“I don’t want your help!” Tesir bellowed up at the sky. “This is my fight. Go back to hiding.”

In response, a twister descended from the clouds and plucked him off the ground like a man picking up a bug. Lightning flared in every direction, tearing through the winds and reaching out for the distant figure above, but the bolts couldn’t reach her.

She seems… stronger. But she’s not attacking. Is this a rescue attempt?

Velik couldn’t allow that, but he wasn’t keen on racing up into the sky to challenge two divine beasts there, even if Tesir was at an enormous disadvantage. [Inevitable] was far stronger than [Air Walk], strong enough that it might hold against Eslaka’s own magic, and if Velik could know for certain that it would, he would ascend without hesitation. Unfortunately for him, not only did he not know that, he rather strongly suspected the opposite was true.

It was a moot point. Tesir was a mile up and still going, well past the upper lip of the caldera to where the sky faded to black. And even that wasn’t high enough to reach the distant shadow that was Eslaka. Velik knew from personal experience that the higher he went, the less air there was to manipulate with [Inevitable]. Eslaka probably had leashed her own personal supply to make it that high, because he doubted there was enough up there to take control of naturally.

Just as he was concluding there was no realistic way to bring the battle back to Tesir, the twister tore itself apart in streamers of dust-laden air. Tesir dropped in a free fall, his body spinning and twisting as he picked up speed. Velik was very familiar with the concept of the absolute speed limit when falling, something that could only be overcome by external forces. He was equally aware that the impact wouldn’t be enough to kill Tesir. It probably wouldn’t even seriously hurt him.

That was before a burst of fire and air slammed into Tesir’s back, more than tripling his speed. His howl of mixed fury and pain was clearly audible even over the immense wind ripping across the caldera. Velik watched him strike the ground so hard that he was driven hundreds of feet straight down, throwing a plume of stone and dirt a thousand feet in the air and revealing the heated red glow of a magma stream underground.

Okay, not a rescue attempt then. She’s… helping, but why? Is it just because Tesir broke the agreement or whatever? Or does she think I’ll agree to be her little project once he’s dead?

He actually might agree to that if for no other reason that it would deliver him to the divine beast he most wanted to kill, but that would do so on their terms. It would depend how much stronger he grew from killing Tesir. If Eslaka was no longer a real threat, it would be a lot safer to use her to further his goals.

Of course, watching her pick a divine beast up several miles into the air and then pile drive him through hundreds of feet of stone until he breached a magma river had Velik rethinking exactly how strong Eslaka was. She hadn’t displayed anywhere near that level of power during his own brief skirmish.

Tesir emerged from the crater, his skin black and his eyes glowing electric blue. Magma sloughed off him, hissing as it plopped into the dirt and ignited small fires. With a wordless roar, he shifted back into his tiger shape and bounded upwards, running through the air in much the same way Velik did, only each stride took him hundreds of feet instead of twenty or thirty.

Fire rained down from the sky in great swirling balls, devastating the caldera and scorching Tesir over and over. He regenerated flesh as fast as it turned to ash, but there were limits to even his powers, and it looked like he was reaching them. No matter how high he climbed, he couldn’t reach Eslaka, and after a minute of futile struggle, he once again crashed down to the caldera.

The fire and wind cut out, leaving the whole area oddly, almost terrifyingly, calm. The storm wasn’t gone; it was just invisible, lurking just past the corner of his eye, unseen but still felt. It could renew its fury at any moment, and taking a single step felt like walking into a trap.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He approached Tesir anyway, each stride taking him fifty feet or more. He slipped past pools of fresh, bubbling lava and leaped new ravines cut into the caldera floor, and in a matter of seconds, he stood over the latest crater pockmark to scar the mountain. Tesir was crumpled up at the bottom, struggling to pull himself out of the stone he was embedded in.

