She's… gone...

Shisoka was swallowed by the growing void of Utsuki’s absence—perhaps devastated more by her loss than the twin daggers that had all but cut the Core from him. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and wait for his death... But he wouldn’t... he couldn’t shame her that way. Shisoka had loved Utsuki from the first moment he had laid eyes on her. Facing a guaranteed final death, she had not hesitated to save him.

Her sacrifice deserves more than my weakness. My last living choice will not dishonor her!

Shisoka forced his Essence to the severed ends of his severed Meridians and began to repair the route to his Core. Simultaneously, he gulped massive quantities of Spacetime and Life Aura through his external Meridians. Power once again began to flow through his body as he struggled to detoxify the spiritual and physical poisons in his systems. At the seventh tier of Spherical Attunement, Shisoka only needed time and a continued will to survive and overcome these poisons. So he did, and with eyes as hard as diamond chips, he saw his blood slow and stop pouring from his chest. His flesh knit together. Slowly, at first, then speeding up into the instant flash it should be when the toxins were purged. Through the stone mask his face had fused into, Shisoka stared at the ice monolith created from his wife's last act. Tears began to flow, and his knees almost buckled—

No. I will not allow my mind to go down that road right now... I will see her after I have finished here... and I will keep our date. The sharp sound of overlapping fractures echoed through endless growing fields. Cracks ran down the surfaces of the hundred-meter ice ball holding the vampire.

With a will of iron that all men hope lives within them; Shisoka divorced his mind from his heart and readied his blades. There is a monster coming...

And then it was there.

An unstoppable nova of ice, dirt, and Zindagee stalks blasted out in all directions as a muck-covered corpse driven by mindless power shot at Shisoka across the intervening space. Raised weapons and a lifetime of trained reflexes saved him before he even saw the insectile blur of snapping teeth and hooked hands attached to freakishly disjointed limbs. Gone was the cunning assassin. The creature hd now devolved into an abyssal terror whose only aim was to consume him—With horror, Shisoka realized he wasn't the only target on the platform. An instantaneous gap step later, he appeared before the still incognizant Aeneas. Without time to regret, he struck with a maximally enhanced back kick that shattered his son's ribcage and propelled him a distance to rival Xsias' earlier force pulses. He then spun 180 degrees in the same movement and slashed deep red glowing wounds from his now fire-enhanced blades into the madly clawing vampire. Shisoka’s blades cut into the beast's grasping arms as they closed on the empty space Aeneas had just occupied.

Not only was Xsias moving eighty percent slower than before, but the charred black lines from his strikes on her mud-covered skin remained for a fraction longer than they should. The frenzied animal's healing was sluggish and taking a full micro to complete. Utsuki’s fast actions and faster thinking had significantly depleted Xsias' gray Core along with everything else.

Thank you, my love!

Shisoka gap stepped behind Xsias' overextended reach and slashed her open back with a Force Essence accelerated dagger. He scored two hits before the vampire spun and shattered his partially erected earthen shield supported by his Force Attunement deceleration field. Jagged rents through his ribs and lungs followed the vampire's claws before he again gap-stepped away, traveling five hundred meters to gain a micro to cycle Essence for healing.

Black crushing death! She is still fast and strong!

Even so, Xsias’ starvation was keeping her from propagating skills. Hope grew in Shisoka when he heard the enraged carnality Xsias had become, breaking the sound barrier as charged to his new position. He gap-stepped once again behind here with his burning blades already cleaving. I can play matador to her toron...As long as I'm the only convenient source of Blood Essence for her to eat!

* * * * *

Josh and Sen sped with enhanced legs over the kilometers they had been thrown.

Hands thrown in frustration, Josh sent out a mental communication. ~C’mon Sen! We need to get there!~

Sen's eyes had been constantly upturned as he tried to catch glimpses of the streaking aerial forms through the canopy of bobbing flower heads. Even at their distance, the little he saw made Sen sure the speed and fluidity of their battle movements were far beyond anything he or Joshua could handle. To enter the fight would be a very deadly mistake. Both for them and possibly for Shisoka if he was distracted trying to protect them from their own overreach. Further complicating things, both opponents were in the air and decidedly out of reach. This didn't escape Joshua.

~Sen! They’re flying!~

Sen offered a patient look, agreeing with the obvious statement. ~Yes.~

Josh’s increasingly embittered look bunched his eyebrows. ~Well!? How the heck are we supposed to get up there!?~

There was so much wrong with Joshua's question that Sen hardly knew where to begin... Still, he tried.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Sigh. ~Joshua... These are Cultivators near and above the Tetrahedral Core formation. With an offhand gesture, either of them could splatter us over a wide area. It is beneficial’’ that they have decided to keep their combat off the ground. They could be sending waves of buckled deck plates that buried us, or hull breaches that sucked us into the void... ~

Thoughtful expression. ~Ok, ok, ok... I get it. You're right. Fighting on the ground would be bad... And I see why Shisoka wants to preserve the ship. But why would Black Eyes want that too?—~

A look of terrified understanding came over Josh’s face. ~Gods Sen! She’s planning to capture the ship...She'll have to kill or enslave everyone on it to make that happen! She has to be stopped!~

Now that Joshua had pointed it out, there was no question that he was right. But Sen didn't have any guidance to offer. He hadn't asked Joshua about his plan to defeat Black Eyes when they started their run. He was sure such a plan, as usual, would only exist when they were much closer to sending their spirits to the mortal soul nexus. But things were different this time. Right now, Shisoka was all that stood between Black Eyes and the rest of them. If he fell, based on the little he had witnessed of the fight overhead, all Sen could offer was standing in front and dying a split micro before Josh. The only thing he was sure of was that the attack would be so fast neither of them would see what killed them.

