Deep within the collapsed entrance, where dust still hung thick in the air like a funeral shroud, a third figure moved with desperate caution.
Bulk crouched low in the right-centered corner of the ruined floor, his massive frame pressed against the shadowed walls. His broad shoulders trembled not from cold, but from raw, animal fear. The sounds of the earlier cataclysm still echoed in his ears: the thunder of collapsing stone, the crackle of lightning, and Agatha's mocking laughter. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide deeper in the rubble, but he couldn't. Not while Camilla was still missing.
He glanced once toward the distant silhouette of the hovering witch, then quickly looked away. Don't notice me. Don't notice me. His thick fingers, usually so steady in a brawl, shook as he carefully lifted another boulder. The rock grated softly against debris. He froze, heart hammering, waiting to see if the sound had carried. When no violet sigils flared in his direction, he exhaled shakily and kept searching, pulling aside shattered slabs of stone and twisted rebar with as much silence as his giant body could manage. Dust coated his sweat-drenched face. Somewhere beneath this mountain of ruin, Camilla had been caught in the blast. He had to find her. He would find her.
Rate stood alone amid the settling rubble, chest still heaving.
Smoke continued to rise from his emaciated, darkness-fused form. The absence of his blade-tentacles left his back feeling unnaturally light and vulnerable. Pain radiated through every joint and blackened muscle, but the fire in his hollow eyes had not died. It had only narrowed into something colder. More focused.
He took one sluggish step forward. Then another. His movements were heavy at first, boots dragging through dust and broken stone. The dark saber hung low in his right hand, its unstable edge flickering weakly. But with each step, his body remembered its purpose. Coordination returned. The unnatural fluidity of his darkness-fused physiology reasserted itself. His breathing steadied. A low, guttural growl built in his throat, "this is only getting worse by every minute."
Rate's blackened lips curled. Direct assault had failed. Brute force had been answered with overwhelming magical dominion. So he would become what he was always meant to be, a shadow in the dark, "this is dragging on at this point, she's pushing us to the edge of collapsing at this rate." *She's definitely enjoying this taking us too lightly, toying with us.*
He aligned himself with the chamber's abundant darkness. The fallen stones, the swirling dust, the deep pockets of shadow cast by collapsed pillars all became his domain. Violet light from Agatha's lingering sigils only deepened the contrast;
*Quinn is already exhausted, I can't blame him. I'm quite impressed he stood this long, the only reason we're still breathing this long clearly show's out level gap is no where close.*
Rate activated Shadow Steps;
*She could have killed us, but for some reason she's still holding back. How irritating, I'll make her eat her own words for underestimating me!*
His form blurred. One moment he was marching forward in plain sight. The next, he melted into a pool of darkness at his feet and vanished completely. He reappeared ten meters closer, stepping out of a shadow behind a ruined pillar, already moving again before Agatha could fully track him. Then he disappeared once more.
Agatha's red-pupiled familiar eyes widened slightly. Through her sensory link, she felt the distortion, the unnatural ripple in space and heat signatures. But Rate was no longer where logic said he should be.
He emerged above her.
In a burst of void energy, Rate stepped out of the darkness directly overhead, inverted in mid-air like a nightmare descending. His dark saber screamed downward in a vicious overhead strike aimed at splitting Agatha's skull. The blade left a trail of black essence that hissed through the air.
Agatha reacted with terrifying precision.
Her passive necklace charm flared to life instantly. The golden-white barrier bloomed around her just as the saber connected. The impact rang out like a struck cathedral bell. Cracks spider-webbed across the shield, but it held. The force pushed her downward several feet before her levitation stabilized.
Rate didn't relent. He twisted mid-air using residual shadow momentum and unleashed a blistering series of follow-up slashes, horizontal, diagonal, spinning cuts, all powered by accelerated shadow steps. Each strike landed within fractions of a second. The barrier absorbed hit after hit, cracking further with every impact, but reforming microscopic fractures almost immediately thanks to the charm's passive reconstruction.
"You're faster now," Agatha murmured, almost impressed. "But still so predictable."
She thrust her left hand forward. Gravity Well.
A concentrated sphere of intensified gravity exploded outward from her palm. The space around Rate warped violently. His shadow step faltered mid-transition as the crushing force seized him like an invisible giant's fist. He was slammed sideways, hurled through the air, and smashed into a half-collapsed pillar. Stone exploded around him on impact.
Rate rolled with the blow, darkness swallowing him again before he hit the ground. He reappeared behind Agatha, saber already thrusting forward in a piercing lunge aimed at her spine. The blade struck the barrier once more. Fresh cracks bloomed. For a heartbeat, it looked like the shield might fail.
Agatha spun with alacrity-augmented speed. Her right hand wove a counter-spell. Repulsive Graviton Pulse.
The barrier itself became a weapon. A violent outward surge of gravity erupted from the golden-white dome, catching Rate's saber and pushing both blade and wielder backward with multiplied force. Rate's arms strained as he fought the repelling wave, boots skidding across nothing but air. The push bought Agatha precious seconds, enough for the necklace charm to pulse brighter, knitting the worst cracks back together.
Rate vanished into shadow again, frustration fueling his movements. He was pushing his body to its limits. The earlier lightning barrage had left his nerves raw. Every shadow step now carried a hidden cost, stinging pain shooting through his darkened limbs.
