Shura Saga: Burn and Slay - Cultivation, Lightning Bolts, Monsters galore

Burn the Corpses: Part 30

Lan Feng's spear flashed, and Raksha swept Steelbreaker around to meet its tip. The clash of their aegises whipped the air in the chamber into a frenzied tumult, catching at the edges of his robe and flinging his hair from his face.

The revenant readdressed its weapon and thrust it out once more. Raksha moved to parry. If he could bind the spear with his blade, he could close the distance and—

Lan Feng crashed the shaft of its other spear into Raksha's cheek. Bone broke with a dry, crisp snap. Stars danced across his vision. The sticky, acrid warmth of blood filled his nostrils. He blinked, clearing his vision just in time to see the revenant kick him in the chest.

The impact cracked his breastbone and hurled him across the chamber. He crashed into the side of a furnace, denting the metal, and bounced off, before flopping face-down on the floor.

"No, no." The revenant's gurgling voice echoed in his ringing ears. "When using a blade against a spear, logic dictates that you parry, bind, and close. But you have one weapon. I have two. Stand, child. Try again. Do better."

Groaning, Raksha struggled to his feet. The Conflagration's aegis pulled the shards of his shattered cheek into place and started rebinding them. His chest tightened as his breastbone began to heal. Lan Feng could have swept the blade of its other spear across Raksha's throat just now, decapitating him or inflicting a wound beyond his aegis's regenerative capacity.

But the revenant hadn't done so. Neither had it pressed the attack. Instead, it paced a small circuit around the chamber, twirling its spears in either hand.

"If you die, I'm going to laugh so hard," Sadea jeered from the side. "I'll even take off your pants, so you'll be walking around as a bottomless corpse."

"Thanks. I'll do the same for you." Raksha raised Steelbreaker once more. The Conflagration had already lit the fifth Solar Gate, the hottest he could burn it right now.

Lan Feng grinned and beckoned.

Roaring, Raksha charged, focusing his aegis downward so that beneath each step, the floor cratered where there was permacrete and buckled where there was steel paneling. Six feet away the revenant, a spear-tip rose to meet him.

Back-stepping, Raksha hooked the toes of his left boot underneath the lip of a buckled steel floor panel and kicked upward, tearing it from its resting place. He flipped the tortured metal into the path of Lan Feng's spear. Wreathed in the revenant's aegis of eerie black light, the weapon punched easily through the steel panel and continued toward Raksha's face.

But the minute delay caused by the spear's passage through an inch of metal was enough for Raksha to slip his head past the sharpened tip. He hit the bottom edge of the steel panel with a left-handed palm strike, hurling it to the ceiling and bending the spear shaft thrust through its center.

Lan Feng's second spear darted for Raksha's throat. Tucking his chin in, he caught the spear tip between his teeth. The Conflagration's aegis blazed at his jaw, reinforcing his bite and securing its grip on the weapon. Raksha felt minor tendons and muscles at his neck tear and several lesser channels rupture, but he stopped the spear's flight.

The revenant's eyes widened in evident surprise. Bleeding from his gums, Raksha spat the spear-tip sideways. A step brought Lan Feng within Steelbreaker's reach. He struck.

Releasing both spears, the revenant hurled itself backward, beyond Steelbreaker's arc, but not before a shallow cut parted the grey flesh of its right cheek. Raksha lashed out again, seeking to drive Lan Feng further from the spears.

The revenant gave ground, flipping its body back and away, before landing ten feet from where it had released its weapons. Raksha closed that distance in two strides.