The blood-red setting sun could not pierce the roiling black clouds over Wind-Thunder Gorge.
Lightning wound through the clouds, like countless silver snakes tearing at a pitch-black curtain.
The gale carried the scorched tang of ionized air, sweeping up stones and broken branches and shrouding the entire gorge in an apocalyptic roar.
Charred crow feathers and severed panther-cat limbs lay scattered everywhere. Almost hysterical roars echoed through the mountains until the rushing water at the bottom of the gorge drowned them out.
A surge of energy from afar made both sides pause in their slaughter, then sweep past one another amid crashing lightning.
Among the ruined walls of Thunderclap Hall, Nuregarasu's black hair hung loose and disheveled.
Her right arm had turned to charcoal, entwined with the blood-red patterns on the spear's shaft like a red spider lily grown out of hell.
The Azure Wings of Wind spread behind her. Through the deadly battle, she had mastered them completely, and their faint tremors resonated ceaselessly with the wind veins of heaven and earth.
Her dark-red eyes held neither joy nor sorrow, reflecting the Panther Cat Third Elder opposite her as he growled low, his expression twisted with unrelenting fury.
The Third Elder dug his right claw into the rock face. Wormlike lightning patterns bulged across his knotted muscles, and the lightning plasma flowing around him melted the entire rock beneath him into crimson lava.
His seething killing intent seemed to take physical form, turning into a berserk gale!
"Why! Why!"
"You lowly Karasu Tengu, must you resist to the bitter end? Why couldn't you just die sooner, like that dead Pops of yours!"
Now that matters had reached this point, even his exalted status as the clan's Third Elder left him no way back.
Not only had the Sixth Elder died horribly here.
He had repeatedly used the Panther Cat troops stationed here as cannon fodder to drain Nuregarasu's strength or threaten the remaining Karasu Tengu, and more than half had perished beneath the crushing thunderbolts.
Worse still, he had devoured quite a few panther cats as blood sustenance to ease his own injuries!
After paying such a brutal price, the Third Elder truly could not imagine what would happen to him if he still failed to seize the Wind-Thunder Twin Treasures and Oyakata learned of it.
The cold curses echoed in her ears. Nuregarasu's charred fingertips brushed the cracks in the Thunder Spear, and her eyes grew colder and more lifeless.
The rhythms of wind and thunder pulsed incessantly in her heart, like a long-suppressed volcano erupting with a roar!
The Azure Wings of Wind behind her suddenly shuddered in reverse. A spiral opening tore through the thunderclouds above the gorge, and eighteen columns of tornadoes crashed down, wrapped in arcs of lightning!
"Wind-Thunder Invocation: Thousand Sparrows Cry!"
Having discovered how to unite wind and thunder, Nuregarasu spun and hurled her spear. Within the eye of the tornado, the Thunder Spear transformed into myriad lightning sparrows.
Each sparrow's wings were wind blades compressed to their limit, and their beaks, sheathed in lightning plasma, pointed straight at the Third Elder's demonic body.
Amid the turbulence stirred up by the Wind Wing, her carbonized right arm peeled away piece by piece, exposing stark white bone.
Facing the countless lightning sparrows descending from every direction, the Third Elder felt an unprecedented surge of terror.
His pupils contracted sharply as the lightning patterns all over him blazed. Lightning plasma poured from his body like a raging tide, forming a thick shield of lightning before him.
The flock struck the lightning shield, unleashing a succession of deafening booms, as though countless bombs had exploded at once.
Wind blades and lightning plasma intertwined into a mighty energy storm, instantly shredding the surrounding rocks and broken wood to powder.
The Third Elder's body trembled continuously beneath the immense impact. His feet sank deep into the lava beneath him as he tried to brace himself.
"Damn it! Damn it!"
"If I weren't so badly injured, an attack like this would be nothing!"
Madness and desperation filled his eyes. He swung his remaining right hand again and again, trying to smash each lightning sparrow that pierced the shield.
But Nuregarasu's Wind-Thunder Invocation: Thousand Sparrows Cry drew on the weather and terrain, its assault unending. The Third Elder's resistance gradually became futile.
Under the lightning sparrows' relentless impact, cracks began spreading across the lightning shield like a shattered spiderweb.
Then the shield shattered with a thunderous crash. The lightning sparrows surged forward like floodwater bursting through a dam, engulfing the Third Elder in an instant.
The Third Elder screamed in agony as countless wind blades sliced his body and lightning plasma seared him.
His fur and hide tore apart. Flesh and blood sprayed, exposing stark white bone.
Amid the torment of being cut to pieces, his struggles grew weaker and weaker.
At last, his body collapsed limply, slamming into the scorching lava and sending up a spray of fiery sparks.
The energy swept apart the swirling clouds above the gorge. The setting sun cast its light over the earth like a congealed bead of blood, pinning Nuregarasu's fragmented shadow to a collapsed pillar of Thunderclap Hall.
The nearly half-destroyed Thunder Spear fell from the sky and embedded itself nearby, forgotten.
The Third Elder's remains were carbonizing in the lava. The churning lightning plasma faded to dark red, just like the blood her father had shed when he sacrificed himself to the Azure Wings of Wind.
Nuregarasu stumbled over the severed panther-cat claws littering the ground. Broken toe bones pierced her soles, but she seemed not to notice.
Pushed to their limit, the Azure Wings of Wind suddenly dissolved into drifting firefly lights. With the wind no longer supporting her, her body crashed heavily among the broken stones.
Her fingertips dug unconsciously into a crack in the stone, and Nuregarasu suddenly remembered Anhamaru's final plea.
"Live!"
Anhamaru's last breath had carried the taste of rust, crashing into her mind along with a boundless deluge of thunder.
The lava pool suddenly erupted in one final burst of lightning and fire, flinging the Third Elder's charred head into the air.
Nuregarasu swung her ruined arm on reflex, but the wind blade only sheared off half his jawbone.
When the savage beast's head rolled to her feet, disbelieving spite still lingered in its hollow eye sockets.
She suddenly began to laugh softly.
Her right arm, the only one still reasonably intact, supported her as she slowly straightened. Deep in her eyes, there was only loneliness and bewilderment-
So when vengeance was finally complete, no exhilaration surged in her chest. There were only ashes of devastation drifting down from the sky into the gaping wound in her soul.
The mournful cries of young crows came from deep within the gorge.
Nuregarasu turned toward the cave where her clanspeople were hiding. Her blood-matted lashes trembled like the wings of a dying butterfly.
The setting sun finally broke through the clouds, stretching her shadow longer and longer.
Like a rusty broken sword, it slanted across the scorched earth that had buried far too many souls.
Just then, the mountain wind swept past her ears, laden with the scent of blood. Nuregarasu abruptly looked toward the gorge's entrance. The undisguised footsteps and presence made her stagger toward the Thunder Spear.
Nuregarasu's toe bones cracked sharply among the stones, and her broken nails scraped sparks from the Thunder Spear's surface.
Before her nearly spent body could turn, her ankle became caught in a crevice.
The instant she lost her balance, wind caught her shattered spine.
"The Karasu Tengu Princess should not fall like a fledgling with broken wings."
As the words sounded, a figure clad in armor and splendid robes took solid form. The young man's hand hovered at her waist, supporting her without touching.
A kindly smile graced his flawlessly handsome face, and his flecked golden eyes shone.
Nuregarasu's fingertips were already pressed against his throat, yet ice crystals formed as they touched his skin.
She looked at the claw markings on the young man's face. Her expression, as though carved from thousand-year-old ice, softened a little, and she spoke quietly.
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