Dan had become more and more used to falling through voids in recent months. He wasn’t sure how many people had an education which included control of one’s body within an abyss but he expected that was becoming something of an expert on the subject.

His partner in this tumble, it seemed, was not as learned or capable as Dan himself. This had been his attack but battle between relic holders was not common, so the effects of that combat must be novel by virtue of that fact. Dan watched for a humorous few moments as the man fell head over rear without needing to.

This was a more fitting battlefield, certainly. Dan could feel the labyrinth above, the mana that he had left telling him that he was still close to his previous location. Thankfully, it also told him that his allies were okay. The massive explosion had essentially happened around them, keeping them from the worst of the shrapnel and damage.

Dan was happy. He could focus completely on the battle before him.

It felt right. There had been a struggle to get to the Spear but if Dan were being honest, there hadn’t been anything that challenged him. Lifting the Spear felt a little forced and stale until now. That feeling was banished, replaced with excitement at the opportunity before Dan’s eyes.

This was a chance for victory. A victory which would cement his place as a wielder of the soul relic. That felt important for a reason that Dan couldn’t put his finger on but he did not let that sliver of uncertainty ruin the moment. Now that there was a moment to inspect himself, Dan felt all of the trials catching up to him. His body ached, his movements, though enhanced by the Spear, were becoming sluggish.

Too bad, Dan told his groaning body, we’re not finished yet. Just a little more.

“I hope you’re ready!” Dan shouted, projecting a calm confidence with his words that he did not feel within. Dan’s voice carried louder and longer than he expected in the strange half-real space that he and Shin Boh Tahn were floating within. It shocked his own ears, never mind the old man’s. There was a look of shock and worry on the man’s face as Dan closed the distance between them, the Spear aimed directly at him.

Unbidden by the man, it seemed, Dan’s attack was met by the Whip. Snaking out like a collection of god-forged eels, the Whip’s lashes wrapped around the shaft of Dan’s weapon and threw him off course. Dan collided with the pope, who grappled Dan. Having Dan in his grasp brought a wild smile to his face.

Then he squeezed.

Dan had been subjected to Hyun Soon’s wrestling and more than a few of their sparring combats had ended with Dan unable to escape the larger boy’s grasp. The crushing vice grip on his spine now was on a completely different level. If the cords of the Whip were eels, Shin Boh Tahn’s arms were mythical constrictor snakes made of steel.

“Ready, boy?” Shin Boh Tahn’s words louder than Dan’s had been, the man screaming his retort into Dan’s ear. “It would take a thousand battles before you were able to take me by surprise.”

Dan had to acquiesce to that, given the popping and crunching he was feeling in his back and arms. His muscles, pushed to the brink by the continual combat and tribulation of the previous day, were crumpling and ripping inside of him. Dan howled from the sudden agony throughout his body. The pain was enough to make Dan release his grip on the Spear.

No.

With a move that Dan would not have been capable of without being guided, the Spear itself spun in Dan’s loosened grip. The speed of rotation increased with each spin, doubling each loop of Dan’s fingers until it was a spinning drill of dense, devastating power. Dan did not need more assistance than that. Aiming was difficult and awkward but he quickly positioned the tip towards the pope of the church of the empty god. Then Dan stabbed the Spear into Shin Boh Tahn’s leg.

They are not stronger than us.

As though without resistance, the Spear punctured and pulverised the spot it met and pierced straight through. For a panic-filled moment of distress, the guillotine of Shin Boh Tahn’s arms tightened even more, from the pain. Then the man fell away. Quite literally.

Do you understand now?

Their position within this space was governed by their perspective of themselves within it. Dan could not have explained with words the understanding which had come instinctually but control within this astral space was given entirely over to mental control. That seemed to extend to confidence in one’s self being the source of their strength.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The Spear had not said these things to Dan in words but it hadn’t needed to. They were connected on a level far beyond just simple thoughts. What the Spear knew, Dan was able to know, like searching his own memory. The soul relics truly were incredible. Dan had spent a lifetime watching the experiences of others around him and taking from them.

He could not imagine a more perfect weapon.

Now it made sense. The old man was not impossibly strong but Dan’s imagination of him placed him into a godlike strength. Picturing the losses to Hyun Soon had sapped his strength and given power to Shin Boh Tahn. Dan had given up for a moment and it had nearly cost him everything.

However, that knowledge was intensely powerful. The Spear was not just a weapon, it had given Dan a weapon. The Whip had acted of its own accord and now so had that the Spear. Due to the mostly conceptual nature of the weapons which they wielded, it made sense to Dan that they would have their own impetus in this place.

Dan was not sure what concept the Whip or Sceptre embodied but he knew on a deep, spiritual level that he had the advantage. The Spear was progress. It was drive. It was momentum and being stopped here was not part of its destiny. Dan thanked the weapon in his hand and righted himself in the dark void of his battle.

