Fa Lian and Hyun Soon slammed the door shut behind themselves. It wouldn’t keep those outside out for long but it would have to be enough for right now. Everything was becoming chaotic and promised to get even more so. Seeing Po Daiyu had been a shock, one that should have prepared her for this one.
It hadn’t.
Guan Po Kahn was standing in the middle of the fairly large room. It was clearly a part of the labyrinth, the rock of the wall coloured with the now familiar grey stone, but there was a dramatic difference here. Each wall, every inch, was riddled with cracks. All that existed in those cracks were pitch black void. Somehow, the void seemed to seep out of the cracks, infecting the room with darkness.
Her cousin did not look well. Po Daiyu had looked frantic and scared, exhausted in her mind and body. Po Kahn looked like he was dying. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin around them was turning blue and black. A dried stream of blood from his nose had congealed into a thick, sticky and dark moustache and goatee. He was growling.
“Cou-cousin?” Wanting to scream at her own fear, Fa Lian was furious for stuttering. She also wanted some kind of confirmation. It must be Po Kahn but something was clearly different. “What are you doing here?” When he answered her question, she instantly knew the reason behind her cousin’s afflictions.
“Waiting for yOuUuu.” The voice was probably Po Kahn’s at one point but it had the unmistakable fury and pain within it of Steel Fever. The monster had found the son after devouring the father. “WaITiNg for the GodDeSS toUcHed Too.”
Fa Lian wasn’t certain, she had certainly never heard him called that before, but surely that could only really have meant Ah Dan. It was Ah Dan and herself that had pushed and fought Steel Fever before. Looking over her shoulder, she saw confusion on the face of Hyun Soon and Yurie. Did she need their help? Would they be able to get involved even if she did?
Fa Lian reacted to the widening eyes of Yurie and Hyun to block the incoming attack. Ferocious like a wild animal, her shield was barely formed when the hand swiped past. As though trying to claw at her, Po Kahn swept through the air and an unbelievable force followed the attack. Sure that she had taken only a fraction of the power, Fa Lian’s legs were shaking when she landed.
Po Kahn had always used his mana to create explosions. When his hand brushed her, everywhere he touched erupted with that same explosive power but without the following heat and sound. “Don’t let him touch you!” her warning was for the other’s but she needn’t have wasted her time. Po Kahn - or rather, Steel Fever - was fixated. Fa Lian quickly convinced herself that this was a good thing and threw her full focus on the fight.
The others would need to protect themselves.
—
“We have to help her!” Hyun Soon meant well but he couldn’t see like she could. Yurie was watching the world dance in a constant flow of black, red and violent purples. There was nothing she could do. Every step meant death, dismemberment or worse. Everything in Yurie’s view told her that destruction was incoming.
Like throwing a pebble into a hurricane of fire. The entire back half of the room seemed to be a tornado of whirling force and explosive gouts of flame. Both Fa Lian and the person she fought used flames in their attacks. Fa Lian’s flames held a crimson colouring that you didn’t see on wood fires, as though blood had turned to oil. The man’s flames were alive with sparks. While Fa Lian hosed fire, the other one simply flashed it out.
It seemed as though there was a vast difference in their strength.
So why was Fa Lian the one flung into the wall behind Yurie? Everything was happening so fast. By the time Yurie even noticed that she had nearly been flattened by Fa Lian, the girl was already throwing herself from the back wall back into the combat. Before she could warn him not to, Hyun Soon tried to get involved, following Fa Lian into the fray.
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The result was obvious, even without her sight to show her. Hyun Soon surged his armour, letting it cover his torso. He seemed to strain for a moment before the tension left his body. A helmet formed, a visor dropping before Hyun’s eyes. It was translucent but it would be solid. Yurie had felt how hard the armour was.
All the same, it was shattered as he flew away from the whirlwind of aggression.
She ran to him and held him down as he started forcing himself onto unstable elbows. “No, stop. We can’t do anything.” Once it was clear that he would not try to jump into the battle again, Yurie gave Hyun her hand. Hyun Soon allowed himself to be helped to his feet though he looked angry.
“What do we do then?” He huffed. Casting his eyes around the space, he would have seen even less than Yurie did. The space was large but barren. Behind the fighting there seemed to be a dark spot, a place where Yurie’s sight, either physical or magical, could not peer into. It was an enigma. She’d never seen anything like it.
