Admittedly, using his Tetrahedral Hybrid Attunement skill was a last resort—a Hail-Mary pass that really should put him in contention for the Heisman. Josh knew it would do something… But what exactly? That was up for grabs. He could feel it pulling on both Mind and his Earth Essence. Braiding them together to accomplish its ends. This was new. Up to this point Josh had considered his Essence as vanilla formed from either earth or mind Aura. Something he would have to think about when he wasn’t fighting for his life…

And, using the Skill hadn’t been something he had discussed with Sen. Mostly because he hadn’t told Sen about its existence. Exactly how Josh had ended up in the position needing to use a last ditch effort at the very start of a fight was honestly a reflection of the quality of work they put into their planning. Which was decidedly piss poor. No question about that. He made a note to put more time into planning the next time he was faced with mortal combat with a cultivator two attunements above him. It was true that he and Sen had expected Kyon Shi to have some support… But really, a triple-Attuned, six-armed raptor skeleton that jumped out of insta-portals?! That possibility had been very low on their probability list.

The sane part of Josh’s mind interrupted his rambling.

What are you complaining about? Your plan was to delay Kyon Shi so Sen could get back here and chop him to pieces... Nothing’s actually changed in that regard. In fact, everything’s going exactly according to plan. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

And his sane mind was making a lot of sense, so Josh went with it…Now onto the tough part… Actually buying Sen the time he needs ...

If Josh was being honest, he really wasn’t worried about Sen dealing with the tomahawk, bone-in ribeye surprise that had bowled him down the deck. Josh had yet to see the limits of Sen’s martial abilities. He doubted that even this nightmare would bring everything out, either.

So, buying time it is!

Focusing on the here and now, Josh saw that Kyon Shi’s response to their current situation was a lot like how Ishan’s had been when Josh had first brain-jacked the Tiger Affin on the Raptor: Initial surprise and then a quick scramble for weapons that weren’t there.

The new battle ground they had appeared placed them fifty yards apart in a gray, lifeless world with the odor of death laying heavy in the stagnant air that hung around them. A thick layer of oily dust coated the ground like furniture covers in a haunted house. The outline of cold-blooded, sightless things that bore far too many legs could be seen as they crawled shallowly under the dust's surface.

A knowing look came over Kyon Shi’s face and his head nodded grudgingly as he chuckled through a smirk of admiration over dry, cracked lips. With hands held up as if to encompass the area around them, Kyon Shi walked to the halfway point between Josh and himself. He raised a jagged-nailed finger and tapped at an invisible barrier in front of him. A pulse of white light radiated from Kyon Shi’s nail point touched to outline the football field sized area that surrounded Kyon Shi. The sound of an empty five-thousand-gallon tank being hammered on accompanied the barrier’s opacity. Echoing through the battle space.

Lowering his hand, Kyon Shi looked up at Josh as if truly seeing him for the first time and he pointed a finger to emphasize every word. “Your surprises continue, thrall.” A serious and deadly expression fell over his countenance. “... How you brought us to my soul space, I have yet to learn. I hunger to claim your mind’s light along with these secrets… But I will feed you your child’s flayed organs for having the brazen arrogance of thinking you could donjon me in my own Umbra!”

Closing thin and leather eyelids, the energy drainer adopted a horse stance and began to intone a harsh-edged mantra. Darkness exploded from him and filled the space he was held in. The transparent boundary around Kyon Shi began to strain and loud cracking noises filled Josh’s ears as hairline cracks sprang up and ran along the cage's circumference. They quickly grew thicker as the pressure from the undead's dark mojo increased.

Uh oh...

Josh could feel his strength being pulled from him as Kyon Shi attacked the walls of the crystal boundary his skill had somehow created.

The bastard is draining me again! Status!

Nothing.

Status! Status! Status!

Still nothing... Then the truth hit him.

Wake up, Josh! You are in Kyon Shi’s mind. He doesn’t have your Probability Interface, does he? So stop looking for it!

God! I’m such a smart ass... How does anybody put up with me!

