Silvestia moved with purpose. She wasn’t going tremendously fast but the turns she took were sudden. There was no warning as she swerved around another building, feet hidden under her robes. Kyrylo knew nothing about her shape, how she could or couldn’t move. Her arm shot out and grabbed onto a grate on the ground, yanking it up with casual strength. Beneath was absolute darkness, the faint echo of trickling water wafting out.

“You will fight in here, you understand?” She turned to face them, the glow of her eye piercing through from within her clothes. “The Rat King is not alone. Those who follow him will want to prove their loyalty.”

“And you don’t?” Kyrylo countered, cocking an eyebrow. He could feel Felix tensing, hand likely at his side to grab his sword. He had already passed Kyrylo his own weapon. Didn’t really need to be authorized this deep into forbidden territory.

Silvestia snickered, her robes shaking. “Am I not proving it right now?”

Kyrylo felt his stomach twist. His nerves were starting to creep back in, once forgotten in the heat of the moment. He had barely killed spirits in the past. They weren’t hard, so to speak. But they weren’t usually expecting him. They were haunting someone, focused on a target, and he would swoop in, slash through them, and leave the realm just like that. Most of the time he watched Felix do it. If it seemed even slightly difficult, Felix sidelined him. Now he needed to plunge into a black sewer packed with fervent followers who wanted to kill him for glory?

“But only the Rat King can help you,” Silvestia continued. She held up her hand and a small ball of blue fire appeared above her palm. It floated up until it was hovering around her head, casting a dim light into the dark hole of the sewer. “Come.”

Kyrylo sucked in a breath and tried to bury his fears under the air. He was far too determined to see this through at this point. Silvestia dropped down, the flame traveling with her and lighting up the tunnel within. Kyrylo followed suit.

It was more damp than wet, a delight Kyrylo welcomed. He had prepared to splash down into some stream of disgust but there was instead only a trickle running through the center of the tunnel, obvious and easy to step over. It was taller than he expected as well, not massive certainly but he could at least stand up entirely and didn’t have to hunch. He could reach up and touch the moss-coated ceiling, not that he wanted to.

Felix hopped in shortly after, his eyes hard and piercing. He had already drawn his sword and Kyrylo could see his knuckles bulging from how tight his grip was. And then Silvestia was striding ahead once again, as if they both knew where she was heading and were familiar with this city.

Kyrylo thought he felt a buzz at his side, a phantom vibration from the RIF disc strapped onto him. He gingerly placed his finger on its surface, reassured somehow that this thing he had brought over from his own world was still intact. Some part of him felt like they might start to fade away as they stayed in here too long. Maybe that was how spirits got created, something like that.

But he also touched it for the reassurance that it had the emergency recall on it. He didn’t know how it would work, or even if it would work at this point. He didn’t see glimmers anymore in the air to pass back through to his own world so could it pull him back instantly? Did it just send out a distress signal and someone had to come find you?

All of his thoughts fizzled as Silvestia darted around a corner and he came around to face an ancient metal door, half-rusted with a circular lock in the center like a vault. And flanked by a pair of spirits, two similar-looking humanoid-lizard creatures in leather armour. Kyrylo gulped; they had already hit the aforementioned enemies.

Both of them appeared equally surprised by the sudden appearance of Kyrylo. One of them flicked its forked tongue at him, the other reaching to its side to grab a mace that had been propped against the wall.

“What are these?” one of them said, nodding at Kyrylo as Felix rounded the corner. Kyrylo heard Felix curse behind him. “A tribute?”

Silvestia shook her head. “They want a favour from the Rat King.”

“Don’t we all.” The spirits laughed, a strange hissing sound with the odd click in it. “They’ll die here though.”

“They understand that,” Silvestia replied. “They said they will fight.”

“They’ll be a snack,” the other lizard stated, the one with the mace. Its yellow eyes had been locked onto Kyrylo the entire time. “Maybe we can be interior guards for once.”

“Or challenge the Rat King,” the other added, raising some small alarm bells at the back of Kyrylo’s mind. This may not have been the structured worship of a ruler he had been imagining. It was starting to sound more like the Rat King was on top so long as he could fend off any challenge and everyone else was striving for his seat.

“This feels very anti-climatic,” Kyrylo said, withdrawing his sword. “There’s no build-up, we just run into each other and battle? I was kind of expecting more when I fell into this interdimensional spirit war.”

The guard with the mace shrugged and took a step forward. “It’s just how things are.” It swung without further hesitation and Kyrylo barely managed to throw out his own sword to counter. He felt the strike reverberate through his arm and his knees nearly buckled under the weight of the weapon striking him. He held out, barely, but decided to leap back as the creature tried to strike again, this time swiping across his body and missing.

“You have to kill them to kill them,” Felix hissed beside him, locked in his own combat to the side. Kyrylo didn’t want to look over and observe that fight, couldn’t afford to take his eyes off his own fight. He felt the heat boiling under the surface again at Felix’s patronizing tone. Yes, obviously he couldn’t win by just dodging forever but he had never really fought a spirit so much as ambushed them. This was a whole different game.

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“Because it’s so easy,” Kyrylo snapped back, starting to get some feeling back in his hand after parrying the earlier attack. “I’ll stop messing around and just do it.”

“That’s the idea,” Felix said, slowly warming back up to his usual confident self. He must’ve been winning for him to be talking like that.

Kyrylo’s foe didn’t give him the chance to check, lunging forwards again and stabbing into Kyrylo with the mace, taking him by surprise. He didn’t think you could get stabbed by a ball but the metal sphere went straight into his gut and winded him. He doubled over to clutch at his stomach but his eye caught the spirit winding up again to bring its weapon down on his head. He rolled to the side and barely dodged the blow but he grimaced as he heard his sword clatter onto the stones.

