197: Yaksha (Patreon)

The guardian screeched out a sound halfway between maniacal laughter and a wail.

Vir fell and continued falling, right into his own shadow.

In the Shadow Realm, a dozen questions ran rampant in his mind, augmenting his fear. Why had the Yaksha waited outside? Why hadn’t it ended him the moment it found him? Was it waiting for him to open the container? If so, why?

It was almost as if it’d waited for him to retrieve the Artifact ribbon. Did it want that for some reason? But if it’d retrieved the cores from the box, why would it need him? It didn’t make any sense.

And what happened to the wolves?

The beasts had risked their lives to accompany him into the maw of this dark place. Were they dead? What happened?

Vir forced himself to calm down, channeling what he could of the Foundation chakra. Those weren’t the questions that mattered right now.

He was safe here, for his ten counts. He just had to escape. The mission was a bust.

While he felt terrible for the dead wolves, there would be time to mourn later. Right now, survival was his only priority.

Vir searched the shadow exits. Most were dark, as the rooms outside the vault were all unlit.

That made the Yaksha’s prana signature stand out, its prana signature blazing brightly in the darkness.

The… darkness? Vir thought. He looked back at the vault. The Yaksha was missing.

It must have moved the moment he’d sunk into the shadow. To where, he couldn’t say. But it proved that the guardian could move through walls, disappearing in one location and reappearing in another.

Vir searched for another exit. The Yaksha’s signature was there, too.

That’s weird…

He looked for others, but all were equally black to his eyes. In fact, they’d all gone dark.

The Yaksha.

It was gone.

Huh?

Vir took two full counts to comprehend what had happened.

That’s… What?

The Yaksha was moving in a world where time should have stopped. It was impossible. It should have been impossible.

Vir had never felt such terror before in his entire life.

Once again, Vir choked down the panic, struggling to calmly analyze the situation.

A task easier said than done.

He stared at the Yaksha, looking for any signs of movement. He found none. It hadn’t moved. The Yaksha was as frozen as everything else.

Just… when he looked away, it was no longer there.

The Shadow Realm had been sacred to him. Inviolable. It was his sanctuary from danger, where the world stood still.

And now there was another. An entity that ignored the rules.

Vir should have expected it. He should’ve guessed that an Automaton guardian built by the gods would have their powers. Strange, incomprehensible powers. It wasn’t simply a question of its strength or its speed. Its abilities defied comprehension.

His ten counts expired.

Move!

Vir picked the highest shadow above him. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was the fear of deep, dark places with an immortal executioner on the loose.

Not daring to emerge with his whole body, Vir reactivated Dance of the Shadow Demon the moment his hand emerged, sinking back into the Shadow Realm, surging prana to his skin at the same time. If the Yaksha broke through both Prana Armor and his seric Brigandine, Toughen wouldn’t help much. But it was all Vir had.

He almost made it.

The Yaksha appeared, slicing his leg as he passed between shadows.

The Prana Armor Vir had spent hours building was wiped away in a single blow. His seric armor cracked, the automaton’s blade sinking deep into his bone before Vir escaped into the shadow.

The pain consumed him, but it also drove the fear away, forcing Vir to concentrate on the now.

No matter how bad his injury, it could not kill him when he was in the shadows. Ashani’s pranites would work to heal the wound when he wasn’t, but Vir planned to spend as little time outside the Shadow Realm as possible.

It was now a race against time.

Vir let prana guide him, choosing the only exit that shone with it—the cylindrical elevator shaft.

Panic fueled his breaths, and terror powered his legs. While the shaft was just as dark as everywhere else, the prana density was higher, allowing Vir to see with ease.

Where he went, the Yaksha pursued, slicing at whatever body part it could each time Vir left the shadows. An ordinary opponent would find the task impossible—it moved instantly to Vir’s exit point, with barely a split second to attack as he slipped from one shadow to the next.

It was even harder here, where the pitch blackness acted like a single, massive shadow. There was hardly a gap of inches to strike at.

Yet the Yaksha was no ordinary opponent. The blade of its talwar glowed blue, buzzing with the sound of death. Like a swarm of starving hornets.

Relentless.

It cut his arm, eating through Prana Armor like it wasn’t even there.

Inevitable.

It sliced at his legs, and it would have bisected Vir’s torso if the Phantomblade’s spike shield hadn’t saved him.

It did. Thrice. Then it shattered.

It was then that Vir knew he wouldn’t make it.

his body took on more and more damage as he shot up the shaft. The pranites hardly had time to work, preventing him from recovering.

Vir’s body roared in pain, but to stop was to die. Something deep within him forced him to keep moving.

The pain is good. It means you’re still alive.

The pain sharpened his mind. It was the only reason he noticed a pattern to the guardian’s attacks. It was slower when he chose exits at the edge of Dance’s reach.

It’s learning. It’s predicting where I’ll end up.

