[Auren: Objective - Repel Zealot Attack! Secondary Objective: Analyze Luminari Power Systems. Emma - WoodDust Capacity: 41% (10^35 J). WARNING: Right Arm at 38% Integrity! Melee Combat with Injured Limb NOT Recommended! Nanite Stasis Active.]
Emma's HUD exploded with red threat markers as the five Zealots spread out in perfect formation. Their leader smiled, those too-sharp teeth catching the light from the fragment's molten surface.
"The Master wants the anomaly," it repeated, flexing fingers that crackled with energy that hurt to look at. "The rest are dust."
They attacked without warning.
Fire erupted from their hands, but it wasn't normal fire. It screamed as it burned, leaving trails of shadow in the air. Ice shards followed, but these sucked light from everything they touched, creating pools of absolute darkness. Wind howled between them, carrying whispers that tried to burrow into Emma's skull.
[Scanning... Power Source: Corrupted Divinity (Tier 9 Derivative)... Signature Unstable!]
"Fuck this," Lucas snarled, his Kineticvance building to a roar. He slammed both fists into the ground, sending a shockwave that carved a trench across the fragment. Superheated rock sprayed everywhere. "Aisha, left flank! Chloe, with me!"
The Seedkeepers moved like they'd been fighting together for years instead of months. Aisha became a blur, her remaining eye tracking impossible movements as she fired kinetic bolts from her Techsynth arm. The shots weren't meant to hit. They were meant to herd.
"Gray, call their shots!" Lucas roared, meeting a Zealot's charge head-on.
Gray's eyes went white, his Mindpulse straining against the chaos radiating from their attackers. Blood trickled from his nose as his enhanced brain processed combat data faster than it was designed to. "They're blinking! Two on your left, Aisha!"
The Zealots didn't run. They tore holes in space itself, appearing and disappearing in jarring spatial rifts that made Emma's eyes water. Reality bent around them like they were walking through thick liquid.
"He's reappearing behind you, Chloe! Three... two... one...!"
Chloe spun, tears streaming down her face, her fist already in motion. "This is for MARKUS!" Her enhanced strength met the Zealot's magically reinforced robes with the sound of a meteor impact. The creature staggered, surprised.
Emma watched from her position near the Observer's wreckage, clutching her mangled arm. Her team was outmatched in raw power, but they fought like a pack of wounded wolves. Desperate. Loyal. Fucking beautiful.
Then the ground stopped shaking.
The Zealots froze mid-attack, their chaotic magic dissipating like smoke. The sudden silence was more terrifying than the battle had been.
Arydra landed without a sound.
The fragment didn't even crack under his feet. He looked at his Zealots with the expression of a teacher disappointed in particularly slow students.
"Pathetic," he said, waving a dismissive hand. "You cannot even handle broken toys."
The Zealots actually flinched. Whatever power they wielded, his was so far beyond theirs that Emma couldn't even process the difference. It was like comparing a candle to a supernova.
He turned his full attention to her.
Up close, he was even more wrong than she'd thought. Beautiful in the way all Luminari seemed to be, but corrupted. His skin had a fever-bright luminescence, and his eyes... his eyes were windows into something vast and hungry and absolutely insane.
"You interest me, anomaly," he said, his voice like silk wrapped around broken glass. "Your power feels... raw. Unsculpted. Like a star before it learns its name."
He moved.
Emma's enhanced reflexes were fast. Aisha's were faster. This was something else entirely. He was simply there, standing inches from her face, his smile spreading like a crack in reality.
"Let me show you what true power looks like."
His fist came up in a lazy uppercut. Emma threw herself sideways, raising her good arm. Golden light erupted around her, forming a shield of crystallized Stormgleam.
[WARNING! REALITYFLUX DETECTED! SHIELD INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!]
The punch connected.
The shield held for maybe half a second before cracks spiderwebbed across its surface. The impact sent feedback screaming through Emma's nervous system, making her injured arm convulse with agony. She skidded backward, her boots leaving molten trails in the stone.
"You have the fire of a dying sun," Arydra said, leaning in close enough that she could smell ozone and something else, something that made her stomach turn. "But you burn so inefficiently."
Rage flooded through Emma like liquid fire. Her Flight system kicked in, golden light erupting from her feet as she launched herself at him. The pain in her arm didn't matter. Nothing mattered except wiping that condescending smile off his perfect face.