“If we can get to the other side somehow, we might be able to help.” It was just a guess but that was as much as they had. Yurie could see on Hyun Soon’s pained expression towards the door they had come through that he was thinking of other things. Xiaomei’s situation was unknown. Fa Lian had replaced her downstairs, leaving just Xiaomei and her ribbons to deal with Guan Po Daiyu. “The best thing we can do right now is end this fight. If we have to start another one right after it, we will.”
That seemed to cheer Hyun Soon up. His armour had cracked and fallen away in places, acting just like a real suit of metal plates. One half of his face was open to the air, the other half a full helm. With obvious effort on his face, Hyun caused the armour to ripple. The broken bracers reset themselves, his visor covered his entire face once more. “I wouldn’t mind one of those suits.” Yurie said, trying to import some humour into the terrifying situation.
“I wouldn’t mind if it were stronger, so we’re all wishing for something.”
“For now, let’s just wish for an opening and take it when it comes.”
————————
Fa Lian was leaving no openings. For each attack the vile creature threw forth, her dragonscales met them inch for inch, pound for pound. Her own attacks were thrown to the side by extended limbs and calculated explosions.
Steel Fever fought with a different intensity while using the body of the son rather than the father. The body was not as malformed, so the angles of the attacks were easier to read. However, the control seemed magnitudes above anything shown with Po Shang. As though…
“You’re still there, aren’t you, cousin?” Fa Lian’s voice would carry over the sound of their clashing. Her question dripped with disgust. Steel Fever had been vicious and murderous before but there was now calculation and intent which it hadn’t had before. “You found something with a hint of power and let it control you, is that it?”
“HyPOcRiTe!” Po Kahn’s voice sent a familiar shiver through Fa Lian. Her cousin had been dangerous at the best of times but with the scraping of metal on metal in his throat now, he was more like a nightmare. “TAmeD bY tHe dRAGoN and SHe saYS wE aRE ThE pRobLEm?
We, was it? Fa Lian heard the words and felt Ryong Aang growl from within. The dragon recoiled and rebelled against the comparison and Fa Lian agreed. Together they would scour Steel Fever from Jaia and then there would be no foul mirror or themselves upon the land. Whatever she and Ryong Aang had become, it was not this twisted thing before them.
A slip became the decisive moment. A simple slick patch, created by the blood Fa Lian had spat from her mouth. That was all it took to make all the difference. As Steel Fever planted his foot, Fa Lian rushed forward. She knew how he would dodge, the muscle in his right leg tensing to launch him backwards. She had been waiting for this.
It was a technique that Ah Dan had taught her. Not actively but passively, she had watched the way that he fought. She had trained with him enough times to know why he almost always won. It wasn’t that he was stronger - he wasn’t. It wasn’t that he was faster - he definitely wasn’t. Ah Dan won their fights by wasting no movements of his own and by following all of the movements of his opponent. For Dan, it was the sticky mana that he left everywhere which allowed him to follow such things.
For Fa Lian, she relied on chance and luck. She hadn’t planned for Steel Fever to step on her blood and fall but she had planned to be ready for such an occurrence. When it came, she pounced. Momentum started falling in Fa Lian’s direction. She pushed her advantage, pushed Steel Fever further and further back. From the door, he was now essentially being pressed back into the right wall.
As though this were some kind of signal, Yurie and Hyun Soon ran past. Steel Fever became agitated, wriggling in Fa Lian’s hand and screaming his awful, tinny scream. She held him firm, slightly enjoying the feeling of power she had over her once fearsome cousin. She couldn’t stop every flail, however, and shouted a warning over her shoulder.
Certain that she was too late, Fa Lian cringed in anticipation of pain from behind her. The sound that Fa Lian heard from behind was not the slicing of skin and muscle or anything like that. It was simply a head impact followed by more writhing. Steel Fever screamed while retracting its arm. The hand and wrist at the end were completely shattered. A solid, well-timed punch from an armoured Hyun Soon? That would certainly do it.
While Fa Lian kept the monster busy, her allies ran past into the shadowy, dark space that filled the back of the room.
She would join them soon.