We ended up searching the nameless cult member and stealing both his storage ring and his pendant, which we had safely hidden away. There had been a brief argument before we left about what we were going to do with him, but we had ended up wedging the door closed from the outside; if he woke up, he would be able to shout and maybe attract some attention, but killing a defenceless person, even an immoral, complicit one was something I did not want to do. Strangely, there had been no moral compunction against ending him; when I had killed in the past, it had been in battle, one way or another, and I had written off the lack of visceral reaction as something that just happened to people in a life and death fight, but I was starting to believe that it – like many of the instinctive reactions I had to things in my last lfe – had somehow been removed.

Back on Earth, I had been anxious, neurotic and depressed, even before my terminal diagnosis. But since my rebirth, those things had been absent. I was taking the world as it came; torture, violence and magic included. The things I had experienced where strange, wonderous and exciting, but they would have had my old self curled up on the floor in the foetal position. But, even in the absence of all the impulses and habits of my old life, intellectually there were things I understood. I knew that a person needed food to live, and when that knowledge conflicted with my new reality, it had been a shock to the system. And I knew that killing a helpless person was wrong, even if I did not feel it. Of course, I really hoped that decision did not come back to bite us in the ass, because then I would really need to reconsider my position, and I did not want to be in a position where I had to reconsider the merits of killing prisoners...

Reff was not happy at the decision – at all – but he was a big enough person – pun not intended - to let it go for my sake. Neither was Riffa, but she seemed to be coming at it from a simple practical standpoint. Toria on the other hand seemed to consider it significantly more offensive than either of the risi, which was really something given that the Risen Throne had already targeted their home. The disciple of Weilou apparently considered allowing the conspirator to live as a perversion of justice, but had eventually conceded, if only because we really needed to head back to Ouhl.

It had been surprisingly easy to escape the Inverted Mountain; I had thought Riffa would have wanted to retrieve her sand, but she apparently had the equivalent of a warehouse of the stuff stored away. We had skipped going back to the lodging and simply climbed up to the wall and jumped off the edge. Riffa had created a sort of falling ramp to divert her momentum as she fell, along with Reff. Darina had of course simply taken the fall and healed right out of it, which I was careful not to watch, because ew. Toria had hovered her way down, now that we were no longer really concerned about being seen. And I... had underestimated the fall. It had certainly been reduced by my Path’s odd effect on time, but I had still ended up with a broken ankle, which is how I found myself being carried by Reff and waiting for the damned medicine the Earthen Sky had given to work its way out of me so Darina could finally heal the accumulated damage. I was really missing my healing.

But it was from my position on Reff’s shoulder, being painfully jostled as the giant took truly, truly long strides that really made me appreciate how much easier it was to run with long legs, that I saw the flash of light behind us. We had long since left the wall behind us and were approaching the point where the red grass would start to show up again when it happened; my Instinctive Precognition had triggered and a flash like a distant camera going off flared in the dark distance, and then a moment later Gan was there, forming out of brilliant lines. With a mental growl I noticed that the dwarf looked fine after our match, even though I knew I had hit him hard enough to kill some people. I guessed that the asshole sect had given him the good medicine.

“Look out!”

I had just enough time to yell the warning before he reached us, but thankfully it was enough, with the distances involved. Reff threw a leg forward and spun his linear momentum into angular, turning to meet the threat. The centripetal force did spin me out of his hands as he took up a defensive stance though, and it hurt when I landed, but I could understand it. The fall was unlikely to kill me, but having to hold me and fight might kill him.

I landed on the wet grass with a thud and agony speared into my arm and leg for a moment. The others had turned and were attacking, but Gan was moving about in flares of burningly bright light, and even as fast as Toria was compared to a normal person of her level, the dwarf outclassed her when it came to speed. I had some hope that the fiery cage she left behind would limit his movement and allow Reff to land a solid hit, but while he seemed to hesitate to cross them, they did not stop him. Reff’s molten armour did seem to pose the dwarf a problem, once it finished forming, but rather than contend with it, the stocky – if flamboyant – cultivator simply moved to threaten the others. Toria took a blow to the hip which took her out of the fight momentarily, and Riffa’s repeated attempts to encircle and contain him were countered by the simple expedience of slipping out between the gaps before they could close. Darina was attempting to limit his movements or travel with him by attaching to him in much the same way she had with me in the past, but he seemed to slip right out of her altered grasp time after time. I could tell that it was irritating my friends, but from the side-line, it allowed me to notice something.

Unlike when I had fought him, which had been both frantic and taken place over a very short amount of actual time, being out of the fight allowed me to grasp something that I had not at the time; when Gan was surrounded by light, he seemed to be mostly insubstantial, with blows passing through him. On the other hand, whenever he struck, he came to an almost absolute stop, with the entirety of his movement being contained in the attack. When I had fought him, the ability to match speeds had meant I was almost always attacking with him, which is how I had eventually kicked him in his stupid head. Unfortunately, the others – even Reff who was at least a stage ahead – were unable to match him, it seemed.

Groaning, I stood and balanced on one foot. I probably was not going to be able to pull of an echo punch without further damaging my limbs, but did have another option, and one I knew he had not seen before.