Concerned look. ~Will it come to that? Can Shisoka win?~ Josh asked through the Bond, having heard Sen's surface thoughts.

Shrugged shoulders. ~...I ...I am unsure... I need to see from closer.~

Josh eyed Sen and his suddenly mysterious frame of mind. But he didn't comment. Sen wasn't surprised at his brother's silence. This was war. War was Sen's area.

Sen nodded ahead. ~ Let's get closer so I can see better. ~

They kept running.

Even through the flower gaps, Sen understood the stances and techniques Shisoka was using. His form was perfect. No wasted movements. He always converted his dodges of her swipes into spinning counter slashes that drained her gray Core. The Talan leader was also using his Cultivatory skills to enhance his fighting. His rapier glowed red as he channeled Fire Essence to deliver extra damage to the undead. On the left, he was armed with a long dagger that glowed the yellow of Force Essence. Gaining increased speed and striking power. Shisoka was an unquestioned advanced master of bladed weapons. He was even several degrees better than Sen. Obviously Shiska had dedicated much of his life to advancing his physical combat skills. Far more than Sen had been able to yet. Immortals shunned combat in physical reams. When they had to, as he had against Brundox’s physical manifestation at their first meeting with Damni, Immortals would surge in massive Essence energy clouds and desiccate or explode the physical matter as was necessary…Sadly these were not options available to Sen any longer… His attention came back to the combat before him. It was genius of Shisoka to accelerate his shorter, quicker weapon for defense and use his longer, heavier weapon for offense against a lesser-skilled foe that tremendously outmatched his physical abilities. Sen would have been tempted to reverse the weapons' use in an admittedly futile attempt to damage her heavily and end the fight quickly. Seeing Shisoka in action, Sen had to admit that his own instincts would have resulted in him being too slow and eliminated in short order. Instead, Shisoka constantly stayed out of reach by parrying the blurring attacks of his faster opponent and was eliminating her with a thousand cuts.

Moreover, Shisoka had determined this strategy in the scant micros he had to heal from Xsias devastating assassination attempt on his Core. The words of Sen's Immortal trainers came unbidden into his mind.

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

I still have so much to learn in these mortal realms...

Even more than this, the commander's combat skills and field awareness were impressive. Shisoka was perpetually in motion, always able to position himself to let his weapons do the work of deflecting Black Eye's stronger and faster attacks. Shisoka never presented anything but a moving target, continually out of reach. He struck multiple times from all sides—vanishing randomly, most times fast enough to avoid Xsias' counterattacks, then reappearing in a new location to spring at her again. He scored several hits with the rapier. Its double edge, leaving charred lines on her dead flesh. Sen could learn many things under his tutelage. I only hope we all survive long enough to get a chance to ask him.

He and Josh slowed to a stop as they entered the clearing at the platform. Sen finally saw the two combatants with an unobstructed view as Shisoka masterfully executed his hit-and-run attacks two hundred meters in the air. And it confirmed his suspicions from his glimpses during their run. It was an understatement to say that Black Eyes combat style had changed from her initial attack. She had abandoned her blades entirely. Her body and movements jerked across the sky in feral and uncoordinated attacks. Wide-armed lunges, clawed hands, and snapping fangs. No obvious feints, techniques, or strategy... It was as if—Transcendence!

Violently shaking his head. ~Stop, brother! NOW!!~

Sen latched onto Josh's shoulders from behind and planted his feet into the ground. Two deep furrows dug into the soil as Josh was slower to stop his full-steam run into destruction.

Josh finally stopped with Sen’s full weight hanging off his back.

Confused look. ~Wha... What the heck, Sen—~

Look of focused fear. ~Black Eyes has entered starvation-induced rabidity! A drained feral combat state of the undead where the intense need to consume Essence from spirit beings eclipses all other desires. If we don't flee right now, we will be drained as empty as Sophie's juice pouches before we could even see her coming!~

Josh frowned. ~She really does like those juice pouches…”

With the timelessness of metaphysics, Sen sent Josh a fundamental understanding of the undead rabidity concept through their Bond. He ended it with mental images of shocked warriors being torn to bloody fibers. Most of the scenes were of fights that, until then, the victims had been winning. Sen saw Josh's face go from confused to dark and reflective as he fully understood what they faced in Black Eyes. They kept their eyes on her back and started to slowly back away—

Too little too late.

Black Eyes disengaged her dogged pursuit of Shisoka and raised her nose into the air at a new scent. She spun in a shadowed blur and pinned them in a stare of wide-eyed madness. With no gap, she launched toward them in a razor-edged intercept. With her snarling, mud-covered visage and hands bent into claws, Black Eyes was barely recognizable as humanoid.

Turning their backs and running now would only get them cut down and devoured. Sen flashed forward with blades drawn, a skintight earthen shield enveloping him as he bodychecked Josh behind him. With raised weapons, he spoke through their bond in a ruling tone he’d never used with Josh before.

~Run, now! I will hold her!~