"What—?"

The elder appeared alone in the lantern’s beam, completely exposed, a blank space punched through the dense formation above her, as conspicuous as a void in a field of stars.

Her expression said she had not accounted for this possibility. Raphael noted it without surprise.

As expected.

Both were the Jester’s constructions, different in precision but identical in fundamental nature, devices that emitted the same class of energy.

When the two beams met, they cancelled each other out.

The lantern could only reveal the castle’s own illusions. The elder’s flock was a different working entirely.

But the two energies opposing each other had erased her cover wholesale.

With the concealment gone, Raphael’s gun was already trained on her.

"Damn you—!"

She tried to flee. But what moved faster than a bullet?

White lines crossed the sky one after another, each one finding her, and the impacts blew open across her body, blood erupting from the wounds, the colored feathers coming away in sprays around each one.

"AAAH—!"

Silver burned. Several rounds hadn’t passed through cleanly, the heads were lodged between her ribs, staying inside, and those were worse than the ones that had exited.

Like white-hot iron packed into the body cavity, and no cooling that came with time.

Her great wings had given her speed and range. Now they were working against her, the complex musculature of them firing incorrectly in her pain, the wings beating against each other, her flight path lurching and unsteady.

Raphael reloaded with practiced efficiency, watching the elder’s response without much reaction.

Every Demon had its balance. Strong in one axis, compromised in another.

She’d been given the ability to command a flock, to perceive through the eyes of hundreds of individuals simultaneously, and for that, the body itself had paid the price.

Physical functions and physical resistance below what he ran at baseline without Blood Frenzy.

The exchange was always there if looked for it.

He kept the lantern angled to track her and kept firing.

The rounds accumulated. Her colorful plumage fell in scattered drifts across the rooftop.

The feathers were matting together with the blood, the great wings had become enormous targets, punched through with holes the moonlight came in through.

Her flight was failing. Each beat took more effort than the last. A few more rounds and she’d be finished where she hovered.

She made a decision.

In the gap while Raphael was reloading, she stopped retreating and dove, straight down, straight at him, carrying the full commitment of something that has decided to end this one way or the other.

"Die — die! I’ll take you with me!"

His eyebrow rose slightly. He hadn’t expected this from her.

He pocketed the revolver and brought Death Crow up, and took the incoming strike on the blade.

Shhhk.

Half the talon came off in a clean arc. The severed portion spun high into the air, trailing feathers, the disruption briefly crossing his sightline in a scatter of red and dark color.

The elder screamed. Raphael moved to press the advantage, and she turned.

Not toward him. Around him. She banked hard, skimming past his guard entirely, and went straight for the lantern behind him.

"What? get back here!"

She snatched it, gained altitude, and threw it.

It struck the battlement wall several times on the way down, the crystal ringing off the stone, and disappeared into the treeline below.

The sky filled again immediately. The entire illusory flock snapped back into existence, and the elder folded herself into the formation and was gone, identical to a hundred others, indistinguishable.

She looked back at him over her shoulder, and her beak opened and closed twice in a gesture that carried a very deliberate air of satisfaction.

"Foolish. Human."

She turned and disappeared into the circling mass.

Raphael watched her go and felt his options narrowing.

He activated the werewolf contract.

The moonlight mark surfaced on his forehead, barely visible at first, the thin crescent that several nights of accumulated storage had built up.

That storage, and his nearly depleted arcane reserves both, began moving at once, drawn into Death Crow’s blade, converging there, concentrating until the axe-head held a light that made the surrounding dark look darker by comparison.

The reason he’d held this back until now was the cost. His arcane energy had been in deficit since he entered this place, and the moonlight strike’s appetite wasn’t small.

But the reserves were almost gone regardless, and there was nothing left to conserve.

He stepped forward, dropped into his stance, and swung.

The crescent of light left the blade and opened, spreading upward and outward, expanding until it covered the whole sky above the castle.

Every particle of accumulated power invested in a single motion.

The moonlight mark went dark the moment it was done.

Above him, the elder’s expression shifted for the first time to something that looked like genuine alarm.

She’d watched him fight for this entire encounter and he’d been holding this. The whole time.

Just like an ace is always played last, he held onto this strongest trump card, patiently waiting until the very last moment before using it, making it the checkmate card on the chessboard.

Raphael stared at her expressionlessly, as if he had already foreseen her fate. This ruthless hunter watched his prey head towards her inevitable destiny, falling into the end she deserved: death.

The range was too large to evade, there was no part of the sky above the castle that wasn’t inside it.

She made the calculation quickly: wide area, distributed impact, force spread thin. She could take the hit and survive.

She assembled her illusory flock in layers in front of her, stacking them, using the bodies as a series of barriers to bleed the energy away in stages.

The light passed through them.

Not slowed. Not diminished. Not interacting with them at all.

"That’s not, that’s impossible!"

The crescent reached her and then something changed, what had been a wide arc suddenly had a target, and everything it carried collapsed inward to a single point of contact.

Every unit of force, compressed to where she was.

"NO—!"

It entered her body and kept going. Muscle, bone, organ, none of it offered anything resembling resistance.

The energy tore through the interior without slowing, shredding as it went, and what it left behind it was not intact.

"AAAAAHHH—!"

The elder fell.

Everything from the waist down had been reduced to fragments. Her wings were gone, converted to ash and dispersal.

She hit the rooftop hard and didn’t move again with any coordination, only the involuntary final processes of a body that hadn’t been told yet.

Raphael walked over to her and looked down.

"It’s over."

The elder’s voice came out in fragments.

"This... is... not... possible."

Even at the very last moment, she still couldn’t believe her fate. The chance to escape was right before her eyes, the hope of survival seemed within reach.

But she failed. Her wings were severed by a devastating blow, making her the undisputed loser in this gamble, falling from the sky.

Raphael made a short, dismissive sound.

"The moonlight blade only damages the first thing it contacts. Distance traveled before that contact, or how many non-physical things it passes through, none of that affects it.

The Jester’s illusions may be sophisticated enough to affect reality directly. Yours weren’t."

The elder’s eyes fixed on a point behind him with a sudden intensity. A harpy appeared at his back, perfectly silent, driving toward a vital point.

Raphael didn’t turn around. The harpy touched him and dissolved instantly.

The elder stared.

"You’re not... even slightly... afraid?"

"Because I knew there wasn’t a real one nearby. No time to arrive." He kept his voice even.

"You can share their vision, which means, to maximize your search range after I went down into the forest, you would have sent them as far out as possible. Spread your eyes across the widest area you could manage."

He raised Death Crow and the motion was entirely without drama.

"None of them are close enough to matter."

"Die."

Shhk.

The elder’s head came to rest separately from the rest of her.

[Hunt complete.]

Raphael stood beneath the moon, basking in its light, his clothes soaked in blood.

The corpses of harpies lay scattered everywhere, silently recounting a perfect hunt.

Firearms and melee weapons danced tonight, and slaughter blossomed here.

Raphael, on the other hand, is like the embodiment of death.