The silver alien's violet eyes narrowed as the last echo of Nastrus's final words faded.
The red crescent blade was raised again.
The four thick and glistening tendrils rose, snaking up the spiral staircase in deliberate arcs.
Zelaine crushed a fresh marble crystal.
Two sleek crimson cubes launched from her palms and spiraled down the central cylinder's curve like guided missiles.
She clenched her fist.
The cubes detonated with a strong and loud bursts, scarlet energy blooming just above the alien's shoulders and forcing him to lean sideways to avoid the full radius.
The black vine patterns on the suit sparked. A thin crack split across the left pauldron.
"Got a hit," Zelaine muttered. "Watch the tendrils."
Atiya kept his three portals open, Yai reservoir sitting at sixty-six percent and draining at three percent per minute.
He caught a chunk of shrapnel from the blast through the middle portal and sent it harmlessly back down the stairs into a console below.
The alien countered without pause.
"Purify."
A translucent orb of starlit water formed in his palm. He hurled it downward at his own feet. The orb splashed and erupted into a pillar of liquid light that raced up the staircase and washed over the cracked pauldron, sealing it shut with a soft steady glow.
Zelaine cursed under her breath. "He's healing faster than I can burn."
She launched four more cubes, smaller and faster this time, aiming for the portal's edges. The detonations cracked the violet rift's rim and forced it to flicker unstably for a moment.
The alien tilted his head.
"Tremetus. Twice."
Two miniature celestial spheres materialized, one on the landing directly behind Zelaine and one midway down the stairs.
They imploded in perfect sync. The dual shockwaves hit the crystalline shell hard, and her runes flared as the barrier held, but the force threw both of them backward.
Shoes skidded across the landing.
Atiya's Yai dropped to sixty-three percent. He redirected a length of flying railing through the low portal before it could take either of their heads off, sending it into the base of the central cylinder instead.
"Too many variables," he said, voice tight. "We can't keep trading blows like this. We'll run dry before he does."
Zelaine pushed herself upright and wiped a thin line of blood from her lip with the back of her hand.
"Then stop talking and redirect better."
The alien pressed forward. The tendrils rose again, six of them now, coiling up along the staircase rails like living vines again.
Zelaine countered with a ring of spinning cubes, detonating them in a tight defensive perimeter around the landing.
The blasts severed three tendrils mid-climb, ichor spraying in wide arcs, but the remaining three punched through the smoke and slammed against the barrier.
The shell cracked. Runes flickered wildly as they struggled to repair.
Atiya caught one barbed tip through his portal and sent it back down into the alien's own shoulder. The tendril pierced the suit and drew a thin line of ichor.
The alien paused. Violet eyes narrowed in annoyace.
"Good shot," Zelaine said, breathing hard. "Keep doing that."
The alien raised both hands.
Yai surged outward from him in visible waves, violet light rolling off his body and pouring into the portal.
The rift tore wider, edges fraying like ripped cloth. Energy coiled inside the opening like a storm that hadn't decided yet how much damage it wanted to do, dense enough to warp the air and set the central cylinder vibrating at a frequency Atiya could feel in his back teeth.
Twenty meters away, pressed flat against the far wall among the corpses, Correl crawled another inch toward the gravity regulator console.
He had been playing dead since the fight started, blood from a nearby body smeared across his coat for camouflage, moving one careful increment at a time while the alien's attention stayed fixed upward.
'I have to reach it,' he thought. 'Nothing I have seen so far works on this thing directly. But the gravity regulator might pin it down long enough.'
His wrist device beeped softly. Tremendous energy signature spiked from the portal.
'What the hell is that.'
The violet beam shot from the portal without further warning, a massive lance of raw melting energy twenty meters wide, surging upward along the staircase in a blinding column that swallowed everything in its path.
Zelaine's face paled and quickly activated her skill.
"Lotrose."
The semi-circular barrier reformed around them, stronger than anything she had deployed yet.
