Henry, splattering the monster with a plank, made a flicking motion with his hand. The plank carrying the monster jerked sideways, dragging its paralysed body further and further away from the tree, out into the open air.

Unlike the Landworker-controlled lumber, didn't lose its momentum on impact or contact.

By the time the old monkey had healed, it'd been taken too far away to jump back.

"Monster!" it shrieked, the pain wracking its smashed body causing it to regress to its infantile state.

Taunt bait.

Henry, seeing the monster clinging to the plank in terror, made it zoom around in a comical circle. To provoke it out of this state, he slapped his knee and sent the monster a click flavoured with the identical amused emotion he'd received from it earlier.

"What does it matter if your “form” is honed for the branches?" he taunted. "Can a monkey do anything when it has been picked up and placed in the sky with the birds? Watching your movements populates my mind with a cloudy memory of my own. I am reminded of Bakraktakmak The Seventh, a fat pigeon that I once witnessed circling above a rubbish dump."

The old monkey abruptly released its grip on the plank and, falling, clapped its hands in raucous applause. "According to the legends, The Hagwaksung people were punished by The Dragon Iminekta who carved a gorge around their land that isolated them from the outside world. After the dragons departed, the Hakwaksung built physics-defying bridges to reconnect with civilisation, and, in return, civilisation put them to the sword. One day, long after they were gone, I was walking along the Northeastern bridge when it started to hail. I climbed under the structure and took refuge with the spiders who sang me a funny ditty about this folly of the short-sighted bridgebuilders. "

Energy began gathering in the old monkey’s tail, and its gaze locked on a spot on the palm tree above where the had been - not too far from the human.

Escape.

Snap! Its tail cracked like a whip, transforming the old monkey into a gust of wind.

But as it teleported and rematerialised on its chosen spot, its target was already swinging away on a rope, glowing axes sprouting from his body.

Henry, to make a safe escape, was going to uproot any trees that could form a bridge to his new location.

The range of the monster’s skill turned out to be exactly 40 metres. Its wind-up and travel times combined to a total of 850 milliseconds. The cooldown, he couldn’t know for sure, but an educated guess said 20 seconds.

With the information he’d gathered so far, he had a concrete sense of the methods available for defeating it. All that remained was to wait out and determine the expiration of this hyperspeed Yang-phase for the species' docile Yin-phase, giving him the precise timings for rotating his own attack and defence going forward.

The old monkey, at the ludicrous sight of Henry swinging away after boasting, underwent another moodshift.

Seeming to shrink in stature, it became in many senses simply what it was, a pitiful monkey that'd lived far too many years beyond its natural lifespan. "How my niece would soar through the jungle top in search of our favourite berries. She was lovely and playful and beautiful. One day she did not come back before sunset. We looked for her for days. I found a bracelet of Blue Daisimellias beside a trail of footsteps. I had woven it myself for her. They were human footsteps. I lacked the power then to seek revenge. Helpless, I told the family that she had abandoned us for a better troop."

The old monkey shed a tear, which, rolling down its cheek, was stripped away by the wind and fed into its grotesque clothes, into the screaming mouth of a baby.

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The old monkey, incongruent with its sombre mood, made an overly-lengthy blink, as though its brain had shut off momentarily.

Henry—who'd studied these monkeys so carefully on his first day in Saana after they'd pummelled him—recognised the gesture. That protracted blink was the telegraphing effect, the signal of its transition.

Noting the effect, Henry set a 10-second Commander timer from the start of the blink. Between each second count were nine metronome ticks, accentuating every 10th of a second.

9...

Volcanic Skip. Cloak Bait. Stab. Garbage disposal.

Along with the combo springing to mind, he marked several critical execution points on his surroundings.

For now, he would only envision the steps since he didn’t know whether the time before the transition had changed. Any variance of the type he’d seen with the monster’s previous abilities would cause him to die on the spot.

The old monkey, noting the shift in the human’s demeanour, bent its head sideways. "A strange cloud, this one. Although I cannot name him, I see his face before he dissipates. He is also a man of books. He holds this calculative expression, too. His thoughts are no different. 'That’s The Yin-Yang Monkey Transformation Signal. In 10 seconds, it will become vulnerable and I will have my chance to strike.' He, also, has done his research. His assumptions are also not baseless, except for one. He does not know that, against me, this breathing space leading up to The Yin is not the signal to attack but the signal to flee. He does know that I have dug deep into the soil of the universe and excavated its most precious secrets. He does not know that The Yin is both weakness and strength. He does not know that, in fact, it is the deadlier of the forms when harnessed properly."

8...

Henry, receiving the message, noted a difference from all the preceding ones. This time, the old monkey had refrained from conveying an emotion with its message; this time, it'd demonstrated a new self-awareness, a new self-control.

"Those clothes of yours are nice," Henry replied. "Where’d you get them?"

The Redeemer, unaffected by the petty trick, laughed.

7…

Its identity had stabilised. It had realised who it was.

Henry knew that, if it had truly overcome the weakness of the Yin-phase, then he needed to end this fight now, or he would lose.

But he still hadn't—

Fuck it.

Having taken in his surroundings, the capabilities scouted from his opponent, his aerial position swinging relative to The Redeemer's, his every tool on hand and not on hand, Henry—who'd spent the years separating that first day when these monkeys had humiliated him and the present making one snap life-or-death decision after another—made one such decision now, leaving the rest for fate and the mountain.

He relinquished control of the lumber swarm and focused exclusively on redirecting several floating hatchets.

6...

The Redeemer raised its long eyebrows. "Bravery or blindness? After millennia of disuse, it’s hard for this fragmented mind to distinguish these concepts. They seem too similar. Either way, human, I salute you who has chosen to face oblivion head-on. For a reward, you may choose the fate of your soul. Be absorbed by The Ring after I reclaim it, or re-enter The Cycle to become something more beneficial to the world, like a maggot."

Henry didn’t answer, defeat or victory being his only reply.

Volcanic Skip.

He let go of the rope he'd been swinging on and grabbed a constellation. “ELD!”

5...

A flaming door swallowed him mid-fall.

From The Redeemer’s heightened perspective, the trail of fire behind the door was like a stroke of red ink being drawn sluggishly across the sky.

A lovely memory made it inhale a breath of fresh air. "Jushri was his name, The Head Scribe of The Great Library of Izuchavane. Over the entrance to his precious palace of knowledge hung a banner of a single calligraphic character that would, apparently, capture the spirit of the day. Every morning, Jushri would delete or add a stroke to this character, in turn modifying its meaning. It was the type of uniquely pointless gesture one sees only from humans. When The Library burned to ash before me, that banner had read, 'The Sweetest Fragrance.' What a conundrum, I’d thought. Boiling ink or scorched flesh – how was one to decide which smelled more delicious? Both were divine."