Maria swung her arms around, mentally yanking the flaming centipede heads forward and whipping them into part of the main body.

She couldn’t get what Ian said out of her head. Crystal wanted them to save the centipede and help it escape to another plane? It sounded ridiculous.

Crystal, what are you up to? she wondered as Vik sent wind coursing along the centipede’s body, fanning her flames. Maria could control fire and force spontaneous ignition from her fingertips, but fire didn’t burn well in the vacuum, devoid of oxygen. It necessitated greater personal involvement, where normally Maria could start fires and let them rage out of control on their own.

It was an annoyance, but at least she didn’t need to worry about keeping herself alive in the void like the others. She could see now why Ash had chosen this hunt as their pageant trial. The challenge of fighting in the vacuum taught a lesson that someone like Alan, who was all but neutered by the void’s emptiness, would be unable to forget.

Crystal never answered, leaving Maria alone with her thoughts and the rhythm of battle.

As they hurtled toward the atmosphere, the centipede had been weathered down significantly. Now the majority of its mass was in Ian’s hands, filling his range of influence, though Danessa warred against him, severing his control.

But Ian’s goal had shifted from killing the centipede to helping it escape. He caught Danessa off guard when he suddenly pressed the centipede parts into the living main body, turning dead chitin into a defensive aegis that shimmered with iridescent Death energy and crackled with blue lightning.

Then Ian turned around to look straight at Maria, his eyes intense and glowing with violet energy. I can’t overpower Danessa directly, he said. The centipede is an array. I need you to find a way to activate it.

Maria knew that the array would kill Ketu and Danessa, who wouldn’t know to smother their vitality. It would only mean the loss of one life each, but they’d respawn where they were ten minutes ago, all the way back in the depths of the void. With the centipede already on its last legs, their deaths would spell the end of the battle. If Ian and the others wanted the centipede dead, victory was theirs.

Most of Maria’s actual combat experience with her elementalism was learned within the Infinity Loop, in the minutes preceding Ari’s thrashing of Cunabulus. Most of her life, she’d been without elementalism, and naturally learned how to defend herself with End, weapons, and her own grit.

Her experience in the loop was far different from Ian’s, but fueled by a similar desperation. Ian had been alone and confused, desperate to escape. Maria had known exactly where she was and why she was in the loop, and how to exit at will. But if she failed to grow strong enough within it, she stood to lose her country and the war. The pressure had turned the loop into a crucible. And still, she’d failed, losing to Ian. It only confirmed the disdain her mother held for her until her dying breath.

Being transported to Eternity was the final straw, shattering her sense of control. Her entire style of combat revolved around ensorceling people in oaths they could only escape through death. What good was that when death was so cheap, so impermanent? Her elementalism, while powerful, was still fairly new, untempered–outclassed.

Back in Messeras’ plane, Karanos had seized her with barely an exercise of effort. She’d been completely helpless before him. As a grown woman, she’d never felt so helpless in her entire life.

But she’d grown since then. She could stand and fight amongst the other ascendants, no longer mortal and vulnerable. She, too, could be unafraid.

A sentiment of rebellion stirred in her. She had no idea how to activate whatever array lay dormant in the centipede, but she had to try.

“Vik,” Maria said. “I’m going to try and activate the End array in the centipede’s body. You all should be able to handle this section of the centipede without me. Be ready for Ian to cloak you in Death when the moment comes–you’ll need to come in close.”

Vik nodded and used her practice to relay the message to the others. With a flash of fire along her feet, Maria twisted and pushed off a centipede segment, propelling herself toward the front of the centipede where Ketu, Danessa, Marcus, and Ian warred. Now that the centipede was in shambles, Marcus had pivoted from eviscerating its body to attacking Ketu directly. He couldn’t kill the man thanks to Ketu’s superior ascendant energy defense, but he prevented the water elementalist from halting the centipede’s advance, allowing it to continue unfettered toward the far-off nethereal coil.

The array is going to need power, Maria thought to herself as she touched down on the centipede, one hand on a segment controlled by Ian, and another hand on the still-living body. But that would need to wait for when they got close enough to the nethereal light.

Normally when Maria dealt with other arrays, it was to break them. She sensed the array within the centipede like strands of thin chains. As she pressed her fingers in between the chitin, she realized that the chains were really shaped like interlinked segments of centipede chitin. It was different than any array she’d felt before. Instead of the typical arrays that relied on symmetry, geometric shapes, and text inscriptions, the centipede’s array was like a fractal, a pattern that repeated along its length. It didn’t have an obvious beginning or end.

This array is a mess, she thought as her awareness extended over the centipede’s body. But the more she probed its contours, she began to make sense of the chaos.

I need all of the shorn pieces to be in circuit, Maria transmitted to Ian. Make sure they’re all physically touching.

The centipede parts suddenly smashed inward, fragments that previously wafted nearby crowding and filling all gaps. It was then, with all of the pieces together, that the dormant array clicked into place. She sensed the winding circuit and its complexity. The fractal segments were almost a language unto themselves, imbuing meaning, almost like the scripts and sigils they used back home.

