[Mana spring]
As Darganth closed in on the beast, Venrie was still keeping its attention occupied. Flying low, she exploited the fact that the combination of one missing and one diminished antler meant that it wouldn't be able to call upon the same powerful magic it had used before to attack more aggressively. That meant staying far closer than a reasonable mage had any business being to a beast, giving it little to no time to dodge her spells. Meanwhile, its counterattacks shattered against the shield spell that surrounded Venrie, with the incoming pieces of metal shattering against the bark that appeared around her whenever an attack came close.
However, despite the strikes from its hooves and the swings of its head doing similarly little, the beast remained dead set on killing Venrie. In the process, it didn't notice as Venrie slowly shifted their fight away from the area suffused with metal magic. Baiting the beast along as she slowly retreated, she had managed to put a few hundred meters between them and their original position despite only managing to circle around maybe one-fifth of the massive hole that was the mana spring.
But though this brought her foe away from both its summoned allies and the lingering elementally attuned mana that the beast could've used to empower its spells, it also brought them away from Venrie's own allies. As such, when Darganth moved to join the fight, almost a kilometer of clearing separated them, leading to the beast spotting his approach long before he came within striking range. With his remaining mana reserves allowing not even for a weak dragon's breath, this meant that he couldn't get an attack through to the beast before it braced for his intervention.
Not willing to run headfirst into the counterattack it was likely preparing in the time it took him to close the gap, Daranth thus broke off his charge barely a hundred meters before reaching the beast. Turning sharply upward to avoid entering its range, he nonetheless managed to bait out a brief reaction from the beast, giving Venrie an opening as it shifted its balance in preparation for the kick Darganth anticipated and avoided.
Using this chance, Venrie appeared behind the beast in just that moment. Floating in place for a moment, she used the situation to channel more power into her next spell. By the time the beast stopped its kick and stabilized its posture, this had already resulted in an ashen gray blob of liquid.
Waiting until the last moment when the beast was already spinning around toward her, Venrie unleashed her spell straight at her opponent's head. Shooting forward fast enough to reach its target in the blink of an eye, the projectile burst open when it struck, catapulting tiny fragments of itself in all directions.
Landing mostly on the beast's back but also splattering across the side of its head, these smaller pieces started to sizzle and smoke. Rotting through any biological material they came into contact with, they caused the beast to thrash around with a pained roar as its skin dissolved together with Venrie's rapidly disintegrating spell.
Using that opportunity, Darganth folded in his wings and dove toward the beast. Catching it unprepared as he crashed into it, he slammed into its side with all four of his claws extended.
Still carried forward by his momentum, he and the beast then both went tumbling to the ground. Landing on it as it fell onto its side, his claws twisted in its flesh as he rolled off its prone body when it slid to a stop moments later.
Keeping himself from landing on his back by pushing against the ground with one of his wings, Darganth quickly got back to his feet, managing to do so long before the beast had recovered. As such, it was still in the middle of standing back up when he pounced again.
Throwing his superior mass into it, he pushed it backward when he slammed his head into its side. Impacting perfectly with the area above his eyes where two of his horns grow out from, he barely felt it even as the beast's bones audibly cracked under the impact.
Not letting up, Darganth followed this with two slashes from his claws across his opponent's chest before lowering his head so far that the tips of his two largest horns were angled forward. With a dash, he then closed the distance the beast had stumbled back and whipped his head upward, driving his horns into the beast's underbelly.
Hearing the pained roar that confirmed that his strike had landed true before he felt his opponent's blood drip onto his head, he didn't waste time and risk it recovering. Digging his feet into the ground, he pulled back, piercing through flesh as he shook his head until the tips of his horns broke past its skin. With this, he then threw his head back, ripping through the beast's flesh as he wrenched his horns free in a shower of blood.
Once he could see the result of his attack, a grin crept onto Darganth's face as he found it to have exceeded his own expectations. Running down the middle of the beast's body, a bloody gash easily a third of its body deep ran almost the entire way from its underbelly to its spine. In it, parts of its rib cage and organs were visible, with only the resilience granted by being a mana user saving the beast from what would be a deadly wound otherwise.
However, that didn't mean that it wasn't still a serious wound. Clearly hesitant after the exchange, the beast backed off further when Venrie descended to hover next to Darganth.