However, the feel of his Essence draining was a clue, even if he couldn’t see how much. This was a battle of wills—of their psyches and inner strength, which his Probability Interface calculated as Essence. Now that he knew what he was up against... he had an idea!

Josh cycled Essence through his Meridians and into the space surrounding him. Faster and faster it surged through the created loop. A white-golden vortex began to take shape and rapidly filled the area above him like Kyon Shi’s darkness had filled his side. The sparkling swirl enveloped his cage and started to siphon off the rancid power Kyon Shi had been cracking the barrier with. The light in soul space increased, and the smell of death lessened as Josh’s Essence gained its foothold. The splintering barrier walls also renewed like reverse-time video footage.

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Every muscle in his body was tense and his fists were clenched at his sides as he leaned forward. Teeth grinding from the effort of his mental power output. Sweat started pouring from his hair, face, neck, pits and crotch. But he wasn’t about to slow down. Oh, you want my Essence you fugly bastard! Here! Take it all!!!

The angry lawyer forced his cycling into overdrive and the intensity of his Essence outshone everything in the undead’s bleak soul space.

Both combatants were blinded by its blazing sun for what seemed like forever.

Josh held it for as long as he could, unsure of the passage of time. Then, panting, heart racing like a thoroughbred, lightheaded and no longer able to continue, he slowed down the cycling.

Eyes still bedazzled from the psychic lumens, Josh blinked to see what lay before him. Is he gone? Washed away from the iteration’s toilet bowl on a Mr. Clean commercial like the diarrhea splash he is?

One could only hope.

As Josh’s lightshow finally faded to less retinal-searing levels, Josh saw the energy drainer was down on one knee, head bowed and panting with the mental equivalent of deep retching breaths. Patches of white bone showing through blackened hide where thin skin and greasy strings of hair had been burned away. Nothing remained of the tattered lich cowl and robes he had always worn. Just a pile of charred saggy skin. And fortunately, as far as Josh could tell, he was a smoothy between his short,stubby, flying-mammal legs.

Kyon Shi rose slowly to his clawed feet, a feral slant to his stance spoke volumes about what Josh had done.

Volcanoes of enmity erupted in his calcified white eyes as the two of them locked gazes. “I. Had. To. BURN MY CORE ESSENCE!” The undead finished in a raging shout as he hurled his wiry frame at the crystal barrier shattering it and launching on an intercept towards Josh with all his claws extended.

Now that Josh had truly angered risen undead out of his arrogant posturing, the 44 year old knew that there was no iteration in which he could stop the death-storm of rage that currently howled at him. Nothing was going to stop this undead from applying his entire will to destroying the human who’d cost him so much.

* * * * *

Alysa was a small fish in a very big pond, but being frozen in place by cosmic bad guys was getting old. Still, as her father said, she should try to learn from her elders. Just probably not from Josh and Sen.

These two had arrived in a cringe-worthy fashion—storming the bay of a superior force with no concealment techniques, fallback plans, or any diversionary actions.

The very first and last thought that sprang to her mind was, If this is how they operate… How are these two still alive?

Sen had been dragged from her frozen field of view by a very nasty specimen from Kyon Shi’s warrior stable as it appeared and they went rolling across the decking. He hadn’t yet returned. Josh had ended up locked in place and not moving for the last twenty seconds with Nosferatu himself.

That pairing isn’t going to go well for any of us…

Soon after that, things had begun to become truly interesting.

Darkness had swelled around Josh and Kyon Shi, and they had flown apart like neighboring Coloso EM-mags that had suddenly been tuned to the same polar frequency.

Josh had been sent sprawling on his back fifty meters away from where he’d been standing. Kyon Shi had resurfaced like a knargon bristling razor plates after being bloodied in a hunt. The undead’s scratchy voice had screamed in a language she hadn’t recognized as he swiped his clawed hands at everything and nothing.

