For a moment they stood off, Nic glaring down the sights of the enemy ship.

“I will give you to the count of three to surrender!” Their commander shouted out, clearly enjoying the sound of her own voice.

Nic stood stock still.

“One!”

“Two!”

The ballista’s gleaming iron points blazed with reflected sunlight.

“Three!”

The sound of the enormous ballista bows firing was an all-consuming scream, their arrows cutting through the air and smashing into the temple. The whole structure came tumbling down; walls that had stood for centuries were no match for the fury of the siege engines.

But Nic was gone.

He teleport-stepped three times in close succession, flickering up the dune walls with his bow in hand. Two talisman-arrows dangled from his fingers.

In close succession he fired twice. The bowstring hummed as the arrows flicked through the sky like darting shadows.

One punched into the neck of the ascended devil manning the first ballista. The second slammed into the mechanism itself. Both detonated beautifully, carving their targets apart in a blossom of flame and force. Nic flickered again, escaping aside as a javelin shot into the ground where he’d been standing. A devil hung from the ship’s rigging with a dozen more chitin-toothed javelins slung around its back.

Nic fired again, taking the beast’s head off-

But it was no good.

He counted more than two dozen devils on that ship, and all of them were moving now, throwing themselves over the side and down to the sands below. They brought out formation-tokens, crushing them in hand.

Three of them fused into a massive, green-shelled mantis. Two more became a serpent the size of a traincar, with gold and bronze scales. A roc was formed from four, one in each wing, one for the talons, one controlling the head.

Three great beasts. Each one was nearly a rival to the D-Class wretch-queen.

Nic was outmatched, even before the rest of the devils aboard the ship came into play. They poured across the sand in their goliath forms, ready to crush him.

Turning tail, Nic conjured a platform of sand and shot across the dunes, heading off at full-speed. This wasn’t his fight and this wasn’t a fight he could win; his goal was simply to survive and come back for revenge when he could crush them in the palm of his hand.

But as he shot towards the safety of the horizon, a light shot up from the ship’s mast. It rose into the air and then exploded outwards, cascading down in the form of a massive dome formed of hexagonal panels of blue-gold energy. It slammed into the earth and sealed off escape.

A net had been thrown over Nic.

He twisted aside, turning just in time to avoid slamming into the barrier. As he swept back in a wide arc towards the ship, the three formation-beasts awaited him.

“Nicolas.” Sofia cut into his mind, speaking quickly. “Open your mind to the High Narrative’s information.”

“What?” He grimaced. “It’s really hard to fight with all those numbers floating around.”

“I’ll restrain the worst of it, but, Nicolas. These are just formations. There’s no way to perfectly distribute energy between multiple bodies- only imperfect ones, with weak points for you to exploit.”

Nic nodded, his face grim. If Sofia was offering direct intervention- it was bad. His eyes flashed as he fully opened the channel between himself and her, letting floods of golden runes spread across his vision and describe everything- from the sand to the sky above- in overwhelming detail.

He felt Sofia’s will join his own, filtering away the worst of the information-overload. The runes dimmed out of existence, leaving only a few behind…

They hovered above the formation-beasts’ bodies, overlaying their illusionary flesh with golden lines and diagrams.

Nic could see what Sofia meant now.

The flow of power between the devils who joined together within the formation was unsteady, fragile. There were strong links and weak links, points where barely any energy was focused. Points where a single well placed arrow…

The roc swept down towards him, claws spreading wide.

Nic unleashed a shot directly into the beast’s heart. There was a flash of unwinding strength, like a rope under tension being cut. And with a gushing wave of black mist, the devils composing the formation were thrown out in all directions as the roc’s body dissolved.

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Before they hit the ground, Nic arrived like a killing wind. His body was blurred within the illusions of the Mistwater Step, so it seemed like he was a tide of faces, a storm of hands. Dozens of illusionary Peacemaker’s cut outwards- and the real one, undetected, sliced through a devil’s neck and shoulders in a rain of yellow blood.

One.

Two.

Three.

The fourth survived, throwing up a defensive Shard that created a massive shield in the shape of a grinning skull around its body. Rather than try to cut through, Nic turned aside, quickly changing directions and fleeing once more-

The remaining beasts had arrived.

The mantis was first, skimming through the air with its wings buzzing. It couldn’t truly fly- but it could leap at astounding speeds. Its claws came down, slicing towards Nic in blows so quick, so furious, they left trials of disturbed air vapor behind them.

He wove underneath, dropping partway into the sand and rebounding up to slip under the knife. As he rose Peacemaker stabbed up, aiming for a vulnerable point in the beast’s construction, but it turned at the last moment.

