Velik instantly adjusted his plan. Making a break for it wasn’t going to work when Eslaka knew he was planning on it. He’d already seen how fast she could fly in her true form, and he doubted he had a reasonable chance of escaping her notice if she was actively on guard.

Bet it’s hard to fly around with a broken wing, though.

“We could fight about it first if you want,” Velik told her.

“I would very much prefer not to, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, I very much have other things to attend to besides being some asshole’s test subject, so while paying him a visit is on my list of things to do, I’m afraid that following this scent trail your friend Tesir left for me takes priority.”

Thinking about it, Velik wasn’t really surprised she’d waited until now to push the issue. They’d both trusted each other only because it was obvious that they wanted the same thing: to get Velik through the sky bridge. Now that he was here, their priorities had diverged, and Eslaka was smart enough to realize that he wouldn’t meekly follow her to a sacrificial altar.

“You agreed to the study first to determine what set of circumstances led to your transformation into a divine beast.”

Velik looked her straight in the eyes and said, “I lied.”

Then he unleashed a [Dread Lance] at Eslaka, knowing full well it wouldn’t hurt her. He was counting on the noise, the light, and the mana cascading out of the skill to blind her to his next move. When she took an involuntary step backward and raised a hand to ward off the attack, his lips curled back into a savage grin.

That grin disappeared a moment later when a blade of brilliant shining mana sliced through his [Dread Lance] like it was nothing, warping the mana weave until the whole skill disintegrated. He’d never seen one dispelled before it could detonate, but he supposed it was fair to expect a few tricks from a divine beast who specialized in magic.

That did not mean he was just going to stand there and let her hit him with the gods only knew what. Velik was already six steps away, having dodged a wide quarter-circle turn as soon as he realized the [Dread Lance] wasn’t going to work. He lashed out with his spear while Eslaka was facing a different direction, only to have it rebound like it had struck the world’s strongest metal.

“You’re about as subtle as Tesir,” Eslaka said, not turning to face him. “It’s all speed and force with you, isn’t it? Subtlety and elegance are foreign concepts you just can’t see any value in.”

A sudden wind caught Velik and threw him into the air. He let it take him away from Eslaka, reasoning that if she wanted to throw him, he could pivot his intention back to escape. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple for him. Sharp blades of solid air slashed across him, creasing his skin and shredding his already ruined clothes even further. A particularly harsh blast hit the fingers holding his spear, but failed to cut skin.

Nice try, he thought. He was already a few thousand feet away from Eslaka after just a few seconds, a speed he would have boggled at just yesterday, but which no longer felt insurmountable. He could move at that speed, at least for a few seconds, and he doubted Eslaka could keep up this kind of wind speed for very long either.

Sure enough, the mana battering him fizzled out about half a mile from the entrance to the sky bridge. Velik immediately started falling, but there was no chance he made it to the trees below before the giant, long-necked bird flying his way made contact. Air streamers so thick they were visible to his physical eyes roiled around it, whipping about chaotically.

So much for distance. Back to the wing-breaking strategy.

At the speeds the two of them were operating at, their next exchange began and ended faster than any observer could have blinked. The instant before Eslaka reached him, he curled a leg and formed [Air Walk] above his foot, then pushed down off it. The boost to his fall speed was just enough that the massive bird swooped overhead, missing him completely.

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A second, third, and fourth [Air Walk] curved his momentum so that he was coming back before Eslaka got past him. His spear drove into her flesh right at the base of her right wing. The resistance was incredible, easily stronger than anything he’d ever fought. Not even Tesir had been that resilient to Velik’s attacks, though he’d recovered quickly enough from them.

Velik would just have to hope that Eslaka’s talents didn’t run in the same direction. If she could regenerate as swiftly as Velik himself did, this was going to be a very long fight. Or, depending on what other tricks she had, it might end up being a very short one.

