The mutated creature now found itself upon the stairs, a predicament he loathed. To engage in combat on such a gradient was not merely difficult; it was nearly impossible. Mal had never fought upon a staircase, for he knew it to be a recipe for a shattered limb, yet he could well imagine the nightmare it presented. To compounded matters, Mal's attempt to cast the monster from its lair within the ancient armory had clearly incensed it.
Mal felt his energy and stamina waning; in such moments, he cursed the fragility of his own blood. The monster hunched its back, unleashed a guttural cry, and lunged once more. Its movements were now far more chaotic - its slashes wider and imbued with a desperate strength, which, conversely, meant they could not be easily parried. Mal reached for his red discharges. As he evaded the beast, the words of electricity already danced upon his tongue, and it was not long before they materialized in his hand. As was his custom, he immediately imbued his blade with one charge, holding two in reserve.
The monster swung for his throat - a part of himself Mal was keen to preserve - and he raised his sword in defense. However, the strike was too broad and possessed too much momentum for a simple parry. Mal was hurled two meters backward. Upon landing, misfortune struck: his right knee buckled. The will that had been binding his cruciate ligament was diverted elsewhere, and it gave way. Consequently, Mal failed to land as intended and collapsed onto his belly.
The monster seemed to gloat at this calamity, leaping forward to deliver the final blow now that its tormentor was finally floored. It hated him for every wound he had inflicted; it hated him for the prey that had escaped its clutches because of him. As it leaped, Mal resorted to the only gambit left to him. He rolled onto his back and thrust his electrified blade toward the descending horror. The monster impaled itself upon the steel, and Mal unleashed a red discharge into its form, paralyzing it for a fleeting moment.
This respite was brief. The monster was a hair's breadth from killing him, and Mal had no choice but to force a victory through sheer violence. Just before the paralysis faded, he channeled the remaining two bolts of electricity from his hand into the blade and through the creature. Simultaneously, he began to chant the same incantation for the aerial vortex as before, this time centering it within the palm of his left hand.
The incantation was completed exactly as the monster broke free. At the very instant the beast swung its shattered blade, Mal thrust his fist against his opponent's chest, releasing the full destructive force of the wind trapped within his palm. The violent torrent of air collided with the creature's mass, but this time, Mal was braced by the unyielding floor of black, otherworldly stone. The result was that only the monster was sent flying—hurled toward the stairs, through the wall, and out into the open. Exactly where he needed it. His solitary portion of the battle was won.
__________
Leo crouched in a small room within the opposing building. His weapon was at the ready, his lips poised to utter the words of power and explosion with which he had learned to enchant his pistol over the past fortnight. Mal had entered the armory five minutes prior, and Leo was growing restless. He trusted him. To be precise, he believed Mal was the only one capable of flushing the monster out; if he could not, no one could. They could, theoretically, have fought inside, but it would have been a foolhardy decision. He and Medea would have been forced into close-quarters combat by the lack of space, which would have signaled their certain defeat.
Just as he was lost in these thoughts, a whistle of wind echoed from the house, followed by a dull thud. Leo snapped to attention. He wondered if Mal was in peril and if he should rush to his aid. Within half a minute, another whistle sounded, followed by a louder crash. This time, the sound came from a shattering wall, and Leo saw the mutated monstrosity with his own eyes for the first time as it was ejected from the second floor, tumbling to the ground some ten meters from Medea's position. He also saw Mal slowly rising within the house and deduced that his friend would not reach the street quickly.
With the words of his incantation upon his lips, he gripped his weapon firmly. The moment the monstrosity hit the earth, he unleashed a relentless barrage. The magic he had forged for this encounter was perfectly suited for the task; it bolstered the bullets and magnified the explosive force of the powder. While the effect was negligible with a single round, it compounded with every successive hit. In two seconds, Leo hammered ten shots into the creature. Disoriented by the fall and the pressure of Leo's assault, the monster struggled far longer than usual to rise.
Leonard maintained his fire. His bullets were too weak to slay the thing, but that was not his purpose. He and Medea needed only to stall the beast until Mal returned to the fray from two stories above. Medea, too, had begun her work. With one incantation, she conjured blocks of ice to bind the creature's legs and one arm to the cobbles. With a second, she wove an aerial prison similar to the one Mal had used against the wolves in the square of Saint Alter in Ir Za'avin. Either spell alone would have been shaken off by the monster, and even together they presented no insurmountable obstacle, yet in tandem with Leo's continuous fire, they held the beast for a few precious seconds. And if Medea understood one truth, it was that a single second can be everything in a battle.
And so it was. In those fleeting moments, Mal managed to stand and reach the edge of the ruined floor. He looked down upon the monster from above, as was only right. Until now, he had been the prey. Now, the roles had shifted. Humans are creatures of the pack, and in a group, they become predators - the deadliest predators in existence. In the next heartbeat, three swarms of red electrical current flared in his hands, and he applied them all to his blade at once. As the monster hauled itself upright, Mal leaped from the second floor, channeling the full kinetic energy of the fall into a strike. His sword, entwined with red moss and bathed in electricity, buried itself into the monster's back.
The steel passed entirely through the body of the mutated soldier, and Mal discharged every ounce of lightning currently held within the blade. The landing from such a height was not easy; his muscles screamed at the impact, and he was forced into a tactical roll away from the beast. The creature's paralysis granted Leonard the time to empty another ten rounds into it, while Medea pinned it down once more with ice and air. Most importantly, it gave Mal the freedom to swiftly chant an incantation of healing, bolstering the ravaged tendons of his right knee with his will once more.
The monster shrieked again, fighting against the ice and the aerial pressure until it shattered both. Leonard's fire ceased briefly as his weapon grew dangerously hot, but Medea handled the situation with practiced ease, using her frost incantations from afar to cool the pistol in a flash.
The preparations for the duel were over, and they had fared better than expected. The monster was significantly weakened, with a deep, thrashing hole in its torso. Though Mal had failed to pierce its heart during the descent - an act that would have ended the struggle - he had punctured its lung, only to realize the creature likely had no need for breath. He had also succeeded in truly infuriating it. Its movements were now more predictable, driven by rage. As if to prove him right, the creature screamed, and the shattered sword in its hand ignited with the dark red flames of hatred. Mal had it exactly where he wanted it. Now, it was time to kill it - to kill it and finally ascend to the second rank.
Beyond his conscious awareness, his body began a slow process of transformation. His heart now beat faster and louder, thundering like the rhythmic pulse of tribal drums. Subconsciously, his blood began to course more swiftly through his veins, moving as if possessed by a singular, clear purpose. The blood seeping from his minor wounds ceased its flow, forming instant scabs over the gashes. Once more, his will was operating independently of his mind, just as it had in those first moments after waking beneath the dead white sky, when he had fashioned a sharp weapon from a blunt umbrella.
And had he peered now into his very depths, where his Wisdom core hovered amidst a dark mist of terror, he would have seen it begin to bleed slowly, as droplets of crimson blood fell one by one upon the ground.