The first step of their plan was to trap the Ascended. The open environment provided an endless source of ambient qi for both sides of the battle, but Tyrin would eventually wear himself down, leading to a stalemate between Loras and the Ascended. Meanwhile, Cyril’s people would suffer.
Fortunately, Loras and Tyrin had begun to find their rhythm together. Cyril knew that his appearance would add more chaos into the mix, but that would throw off their opponent as well. In the end, he had no doubt it would work. It was only a matter of execution and perseverance.
As Cyril surged forward, Tyrin was already enacting the first step of their tentative plan. His fingers danced into a complex mudra; a cyclone of pure wind qi sprouted up from beneath the Ascended, flinging it up into the air in a spiraling orbit. Its expression remained unimpressed as its hair and clothing whipped about. The lake of blood weaved itself into the cyclone, forming a crimson waterspout of conflicting energies. Within moments, the Ascended broke down the rival technique, dispersing the winds buoying it into the air.
The timing was perfect. The Ascended, about thirty paces above ground, began to fall back to the earth. Just in time for Cyril to land slightly in front of its path, both feet sinking into the ground from his impact. He immediately launched into a follow-up leap, this time straight upwards. As he ascended, Cyril somersaulted backward, legs scything through the air. His right foot connected with the Ascended’s chin in a flip kick, snapping its neck backward.
The reflected damage made Cyril black out for a moment. His backflip turned into a wild series of spins. He regained consciousness in time to control his descent, twisting to land into a crouch. Stars danced across his vision. His neck ached fiercely, but the fractures throughout the upper half of his golem body sealed themselves with fresh bronze.
Cyril cracked his neck as he watched the Ascended soar higher into the air.
Loras’ follow-up was right on its trail: he had flung a deck of golden metal cards upwards, and they drifted apart in an expanding circle, like a makeshift array. The individual cards blossomed in size until they made up the individual panels of Loras’ Pagoda. They swiveled about the Ascended, connecting to one another like the pieces of a puzzle. Threads of purple Gravity qi guided the construction.
The Ascended, realizing it was being caged, flung its arms out to the side. Whips of blood surged out of its palms and lashed out against the plates, forcing them apart.
“Ninth ember stokes the wind,” muttered Tyrin, fingers dancing, his soft voice piercing through the world. “Heaven shall burn.”
A white inferno materialized around the Ascended. Tyrin’s skin reddened and blistered from the reflected damage, strands of hair shriveling as they burned. Still, he maintained the technique, evaporating the Ascended’s blood away. Consumed within the conflagration and unable to alter its trajectory in mid-air, the Ascended was helpless as the walls closed in around it, sealing it away. The reassembled Pagoda took the form of a rectangle the size of a large arena, the extraneous sunsteel panels stacked together in reinforcing layers.
A torrent of Gravity qi flooded from Loras, redirecting the falling bulding so that it landed outside of the blood lake’s reach. Despite his effort, the crimson waters shifted along the ground, like some sort of eldritch organism eagerly following its master.
With an earth-shattering impact, the sunsteel building crashed into the ground. Immediately it began to smoke as the waters of the blood lake eroded through the outer layer. No doubt it would eat through the entire prison within minutes.
Cyril charged toward it. Loras and Tyrin followed his lead, approaching from another angle. Cyril reached the building first, punching both hands into one of the walls. Vibrations shuddered throughout the edifice, and through his seismic senses, he acquired a rough understanding of its dimensions.
He narrowed his focus onto the very interior of the edifice. Though reaching Foundation Stage had expanded his qi output and control greatly, it was not enough to transmute the entire building into C-grade [ Null Obsidian ]. Through his right arm, augmented with Behemoth’s Fragment, he channeled a maelstrom of Earth qi. It dispersed into the building and, following Cyril’s adamant will, coated the interior in a thin layer. Then he flooded even more of his core into it, willing it to transmute into the spiritual obsidian. His energy obeyed, condensing and gathering into the appropriate material.
Cyril could tell that his technique was successful, but it wasn’t perfect. Black smoke drifted up from his feet as the blood lake continued to eat away at the soles of his feet. Gritting his teeth, Cyril poured more qi into the building, attempting to fill whatever patches existed within his incomplete seal.
Three-quarters of his core was drained before the blood lake lost cohesion, cut off from its creator. The malevolent will contained within it vanished; its waters began to seep into the ground, wet clots blooming along the surface like macabre water lilies.
Cyril shook his head, exhausted from the effort. A hand clapped down on his shoulder, and he looked back to see Tyrin, a slight smile contrasting with the angry burns across his face. He nodded, and Cyril nodded back. Warm regard surged back and forth across their mental link.
They had contained their adversary, but it was a temporary measure. They had managed to execute the first step of the plan. Now, it came down to perseverance.
Loras waved his hand, and a doorway dilated open upon the wall. The lake began to reform beneath their feet, connection reestablished. Together, Cyril and his companions flung themselves into the building. The entrance sealed shut behind them.
Eerie darkness filled the edifice. Cyril and Tyrin both summoned multiple Flickers, dispersing them throughout the room to provide vision. Reflected light gleamed darkly along the obsidian walls.