He ripped the spear through the wing as hard as he could. Golden blood rained down and severed feathers fluttered away, caught on streamers of air that whipped wildly around Eslaka. One of those air columns slammed into Velik’s chest, throwing him into a free-falling spin.

Something blindingly white and sharp enough to draw blood slashed into his hand—Eslaka trying to disarm him again. The spear tumbled free from fingers that he no longer had control over as the tendons were severed. That they regenerated a second later was irrelevant; the spear was already out of reach.

Must have pissed her off with that hit to the wing.

Velik wasn’t the only one falling. Down a limb and apparently not capable of rapid regeneration like him, Eslaka had pulled into a sharp spiral in an attempt to regain some control and slow her descent. That also put her in the position to hurl spells down on Velik’s head, but he got the sense her heart wasn’t in it, because nothing she sent his way felt all that lethal.

That’s the problem with trying to capture someone who’s perfectly willing to kill you to get away. Now, how best to take advantage of that…

To start, he needed to get back into range. His spear wasn’t his only weapon, though he was annoyed at the loss. If nothing else, he’d need to figure out where it landed and retrieve it after the fight. That would slow down his escape, but he was pretty sure he needed a weapon to survive in a world where monsters reached triple digit levels of strength.

Then again, he hadn’t tried out his other new skill yet. That meant Eslaka wouldn’t know about it, no matter how much spying she’d done. With a one-two combo of [Air Walk] steps to push him back into range, he lunged at the giant injured bird with his bare hands.

Eslaka summoned a wall of wind to toss him away before he could reach her, but it wasn’t enough. [Air Walk] broke as he used it to force himself through, but without the quarter-ton spear weighing down on it, it was considerably more durable than he’d displayed earlier.

Eslaka let out a startled squawk as Velik pushed through her defensive spell, and more mana frantically erupted from her. He recognized the pattern, and was pretty sure it was what she’d used to repel his first attack back when they were still on the ground. Before it could solidify, he got close enough to grab a handful of feathers.

Pulling himself in with one hand, Velik raised the other and pulled mana through the essence configuration the limited personal system had tagged as [Shadow Striker]. An obsidian-black shaft of magic appeared in his hand, the dark cousin to his tried-and-true Harbinger of Dusk. It even curled and flexed in response to his will just like his old spear had.

Velik brought it down, plunging it through Eslaka’s back and into her chest cavity, then tore it sideways to cripple her left wing. More golden blood flowed from the wound, and she let out an avian screech of rage and pain. Twisting mid-air, she fixed him with a steely glare that promised death.

He met the glare with a smirk, then kicked himself free. Running on [Air Walk], he stopped his descent and even gained a few dozen feet of altitude. At the same time, Eslaka struck the top of a pine tree, plowing right through it and its neighbor in an explosion of wood shards and pine needles.

The third tree she struck was thick enough that it bled off her momentum when it snapped, dropping both of them into the forest in a tangle of branches, feathers, and indignant rage. Velik sprinted through the air, eyeing the destruction and scanning the woods below for his lost spear. [Shadow Striker] was good, even better than he’d expected, but he wasn’t about to throw away a valuable resource if he didn’t have to.

He spotted the spear a thousand feet to his left, lanced halfway through a tree with a two-foot bole. Swooping down, he slammed into the tree feet first, cracking it and ripping the spear free. Approximately one second later, Eslaka rose out of the wreckage from her own descent, back in human shape and floating on a tempest cyclone.

Velik could have continued the fight, but he realized something important. She was facing the wrong direction. In the chaos of her fall, she’d gotten mixed up, or maybe she’d just lost track of him since he’d kept moving. Either way, he had a quarter mile lead and she was looking north instead of west.

He dropped through the trees to the ground, then ran hard. Twenty seconds later, another furious screech shook the forest. Gale-force winds started tearing at the trees, even ripping some of the more fragile ones out of the dirt. By the time they expanded enough to rip through where Velik had recovered his spear, he was already another mile and a half away.