The ground had been scorched black by countless lightning strikes, and the corpses of all kinds of animals scattered everywhere had been burned into charcoal.
Flocks of crows wheeled through the air, turning from time to time into streaks of lightning that guided the thunderbolts in the sky down onto certain spots. The vast swamp maze had now been flattened by thunder and fire.
Murphy was in his demonic form at that moment. He lifted a stone slab, and suddenly music drifted out from behind it, making his mind go blank for an instant. But he quickly blocked it out. He saw the god lying beneath the slab, one goat hoof already severed.
The panpipes in Cernunnos's hands had been snapped and could no longer produce that bewitching sound, while his followers had all been wiped out by Murphy's lightning. He had no other means left.
At that moment, his goat eyes stared blankly at Murphy. "Who exactly are you? This power of lightning—does it come from Odin, or Zeus? But this appearance of yours looks like my offspring..."
But before he could finish, Murphy grabbed one of his horns and lifted his head.
"So that's it. That piece of goatskin was yours." Murphy had also sensed a strange attraction from him, as if the other party's magic shared some kind of commonality with his own.
He understood at once. The piece of goatskin he had once found in Joachim's village had been used for his Animagus transformation, and could be considered to have fused into his body. That was why his demonic form displayed traits such as goat horns and goat hooves.
He had not expected that the goatskin had actually come from Pan.
"Now isn't that convenient?"
With this connection, he was even more confident he could seize