In the center of the space stood the Ascended, waiting patiently for their arrival. Despite its confident stance, the slightest flicker of annoyance twitched across its face.
“Clever mortals,” said the Ascended in its lovely voice. It licked its lips with a disgustingly long tongue. “It is a shame that you do not bow your head to Lord Leviathan. You would have made excellent slaves. It is not too late.”
Only Loras bothered to respond. “This will be your crypt.”
The Ascended smiled, shadows playing across its face.
Its lips moved in a quiet mantra. Abstract snowflakes and droplets sketched themselves into reality, subdimensional alterations to the fabric of the material world. A bitter chill filled the enclosed area. Cyril felt his joints freezing into place. As he pushed forward to try and reach the Ascended, his movements were slow, languid, as if he was trying to run while chest-deep in water.
Loras and Tyrin restrained themselves from countering with their own domains, conserving their energy. Instead of brute force, they sought to undermine the Ascended’s techniques, forcing it to invest more of its core reserves. Discordant flute music echoed throughout the arena as Loras began playing his instrument. Tyrin, half of his lustrous hair burned away, pressed his hands together; the Flickers he had summoned converged upon the Ascended in a barrage. Unlike Cyril’s basic cantrip, the fireballs were also infused with Wind qi. Each one contained the force of a gale, driving the Ascended backward.
Still, its domain continued to manifest, but Cyril found that he could move more freely than before. He forced himself forward, one step at a time, in pursuit of the Ascended. As he did, he let his senses billow out--sharper, more refined, now that he had ascended to Foundation Stage.
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Like with Lady Firouza’s ultimate technique, he could make out subtle flaws within the domain around him. The imperfections stood out to him as spirals, faintly shimmering in the air about him. Under Loras and Tyrin’s combined assault, those flaws widened, until it seemed the entire technique was already on the point of collapse.
Cyril’s core had almost refilled, tapping into the near-infinite reservoir of his Titanic spirit. He sent out threads of Gravity qi to infiltrate and exploit the flaws in the enemy’s technique. At the same time he extended his own domain--if he could even call his gravity field one, in comparison to a true one like the Ascended’s. Still, he condensed it into a tight shell around him, and the chill grip upon his body abated.
His cautious footsteps turned into a full sprint toward the Ascended. He materialized a bronze spear, forging the head from darksteel. He reached the Ascended as the last of Tyrin’s Flickers struck it, parting through the veil of superheated air to land a spinning strike against the abomination’s head. The reflected impact knocked Cyril to the side and tore a gouge from his cheek. Uncaring, he followed up with a series of strikes, thrashing the Ascended about. Heedless of the marks torn into his own body, only to be repaired with new darksteel flesh.
Then, at the end of his sequence, the Ascended reached out and seized the head of the spear with its left hand. Smiling, it crushed the darksteel. Lacerations carved deep into Cyril’s fingers. Then it lashed out with its other hand. A blade of frozen blood erupted from its palm. Cyril managed to catch the Ascended’s wrist, the jagged tip of its weapon stopping an inch from his eye. The blade expanded, but before it could penetrate, Cyril twisted and flung the Ascended through the air.
Loras was there, waiting. The metallic man leapt and spun through the air in a blur, his leg lashing out to catch the Ascended in the temple. The downward angle of the kick smashed the Ascended back down into the ground and thrust Loras high into the air. He twisted, planted his feet against the ceiling, and shot back down like a meteor; his reinforced head drove into the downed Ascended’s sternum.
The floor beneath them cracked from the impact. Loras’ breastplate crumpled. The injury repaired itself as Loras hauled himself onto the Ascended and pummeled it. The force behind the impacts disfigured even the clamped shell of his hair. After several seconds of raining down devastating blows, Loras went still, his mental connection wavering for a moment. The Ascended flung the suit of armor aside and regained its footing, flicking its long hair to the side.
Tyrin flew forward to fill the gap, draconic wings tucked close, sword extended. The Ascended welcomed him with open arms, smiling. At the last moment, Tyrin flared his wings, arresting his momentum, and opened his jaw unnaturally wide. Dragon’s breath, white-hot and braided with light green Wind qi, flared within his mouth, spewed out in a rotating column of force. Upon impact, both combatants were sent tumbling in opposite directions.
Cursing, Cyril directed his attention toward the cracks in the ground. The continuity of the [ Null Obsidian ] was broken; environmental qi leaked into the arena, though only a small amount could filter in through the ground. It took him a few seconds to repair the fractures with Earth qi.
By the time he was finished, Loras was back in the fray. The Ascended, perhaps trying to conserve energy, started making an effort to defend itself against his blows. Loras tore apart the amateur defense with ease, then lashed out with all four arms at once. Vibrational energies pulsed at the ends of his fists. When they struck the Ascended, Loras’ armor rang like a gong and shattered into thousands of ebony fragments, leaving only his head intact.
The Ascended stumbled backward. Coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Success, Loras thought, a hint of trembling pride in his resonant voice.
Though Cyril felt a moment of triumph, he was more concerned for his older brother. Tyrin had barely managed to force himself into a kneeling position, propping himself up with his sword. All of his hair had been burned away, and his melted skin bubbled sickeningly. He noticed Cyril’s attention and shook his head tersely.
