“I’ll sneak around and enter the hall from a different direction. I’ll bait him away, then you run to the doors and open them. Then we’ll help Anza fight him,” Keldryn explained.

  “You sure you’ll be okay?” Mikayla asked. She looked back in the direction of the human figure that was Flyreh and Identified him.

  [FLYREH KONSTANTIN - LEVEL 58 - HUMAN]

  “He’s more than double your Level. Are you sure he won’t just kill you?”

  “Dexterity is my highest stat. And your lowest. I can do this, better than you can,” Keldryn insisted.

  “Alright,” Mikayla nodded, balling her fists. “Stay safe, okay?”

  There was a crash behind them and a voice rumbled, “I’m sorry to inform you that it’s too late for that,”

  Mikayla turned, already knowing what she would find. Flyreh was looming over them, his arms folded. His feet had visible dents in the ground; had he jumped straight across the main hall to reach them without letting them hear any footsteps? How freakishly strong was he? “Did you foolish children forget that I can Scan too?”

  Keldryn’s paw-padded fingers wrapped around Mikayla’s wrist before she could think of a comeback, and his heels lit up with white light. Heel Propulsion launched him back down the corridor and dragged Mikayla with him.

  They hit the stairwell that they’d just come down from, and Keldryn headed down instead of up, hoisting Mikayla onto his back as he went and using Skyward Grasscutter’s digitigrade legs to bounce down the stairs three at a time.

  There was a flash of blue, and by the time they’d descended the first flight Flyreh was catching up. He was now wrapped in iridescent blue plates tinged with maroon lines, which had a bulbous chest and long, slim legs that looked more like wings. A pair of actual wings, triangular in design, hung from his back, and disproportionately huge shoulders carried tubular arms that ended in wicked, grasping claws. “I should thank you, children,” he crooned from where his head was set inside a cyclops-like helmet that was all eye, like a vintage diving suit. “I’ve been wanting to field-test this Faerie-made Armour Core,”

  Mikayla’s eyes widened. The blue, insectoid projection was Asika’s lost Armour Core? Flyreh was trying to kill them with her way home?

  Well, that was just delightful.

  Keldryn hadn’t paused, continuing to charge down the stairs. He shouldered through a door, not bothering to close it or try to hide their passage, instead just pelting down the revealed corridor.

  Mikayla wrapped one arm around his shoulders and raised her other, aiming her hand and trying to pretend it was a rifle. As soon as Flyreh’s blue bulk burst through the door, she fired a Psychic Bolt that splashed against his armour.

  If he felt it at all, he didn’t show it, wings buzzing like a hummingbird as he launched himself towards them.

  Mikayla threw her Shield out of the gem, the white-red barrier taking the full weight of Flyreh’s charge. Her defence blunted the blow, but still sent Keldryn stumbling forwards and Mikayla went flying off his back.

  Her arms flew out to catch herself on the smoothed-stone floor of the corridor, and she scrabbled, trying to avoid being laid prone. With an acrobatic twist that Mikayla knew she couldn’t have done back on Earth, she sprang back to her feet, already bringing out her Sword to defend herself with.

  Instead, by the time she’d finished turning around, she saw that a rifle had been conjured in Flyreh’s hands and he was bringing its barrel down towards Keldryn’s head. The foxkin was struggling, but Flyreh’s foot had come down on the small of his back, pinning him to the ground.

  Mikayla panicked. Her mind lost all thoughts of how things worked in the Kaiju Coast, how there way no way that a single shot would take all of Keldryn’s Health, especially through his armour. People died when they were shot in the head, that was a fact which she could not yet believe to be untrue.

  And she could not allow Keldryn to die.

  So her Willpower drove adrenaline down her arms and she threw herself forwards on instinct, swinging wildly to deflect the barrel.

  Caught off-guard, Flyreh failed to react quickly enough, his finger tightening around the trigger as the rifle was knocked aside and shot harmlessly into the floor.

  “Go for his knee!” Nocturnus’ voice reached her, and Mikayla reversed her swing, twisting the blade and hooking it around the back of Flyreh’s knee, then sharply tugging. She didn’t know for sure if the back of the knee was a weak point like it would be on non-magical armour, but it was as good a target as any.

  Her impulse paid off, and Flyreh stumbled, arms pinwheeling and digging into the side of the cave to stay upright. Mikayla yanked Keldryn to his feet, and he nodded his gratitude, then conjured a Psychic Bolt in one hand and drove it into Flyreh’s face while they had the opening.

