The pain shattered my thoughts. Every millisecond was an agonizing torment. I took a breath, and the bones in my shoulder grated against the blade that was still lodged in my body. The agony nearly knocked me senseless. I lay on the cold stone, blood gushing from my wound.
“Do something!” Clem shouted. “You can’t let him die!”
But no one did anything.
No help was coming.
I had to save myself.
The pain nearly put me out of the fight, but the furious attack had also damaged the construct. Its weapon was stuck in the stone, and its limited intellect was entirely focused on solving that problem. It could’ve crushed my head with a simple swing from the mace or a stomp from its foot, but it was too focused on retrieving its sword to do anything else.
I had a precious few seconds to gather my thoughts and make a counterattack.
My serpents were still active, and I sent them slithering across the construct’s body like snakes looking for a warm burrow. The seams of the monstrosity’s armor were tight, but there had to be some space at the joints or it couldn’t move.
My serpents found an opening near the thing’s ankle and slipped through the gap. Gears and scrivened circuits hummed under my serpents’ touch, and I urged them deeper into the creature. I needed to find its center.
I had to kill it, before it could kill me.
The construct slammed its mace down on the stone next to my head, braced itself, and yanked on the sword. Its tremendous strength wrenched half an inch of the blade’s length free of the floor and dragged it through my tortured flesh and bone.
I roared in pain and clung to consciousness. If I blacked out, I’d be dead before I came to.
“No,” I groaned. “I didn’t come this far to lose.”
My serpents finally found what they’d been seeking: the Machina. They slithered across its smooth, blocky surface and found the points where thick copper cables connected to its jinsei circuits. I coiled the serpents around the Machina within the construct and pulled as hard as I could. The cables creaked, but they didn’t come loose. With a frustrated shout, I abandoned that avenue of attack. There had to be another way.
The construct gave another convulsive jerk, and more of the blade slid out of the stone. Blood sprayed from my wound, and a freezing wind poured into the ugly puncture. I blinked hard, willing the jinsei out of my channels and into my skull. I needed to stay alert, to keep myself awake.
Spots of light glowed like complex constellations near the ceiling. Their pattern seemed familiar, and yet utterly alien.
What were those lights?
The construct’s gears groaned, and jets of steam whistled from the cracks in its armor. With a final jerk, it ripped its blade free of the floor’s grasp. The weapon’s dull edges snagged on my bones, dragging me into the air. Blood poured from the hem of my robes and splattered across the creature’s armor.
The stars shone down on us.
No, they weren’t stars.
They were scrivenings.
On the gargoyles’ feet.
A desperate, horrible thought occurred to me. There might be a way out of this.
But it also might kill me.
I activated the Borrowed Core technique and forged a connection to the nearest gargoyle. I pulled at its unguarded jinsei stores and the aspects of elemental damage snared in its aura. I cycled my breathing and drew more and more of its elements into me. My aura blazed with fire and ice.
It had only taken a second, the blink of an eye during which I hung suspended from the construct’s blade and my life leaked out of the horrifying wound in my shoulder.
Before the creature could hurl me away, I rolled the dice.
A swarm of serpents exploded from my aura. They lashed out toward the soles of every gargoyle in the arena. I put everything I had into that one moment and stretched my serpents farther than ever before. I forced myself to channel jinsei, all that I could muster, to strengthen and elongate the tentacles.
They slammed into the gargoyles with perfect timing. The trap the statues had been set to guard was sprung. Their heads swiveled in the same direction at the exact same time. Beams of elemental force burst from their eyes and streaked toward me.
Time slowed to a deadly crawl. The beams were headed on a perfect trajectory to annihilate me. My core gave me gifts of speed and precision that few others could hope to attain. And in the split second before I was torn apart by that elemental force, I grabbed hold of the construct’s blade with my good hand.
And tore the sword out of my body.
I fell away from the construct in a shower of my own blood.
A dozen ruby blasts from the gargoyles streaked through the space where I’d hung from the sword a moment before. They slammed into the construct with devastating force. Its torso was broken wide open to reveal its complex workings. The Machina, a cube of unbelievable power and complexity, glowed from within the metal cavern with a strange and unwholesome light.
The pain was too much for me. I lay on the stone, and my head fell back. The construct was beaten. I’d destroyed it.
But Trulissinangoth was still out there. If she reached me, I was done for.
I willed myself to stand up off the floor.
But I’d injured myself too grievously.
My flesh was wounded beyond repair. My core’s delamination had reached a critical stage. Even with no new jinsei flowing through it, the damage I’d done was irreversible. It peeled away, layer after layer, a hot spike of agony through my center.
I lay back on the stone, dying.
I’d come so far, done so much.
And still, I’d lost.
