"Though I can now ambulate, I cannot be separated from the crystal. You see, the soul requires both an anchor and fuel. All I have done is transfer my anchor to this body, yet I am from out of time—the rules and laws of this iteration do not include me.

"You might think this sounds like power, as if I am above the rules of this reality—this is true, to an extent. However, it is also a weakness. This iteration of reality will not fuel my soul with mana. No matter my anchor, I do not belong. I must always draw mana from the Etherium I was bound to," the man explained as he gazed longingly toward the gigantic crystal.

"Is that what all this Orichalcum is for?" Julia asked, motioning around the room.

She continued to stall, hoping to figure out why she was having such trouble syncing her time with his. Was it due to him being outside the world's rules? That hadn't stopped her before with the Nashiin, but she supposed it was possible. Or maybe it was something to do with the Etherium?

"It is now. I don't know why Vinren—the previous owner of this body—created this infrastructure, but it serves my purposes well enough. Adjusting it to raise The Stone from the crater floor was not difficult, either," he gloated.

"You were the one who raised the Stone? Why? That seems quite a bit of effort for little gain," Julia said.

"'Little gain' to you, perhaps. But spend decades bound to the floor of the crater, and you too would long for the horizon again—so much that there's almost nothing you wouldn't do to see it," the man said with a chuckle.

He straightened out of his lean and paced across the room toward the opposite balcony, as if even speaking of the horizon had made him want to see it again.

"The Mother…these Orichalcum conduits…you plan to—what—possess the Mother? You want the ability to travel wherever her roots reach, right? You're really willing to become a tree to accomplish that?" Julia asked incredulously, the realization so outlandish that she immediately began doubting it.

"She's a tree spirit, girl. There's a difference," he huffed over his shoulder, as if annoyed that Julia had reduced the Mother to a baser organism.

"There are many forms that spirits centered around nature might take: fey, leshies, dryads, and even spriggans.

"I needn't possess the Mother—merely bind myself to her. I could be a fey bounding between branches, free from worldly restraints, or perhaps a Sylph, floating amongst the boughs," he said wistfully, staring out at the distant sky.

"Unfortunately, I can't let that happen," Julia declared. "You speak well—convincingly. If I hadn't seen the horrors you've unleashed—if I hadn't seen the innocent slaughtered and harvested, if I weren't aware of the millions of elves you've killed—I might have been swayed.

"I don't know what happened to you in life, but it doesn't matter. No amount of suffering justifies genocide."

Julia's armor glowed and crackled as blue and red plasma ignited across it. Lumenfall, previously clutched onto the back of her cuirass, burst into white vapor that swirled around Julia.

It formed white, reptilian wings with golden edges on her back. It surrounded her body, forming hard—yet translucent—scales of gold, with shining white whorls and patterns. It formed white paws with sharp, golden claws around her hands.

Her eyes glowed blue and red through the helmet's visor, and her pupils shifted to a reptilian slit before shining with golden light. The air around her began to stir as though a storm had suddenly blown in.

The man barely responded to the obvious provocation, merely sighing in exaggerated disappointment.

"Your assistance would have been helpful, though it's not required. Shame—" he started.

Several things happened at once.

Time went still for Julia—the world slowing to a crawl as the bolts zapping and crackling around her froze in place, like trails of light following fireflies. She was distressed by her inability to sync with the man's time, but she was running out of ways to stall, and she decided to risk a surprise attack.

She dashed forward so fast the ground shattered—or would when time resumed, at least. She leveled her sword in a horizontal strike, already planning a few steps ahead. He would parry her strike, or maybe dodge it, and then she'd—

Shink!

She stopped her charge—already a stride past the man, her sword having passed clean through his torso. She was so surprised by the lack of resistance as her blade sliced him through that time resumed its normal cadence, her concentration broken.

She looked back in time to see the top half of his torso, just above the navel, slide off the bottom half, both collapsing onto the floor.

What the— she started to think, but a sinister feeling interrupted her internal narration.

There was a ping sound, and then a pulse of mana swept across the room, the force so strong it pushed Julia back. She slid across the smooth stone for several strides, allowing the mana's momentum to propel her as she watched the horror show before her.

Ghastly tendrils of purple that wisped into skulls and bones snaked out of the holes in the man's body, which was strangely devoid of blood. The tendrils crept across the floor before abruptly moving nearly faster than Julia could perceive, slamming the two separated halves back together and suturing the wound shut with glowing purple thread that quickly settled into a dull, metallic gold.

"Well, color me impressed," the man stated casually as his body rose from the ground. The only movement Julia saw from him was to cross his arms. Otherwise, his body seemed to stretch and stand the way a puppet on a marionette's strings might.

His fine tunic fell away below the navel, perfectly in line with the small scar running across his abdomen. He wrinkled his nose as the fabric fell, as though its loss was the most inconvenient thing at the moment.

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"I suppose this is a good thing on the whole. A battle that the citizens feel below will only strengthen my cause," he said.

As he made eye contact with Julia, who was back in a defensive stance by this point, his face warped into a twisted smile that seemed to stretch abnormally far across his face—nearly from ear to ear.

He lifted his arm, no doubt preparing some sort of attack, but Julia was there in an instant, her blade severing the arm from its body before it was even half raised.

Her momentum carried away from the man once again, and she turned into a wary guard several strides from him. His abilities—and basically everything about him—were unknown, so she was placing caution above all else.

The arm hit the ground with a splatter and squish that she hadn't expected and seemed to dissolve into a greasy purple smoke that billowed back into the man's body. A new arm burst from the stump of the previous with a horrible spray of purple goo that sizzled and pitted the ground where it landed.