He emerged low this time, near the shattered floor, sweeping his saber in a wide arc while simultaneously extending two regenerated shadow tendrils (weaker replacements for his lost tentacles) to strike from below. The attacks converged on Agatha's hovering position from three angles.
The witch's familiar senses tracked every flicker. She ascended sharply, then dropped with controlled gravity acceleration, slipping between the strikes like a violet phantom. As she descended, she unleashed a focused Gravity Clamp directly beneath her.
Rate's shadow tendrils suddenly became leaden. The multiplied gravity crushed them downward, slamming them into the floor where they shattered like glass. His saber swing, already committed, slowed dramatically in the heavy zone. Agatha flicked her wrist, and a secondary gravity distortion yanked Rate's arm off-course. The dark saber whistled past her by mere inches.
"Impressive persistence," she said coldly. "But you cannot touch what you cannot reach."
Rate roared and shadow-stepped again, this time chaining three rapid relocations in succession. He appeared left, then right, then directly above once more, saber screaming in a decapitating horizontal slash. The speed was blinding. Black essence trailed behind him like smoke from a rocket.
The barrier took the hit. It shattered completely this time in a brilliant explosion of golden-white shards.
For one glorious instant, Agatha was exposed.
Rate lunged with everything he had left, driving the dark saber toward her heart in a thrust that could end the fight.
Agatha's eyes flashed with amusement and calculation. Her hands moved in a blur. Gravitic Inversion.
The space between them inverted. What was "down" became violently "up." Rate's momentum betrayed him as his entire body was hurled upward at crushing speed while Agatha dropped like a stone. The saber thrust missed by a hair's breadth, slicing only through empty air and a few strands of her violet robe.
As the necklace charm began its multi-second reconstruction sequence, Agatha retaliated instantly. She pointed both hands at the ascending Rate and released Chained Gravity Lances, dozens of compressed gravitational spikes that shot upward like violet meteors. Each one carried devastating kinetic force.
Rate twisted desperately, shadow-stepping mid-flight to dodge the barrage. He blinked in and out of darkness, but the familiar's enhanced senses fed Agatha perfect tracking. Several lances still clipped him, brutal impacts that cracked ribs and sent fresh sprays of dark essence exploding from his emaciated frame. Pain flared white hot through his body.
He crashed back to the ground in a controlled roll, breathing hard. The barrier around Agatha was already halfway reformed, shimmering back into existence.
The dance continued.
Rate became a whirlwind of shadow and steel. He shadow-stepped relentlessly, appearing from every blind angle above, below, behind pillars, within clouds of dust. His dark saber wove lethal patterns: feints, spinning slashes, sudden thrusts, and overhead smashes. Each attack tested the barrier's limits. Twice more he managed to shatter it completely through sheer relentless pressure and perfectly timed shadow-step combinations.
But Agatha was never truly vulnerable.
Her familiar's red-pupiled eyes granted her near-precognitive awareness of Rate's movements. Every time the barrier broke, she used those precious seconds with surgical efficiency, levitating higher, dropping with accelerated gravity, or creating wide-area Graviton Domes that slowed Rate's shadow steps to a crawl. The moment he tried to press the advantage, she answered with Repulsion Waves, Crushing Fields that flung him away before the saber could find flesh.
The chamber became a battlefield of impossible physics.
Boulders floated momentarily before being slammed downward with multiplied weight. Pillars groaned and cracked under localized gravity shifts. Rate moved like liquid night, vanishing and reappearing in streaks of darkness, but Agatha flew with graceful dominance, always just out of reach, her violet sigils burning brightly as she layered alacrity with precise gravitational control.
Her necklace charm pulsed rhythmically, steadily rebuilding the barrier each time it fell. She was playing a war of attrition, and she knew she was winning it.
Rate's movements grew slightly more labored. Each shadow step now carried visible strain. His blackened eyes burned with fury, but his body was reaching its breaking point. Dark essence leaked steadily from multiple wounds. Yet he refused to stop. He chained another devastating sequence, vanishing into the floor's shadow, emerging behind Agatha, slashing upward, then immediately shadow-stepping above to drive the saber down.
Agatha met the assault with a perfectly timed Gravity Mirror.
The incoming force of Rate's attack was reflected back at him. His own momentum, amplified tenfold, smashed into his chest. He was sent hurtling backward, crashing through two ruined pillars before skidding to a halt near the chamber's center. The impact left a trail of dark essence and broken stone in his wake.
He rose slowly, saber still gripped tightly, chest heaving.
Agatha hovered higher now, the barrier fully reformed once again. She looked down at him with cold calculation, her familiar's senses locked onto his every twitch.
"You fight like something that should already be dead," she called out, voice echoing across the devastated space. "Yet here you are, still crawling."
Rate said nothing. He simply stepped back into the shadows, preparing for the next assault.
In the far corner, Bulk continued his frantic, terrified search pulling boulders, whispering Camilla's name under his breath, praying the witch's attention remained fixed entirely on the shadow warrior trying desperately to kill her.
The battle raged on, a deadly waltz between darkness and dominion. Rate's saber flashed. Agatha's gravity warped reality itself. Neither could yet claim victory.
But time was running out for one of them.