"Hope we're not late." Darganth said in that brief moment of respite.
"Rather the opposite, I fully expected to have to hold it off for a few minutes at the least. Had I known you and Scalladras would deal with the Elementals this fast, I'd have stayed closer." Venrie answered.
Before Darganth could respond to this, they were interrupted when the beast let out a shrill shout. Falling into a frenzy due to the myriad of wounds it had suffered, it abandoned all care for its own well-being and charged toward them.
"I'll hold it off, focus just on bringing it down." Darganth quickly said to Venrie before jumping forward to meet the charge.
Colliding with the beast only two steps later, Darganth dug his legs into the ground as he caught the impact on his shoulder. Countering with a slam of his head into the beast's uninjured side, he sent it stumbling to the side ever so slightly, allowing the strike from his right front leg that followed to push it back.
Stepping forward in pursuit, Darganth was about to lunge forward with his head to follow up on this when the beast swung its head down with its remaining antler aimed at him. Evading this strike by quickly ducking back, Darganth was forced to retreat when his opponent followed this by rearing up and raising their front legs. A moment later, the beast's stomp landed where he had been just prior, blasting apart the ground and throwing up a cloud of dust.
Before the beast could recover, Darganth stood up onto only his hind legs and closed in. Clapping his wings together in the hopes of disorientating his opponent, he simultaneously reached for the beast's head with his claws.
However, the beast was ready for this. The moment his claws closed around its antler and neck, it pushed forward with all its might. Balancing only on two legs, Darganth couldn't muster the strength to resist this effectively, forcing him to step back so that he wouldn't topple over.
Seeing this opportunity, the beast continued to push forward. Amid this, Darganth's grip on its neck soon slipped as his claws tore through the skin. At first, he still managed to stop this by tightening his fingers, but compared to a true opposable thumb, the flexible innermost digit on his front legs lacked grip strength.
As such, when the beast threw itself forward the next time, his grip faltered again. Tearing open five cuts along its neck, Darganth's hand barely even slowed it down that time, causing the beast's antler to bury itself in his shoulder.
But while the beast's attack managed to land, it also made it unnecessary for Darganth to hold its antler with one claw. Instead, he swung it toward one of the beast's front legs. Landing true, his strike perfectly hit one of the wounds Jennia had inflicted, bypassing the protection offered by its muscles and cracking the bone as it crashed into the leg from the side.
With the sudden loss of one of its legs, the beast then couldn't stem it when Darganth simply let his full weight drop. Dragged downward by its antler, the beast was slammed onto its side, with its right leg giving in while the left leg managed to hold up.
A moment later, Darganth slammed his other front leg down. Keeping his claws spread and angled down, their tips dug into the beast's flesh as the flat underside of his hand slammed into its side.
Using this to hold onto the beast, Darganth pushed himself away from his opponent, pulling the beast's antlers out of his shoulder in the process. Shrugging off the wild kicks the beast unleashed in an attempt to stop him, he waited until he finished untangling himself before pushing the beast toward the ogres approaching behind it.
Stepping back to avoid the last kick the beast sent his way, Darganth watched and waited as his opponent collided with the ogre formation.
Leading the charge, the chief was the first one to slam into the beast. Though vastly smaller than his target, he lunged forward with his flaming replacement arm transformed into a two-handed axe. Raising it high as he jumped, he then brought it down onto the beast's hind leg as he landed perfectly at the lowest portion of the backward-angled part of its leg, where its ankle is.
Letting out a pained outcry as his strike tore through its flesh, the beast didn't have a chance to start attacking the chief before the other ogres of the group arrived. Not able to lunge as far and high as the chief, they instead split into two groups and rushed toward the deer's hooves. Initiating the attack with long lances in hand, they thrust them upward at a steep angle, piercing into the beast's lower leg about halfway between hooves and ankle.
Briefly tugging on their weapons to confirm that the hooks on their blades caught in their target's flesh, the ogres then threw their entire weight back and pushed. Using the lances as a lever, they forcefully bent its lower leg joint forward, causing the beast's hooves to slip and its weight to fall upon the lances instead.
Or at least so was the plan. While the group attacking the leg the chief had injured forcefully shifted their leg before the beast could react, the pain from their lances piercing all the way to the bone snapped the beast into action before the other group finished. And with the beast quickly shifting its weight toward its left leg, they suddenly had to contend with far more downward force keeping the leg in place.