They collided at ten times the speed of light.
Emma's fist, charged with every ounce of Kineticvance she could channel, connected perfectly with Arydra's jaw. His head exploded in a shower of golden ichor and bone fragments, spraying across the fragment in a grotesque arc.
For one perfect moment, there was just a headless corpse in crimson robes.
Then tendrils of flesh and light erupted from the neck stump.
Emma watched in horror as his head regrew in seconds. Skin flowing like liquid gold, bones clicking into place, eyes opening to fix her with that same condescending stare. Even his smile returned, exactly as it had been.
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE! TARGET USES CORRUPTED DIVINITY TO INITIATE ABSOLUTE CELLULAR REGENERATION! CONVENTIONAL LETHAL FORCE: INEFFECTIVE! Emma - Do NOT Engage in Attrition! I repeat: ATTRITION IS NOT A VIABLE PATH!]
"How do you kill something that won't fucking die?" Emma whispered.
Arydra heard her. His laugh was like breaking crystal.
"You don't," he said. "Let us change the scale."
He raised one hand toward the debris field floating around Vysoria. Emma followed his gaze and saw something that made her blood freeze. A small planetoid, maybe a tenth the size of Earth's moon, was moving. Not falling. Moving with purpose.
Arydra's fingers danced in the air like he was conducting an orchestra. The planetoid began to flatten, its surface rippling like liquid. Stone and metal flowed together, reshaping into something impossible. A blade. A guillotine the size of a mountain range, its edge sharp enough to cut reality itself.
He sent it hurtling toward them.
[WARNING! IMMINENT DOOM-CLASS IMPACT! KINETIC ENERGY: 10^38 J! CHAOS CORRUPTION PAYLOAD! EMMA - YOU CANNOT TANK THIS!]
Emma looked at the Observer's wreckage. At her team, still fighting Zealots, still trusting her to handle the big threat. At Lucas bleeding from power overload. At Aisha with her one good eye. At Chloe clutching Markus's chip like a lifeline.
She couldn't dodge. If she moved, the guillotine would hit them instead.
"Fuck it," she snarled, planting her feet.
Both arms came up, agony lancing through her injured right as golden light erupted around her. Not just a shield this time. Everything she had, everything she could channel, pouring into a barrier of crystallized Stormgleam that covered the entire fragment.
The guillotine hit like the end of the world.
Emma screamed as 10^38 joules of kinetic energy met her durability head-on. The barrier held for maybe a microsecond before shattering like glass, but it was enough to deflect the worst of the impact. The blade clipped her, sending her tumbling across the fragment in a spray of golden blood.
She carved a trench fifty meters long, her armor cracking, her bones creaking under stress they were never meant to handle. When she finally stopped, she was on her knees, panting, golden blood streaming from cuts she couldn't feel.
[MASSIVE DAMAGE SUSTAINED! BODILY INTEGRITY: 65%! Nanites at 150% Capacity! WARNING: You are adapting to the chaos energy... but it is also... adapting to you. New Skill Potential Unlocked: 'Chaos Resistance'. Allocation Points Required: 5.]
Arydra floated above her, arms crossed, looking like a disappointed parent.
"You bleed beautifully, spark," he said. "But peace is dead. And soon, so are you."
Emma wiped golden blood from her lips with the back of her hand. Her right arm was completely numb now, hanging useless at her side. Her left wasn't much better. Every breath sent fire through her ribs.
She looked up at him, meeting his fevered gaze with eyes that burned with pure, undiluted defiance.
"Not if I kill you first."
She pushed off from the crater, her Flight system screaming protests as it tried to compensate for her injuries. Golden light erupted around her, but it was different now. Wilder. Unstable. The power that had once felt controlled now raged through her like a storm barely contained.
[Emma - Power Output Spiking! Risk of Uncontrolled WoodDust Cascade! This is suicide!]
Maybe it was. Maybe she was about to burn herself out completely, leave her team alone in this cosmic hellscape with nothing but Markus's data chip and the hope that someone would remember they'd tried.
But she was done running. Done being afraid of what she might become.
If she was going to burn, she'd take this bastard with her.
Arydra's smile widened as she charged toward him, a wounded golden comet trailing blood and fury and light that hurt to look at.
"Now this," he said, "is interesting."