Discordant Note | TBATE

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Toren Daen

I knew the moment that I had exited the confines of the castle's cage. The air was cleaner. The stench of despair and death left me. The cool mist of the night kissed my skin, soothing my aches and worries.

I couldn't see the stars or the moon as I hovered in the sky, finally free. Even without the warmth of the sun, I felt unburdened for the first time in a long, long time.

Dicathen's flying castle glided nonchalantly through the skies, uncaring of the gaping wound in its underbelly from which I'd emerged. Like the rings of a planet—or more accurately, shackles around a throat—the concentric ring of floating arches hovered uncaringly at the far borders of the castle's range. Beyond those, there was nothing but a mist that blocked out the night like a funeral shroud.

"Will you flee?" a voice said nearby. "Will you cower?"

I slowly turned in the air, calmly observing the asura that had followed me. Taci Thyestes no longer clutched his right arm, instead clenching his left where he floated in the sky. His intent radiated a more focused anger than before.

I let out a leisurely exhale. Then shrouded wings slowly grew from my back, their crystalline light glowing subtly. I raised my hand, inspecting the bloodstains all across my body where the pantheon had wounded me.

I could run now. Taci and I both knew it. I was a master of the sky and fast as a thunderbolt. Any attempted pursuit on his part would be treacherous and difficult.

I considered it for a moment, before brushing it aside. Taci Thyestes wanted a battle, and this little god needed to die. Outside of the flying castle, the innocents would not be in danger.

Wait for me, Seris, I thought, exhaling steam. Wait for me, Cylrit. I need to fulfill an Oath.

My shrouded spirit slowly grew over me like an avatar of white light. Plates of powerful mana reinforced my movements as my regalia hummed warmly on my back. Soulplume burned in my veins as my red hair shifted in a breeze. Feather runes gleamed orange like hot coals across my body.

"You spoke as if you were a master of death earlier, Taci," I said, my voice melodic in the night as my aura finally let loose. "But this isn't your domain."

The young warrior narrowed his eyes, before holding out his left hand. The air shimmered and warped, before his winged spear phased into existence. "This is just another test," he said, almost as if trying to convince himself. "Just another test."

The young asura's right arm was disabled from my earlier attack with Resonant Flow, but I could sense it slowly healing. I hadn't been able to cut at his lifeforce to deny that recovery, which meant I had a time limit.

The pantheon pointed his spear at me, gritting his teeth. Then he thrust it forward.

I leisurely drifted to the side, allowing the streak of invisible force mana to whizz past me. Taci didn't relent, however, and thrust again and again and again. His speed picked up the more he did it, his arms becoming a blur.

I weaved past every one, the winds carrying me along. I ducked and wove and danced out of the way, grimly determined. Far behind me, the night mists parted and broke from Taci's attacks, vapor swirling as they mourned their wounds.

A dozen shrouded feathers separated from my wings, before streaking toward the airborne asura like firecrackers. A few of Taci's force bullets intercepted them in midair, making them explode in a conflagration of white fire and buzzing vibration. But more than enough made it through his barrage.

I followed after my homing spells, dipping and weaving as my wings batted aside any bullets that got too close. A shrouded saber of plasma hummed and blurred in the night sky as it asserted its dominance.

Taci tried to backpedal as my glimmering feather spells reached him. After all, he'd seen what happened when they exploded. But as he flew away, those hummingbirds chased him under telekinetic control. He dipped and weaved, sending out arcs of force to try and cut both them and me in two.

I barrel rolled out of the way of one, then parted another with my saber. A few went on past me, severing the arches that surrounded the flying castle.

"You said that I was unworthy of Lady Dawn's plasma arts," I seethed, deadly focused as my heart beat like an engine in my chest. "You said I was a mongrel."

I danced through the sky around the castle, explosions and rippling waves of mana making the glass of the structure shudder and crack. Fireworks trailed across the night at hypersonic speed as I finally embraced my bloodright.

I reached the asura before my homing feathers did. He spun with supernatural speed, but he wasn't on the ground anymore. He was in the sky.

His spearpoint lashed out for my skull, but instead of my flesh, a conjured accel path met it instead. The spear was torn from the pantheon's hands with a sonic boom, blurring off into the darkness of the night.

It didn't phase him. He lined up a punch towards my core, his teeth clenched and his eyes wild. Then, he engaged Mirage Strike.