The blow slipped across its body, doing nothing more than leaving a quick-sealing line of silver traced across the formation-beast’s flesh.

In the next instant-

Nic was forced to teleport away, dodging a retaliatory blow by moments.

When he emerged from the flicker of light that carried him away, blood was running down his chest. The claw had barely nicked him, and still cut down to the ribs.

The snake shot forward from behind, jaws opening wide. Nic kicked off and up into the air, launching himself high. It slammed into the sand with a massive cloud of dust, and twisted around, throwing itself after him and reaching up into the sky atop its coiled body.

“Leash!”

Gwungo exploded forward, snagging ahold of the serpent’s neck and pulling Nic down. He shot forward in an elastic arc, slashing Peacemaker through the sky.

In a single quick blow, he severed the weak point within the serpent’s neck.

As he landed on the sands, the mantis found him again. It blocked his path, preventing him from killing off the devils thrown loose from the formation. Its claws scythed left, right, left, right-

Driving him back, herding him.

He was falling into his enemy’s momentum. Moment by moment, he was more locked into the act of escaping each individual blow, and further from advancing towards victory. His own plans fell by the wayside as he dedicated his all to surviving, weaving the Mistwater Step around him so that the claws met illusions after illusion without striking his real flesh.

It was pressure. The relentless, pure pressure of dancing at the edge of a knife.

And at that point of life or death, Nic always found his best ideas.

“Hey Gwungo!” He shouted, feeling the world blur as he escaped a scythe-claw by the barest fraction, using the sand underfoot to launch himself backwards. “I’ve got a plan!”

“Yes yes! Eager to help! Feel like maybe we die!” The blob burbled back.

“That whole thing is made of energy! So you’re going to figure out how to eat it from the inside!” Grinning, Nic teleported away, opening space. “Grab onto Peacemaker’s edge!”

Obediently, Gwungo surged down the weapon’s haft and concentrated into a sheen of slime around the blade. Nic had only given them a second of space- the mantis was already bearing down- but it was all Nic needed.

With a forward kick, making the sand rise to add force to his leap, he drove himself skyward with Peacemaker braced like a lance. It slammed into the mantis’ chest, piercing deep but failing to strike any vital point.

And in exchange.

Nic’s left arm hung by a thread, his neck clawed open, his chest torn down to the broken ribs. A single claw-cut had all but ended his life. He toppled forward, leaving Peacemaker embedded into his foe.

Another claw cut down at him, seeking to end his life.

With a tired gasp, Nic teleported away. He was past his limits. His aura was dwindled to nothing within his chest, but now he burnt Essence through the Concept of Sacrifice, letting him exert a last desperate effort and escape.

He landed on the sand, his arm sealing back into a single whole as threads of muscle reconnected and the bone stumps fused together.

He rushed forward, trying to buy himself more time, feeling his ribs snap back into place.

His throat began to seal over, breath flowing once more-

The mantis’ claw slammed into Nic from behind, throwing him across the sand. On instinct, he rolled, but as he landed on his knee he found he couldn’t rise any further.

His leg had been chopped off at the joint. The mantis lurched above him, rising overhead and casting him into shadow. All Nic could do was draw out Hollowsong and ready the bow, lifting an arrow. He prepared to fire his final shot-

But it wasn’t necessary. Cracks were spreading through the mantis’ flesh, revealing that its seemingly solid body was only a projection of energy. It was falling apart, crumbling, fragments of light falling away from the cracks like shards from a broken mirror. It dissolved all at once.

Gwungo tumbled out in a shapeless blob, returning to form as a stretchy little lizard as he hit the ground. He scampered towards Nic, his jaw flopping open and shut as he called out. “I did it!”

“I did it I did it I did it!” Joyously crowing out his victory, he shot up Nic’s arm and turned into a stretchy scarf around his neck.

Nic smiled, weakly, his blood running out to the sand below. He fired his arrow off at one of the disoriented devils, annihilating it. Hollowsong’s peculiar and melancholy ‘voice’ sung out time and time again as he killed off the stragglers…

But it was no use.

The ship was sailing towards him, and more devils were crowding to the railings, ready to swarm him. The elf-devil looked down from the prow, a strange black cube floating above her palm.

All Nic could do was exact a final price.

He smiled.

“Hey, you know, I’ve thought about it. I think I’ll surrender after all!” He called out.

The elf’s lips twitched into a ferocious sneer. “You…” She pronounced. “Are the most despicably low and weak of your kind. But I have my orders.”

The cube flashed, turning from a dark surface to a black hole, a void cut into the sky. A massive force ripped Nic up into the air and dragged him inwards, his body shrinking as he was pulled into the prison-cube.