The thought terrified him. How could any opponent read their enemy so perfectly? Let alone a technique like Dance of the Shadow Demon, which offered such a limited window of opportunity to harm him?

And yet, the Yaksha’s monstrous capacity for foresight was also its weakness.

I can use that.

Vir intentionally chose a closer exit, barely ten paces away. This time, he emerged unscathed.

He’d caught the Yaksha off guard. He’d tricked a creation of the gods.

It was a small thing, Vir knew. It might barely have bought him a few seconds of life. And yet, it changed everything. It meant the Yaksha could be deceived. It wasn’t omniscient.

Even so, it was a close thing. Realizing its error, the Yaksha immediately appeared at Vir’s location, just narrowly missing his foot before it disappeared through another shadow.

Exiting another shadow, Vir roared in pain as the Yaksha sliced him open. Both the tendons in his legs severed, and his arms hung limp at his sides. Vir had sacrificed them, using them as armor to keep his head and chest safe during his jumps.

Vir knew the end was near. The pain was all-consuming. Never had he been so close to death.

Nor would Cirayus or his ancestors save him here. He was on his own. Alone. In an elevator shaft in the middle of a long-dead city in a blighted realm.

If he died here, no one would ever find his corpse.

What am I even doing here?

Vir’s mind ebbed in and out. His world became consumed with thoughts of escape. Of death.

It wouldn’t be long now. Another strike, perhaps two, and he’d lose his arms. No orb in the world could restore lost limbs. He’d be crippled for life.

Vir consumed the full time with each Dance invocation, dreading the injury he’d suffer when he emerged.

And then, when he’d lost hope, he saw it. An exit that was neither black nor the dazzlingly bright white of the Imperium building’s lights.

It was gray. It was outside. Sweet, safe outside.

Vir emerged on the roof and instantly crumpled.

What was even the point of coming up here?

He knew he had a reason for it. He thought it was a good decision. But now, as the Yaksha floated up to him, its six executioner’s blades extended, Vir could no longer remember.

The Yaksha’s head rotated constantly, displaying its faces one after another. But they were no longer smiling. One face was frozen in a mask of despair. The other wept, red tears flowing down its face. The third… looked almost pleadingly at Vir.

It screeched, but it was not a cry of glee. It was one of despair.

The Yaksha wasn’t happy to kill Vir. It was tormented.

A sudden thought occurred to Vir.

Unlike Ashani, who’d slumbered her years away, this guardian had been forced to stay awake for millennia. In the darkness of that building, alone.

Vir didn’t know if Imperium automata could be driven insane. But four thousand years was a long time. Long enough, perhaps, to break even the strongest of beings.

It’s gone insane… And it waited for me to steal something from the vault… so it could pursue me here.

Distant memories from Ashani’s residual thought transference surfaced in his mind. The Yaksha couldn’t leave the vault’s premises. Not unless there was a clear threat to its mission.

Like a burglar.

“Please, let me go,” Vir whispered.

The faces rotated, and this time, its expression was an expression of sadness. Like it didn’t want to kill him. It brought its six arm-blades up.

And then it froze.

Huh… Vir thought dazedly. So that’s what a Wyrm looks like up close.

He now knew why he’d led the Yaksha up here. His subconscious mind had taken a page out of Cirayus’ manual.

When you can’t defeat the enemy, get another to do it for you.

The Wyrm disintegrated, falling onto the roof in a rain of tiny versions of itself. Vir knew well what would become of him if any of those touched him.

He didn’t wait to find out.

Without even bothering to get up, Vir braced himself and Blinked… Right off the roof.

Bones snapped under the force. He screamed.

The last thing he saw was the Yaksha’s face, looking up. Smiling blissfully.

As Vir fell, the sky lit up. Beams of red and blue pierced the clouds—the Yaksha’s weapons. Where they swept, the Wyrm disappeared, trivially erased out of existence.

His scream of pain turned into a wry laugh.

It was toying with me all along. It could have ended me any time.

Vir activated Light Step, reducing the impact of the fall. Even then, with his injuries, the landing nearly made him black out.

He couldn’t afford that. Not here, in the middle of hostile territory.

Vir forced through the pain and focused on restoring prana to his body.

The pranites had nearly sucked him dry, and if they ran empty, he’d lose them forever.

He could feel them working within him, mending his muscles. Where they worked, the pain was the greatest.

The pranites didn’t make him invulnerable. They’d heal him, yes, but it’d take hours before he could walk again. Far better than the weeks it’d otherwise have taken, but still an agonizingly long time to wait while a battle between godly beings raged above.

Of course, he didn’t need to walk to escape. Activating Dance of the Shadow Demon, Vir took up a position on a covered ledge nearby.

He kept watch. And he cycled prana. Holding onto the hope that the winds of fortune would shift his way.

Praying that Fate might allow a mortal to benefit from a war between living gods.