I came for Vrakth the fourth time, and his crown had returned, but of course, he would never know that I destroyed it in the last loop... and so I broke it again.
I poured half my depth into a single Tribunal bolt, holding it in my chest until the golden light was so bright that my ribs glowed through my skin, and I waited for him to blitz me with the speed he did not know I was now aware of, he swung his arms to take my head, but my figure vanished like a soap bubble, and I reappeared behind him where the bolt struck the halo behind his head, and shattered it
Vrakth screamed as the dark flame around him guttered. With the crown gone, he could not vomit the dark flame in a geyser; he had to build it in his hands, slow, and a slower demon is a demon I can read.
We fought across the crater for what truly felt like an hour. I cracked his fused Abyssal shield in four separate places so deeply you could see the bones beneath. I burned one of his six eyes and felt the field tilt as half his sight went out.
Twice I had a hand on his chest, and twice he tore it away before I could reach what beat underneath. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and I was bleeding from more, and for a long while, it was the most even thing I had ever been part of.
He won it by patience. He let me spend my Depth, and empty the channels, and slowly, my lightning went out of me one bolt at a time, and when I was dark, he walked over without hurry and put his thumb through my skull.
This damned demon, even with the ridiculous capacity of my Anima Depth and my channels, which had been growing throughout the loop, his energy stores still exceeded mine by an order of magnitude.
The lesson cost me my life, and it was cheap at the price: never let an ancient thing wait you out.
[ Cor Telluris — 3,900 → 4,400 ]
∞
So I learned not to empty myself, and it was the hardest loop of the ten, because it was a delicate dance to manage my Anima, fighting just at the level I was regenerating, while ensuring I was still in the fight.
I learned that a broken crown healed. Not fast, but faster than I could crack it again with a single bolt. So I stopped trying for one big strike. I peppered him with smaller bolts, a dozen at a time, keeping the crown under constant assault. He could not heal what was always breaking.
I rationed the Depth like a man crossing a desert with one skin of water. I drew my threads from the lightning essence thick in the eruption air instead of from my own reserve. I let the channels, more of them now, nearly four and a half thousand, each one a little river of stored power, carry the load they had been grown to carry, and I always, always kept a reserve.
My channels are faster now. My Anima regenerated quicker. The small bolts cost almost nothing, and I could fire them while moving, while dodging, while weaving the Loom.
The fight ran longer than any before it. Crown broken, two eyes dark, shield cracked in six places, and still I had not spent myself. When he tried the patience trick and walked over to finish what he thought was an empty husk, I put a full-power Tribulation bolt through his chest at the length of my arm.
The fused shield over his heart cracked wide, and I saw the heart for the first time since the loop he had killed me holding it, red, vast, beating like the pyramid’s own pulse.
I reached for it, and he caught my wrist before he poured one of the most virulent waves of Corruption into the arm, and the rot raced to my shoulder and into my chest before I could seal it. I died with my fingers a hand’s width from his heart.
If my hand had reached his heart, I would have turned it to ash... oh well, there was always a next time.
In Vrakth’s face, I could see shock, fear, and pain, and as I died, I smiled at him, as I came to acknowledge that I was beginning to enjoy this dance between us, and everything else... even the eruption was just a backdrop.
[ Cor Telluris — 4,400 → 4,950 ]
[ Stored Essence — 64,000 → 98,000 ]
∞
The sixth time I fought Vrakth, I don’t think he understood what hit him.
His shadow crown shattered in the first exchange. Shield cracked in moments by threads quicker than he could track. Flame slow in his hands. An eye I burned dark again before he could guard it. He met me whole, as he always did, but the me he met had grown across five deaths into something that hit like a storm and moved like one, and the demon he was could not keep pace with the demon I was becoming.
I added Soul-Forge to the assault. Every time a Tribunal bolt cracked his crown, I reached into the wound with my threads and pulled something. Pain, attention... the fraction of a second where his concentration broke.
Soul-Forge had grown. It was faster, hungrier. The silver flame that poured from my threads seeped into the cracks in his Abyssal shield and widened them.
The Demon was bleeding heavily now, and my body was being covered with it. I blinked inside his guard, drove a lightning hand through the cracked shield, and closed my fingers around his heart, and I activated Soul Forge with all the upgrades it had had over five deaths.
Silver fire poured into his body, and he screamed as he had never done before. His soul fought against my flame, but it melted into it as fast as the forge could run while his hands came up around my head.
I did not get all of it. He crushed my skull before the soul gave way. But I took a piece of him into the dark this time, a fragment of that ancient soul forged straight into my channels, and the count leapt the way it never leapt for a two-horn.
He may have collapsed after I died, I could not be sure, but this was a dance I only won if I crushed my enemies and did not die with them.
[ Cor Telluris — 4,950 → 5,800 ]