Though understanding his opponent’s capabilities didn’t mean that he could overcome them, it was a start.

Slaughter was surprisingly versatile, often best suited to a support role despite people’s natural tendency to consider it a purely offensive Dominion. Not that it was incapable of unleashing devastation on its own; the silver-and-crimson bite was likely a base technique or Cantrip from one of its lesser Spheres.

Far more concerning was the pure obliteration contained within the black suns, an esoteric quality he doubted came from the Dominion of Darkness itself. There lay the true strength of Slaughter--weaving it into other techniques to amplify their destructive potential. It could corrupt even a concept like Knowledge into an expression of violence.

Panting, Cyril summoned a new bronze spear. Hunger-Made-Alive pointed a claw in his direction, and a ring of black orbs materialized around its outstretched hand. Now that he knew what to look for, he noticed the faintest threads of crimson swirling within their depths.

Cyril had to find a way to disrupt the Ascended as much as possible. Keep it on the backfoot.

He poured Gravity qi into the channels in his forehead. Pressure descended upon the atrium, increasing until he was forced to use the spear for support, despite his minor resistance to his own domain.

The cluster of black orbs wobbled. Hunger-Made-Alive’s chin tilted slightly downward. A subtle sign, but proof that it felt the drastic increase in Gravity. The problem was that Cyril wasn’t sure how to take advantage. Trading ranged techniques wouldn’t end up in his favor at this rate.

He took a deep breath. Had to change his thinking. Hunger-Made-Alive outclassed him in qi manipulation, so he needed a more physical approach. He had eventually managed to make himself into an equal with the Half-Ascended Wyrm. While his current opponent had undergone an additional baptism to its constitution after forming its core, the gap between them would be lowest when it came to their physical forms.

Cyril cast a Pressure centered around Hunger-Made-Alive’s outstretched hand. Its claws were knocked aside, and the cluster of black orbs vanished. As long as he kept the Ascended off-balance, he had a chance.

With a frustrated hiss, Hunger-Made-Alive surged straight at him, moving so fast he could just barely keep up.

He transformed the head of the spear into a long, bladed edge, like that of a glaive, and brought it down with all his might. Hunger-Made-Alive intercepted the weapon with a cross-swipe of its claws, shredding through the E-grade bronze without slowing.

The Ascended continued forward, intending on knocking Cyril backward. He braced himself for the collision. His teeth rattled in his skull and the corners of his vision went dark, but he managed to hold his ground without taking a step back. The black shroud clung to his skin for a moment before they separated from one another, cool and strangely refreshing to the touch, like the waters of a dark oasis.

Cyril recovered from the impact first. He whipped the glaive’s broken shaft about, aiming for Hunger-Made-Alive’s knees. At the last moment, a bronze edge sprouted along the side, and chopped a finger’s-width deep through shroud and flesh.

Hissing, the Ascended darted backwards, wrenching the weapon from Cyril’s hands. Crimson pinpricks bloomed within the recesses of its eyes. It swiped the air with one claw, leaving behind an after-image of vibrant qi.

Pain blossomed across Cyril’s chest. He stumbled backwards, coughing up a mouthful of blood. Without wasting time to judge the extent of his injuries, he shot a string of earth qi from his finger and attached it to the bronze weapon embedded in Hunger-Made-Alive’s leg. He poured energy into the construct, warping its form so that it wrapped around the Ascended’s lower limbs like shackles.

With a roar, Hunger-Made-Alive flexed and shattered the feeble bronze rings around its knees. The distraction only lasted a couple of seconds, but it was all Cyril needed. He flooded himself with Mass qi, circulating it in the reverse of the pattern he had used to Reinforce his body. Lightness suffused his being--a strange sensation, as if he was made of cloudstuff, or floating atop a calm surface of water. Tingling numbness spread across his skin.

Gravity slipped over his body as he charged forward. He felt as if he was disconnected from the world around him, moving through the void unimpeded. His punch was as light as a feather, but when it crashed into Hunger-Made-Alive’s throat, it still contained all of the Mass he had Reinforced into himself.

The Ascended was blasted off its feet, skipped once against the ground before twisting in the air and landing in a crouching position. It remained in that pose, observing him with its head tilted to the side. Wheezes escaped its throat until its deformed windpipe snapped back into place.

Cyril was more than pleased with the new effect from the Second Sphere of Mass. It synergized with his Gravity domain in a somewhat unintuitive way. He moved as if he weighed nothing, while everything around him was suppressed beneath multiple atmospheres of pressure. His physical strikes retained their force as well. The conflicting interaction of forces strained to pull his body apart, but he was sturdy enough to shrug them off.

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“Pleasure,” said Hunger-Made-Alive.

Cyril grunted. He had to admit, he was developing a begrudging respect for the Ascended. More like the bitter acknowledgement of a rival. They were testing themselves against one another, honing their abilities through adversity, and the survivor would emerge from the other side forged anew.

Cyril beckoned for Hunger-Made-Alive to approach. Blood dribbled down the shredded ruins of his chest. His enchanted tunic hung in tatters.

The Ascended was happy to oblige. They met in a flurry of blows, matched in speed.