A large scarlet crystal bloomed between them and the beam like a hybrid of rose and lotus, six petals unfurling and filling with yai, the whole structure radiating in a brilliant scarlet bloom.
The beam struck the petals.
The impact was apocalyptic. Violet energy hammered the Lotrose and melted the outer layer of the barrier instantly.
Heat bled through the gap and scorched the air inside, blistering skin even through Yai protection.
"Hnnnngh. I can do this."
Zelaine gritted her teeth with blood already trickling from the corner of her mouth, pouring everything she had into holding the flower intact.
One petal dissolved in a spray of scarlet sparks.
Atiya's Yai perched at sixty percent and still draining.
'Too small. My portals are far too small to redirect something this size.' He stood there with them open and just watched useslessly.
'Useless. I am completely useless here. A complete dead weight. Mom is right, without more skills I am just something that needs protecting.'
Another petal went.
Zelaine spat blood. Her knees buckled but she held her ground.
The beam intensified. Metal along the staircase warped and began running in slow rivulets.
Third petal.
Fourth.
When only two remained, cracked and flickering at the edges, the beam finally sputtered and collapsed. The portal contracted back to its original size.
The silver alien lowered his hands and tilted his head, violet eyes carrying something that looked almost like genuine confusion.
'How are they still alive.'
The Lotrose shattered, the remaining petals dissolving into harmless scattered light.
Zelaine dropped to one knee, breathing in ragged pulls, blood dark on her chin.
Atiya caught her shoulder and held her steady.
Across the room, Correl had used every second of the exchange. He covered the last meter to the gravity regulator console on his elbows, pressed flat behind a toppled equipment rack, and drove his palm down onto the activation panel.
The device came to life.
Gravity spiked across a twenty meter radius centered on the alien. The air warped visibly. The figure dropped instantly, knees buckling, suit creaking under the sudden crushing weight. The tendrils slammed flat against the floor and stayed there, unable to rise.
The silver alien strained against it, violet eyes flaring bright, but could not stand.
Correl exhaled slowly from behind the rack.
'Got you.'
The alien faced the floor, silver hair spilling forward like liquid metal, the ornate staff lying flat beside it with the red crescent blade pressed cold against the ground and no longer glowing.
Behind it the vibrant portal distorted, edges warping and folding inward under the gravity, the whole structure destabilized and shrinking.
Luckily, Atiya and Zelaine were far enough up the spiral staircase to sit outside the twenty meter radius entirely. The air around them felt normal while the chamber floor below groaned under the strain.
"What happened?" Atiya asked, voice low, eyes wide on the pinned figure below.
They had no way of knowing what Correl had done.
Zelaine stared down with her brows furrowed, breathing still ragged from the Lotrose. "No idea," she admitted. "But it's working in our favor. He's pinned."
She wiped blood from her chin with the back of her hand, then turned to Atiya with a faint and tired smirk. "Babe. Let me drink your blood."
Atiya blinked at her for a moment. "Right. Vampire thing. Faster Yai recovery."
He extended his left wrist without hesitation.
Zelaine paused for just a fraction of a second, then leaned in. Her fangs pierced the skin cleanly. She took one mouthful, then pulled back and sealed the wound with a soft swipe of her tongue.
She checked her pockets. A handful of marble crystals remained. Her reservoir sat at a dangerous twenty-three percent.
I need to take the chance now.
She crushed the remaining crystals in her palms, fresh blood welling up from the cuts as violet energy surged around her hands. Pain flared and she let it.
A beam of concentrated scarlet light shot from her outstretched fingers, aimed straight for the alien's pinned form.
However it dissipated before it reached him. Fizzled into harmless sparks mid-air as though swallowed by something invisible.
"Ughhh."
Zelaine staggered, clutching her new wounds.
Atiya spun toward her.