We keep going, said Tyrin. We persevere. Finish this.
Now that its defenses had been broken, the Ascended’s face was twisted in horror. Its lips quivered. Must have been a long time since it had suffered an injury. The abomination was a walking fortress, equipped with an array of techniques meant to wear down its opponents’ resolve. Now, its walls were crumbling.
Grinning, Cyril surged forward. Loras reassembled himself whole in time to join in the assault. Together, they laid into the Ascended. Cyril channeled Pressure behind some of the blows of his spear, randomizing his use of the technique to throw the Ascended off. When these strikes sent Cyril stumbling back from the recoil, Loras took the opportunity to launch into a flurry of blows. The Ascended was flung about like a ragdoll, its eyes wide, mouth sputtering as it attempted to protest.
Cyril cracked it across the face with the butt of his spear, shattering its perfect nose. He followed it up by stomping the ground, and a stalactite of darksteel erupted upwards, catching the Ascended in the groin. The attack failed to skewer the abomination, but it lifted it high enough in the air for twin crescents of Dragon qi to pierce deep into its chest, gouging deep fissures into once-flawless flesh.
Despite its Reflection technique being drained, the Ascended was still a high-tier cultivator. Its body withstood the trauma--nose shifted back into place, shattered teeth reforming. The wounds across its chest knitted back together.
So they continued to tear into the Ascended, ignoring its desperate pleas for mercy. An overcharged Pressure blasted the Ascended across the room like a ragdoll. Currents of Tyrin’s wind qi swept it back toward their waiting embrace. The Ascended desperately attempted to craft blades and whips from its own blood, only for them to fall apart under Cyril and Loras’ barrage.
For several minutes, they continued their assault. A horde of Flickers rained down upon the Ascended. Gravity flung it about, smashed it into the walls and ceiling. Cyril formed a battering ram of darksteel, and Loras seized it and smashed it into the Ascended; Tyrin’s Wind and Cyril’s Gravity added their own force behind the blow, crushing the Ascended against one of the walls. It collapsed into a broken heap, managed to claw itself back to its feet in time for Cyril to dropkick it into the wall once more.
Hope lit up across the Ascended’s face as ambient qi leaked in through the new cracks formed in the wall. It vanished as Cyril sealed them off again. The few seconds were long enough for it to reactivate its Reflection technique momentarily.
Cyril and Loras continued to pummel the helpless Ascended. A whip of blood wrapped around Cyril’s arm and bit halfway through. He bashed the Ascended with the other fist, teeth gritted. His golem transformation was on the verge of breaking apart. No matter how much energy he sent into reinforcing himself, the injuries stopped healing; he must have been reaching his limits. The mental exhaustion was also catching up to him. Despite the clarity of his enlightened state, the elixirs were wearing off, and his willpower wasn’t infinite. Gasping for breath, his chest heaving like a bellow, Cyril forced himself to keep going. The satisfaction of breaking the Ascended helped. His Magmatic Heart pumped volcanic qi throughout his body, speeding up from the thrill of impending victory.
Loras caught the Ascended with a flying fist, throwing a colossal mixture of Gravity and Vibration qi behind the blow. The Ascended blasted across the enclosed space and collided with the far wall.
With a mighty effort, it forced itself to its knees. Desperate, it formed its twisted, broken fingers into a crude handsign. Blood leapt from its wounds and assaulted the wall, attempting to widen the cracks. It looked back as three shadows fell onto it from behind. It redoubled its frenzy, panicked. Cyril simply touched the wall and flooded Earth qi into the gaps, sealing them.
Now that it was on the verge of death, the Ascended had partially reverted to its base form. Its beautiful mouth had twisted into the lamprey-like maw of a wyrm. Gills flared along its neck. The rags of its robes, torn and half-burned away, failed to conceal patches of cerulean scales disfiguring its skin. It looked pale, anemic, shriveled.
It attempted to speak, words slurred through its deformed mouth. “I surrender. Ascended Clear-Surface promises--”
In unison, Cyril and his companions struck. The darksteel blade of Cyril’s spear punctured its neck; Tyrin’s sword sank into its heart; Loras’ fingers, flat and rigid as a blade, pierced through its gut and slid across, eviscerating it.
Silence reigned within the area, save for the patter of blood dribbling to the ground. The Ascended stared at them, mouth spasming, until the light finally vanished from its eyes. It went limp, chin resting against its chest.
Spiritually inert.
Dead.
Cyril heaved a sigh of relief and stopped attempting to maintain his golem transformation. Motes of Earth qi dissipated as he reverted to his normal self. He almost collapsed to the floor, but Tyrin caught him and kept him steady.
Face livid with burns--even his eyelashes burned away--Tyrin frowned up at Cyril. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice hoarse and raspy, his eyes blazing with indomitable will. “We won a fight, but the battle isn’t over. Claim this Ascended’s death energy, and let’s go.”
Laughing wildly, Cyril pulled his brother into a massive hug and gestured at Loras to join in. The suit of armor remained in place, but the faintest hint of a smile played across his sculpted lips.