“Dammit.” He tried to get back up to his feet, wobbling as he still recovered from the prior attack. The lizard watched with a hint of amusement. Its tongue flicked out smacked against its nostril before vanishing. Its tail swished behind it.

“You won’t be worth much to consume,” it said, shaking its head. “But anything to get ahead, right?”

Kyrylo tried to look past it and see what Felix was doing, hoping he would find his partner victorious and coming around to deliver a surprise backstab. He would do anything to be bailed out at this moment, and he would even take the embarrassment from Felix chiding his poor performance. It was better than facing the actual embarrassment of realizing how pathetic he currently was, how he had thought he could just dive in, fight spirits, talk to a Rat King like it was nothing, and be home in time to prepare to hang out with Isabelle, that thing he definitely wasn’t supposed to do.

No luck though. Felix was still engaged in his own fight and the guard had raised his mace up again to strike a finishing blow.

The little exchange had taken long enough though and Kyrylo was starting to feel like he could breathe again. He knew he couldn’t grab his sword back; he simply wasn’t agile enough. But he did manage to roll aside again as the mace slammed down into the ground, cracking through some of the bricks that made up the floor.

Kyrylo scrambled back to his feet, putting up his fists like that meant something. He wasn’t concerned with the no-touching rule from before given he was pretty certain you couldn’t fuse twice and even if you could it would technically solve his problem. It seemed like the last spirit he bonded with was gone, as far as he could tell. Sure, he would have a weird reflection whenever he was in the spirit realm but at this point he was confident he was never coming back here if he managed to get out.

“You’re wasting our time.” The guard spat and yanked its weapon out of the ground. “Is this to buy time for your friend to win? I’ll kill him too after, it won’t be hard. Humans who fall down here are easy, everybody knows it.” It paused to point at the sword laying on the ground. “They’re not usually armed though.”

“Wait, what?” Kyrylo almost broke stance but did his best to maintain in a fighting posture, or at least his best understanding of a fighting posture. They had only really been trained with a sword and were told to never go in unarmed. There hadn’t been hand-to-hand sparring so he had no technique to follow. He was just going to stand like he had seen in movies and hope that was good enough.

“They don’t all have weapons,” the spirit repeated. “They usually just scream and run and then they die. Your story will be that you hardly fought and then you ran and died.” It chuckled, clicking again and then squeaking at the end.

Then it lashed out with the mace again, once more trying to catch Kyrylo by surprise with a jab into his gut. This one Kyrylo managed to avoid, twisting his torso as he started to feel more comfortable in this dance. There were only so many ways to swing a mace and he was starting to get used to it.

And then he saw it. An opening, the type of moment he had only ever seen on a screen. His enemy had swung past him, he had a free shot at its head with no limitation. This could be his knockout blow to take back control and regain his weapon.

Kyrylo briefly wound up and then punched the lizard across the jaw, feeling an intense rebound in his knuckles as he met with the thick, scaly skin of his opponent. He hadn’t punched anyone, or anything, before this. And it hurt, searing across his fist in response and then receding into an ache that tried to warn him to never do that again.

But the lizard barely budged. It seemed annoyed to have been hit, but it wasn’t reeling away and it certainly wasn’t knocked down. It snapped back at him with its jaw and Kyrylo nearly fell backwards again in shock at the retaliation.

Hopeless dread began to claw at him, wrapping around him like the fog of the city, trying to pull him down and abandon the fight, to stand there and be pummeled and end it all. His sword was gone, his strength was meaningless. He had a brief flash of Felix dashing over and somehow decapitating this thing like a hero but it wasn’t happening. Just a dream as he heard Felix continue his own struggles against the other spirit.

Then it was Isabelle for another moment in his mind, a second to say goodbye, truly and completely, to everything that could have been and never would.

Finally, a flash of the spirit from before, the one he had merged with that was in his reflection. Staring back at him, equally taken aback by its appearance within him. But also curious, passionate. It wanted something too and he wanted to know what.

The lizard took another swipe, this time straight for Kyrylo’s head. The weapon was slow enough though, given its weight, that he could see it coming and ducked down, hearing it smash into more bricks in the wall behind him. He didn’t hesitate further, clenching his fingers into a fist again. There had to be a way to deliver some sort of blow to this thing that could finish it off. He wanted to put everything behind this punch, to hit it with the weight of his entire future he was giving up.

As Kyrylo’s fist shot upwards, he felt it growing heavier, an increasing density that concerned him but one he couldn’t stop. The momentum was too much at this point as it seemed like that very future he had been trying to reach out and grasp was condensing into his hand, collapsing down into a black hole of weight. His fist crashed into the creature’s jaw, this time barely feeling any resistance as everything shattered that it connected with.

The lizard’s head snapped back instantly and the spirit teetered for a second before collapsing backwards. Without hesitation, Kyrylo grabbed his sword back and stabbed down into its chest a few times but the state of its entire snout told him it was already over.

He looked up at Felix, who was still sparring with the remaining guard. This one had a sword of its own and the pair were often just circling each other, waiting for one to slip and testing the other with a quick jab or slash but nothing to overexpose.

The spirit wasn’t paying attention to Kyrylo’s fight though and he easily slashed through its neck from behind as it passed, lopping off its head in a single slice. That felt more familiar, more normal as he was always in awe at how easily their weapons passed through what was otherwise a very corporeal thing.

Kyrylo didn’t even realize he was panting as the corpse collapsed. Felix gave him a slight nod and checked on the other body, his face quickly scrunching into something quizzical. “How did you do that?” he asked, pointing his sword at the shattered face of the lizard, its snout deformed and collapsing in on itself.

Kyrylo checked down at his right hand, clutching his sword but otherwise appearing completely normal. “I…don’t know.”