Though Cyril had hardly been a master in hand-to-hand combat among his people, Hunger-Made-Alive had no true experience at all. He quickly gained the upper hand, landing a series of open-palmed blows against its solar plexus and throat. Ripples spread from the points of impact, but the Ascended appeared otherwise unaffected. Now that it was mindful of his strength, it absorbed the force of his blows with its shroud of darkness. Each blow seemed to hurt Cyril more than his opponent, further pulling open the claw wounds across his chest.

He managed to land a final strike against the Ascended’s abdomen, directly atop its core. Right before it struck, he cast a Pressure Cantrip through the hand. Hunger-Made-Alive slid backward, the stone ground screeching as its clawed feet left gouges in their wake.

Perhaps he was imagining it, but the Ascended seemed frustrated with its inability to break him with its claws and teeth. Bilious saliva trickled down its chin, leaving tiny, smoking pits as it dribbled onto the floor.

Slowly, it drew itself up to its full height. Its hands formed into independent mudras, its claws contorting into unnatural shapes. “Dark World.”

Cyril had prepared himself to fire off a Pressure to disrupt its attempts to form more obliterating darkness. The new technique caught him off guard. His physical senses completely vanished, submerging him in a void of endless night. Bright spots of agony reminded him of his injuries, but he was otherwise a disembodied mind, attached to Behemoth’s presence like a barnacle on the underside of a whale.

The technique did, however, leave behind his spiritual senses. The Ascended had never learned how to mask its qi, since none of its prior opponents had required such an adaptation. Though the majority of its Darkness qi blended with the environment, he could track its presence in the void as a man-shaped network of silver-and-crimson flecks, with dense swirls around the abdomen. The amplified Gravity domain also presented a sonar-like vantage of his surroundings in a twenty pace radius, confirming Hunger-Made-Alive’s location.

Reassuring to know he hadn’t been banished to a pocket dimension or the like. And he wasn’t truly blind.

The channels in Hunger-Made-Alive’s hands turned to pure black. A sign that it was channeling Darkness.

The Ascended vanished.

It appeared a moment later, emerging from Cyril's shadow. He sensed its presence too late, only managing to extend his right hand in its direction. Before he could fire off a Pressure Cantrip, Hunger-Made-Alive’s disgusting mouth unfurled and wrapped around his lower arm like the petals of a carnivorous plant.

Cyril screamed as the rings of small teeth pulsed, tearing into his flesh. Layers of E-grade bronze materialized, one layer of elbow-high gauntlet after another, only to dissolve away from Hunger-Made-Alive’s saliva and the obliterating pit of Darkness contained within its gullet.

Skin and flesh unfurled from bone, the process agonizingly slow. The Ascended was truly savoring him. Its claws tore into his thighs, shredding deep into muscle, but he barely noticed through the torture of having his arm devoured.

The ember of rage in his mind exploded into a bonfire. Strategies didn’t matter. Ingenuity didn’t matter. Even Behemoth didn’t matter.

Less than a third of his core remained. He squeezed every drop of energy he could into his right arm, a mixture of Sun and Earth qi his desperate will attempted to fuse together. If Hunger-Made-Alive could infuse its techniques with multiple aspects, he could too.

Cyril didn’t think about his family, escape, even victory. He thought only of annihilating his opponent at any cost. Bringing it down with him.

For the first time, Behemoth seemed to pay attention to his plight, its god-like scrutiny descending upon him. Beneath its stone facade, it, too, knew the all-encompassing truth that was hatred and spite.

Cyril attempted to circulate the pure agony of the Sun/Earth qi into a Pressure Cantrip. From his shoulder down, every channel burst open, unraveled, shattered. The energy flowed outward in ephemeral streams, the glow penetrating even through the unnatural gloom of Dark World. A near-endless flow of qi disappeared into the Ascended.

More and more continued to flow from Cyril's core. Cracks formed in his central channels from the strain. His output had increased greatly, beyond what should be possible, aided by Behemoth’s active attention. Cyril knew his spiritual partner was paying a price for the assistance, as well as the sacrifice of his own body, but none of that mattered.

Finally, excruciatingly, the Sun and Earth qi began to merge into a river of lava. The pain was exquisite, erasing all thoughts. Only his hatred and rage remained. His screams faded as his voice broke, throat torn.

After a few seconds, Hunger-Made-Alive began to realize something was wrong. Lava coursed down the endless pit of its gullet. The Ascended attempted to unlatch its mouth from the skeletal remnants of his forearm. Cyril seized its head with his free hand and formed a spike of rusted iron from the river of qi flowing through him. It punched into the Ascended’s skull, drilling through the shroud of darkness effortlessly, then spread out into two flanges to secure its hold and scramble the bastard’s brains.

Hunger-Made-Alive spasmed. The Dark World dropped. A moment later, a pillar of lava qi filled the Ascended. Cyril’s sloppy attempt at forming a Pressure Cantrip managed to direct the energy somewhat, forcing it downward.

The Ascended melted from the inside, glowing seams breaking through its shroud of darkness until that, too, collapsed. A gaping hole appeared in the floor, stone tiles burbling.

An ocean of death energy exploded into being around him, thick enough to cause distortions in the air.

Cyril swayed, collapsed to his knees. All the rage, all the hatred, dissipated into the darkness. Behemoth turned away, returning to his unfathomable meditations. All that was left was the ruin of his body.

A bloody grin broke across Cyril's face. Then darkness descended, and he knew no more.