Exclamation marks hammered in the corner of my eye. Trap warnings. I yanked the Angel-Lulu Megazord off their feet and split to the side as a bolt of lightning slammed to the ground. I barely had a chance to land before the next bolt of lightning lashed the marble with a molten red-hot scar.

Lulu yowled. Angel couldn't hear the thunderous noise, but she sure as hell felt it as I desperately yanked her away from the next lighting bolt, and the next. While I dodged and weaved, Rachini reached for the other sword hilt. She put her palm against the guard. As she drew her hand outwards, she pulled a long, curved blade of crackling light out along with it.

There was no reaching her. Not without instant death. I barely had the chance to land before two more bolts pinned us. One ahead, the other just to my left. It was so closed it seared my tail. The air boiled with the burned plastic smell of ozone and cooked scales. My Air damage mitigation, if it was active, did fuck-all against it.

[Glancing blow. This energy type ignores Air resistance. HP: 13,830/14,000]

[You are Dazzled. Blinded for 5 seconds.]

"What the hell are we supposed to do!?" Angel shouted aloud.

"She told us what we have to do! Survive!" I swung them up to drop them on my back as five spears of light struck the floor in a rough pentagonal shape. Angel landed astride with the kind of nut-crushing force that would have made most men puke with agony. Even she let out an 'oof' as her angelcakes met the ridge of my spine. I trusted Lulu to keep her anchored as I sprung away from the next explosion. "There's a pattern! Two, three, five... they're prime numbers!"

In the center of the arena, locusts circled down to cling to Rachini's form in a creaking, singing carpet. The arena went from black to blazing white as seven, then eleven bolts lit us up. We were running out of space to dodge. A flash clipped Lulu. She screamed with surprise, and I heard Angel shout. In pain, in sympathy, I wasn’t sure. There was an ominous pause as the sky let out a bone-rattling basso clap of thunder, just enough time for me to desperately compute where the next round of thirteen strikes would land. Somehow I got it right, flinging myself into a narrow wedge of space as the heavens roared down around us. Lulu, painfully vulnerable to lightning, squealed with terror.

We weren’t moving long distances, but the bursts of speed required to continuously lunge into each precise wedge of space were grueling, a race between my stamina meter and the lightning. I managed to fire off one blast of white noise at Rachini in between bolts. The psionic energy rippled toward her and slammed into a sudden shield of electro-locusts. They spasmed and fell to the ground, immediately replaced from the thousands of wet, flickering bodies whirling above the temple.

"Noodles! Your Stamina is too low! Put us down!" Angel's telepathic sign broke into my thoughts.

“You’ll be cooked. It’s almost done!”

Twenty-two lighting bolts smashed down from the heavens and briefly turned the floor into a seething cauldron of boiling rock. There was nothing but light, roaring sound, and pain as my flesh cooked to my bones. The safety triangle was so narrow that we burned to either side. Lulu shielded Angel against the sudden flash of heat. When the light cleared, I’d lost a quarter of my HP and Lulu was down to nearly half. And the fight hadn’t even started.

Rachini floated at the center of the barrage, her helmet now set over the top half of her face. The bugs swarmed around her in a slithering tornado of wings and chitin, generating static that snapped and popped between their bodies like a dynamo. Suddenly, they erupted in all directions. I yelped as sharp electrified spines hit my skin like tiny tasers. Then, suddenly, came the fear. I forgot my passengers, forgot everything. They were getting under my skin. They were getting under my fucking skin.

"Noodles! Poison Cloud!" Angel barked.

She’d used the collar, but I didn’t care. I ejected a cloud of noxious gas on reflex, like an all-body fart. Hundreds of burrowing, chewing locusts fell from my body and swooned to the floor, twitching as they died. Panting through locked teeth, I skid and spun on the floor, now slick with the bodies of crushed, twitching insects, and faced off against the Daeva as she gracefully swooped down from her place over the altar. Her black armor was made of insects, packed so tightly together that they formed a thick sheathe of plate. Gorge rose in the back of my throat.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Angel, still wearing Lulu, vaulted to the ground beside me. The skin of her face was tight, eyes wide as she took the empty hilt and mimicked the gesture Rachini had made: clapping her hand to the blunted guard, then pulling her hand out as she concentrated. And to all our surprise, it worked. A blade of ghostly blue light drew from Angel's palm, far less flashy than Rachini's weapon.

Rachini flashed a mocking smirk. “The Trial of the Blade.”