Continuing their attempt despite this, the ogres weren't prepared when the beast responded to them with a burst of magic. Erupting from beneath the attacker's feet, the spell burst forth as tens of metal spikes that tore into the group of ogres. And while most of them had noticed its activation and reacted in time, three were immediately torn apart as the attack burst up and impaled them.
However, even the ogres that had reacted didn't all escape unharmed. Especially those that had been closer to the beast's leg were still in the spell's range as the spikes erupted randomly across a multiple-meter-wide circle.
Caught in this onslaught, only those ogres that were fortunate enough to possess some defensive powers could protect themselves effectively. Coating their body in various powers that ranged from simple durability enhancements to explosions that shattered any attacks that came close to them, they managed to make it out of the spell with superficial wounds at most.
The rest of their group, meanwhile, could only try to protect their vital organs by using their arms as a shield. Lowering their head to minimize the target area they presented, they lunged in a desperate attempt to escape. Enduring it even as the spell struck their arms, shoulders, and lower torso, they pushed through even as it tore chunks out of their flesh, lunging out of its area of effect and making a costly but successful escape.
As this was happening, the chief landed near his subordinates with a thunderous crash after being thrown off by the beast's thrashing. Quickly taking in the situation on the ground, he turned toward the successful group with new orders.
"You two, help them." He barked, pointing toward their wounded kin, "The rest, bring the beast down."
With this, he fared his mana and let his magic manifest in a burst of power. In an instant, the chief's body became cloaked in a full suit of armor made from pure fire. Simultaneously, the flames that formed his right arm suddenly jumped in intensity and turned blue. In this state, they also started radiating a soft glow that stretched for hundreds of meters, with any active fire powers from the ogres suddenly rising in intensity the moment this light touched the ogre.
With this done, the chief bent his knees and jumped. This time, his leap catapulted him noticeably further up, with him sailing past the beast's ankle and landing on its back a moment later. At the same time, the weapon in his right was also shifting, with its head widening until he wielded a massive two-handed hammer. Though such a thing would've been impractical even with an ogre's impressive strength, as the weapon was simply a manifestation of his magic, the chief felt nothing of its rather impressive weight as he swung it at the beast.
Impacting its spine, this strike caused the feral beast to scream in pain as its bone buckled under the force. While it hadn't been enough to leave any real damage, it still recognized the chief as a danger, especially when he then reached back for a second swing. Though still fearful of Darganth and Venrie, when he then swung his hammer a second time, the instinctual response to pain won out over its combat instinct, resulting in the beast drawing on the remaining power in its antler.
Thus, before the chief's strike could connect, the beast abruptly vanished, causing his swing to pass through empty air while his body started to plummet. Despite this, he didn't show any concern in his expression and calmly swept his gaze across the area.
Within moments, he found what he was looking for. Standing barely a few meters away from where he'd land, the beast had managed to both evade his attack and escape the lances in its legs. However, to do so, it had shrunk its form to one that was barely ten meters tall, something that was exceedingly favorable for ogres.
Though feral beasts weren't universally capable of transforming, unlike regular beasts, it wasn't impossible for them to gain the ability. Whether it be through innate abilities gained during evolutions, something that happened rarely, or through experimentation with their mana that allowed them to accidentally discover transformation magic, somewhere between ten and twenty percent that reach the mythic rank gain the ability to, at least partially, manipulate their own bodies. Though even then, without the structured teaching through which members of sapient species' typically learned transformation magic, this was often limited to just changing their size and not altering their form.
Consequently, the change was rather predictable. And with the ogre tribe having encountered such scenarios before, they had developed tactics to deal with it and already adapted them for the feral beast.
Thus, when the chief turned toward the forest, the tribe knew what he meant with his shout, "Go!"
Barely a second after the chief's command rang out, the thump of balistae being fired rang out from the forest. From them, almost invisible nets shot out and burst past the treeline, with a whistling sound trailing behind as they tore through the air toward the beast.
Then, just as the first net reached the beast and entangled itself with its legs, a horn sounded in the forest. Immediately, a cacophony of noise answered from the edge of the treeline, something that was then shortly followed by dozens of beast-riding ogres charging onto the clearing.