96 – Shadow Boxing pt. 4

96 – Shadow Boxing pt. 4

We continued our dance. He went at full power from the start, striking with the intent to cleave me in half clear in each of his swings as I slowly dialled up my own power. Or well, what I was dialling up was my toolkit and versatility.

A simple sword vs spear quickly became something much more fantastical as I started incorporating anything from illusions, bursts of speed, extra limbs clad in jagged claws, gusts of matter-consuming flames, and blasts of pure energy.

He had to defend himself on multiple fronts. I came at him from the front while my spells arced around him and struck at any sign of weakness he dared show while Atiesh targeted his back at all times.

Then he used the beam.

“Nasty,” I clicked my tongue as I watched it burrow through the wasteland and draw a new ravine into its flat face. “Too slow, though.”

I Blinked back in, just as I Blinked right out at the first sign of energy gathering in his spear.

He didn’t relent. Any sign of doubt, hopelessness, or giving up — that any normal human would have shown after I danced around him for half an hour — was absolutely absent from him.

His mind wasn’t just a fortress. Space Marines’ minds were fortresses, with gates, walls, weaknesses, and soft squishy humans inside of them that I could attack if need be, but not him.

The Shadowkeeper’s mind was a single piece of unbreaking and unbending diamond. Any telepathic influence slipped off of it or splattered against it helplessly and direct attacks on his body weren’t much more effective.

Every fibre of his being resisted being altered or affected by warp sorcery. It was just that though, resistance, not immunity.

I could still feel my gestating spell working in his body. It was doing its damndest to bring the fortress that was his body crashing down from within. It was a slow process, but it should already be sapping his stamina.

He struck out again, this time a piercing attack aiming to impale me through the belly, but a push of Telekinesis sent his pierce to the side and I kicked him in the chest with all the enhanced strength I could manage.

Flames danced on his form; green, red, white, and black, all latched onto him and ate into whatever they could find.

“You aren’t looking too good,” I noted. “Want to give up?”

Stupid question really. The answer was obvious, and it couldn’t even annoy a single curse out of him.

Not that he was looking all that bad — if you ignored the flames, not that they were doing much with his sigils and power-field holding them off for now — I struck him a few times but never drew blood.

All he had was some scratch marks on his armour, and despite my repeated attempts to skewer him at speeds he had no right to react to, he still did so anyways. At least he was struggling to keep up, every deflect coming at the last possible moment.

“Out of curiosity,” I hummed as he fended off Atiesh bombarding him with a variety of Spells. “What would you do if I ran? You do know I am faster than you, right?”

“I am one of many,” he said, his voice sounding only the slightest bit strained. “You can run, but you cannot hide.”

“So talkative,” I hummed, eyes going wide as Atiesh threw a huge fuck-off fireball at him that exploded into white flames, burning away all the residual warp energy in the vicinity. His sigils shined bright, but fizzling light a lightbulb right before going out. “Am I to be playing cat-and-mouse with you guys for the rest of eternity?”

“You are nothing but a tool,” he said gruffly. Sigils flickering, but as the flames died down, they went back to being as they were. “A broken one at that.”

“You know how to hurt a girl’s feelings,” I hummed. “No wonder your kind never gets married.”

“We are infertile.”

“I know.”

Maybe he was trying to play for time, or just fishing for information. I was certain I was not what he expected to find at the end of his hunt. Maybe he was curious?

Instead of continuing to banter though, he did what I was nervously waiting for since the start. He touched the black skull.

Goosebumps rushed across my skin even if my Danger Sense remained eerily silent, only giving me a faint foreboding sense of impending doom. I blinked away, a good dozen metres further than the maximum radius of the sphere he previously conjured.

The only reason my mind was still intact was the fact that my soul protected its core like an impregnable fortress.

Memories of a war that spread over more dimensions than the human mind could comprehend rushed into my mind.

It would all heal. It would. I knew that.

But that didn’t stop the liquid fury pouring into my veins as I stumbled to my feet. I glared at the distant form of the Shadowkeeper who stumbled out of a cloud of dust, skull, and spear held in each hand.

“You will pay for that.”

He scoffed.

My Avatar was whole, the physical substance was there, but I was weak. I felt like a truck ran me over and then went back to do it again for good measure. Despite every cell of my body bursting with energy, something deeper was barely holding on.

It’s all his fault. I gritted my teeth. Then I calmed down, the irrational anger slowly seeping away. I stepped into this fight knowing I might die and now I got angry that I got close to it? That was ... pathetic.

Still, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t make sure he went through the same pain I did.

But I wasn’t a beast, lashing out mindlessly. I was better. I was supposed to be more. I wanted to be more.

I got arrogant; I thought I knew all his tricks. I assumed he could only make a sphere-shaped null-field and that assumption nearly got me ... what? Dead?

No, my soul was fine. The only reason it even got into a bit of danger was because it wanted to keep the soul-thread active and take back the mind-fragment in the Avatar.

I wouldn’t have died, but I would have certainly lost a part of myself. Knowing which part, or how such a thing would have affected me was impossible. Maybe I’d have gone back to being as I was with an hour of healing, it could have healed by itself. Or it could have left a permanent scar on my mind.

Having two sets of memories was so weird. I was both the Avatar and the Soul, even if the two were separate at some point. The two were one now, they merged back together, though the seams were still frail. Something I would hopefully only have to worry about later. It seems to be healing at least, even if slowly.

I had to be careful. I could not take another hit like that. The stupid skull had to die, where even did the spike I shot at it go?

Narrowing my eyes at it, I saw that now the dark cranium was adorned with a deep scar running along its side. The fucker must have tried deflecting the spike, but it still hit his precious skull.

Gingerly pulling on my puddle, I grimaced as soul-energy came streaming through the thread. I felt droplets falling out of the thread, leaving my puddle but in no way making their way into my body. The channel I had trusted so much before was spotty and filled with holes and not only that, it felt like someone just poured molten metal right into my skull.

The pain was manageable, but I would have much less energy to go about until I healed back up. Annoying. Still, I was already planning to switch tactics before the fucker blasted me in the face with his spear.

“Alright,” I growled. “The ol’ reliable it is.”

When psychic power failed, one only had pure, unadulterated physical violence to lean back on. And tech.

I blinked, bio-energy already surging to transform my measly Psyker Form into the Combat Form, but I held it back for a moment. How one forgot something that was literally stored inside their bodies was a mystery of its own, or maybe I was just an idiot.

The Necron Flayer I’d kept stashed away, phased in my body, jumped into my hands and I fired it without any further fanfare. I should really use this phasing for something more useful than a budget store dimensional storage box.

The Custodian only had time to cover his torso with a gauntlet before the beam of sickly green energy smashed into him.

His power-armour held strong against the alien tech, annoyingly enough, but to be sure I kept the beam going until the thing started fizzing and giving out in my hands, its green energy storage spent.

I let the weapon phase back into my hand and let the transformation go through. It was worth a try. Still, I was growing increasingly jealous of that auramite power-armour.

With what soul-energy I had, I reestablished my control over my remaining Combat-Drones and handed over control of each to one Mind-Core.

Time for round two, asshole.