The pain was distant, ephemeral. Kai's mind focused entirely on the monstrous power within him and the answer that it contained.
When he'd come to Yulthens, he'd hoped to acquire dragon's breath, but fate had spurned him again. He had fought past it and sought his own power, but in doing so he'd abandoned that original goal. Dragon flame was a monstrous power, different from mana or qi, and that was why the silver flames hurt him so much despite all his defenses.
Another stream of it poured over him. New pain, irrelevant.
Infernotoad's Burst and Acidic Lance were the same sorts of skills, pure monstrous energy, but they manifested as tangible force. The boulder would break and the acid would splatter. He needed to render them spiritual, incorporeal. His monstrous power wasn't so flexible, but if he could feed the essence to something else... what did he even have?
Nirka cried out in pain and he saw that a spike of stone had driven through her leg. He could feel the urge to protect her, but he was still bound by stone and battered by flame. The only way to defend was to attack.
Kai threw himself even deeper into his soul, trying to complete his work in the eternal moments that existed within. Within his island, the Shadow of Death loomed ephemeral at the edges, still difficult for him to grasp. Well, he would grasp it now. He had consumed that power and it would bend to his will, would join his soul.
Another gout of flame, another cry of pain. Irrelevant.
The Shadow of Death was almost pure phantom, too difficult for his corporeal being to grasp. But as he fed the Infernotoad and Acidlance Queen into it, the darkness gained a more specific form. It responded to his will and became something he could grasp. No... something he could breathe in. Within his soul, Kai took a deep breath and felt his mouth fill with the fusing essence.
He opened his mouth in the real world and emitted pure destruction.
Shadows roiled from his mouth, churning like smoke and yet moving through the air in a fraction of a second. When they struck the stone defenses, they burst outward into a cloud that revealed flashes of acidic yellow and infernal red. The darkness carried a power that churned against the stone defenses for only a moment before it burst through, shattering the stone.
Traelisia was thrown backward, all her stones crumbling around her. She barely managed to land, one of her arms severely burned. After a glance at Kai, she turned and ran, pursued by Cragrila, but he wasn't looking at them.
"Come back here, y..." Suortril cut off and turned back to look.
Kai strode forward, tasting the darkness and acid and flame as wisps of his new breath escaped from his mouth. Expelling the dark breath had felt visceral unlike any skill that came before it, like he was releasing something from the depths of his being. The dark cloud roiled around Suortril, and though his prism was alight, wisps of shadow passed through its edges.
"You told me I was just an item in your ledger," Kai said as he walked closer. "You were wrong. You're just a step on my path."
"Now see-" Suortril unleashed another burst of silver flame, but Kai's darkness flooded around them. For a few moments the silver fires flickered in the darkness, then they snuffed out and the darkness rolled on, over the merchant.
For a moment he heard a scream of pain, then the sound was suffocated. The merchant's body twisted and thrashed as it burned, but no sound escaped the dark cloud.
When Kai's breath faded, nothing remained where once there had been an earthen throne, a crystal chair, and the greatest merchant in Yulthens.
Despite his victory Kai immediately turned, ready for Traelisia or someone else to attack him. No one did. In fact, all eyes in the harbor were fixed directly on him in fear. He searched for Nirka, ready to help her wounds and hoping she had survived.
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He found her, but she stared at him in horror.
Seeing himself reflected in her eyes, Kai felt something deep within him churn. The hunger was rising and the dark breath floating from his mouth eclipsed his vision until he could see nothing.
Zae Zin Nim stood her ground, and fought, and lost.
Not immediately. She had cultivated her entire life, pursuing the most difficult paths and even mastering the Blackblood Physique. Her training had spanned two continents, and her Coldfire Corona could defend her against the fatal strikes. But step by step, she was losing.
Ren Ziq Quen was a perfect cultivator, having followed every step in his transcendent path from birth. He didn't let his arrogance lead to mistakes, didn't rush in to attack, didn't let her set up any more ambushes. Instead he took her apart, one soft strike at a time. Obviously he was enjoying proving her inferiority with each and every exchanged technique.
Ultimately, she didn't think she could overcome the gap in power between them. Even if her principles had been correct, she didn't have the power to back them up. Her options were dwindling and she grew increasingly desperate as the fight continued.
One of her few advantages was superior Physique, though the Transcendent Divine Body more than made up for that on his end. She decided that she needed to attempt it anyway, taking an injury in order to interrupt his strategy of slowly bringing her closer to inevitable defeat.
They fought one another with windmilling strikes, always redirecting the other's force gracefully. She let it continue for several beats and then thrust out her palm, as if she believed she could land the blow. He immediately met it with his own palm strike, which easily pushed hers back and would carry through directly into her body.
Instead she moved with it, flipping backwards. Her feet hit him in the chin and he staggered backward. Zae Zin Nim managed to land on her feet and skidded back, wringing her arm. Even the brief match of palm against palm left her arm in pain.
When the other cultivator frowned and spat out a bit of blood, she knew that she had failed. She had weakened him and dealt various injuries, but every exchange cost her more. No matter what leverage she tried to gain, her opponent's superiority reigned supreme.
"You're a suitable champion for these miserable peasants," Ren Ziq Quen told her. "Strong enough to believe you're something, but just an imitation in the end. Just doomed uprising, you're a pathetic patchwork of different abilities, failing to match up to true power."
It felt true... but it wasn't. Zae Zin Nim looked into her own soul and realized that she was and had always been a cultivator. The trouble was that she hadn't understood what the word meant: it was broader and stranger and more wonderful than she had ever imagined before.
She had been clinging to the abilities that she'd already mastered, trying to follow the one true path that would only lead to her father. Foolish. A technique didn't have to be drawn into her fundamental cultivation for it to be valuable. After all, hadn't she spent months teaching the acid cultivators who were believed to be the lowest scum of Krysal?
Zae Zin Nim carefully lowered her stance and drew her qi into her palm. She met her opponent's gaze and didn't look away, didn't blink, didn't flinch.
"Want to go out with a bit of dignity?" Ren Ziq Quen smirked but dropped into the opposite stance and prepared another of his techniques. "I'll let you be killed by true brilliance, then."
They leapt forward, palm striking palm, qi fighting qi. Of course she was thrown backward, overwhelmed by his superior force just as she had been in every previous exchange.
This time, Ren Ziq Quen cried out in pain as the acid she had ejected from her palm clung to his arm. He struck at it with a qi technique that dissipated against the burning acid, then began screaming and striking the acid off his burning arm.
She summoned her final strength and leapt at him. He retaliated, but he was unused to such intense pain and his qi technique was scattered. Her Coldfire Corona absorbed the strikes and then she had reached him, her palm slamming into his chest. As his heart thrashed violently, she drew up the rest of her qi and struck him directly in the stomach, driving both qi and mana into his dantian.
Ren Ziq Quen's meridians tore themselves apart, unable to handle the surge of power. His heart was collapsing and blood poured from his mouth, but those were only markers of the fact that it was over. He slumped to the ground with glassy eyes.
After several heartbeats of silence, Zae Zin Nim dropped to her knees. She had exhausted so much of her strength in that attack that she wasn't sure she could have managed even one more palm strike. Maybe it had been excessive, but with luck the battle was nearly over. If only she could find a way to escape the Brightwind cultivators before they arrived...
At that moment, she heard a roar. Zae Zin Nim looked up and saw a monster of darkness and fire ascend above the city.