Locking on to Josh’s prone form, the energy drainer had leaped the fifty for his throat, and had almost cleared the distance between them when Sen’s saffron streak had intercepted his body arching through the air. The new battling pair had again left her field of view. Strain as she might, there was no breaking free from the space lich’s paralytic iron hold on her body.

A moment later Josh had righted himself and leapt from through her field of view toward the action Where ever that was. In the following micros, the three crossed her sight-line several times. Sen’s sword had constantly been flashing and usually ineffectively slicing off Kyon Shi’s arms and legs, only to have them instantly grow back.

Josh, completely unarmed—had been for the most part riding the undead’s back in a rear naked choke position. He’d tried gouging out Kyon Shi’s eyes, tearing the skin off his shrunken head, and once even reached over his head with two hooked fingers and rammed them into the undead’s nostrils, ineffectually trying to to turn his head away from Sen—

Daddy!

Sophie’s voice jubilantly cried out mentally as Alysa’s four-year old spiritual sister popped into being in their shared soul space.

A rush of mixed emotion flooded Alysa at Sophie’s arrival. When she came there was always a sense of ‘completeness’. Alysa somehow felt calm and reassured “better now” despite the battle going on around her and the uncertainty for all their lives. Moreover, despite the space marine’s body still being stuck helplessly in place in the physical world, Alysa was mentally freed upon Sophie’s arrival. She instantly joined her sister in their opened psychic dimension, sighing in the relief their soul space afforded. The warmth of Sophie as she ran up smiling and wrapped her small arms around the space marine’s waist, squeezing for all she was worth was the best part of her life…

…But Alysa couldn’t shrug off the alarm bells that were simultaneously going off in her mind. As ridiculous as the fight in the physical world looked right now, Alysa hadn’t been fooled by the spectacle Kyon Shi had been maintaining. The cowled undead could have met Josh and Sen with a room full of disruptors, swarming undead…or just the dozens of iron-bar-strong arms he had pulled her through his portal with. Regardless of how things had degenerated quickly from his original plan, the energy drainer was laying wait for something…

… And of all the beings I know, Sophie has an awful lot of spiritual energy that he could drain!!!!–

Realization slammed into Alysa’s thinking like an out of control railed transport. Terror fueled her thoughts as she dropped to her knees holding Sophie’s shoulders at arms length, “Go back!! Go back right now! This is all a trap for you!!”

But Alysa’s words were already too late.

Sophie’s attention was shot to the space directly above them, somehow perceiving the monster’s evil intention from beyond the pink floating clouds her space marine sister couldn’t see or feel.

Faster than Alysa could see, the four-year-old’s arms shot up like she was trying to hold the sky up over their heads and all around them a glimmering golden shield snapped in place. An instant later a meter wide swirling mass of obsidian filth slammed down on them from above like an orbital mining laser. The grass and colorful collection of fantasy animals around were instantly destroyed as the death that rained down on them absorbed the Essence supplying them existence.

For a long moment after the attack Sophie's eyes widened in fear and her shoulders began to buckle as the shield above them shrank and dimmed to a hand’s breadth from their heads. Then her countenance changed and she spread her legs and straightened her knees like a powerlifter pushing it back to its original place.

Alysa could see that her small body was drawing the Essence she used to generate their soul space directly into her meridians on the soles of her feet through the ground they stood upon. The gossamer shield she had created immediately brightened and expanded a meter on all sides of them. A strangely adult sounding voice grunted over her sister’s soft palate and through her clenched teeth in its strain as the void-black energy continued its pounding assault from above. Claws and skeletal hands taking form in its swirly eddies to pound the golden surface that protected them before being spent and disintegrating to black motes of energy, dissipating back to the iteration.

A small trickle of blood was leaking from both of Sophie's nostrils as her eyes squeezed shut in her effort to force the obsidian death pounding from above. The force from Kyon Shi seemed to redouble and the small girl's knees momentarily wobbled as she bent her arms that were raised above her shoulders to meet it. Sophie’s voice was haggard through her gritted teeth as she gasped,“Get behind me sister …and lend me your strength!”