  “Argh! You starring little pissants!” the man roared, doubly staggered, and neither teenager hesitated in charging down the corridor, searching for an escape route.

  Mikayla scanned the doors around them as they went, all of which Keldryn ignored. Some of them were ajar, exposing cookie-cutter living spaces. It seemed like some kind of underground apartment complex. Since Keldryn had lived here, she trusted his judgement in ignoring all of the residences.

  Two corners later, they encountered another stairway. Keldryn went to head upwards, but stopped upon seeing that the upper level had been collapsed.

  “Did they fortify this place? Why?” Mikayla questioned, dismayed.

  Unfortunately, a week earlier, Lahlee had indeed been paranoid enough to order that several unneeded passageways be collapsed so as to stymie any invaders. The decision had made her unpopular with the grunts, but none of them were high-Level enough to dare contesting her.

  “Down. We’ll circle around through the lower levels,” Keldryn decided, hopping over the balustrade and pelting downwards. Mikayla followed, and at the next landing they slipped back into the apartment complex. After following the U shape back around, they were about to approach the first staircase once more when Mikayla suddenly held up a hand. “Wait,”

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  Keldryn quirked an eyebrow.

  “If Flyreh had chased us around the bend, wouldn’t we have heard his footsteps through the ceiling, passing us?”

  Keldryn’s eyes widened in realisation, then he flinched as Flyreh emerged from the staircase, having been hiding halfway up. “You’re dead set on giving me trouble, aren't you, girlie?”

  “Yeah, well, you’re the one who captured us and is stopping us from escaping. Your opinion doesn’t count,”

  Flyreh tilted his head consideringly. “Good to know,”

  He exploded forwards, reaching Mikayla before she could even process that she should be dodging, hammer in hand and slamming her into the nearby wall with enough force that cracks split the earthworks. Keldryn lunged for him as he rebalanced himself, but Flyreh caught the twin wrist blades on his arm and knocked Keldryn aside, then smashed him into the other wall.

  “Trip him!” Nocturnus commanded in Mikayla’s ear, and she swung her sword low, going for Flyreh’s knee. “No, not like that or he’ll -“

  Flyreh brought his foot down on the sword and pinned it to the ground. “Rookie mistake,” he commented with a roll of his eyes.

  “Do that,” Nocturnus lamely finished.

  In a flash of inspiration, Mikayla dismissed her Sword, sending Flyreh’s foot to the ground. He was off-balance for half a second, and she capitalised, resummoning her sword and launching a desperate, adrenaline-fuelled thrust to drive the blade into his chest.

  Flyreh took the blow, unimpressed - but when the blade drew blood he yelped in pain. “Ow! That - stars, that hurt! How did - you shouldn’t - oh, right,”

  Equally surprised by her success, Mikayla shoved him aside and moved to cover Keldryn as he picked himself up.

  “Ugh. Forgot I was wearing this thing, not my usual Armour,” Flyreh berated himself, regarding the blue, faerie-make Armour Core coating his body.

  “He’s open! Strike!” Nocturnus commanded, loudly enough that both teenagers heard it.

  “Right!” Keldryn sharply inhaled. “Asika’s Awesome Laser Barrage!”

  “Ooh, yeah! Asika’s Awesome Laser Barrage!” Mikayla agreed, repeating the words to fix the Technique in her mind’s eye.

  In unison, constellations appeared around them both, and they performed quick pirouettes with outstretched arms to create a total of ninety-six dots of energy. Mikayla winced, feeling her Mana drop precipitously.

  [MANA: 682/2000]

  But it was worth the expense, as more shots than she could count flashed down the corridor towards Flyreh. She had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen in distress a moment before the lasers splashing across his Armour obscured their vision of him. Every strike kicked up a spray of white and blue particles, the strikes taking bites out and filling the corridor with smoke.

  “Don’t stop attacking!” Nocturnus insisted.

  “Psychic Bolt!” Mikayla, agreeing, followed through.

  A blade burst out of the cloud and severed the spell before it could make contact. The force of the strike parted the cloud, revealing Flyreh once more.

  “You still don’t get it. Your Stats are just too low to have even a chance of touching me,”

  Flyreh’s Armour had changed. He was no longer clad in the bulbous, alien-looking blue plates; instead his maroon Mana had sketched Armour of the same colour, all cylinders with what looked like exposed pistons in its shoulders and knees. Claw-like hands and feet emerged from the ends of the cylinders around his forearms and lower legs, fingers and toes transformed into inhumanly dextrous tentacles and digging into the ground for extra stability. His chest was plain, with only faint lines shining through the featureless plate. His helmet was horned, like the (inaccurate) stereotype of a Viking’s, covering his face with chain-mail that crinkled into the shape of a man’s face, but with no openings for eyes or mouth.

