A mauled body that seemed to come from thin air flew across the rock and landed with a sickening thud on its back.

Teddy saw it was a man from The Mystics.

His gaze jumped back as the Beast being opened up by imperceptible blades caught another of its invisible tormentors in his huge clawed hand, making him visible.

Without delay, the creature rushed the hole and tossed the man inside.

“Retreat!” Mars’s Trusted from The Mystics shouted.

“Oh, gods,” Moira whimpered.

That Beast turned, like his remaining brother, to the prophesied.

“The one to the left!” Cassius shouted just as Mars yelled, “Focus on the right!”

The blue streams of the tridents struck the one to the right.

He bellowed, and then in a flash of fur and cries and grunts of men, the blue streams of the Mer stopped, and that Beast came to halt beside his brother, his claws wrapped around the staffs of a collection of tridents.

And with a squeeze and a crunch, they broke with a spray of blue sparks and the halves fell to the rock.

On no.

One of them began to walk toward the prophesied.

But he stopped when a stream of fire hit the stone before him, coming from Silence.

“Not a fucking step closer,” Mars growled.

The thing’s head seemed to descend more into hits neck before it popped out, the fur withdrew, the claws receded.

And suddenly, before them stood a remarkably handsome, fit, naked blond man.

The man Teddy had seen back in that horrid glade in the forest of Wodell.

“Gads,” Moira whispered, before she sneered, “That’s a nifty damned trick.”

“I am Daemon,” the Beast man said.

No one spoke.

Daemon didn’t mind.

“We admire you,” he told them, lifting a hand to the other Beast, who Teddy’s eyes went to and he saw not a Beast and not a man, but an attractive blonde woman, though her body was cut in many places and oozing blood. “Let us have the god and then we will rule beside you.”

The thing calling himself Daemon took another step forward.

Both heads of the hovering angmostros dipped closer.

Dragons flew in from all sides and flapped, suspended in the air, red eyes aimed to the Beasts standing on stone.

“Not another sirens-damned step,” Aramus warned.

“As we admire you, we do not wish to destroy you. And thus, you should know, we are holding back,” Daemon warned in return.

“If that’s the case, your brothers probably should have given it their all,” Cassius drawled.

Teddy and Moira pressed closer when Daemon’s head whipped to Cassius and he flashed awful teeth his way.

“Touchy,” Mars said.

“Do not play with us for we are finished playing with you,” Daemon threatened.

“Care to wager?” True asked.

“I will kill you last,” Daemon promised.

“But we’ll kill her first,” True said.