"Woooo—"
The deep, resonant horn echoed through the mist. Every step the Sky Turtle took shook the ground as if it might flip the whole world over.
As the struggle reached a stalemate, Shivana thought she heard a melody.
Strangely, it wasn't loud. On a battlefield that should have been chaotic, it ought to have been an insignificant noise—and Shivana, consumed by rage, shouldn't have been able to pick it out.
Yet the sound lingered in her mind, flowing along with her blood into her heart. It was like kindling, fanning the flames of her fury.
Her strength surged, instantly breaking the stalemate. With sheer force, she staggered the three-meter-tall brown bear.
As the bear stumbled, she swung her Great Axe into his abdomen, opening a gash, then raised her fist to smash it into his flesh.
But a charging wolf leaped at her and sank its teeth into her arm, while a Ratman drew two blades and thrust them toward her waist.
In her fury, the blades and fangs seemed to strike steel. They failed to break her skin, giving Shivana a chance to catch her breath instead.
She kicked the Ratman in the forehead. As he crashed to the ground, she grabbed his ankle, using him like an improvised weapon to slam into the werewolf's forelegs.
With a howl, the two of them were sent flying together. They slammed into a thick tree trunk, startling the birds in its branches into flapping away with a chorus of "coo-coos."
The brown bear took advantage of the lull to steady himself and survey the battle elsewhere. He saw that most of the Beastfolk had already used the rope ladders to return to the Sky Turtle's back.
The turtle was slow. It couldn't sweep the nearby Beastkin aside with every step