I stepped back into the air with a burst of Flight and ran over the branches after my enemy. The dizzying effect of using too much Vigor swirled at the edges of my vision, but I couldn’t stop now. The monk crashed into a boulder with a sickening crunch. Chips of stone scattered into the air. Still, the man hauled himself up from the impact.
“How did he get up from that?” Choshi asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but let’s see him get up from this.”
A Mud Geyser burst from the ground underneath the monk and threw him high into the air. I opened the palm of my free hand, activated Crashing Wave, and pulled the water within the geyser toward me. The monk spun haplessly through empty space toward us, and I hefted my warhammer for one final blow. I pulled a full somersault as the monk came in, just for some extra punch, and hit the monk with everything I could muster.
He vanished into the trees in a ball of silver flame.
“Surely that’s enough?” Choshi asked.
“You know, I don’t think it is,” I said.
Chapter Seventeen
I sprinted through the leaves with feather-light steps. I half-smiled when I realized that I was moving exactly like the heroes of a kung fu movie. My Vigor ebbed dangerously as I followed the burning wake of my enemy. The sounds of battle filled the air and alerted me to the fact that we had returned to the clearing around the Lost Shrine. Kumi wore a determined expression as she fought off a demon’s grasping claws below me. She flowed around her opponent, filled the air with her Song of the Sea, and attacked with her streams of purifying water. Her butterfly daggers scraped uselessly off the demon’s hide, and her water only slowed the monster down.
But I had to trust that she could handle things because I spotted the corrupted monk who should have been dead. The bald, crazed guardian of the Lost Shrine stumbled out of a deep furrow in the ground. Blood leaked from his shoulder, and a chunk of wood the size of a baseball bat jutted out of his gut, but he seemed only a little slowed by the mortal wound.
“What does it take to kill this guy?” I muttered.
The monk sprinted drunkenly toward Tolin, who hadn’t moved an inch since we had left the clearing. Tolin opened an eye and lifted a bushy eyebrow in an expression of distaste as I raced to protect him. Cold energy filled the air again, and the fiery streams of Flight under my feet vanished. I plummeted toward the ground with a curse, landed behind the monk, and turned to face him.
The monk was almost frozen in place.
His muscles stood out in stark relief as he tried to haul himself through the air, but it looked as if Tolin had slowed down the playback on a movie to a crawl. I took advantage of the opening and sprinted around the frozen monk until I stood between Tolin and his attacker.
“That’s a neat trick, old man,” I said, astonished.
“Did you just acknowledge my superior talent?” Tolin wore an expression of mock disbelief.
“Couldn’t you have done it earlier?” I asked.
“I haven’t had to exert myself like this in years,” he muttered. “It’s not as simple as it looks. Oh, he’s slipping out. You’d better—”
The monk returned to normal speed in the blink of an eye. Silver fire engulfed his whole body, bursting from his eyes and mouth. Tymo’s teaching echoed in my mind. The monk was bypassing his pathways’ natural barriers. I couldn’t let him turn into another Hamon Wysaro with centuries more experience. Choshi yelped as I whirled the Demure Rebirth around my head and clocked the monk across the point of the jaw. His legs buckled under him, but his momentum carried him straight into my clutches.
I ducked under a wild swipe and slammed my shoulder into the monk’s gut. The silver flames of his aura burned my skin as I pushed fire through my physical channels. I scooped him up, rushed across the clearing, and slammed his back into the rocky bed of the stream. The water bubbled and hissed from the sheer heat of the monk’s aura as I smacked my warhammer’s handle into his teeth.
“You really need to cool off,” I said.
The monk’s hand darted out and caught me by the throat with a crushing grip. The tendons in my neck flexed under his fingers, and I dropped a knee into his chest to drive the chunk of my Plank Pillar deeper. A strangled, half-drowned grunt gurgled from the monk’s throat, but he didn’t relinquish his grip. Spots danced around the corners of my vision, my lungs burned for air, and a grimace tightened on my face at his strength. I shifted my grip on my warhammer and levered it around the monk’s arm. I found the monk’s elbow joint and arced backward with a savage effort.
His arm snapped, and his grip vanished from my throat.
The monk was bleeding, tired, and on his last legs. Even then, he was still the most dangerous foe I’d faced. But his single-minded focus on destroying me was his undoing. I rammed the Demure Rebirth down into his throat and leaned on it with everything I had. The monk’s face vanished under the water. His body writhed underneath me, but the stream ground out his aura and protected me from the worst of his Physical Augmentation. Steam hissed off the surface of the water as I fought to keep the monk’s head submerged.
“Keep going,” Choshi urged me. “I can feel him; he’s almost done.”
The monk’s struggles ceased, and the burning power of his Physical Augmentation vanished. But I didn’t take
