Relentless.
It cut his arm, eating through Prana Armor like it wasn’t even there.
Inevitable.
It sliced at his legs, and it would have bisected Vir’s torso if the Phantomblade’s spike shield hadn’t saved him.
It did. Thrice. Then it shattered.
It was then that Vir knew he wouldn’t make it.
His body took more and more damage as he shot up the shaft. The pranites hardly had time to work, preventing him from recovering.
Vir’s body roared in pain, but to stop was to die. Something deep within him forced him to keep moving.
The pain is good. It means you’re still alive.
The pain sharpened his mind. It was the only reason he noticed a pattern to the guardian’s attacks. It was slower when he chose exits at the edge of Dance’s reach.
It’s learning. It’s predicting where I’ll end up.
The thought terrified him. How could any opponent read their enemy so perfectly? Let alone a technique like Dance of the Shadow Demon, which offered such a limited window of opportunity to harm him?
And yet, the Yaksha’s monstrous capacity for foresight was also its weakness.
I can use that.
Vir intentionally chose a closer exit, barely ten paces away. This time, he emerged unscathed.
He’d caught the Yaksha off guard. He’d tricked a creation of the gods.
It was a small thing, and might barely have bought him a few seconds of life. And yet, it changed everything. It meant the Yaksha could be deceived. It wasn’t omniscient.
Even so, it was a close thing. Realizing its error, the Yaksha appeared at Vir’s location, just narrowly missing his foot before it disappeared through another shadow.
Exiting another shadow, Vir roared in pain as the Yaksha sliced him open. The tendons in his legs severed. His arms now hung limp at his sides. Vir had sacrificed them, using them as armor to keep his head and chest safe during his jumps. The end was near for Vir. The pain all-consuming. Never had he been so close to death.
Nor would Cirayus or his ancestors save him here. He was on his own. Alone. In an elevator shaft in the middle of a long-dead city in a blighted realm.
If he died here, no one would ever find his corpse.
What am I even doing here?
Vir’s mind ebbed in and out. His world became consumed with thoughts of escape. Of death.
It wouldn’t be long now. Another strike, perhaps two, and he’d lose his arms. No orb in the world could restore lost limbs. He’d be crippled for life.
Vir consumed the full time with each Dance invocation, dreading the injury he’d suffer when he emerged.
And then, when he’d lost hope, he saw it. An exit that was neither black nor the dazzlingly bright white of the Imperium building’s lights.
It was gray. It was outside. Sweet, safe outside.
Vir emerged on the roof and instantly crumpled.
What was even the point of coming up here?
He had a reason for it. He thought it was a good decision. But now, as the Yaksha floated up to him, its six executioner’s blades extended, Vir could no longer remember.
The Yaksha’s head rotated constantly, displaying its faces one after another. But they were no longer smiling. One face was frozen in a mask of despair. The other wept, red tears flowing down its face. The third… looked almost pleadingly at Vir.
It screeched, but it was not a cry of glee. It was one of despair.
The Yaksha wasn’t happy to kill Vir. It was tormented.
A sudden thought occurred to Vir.
Unlike Ashani, who’d slumbered her years away, this guardian had been forced to stay awake for millennia. In the darkness of that building, alone.
Vir didn’t know if Imperium Automata could be driven insane. But four thousand years was a long time. Long enough, perhaps, to break even the strongest of beings.
It’s gone insane… And it waited for me to steal something from the vault… so it could pursue me here.
Distant memories from Ashani’s residual thought transference surfaced in his mind. The Yaksha couldn’t leave the vault’s premises. Not unless there was a clear threat to its mission.
Like a burglar.
“Please, let me go,” Vir whispered.
The faces rotated, and this time, its expression was one of sadness. Like it didn’t want to kill him. It brought its six arm-blades up.
And then it froze.
Huh… Vir thought dazedly. So that’s what a Wyrm looks like up close.
He remembered why he’d led the Yaksha up here. His subconscious mind had taken a page out of Cirayus’ manual.
When you can’t defeat the enemy, get another to do it for you.
The Wyrm disintegrated, falling onto the roof in a rain of tiny versions of itself. Vir knew well what would become of him if any of those touched him.
He didn’t wait to find out.
Without even bothering to get up, Vir braced himself and Blinked… Right off the roof.
Bones snapped under the force. He screamed.
The last thing he saw was the Yaksha’s face, looking up. Smiling blissfully.
As Vir fell, the sky lit up. Beams of red and blue pierced the clouds—the Yaksha’s weapons. Where they swept, the Wyrm disappeared, trivially erased out of existence.
His scream of pain turned into a wry laugh.
It was toying with me all along. It could have ended me any time.
Vir activated Light Step, reducing the impact of the fall. Even then, with his injuries, the landing nearly made him black out.
He couldn’t afford that. Not here, in the middle of hostile territory.
Vir forced himself to focus through the pain and restore prana to his body.
The pranites had nearly sucked him dry, and if they ran empty, he’d lose them forever.
He could feel them working within him, mending his muscles. Where they worked, the pain was the greatest.
The pranites didn’t make him invulnerable. They’d heal him, yes, but it’d take hours before he could walk again. Far better than the weeks it’d otherwise have taken, but still an agonizingly long time to wait while a battle between godly beings raged above.
Of course, he didn’t need to walk to escape. Activating Dance of the Shadow Demon, Vir took up a position on a covered ledge nearby.
He kept watch. And he cycled prana. Holding onto the hope that the winds of fortune would shift his way.
Praying that Fate might allow a mortal to benefit from a war between living gods.
43STRENGTH OF THE GODS
Vir learned that a battle between god-entities was neither short nor simple. It was an epic, drawn-out affair.
The battle in the sky raged for the better part of a day. If there were days in the Mahādi Realm. Which, of course, there weren’t, making the time feel longer to Vir.
The wait allowed him a nearly full recovery. The pranites had stitched his arms and legs back together after only a few hours, and after a couple more, he was walking again. Soreness remained, but at least he was back on his feet.
Also, the three surviving Ashfire Wolves had rejoined him. Vir was elated to discover that the runt—their leader—was among them.
They’d moved to the top of a nearby roof to watch the fight unfold and had been there ever since.
As for why Vir continued to stick around… The case inside the vault once held two prana cores. The Yaksha guardian likewise had sources of power, leading Vir to believe that the Yaksha might have cannibalized those very cores. If it lost, there was a possibility that Vir could recover those cores.