It was alien, but also fascinating. I could learn more from this beast than most ascendants, she realized, her resolve to help the centipede escape solidifying.

Ian, did Crystal say anything about the centipede’s intelligence? Was it instinct that led the centipede to create the arrays that snaked through its body, or was it something more deliberate?

It’s funny that you ask. She seemed convinced it was like herself–intelligent.

Maria squeezed her eyes shut. You didn’t think that was important to relay?

Was a bit distracted, Ian admitted. You think controlling all this mass and fending off Danessa is easy?

You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it, Maria said. Isn’t Danessa supposed to be one of the older, more powerful proteges?

Maria sensed his mental snort. I suppose. In a contest of healing, she’d win out, but we’re butchering this centipede. Every part of it that dies joins my arsenal. She’s trying to keep its main body alive now that it’s been cut down so much, probably so she and Ketu can try to kill us all off before dealing a final blow.

Not if we kill them first. We just need to hold out until we approach the nethereal light and the array can charge.

Is that really necessary? Ian wondered. Can’t we power it some other way? What about using soul gems?

Maria powered arrays with her own practice. The bigger the array, the more time and energy it required to establish. Some of the more complex ones, such as the array that kept the citizens of Selejo under her dominion, required multiple separate arrays that boosted one another, creating a confluence of power.

It was true, however, that many arrays ran off of–and required–certain types of energy. Transport arrays, for instance, required the energy of a Dark practitioner to activate, though most of the energy could come from unaspected energy, the kind used to power glossware like glossYs.

The array within the centipede’s body felt like the kind that required a certain type of energy to work, but Maria couldn’t be sure until they got close enough to the nethereal coil for the centipede to start leeching the energy into itself. It was entirely possible that it processed the energy before sending it into the array.

In that case, maybe unaspected energy would work. But Death energy from soul gems? She was skeptical, and told Ian as much.

Speaking of converting energy, what if you took the energy into yourself and used it to power the centipede’s arrays?

Maria’s mind automatically began formulating a response for why using herself as a capacitor would be impossible, but she stopped herself. Eternity was a land of the impossible–she just had to dare. Fine, give me some prismatic soul gems and I’ll see what I can do.

Some? A prismatic soul gem is incredibly powerful, Maria. I’ll give you five to increase the current you can extract, and even that will likely be too much for you to handle.

She couldn’t see Ian clearly from behind the wall of centipede segments, but she caught flashes of movement as he darted through space, perfectly at home in the weightless vacuum, puppeting himself with greater ease than normal without gravity acting against him. He’d been holding his breath the entire time they’d started the centipede chase, relying on his practice to keep his body functioning without a new source of oxygen. She knew he couldn’t hold on forever, but he projected absolute confidence as he sent his army of centipede constructs after Danessa, overwhelming the Life practitioner through sheer tireless numbers.

She jumped back as five centipede constructs burrowed through the wall of insect flesh and appeared before her, baring the gems socketed haphazardly on their bodies. Maria grasped one of the gems and yanked it free and its centipede host curled in on itself. She’d never used herself as a Death energy battery before. Staring at the gem’s obsidian surface, she wondered, How hard could it be?

She thought of herself siphoning the energy into her cold, dead corpse. Death energy, activate!

But nothing happened.

Ian, how do I absorb the energy?

You’re one of my constructs, Ian replied, his thoughts absent. She sensed him dodging a barrage of Ketu’s ice, which meant that Marcus was failing to keep the man occupied, and Danessa had officially admitted that Ian was more than she could handle. It was possible that Marcus even died, or suffered mortal wounds.

It should come naturally to you, he continued. My mindless constructs all figure it out.

Maria wanted to point out that there was a huge difference between decemantic and necromantic constructs, but decided it was moot point. Ian knew she was fundamentally different from the decemantic minions he used as cannon fodder, but if he thought she could do it, she wouldn’t let him down.

Especially if it was now Ketu and Danessa versus Ian–the necromancer couldn’t wait for the centipede to reach the nethereal light. They needed the vitality seeking array to activate now.

She held the gem up to her chest and grimaced. Other constructs had the gems socketed within them–was she supposed to insert it into her heart, or something similarly gruesome?

Then she had another idea, bringing the gem toward her mouth. It reached her teeth before she gave up–the gem was as big as her first, and too large to fit down her throat.

Y’jeni, this is so stupid, just work!

Maria clenched the gem in her hands and marveled as energy began to wisp off of it. She released her grip and the energy subsided. I’ve never seen anyone crush a prismatic soul gem for energy before, but maybe that’s the answer.

She returned the gem to her teeth, winced, then bit down with all her strength. The large gem cracked and melted into her throat as a liquid. If she’d been alive, the liquid could have entered her eyes and given her vital vision.

Maria had never actually heard of what drinking liquid Death energy would do to a person, let alone a construct.

As she reached for the soul gem in the second centipede construct, her body seized, vertigo crashing over her mind.