Focusing, I looked inwards to my Core as lightning spun around my system and wrapped my will about my out-bound Praxis and yanked it over to my sigil. The effort made me sweat; it was a process that had, to that point, taken me minutes to achieve, but in the moment, knowing the short asshole could zip over and punch me in the face at any second, I somehow managed it, though not without some mild discomfort.

Violet-blue turned to a deep, bloody crimson in an instant and I could feel the destructive energy beginning to grind away at my channels. Lamenting the loss of energy, I stepped onto my Path, dragging Praxis through my Exemplar and shouted.

“Hey, asshole, remember me? I only have one arm and leg, but I bet I can still kick your ass!”

My plan hinged on three things; the first was the fact that Gan seemed hesitant to attack Reff, but was fine with Toria’s flaming cables. This told me that he was fine while moving, but when striking was vulnerable. I was guessing that he did not put much into defence, since it would be so rarely required, moving through dangers without concern and attacking in an instant before ghosting again would usually leave little need for it. The second thing was timing; I was accelerating time because I knew I would only have an instant for the same reason, and I needed to land my attack, as I would only get the one chance... because I needed him to come to me. That was the third thing I was relying on. I simply could not run on a broken ankle; tough a cultivator’s body may be, but somehow super-speed did not seem like something that even a tough broken ankle would handle.

Thankfully, it seemed like my plan was going to work, or the man was going to attack me at least. In a subjective moment, the bright fighter was on me, his face masked in a dark scowl. At his approach, I held my crystal arm out defensively, pretending to shy away as best I could without actually moving, hoping he would take the bait. As he entered striking distance of me, he reached out to push my one good arm away – as I had intended - and in that split-second, I directed every erg of energy that my extensive channels could stand through my Core sigil, into my significantly more efficient prosthetic and then out into the world.

Red annihilation burst out of me, tree-trunk thick ropes of destruction that whipped toward Gan and smashed him back to the ground as they tried to dig through him to reach the ground, snapping up and away before lashing down again, a torrential rain of rough hammer blows that ripped chunks of flesh out of his body.

Seeing the results – and the fact that Gan was mostly flopping around – I cut the power. I watched his now unmoving form for a moment to see if he would get back up, but I was grateful that he remained on the ground, motionless.

“Shouldn’t have skipped... energy defence day. I guess.”

“That was a very irritating fight.”

Darina’s voice had a growl to it, and I looked over as she stomped over Toria, pointedly ignoring the hopefully unconscious dwarf, even as the lowing lines faded and darkness returned.

“With calm contemplation, the red lightning you used is very... destructive, Hunter.”

“Yeah, I know right? I’d seen it damage stuff before, but it’s kind of a lot against flesh...”

“In vague irritation, his ability to become insubstantial made him a most annoying opponent. This is who you fought for your challenge?”

“Yeah, that’s right, Riffa. I got lucky, I guess. I moved at about the same speed, so he couldn’t just fade away before I could hit him. Looks like he relied a lot on that to stay ahead of other people’s abilities. Is he... alive?”

Reff crouched down to check for a pulse, his huge fingers pressing against his squat neck before coming away bloody.

“With vague regret, he does seem to be alive, which is unfortunate for us and for him, given the damage.”

“Do we heal him...?”

“No, we don’t heal the enemy that just attacked us, you Void-blinded fool!”

The healer shouted from where she was healing Toria and I winced; it seemed cruel, but she did have a point, Gan had just attacked us, and all we had really done is take a tour of their sect and sort of knocked out a guest.

“Fine. We should probably get going again though; Gan may have been way faster than their other members and reached us first, but I doubt he’s actually alone. More will be coming. We should get out of here. How long until Toria is up and running, Dee?”

“Stop calling me Dee. And a few minutes, it seems he was distracted by the number of enemies and his blow only caused a fracture.”

“Great. Maybe you could check me as well...?”

*

***

*

The sun was rising over the distant city of Ouhl as we came to a reluctant stop at the border at which the angry aura would begin to affect us again. My arm and leg were still hurting, but I could move again on my own, the crap the Earthen Sky had fed me finally out of my system enough to get some real healing done.

We stood in a line, looking at the red grass; a heavy reluctance to step over filled me, and looking at the faces of my friends, who I knew were feeling something similar. We had to of course, if we were going to stop whatever was supposed to happen, but the energy suffusing the city and its environs was not pleasant, to say the least, and did not think that any of us had any desire to go back to being angry idiots.

“I guess... we should cross.”

“With reluctant agree-”

Reff did not have chance to finish his sentence; before us in the cool, reaching light of dawn the red grass began to blacken as a deep rumble sounded in the distance, growing louder as the ring of blackened grass rushed inwards towards the distant city.

“That doesn’t look good!”

I had to shout over the roar, and even then, I was barely audible; I could not imagine what it sounded like closer to the source. The closing border of black soon become almost invisible as it raced further and further away, until a few minutes after it started, with the ground shaking beneath our feet there was a flash of red that made my blood boil and a sound like the world collapsing.