Space splits.

Cracks appear. Cracks diffuse. Cracks get larger. Brighter. Cracks converge. Diverge. Shatter. Reform.

His mind devolves.

Human instincts dull. Kirin instincts arise.

His perceptions are different. Not human, but colourful. They are not grayscale. He is large. His eight limbs are powerful, with armoured chitin protecting his hide from harm. His eye sockets are empty. He has multiple horns.

His breath is rotten meat. His skin is dead bone.

He breathes out of his nostrils. Cold mist dissipates from him.

His fur is snow.

His legs are the wind.

He is of Winter. He is of Frost.

He was there when Winter reigned. He was there when the coldness of the frigid tundra lashed its way through summer green. He has raced across the boundaries of the world and will race again.

He wants to fight.

He wants to kill.

His maw opens and he lets out an angry screeeeeechhhhhh—

He felt nothing.

Not the absence of sensation, but truly nothing. There was no connection, no feeling, no hopes, no dreams, no desires. Just a cold, numbing empty void that made the world around him seem smaller with every pointless, mechanical movement. Unlike the khorkhoi, whose perception and hunger overwhelmed his sanity, the kirin made Lukas feel like he was a compact robot. Every moment spent made him feel less.

But that was just the start.

There was power. Not the overwhelming aura of mass destruction the khorkhoi wielded in spades. No, this was instead cold. Like an icy fire. A frosted metal held to the neck, a fraction of an inch away from spilling precious blood. There was strength too. And speed, overwhelming speed. The power of the Wind accompanied his footsteps— all eight of them.

He was the steed of Winter.

And everything in his path was prey.

At least I’m in control.

Not that he needed it. Tactics were useless. Skills were unnecessary. And who cared for combat style, when he possessed speed. Speed was the key. Speed had always been the key.

And luckily for him, he was speed.

“You gave me a useful hint,” Lukas breathed. Being able to formulate thoughts of his own while being ruled by a different set of instincts was a novel experience. His toes slowly dragged against the rocky floor. The terrain felt strong and hard. He would enjoy this. “You may be able to copy me. But the monsters I can channel? Not so much.”

Without warning, Lukas vanished.

And in the next moment, there was a clenched fist where Not-Tanya’s face was.

Aqāru exploded as Not-Tanya's face exploded in metallic gore. Before it could react, a knee slammed into its abdomen, accompanied by a gale of tremendous kinetic energy, bending the monster in half. A fraction of a second later, a pair of hands grabbed Not-Tanya's now grotesque behind and lifted it up high, swerving it around and—

[ BURST ]

The Crypt was flung across the chamber like a ragdoll, bouncing all the way over. But before it could hit the wall, Lukas appeared out of nowhere, crouched with his right leg sweeping across the floor. Not-Tanya hastily raised a wall of pure metal to intercept his kick.

It was about as effective as wagging a finger.

WHAM!

Lukas crushed it.

The look of shock on its mangled face was almost comical as Lukas tore through its guard like a lion batting aside a kitten. The defensive wall of liquid metal exploded like a block of ice being hit with a sledgehammer. Pushing his foot against the shapeshifter's solar plexus, he propelled himself with life force as his skin tried to overcome the metal's natural dexterity.

The shapeshifter’s right arm morphed into a massive blade and swung it at Lukas, but he had already disappeared. The overly-large blade cut through air, only for Lukas to land on its upper surface, literally walking across like it was a pavement. With a somersault in the air, he twisted his body to grab the creature’s head by its sides. A maniacal grin spread across his features as the Monster understood what he was trying to do.

[ BURST ]

Its head exploded. Again. Only this time, there was no neck attached to it. The entire mass of aqāru had splattered over the floor, with the rest of the body still unable to process the decapitation. Lukas swung his leg downwards at an angle, applying a precisely directed hit upon the neck to tear its upper body in half.

Another well-timed Burst obliterated the rest of it.

“And that’s what I call panache,” Lukas replied, dusting off his shoulders as he looked around at the metal carnage. The entire floor was covered in aqāru-sludge, with the liquid metal reforming into spherical droplets— as was its nature. A radial wave of lifeforce from the bottom of his feet wiped away everything within a three feet radius.

“Yeah, this looks neater,” he grinned. “But boring. For all your talk, was this really the best you could do?”

“Actually—”

Lukas groaned, turning around.

I just had to say it.

“—this is what I can do.”

As a curved blade impaled him in the stomach, Lukas lurched back in pain and took a step back. A new physical form arose from the aqāru on the floor. One that looked completely unhurt by his recent attacks.

Several dozen blades came shooting out of the ground at him. Dodging some, Lukas sent a wave of lifeforce to deflect the rest, wincing as he felt blood oozing from him. For all the speed his form offered, the kirin was no expert at regeneration. Not like the khorkhoi was.

“What I want is to pit myself against you, with the winner consuming all.”

Lukas ignored the pain and smiled. “So that’s how it is,” he said, with no humor in his voice. “I’m surprised it took me this long to notice.”

The Crypt, who had now reformed into its original form as Lukas’s doppelganger, tilted its head.

“All this time, I was thinking you were trying to mimic me, and as such limiting everything to that body. But it’s not a Host. It’s just a better crafted genius loci. You, the Crypt, are still maintaining your independent existence from it.”

Not-Lukas said nothing.

“It was a good illusion, but you weren’t as sneaky as you thought.”

“Oh?” the Monster probed.

Lukas shook his head. “This… game we play. This elaborate charade. You could have killed me several times during our exchanges. You should have killed me, yet you didn’t. Why?”

His doppelganger grinned. “Maybe I’m enjoying this a bit too much.”

