The man with the crescent and empty circle tattoo on his cheeks smiled. It was an empty smile. Derisive eyes. Green as the colour of Chaos. He raised an eyebrow at Yuriko, then snorted at Avos Shillogu, who was big enough that his tentacles were pressed against the ceiling.

“Ah, so we meet again,” he said. The Chaos Duke. The same one that dealt the fatal blow to Avos Zarek.

Yuriko could barely move. The pressure against her Anima was such that her reach was suddenly compressed close to her body. But it wasn’t an actual pressure, but more that the idea of facing this man in battle, without Eli’Theria and backup from her Mum and the other Knights Domini, was so frightening…

It's a minor incarnation. That body is barely stronger than you are now. Damien’s words cut through the paralyzing fear and replaced it with wrath. Her Anima burst out from its compression, encompassing the entirety of the chamber and filled it with Radiant light.

The Chaos Duke winced as the light touched him, but something else pushed her Anima away from his body, leaving his exposed skin just a bit red, as though it experienced a minor sunburn. “Ancient, indeed. So it was you my senses warned of.” His smirk didn’t fade, and through Yuriko’s perception, she noticed that several threads of ambient Chaos were being twisted into the very pattern that Shillogu discovered underneath the lake.

Yuriko took a step forward and it was harder than she expected. Her body trembled, and though her mind was no longer frozen in fear, her hands and feet said otherwise. Still, if the incarnation was only at her level of strength, then she had a chance to win. She grit her teeth and forced herself to move, and at the same time, she spun sunshards into existence, then called Fri’Avgi to hand.

‘Nostalgic…’ Fri’Avgi said as soon as the artefact landed on Yuriko’s hands.

Yuriko started when she realised she hadn’t even asked the artefact what she was doing in this tomb. Fri’Avgi’s animating spirit had taken years to awaken, so Yuriko simply forgot to ask. She shot a quick question at Fri’Avgi, who answered, ‘I don’t remember.’

Well, so much for that.

The Chaos Duke turned to face her fully, then raised an eyebrow at the artefact. “So you want to dance? Well, that’s fine. Let me take your measure. But first…” His gaze shifted to the outside and Yuriko felt a spike of apprehension. “Just the two of us fighting would be boring.” He gestured sharply with a hand, tore a rift into the Chaos Sea open, and sparkles of light rushed through.

Yuriko yelled and sent sunshards at the rift. They struck it, causing the edges to waver. It didn’t close it, of course, but it filled the opening with Radiant energy, which snuffed out the lights. The Duke laughed and rushed towards her, hand extended to grab.

His fingers touched her condensed aura and she swiped at him with Fri’Avgi. He ducked down, dragging his fingernails across her aura, sending flashes of pain that made her flinch. Then, he swept her legs, aiming to knock her off her feet. His shin struck her calf, but was rebounded away. The hit forced her to step back, and it was at that moment that the Chaos lights materialised into monstrosities.

Shillogu yelled in fear as several of them, looking like a pile of melted flesh, pounced on him. Each tendril that touched his hide caused it to smoke and burn. His tentacles struck back, but every touch only caused him more pain. He retreated from the chamber, rushing outside as fast as he could, while other Chaos slaves followed behind.

In the meantime, Yuriko attempted to slice the Chaos Duke’s incarnation into little itty bitty pieces. Fri’Avgi with the third dance in ascendance, jagged Animus edges, clipped at the Duke’s robes. The cloth smoked as the Radiant burned the Chaos, but it did little more than blacken his sleeve. The man twisted and turned, avoiding her strikes with disturbing ease. He wasn’t as fast as she expected, certainly just a little bit quicker than her own movements, but just that little edge was enough to stymie her attack pattern.

She added sunshards to the attack, but he avoided them as though he could track exactly where they were. His body moved in such a way that even when Yuriko thought that she would hit, she didn’t. It wasn’t as if he shifted the way his body was built, no, every movement was something a human would have been able to do. And even with attack patterns that shouldn’t have given him any leeway, failed to strike home. It was as if he knew exactly how she fought, and where the weaknesses of her attacks were. She only had a dozen sunshards out, and that wasn’t enough to create an inescapable net. So there was only one thing to do.

She charged Fri’Avgi with Animus and Radiant energy, then sliced out an arclight. The Chaos Duke danced back, and ducked under the arclight, but that was fine. She spun another dozen sunshards, sent them his way, and made another three dozen more. Sixty shards.

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Then attacked all at once, leaving nothing to chance. There wasn’t a gap between the attacks wide enough to fit his head through…

Except that’s what he did. As the shards collapsed into his position, he jumped to his left, contorted his body, so that every bit of him went through the gaps, and when the shards were about to his his chin, he grinned and leaned back, somehow forcing his head to shift slightly out of phase with reality, which sent ripples of force that made Yuriko nauseated, before returning to normal right after the shards passed him by.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. So brutal, aren’t we?” He tutted as he landed outside of the killzone. Yuriko would have struck where he landed, but the ripples discombobulated her enough that she only recovered her balance after the fact. “Do you have anything else to show?” His mocking tone burned. He gestured to the outside, “Better hurry or your friends will suffer.”

