A deep sound, like a gong being struck, echoed all around Cyril.

He had no time to look around. Whatever force the Half-Ascended Wyrm feared had announced its presence, but evidently it hadn’t warmed up enough for sudden violence. The Wyrm had no such qualms; it was upon Cyril in a moment, lashing out with all three arms.

He held his ground, seizing one of the monster’s wrists in each hand. The third arm reached for his head. Instinctively, Cyril channeled earth qi through his glabella. A thick stone horn sprouted from his forehead and intercepted the hand. It failed to pierce the flesh of the abomination’s palm, but that wasn’t Cyril’s intention. He just needed to buy time.

The Wyrm attempted to slither forward, to budge Cyril. He was immovable. Though the monster’s brute strength far exceeded his own, the sheer Mass reinforcing his body stood in defiance to its sinuous rage.

Seeing that it could not break through his defenses quick enough, the Wyrm attempted to retreat. Cyril refused to release the creature, now serving as a stubborn anchor to lock it in place. The third arm flailed out once more, shattering his stone horn and landing a glancing blow against Cyril’s cheek.

Pain exploded white-hot behind his eyes. His knees buckled. He thought he may have passed out for a second, but his body remained upright as the Wyrm struggled to escape. Its free arm lanced forward, prepared to cleave his skull in half.

A sheet of pure darkness whispered past Cyril’s face. The Wyrm’s arm collapsed to the ground, severed cleanly at the elbow. A diagonal line of black ichor opened along the abomination’s chest, and the upper half of its torso separated from the rest of its body. The bisected mouth in its sternum gaped stupidly.

Cyril was left holding onto the amputated section of twitching arms. The serpentine form retreated, spewing putrid blood that steamed like acid against the ground. In an instant, it escaped beyond the perimeter of the temple.

Tossing the abomination’s twitching arms aside, Cyril said a silent prayer of thanks to the guardian deity. The Wyrm may not have killed him with that blow, but it definitely would have hurt.

Even as he relaxed, his hands formed a familiar mudra, fingers steepled together like a flame, thumbs joining in an arch below. While the handsign was not necessary, it assisted in channeling every drop of free qi into a loose interpretation of Flicker. A conflagration like dragon’s breath erupted from his outstretched hands, its white-hot intensity almost unbearable. Cyril grimaced as his stone armor absorbed the heat. His skin sizzled.

At least the Wyrm would suffer far more.

He lacked the control necessary to direct the wild inferno of Sun qi, but the existing Flicker had continued pursuing the Wyrm as instructed. A resonance existed between the two disparate flames; Cyril used it to guide the inferno in the right direction.

For the first time, the Wyrm made a sound. It was a warped, twisted screech like nothing he had ever heard before, full of fury and outrage. The conflagration consumed the silhouette of the abomination until no sign of it remained.

Cyril sat down on the first step of the temple and heaved out a shuddering breath. The white flames faded away, leaving him in the darkness.

A hint of pride bubbled to the surface of his mind, a feeling he was not too familiar with. He swiftly crushed it.

The lack of death energy meant the Wyrm had survived. No doubt it was injured, perhaps even severely. Not enough, though. It was possible it would succumb to its injuries in time, but its base species was notorious for their resilience. The temple’s defenses--that bizarre sheet of darkness that sliced through the Wyrm like it was made of sand--had only amputated a relatively small chunk of the greater whole.

His own farewell was not meant to kill, though he wouldn’t have complained if it did. He had chosen Flicker over Pressure because the flame would cauterize the Wyrm’s wounds, hopefully slowing its regeneration. The abomination’s power came from consuming a legion of its brethren, none of which exhibited much of a resistance against fire.

Preventing the Wyrm from having a proper humanoid body seemed like a worthy endeavor, especially the arms. While the Half-Ascended abomination had no spiritual companion to grant it access to magic, similar monsters were rumored to have developed their own profane art. If it had consumed enough monsters with affinities or powers, such as the monster that had dragged him down into the cavern, it may have fused them into a natural technique. As long as it had no way to form handsigns, anything of the sort would be restricted.

Most of their fight had been admittedly one-sided. The Wyrm would have had no reason to reveal its technique until the end. As unlikely as it was to have one on top of its prodigious physical strength, Cyril wasn’t taking his chances. He had already been unlucky enough to stumble across the thing.

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Drained of all but a trickle of energy, he felt like a Mundane after marching for a week across the desert. He sighed, resisting the urge to close his eyes for a quick nap, and waited for Behemoth to replenish his core. As soon as he had enough qi, he summoned a rudimentary Flicker to illuminate his surroundings.

“You are not her,” whispered a woman’s voice beside him.

The words were so soft, Cyril thought for a moment that he had imagined them in his exhausted state. Then his head snapped to the side as he remembered where he was.