His fist blurred through the air, shattering my shrouded spirit—and then my ribs—on contact. I simply smiled through bloody teeth, then grabbed his hand. The sharp talons of my spirit dug into the meat of his wrist, drawing blood.

"But your blood is just as red as mine."

My wings shone with dawnlight, each feather vibrating with the speed to cut through steel. They scythed towards the asura's head, promising to relieve him of it. Taci hastily twisted in my grip, his wounds tearing as he tried to kick me in the chin with a force-imbued strike.

It missed, the force that erupted from his attack parting the mist in desperation. My lips twisted in a grimace of vindictive fury.

The razor edges of my shrouded wings rebounded off his mana barrier in some places, the vibrating sound spells unable to find purchase. Others missed from the asura's supernatural grace. But Taci could not spare himself every wound.

My winged attacks carved deep, bloody gashes along his left arm, chest, and legs. For a split instant, Taci drowned in a blender. The lifeforce I siphoned from his wounds rushed through me in a vampiric draw.

The young asura's eyes widened in true fear as he screamed in agony, blood streaming across my wings. His left arm opened, his spear returning in a sudden haze. He twisted it, trying to skewer me through the head.

Instead, I threw him through the sky. He tumbled haphazardly like a broken bird, spraying blood from a dozen wounds like a sprinkler. His mortal flow watered the castle far below like rain.

Then the homing feathers hit him. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. They thunked one after another into the left side of his body like arrowshafts.

Time stood still for a moment as I stared into the terrified boy's eyes. For the first, critical moment, this little god seemed to understand. All along, he thought he was playing a game. This war? This battle? The concept of lessers?

They didn't matter to him. Why should they? He was going to live for thousands more years. They were out of his concern.

The dartlike shafts of my shrouded feathers embedded across his body told another story. They brightened for an instant, the white fire within straining against their confines.

I clenched my fist shut, and every single feather detonated.

A firestorm of white-hot fury expanded in a radius fifty feet wide, heat banishing the nearby clouds with Taci at its center. The not-so-distant castle rumbled as the air warped from the flames.

Taci's body shot away like a bullet fired from the chamber of a gun, his form breaking the sound barrier. He slammed into one of the floating arches surrounding the castle, cratering the golden-white stones. Boulders fell away into the Beast Glades far below, the sound of crushing stone joining that of screaming explosions.

I shot after him, unable to risk my advantage. The lifeforce I'd taken had healed over the damage he'd done, but I knew this asura was far from finished. My prey wouldn't cease fighting unless I forced them.

I slammed into the crater Taci had made, my wings poised. The left side of the asura's body was covered in burns, blood leaking around him in a pool from the unhealing wounds I'd given him. His eyes were wide and fearful as they took in my burning, angry form.

He tried to thrust his spear at me again, but a simple application of telekinesis pinned his hand to the stones, before a feather speared his palm to the rock. The young asura grunted in pain.

I loomed over him like an angel of death and fire, the burning pits of my eyes reflected in the depths of his. "Those wounds will never close," I decreed, my voice carrying on the wind as the fire and sound mana in the atmosphere bent to my will. "Every cut I give you, I make you mortal. You bleed like a lesser, and you will never stop bleeding."

Indeed. I had ripped and torn at Taci's lifeforce whenever they intersected. It was difficult to do so with his asuran physique, but the more I absorbed and understood, the easier it came. Though his mana was already working to wash away the burns across his left side, the cuts my wings had given him would never heal.

Taci's eyes widened so much I thought they might burst. I relished his anger and terror, drinking in that horror he felt. Because that was what the asura of Epheotus and Alacrya didn't understand. They had gone so long without bleeding that they thought themselves invincible.

I prepared to thrust my shrouded saber through this child's skull and finish this.

But something changed.

I didn't see what hit me, but I felt it. My shrouded spirit cracked as pain erupted across my body. I blurred backward through the sky, my wings barely stabilizing me.

Then I slammed into the tall spire of the castle, cratering the stones in a mirror of Taci's earlier situation. Glass shattered as rubble fell toward the courtyard below, eliciting screams and shouts of alarm from the gathered soldiers there.

I blinked, snarling through bloodied teeth as my mana-enhanced eyes saw what had happened. Little agonies popped and ripped their way through my body as my stressed heart fought to use the lifeforce I'd stolen to ease my wounds.

Taci was transforming, finally taking on his race's inherent mana-enhanced form. Two more arms had erupted out of his back on either side of his body, which was presumably what had hit me. His skin was hardening into yellow scales. Twin horns erupted from the side of his head, and I knew they would eventually form plates that would cover his upper face like a helmet.