“You didn’t win,” he snarled weakly when he saw Velik standing over him. “You didn’t earn this. You’re weak. Pathetic. Whatever deals you struck…”

Velik barked out a laugh. “I didn’t strike any deals. If she turned on you, that’s between you and her.” Then he leaped down into the crater, a spear forming in his hand as he dropped. “And this was never about the challenge. I wasn’t here for a duel. I’m not trying to win a competition. I’m here to put down a rabid animal.”

Then he plunged the spear deep into Tesir’s chest. Five more formed, one after another in the space of a single second, and he grabbed each one to stab it into the divine beast’s body. Tesir flickered, trying to transform, or to push a pulse of healing magic, anything to save himself.

[Dread Lance] exploded over and over again. Compared to the fury in the sky only a minute earlier, it was a pathetic display, but it was enough. The light of life left the great monster’s eyes, and Velik’s system reached out to take a huge chunk out of the essence streaming out of the corpse.

[You have gained 29767 essence.]

Eslaka stepped out of nowhere, only the slight ripple in the air giving evidence to the magic she’d used to hide herself. She stared down at the broken and battered corpse of a creature she’d known for thousands of years, and Velik didn’t see the smallest sliver of sorrow or guilt for her part in ending his life in those eyes.

Instead, she just shifted her eyes from Tesir to Velik. “You are satisfied?” she asked.

“As much as I can be, I guess.”

“What else could you ask for? You’ve achieved your vengeance. You even got to foolishly risk your life first instead of letting us examine you.”

“It doesn’t bring back the man he killed,” Velik said. “It doesn’t bring back any of them.”

“I didn’t take you for a bleeding heart,” Eslaka remarked.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand. I kill monsters to protect people. That’s all I’ve ever done. This one came for me and killed a lot of other people in the process. He got what was coming to him.”

“And now?”

“You want me to meet your researcher, right?”

“I was under the impression you were not interested,” Eslaka said.

What the hell is her game?

“I had different priorities,” Velik said.

If he had to, he was sure he could eventually track down the other divine beasts on his own. Alternatively, they might find him like that giant bat had. Either way was fine with him, so long as they died in the end.

Movement from below caught their attention, and they turned to see a trio of those strange lizard-people crawling out of the devastation. One of them lifted a whole tree that had been torn out by the roots and sent flying, allowing two smaller people to slide out from beneath it. Only after they were clear did it set the tree back down.

“What’s up with them?” Velik asked. “Monsters with tools and society? They don’t do that where I’m from.”

“It is their true nature when not suppressed by the system your gods put in place to enslave them,” Eslaka told him. She saw Velik’s surprised expression and added, “Not all monsters, of course. Many aren’t much different inside or outside of the system, but some of them are smarter, or at least they would be if they weren’t being tortured by a massive parasitical essence drain their entire lives.”

Does that change anything? Probably not.

Eslaka’s lip curled into a sneer. “Such is the fate of those who aren’t favored by the gods. Why they took pity on your pathetic prey species, I’ll never know. You are weak, you grow slowly, and your kind should have been driven to extinction thousands of years ago. Instead, the gods gave you your own little playground to keep your kind safe and built your system to speed your growth.”

“Well, sorry, I guess?”

Eslaka brushed past Velik’s half-hearted apology. “It is simply the way of things. One small corner of the world belongs to mankind, and the rest belongs to us. We ignore it for the most part, and your people remain ignorant of the truth.

“But that’s enough of a history lesson for the time being. Are you ready to meet the divine beast who elevated you beyond your own kind?”

Velik rolled his eyes. “Sure, I guess.”

Can I kill her? Maybe. Guess I’m about to find out, because she is way too dangerous to have standing next to me when I fight the next divine beast.

“Pay attention, then. I will tell you where to go.”

“Wait, what? You’re not coming with me?”

“I have other business,” Eslaka told him. “Now, are you ready?”

Shit, this changes things. If I’m quick enough, I could be done before she catches up. The second she’s gone, I’m spending this essence. If I wasn’t so sure she could see me do it, I’d do it right now.

“Yes. Where am I going?” he asked.