Rivers of Mana coursed within him as he leapt from where he stood, his legs launching him into the air with force that cracked the stone beneath his feet. He went toward the trajectory of an almost-cleaved woman who should be dead, his body cutting through the air like a spear thrown by a titan!
The two forces rushed toward each other across the empty sky.
Damian, ascending from the Lands of Stone with Mana blazing around his form like blue fire given purpose.
The Holy Daughter, descending toward those same stones with wounds that should have killed her and blood trailing behind her like a comet’s tail!
Their trajectories went forward and shockingly met at a point perhaps fifty feet above the unforgiving rocks below.
Damian came to float right before the mangled body of the Holy Daughter in the instant before she would have hit the ground, his Mana-enhanced perception allowing him to time his arrival with precision that defied ordinary reaction speeds.
And in that last moment, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, something happened that he hadn’t expected.
Faint flickering white-blue wings manifested around her body.
They appeared like phantoms, like the ghosts of birds that existed only in the realm of Mana, spreading from her shoulder blades and catching the air with ethereal surfaces that had no physical substance but somehow still affected her fall. Her speed slowed, the terminal velocity that would have splattered her against the rocks being reduced to something merely devastating rather than absolutely fatal.
But she was still barreling toward the stone.
She would still have hit with enough force to shatter every bone in her body and scatter her organs across the landscape.
She would have splattered.
When...
SAA!
Damian appeared right below her, his timing perfect despite the impossibility of what he was attempting.
He came to grasp onto her body with hands that burned with Mana, his arms wrapping around a form that was slick with blood and torn open. The terrifying force she carried transferred into him, momentum that would have broken a normal man’s arms trying to absorb, but his Mana-reinforced body withstood it.
His bones creaked. His muscles screamed. His flesh compressed under pressure that seemed determined to prove that catching falling bodies was a fool’s endeavor.
But he held on.
And gently, with a control that came from somewhere deeper than conscious thought, he floated down toward the stone below.
The scene seemed to unfold in slow motion.
Damian looked at the girl in his hands and saw grievous injuries that would have made a battlefield healer weep with hopelessness. The crimson crescent that had struck her had opened her body from shoulder to hip, a diagonal wound that exposed ribs and organs and structures that should never see daylight. Her thin armor had been torn away along with the flesh beneath it. Her blood soaked into his garments and ran down his arms and dripped onto the stones that passed beneath them.
She should really be dead.
She should have died the moment that crescent touched her.
And yet she wasn’t.
His gaze eventually traveled to her eyes, and he found them open, barely, flickering with consciousness that refused to fully fade despite every reason it should have.
He saw the white wing-shaped pupils surrounded by blood that had pooled in her eye sockets from wounds above.
And the Holy Daughter looked at him.
Her consciousness flickered in and out like a candle fighting against a wind that wanted it dead. Her eyes blinked slowly, each closure threatening to be the last, each opening a small miracle that defied the damage her body had sustained.
She saw his face.
She remembered him.
Even through the haze of pain and blood loss and the encroaching darkness that promised an end to all suffering, she remembered him as the Dross she had just watched devastate the Sworn woman’s forces. The young man who had thrown logs across miles and killed Warriors like they were insects. The mystery that she and her master had been discussing moments before everything went wrong.
The moment she had this thought, all strength faded from her.
As if recognizing that she was in hands that might be capable of helping, as if deciding that she had fought hard enough and could now surrender to the darkness, her body went limp and her consciousness fled.
She lost all awareness.
Damian landed on the stones below while holding onto her.
His feet touched rock that was cold and hard and utterly indifferent to the tragedy that had almost painted it red. He stood there for a moment, the weight of the dying woman in his arms seeming far heavier than her physical mass should account for.
He looked at her frail and sad state, at the almost-cleaved body that hung in his grasp like something already dead, at the wounds that gaped and wept and promised that death was merely delayed rather than prevented.
But then he focused, truly focused, and he sensed something that made his eyes widen.
Her heart was still beating.
Faintly. Irregularly. With a rhythm that stuttered and stumbled and seemed ready to stop at any moment.
But it beat.
Something in her, some will or power or force that he couldn’t name, was keeping her alive despite injuries that should have killed her instantly. Those faint wings that had manifested to slow her fall, perhaps.
Whatever it was, she wasn’t dead yet.
But she would be soon.
Very soon.
Unless...
Damian became serious, his expression hardening with purpose as he looked at the woman in his arms. The Holy Daughter of the Covenant of the First Stone.
He didn’t know why two Imperators from different empires wanted her dead.
But for now...
"Persevere."
...!
BOOM!
Radiant blue flames erupted around him the moment the word left his lips, the power of the Primordial Tongue responding to his call with intensity that exceeded any previous use. The sacred fire wrapped around his body like a living thing, the same power that had healed his wounds and inscribed itself upon his heart now blazing forth to answer his command.
But this time was different.
This time, he was holding onto a nearly mangled corpse.
The flames flickered for a moment as they encountered something unexpected, as they found flesh and blood and bone that wasn’t his, a body that wasn’t connected to the will that had called them forth.
And then a few of them extended themselves.
Tendrils of blue fire reached out from Damian’s burning form and wrapped around the body of the Holy Daughter, the sacred flames touching her gory wounds with something that looked almost like curiosity. They explored the damage, traced the edges of torn flesh, examined the severed vessels and exposed organs with attention that seemed far too intelligent for mere fire.
Then they began to heal.
Her wounds started closing with speed. Flesh that had been separated knit itself back together. Vessels that had been severed reconnected and resumed their flow. Bones that had been cracked reformed with crystalline strength that exceeded their original construction.
The diagonal wound that had opened her from shoulder to hip narrowed and sealed and disappeared, leaving only smooth skin where devastation had been moments before.
But this wasn’t all.
The flames didn’t stop at healing the surface damage. They coursed into her body and permeated across her existence, the sacred fire exploring systems and structures that had nothing to do with the wounds he had been trying to close. They touched her bones and her blood and her organs, leaving traces of something that felt familiar even though he couldn’t name it.
And then they made a cycle.
The flames that had entered her body gathered something from within her and returned to Damian, flowing back into his form with a quality that hadn’t been there before. They carried something, some essence or power or fragment that belonged to her, and they deposited it within him alongside the power that had always been his own.
His body buzzed with sensations he had never experienced.
His perception flickered and expanded and contracted in patterns that made no sense.
And ever so briefly, for a single heartbeat that seemed to stretch into eternity, something happened that he didn’t know or see himself.
His eyes changed.
His pupils, which had been crackling with lightning-like tendrils of blue Mana, transformed.
They became... radiant blue wings.
Wings that matched the white wings in her eyes, but colored with the blue of his own power!
The moment passed.
His eyes returned to normal, or what passed for normal now.
And in his arms, the Holy Daughter of Stone breathed easily for the first time since the Crimson Imperator’s attack had nearly ended her life.