I ignored the mages far below as they prepared their spells, many of them aiming frantically up at me. A barrage of all four elements peppered me, but my shrouded spirit and wings turned most of it away with contemptuous ease. The rest I ignored as I focused on my priorities.

I called on my regalia. Threads of telekinetic force wove themselves in front of me as an elongated spear of shrouded plasma hummed in my grip. I lined up my sights, aiming for the bleeding deity so far away.

Taci seemed to sense what I was doing, even from where he was in that crater. He raised his spear, cocking it back as if he would throw it.

"Stake of the Morning," I whispered, my voice melodic as Soulplume burned my Vessel. Then I hurled my attack at the same time that Taci's arm blurred with a Mirage Strike.

The crack of sound that echoed out from our attacks blew away any and all of the distant mages' shouts of fear and terror. My phasing streak of white light met another of raging red. The world exploded with light as my spell and Taci's spear diverted each other.

The white streak of my attack carved a hole through one of those distant arches, while the winged spear blinked somewhere into the far distance, carving a trail into the distant mists.

He can use his version of Burst Strike to throw his weapon with similar power as Stake of the Morning, I realized with alarm. I need to get away from the castle. The collateral damage will only increase.

I jumped just in time, a wave of force-type mana severing the spire I'd been crouched on. The top of the building began to list to the side, creaking and groaning as it belatedly realized it had been cut. On instinct, I grabbed the top of the tower as it fell with my telekinesis, raising it up like a shield in front of a coming arrow.

Taci struck like a cannonball. He trailed blood as he burst through the building's top, the lifeforce-inflicted wounds I'd given him streaming red. There was no sign of the burns I'd worked so painstakingly to deliver earlier, and his right arm—which I'd pulped using Resonant Flow—was in perfect working condition.

The only damage that remained across the glimmering gold scales of his hardened skin were those I'd carved with my heartfire blades. Six eyes watched me with feverish intensity: two from the front, and two more from either side of the asura's plated skull.

"You don't know what it means to be an asura!" he bellowed, his voice like a stone being crushed as his meaty hands reached for me. "I will put you in your place!"

I was already blurring backward, recognizing the foolishness of engaging in a close combat duel with a martial master. I pulled the destroyed rubble with me, unwilling to let it fall on the mages in the courtyard far below.

"I know what it's like to be human!" I yelled back, my pulse thumping like a drum as my diminishing mana reserves kept me fighting. "But even the so-called greatest of you can't do that?"

As I moved, I commanded the rubble to swirl around me in a hurricane of power. Around and around it went, blocking the asura from my sight as he chased after me in the sky. The glass and stone within slowly began to heat up as I commanded the ambient mana, igniting the oxygen with a touch of white fire.

"And you mock even our force-type mana arts," the asura seethed from beyond. "Contemptuous."

I felt Taci eject wave after wave of invisible force into my vortex of telekinetic power, attempting to rip it apart. But my arts flowed more than his. I wasn't rigid and defined like this toddler asura's attempt at power. So when his arcs of cutting power entered my range, they were swept into the current of white fire and melting stones.

The effort of maintaining the tornado made my mind burn. My breathing shortened as more and more power was packed into the centralized vortex as it protected me from the asura's assault.

But I knew it wouldn't last.

My feet touched down on a far distant rung of the castle's floating ring of arches. The moment I was out of range of the castle, I clapped my hands together.

The shape of my tornado changed. Where before it had been a hurricane whirling around an eye, now it twisted and howled in a vortex of angry white fire and raging force. It moved like a drill as it lashed toward Taci, denying the night with a roar that sounded like a dragon.

Taci was prepared for it. He'd resummoned his spear, holding it in two of his six arms. And as the angry tornado of power surged for him, I saw his muscles tense.

He executed a Mirage Strike. His red weapon blurred upward, parting my attack clean in two. An undeniable wave of cutting force rippled towards me, alarm bells roaring in my mind.

I jumped to the side, my wings glistening. The hundred-foot-tall arc of invisible power bisected the ring I'd been standing on a moment before. The entire massive structure groaned.

The night sky erupted with flaming shrapnel as the remnants of my tornado spell peppered the rims of the castle's ring. Taci glared at me with undisguised hate, the fingers of each of his hands burned black from parting the tornado.