He caught the movement from the corner of his eye too late. Nongban, who had been standing silent and completely still behind them the entire time, drew a slim knife from his coat in one smooth motion and slashed it across Zelaine's chest.
Blood gushed, bright and sudden.
"What are you doing!"
Atiya lunged, fist already moving. Nongban ducked under the swing with eerie unhurried grace, then drove the knife downward in a single clean motion and pinned Atiya's right foot to the metal floor through the top of his shoe.
"AGGGHHHH!"
The pain exploded up his leg and dropped him to one knee, hands flying to the hilt. Nongban straightened beside him and wiped the blade on his sleeve.
"A splendid display of skills," he said, pleasantly, almost warmly. "But now let me take the stage. I have a performance to give."
He stepped off the landing without looking back and dropped straight down, falling twenty meters to the lab floor below. He landed with his knees barely bending, the impact absorbed as though it were nothing.
The gravity field, twenty meters of crushing artificial weight, did not touch him. Not a single hair on his red head stirred.
Atiya wrenched the knife free from his foot with a hiss of pain, and blood spreaded dark beneath him. He pressed his hand immediately to Zelaine's chest wound and held it there.
"It hurts," Zelaine rasped, her voice thin, blood soaking through her shirt and between his fingers.
Atiya's vision blurred at the edges, pain and shock and something hotter underneath both of them.
Below, Nongban walked at a casual pace toward the pinned silver alien, the knife turning once in his hand.
Behind the toppled equipment rack, Correl crouched over the gravity regulator console and stared. His mind turned the image over and refused to make sense of it.
'He's unaffected. Completely unaffected.'
The silver alien continued to strain against the floor, violet eyes burning brighter with effort, unable to rise.
Nongban stopped a few meters away from it and stood there for a moment, looking down at the pinned figure with a small and polite and deeply unsettling smile.
"Now," he said softly, "let's see what happens when the curtain rises."
The silver alien lay face down on the floor, silver hair spilling forward like liquid metal, violet eyes dimmed and unfocused.
The ornate staff lay flat beside it with the red crescent blade pressed cold against the ground and no longer glowing.
Correl crouched behind the toppled rack with his heart hammering and his eyes fixed on the scene in front of him.
'How is he standing completely unaffected,' he thought frantically. 'That field is running at five hundred times normal gravity. Roughly four thousand nine hundred newtons of force applied to every square meter of surface. The suit should be crumpling. The floor should be cratering beneath his feet. But he is just standing there.'
Nongban bent down, and took the scythe from the alien's limp fingers. He raised it high and brought it down in a single vertical swing.
Violet energy surged from the blade and a new portal tore open beneath the arc.
Nongban looked at it for a moment, then sighed and turned toward the central cylinder.
He approached the glowing blue enclosure, raised the scythe again, and brought it down in one precise arc.
The reinforced glass shattered like brittle ice, no resistance and no alarm triggering, shards raining harmlessly across the floor. He reached inside without hesitation and lifted the smooth black box.
It hovered weightless in his palm.
'What the hell,' Correl thought. 'That box has no mass. How is he holding it.'
Nongban exhaled slowly and turned.
"Professor," he called, his voice carrying the easy calm of someone conducting a scheduled appointment. "It is no use staying behind the rack. Come out. I have five minutes remaining and we should talk. Pay our respects, as it were."
Correl's stomach dropped through the floor.
He stepped out from behind the rack with his hands raised slightly, steadying his expression against the tremor running through his hands.
Nongban tilted his head, the small tight smile still in place.
Correl looked at the scythe. "That weapon," he said, keeping his voice level despite everything. "Is it Sajibu. One of the Twelve Great Artifacts."
"You are quite knowledgeable, Professor," Nongban replied.
"I have a great many questions," Correl said.
"Why did you appear only after that creature was already pinned. How did it bypass Ansep security in the first place. How did Sajibu get inside this facility." He held Nongban's gaze.
"It was you, wasn't it. You arranged all of this."