The fragment that I collected from the demon changed everything. I woke with a piece of Vrakth’s soul threaded through my own, and I found it had given me a gift he would have died to keep from me: I could feel him.
The afterimage stopped working the first time he tried it, as I had fought this demon enough time that I now knew his body the way I knew my own hand.
So I stopped chasing his tricks and started ending them. He threw the afterimage; I struck the true body. He flowed left; I was already there, because the soul-piece told me where left would be.
I broke him down with a calm I had not had in six deaths, beginning from his crown, Abyssal shield, then his eye, and finally his heart.
I stopped trying to kill him at range. I let him come close, let him think I had given up, and when he reached for my head, I grabbed his wrist, before I became Lightning Incarnate, and did one of the craziest things I had ever done in my life.
I became lightning and flowed up his arm, until I was inside him. I could feel his heart, his lungs, his ancient, hateful soul, and the sort of resistance I was experiencing was insane... it was as if I was being torn apart as everything about his body was resisting me.
My own screams came out of the demon’s mouth, because I was the thing inside it now as I burned what I could reach. Tribunal lightning poured from every channel I had, and it was not enough as I burned myself out.
My soul was torn to pieces, but as I died, I knew that there was no way that Vrakth would survive for long.
This experiment was a failure, but I was curious what it would feel like to push my entire body into someone else, and I saw what it could do to my soul. Perhaps if the demon I was fighting were not so ancient, then I would have survived this.
[ Cor Telluris — 5,800 → 6,400 ]
[ Stored Essence — 98,000 → 121,000 ]
∞
I knew his rhythms now. The way he breathed before a strike. The way the crown pulsed before he sent out a spear or a flaming geyser. The way his left knee buckled slightly when he lunged, even the slight twitch of his eyes before he accelerated... I studied this demon more than anyone else... I had no choice; he was just too powerful for me not to give my all.
As we fought, I continuously targeted his left knee. Tribunal bolt after tribunal bolt, each one aimed at the same spot, widening the crack in his Abyssal shield, and tearing through his flesh until his bone showed.
I made him kneel, and I nearly made him stay down for good. I rushed him. Lightning Incarnate carried me to his face. My hands closed around his horns. Tribunal light blazed from my palms, and the horns began to crack.
The power of a Narghul Sorcerer was closely tied to their horns. I had known this from the first Narghul Sorcerer that I had killed, but I had deliberately refused to use this loophole because I was getting stronger much faster when I challenged him head-on.
No other mage I knew was able to refine their battle skill with a teacher like this, and I wanted to kill him head-on, but there was nothing wrong with seeing how many ways I could take this demon apart.
He gasped in shock and pain as I pulled, and the left horn came off in my hand. He fell to one knee, bringing his chest closer to me, and I made my hand into lightning before shoving it into his chest and activating Soul Forge.
Vrakth screamed and tried to pull my hand away from his body, and I knew that I was not strong enough to resist him, so I used my loom to weave a thread across my wrist and wrapped it around his body, almost fusing my hand to his body, and he needed much more power to pull out my hand from his chest.
Even with my threads, I could not hold on for long, since the demon’s physical strength was so great it could crush my hand to mush in the next few seconds, but I still had more spells.
"Die," I told him, the Edict poured straight into the heart where it could reach. "Die."
His heart stuttered, then slowed before it stopped, and for a full nine seconds, his heart did not beat, and the great body sagged against my threads, twelve feet of ancient muscle going slack, the six eyes losing their light one by one, and I thought, this is the one. This is the morning it ends.
Then his heart restarted. A heart that old does not stop because a boy, no matter how powerful, commands it; it stops, and considers, and starts again out of pure ancient habit, and the restart of this ancient heart went through me like a thunderclap and tore me off him, breaking half the bones I had left.
I bled out in the crater while he stood over me, swaying, bleeding from six eyes, saying nothing. He had nothing to say. We had been fighting for an hour, and I had caused this ancient demon to be short of words. That was new, and I began to laugh as I died, and when I saw the confusion and fear on the face of the demon, it made me laugh even harder.
I carried this warmth into the dark like a coal.
[ Cor Telluris — 6,400 → 7,000 ]
∞
The tenth time I was fighting the demon, I did not try to kill him; instead, I tried to break him.
The battle was no longer for survival or even learning; I was beginning to have fun, and I wanted to see that look in his eyes where he feared me. It was almost cathartic to see the demon descend from the heavens with so much arrogance, and then a short while later, screaming in pain as I took him apart.
I fought like the Hollow Avatar had taught me loops ago, fighting close, and being as brutal and efficient as possible. I had watched the demon fight long enough that I was comfortable enough to do this.
I did not cast from range; I got inside his guard and stayed there, pressing the tribunal light against his skin, burning through his shield inch by inch.
He bled, roared, and threw me off a dozen times, but I had it all by then. The shadow crown broke in the first exchange. The shield came apart in the second. I burned three eyes dark before he landed a blow.