Imara collapses into a heap. I hear it rather than see it. The soft, heavy thud of a body hitting stone behind me. The clatter of her as her body finally gives out. The absence of her ragged breathing being replaced by the deeper, slower rhythm of unconsciousness.
The strain of her power and her injuries finally collecting their debt.
I don't bother to look back.
The moment Imara's concentration breaks, Teleb reasserts his control. It happens instantly. One moment the blades are scattered and chaotic, flying in wrong directions, some still embedded in stone and wood from where the density interference sent them. The next they're moving. All of them. Returning to their master.
The thousands of blades reorient themselves in the air above me. Blocking the sky again. Casting moving shadows across the ruined platform.
But they don't launch.
They just... hover. Suspended and waiting.
And Teleb regards me.
He's lowered his platform slightly. Close enough that the details of his destroyed appearance are even more visible. The ruined armor. The shredded clothing. The cracked mask with that single bright blue eye watching me through the fracture.
That eye is full of something I didn't expect from someone I've been trying to kill for the last however long this fight has lasted.
Amusement. Genuine, unguarded amusement. And beneath that...
Fascination.
He tilts his head.
"What manner of foul creature are you?" he calls down to me.
His voice is different now that we're not actively trying to destroy each other. Clearer. The mask muffles it but not completely. There's intelligence in it. Warmth even, which is off-putting in the best scenarios.
The question hangs in the air between us. Sincere. Like he actually wants to know. Like I'm something he's encountered that doesn't fit into any category he has available.
I grin brightly.
"The best kind," I answer simply.
Teleb stares at me for a moment.
Then he laughs.
It's a real genuine laugh. The laugh of someone who's found unexpected delight in an otherwise ordinary day. It echoes off the canyon walls, mixing with the distant sounds of Helix still fighting his people somewhere deeper in the burning city.
And the thousands of blades orbiting his position ripple in response to their Lords mirth.
My eyes flick to the slender figure standing to Teleb's left. The pristine one. The one without a scratch whose mark I still can't identify with certainty.
She's watching our exchange with her head slightly tilted. Mirror image of Teleb's gesture. Love perhaps?
As I watch, she glances upward toward where Teleb hovers.
He catches it. Looks at her. Something passes between them silent communication, the kind that develops between people who've operated together long enough that words become unnecessary.
He nods.
A small, decisive motion.
She doesn't move doesn't respond visibly. Just returns her attention forward back to me.
And Teleb turns back to me.
Something has shifted in his posture. The amusement is still there but there's something underneath it now. Something that feels like the moment before a business transaction. When pleasantries are done and actual purpose surfaces.
He descends slightly. His metal platform lowering him by maybe twenty feet. "Dangerous! What a brave man! Oh, but I wouldn't advise it... I wouldn't advise it at all..." I think with a suffocating malice.
"You could be one of my petals," he says.
The words are casual. Conversational. Like he's suggesting I try a restaurant he likes.
"We can help you grow."
My laugh is dark. And for just a moment just a fraction of a second i am sure something horrible surfaces in my eyes.
A hunger.
"Why would I do that," I say, and my voice drops into something quiet and cold and absolutely certain, "when killing you as you killed me would satisfy me way more?"
The silence that follows is perfect. Absolute. Even the distant sounds of battle seem to dim for a moment.
Teleb's one visible eye flickers. The blue of it darkening slightly. Something moving through that cold, intelligent gaze.
Dark amusement and recognition. The expression of someone who has heard a good answer and respects it even while disagreeing with it.
He lowers himself further. Deliberately. Unhurried. Closing the distance between us without any apparent concern for what I might do with that proximity.
The move is a statement. I am not afraid of you.
His voice, when it comes, is cold. Not cruel. Just matter-of-fact. The tone of someone stating a fundamental truth of the universe that you've simply failed to understand yet.
"It wasn't really an offer you can refuse," he says. "Little Awakened."
The last two words land like a pat on the head. Condescending. Dismissive. Reducing everything I am everything I've become to a category. A label. And one with nothing but disrespect at that.
Little Awakened.
The voices explode.
And the every fragment of restrained fury. Every second of held-back violence. Every ounce of the divine rage that's been building since Imara interrupted our fight, all of it converges into one single sentence.
"Just die, bastard."
The words come out quiet. Almost gentle.
And then I move.
The platform cracks beneath my feet as I launch. The force of my acceleration so sudden and total that the stone beneath me can't handle the stress. Fracture lines spider outward from my footprints as I leave them behind.
I cross the distance in less time than thought takes.
My fist is already moving. Has been moving from the moment the words left my mouth. Leading the charge. Point of the spear.
It moves with the speed of lightning.
Not metaphorically. Not hyperbolically. The air around my fist compresses from the velocity. Superheats. A small crack of displaced atmosphere preceding the blow like a herald announcing a king's arrival.
And behind that speed behind that velocity that makes the air itself protest is weight.
The weight of three marks working in concert. The Fearmonger channeling rage into pure physical enhancement. The Regenerator flooding my muscles with divine vitality that makes them perform at levels no human body was designed to sustain maybe even no Elite was supposed to sustain. The Veilshaper sharpening my perception until I can see the exact molecule of that cracked obsidian mask where maximum force will transfer.
The weight of everything I am.
Everything I've suffered.
Every blade that pierced me. Every second of dying. Every moment in that void between existence and non-existence where a cosmic entity showed me my planet from above and asked me if I wanted to live.
The weight of a mountain.