When I landed again, my mana channels aching and my core warning me in protest, I tried to ask myself what Aurora would do. How would she fight this fool?

I found my answer immediately.

I grinned despite myself as I stared up at the bleeding pantheon. "Can you tell the difference between your blood and mine?" I asked, my teeth red. "I can't."

My attention immediately honed in on the pantheon's blackened arms. It was subtle, but the ones he'd used to execute his Mirage Strike were trembling ever-so-slightly. I could sense the damage that technique did to him over his heartfire.

He hasn't mastered it entirely, I thought. If he had, he would be using it with abandon to destroy me. But he risks damaging himself.

How could I use that to my advantage?

My taunt struck home. The asura clenched his hands around his spear, his hesitation evaporating. His powerful form blurred as he slammed into the ground not far away, mana quaking with his passing.

"I will tear you limb from limb, Toren Daen," he sneered, each syllable like a breaking stone. "I'll tear them away as many times as it takes till they no longer regrow."

I opened with a salvo of telekinetic homing feathers, my wings strong as sweat beaded down my face. As they swirled like angry hornets toward the asura, he flickered about, making utterly minimal movements to avoid each one. With the precision of his dodges, it almost appeared like he was teleporting. It was honestly impressive, the way he phased from place to place using precise applications of Mirage Walk.

Taci swung his spear half a dozen times, sending out waves of force mana toward me. I rose back into the air, unwilling to let myself get pinned down on the ground. But more than that, I needed to gain distance from the castle. I'd avoided collateral damage as best I could so far, but as our fight reached a truly colossal scale, I needed room.

I ascended at a rapid pace, the clouds and pervading night mist swallowing me whole. Like a lone star in the night, the heat of my body helped me carve an upward path. Every flap of my wings was accompanied by a swirl of water vapor that clung to them.

I felt Taci's rage over his intent as I rose, the pervasive clouds blocking him from my sight. He wanted me to stay and fight. And sure enough, he followed.

I rolled to the side as the clouds around me parted, a crescent of cutting force passing me by. Then another and another followed me, attempting to clip my wings. I wasn't able to dodge them, so fevered was my rise. A few cuts opened along my arms. One on my leg. Another across my back that nearly removed a shrouded wing.

"You cannot hide in the dark, Toren Daen!" Taci's voice bellowed after me. "You challenged Epheotus! You challenged a pantheon! Be it the sky or the land, there is no hope for you!"

No hope for me?

I ground my teeth as I finally erupted from the clouds, emerging into the starlit night sky above it all. I glared angrily up at those endless stars, thinking of my recent talk with Sylvie, where I tried to bestow upon her a kindling ember of hope. A unique bonfire pulsed in turn with my tired heart as I stared up at those distant constellations. So far out of my reach. So far beyond me.

There was no sun in the sky. There was no moon to light my way. By all logic, there was no hope. With all that had changed, I couldn't even be sure that Arthur would develop his aether core. I couldn't be sure that there would be a chance to defy these asura who held the world in their fearful, petty fingers.

My thoughts came faster and faster as I rose higher and higher, but those distant stars never grew closer. Ages ago, Seris had lamented how distant they were. We mortals would never touch them, but it was in the taunting nature of the cosmos to tease us with the possibility.

What had the people of Burim taken to calling me? What did they whisper amidst the rubble, what stories did they tell of the devastation? They called me the Morningstar, didn't they?

"We don't need to chase the stars," I said, anger burning my vision red as I finally slowed. "That's what I told her, long ago."

What made Arthur the only source of this world's hope? What made him the single torch that could be followed? Why did I have this idea in my head that without him and his aetheric powers, there was nothing but destruction left for this world?

I heaved for breath, my core aching from maintaining Soulplume. I swiveled in the sky, the darkness of the night laughing in the face of my resolve. As far as I could see in every direction, clouds covered the world in a blanket of smothering white. It was beautiful in its vast tranquility.

But it was quiet. The world itself was being strangled of its ability to breathe by those clouds.

I called on my magic, summoning dozens of streams of telekinetic thread around me. They wove between each other, creating churning accel paths. Half a dozen input points glimmered reflectively, promising death and destruction to any who entered their range.

Stake of the Morning was a powerful spell. I counted it among the most powerful in my arsenal, but it had a few glaring weaknesses. One of those being that it was hard to hit a moving target, and my foes could predict its angle before it hit.

I would never normally be able to hit Taci with one of these. He moved too quickly and was too intelligent in battle to be caught unawares.

