Zelamir ran through the air in much the same way Velik did, one bounding leap at a time. He had a decent lead and was remarkably quick, but it was still just a matter of seconds until Velik closed the gap. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage it before his prey reached the next floor.
Mana poured out of Zelamir, dozens of tiny threads that lashed at his surroundings, connecting him to something bigger than himself. By the time Velik passed through the open archway, the divine beast had fully connected to his sanctum, and woke up to defend its master.
The commands were all mental, or if not, they were done in some other way Velik couldn’t determine. In his defense, he was fairly distracted when hundreds of brilliant red fetters that looked like long trails of silk ribbon fell out of the ceiling and started trying to ensnare his limbs. He barely had time to see that he was in some sort of massive metal room full of all sorts of things he didn’t have words for.
There was a lot of what appeared to be glass, a lot of metal bars making up cages, and a lot of flesh twisted into shapes that could never have been natural. Open flames and crystal-ice pillars dotted the room, as well as blocks of stone in various colors and grains. Velik took all that in in an instant, then dismissed it from his mind in favor of contending with the threat in front of him.
A corona of [Dread Lance] spilled out of him, his ability to shape the skill having increased dramatically as his mental and mystic stats had spiked over the last week. He couldn’t hold it in that shape for more than a second, but that was enough to burn away the leading edges of the silk fetters threatening to bind him.
More fetters emerged from panels in the wall, adding the sound of face plates popping free to hit the ground to the background as they lashed out. By the time the first one struck the metal floor, Velik was already fifty feet deep into the room. Zelamir was smart enough to not stop and gloat just because he’d reached his sanctuary, which was the only thing that saved him from being skewered.
The divine beast fled through a doorway so big Tesir could have fit through it in his beast form, and a curtain of red unfurled to guard the passage. A hundred more ribbons descended from the ceiling to grab at Velik, but another pulse of [Dread Lance] pushed them back. Velik crashed through the wall of ribbons, stepping into the shadow world as he approached them and summoning a flying wedge of spears to lead the way in case that wasn’t enough.
It was a good thing he did, because they sliced through ribbons that didn’t stop reaching for him, though in this echo of reality, he could see lines of bright light among the twisting strands of mana animating them. About a third of them had those threads woven into them, and it was those that could reach into the shadow world.
Nice of him to let me know which ones to focus my attention on,
Velik thought as he mentally commanded his spears to shift from stabbing points to slicing blades. They attacked the ribbons where they were attached to the room, severing them from their mana sources and sending them fluttering down to the floor.He brushed past the remaining ribbons unobstructed, only to see Zelamir spin in place and ignite a miniature sun between his hands. He held it over his head, snarling in one part rage and one part triumph, and the brilliant light banished the shadow world. Velik didn’t falter as he tumbled back into reality, didn’t even so much as slow down.
“Got yo—ah!” Zelamir’s boasting turned to panic as he saw Velik still coming at him. However he’d figured out that Velik had stepped sideways into the shadows, he hadn’t accounted for the fact that bringing him back out wasn’t going to actually stop him. Perhaps he’d simply assumed Velik was farther back and that the red binding ribbons would finish their work.
Whatever thoughts were going through Zelamir’s mind, they didn’t save him from being skewered by four different spears. One came from the monster’s left, one from straight ahead, and two got him from behind. Velik himself drove the fifth one in, then discharged [Dread Lance] directly into Zelamir’s abdominal cavity.
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Any normal monster would have succumbed to that level of punishment, but despite this one’s apparent specialty as a mage and a researcher, he was after all a divine beast. He was wounded, but not dead. Mana flashed into existence around him, but whatever it was meant to do, Velik stole it too quickly for that to happen. fried most of them, and the shadow spears killed what was left. Essence flooded into Velik, not a lot, but a few thousand he didn’t have before. Zelamir’s attempted ambush died before he could make the first move, and Velik drove him down to the floor.
“Wait! Don’t you want—”
“Nope,” Velik said.
[Dread Lance] sparked down the spears, power arcing across the length of solid darkness, and dove for Zelamir’s skin. With all the mana Velik had eaten, he was sure he had enough to finally kill his prey, and judging by the look in Zelamir’s wide eyes, he knew it, too.
That was when the floor opened in an explosion of fire and lightning, rent into a rift a hundred feet wide. Zelamir started to fall, but he twisted in place and darted off, his body shrinking down to the size of a normal fox. Velik bellowed and pushed himself off thin air in an attempt to snatch the beast, but a scaled arm thicker than he was tall absently smacked into him.
Reisha didn’t even seem to notice grazing Velik. Instead, he exhaled a blast of impossible frost-filled mist directly onto Eslaka. Her flames pulsed brighter and hotter in response, and the mist melted away into true steam, whatever magic that sustained it breaking the mist down as it fell out from between his jaws. She rose up over Reisha and flared her wings, unleashing pinions of molten metal and flames to scrape across Reisha’s scales.
Velik snarled in rage at the interruption. He’d had Zelamir! Another second would have ended the monster’s life, and even now he wanted to shove his way past the two brawling divine beasts to resume the hunt. He would have, but he saw an opening. At the end of the day, killing Reisha before he could do whatever it was that would break the Garden was more important.
So Velik spun in place and jumped straight up. [Dread Lance] shot down Reisha’s throat, cutting off the flow of frozen mist and choking the multi-ton lizard. Eslaka immediately took advantage of that, and with two targets hitting him from both sides, Reisha was driven back on the defensive. His power was overwhelming though, stronger than anything else Velik had seen. The dragon probably could have taken all five of the other divine beasts at the same time.
Bolts of lightning arced up Reisha’s spine and jumped across the open air in a wholly unnatural way, shocking Velik repeatedly as he struggled through the pain. They were greatly diminished as they struck him, [Sun Eater] taking a bite out of the mana powering them and [Seal of the Relentless] further dampening their power, but even with both skills protecting him, Velik’s skin blackened and his muscles spasmed.
His regeneration kept him alive through the lightning storm, and Reisha’s focus on him let Eslaka rake her talons across the dragon’s eyes. He flinched away, desperately trying to avoid the strike, but she ripped into him anyway, all aggression and flaming feathers. The lightning abruptly cut off, and Eslaka flew past him just in time to avoid being carved apart by massive claws.
The attack hadn’t blinded Reisha, or if it had, he’d healed so quickly that his eyes were functioning again the instant Eslaka’s talons had pulled out. New scars ran across his face, though, one cutting through the heavy ridge plate and the other running up the side of his cheek to his eye. Even as Velik watched, scales grew in and the scars faded.
Spears slammed into Reisha, not penetrating his body, but strong enough to force his body to shift with each impact. Velik wasn’t stupid, either. He didn’t mindlessly pound on the dragon; he did it strategically. When Reisha raised an arm to ward Eslaka off, he caught a spear in his elbow that forced it out straight. When the dragon tried to lash out with his tail, four spears smacked into it along its length and knocked it off course.
Everything was going well enough that Velik had some hope the two of them could wear the dragon down, but Zelamir was still out there. As if seeking to remind Velik of his presence, new ribbons came to life and stretched out to grab him.