Three clouds of electrified locusts split from the gathering mass overhead, synchronized slithering black ribbons. They swirled into each of the three niches staggered around the arena, where they effortlessly flew in sync, forming a ball of incredible geometric complexity. The electricity they generated grew to a fever pitch, turning each bug-ball a shocking, brilliant white.

"Noodles! Shadow Cloak me and regain your stamina while I hold her off!" Angel faced off against Rachini in a Roman-style martial stance, the sword held at waist height, her other hand outstretched. It was a stance better suited to a shortsword and shield than the scimitar-like energy sword.

"Are you both out of your damn mind!?" She sure was - and so was Lulu. Her Omnishell Poison polarity was only temporary.

“You have to get those spheres before they finish charging. I can’t shoot them out without a gun!”

Now we were linked, I could apply the stored Soul Drain move to Angel, shrouding her in a flickering sphere of darkness. She could see out, but Rachini couldn't see in. The Daeva’s lips, full and sultry, sloped to one side in an irritated grimace. Then she attacked.

Rachini blurred, as fast as the lightning. She closed with Angel at frightening speed, smashing her sword away. Lulu saved her, yanking her down under a slash that should have decapitated her. Angel surged back up, but the angle of her sword was wrong. It bounced back toward her, slashing Lulu and sending them staggering. I bounded in with a roar, swiping at Rachini, following up with tentacles from either side. The claws hit, but deflected harmlessly off her armor. Rachini parried my attacks with the same lazy grace that she handled Angel’s, sparks flashing off my scales - then let out an inhuman screech as Angel stabbed the energy blade in through her living armor.

"Noodles! Don’t worry about us!" Angel yanked the blade free and dove away as Rachini whirled with a flurry of slashes. "I think the sword is the only thing that can hurt her!"

I bit the shit out of Rachini anyway - and broke a tooth against her armor. It was hard and glassy, like obsidian. I had a second to register that before she balled up and punched me right in the eye. Pain worse than anything I remembered feeling shocked through my skull. Then I was airborne. For a second, I thought I'd been hit by lightning.

[You are partially blinded. Instincts reduced by 25%.]

"Arrrrgh! FUCK!" I hit the floor in an awkward tangle of many limbs, rolling to a stop near the base of the stairs leading to the first ball. A chill passed through my belly. Rachini was stronger than me. Stronger than Vanara or Karkinos, even though she was a quarter of their size.

All three of the glowing bug spheres spasmed, sending a flash of energy into Rachini's body. The HP came back - along with three new buff icons that appeared over her HP ring: a flexing muscley arm, a winged sandal, and a rising sun. Strength, speed, and health buffs.

We had to take down those fucking turrets.

“Hold on!” I fought the urge to shake my head. It would only make the world tilt harder. Instead, I climbed the ivory stairs, and skidded a stop in front of the churning bug ball. It was forming an increasingly complicated, sophisticated lattice, the energy around it intensifying. A cycle. The end of that cycle was probably a weapon of some kind. Touching it was out of the question. Even with my Air resistance, the heat coming off the thing felt like it would peel the skin off my muzzle.

I concentrated through the disorientation. Turned inward, boosted myself with Psychostimulant. A rush of savage clarity flooded my mind, the venom glands in my skin and jaws swelled, and I discharged a cloud of poison gas. A health meter appeared above the ball, slowly depleting. I leveled off a blast of raw Psionic energy at it… then another, and another. Every time the White Noise shockwaves struck it, the bugs jittered, struggling to retain their formation. But even with my attack boosted by twenty percent, even with the type weaknesses in effect, it was tougher than it looked. As its HP drained, it got more and more unstable, hotter and whiter, until it exploded in a cloud of molten chaff.

Down below, Angel and Lulu fought for their lives - and they were losing. For every lucky blow they managed to slip in, Rachini nicked the Limne half a dozen times. Her HP was flashing a dull, ugly red.

"Stop fighting! Just run and kite her!" Even as I thought that and bounded down to the floor, the other spheres reached the climax of their charge cycle. They lit with a brilliant flash, sending bolts of lightning after Angel and Lulu like turrets. It was Lulu who wrenched Angel off her feet and away from them, sending them tumbling awkwardly to one side.

Rachini's face split with a maniacal fanged grin. The grin continued to split up her cheeks, revealing the black mandibles hiding behind her sculpted lips. The sword lifted like a scythe over wheat.

"Hey! Fuckface!" I wasn't going to make it in time. There was no way. "HEY!"

Lulu, with the kind of bravery only the truly desperate could muster, gathered herself over Angel's body as the Daeva brought her lightning charged blade down.