But if there was more than one?

I'd never been able to truly let loose before. As I'd trained myself in the depths of the Beast Glades, making my way ever-so-slowly to the Hearth, I had to be careful with absurd displays of power lest I potentially give away my location. Even in the Breaking of Burim, I'd restrained myself to some degree.

But as spears of solid plasma slowly hovered in the air around me, banishing the darkness, I remembered something I'd almost forgotten.

I didn't chase the stars. I brought the sun myself.

Taci emerged from the clouds not far below me, outlined perfectly against the endless white. He was a distant dot, but I could see his expression of anger as he stared upward.

As his six eyes observed the waiting attacks, however, that anger turned to surprise. And then fear.

The world froze. I raised my hand languidly, sweat streaming down my face from the mental effort required to keep all these accel paths active. Exhaustion clouded my mind and made my thoughts run slow, but they still ran.

"You challenged a phoenix in their domain, pantheon," I hissed, my words carrying on winds of sound magic as I bathed in the heat of my power, "and you have the audacity to accuse me of arrogance?"

I swung my hand down.

One Stake fired with a rapturous boom, a streak of white outlined in that realm of heaven above the clouds.

Taci managed to dodge the first Stake of the Morning by sheer skill, flying to the side. The second one, too, he avoided with careful movement, still rising with a quiet fear as he closed the distance between us. I could see the desperation in his eyes as he recognized the urgency of his plight.

But I'd gotten his measure. I could sense his intent and desire as he gritted his teeth, like Icarus charging the sun with his wax wings.

Mirage Walk was powerful. It was the secret to how the pantheon race had become martial warriors among the asuran clans. By taking those divine, blurring steps, they could dodge nearly anything. The warrior race could leisurely avoid any and all threats to their safety as they closed the distance, before gutting their foe.

But to use it, one needed to be on the ground. One needed footholds to press off of if they wished to blur about like a dancing butterfly.

The third Stake couldn't be dodged. Taci had flown too close, and he was within my domain. No foothold would save him.

So when that spear of holy light neared, he raised his spear to deflect it. I saw his muscles tense, felt his intent mist away, just like it always did before he used Mirage Strike.

His arms blurred upward and his bloody spear flashed with a boom. The winged head of his weapon kissed the white streak of my Stake: and he parried it. My attack splintered into a dozen shards of reflective white plasma. They looked like shooting stars as they streaked through the night.

We locked eyes then, the light reflecting off our faces as our determination clashed. Our heartbeats raged in our chests, our blood pumping with the song of battle.

Then the next Stake fired. Taci moved on, undeterred as he used another Mirage Strike, this time with his second set of hands. Just like the first time, my spell was shattered, the remnants falling like dying angels through the clouds below.

At the same moment, he sliced the air with one of his open hands. Streaks of force-type mana surged from the edges, twisting as they cut toward me. I twisted sideways on instinct, trying to let them surge past me. But as tired as I was and with exhaustion slowly turning my body to lead, I was only partially successful.

Taci's attack severed my wings and carved trenches across my back, but I ignored the pain. The pantheon cocked back his arm, his eyes gleaming angrily as he hurtled towards me. In turn, my last stakes were poised to tear him to shreds.

His intent misted away, and my eyes widened. Mirage Strike. But if he abandoned his spear now, he wouldn't have anything to defend himself from the oncoming Stakes. Was he trying to go for mutual destruction? To hit me with his spear at the same time my attacks hit him, too? He was barely two hundred feet below me. He was too close to avoid it.

Hastily, I pulled myself backward, twisting in the sky.

Just as Taci threw his spear, normally. It was fast as sound as it whizzed past my ear, but nothing like a Mirage Strike. At the same time, I allowed the last two of my Stakes to enter their accel paths, ready to finish this.

But in that microsecond before I allowed those spears to accelerate, my attention focused on the asura in front of me.

He bled from a dozen wounds. Long, jagged cuts along his chest, back, legs, and arms told the story of the blender my wings had left him in. His martial robes—a deep crimson, to hide the blood of his enemies—were burnt and torn in a dozen places. The golden scales of his asuran form gleamed in contrast with the constant red.

All six of his arms were blackened and burned, consequences from parrying my Stakes of the Morning. They trembled on a nearly imperceptible scale, the damage from using his technique making itself known.

