Erel followed the trail deeper into the stadium's bowels, his enhanced senses guiding him through corridors that had been twisted into something resembling organic tunnels. The emergency lighting flickered overhead, casting everything in sickly green hues.
His flux reserves felt hollow after burning through two uses of his Cycle of Rebirth against the prowlers. The familiar weight of potential death-visions was absent, leaving him with the uncomfortable knowledge that if he died down here, there would be no preview.
Just my enhanced reflexes and whatever's left of my Adaptive Ouroboros. Need to be extra careful.
He rounded a corner and found Lyra crouched beside a massive breach in the floor, not broken concrete, but an opening that looked like it had been melted rather than smashed. She was peering into the darkness below, her bow ready.
"Six prowlers down," she said without looking up. "I felt them dissolving. Nice work."
"Thanks. Please tell me our main target down there is having a worse day than I am."
"See for yourself." Lyra gestured toward the opening. "It's definitely home."
They rappelled down using rope from Lyra's pack. The chamber below was vast, clearly some kind of old maintenance area that had been... modified. The walls curved at unnatural angles, and emergency lighting had been torn away, leaving only an eerie phosphorescence emanating from patches of organic growth.
In the center of the space, on a raised platform of fused metal and bone, stood the kin.
The creature had completely abandoned human appearance. It stood nearly eight feet tall, its limbs elongated and wrong, joints bending at angles that made Erel's vision struggle to process. Its skin shifted between textures—sometimes smooth like polished stone, sometimes scaled, sometimes something that looked disturbingly organic. Its face was a collection of features that suggested intelligence without achieving anything recognisable as human.
Most unsettling of all, it moved with perfect silence, its feet never quite seeming to touch the ground as it turned to face them.
"Hunters," it said, its voice carrying harmonics that made the chamber walls vibrate. "You have come far to die in this place."
"Yeah, well, we were in the neighborhood," Erel replied, drawing his sword.
The kin's attention focused on him with uncomfortable intensity. "Such confidence. Do you truly believe your weapons can harm me?"
I'm so low on essence I couldn't use my Cycle of Rebirth if my life depended on it. Time to wing this.
"Only one way to find out." Erel activated his Adaptive Ouroboros, feeling the familiar sensation of scale patterns flowing across his skin. The enhancement was weaker than usual—his depleted flux reserves couldn't support full reinforcement—but the metallic gleam spreading across his sword arm was still impressive.
The kin moved first.
It didn't run—it flowed across the distance like liquid death, its form seeming to stretch and compress as it covered the twenty feet between them in less than a heartbeat. Erel barely had time to register the movement before obsidian claws were sweeping toward his throat in a strike that would have separated his head from his shoulders.
He threw himself backward, feeling the wind from the creature's talons brush his face. His sword came up in a desperate parry, steel ringing against whatever supernatural material the kin's claws were made from. Sparks showered across the platform as Erel stumbled, his enhanced reflexes the only thing keeping him alive.
The kin didn't pause. Its follow-up came immediately, a backhand swipe with its other set of claws that forced Erel to duck low while its original hand reversed direction in a movement that should have been anatomically impossible. The creature's joints seemed to operate without the normal restrictions of bone and cartilage.
Fast doesn't begin to cover it. This thing moves like it's got joints made of water.
Erel rolled to his left, putting distance between himself and the creature while his Adaptive Ouroboros shifted to enhance his speed. The scale patterns flowed down to his legs, providing better traction on the uneven platform surface.
"Quite nimble for prey," the kin observed, its voice carrying amusement that made his skin crawl. "But speed alone will not save you."
To prove its point, the creature's form began to change. Its limbs elongated even further, adding another foot of reach to its already considerable span. Worse, what had been arms split and reformed, giving it four separate appendages tipped with those deadly claws.
"Oh, that's just cheating," Erel muttered, circling warily around the platform's edge.
The kin's laugh was like breaking glass. "There are no rules here, hunter."
It attacked again, this time using all four arms in a coordinated assault that came from multiple angles simultaneously. Erel's sword work became a desperate dance, his blade intercepting strikes from the left while he ducked under attacks from the right. His enhanced reflexes let him track all the incoming threats, but tracking and stopping were two very different things.
One set of claws scraped across his reinforced vest, the mythic protection holding but the impact sending him staggering. Another grazed his sword arm, drawing a line of fire across his bicep. He managed to score a hit of his own, his blade finding the gap between the creature's elongated ribs, but the kin barely seemed to notice the wound.