“You…” Yuriko growled as her Animus boiled. She had two options. Radiant Lance or Trinity sunshards. Ideally, she could use Trinity to cap her Radiant Lance, but she didn’t have the implement ready and she wasn’t about to experiment or Free Shape in front of the Chaos Duke. There was also the fact that he was just a minor incarnation. Who knew how many were left? Though if she did manage to destroy this, would it delay his plans of assimilating with the planar core?

Her first incarnation had done something similar, though the memories were hazy. She only had the impression of being in a chamber, touching the core, then the next moment, she was back on the surface while her Anima reach expanded to encompass the entirety of the plane. The process had been hidden, though she felt that if she recreated the circumstances, the process would reveal itself then.

Anyway, destruction.

Behind her, the Radiant Lance Implement materialised from her Anima and began to gather ambient Chaos and Radiant energy. Since she was underground, the latter had to be sourced from her, or converted from the ambient Chaos. She didn’t hold enough Radiant energy to make the lance by herself.

The Chaos Duke smirked, “Ah. So that one, huh. Quite bold.” He leaned forward and hopped. The next moment, he was right in front of her and his fist slammed right into her middle.

“Urk!” She gasped as she leapt back away from the strike. Her condensed aura took the attack head on, but somehow, part of the kinetic energy penetrated past her defences. Several strands of consciousness kept focus on the Radiant Lance, while the remaining was focused on the sunshards. She sent those to attack, but before they could reach him, he was gone in a blink.

Behind!

The Chaos Duke slapped the materialised implement away, burning his hand in the process but also disrupting the attack. She only managed to track him from the void in her perception, but she’d had several exchanges by then. Fri’Avgi wiped at the Duke, while several sunshards dove towards the decaying implement to salvage the produced Radiant energy. Then, with the shards glowing like the Radiant Sun, she sent them towards the Duke.

He swayed away, doing the same out of phase dodge that avoided her inescapable net. But this time, she caused the sunshards to swerve around instead of flying past. Then, once he had several around him, each one overloaded with Radiant energy…

‘Explode!’ She yelled in her head as the Animus construct holding the Radiant energy at bay unravelled.

A globe of Radiant light expanded to cover the duke. She heard sizzling sounds as her Ennoia energies devoured his protections, but intuitively, she knew it wouldn’t be enough. His words about her friends rang in her ear and she leapt towards the tunnels, but before she could take a second step, he was there blocking the way. His robes were scorched black, and half of his face dropped as though it were melted candle wax, but his expression was serene, as though pain didn’t even touch him. His gruesome grin, with half of it exposing blacked teeth and jaw bone, made her shiver. And even as she took a second step, his flesh started to creep back, as though time rewound and the injury was being undone. Had she not witnessed the resurrection of the Chaos fleet by the three Marchionesses, she would have been stunned silly at the sight.

Instead, she jabbed Fri’Avgi at his guts, and he swayed out of the way. Still, she was not aiming to hit him now, but to drive him off her path. A second swipe, as well as strikes from the sunshard, pushed him another step back. She almost engaged the fourth dance, but remembered belatedly that the stronger her foe, the more Animus it ate up. And she wasn’t sure if she had enough reserves to pay the bill. The same with the Ender’s Waltz. The latter would probably exact a larger toll, now that she thought of it. Attempting to predict how a creature that was four levels above her would have drained her dry in less than a second. So she did what she could. He was still a Chaos Lord and his incarnation was as a Chaos Baron in strength. His Chaos Well would run out sooner or later.

He couldn’t really hurt her anyway. Her condensed Anima as well as her kinesis, which had been subtly counteracting his attacks, kept her from being wounded. But this was only one incarnation. The Devotee of the Radiant Fire said that he had hundreds, if not thousands.

“So eager to leave?” The man’s voice was hollow as he chuckled. Somehow, his evasive footwork easily brought him back to the center of the tunnel. “Stay awhile…”

“No!” Yuriko yelled as she threw even more sunshards at him. She rigged a few to explode while she kept a few back and funneled even more Radiant energy into them. She knew the perils of talking with this Chaos Lord! She remembered Annise Delovine’s fall. To listen was to open her heart, and to do so was to invite him inside. And from there…well, actually, she already had two people inside her head. Three, including Eli’Theria.

She was suddenly aware of the Orb of Authority within her Anima, and the Colossus’ animating spirit’s regard. She could call upon Eli’Theria, and she would be answered. More importantly, the Colossus could appear from her Anima if she was willing to pay the price. A significant chunk of Animus as well as most of her Radiant reserves, probably, as well as how her Anima would be battered and bruised for days afterwards. But she could call on her Colossus if she needed to.

Despite her intentions, his voice still rang in her ear, and what he said made her freeze.

“I have something of yours…”