapor.

The artificial sky above split open like glass under a hammer, and beyond the cracks, the endless black void was revealed.

Gale was the first to emerge from the explosion.

His feathers were scorched, his breathing uneven, but his eyes gleamed with pure exhilaration.

He hovered mid-air for a moment, watching as the roaring blaze below began to fade.

Ignis was still floating. Barely.

His chest rose and fell in ragged motions, smoke pouring from his nostrils as the glow in his chest dimmed.

The once-pristine scales on his underside were charred black, and yet, he stood tall, refusing to bow.

For a long, still moment, both beasts simply stared at one another across the smoking ruin of the battlefield.

Then, in perfect unison, they both exhaled

one a hiss of wind, the other a puff of smoke, and collapsed simultaneously.

The artificial world groaned as the cracks in its sky spread wider, unable to contain the force of their clash.

Then it collapsed.