"Having trouble?" Lyra called out from her position across the chamber. She had her bow drawn but had no plans of intervening.
"Just getting warmed up," Erel replied through gritted teeth, blocking another combination attack that would have turned him into ribbons. "Though if you have any brilliant ideas, now would be great!"
"Try not to die!"
Right. Against something that hits like a freight train and moves like liquid.
The kin seemed to sense his growing desperation and pressed its advantage. Its attack pattern became more aggressive, forcing Erel to give ground as it tried to back him against the chamber wall. Each exchange left him with new cuts and bruises, while his own strikes seemed to have minimal effect on the creature.
Worse, his Adaptive Ouroboros was flickering. The scale patterns that reinforced his skin were becoming intermittent as his flux reserves drained toward empty. Soon he'd be fighting this thing with nothing but ordinary human capabilities.
The kin's next attack came as a high-low combination that should have been impossible to defend against. Two arms swept toward his head while the other two aimed for his legs, coordinated with inhuman precision. Erel did the only thing he could think of—he went up instead of sideways.
His enhanced leg strength let him leap higher than any normal human could manage, vaulting over the low strikes while deflecting the high ones with his sword. But the kin was ready for the maneuver. As Erel reached the peak of his jump, the creature's form flowed upward to meet him.
Claws raked across his back as he passed overhead, tearing through his protective gear and drawing blood. He hit the platform hard, rolling to absorb the impact but knowing he'd used up most of his luck.
"Getting tired, hunter?" the kin taunted, its four arms weaving hypnotic patterns in the air. "Your movements slow. Your defenses weaken. Soon you will join the others who thought to challenge me."
"Yeah, well," Erel gasped, pushing himself back to his feet. "At least I'll go out with style."
He charged.
It was probably the stupidest thing he could have done under the circumstances, but sometimes stupid was the only option left. The kin's four arms lashed out to intercept his attack, claws converging on his position from multiple directions.
But instead of trying to fight through the defensive web, Erel slid. His enhanced agility let him drop into a baseball slide that carried him under the creature's guard, his sword coming up in an arc aimed at what he hoped were vital organs.
The blade connected with something important. The kin's harmonious voice rose to a shriek as dark fluid sprayed across the platform. But even as it reeled from the wound, its counterattack was devastating.
All four arms hammered down on Erel's position with enough force to crack the fused metal of the platform. He barely managed to roll aside, the impacts sending shockwaves through the floor that rattled his teeth.
"Clever," the kin hissed, dark fluid dripping from the gash in its torso. "But not clever enough."
The creature's form began to shift again, this time in ways that made Erel's enhanced vision struggle to process. Its four arms merged back into two, but they grew larger and more muscular. Its legs restructured themselves for maximum speed and power. Most disturbingly, its claws grew longer and sharper, gleaming with some kind of oily substance that probably wasn't healthy.
Poison. Because regular dismemberment wasn't enough of a threat.
"Now you face me at my full strength," the kin declared, its voice deeper and more resonant than before. "Let us see how long you can—"
An arrow sprouted from its shoulder, the shaft vibrating with impact. The kin turned toward Lyra with annoyance, its attention dividing for just a moment.
Isn't she just the best?
That moment was all Erel needed.
He attacked while the creature was distracted, his sword work becoming a furious combination of cuts and thrusts aimed at every vulnerable point he could identify. The kin's altered form was stronger but also less flexible; its enhanced muscles came at the cost of some of its inhuman agility.
His blade found the creature's wrist, severing tendons that made its right hand spasm and lose grip strength. A follow-up cut across its thigh drew more dark fluid and made it favor its left leg. For the first time since the fight began, Erel felt like he was making real progress.
But the kin wasn't finished adapting.
Its wounded hand began to regenerate, new tissue flowing like clay to repair the damage. The cuts on its leg sealed themselves with disturbing efficiency. Within seconds, it was back to its best.
"You cannot win," it told him, testing its restored hand with obvious satisfaction. "I heal faster than you can damage me."
"We'll see about that." Erel's Adaptive Ouroboros was barely functional now, the scale patterns flickering like a dying light. But he had one advantage the creature hadn't accounted for, Lyra.
"High and left!" she called out, her Battle Prophecy, a mythic ability showing subtle next courses of action the kin was about to take. "Then roll right and strike low!"
