I popped Death Metal on both arms and tried to take a step forward to meet the balancer, but a sticky ripping sound stopped me. The soles of my sneakers were melting to the hull.
Up on the driver’s platform, Kest let out a surprised shout and dropped to her knees. She slammed her hands down on the softening metal. Chilly blue-white light blazed from her skin as she poured Cold Metal Spirit into the fan boat, trying to keep it solid.
I ripped my liquefying shoes free of the hull and jumped up onto the front seat. With Dead Man’s Hand, I searched for the creature’s life point.
Nothing. No glowing life point, no Spirit sea. Just an endless well of blackness that began sucking down Miasma by the bucketful. Dead Man’s Hand fell apart and disappeared into the void.
I grabbed Hungry Ghost out of my pocket, refilling what the balancer had taken. Miasma exploded off me, forming Three Corpse Sickness, and I sent them racing to meet the oncoming creature.
The balancer galloped through them, dispersing the blobs in a burst of turquoise and absorbing them. It opened its huge jaws, fangs glinting gold.
Absolute nothingness spiraled at the back of its throat. An endless void that not even light could escape from. Looking into that abyss felt like I was falling, dropping into empty space. My head spun at the enormity. You could fall forever there.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. Warm Heart Spirit poured into my Spirit sea, reorienting me and sharpening my focus.
“Don’t get sucked in!” Rali yelled.
The boat rocked as Warcry took a flying leap off the front, burning fists cocked back for a mega-Superman punch. The balancer turned its head to tear into him. He slammed a burning kick into the creature’s jowl, knocking its mouth to the side and snapping me out of the daze.
But there wasn’t any solid ground to land on, and the water was boiling. Warcry let out a pained shout when he splashed down. The boat rocked again as Rali launched himself after the redhead. Orange Warm Heart Spirit surrounded Rali like the corona around the night sun. He cannonballed next to Warcry, slapping him with some sort of boost or protection. Warcry stopped freaking out about the heat, and his red flames raged brighter.
From there, Rali tangled his walking stick in the balancer’s legs. It roared again, shaking the whole world with its sonic attack, and whirled toward Rali.
“That’s right, over here,” he yelled at it.
Dead Reckoning screamed that I was about to die and threw my muscles into motion. I sidestepped and spun just in time to see the angel of death swoop over Kest’s head and slice that huge scythe upward at me
Without Dead Reckoning, I would’ve been cut in half. With it, I just barely managed to get out of the way. The angel’s blade sliced through the corner of my shield and tore open my shirt, leaving a thin red line across my chest and shoulder. Thankfully Kest was down trying to keep the boat from melting instead of standing up, or she would’ve been collateral damage.
The angel banked over Warcry and Rali’s battle with the balancer.
“This is between me and you,” I yelled at the angel. “Call your monster off and leave my friends out of this!”
“You dragged them into it,” she said.
The angel didn’t care who died as long as she could cover up her mistake. I had to end this before she killed somebody besides me. I reached out with Dead Man’s Hand, but just like the balancer, I ran into a wall of nothingness where the angel’s life point should’ve been.
Behind me, Kest called, “I can’t save the boat! Hake, cycle as much Miasma as you can without internal alchemy! Freeze out your tissues!”
I hit Hungry Ghost and started cycling Miasma to every muscle, tons of it. Frost crackled across my skin, death settling into the tissues.
Metal crackled and crunched like a car wreck, and the boat dropped out from under me. I splashed into the boiling water. Steam exploded off me in a cloud, the frost from my Miasma and the heat from the balancer canceling each other out.
My feet hit the muddy bottom of the bog, and I spun around, spitting hot dirty water and searching the sky for the angel.
A boiling wave of water sloshed over me as a huge metal golem waded past, wielding a blade from the fan boat like an oversized anime sword. Kest’s face poked out of the golem’s head. It took me a second to realize she was wearing the remains of the fan boat crunched around her like mech armor.
Dead Reckoning freaked out again, and my muscles reacted, jumping me backward. Even with the early warning, I was too slow. The angel’s scythe blade missed my throat, but sliced through my collarbone like a sword through overcooked spaghetti.
I gritted my teeth and dropped Death Metal—the shields weren’t doing me any good anyway—then pumped Miasma to the gash until the blood pouring out of it froze over. My left arm hung useless at my side.
I couldn’t survive a physical fight against the angel while I was trying to hold myself together like this, and I couldn’t wait around for someone else to help me. Rali, Warcry, and Kest were busy fighting off that balancer.
That only left one option.
I reached down to the place where Sudden Death was stored in my brain. The technique wasn’t powered by Spirit like everything else I’d developed so far. Sudden Death ran on life energy. It was a million times more powerful than Spirit techniques because it used up years of your life every time you executed it. The chaos creatures had given me one free shot to use against the angel of death in return for helping them, paying the price themselves since they were already dead.
I brought my hand up like I was scooping the heart out of my
