The sky shuddered under the weight of the blows exchanged; Aaron felt like bombs were going off above him. The concussive forces of two gods testing each other reverberated in the air.
Is that what ants feel like? Aaron mused. The camp was enveloped in a white halo that seemed to keep the darkness at bay. The abyss, it seemed, had swallowed the place whole. Zarkhan floated above, worry etched deeply into his perfect features.
Yuri had encased her entire body in plasma, sparks dancing across the surface of her manifested armor. The onyx smoke was kept at bay through sheer raw power. Transforming into a lightning bolt, she danced through the sky until she collided with Malkaleth in a thunderous blow. The black creature parried her strike with a casual backhand, the resultant force bellowing out for miles into the artificial dark. Malkaleth thrust with his off hand, the jagged tip screaming toward Yuri's temple. The blade bounced off her incandescent frame, screeching as though in pain. An overhand stance turned into a guillotine aimed at Malkaleth's head, but this too was blocked with a cross-dagger guard. Malkaleth grunted with effort, sparks singing his ethereal cloak, butterfly-like embers snaking up his forearms.
This is going to be a dance of endurance, he mused. He had to outlast the princess's firepower—not an easy feat knowing who he was up against. Taking the full brunt of an all-out attack from her would be dangerous, even for him. It was time to chink her armor.
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His daggers began levitating around him, crystal onyx covering their forms and turning them into dangerous needles.
The needles split into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen, until there were thousands—each a potent missile of death, whirling around the butcher. They melded into the enforced night, silent, invisible, and deadly.
But he wasn’t done. Portals, one for each needle, opened around Yuri like the thousand eyes of a nightmare, honing in on her brilliant form.
The needles flew. Malkaleth smiled.
Yuri couldn’t see his daggers, but she sensed movement through electrostatic feedback. She knew Malkaleth could supersede her energy sense, so she had long ago used her physical manifestation of power as a sensory array. Thousands of moving objects, voids in space, flew around her at dangerous speeds. If any one of them pierced her armor, it was game over.
Yuri focused, drawing on her planetary reserves and supercharging her speed—a star-like engine revving at full RPM. Her entire consciousness honed in on her prey. A singular reason for existence, an adamantine resolve. Power followed. She could sense the needles like a shoal of fish blinking in and out of existence, like immaterial flies honing in on her.
She waited.
She waited.
She let the first needle hit—a dull clink.
Space weakened as she ripped a jagged line through the gaps, evading her inorganic pursuers by the barest of margins. It was a game of 5D chess, the needles moving through the network of portals, trying to reach their elusive target. Malkaleth’s hands were outstretched in grim concentration. Yuri’s eyes never left her prey.
