'Wait!' I said, holding my hands up, palms out.

Mihai grinned cockily. 'Scared?'

'Screw that. Where the hell did the Fourfold come from? When did pops talk to her and, for that matter, why were none of you surprised?' I asked, narrowing my eyes.

Mihai shrugged. 'I froze up when I saw her. Agent like her turns up, you know something big's about to go down.'

'When did pops talk with her?' I repeated. 'He didn't leave my sight when since we talked in Ghencea!'

'I. Don't. Know.'

I froze, realizing I was pressing my friend for answers he didn't have. Damn it.

'Sorry,' I said. 'It's just that...'

'You're scared. Like a sick man who feels death approaching,' he took in my expression and tried to grin encouragingly. 'Hey, relax! Doctor Codrea's in the building. Look alive!'

'Oh, that was awful!'

But I was grinning. We hadn't bantered like this since my return from the grave, and it was...refreshing. Good for the soul.

A transparent, spherical forcefield snapped into existence around us. Fifteen metres in diameter, it encompassed the clearing, both above and beneath the ground. So that Mihai could go all out, for my sake.

He started with cold. His wards protected him, but the ground beneath me and the air around me turned into solid ice, covering me, pressing into my skin and clothes. I didn't feel anything. I shrugged, and the ice shattered like glass.

He switched to heat. Fire blazed inside the forcefield, vapourising the ice and the ground beneath me for metres. My clothes turned to smoke in an instant, but I stood there, not feeling any difference in temperature. My skin wasn't singed. How could this strain my healing?

The fire consumed the air inside the shield. I didn't need to breathe, and Mihai was protected, but this wouldn't do. With a gesture, time rewound. The ground was untouched and the air was clean and sweet.

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Mihai curled one hand, and a spear of lightning appeared in it. Fifteen thousand degrees celsius, one gigajoule of energy, it came straight for my right eye, crackling in the air.

And was stopped cold.

Mihai frowned, pushing the lighting with his mind, maintaining its shape, but it couldn't pierce my eye, not even burn my eyelashes by proximity.

He gave that up, too.

Mihai hit me with all the elements of nature. He tried transmuting me into gas and liquid and metal, forced plasma hot as the Sun's core down my throat, bent space around me and tried to rewind me back into infancy. None of his magics overcame my undead nature and impossible toughness.

So, he switched tactics.

Enhancing his body with mana, Mihai blurred towards me, striking me in the chest with an open palm. The blow sent me flying, first past the clouds, then into space.

I was hurtling towards the Moon.

I landed with a silent crash, pulverizing a new crater into the surface of our satellite. It could have swallowed Bucharest with space for more cities, and was so deep I couldn't even see...

I couldn't see. My head was pulped. So, this was what it took to overcome my body...

It took a few moments for my shattered head to heal itself. My eyes were the last to heal. The crater was, indeed, deep. Like someone had pulverised a mountain range to make space for something new. I'd landed on my head, but now that I could see, my gaze pierced through the dust raised by my fall, yet couldn't see the edge.

Mihai teleported next to me, shaking his head.

'I'm sorry, David. I don't know what else to try...' he somehow said into the airless vacuum.

I waved him off and clapped him on one shoulder. 'You did your best,' I mouthed.

Mihai sighed, took my hand, and flew us back to Earth.