But there was something wrong. Those eyes of his… They were too determined. He was a warrior. He should understand his approaching death from starfire. But I couldn't read his intent anymore, as he'd erased it. He moved forward in near slow motion as death approached.

Why had he erased his intent? So I couldn't predict his movements?

Then I saw the slight warping of the air beneath the asura's feet, and I realized too late. My pulse didn't even have time to rise in terror as Taci's eyes glinted malevolently.

I had miscalculated.

Twin Stakes accelerated along guide rails, streaking like scissors toward my foe. At the same time, I desperately tried to fly backward, recognizing exactly what was about to happen.

Using a buildup of force-type mana beneath him as a foothold, Taci blurred forward, his asuran physique slipping the hangman's noose of my Stakes. The streaks of white light seared through the clouds, leaving me wide open as the asura closed the gap at last.

I tried to summon a saber, but my weakening magic meant it wasn't coming nearly as fast as I was used to. My core ached as the shrouded saber coalesced, but Taci was faster.

One of his arms slammed into my wrist with pinpoint precision, eliciting a grunt of pain as I tried to escape. My shrouded spirit turned away most of the damage, but it was enough to divert any attempted attack.

The asura pushed on through his wounds, grabbing my arm and flowing behind me in perfect form. "Did you think the pantheons became the race of greatest warriors by being unable to kill things that ran from us?"

Quick as lightning, two of the asura's massive, burly arms locked around my throat, pinning me to his chest with a headlock. Then, without a second to waste, he began to hammer his fists into my shrouded spirit.

I gritted my teeth, sinking the tips of my shrouded talons into Taci's arms as he tried to smash through defenses. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Like the pistons of an engine, he kept striking. His punches were paltry and weak compared to what they were at the start of our fight. He'd sustained too much damage and lost too much blood to maintain his earlier fervor. The smell of burnt flesh invaded my nose from where his charred arms held me.

My avatar splintered, but it didn't break. I funneled more mana into it, pain radiating from my core. The cracks mended over nearly as fast as they appeared, but I couldn't maintain it forever.

I struggled and thrashed, desperately healing the damage of oxygen deprivation over and over as his muscles tightened around my throat. I tore at the streams of lifeforce from Taci's arms, using them to heal my wounds and wash away my agonies. But he still wouldn't let go.

Taci's breathing was heavy and pained as he forced us through the air, orienting us towards something far away. 

His spear. It was returning at an accelerated pace, its point glinting malevolently in the night.

"The asura gave lessers their magic," he wheezed weakly into my ear. "We can take it away. It is our right. Worthy opponent you may have been, Toren Daen, but you are just like every other."

Soulplume flickered in my veins as I struggled to maintain my power. My hair flashed colors, my Phoenix Will retreating back towards my core.

No, I thought angrily, reasserting my grip on my power as that spear of death approached. No. I refused to die here. I refused to die to Taci. I refused to give up the fire that had begun to kindle in my breast. Those embers of hope had grown as I'd spoken with Lusul about his child, as I'd promised Seris to return Cylrit to her, as I'd confided in Rinia and Sylvie. They were a weak, steady candlefire before, finding uneven ground in the wake of Burim's Breaking.

But somehow, as I saw my death approaching in a flash of red, I felt those embers rise into a bonfire.

"You're right," I hissed through bloody teeth, rejecting the despair coming my way. "It can be taken away."

I drew in all the mana I'd been using to sustain my shrouded spirit, cycling it back through my weary core. The snow-white edges of it gleamed with how close I was to the next stage. And as Taci's fists suddenly cracked my bones and pulped my insides, I focused on my regalia.

As that spear approached, an accel path glimmered into existence to meet it. Except it wasn't pointing away.

It was pointing towards me. Towards us.

I felt Taci's fear as he noticed what was about to happen. He tried to pull himself away in the split instant before it became too late. He didn't even have time to speak.

I gripped his upper arms, forcing them to remain in the chokehold as I grinned.

One of Taci's auxiliary arms was thrusting weakly outward, no doubt to try and resummon his spear.

Too late.

The weapon hit that accel path, then became a streak of red. The sound barrier shattered as the asura's weapon surged faster than it had been meant to. Because at its original speed, it would have only impaled me.

But with the speed of a railgun's fired bullet?

I only had time to feel the pain after the spear had passed through my stomach, leaving a bloody mess behind. I felt suddenly blind as every sense I kept close abandoned me. Touch, hearing, sight, mana… It drifted away, leaving me cold. Soulplume flickered out as I lost control of my power, the pain radiating all across my body. 