  “Say, girlie, I know I invited you to take a swing at me. But I didn’t reckon you’d be such an idiot about it,” As he spoke, the mesh covering his face distorting to mimic stretching over lips, more maroon mana stretched into his blue warhammer. He swung it experimentally, the pistons in his limbs extending and depressing with pneumatic hisses. “You’ve cleared the first Schema Lock. Sure. But you really thought that’d be enough to survive getting close to me?”

  Mikayla was nonplussed, head tilted in confusion. “This is a high fantasy setting, and some modern stuff’s floating around, but why is your armour steampunk themed?”

  “Oh, you like?” Flyreh shifted his shoulders. “This is the Brass-Beat Brawler. It’s a collector’s item, an experimental design made by a mad genius. I got it for a steal,”

  “Lovely,” Mikayla rolled her eyes.

  Flyreh sprung forwards, streaks of energy appearing around him. Clearly it was some kind of Technique to close the distance. His hammer went up, already coming back down for a blow that would cave in their skulls if it landed. “Dodge!” Keldryn barked, throwing himself into a nearby door with a flash of light from his foot. Mikayla followed suit, kicking off and using her own Heel Propulsion to be several feet away from the impact.

  Flyreh’s hammer hit the ground with such force that deep fissures spread from the point of impact, but if missing frustrated him at all he didn’t show it, letting the hammer vanish as soon as he’d passed the point of impact and not letting his momentum abate, twin scimitars erupting from his hands. Mikayla barely managed to catch them on her shield, the force of the strike driving her to the ground. She landed hard on her ass, Health bar dropping from the sheer impact, but at least she’d avoided a fatal wound.

  [HEALTH: 842/1750]

  Mikayla silently cursed herself. She’d forgotten to ask Asika what Health actually meant.

  Whatever. Something bad would happen if it fell to zero. Probably, she would die. She didn’t want to find out. She shivered, trying not to think about the fact that, apparently, she was mathematically more than half dead.

  Wait, that wasn’t just her body shaking. The entire tunnel was shaking.

  She looked down to find the cracks Flyreh had created spreading, chunks of the wall collapsing and hitting the floor, which in turn fell away. Keldryn was trying to catch up, Flyreh’s face had fallen. “Seed of Chaos, was this already close to the dig site? Thought this place was bigger than that!”

  Then the floor beneath them collapsed, and they all fell.

  The Black Knight flickered in protest as the landslide swallowed up all three combatants, absorbing dozens of points of chip damage as Mikayla dismissed her Sword, tucked in her arms and braced herself for the worst rollercoaster of her life. The only mercy was that the falling earth dragged Flyreh away from her, and he was too caught up in the rubble to try to attack her again.

  Mikayla wasn’t sure if she was sliding or falling, perhaps a mix of both, but eventually she burst out of the stream of debris and found herself dropping into the most expansive cave she’d seen to date. Beneath her was an incredibly massive pit, so deep she couldn’t see the bottom, encircled by a balcony of earthworks around the edges.

  She hit the ground, thankfully landing on the balcony, and her Sword flashed into existence. Just like she had when escaping the Cavemaw Spider’s lair so long ago, she drove the glowing blade into the dirt and used it as an anchor. Rocks tumbled across her back and sides, but all her Strength and Willpower kept her fingers tight around the blade until the dust had settled.

  Mikayla forced herself to her feet with a spray of dust, getting her bearings.

  [HEALTH: 527/1750] Her Health had dropped even further during the tumble, but that was a minor concern at best. Keldryn and Flyreh had both recovered faster than she had, and her partner was making his way towards her with their foe in hot pursuit.

  Worse, there seemed to be only one exit to this cave, besides the giant pit; a single tunnel that was behind Flyreh’s advancing form.

  Keldryn drew to a halt, shoulder to shoulder with her, and they watched as Flyreh leisurely closed the distance, picking his way over the rubble. “I’ll admit, that was unplanned. But it doesn’t matter,” he called. “There’s nowhere to run and no hope left. Surrender, and I’ll make your deaths quick,”

  Keldryn growled, but didn’t have an answer.

  Mikayla took a long, slow breath. “Keldie? Do you trust me?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Great,”

  And before she could second-guess herself or delude herself into thinking there might be a better strategy, she grabbed Keldryn’s wrist and dragged him with her as she threw herself into the pit.

  guarantee you won't expect how it ends. :P

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