Depthless Hunger

The silvery clouds tried to invade Kai's mind, but he was no longer so vulnerable to Anaelina's sexual manipulations. When she struck at his throat, he caught her arm. Now that he had her by the throat and wrist he slammed her back against the wall and pinned her there.

"I can't believe it..." Anaelina somehow purred the words through the claw around her throat. "How have you gotten so strong?"

Her power was still coursing up both of his arms, trying to fill him with lust, but Kai was stronger than that now. He beat it back now, maintaining control of himself, and glowered at her. "Stop that."

"Fine." Her power vanished and she went limp, entirely within his power. "Are you going to have your way with me now?"

"I'm going to kill you."

"You know, I was honest with you, all those years ago. I grew up with nothing, just like you. The only thing people like us will ever gain in life is what we seize for ourselves. So I hurt a few people... isn't that true of Zae Zin Nim and especially Omilaena? Am I any worse than them?"

"You've tried to use me from the beginning..." But Kai found his grip slackening on her neck.

When she was free, Anaelina didn't attack him. Instead she dropped to her knees, gripping his legs and pressing herself against him. "And I was wrong. Please, don't kill me, let me serve you. I can help you drain those who were born with power and lord it over everyone else. I don't understand how these abilities of yours can be so powerful, but I know I can help feed them, if you'll accept me."

He was skeptical at first, but when he grasped her head he felt her mind submit itself to him, and then suddenly she was under his control. Anaelina rose meekly and followed him as he ran down the last staircase to the core that powered the First Crest's weapon. To test her submission, he ordered her to destroy it, and she did so willingly.

Then he rushed back to the others. He saw Omilaena with her throat nearly cut and Anaelina actually leapt into the way, taking the injury on her own arm. Troulon was no match for their combined forces and they raced on. Zae Zin Nim had somehow survived a long battle against Lilaetiel without having her cultivation drained, so Kai grabbed her as they ran. As soon as he had everyone free, he snapped the elven totem and they were all whisked away.

At first the others were skeptical of Anaelina, but she stripped naked and prostrated herself before them, begging to be allowed to serve. And in the end they accepted her, all of them coming together and-

No.

No, this wasn't true.

Kai realized he had one claw around Anaelina's throat and another driven through her stomach. For a moment he was massively disoriented, as if he was unmoored in time, but the truth was that it had only been a second. Nothing that he had seen since he touched Anaelina's throat had actually happened - he'd fallen into her illusion immediately.

Except instead of being consumed by the fantasy, he'd driven his other claw into her stomach. He didn't remember doing it or even intending it, but his arm was stained with her blood. Just red in the end, just human.

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"Heh." Blood bubbled from Anaelina's lips as she spoke, but she still managed to smirk. "I really thought... that one would get you..."

Her body was too durable for him to easily snap her neck, but he needed to make sure she was completely dead as fast as possible. Kai wished briefly that he had kept Isulfr's Bite active, because if he swallowed her whole he could be sure there was no chance she came back again.

"Don't have the guts to finish it?" Anaelina's eyes blazed silver again, and this time they weren't carrying any fantasy. Instead he felt her power reach out into his soul, trying to draw out his strength, just the way she had back in Deadwaste.

Except this time she was weaker and she was bleeding out. Kai resisted, then pushed back. He realized that Isulfr's Bite had never been what allowed him to consume monsters - that had always been the Monstrous Hunger - it was just a technique that made the process easier. When the hunger yawned open within him, the flow reversed and her strength began to drain into him. She didn't try to stop it, even as the glow in her eyes faded.

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"Did you ever mean any of it?" he asked.

"The story was true," Anaelina said faintly. "And the fantasy... would have been fun..."

Then her life force was gone. Kai drove her body to the ground and made damn sure that she was dead before he finally rose, panting for breath. He'd never done something like that and it left his mouth coated with a flavor he could only describe as silver.

But there was no time to think about that. He briefly glanced upward, worrying that his allies were in as much trouble as they had been in the vision, and then turned away. They were fighting to buy time to destroy the weapon, so he needed to do that before anything else could go wrong.

.

..

.

When Zae Zin Nim first injected herself, the rush was so intense that she feared she'd done something wrong. The world seemed to swirl in front of her, sometimes distorted purple and sometimes a pitch black that frightened her. And yet, when Lilaetiel attacked her again, her arm smoothly came up to deflect the qi claw.