Sitting beside him was a woman in the robes of a priestess. She hugged her knees to her chest, staring off into space. Her dark raiment obscured most of her form, except for her face and doll-like hands. Her skin was so thin and pale it was translucent, blue-green veins standing out in sharp relief along her wrists. He couldn’t help but notice the nails of her delicate fingers ended in sharp tips, like claws.

Despite her tiny stature, she was undoubtedly a grown woman, perhaps in her late twenties. Beneath the waterfall of her glossy black hair, her face was sharp and mature, eyes heavy with sadness and wisdom.

A beautiful older woman, Cyril reflected. My greatest weakness.

“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m Prince Cyril, of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe.”

The woman smiled. Her teeth were perfect, though her incisors were slightly too long, like fangs. “My first visitor in aeons, and he is royalty.”

Cyril scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, I’m the third prince. There’s a lot of us. All five of my sisters and my two older brothers would have to die for me to assume any sort of power. We’re not even the biggest tribe, anyways.”

The woman’s smile vanished. She ignored him, staring off into the distance. Not in the mood for a lecture on his personal genealogy. Understandable.

Cyril took another approach. “You said I’m ‘not her.’ Who are you looking for down here?”

“A priestess,” she said. “A girl who tried her best. A girl I was supposed to protect, and failed. You see the result of that failure, all around us now. Our city. Our great hope. Beljeza, the Jewel of the East. Buried beneath the world and riddled with foul creatures.”

“If you do not mind my asking,” said Cyril, “which god is it that you two serve?”

She buried her chin between her knees, glancing up through the veil of her lustrous hair. “A useless one. Dead and forgotten. One of stars and sky. How fitting, their final temple is buried, far from home.”

Cyril heaved a deep sigh. Perhaps it would’ve been smarter to wait for his core to refill before engaging with the woman more. In the end, did it matter? Could he delay for hours to layer on his defenses? The Reinforcement Cantrip and his stone armor remained active. The amount of energy he’d exhausted in combat was still a drop in the bucket of what Behemoth could provide.

Would it make a difference if he spent more time empowering himself under her nose? One casual technique imbued with dark energy had devastated the Wyrm. She could probably decapitate Cyril with a wave of her hand.

“Tell me about this girl,” Cyril said, “and maybe I can help you find her.”

The woman closed her eyes. Cyril thought she was going to withdraw or lash out. She drew herself up into a perfect, rigid posture and stared straight into his eyes. Beneath her gaze swam a sea of unfathomable darkness, twinkling with distant specks of light.

“To me, she is like my daughter,” she said, her voice hollow. “Anadei the Lovely. People come from all corners of the world to witness her. To petition her for wisdom or prophecy or, perhaps most often of all, for her hand in marriage. She remained here even as our enemies descended and laid ruin to Beljeza, Great Beljeza. So why can I not find her here?”

Cyril struggled not to lose his soul in the dark depths of her eyes. “Because she is dead, my friend.”

“She is a pure soul, one who hopes to guide the world into light and creation. And powerful, so powerful. She would have been able to evade even Death himself with her oracular powers.”

“Anadei was a human?”

“She is, yes.” The woman’s voice was sharp and distrustful.

“This temple has laid here in ruins for millennia, if not longer,” said Cyril. “It sounds like Anadei was a powerful user of the Dominion of the Stars. Neither it nor the adjacent realms offer much in the way of survivability or longevity. She could have elevated her core to a level where she is pseudo-immortal, but I would have probably heard of such an impressive oracle.”

The woman bared her teeth, fangs gleaming. “You speak lies in my presence? How could anyone who has come here not know of Anadei’s legend?”

“If I had to guess,” Cyril continued, “you are the god that Anadei once worshipped. Back in ancient times, many cities were dedicated to the most powerful spirit in the region. That was probably you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a peak-rank ifrit at the height of your power, one of the Star celestials.”

“I do not enjoy violence,” the woman said through gritted teeth, eyes wide with madness. “But if you continue to lie in my presence, I will end your treacherous existence. I have the utmost respect for the Heavenly Pillar within you, but he cannot manifest properly in such a weak vessel. I would merely be freeing him from imprisonment.”

“I deeply apologize, but you’re a spiritual being,” said Cyril. “A human couldn’t survive down here for so long. My dialect is only six centuries old, yet you speak it flawlessly, with no accent. As a spirit, you communicate with the universal language of the soul, so you will always sound fluent to my ears. An ancient human wouldn’t.”

The woman stared down at her translucent hands. She clenched them. Her body trembled. “How did such a pure soul come from such a monstrous race? It was her own people that did this. A senseless war. A tyrant who could not stand a neutral territory in the midst of their new empire. I would not be surprised if his name, too, is lost to the void. All his so-called great deeds forgotten. So much pointless suffering for a mortal’s pride.”

Cyril found he had no real argument for that. “Would you tell me more about her, noble spirit?”