He killed the thought before it’d even formed. Even if they were prana cores, he didn’t dare think about fighting it. Vir didn’t even know if he could flee from the Yaksha. Killing it was out of the question.
Vir refocused on the container. It was immovable and impervious to damage. There was just one trick he could try.
Vir reasserted Prana Dam, which he hadn’t had to use recently thanks to Parai’s Barrier pattern, which repulsed prana and was generally superior.
Except in this instance, he didn’t want to repel prana, he wanted to suck it in at a very specific point.
Activating Blade Launch, Vir purged his body of prana. He then opened a small hole in the dam, on his palm, which he placed on the box.
The inscription running around the box used Ash prana just like he did. Which meant he could drain it.
The trickle immediately flowed into his hand. It wasn’t much—the inscription was on its last legs—but it was enough.
The inscription flashed a few times, then winked out of existence. The box hissed as its top lifted, then vanished into thin air.
Vir watched as rust developed on the metal in seconds. Whatever material the Imperium used for its buildings and roads couldn’t survive without preservation inscriptions.
Initially, Vir thought the materials had simply aged rapidly, but now he wondered if the metal itself was designed to function with the inscription. It would explain why the fallen spire had degraded while the orb inside the half-built Automaton had not.
Vir waited a moment longer for the metal to weaken, eyes darting between the box and the Yaksha who lurked just beyond the wall on the other side.
This better be worth it.
With bated breath, Vir peered inside… and found a flat ribbon an inch wide.
He reached in and picked it up.
The ribbon was coiled around a spool, and it glowed blue. Its surface was covered with a maze of tiny straight lines that formed a beautiful pattern. The lines zigzagged across the ribbon, never crossing one another.
It was beautiful, but right now, it did him little good. While he couldn’t tell if it was a functioning Artifact, he pocketed it regardless. It was the only piece of Imperium magic he’d come across in the whole city.
Vir reached into the box once again and pulled out the insert the ribbon had been set on.
Underneath was a tray with two semicircular indentations. Orb receptacles. And they were empty.
Vir roared in frustration.
Why? Why can’t they have been there? Why can’t things just… Wait.
Two core slots.
What are the chances…
Vir looked up. The Yaksha was gone.
He whirled and screamed out in terror.
The Yaksha floated just inches away. Smiling.
42YAKSHA
The guardian screeched a sound halfway between maniacal laughter and a wail.
Vir fell and continued falling, right into his own shadow.
In the Shadow Realm, a dozen questions ran rampant in his mind, augmenting his fear. Why had the Yaksha waited outside? Why hadn’t it ended him the moment it found him? Was it waiting for him to open the container? If so, why?
It was almost as if it’d waited for him to retrieve the Artifact ribbon. Did it want that for some reason? But if it’d retrieved the cores from the box, why would it need him? It didn’t make any sense.
And what happened to the wolves?
The beasts had risked their lives to accompany him into the maw of this dark place. Were they dead? What happened?
Vir forced himself to calm down, channeling what he could of the Foundation Chakra. Those weren’t the questions that mattered right now.
He was safe here, for his ten counts. He just had to escape. The mission was a bust.
While he felt terrible for the dead wolves, there would be time to mourn later. Right now, survival was his only priority.
Vir searched the shadow exits. Most were dark, as the rooms outside the vault were all unlit.
That made the Yaksha’s prana signature stand out, its prana signature blazing brightly in the darkness.
The… darkness? Vir thought. He looked back at the vault. The Yaksha was missing.
It must have moved the moment he’d sunk into the shadow. To where, he couldn’t say. But it proved that the guardian could move through walls, disappearing in one location and reappearing in another.
Vir searched for another exit. The Yaksha’s signature was there, too.
That’s weird…
He looked for others, but all were equally black to his eyes. In fact, they’d all gone dark.
The Yaksha.
It was gone.
Huh?
Vir took two full counts to comprehend what had happened.
That’s… What?
The Yaksha was moving in a world where time should have stopped. It was impossible. It should have been impossible.
Vir had never felt such terror before in his entire life.
Once again, Vir choked down the panic, struggling to calmly analyze the situation.
A task easier said than done.
He stared at the Yaksha, looking for any signs of movement. He found none. It hadn’t moved. The Yaksha was as frozen as everything else.
Just… when he looked away, it was no longer there.
The Shadow Realm had been sacred to him. Inviolable. It was his sanctuary from danger, where the world stood still.
And now there was another. An entity that ignored the rules.
Vir should have expected it. He should’ve guessed that an Automaton Guardian built by the gods would have their powers. Strange, incomprehensible powers. It wasn’t simply a question of its strength or its speed. Its abilities defied comprehension.
His ten counts expired.
Move!
Vir picked the highest shadow above him. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the fear of deep, dark places with an immortal executioner on the loose.
Not daring to emerge with his whole body, Vir reactivated Dance of the Shadow Demon the moment his hand emerged, sinking back into the Shadow Realm, surging prana to his skin at the same time. If the Yaksha broke through both Prana Armor and his seric brigandine, Toughen wouldn’t help much. But it was all Vir had.
He almost made it.
The Yaksha appeared, slicing his leg as he passed between shadows.
The Prana Armor Vir had spent hours building was wiped away in a single blow. His seric armor cracked, the Automaton’s blade sinking deep into his bone before Vir escaped into the shadow.
The pain consumed him, but it also drove the fear away, forcing Vir to concentrate on the now.
No matter how bad his injury, it could not kill him when he was in the shadows. Ashani’s pranites would work to heal the wound when he wasn’t, but Vir planned to spend as little time outside the Shadow Realm as possible.
It was now a race against time.
Vir let prana guide him, choosing the only exit that shone with it—the cylindrical elevator shaft.
Panic fueled his breaths, and terror powered his legs. While the shaft was just as dark as everywhere else, the prana density was higher, allowing Vir to see with ease.
Where he went, the Yaksha pursued, slicing at whatever body part it could each time Vir left the shadows. An ordinary opponent would find the task impossible—it moved instantly to Vir’s exit point, with barely a split second to attack as he slipped from one shadow to the next.
It was even harder here, where the pitch-blackness acted like a single, massive shadow. There was hardly a gap of inches to strike at.
Yet the Yaksha was no ordinary opponent. The blade of its talwar glowed blue, buzzing with the sound of death. Like a swarm of starving hornets.