"You are strong, Zhul'Kareth. Beings that have even a rudimentary control over forces like Time and Space are fearsome, and you seem to have mastery over both.

"Yet I am immortal—bound to a fragment of Creation itself! You cannot defeat me, though not due to a lack of power. I simply cannot be defeated.

"We waste time and energy in this confrontation when we could bend this entire world to our wills. There is nothing we couldn't accomplish together, but I understand. You will not be convinced of this through talk alone.

"Often, those with the most power will only be swayed by domination. As you wish," he declared, raising his arms to the side, palms to the sky, as if summoning divine intervention.

A gout of purple mana erupted around him, surrounding him like a transparent cocoon. The mana was viscerally unpleasant to all of Julia's senses. It had the malicious, hungering quality of Gohlmer's aura, the burning, rotting timbre of Khraven, and the clawing, ravenous desire to subsume the living that all Nashiin were filled with.

This was, without doubt, the leader of the Nashiin, as well as their source. Whether they were summoned or raised from corpses, this was their origin. This was what Julia needed to destroy.

The man's face seemed to sink, his skin deflating as if it had been filled with air. It hugged his bones tightly, like leather tanned into shape. He acquired the pallor of a corpse, veins that looked a bit too purple to be natural became visible through his sickly, translucent skin.

His fingernails extended into claws, yellowing along with his teeth, plainly visible now that his lips had pulled away from each other and lost their plump. His canines seemed to have elongated into fangs to match the vicious claws.

His feet left the ground as the mana lifted him into the air. It swirled and warped, constantly changing shape, resembling a puddle of water were there no ground to hold it.

Suddenly, the front of the mana bubble burst, and Julia saw a vision of a large tentacle smashing her into the ground. Recognizing a precognition from her Truth, she dashed to the side just as the prophecy actualized, and a writhing arm cratered the ground she'd just stood on.

A dozen more arms burst from the mana bubble, arcing out in different directions before converging on Julia's location, attempting to cut off any paths of retreat.

With a vrump, she appeared on the other side of the bubble, the higher dimension offering her an unobstructed path of retreat. She placed her hand on the bubble and pumped a geyser of crimson plasma into it.

The fuck? she thought as the bubble reached out to grasp her arm.

She darted away from it, shaking her arm out, but the purple mana clung to her armor like oil. She flexed her will and sent mana to cover and combat the filth, yet her mana made little progress consuming it. It seemed to resist, almost as if it was alive.

She dodged backward as more tentacles lashed out at her, pumping even more mana to confront the taint, seeking to overwhelm it through force alone—she didn't have the time or leeway to figure out specifically how to counter its increased virulence.

It finally burned away as she launched into the air, dodging a tentacle that had somehow made its way toward her underground. She surrounded herself with an intense, concentrated plasma, aiming to attack from range, but an overpowering presence bore down on her, casting her from the sky.

She hit the ground—somehow landing on both feet—but was forced to one knee, as if a tremendous weight had settled on her back.

"I've noticed that you counter the Shroud using your Domain—that's impressive work," the man said, his voice now a scraping, rasping wheeze. "Did you know that a Domain's range and strength is largely based on its source?

"You keep yours wrapped about you tightly, which increases its potency. However, if—for example—you had all of Creation to power it, you might be able to do incredible things, like blanket it over an entire city."

Julia's eyes widened as realization hit.

"That's right. What you call the 'Shroud' is simply my Domain. And just as you can concentrate yours to increase its potency, I can do the same," he gloated as another pulse of mana resonated through the space.

Julia grunted as she fell to her other knee. The ground cracked threateningly beneath her, as though her body were being driven into it like a nail by the immense force of the man's Domain hammering her.

"You see? You never had a chance. You are unbelievably strong, Zhul'Kareth. However, I am beyond you. I am immortal. I am endless. I am, and all is as I will.

"Submit, now," he commanded, floating near her to look down on her condescendingly.

Julia's mind raced—how could she counter this? She was certain that she could find a way. She'd done it on a lesser scale in mere minutes. The Domain was simply stronger now, not different. If she could just take a moment to think it through—but he would attack her! She couldn't work this problem through while fighting for her life!

"Focus your mind on the task before you. I will handle combat for now," Lumenfall said.

"I—what? You can't possibly think you can fight him alone, especially without our—" Julia started, but Lumenfall wouldn't let her finish.

"Do not speak to me of Skills and magic. You are far beyond such trivialities, Julia. Stop thinking like a mortal—you are not one any longer.

"Your Truths—and my Revelations—are part of the World. We are part of the World. It will answer when we call, no matter what," she declared confidently.

Julia's mind presented a thousand and one reasons that dividing their forces would be foolish, but she cast them all aside. One of the first lessons she'd been taught was that sometimes, a desperate gamble was the only option.

Rather than rely on their current method, which had her kneeling, unable to even fight, she decided to trust her friend and partner.

Julia closed her eyes.

Suddenly, with a heave, she rose from her knees. One of her legs planted itself on the ground, sending a web of cracks scattering with the force of her step. A step with her other leg had her standing in a crouch, her arms hanging limply in front of her, the claws of her gauntlet looking sharper than moments ago. Her fingers flexed, as if testing their strength.

White smoke blew from her visor, crackling with golden electricity. Her head lifted to meet her foe's eyes, and the only thing visible from within the visor's darkness was a pair of golden, reptilian eyes, accompanied by a low, threatening growl that felt as though it rumbled the world around it.

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