#session 83

Glancing up at the rolling blue and red stormy sky, Hayate felt a spark in his chest as the wind began to pick up. Putting his shotgun away, he straightened up, closing his eyes, one hand held in front of his face, two fingers extended, the other held in front of his chest as he felt more carefully for that spark.

Something primeval and ancient coiling its way round.

Guns clicking in preparation to fire.

Ba-dum. A sensation both familiar, and a stranger.

Oriz and Kirin’s vocal components entering the air as they readied their magic.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. A breath of magic infused into his very blood resonating with that spark, once, twice, until the spark began to match his heartbeat.

The Yeth Hounds grew louder still, their voices unholy wails and screams of the demon scouts.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

Lightning crackled, sparkling to life in time with his heartbeat, rolling around his fingers, the aberrant sky above starting to pulse in response, the rolling clouds beginning to twist and warp with static.

A voice of rolling thunder in his mind, in his soul, chuckling lowly “What spirit, Little Storm,”

Hayate scarcely had a moment to process what, or who, that was before the baying was upon them.

His eyes snapped open, lightning sparking from his pupils as he fell into a set of motions he didn’t remember ever being taught, drawing his fingers through the air, static filling the space around him.

“Shinu.” He spoke one word, lifting his fingers to the sky, lightning arcing up, the sky erupting into sparks and flashes of light, illuminating the swarm of Yeth Hounds flying in.

And in the blink of an eye later the sky crashed down with a thunderous roar as the shape of Ryuu took form in the clouds, opening his maw with lightning blazing from his throat into the bodies of over half of the approaching horrors, those struck first dropping from the sky like flies into smouldering, wailing heaps.

Hayate’s breath had been held until then, leaving him in an exhausted gasp as fatigue snapped into his muscles. But they weren’t done yet.