“Doubtful,” he smiled back. “I think you’re doing it because you need me. Alive. The banter is just a way to stall for time while you kill my teammates. Or is it to kill Tanya in particular?”

Something about the Crypt’s posture shifted just a little.

“Ah, have I hit a chord there?” Lukas asked, starting to feel a little lightheaded from the bloodloss. Not that it mattered. He’d be right as rain very soon. “Her strange frost-like powers. She frightens you, doesn’t she?”

The Crypt was now glaring at him openly.

“But that doesn’t feel like the only reason.” Clenching his teeth, he slowly pulled the aqāru blade out of his stomach. It hurt like a bitch. “I think that as long as you maintain that form,” he pointed at his doppelganger, “you’re limited to it. You can’t turn me into a mindless beast unless you drop your control on the genius loci. You know what that means?”

Lukas grinned.

“It means I don’t have to keep playing anymore.”

Optimum Monster Prototype Identified

Found— KHORKHOI

Auto-activate. Fight-process calculated. Intercept routines.

ENACT.

The khorkhoi roared.

“This is bad. This is so bad. This is soooo bad!” Olfric hollered, cutting down one metal monster after another with his rapid water-whips. It was the only thing in his arsenal that was moderately useful against these creatures. Everything else was either quickly repelled or unable to breach the metal’s defenses.

Hell, even Banksi was reduced to fighting defensively, shielding everyone from sudden strikes. Tanya was the only one leading the assault, and by the looks of it, she didn’t need any help. Olfric had never even thought it possible for a single person to throw that much mana around, utilize two independent kamis working in tandem, and still keep going like there was no tomorrow. It made him wonder just how powerful his female ally truly was.

He watched as Tanya froze several monsters with her ice spells, hoarfrost covering the metal at an unbelievable rate. Even stranger were how the monsters— grotesque metal-forged things that they were —reacted to it in strange ways. After all, it was just ice, right?

Metal had nothing to fear from some plain old frost.

And yet, fear they did.

It made no sense to him.

“We need to get into a formation,” Banksi called out.

“You do that and they’ll attack from underneath,” Tanya yelled back.

“Ah well, worth a try!” Banksi replied, sending a drove of chiselled rocks to pierce several of those… giant rat-like things and pin them against the walls.

It didn’t work.

Every time something pierced through them, the monsters just turned into liquid metallic goo, dripping down to the floor, only to reform into newer, different forms. It was like—

“These things aren’t immortal, are they?” Olfric yelled.

“Not really,” her ice-cold friend replied with— was she laughing? “If it lives, I can kill it. And I will.”

He decided not to question her reasoning, and instead braced himself for the worst.

“Tanya,” he heard Banksi interject, “freezing them isn’t working. We need a better idea.”

“It’ll work if I can freeze them all at once,” Tanya shot back.

“Is that so…” Banksi frowned. “In that case, I might have an idea, but I’ll need some backup.”

“I’m backup!” the half-breed chimed in.

“Not now Elena!”

“What do you need?” “What do you need?”

He and Tanya glanced at one another.

“A distraction,” Banksi replied. “For at least ten minutes. And at the end of it, Olfric’s help.”

Olfric found himself meeting Banksi’s gaze, and they silently reached an agreement.

“We’ll get you ten minutes,” he replied, nodding to Tanya as he poured more of his dwindling mana reserves into his attacks. “Just make sure you don’t screw this up.”

Banksi snorted. Without further ado, he raised stone walls on all four sides and began chanting.

War.

Even if it was confined to a single chamber. Even if the participants were her Host— functioning under the corruptive influence of a rage monster— and a shapeshifter that would have made a wonderful pet had she met it earlier during her reign. Even if there was no politics or lands or history of aggression involved.

It was the best way Inanna could describe the event she was witnessing through the mortal’s eyes.

There was no mercy in the attacks fired in the chamber, nor victory when said attacks were nullified, outwitted, or shattered by the opponent. The back-and-forth occurred dozens, if not hundreds, of times by now, shaking the cavern to its foundations and causing much of the structure to fall victim to their chaos.

For the first time in a long time, Inanna felt uncomfortable.

Not because of the paltry conflict, which was a devastation she could cause with less than a fingernail. Not because of the participants either. Nor was it because of the oddity of the situation. No, it was the sheer lack of control that was getting to her. Something she’d never felt before.

For aeons, she had stayed confined within her pendant, yet not once had she felt such discomfort. Even when the cowardly vermin had struck her with a weapon, or when her sister betrayed her confidence, she had felt fury. But now, she was stuck in the mind of a mortal, her powers drained to the point of non-existence, and there was very little she could do unless the mortal turned things in their favor.

On his own. Without her assistance.

It was a sickening existence, not being able to interfere, and Inanna loathed it.

She watched as Lukas, possessed and strengthened by the beast-spirit, dashed towards the metallic deformity and tore into it. Blades of all shapes and sizes came rushing at him. But mad as he may be, he was far more nimble thanks to his smaller size, able to anticipate the onslaught.

He did not falter when the first blade pierced his body. Or the seventh one, for that matter.

Absolute regeneration.

Inanna observed as Lukas recovered from having his chest impaled by a massive double-edged blade that should have split him in two. Instead, he grasped the hilt of the blade that was buried into his body and pulled it out with reckless abandon, just in time to knock aside the oncoming spear that would have run through his skull. As her Host fell back to run towards the frost wielder, the Crypt raised more walls to keep him busy, repeating the cycle.

It was an aggressively maintained stalemate. And at this rate, a battle of attrition.

The walls shook with every hit, and sooner or later, the anomaly would cave unto itself and bury everything under the ground. She expected both parties knew it to be true.

This could not go on. A second option was needed.

But what?