Chapter 81: Awakening

The sword came down. He stepped inside it, and the blade passed his shoulder and cut the air. His right fist hit Marcus in the ribs. The cracked armor split further. His left fist hit the jaw.

Marcus’s head snapped back one inch. Then he swung his elbow.

Dante took it on the forearm. The bone rang. He felt his feet slide across the sand, and he dug in his heels.

’Hit the seal. Behind the right shoulder.’

He went for it. Marcus turned his body, and the seal moved out of reach. Dante’s punch landed on the plate beside it, and the plate cracked. Marcus grabbed his collar and drove a knee into his stomach.

Air left his lungs. He grabbed Marcus’s wrist with both hands and twisted until the bone gave. The red sword fell, and Dante kicked it away across the sand.

"Mortal," the entity said, and sounded almost impressed.

Marcus punched him in the face. Dante went down. He rolled before the next fist came, and got up with blood in his mouth. The decay crawled up his neck again. It had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. He spat red and raised his fists.

.....

On the other side of the crater, Elena’s black spear took Esabella’s wing. It tore a hole through the membrane, and the rot burned the edges. Esabella screamed through her teeth. She had no weapon. The whip lay in pieces at her feet where she had dropped it.

Elena laughed with two voices. Esabella saw the handle half buried in the sand, the only piece still whole. She grabbed it. She bit her lip until blood ran, and let it fall on the it.

Fire burst out of her hand. The leather twisted and swelled. It grew into a two-handed greatsword, with a guard like a dragon’s open jaws and a blade like a shard of burning blood. The sand around her feet turned to glass.

"Again," Elena’s entity whispered.

Esabella swung. A wave of hellfire rolled across the crater and caught Elena’s left arm at the elbow. The arm hit the ground and twitched. Black flesh started crawling out of the stump.

"It grows back," Esabella breathed.

She looked across the arena. Dante was struggling, with a bleeding mouth and no sword.

A voice came back to her from a long time ago. She had been small, sitting on the arm of her father’s throne.

’ Never use the whole of it at once, little flame. The full form eats you if you let it.’

She wiped blood off her chin with the back of her wrist.

"I don’t care," she said. She pressed her palm to her chest, where the core beat slow, and called it up.

"Urggh"

Red-black fire poured out of her skin. Scales climbed her arms from the wrists to the shoulders, then spread over her ribs and hips, glossy, edged with orange. Her horns doubled in length and curved back like a crown of blades. Her wings grew by a third, with fire running along the bones. Her tail thickened and the spikes turned to molten iron.

The ground cracked in a ring around her.

"That form," the female entity said. For the first time, something like fear was in the voice. "It will burn you out."

Esabella vanished. She came out of the smoke behind Elena and drove the sword through her back. It went through the chest and into the sand, and she pinned her down like an insect. Elena’s mouth opened in a black laugh. The flesh tore, and she ripped herself off the blade in a spray of rot, leaving half her ribs open.

Esabella caught her by the throat and slammed her into the ground twice. The sand around them split. She raised the sword.

Then the pain hit. It came all at once, as if her blood had turned to boiling oil. Her sight went white at the edges. Blood ran from her nose, and her hands began to shake. The sword dropped an inch.

Elena’s fingers closed around her wrist, and the grey spread across her scales.

’Not yet,’ Esabella thought.

She headbutted Elena in the face, and the two of them crashed across the sand together.

Behind the pillar, Yenna was crying and struggling .

And The threads were everywhere. She had been looking at them for minutes. Thin lines of grey and red ran between all the fighters, tying them to something above. They shook every time someone was hit. The thickest one, red as fresh blood, came off Marcus’s shoulder and went straight up into the sky. It didn’t end. She followed it with her eyes until it was out of sight.

’It’s holding him,’ she thought. ’It’s what’s holding him.’

On the sand, Marcus’s fist caught Dante in the chest and threw him back ten meters. He hit the ground. He didn’t get up right away.

Marcus walked toward him, slowly. The red sword lay forgotten behind him. He didn’t need it.

Yenna’s breath stopped. She had seen it. The red thread had gone slack for a second when Marcus swung. A tiny gap, like a knot coming loose.

Something moved in her chest. and it had been asleep for a long time.

*Asura Void-Seeker.*

The words rose up from somewhere she had never been. Her hands stopped shaking. Her ears lifted. Her eyes began to glow a bright violet.

"Noo, Dante," she whispered. "Get up."

He couldn’t hear her. She dragged herself forward with both arms, out from behind the pillar and onto the open sand. Her legs stayed behind her like dead weight, and she didn’t care.

She reached out toward the red thread.

It was far away. It shouldn’t have been reachable. But she stretched her fingers, and the world bent, and her claws closed on the line. It was hot, like grabbing a live wire.

"Ughh"

She pulled it.

Across the crater, Marcus stopped.

His head snapped around. The red eyes went wide. The entity inside made a sound that wasn’t human, a high, ringing wail that cracked the stone pillars.

"What? The thread?" it gasped. "Who is pulling the thread?"

Yenna dragged her claws down the line. It snapped.

"Ahhhh! Ughhh"

A scream tore out of Marcus’s mouth. The red aura around him tore to pieces. The armor on his right shoulder cracked from top to bottom, and the seal behind it showed, a small red stone, glowing and unprotected. Marcus went to one knee. Blood ran from his nose and his ears.

Dante saw it from the ground. He didn’t think. He pushed off the sand with both hands and ran.

He crossed the distance in three steps. His right fist was already drawn back. Marcus raised his head, and the entity’s eyes met his.

"No..."

Dante hit the seal with everything he had.

It cracked down the middle with a sound like a stone dropped on glass. Red light blasted out of the break. The shockwave threw Dante back. Marcus’s body arched, his mouth opened, and the entity shrieked from deep inside.

Then the light folded in on itself and vanished. Marcus lay on his back with smoke rising off his armor. His chest didn’t move.

Dante stood over him, shaking.

’Is that all?’

...

Yenna lowered her hand. Blood ran down her chin from her nose and both ears. Her eyes had gone back to amber, and the light in them was gone. She tried to say Dante’s name. Her lips shaped it, but there was no sound.She fell forward onto the sand.

Marcus’s finger twitched. Dante turnen quickly .

The body sat up slowly, like a puppet being pulled by one string. Marcus’s head rolled to the side and his neck cracked. The red eyes opened again. Dim now, almost grey, but burning.

The male entity smiled.

"A kitten," it said, in a voice that had lost its double tone and was slower, and colder. "A kitten cut my thread. I will remember that."

Its gaze went across the sand to where Yenna lay in the dust, not moving. Dante stepped in front of the body, between her and Marcus.

" Nobody touch her while I am here " he said.

The entity tilted its head.

And behind him, from the far side of the crater, Elena’s broken body pulled itself off the ground, with half her ribs open and her head hanging, and began to crawl toward the girl.