Beast hardly had time to react to anything going on around him.
The magic continued to sling, and Vazi even kicked out at him, or at least Beast thought he did, in the chaos--shouting angrily.
He winced away only to find the shaggy brown creature standing over him, and for an instant his instinct was to flee. He even started to bolt, to leave the cover of his bear-shield above, but at that instant a sharp barb of something translucent and glistening stabbed into the earth just before him and he cringed back. The hail of icicles continued, until just as suddenly as it had begun, it ceased.
As if on cue the great bear charged forth, and Beast was left mewling and lost in the smoke--lost, listening to the sounds of ferocious combat, of the clash of magic.
Lost, until a roaring tongue of flame was suddenly visible through the smoke.
Beast froze, staring toward it, horrified. His instincts made him recoil, made him want to simply turn and flee, but where could he run to, in this thick black fog?! He didn't know where he was, his eyes burned and it hurt to breathe.
"Hasira...?" he finally tried, his cry a sobbing gasp of fear.
He took one stumbling step forward, and then another.
And then he stopped.
The flames had risen. The smoke had cleared. And what he could see left a cold, blank horror in him like nothing else he'd ever felt before.
The bear was towering over Vazi, towering and burning. The flaming figure was impossibly large, silhouetted against the wisps of remaining black smoke, a demonic figure in the hell that had suddenly engulfed Beast. Leon was a burning inferno, the rancid stench of burnt fur and flesh even stronger than before, and Beast simply didn't know what to do.
Utter terror gripped him, and he found himself blindly doing the only thing he could do.
He ran.
He fled to the tower, bolting inside, in to its safety and its dark confines, bolting directly into the opposite corner and dropping down. There he lay, cowering and trembling and unable even to cry out, bleeding quietly in the dark while the demons broke free in the distance.
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