Omilaena had implied that the injection would offer some protection against being drained by a demon, but Zae Zin Nim had no idea about the limits of that protection and this wasn't the time for testing. So when she dodged away from the next attack, she released an experimental qi technique against the demoness.

Lilaetiel caught it and closed her hand around the energy... and frowned. She clearly wasn't able to absorb it the way she had past techniques. Zae Zin Nim increased her offensive, unleashing attack after attack until the sides of the chamber had been cratered by her qi bolts. Occasionally she even managed to hit Lilaetiel and the strikes seemed to burn her.

With a loud howl, the demoness retreated and raised her hands over her head. The qi claws grew far longer, unwieldy but terribly powerful. Zae Zin Nim was ready for the next charge and so was unprepared when the qi claws leapt across the room at her.

Except she had seen Kai performing a similar technique many times before, and his claw was faster and heavier. Zae Zin Nim responded on instinct, bracing an arm in the way and also summoning her Coldfire Corona. She blocked the attack without budging an inch.

Of course Lilaetiel was striking again, this time with a sideways swipe, but she had miscalculated. These new claws were stronger, but they were so large that they were clumsy, especially in such a large chamber. Zae Zin Nim spun above the next strike, bounced off the ceiling, and shot back down to the demon, ducking underneath the next claw swipe.

Finally her palm impacted the demon's stomach, qi and mana and chakra flowing together, and she felt it penetrate. Lilaetiel coughed up blood... but she wasn't dead. The demoness reached out and pierced her claws into Zae Zin Nim's heart to drain away her power.

Or she tried. They were both surprised when the qi claws shattered before they penetrated Zae Zin Nim's soul.

Only now, as she saw it happen, did she understand what Omileana had done for her. There was a protective layer around her dantian, formed of Kai's brute force and Omilaena's poison. She had felt those same powers during their dual cultivation, and Omilaena had somehow tapped that same strength and given it back to her refined. So long as the injection lasted, all the cultivation that the demon wanted to consume was protected by a shroud of their love.

Zae Zin Nim clapped her hands on either side of Lilaetiel's head, striking with both a qi technique and raw force. The demoness somehow survived it, clawing weakly at her stomach, but Zae Zin Nim grabbed her head and slammed her into the wall, smashing until she stopped fighting.

When it was done the demoness dropped and Zae Zin Nim swayed on her feet. She'd taken a few scratches that might have been disabling before, but with the Pure Yin Shroud she was still fit to keep fighting. The problem was, when she managed to turn around to look for the others, she faced a wall of smoke. Not just the blue poison that was familiar by now - strange black and gray shades. The smoke resonated with chakra and couldn't be healthy.

But her husband and wife were somewhere in there. Zae Zin Nim gathered her Coldfire Corona around her and plunged in.

.

..

.

After so much trouble, Kai had expected some terrible challenge at the end of this path, but it seemed like all the Crestguard in their way had already run up to fight them. With no one else in his way and the others guarding his back, he leapt down the final stairs and found himself in the lowest chamber.

There was no doubt about the core of the weapon: a vast column of white marble reached from floor to ceiling, covered in glowing symbols. Whatever they were, the Alltongue Fruit didn't translate any of them. Cables snaked out of the ceiling from the First Crest and there were also much thicker metal pipes flowing from the bottom that arched back upwards. Even though the weapon wasn't active, every single piece of it was loaded with chakra.

No sense wasting time. Kai swung a Tyrant's Claw against the central column and was surprised when it skated off with a flood of sparks. His claw severed one of the cables going in and damaged one of the metal pipes, though.

Kai lunged to that one and hit it with a more focused Claw, tearing the metal apart. The elves hadn't known the exact shape, but in the abstract the weapon had to take energy from the First Crest, alter its form, and then apply it as a blast. The pipes seemed like an essential component they couldn't replace as quickly as the cables.

As he raised his hand to destroy another one, Kai's instincts screamed danger at him like never before. He leapt aside and saw a ghostly flame float where he had been standing before silently going out. Air swept through the chamber in the moment after.

Someone had just teleported inside and attacked in the same moment. Kai turned and saw Matiavel the Destroyer raise his hand.