But I wasn't the only one who had been hit.

Taci coughed blood onto my shoulder, his grip slackening where it still held my throat. His arms spasmed weakly, his sense of mana disrupted.

We began to fall.

The clouds welcomed us gratefully, embracing us in hugs of graceful water vapor as I struggled to remain conscious. Down and down and down we went, the Beast Glades far below waiting for their catch. Our blood trailed in the mists like ribbons of scarlet silk.

I blinked headily, trying to remember what I'd been thinking a moment before. As I fell, my consciousness winked in and out. I could see the trees. Feel… Feel the wind rushing past my face as gravity asserted her dominance. I felt pain, too. So… So much pain.

We were so close to the ground. Only a few seconds more, and we'd be there.

Close to the ground.

I remembered. I was fighting. I was battling an asura. I was killing him.

I called on my heartfire. I had an abundance of it from what I'd ripped from Taci, and it eagerly washed over the bloody hole in my stomach. And after that, it banished the influence of Taci's spear on my mana channels and veins.

My senses returned like a flood of light, agony pulsing from my core at the overuse of my power. The world returned to focus.

I gritted my teeth, then called on my Phoenix Will one last time. Taci's arms were tightening around my throat, a sign that he was recovering quickly, too. Before long, he'd have his mana back.

I broke out of his grip with ease, spinning in the air. My fist clenched as I called on my bloodright a final time, asking the skies to heed me. I rotated with impossible force, calling up the last dregs of mana I had available. Flame and lifeforce gleamed along my knuckles.

I was done. I was done questioning my past and focusing on my regrets. So what if Arthur could kill gods? So what if that was what made it possible to resist? So what if that was what gave this world hope? I had found light once more in a new path.

So I would let this god know of hope through its absence.

My heartbeat thundered in my veins as I locked eyes with Taci. The plates of his face gleamed in the white firelight. Comprehension dawned there, slow and painful. He pulled his blackened arms upward, crossing them in front of his face as he tried in vain to protect himself. His mana signature returned barely in time, energy rushing to try and brace him against the attack.

It wasn't enough.

My knuckles obliterated Taci's haphazard guard, before slamming into his face. The bones in my hand fractured as they pulverized Taci's faceplate, blood spraying. The young asura's defenses cracked almost in slow motion, breaking under the weight of my power. And as my heartfire intersected his one more time, I knew these wounds would never heal.

And then the fire along my hand exploded, bathing his skull in white fire. 

Taci shot off like a white comet towards the ground below, crashing through the trees of the Beast Glades. His mana signature flickered weakly as he disappeared beyond my sight.

Then I slammed into the ground. My legs belatedly bent as I halted my fall, my bones creaking. Soulplume abandoned me entirely as I collapsed to my hands and knees, my Phoenix Will retreating into my core. I heaved for breath as I knelt there for a time, just… breathing.

I felt a pinprick on the back of my neck. Then another. Then another.

Rain began to fall in a slow, steady drizzle, seeping into the earth and blessing the nearby trees. It sank into my clothes, mixing with the blood and soaking my hair. The pitter-patter of the clouds' dance was almost soothing.

I slowly pulled myself to my feet, ignoring my body's protests as I stared up at the sky, feeling the water wash over my bloodstained face. I forgot myself in them for a moment as that cool water washed away my fears and reservations. It felt uniquely cleansing, nature's gift for a hard-fought battle. As it seeped through my clothes, it took away my sorrow. My pain, my fear, my anger. Even my pride and arrogance washed away in the pinkish flow. I felt myself forgetting everything about myself for a single moment, enraptured in a single moment of blissful ignorance.

When tales of old spoke of a phoenix rising from the ashes of its own corpse, I thought, hardly aware of myself, Did they ever speak of the rain? Did they ever talk about what it was like to stay at the center of a rainstorm, hearing its lulling heartbeat?

I drank in the scent of quiet rain, my eyes closed. I'd forgotten what I'd been doing a moment before through the exhaustion. What was it, again? What was I here for?

Ahhh, yes.

It took me a moment to return to everything that I was, the reprieve of the rain drifting away. I found my answer again, cementing it into place like a sword driven through stone. I opened my eyes, staring into the darkness of the Beast Glades beyond. I took a solemn step forward, my boot sinking into the wet grass. Then another, then another. A shrouded saber sputtered into my grip.

I remembered. I was going to slay a god.