The woman says something behind me.
I ignore her.
I'm already turning back. Already fixing my gaze on the two figures that matter. The only things in this entire burning city that matter.
Teleb.
Hovering above me on his platform of orbiting metal. His armor is devastated—cracked and dented and scored from our rampage through the city. The pink robe is completely gone now, shredded somewhere in the ruins of what used to be Baelin's market district.
But that mask. That cracked, spiderwebbed obsidian mask.
One bright blue eye staring at me through the fracture.
And that eye that single exposed window into whatever passes for a soul inside Teleb is full of something I didn't expect.
Awe.
The second figure stands a few feet to Teleb's left. Watching. Perfectly still. Perfectly pristine.
She's undamaged.
Not slightly battered. Not mildly scuffed. Completely undamaged. Her black armor shows not a single scratch. Her pink robe hangs perfectly, not a tear, not a stain No labored breathing. No signs that she's been anywhere near the catastrophic destruction we've been unleashing on this city. Or fighting against Helix members. I assume her mark if some type of teleportation considering her and Imara appeared out of nowhere.
Because right now it doesn't matter. Nothing matters except the man floating above me with thousands of blades at his command.
I walk toward Teleb.
Not run. Not charge. Walk.
Slow. Deliberate. Each step measured and heavy on the cracked stone of the platform. Arms spread out at my sides like I'm welcoming an embrace.
And I laugh.
The sound that comes out of me is wrong. Broken. Echoing off the canyon walls in ways that sound like multiple people laughing simultaneously. I wonder if the voices in my head are so loud they've become part of my physical experience. If the others can hear the thunderous, holy, righteous fury screaming inside my skull.
"What are you waiting for?" I call up to him.
The words come out easy. Conversational.
Teleb doesn't move. Those thousands of blades oriented at me don't move. Everything is suspended. Held in a moment of terrible anticipation.
So I keep walking.
And I keep talking.
"Strike me down again." The laughter bleeds into the words, warping them. Making them something between a taunt and a prayer. "If you dare."
The last word comes out as a scream.
Not a frightened scream. Not a desperate scream.
A challenge.
I stop walking.
Arms still spread. Head slightly tilted. The smile on my face stretched so wide it feels like it might split my cheeks.
Thousands of blades. All pointed at me. Hundreds of them with that horrible sentient quality the ones forged from human remains, carrying the emotions of the dead.
All of them ready to tear me apart.
And I'm smiling.
"You think me defeated?" I ask. My voice drops to something gentle and pitying.
"You think your victory is certain?"
I take one more step forward.
"That I am chained?" My head tilts the other direction. "That I am destined to fall?"
I chuckle again my voice becoming harsh once more
"But I am unbowed."
"Noble will the carnage that I shall inflict upon you and your people."
For a long moment, nothing moves. The dying city groans around us. Somewhere distant, the sounds of Helix still fighting continues without us.
But here, in this moment, the world holds its breath.
And then Teleb cocks his head.
That familiar gesture. Slow. Deliberate. The head tilt of something that finds you interesting rather than threatening.
And he chuckles.
The sound is muffled by his damaged mask. But it's genuine. Warm, almost. Like I've said something that genuinely amuses him.
"Really?" he says.
"Let us see then."
His hand moves.
And everything converges.
Every blade. Every spinning orbiting construct. Every piece of metal under his control—thousands of individual weapons all launching simultaneously toward a single point.
Toward me.
The air screams. The sound is like nothing I've ever heard. Like reality itself is protesting the amount of metal moving through it at that velocity.
And I throw my head back and laugh.
The blades are ten feet away. Five. Three.
And then they go haywire.
Not all at once. Not cleanly. It happens in a cascade of wrongness that my enhanced perception catches in excruciating detail.
The first wave hits something. An invisible wall of resistance.
Blades that were moving in perfect coordinated arcs suddenly jerk. Trajectories going wild.
Some slam straight into the ground, burying themselves to their hilts in stone.
Others reverse. Actually reverse. Spinning backward against their own momentum, against the will directing them, against all physical logic. They fly back toward Teleb and the pristine woman with enough force and speed that actually makes them both move.
And some simply explode.
Not from impact. Not from any visible cause. Just the metal cannot decide which will to follow. Cannot reconcile two opposing forces acting on it simultaneously. The conflict becomes too great. The stress too much. And the metal does what metal does when pushed past its limits.
It fails catastrophically.
I spin.
My eyes track across the platform to where Imara stands. Still where I left her. Battered and broken-armed and barely upright.
But her hand is outstretched.
Fingers spread. Face drenched in sweat that pours down her temples and drips from her jaw. Every muscle in her body visibly straining. Tendons standing out in her neck like cables under load.
Her density mark. She's using it on the metal. Altering the density of individual blades mid-flight. Changing their mass. Disrupting the relationship between Teleb's will and the physical properties of his weapons. Creating enough interference that the conflicting forces tear his constructs apart.
And it worked.
Kind of.
I stare at her.
She stares back. Her one functional eye is full of determination. I scan her body and notice the sweat pouring off her. At the way her outstretched hand is trembling from the exertion. At the cost written clearly in every line of her exhausted, battered body.
She used a significant portion of whatever reserves she had left. On me. To save me from a blade storm I was actively welcoming.
I sneer.
Walk toward her. Each step deliberate. Slow.
She doesn't back away. Holds her ground. Keeps that one eye fixed on my face.
I stop in front of her. Close enough that she has to look up at me. Close enough that the golden light of my halo falls across her features.
"You," I say. The word comes out flat. Cold. A statement rather than an accusation.
"Are no fun."
I lean close. My voice drops to something just above a whisper.
"Stay. Out. Of it. He. Is. Mine."