Shin Boh Tahn continued to fall. Dan’s desire to chase him warred with a stronger, more primal instinct. Survival was paramount even compared to the soul relics. Dan’s very soul was certain that if he closed the distance to the man now, he would lose not just the fight but very likely his life.

Whether his lethal prediction was true, Shin Boh Tahn was certainly doing something. He shouted in rage and pain, his voice once again seeming to come from everywhere at once. To Dan’s vision he had become a pinprick of white fabric tumbling through endless nothingness.

Then the screaming stopped and the glowing began. Starting as a shimmer around his far off white form, Shin Boh Tahn began to glean with an increasingly powerful light. As though the man had transformed into the sun, Dan watched as the light swelled into a huge sphere around him. Dan had seen light of this colour from the Sceptre before and he assumed that the light show was the soul relic’s doing.

The sphere of light was almost too intense to look at but Dan could not afford to turn away. He watched as the sphere started to shrink. It did not collapse evenly and quickly Dan could tell that something was beginning to emerge. A humanoid form of pure light took shape. In its hand it held a whip.

Shin Boh Tahn had found some resolve of his own.

——————————

He had the foolish child now.

Shin Boh Tahn had drawn the power from his soul relics and could feel the magic covering his veins and surging through his mana channels. There was a dull keening in the back of his mind, the whine of the soul relics as they were pushed to the brink. He ignored it and focused on the danger before him.

There was nothing to be learned from the whining of an object.

Boh Tahn had absorbed the Sceptre’s power into himself, subsuming it and making it his armour. The Sceptre was pure control given form. The very essence of control. With it, he had performed miracle after miracle, from healing the unwashed masses to ending wars. By taking command of this power, Shin Boh Tahn was placing himself above the weapon, and so his form grew to match it.

At his hand was the Whip, the very concept of pain itself given form. The strength flowing within was intoxicating, making him feel almost tipsy. With the combined might of absolute control and the very spirit of pain itself, Shin Boh Tahn was certain that he was as powerful as any creature had ever been.

He wondered, despite himself, whether it would be enough against the strange child and the Spear at his side. It would have to be. He needed the weapon to further his goals and had never encountered a wall he could not smash through or a mountain unclimbable. This boy would be no different.

With a grunt and a roar which seemed to tear apart space, Shin Boh Tahn launched himself forward.

——————————

Dan watched as the being of light suddenly started getting larger and larger.

He may have braced but there was no preparation possible for the onslaught which followed. With every ounce of his impressive strength, every moment of experience he had gathered and every dreg of power he had siphoned from his soul relics, he attacked.

All Dan could do was survive.

The Whip moved at lightning quick speeds, seemingly without care for physics or natural movements. The lashes took turns punching into, whipping and searing Dan’s flesh at odd timings. It was impossible to keep up with and all Dan could do was howl in pain as the cords of molten agony smashed against him against and again. Dan had almost felt nothing like it.

Except he had.

The pain was just that. Pain. He had been subjected to torment after torment to get to where he was now and if Shin Boh Tahn’s plan was to torture Dan into submission then he had already lost. Even as Dan registered that his body was not taking damage, he stopped feeling so brutalised by the Whip. Each lash hurt less and less until the whimpering flails were nothing more than a tickle.

Shin Boh Tahn had seen this. For a tumultuous while, Dan had weathered the storm of the pope’s ire and unlike any that had come before, was still standing. There was a whimpering movement the massive figure of light before Dan. Dan looked into where he expected Shin Boh Tahn’s face was and smiled.

The light around him vanished, leaving only the man. “Wh-what did you do? This is impossible!”

Dan knew what had happened but he was of no inclination to explain. An explanation would get the pope back in the fight and Dan was not going to let that happen. Instead of answering the man’s frantic cries, Dan stepped forward. Each step fell on a floor which wasn’t there, resounding crashes of power with each stride clattering through the space.

With each reverberation, the man before Dan shrunk. Dan himself was no bigger or smaller than when he started. It was all a matter of perspective and right now, the pope was seeing Dan as a gargantuan threat. He had not worked out, maybe could not work out, the mechanics of this space.

Dan wouldn’t give him the chance.

He knelt down and picked up the supposed holy man. Like holding a wasp, Dan felt him buzzing and stinging in his hand but ignored it. “Time to leave.” He said, mostly to himself. Holding Shin Boh Tahn in his left hand and the Spear in his right, Dan could feel the consequence surrounding this battle settling into place. He did not yet understand all of the implications but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Shin Boh Tahn was defeated.

With an almighty heave, Dan launched the man into the air and imagined him appearing in the huge cavern where the bone tower had stood. When he vanished from sight, Dan was sure that he was alone in the space and that Shin Boh Tahn would be handled by Shade or Fa Lian for now.

There was something important he needed to do before anything else.