Erel followed her guidance without question, ducking under a swipe that would have taken his head off before rolling to avoid the follow-up. His sword found the back of the creature's knee, this time cutting deep enough to sever something important.
The kin stumbled, its regeneration working to repair the damage but not fast enough to prevent the injury from affecting its balance. Erel pressed his advantage, his attacks becoming more precise as Lyra continued to call out the creature's intentions.
The kin's movements became chaotic and unpredictable, abandoning tactical precision for pure aggression. Its claws swept in wide arcs that forced Erel to constantly retreat, each near-miss leaving gouges in the platform's surface that showed just how much force was behind the attacks.
Erel's flux finally hit absolute zero. His Adaptive Ouroboros failed completely, the protective scales fading from his skin and leaving him with nothing but ordinary human durability. The loss of enhancement hit him like a physical blow; suddenly, every impact felt heavier, every movement required more effort.
The kin sensed the change immediately. "Ah, your pretty tricks abandon you at last. Now we fight as nature intended, predator and prey."
Its next attack was a devastating combination that Erel barely survived. Claws raked across his ribs, tearing through his protective vest and drawing blood. A backhand blow sent him staggering, his vision blurring from the impact. Only his training with Lyra kept him moving, muscle memory taking over when conscious thought became too slow.
This is it. No more flux, no more enhancements. Just steel and skill.
But as the kin pressed its advantage, Erel noticed something crucial. The creature's regeneration was slowing down. The wounds he'd inflicted earlier were still healing, but the process was taking longer. Each use of its shape-shifting abilities seemed to drain some finite resource.
It's not unlimited. The healing, the transformations—they're burning through imaginarium, just have to outlast its reserves.
The problem was that his own reserves were exhausted. His sword arm was growing heavy, his reflexes slowing from blood loss and fatigue. The kin was winning through simple attrition, and they both knew it.
"You fight well for prey," the creature acknowledged, its claws weaving defensive patterns as it stalked him around the platform. "But all hunts end the same way."
"Yeah?" Erel wiped blood from his eyes, trying to clear his vision. "And how's that?"
"With the hunter feeding."
The kin lunged forward in its final attack, both hands extended to pin him while its claws went for his throat. There was no room to dodge, no time to parry. This was the killing blow, and they both knew it.
Which was exactly what Erel had been waiting for.
Instead of trying to escape the creature's final rush, he stepped into it. The kin's claws punched through his protective vest and into his chest, missing his heart by inches. But his own sword, driven by the last of his strength and the creature's own momentum, found the gap between its ribs and slid home.
The blade pierced whatever served as the kin's heart, and this time the wound didn't begin to heal. Dark fluid poured from the injury as the creature's eyes widened in what might have been surprise.
"Impossible," it whispered, its voice losing its harmonic quality. "You are merely human."
"Yeah," Erel agreed, twisting the blade deeper.
He glanced toward Lyra, who had another of those special arrows nocked and ready. But it wasn't needed. The kin was already collapsing, its form losing cohesion as whatever force animated it finally failed.
Within seconds, the entity that had terrorized an entire district was dissolving into the same oily substance that had marked all its creations. The chamber fell silent except for the sound of Erel's labored breathing and the steady drip of his own blood on the platform.
"You alive over there?" Lyra called out, approaching cautiously with her bow still ready.
"Define alive," Erel replied, pressing his hand against the puncture wounds in his chest. "But yeah, still breathing. The heart's still beating. That's probably a good sign."
"The wounds don't look too deep," she observed, pulling medical supplies from her pack. "You got lucky. A few inches to the right and this would be a very different conversation."
"Luck had nothing to do with it. That was pure skill."
"Right. Is that what we're calling 'barely surviving by the skin of your teeth' these days?"
"Hey, a win's a win. Style points are optional."
As Lyra worked to patch his wounds, Erel surveyed the chamber one final time. The organic growths were already withering without the kin's presence to sustain them. By morning, this would be nothing more than an old maintenance room with some unusual stains.
"Come on," Lyra said when she finished with the field dressing. "Let's get out of here before something else decides to show up."
They climbed out of the underground chamber to find dawn breaking over the city. The black growths covering the stadium's exterior were already crumbling away, and the oppressive atmosphere that had hung over the district was finally lifting.
"So," Erel said as they walked toward their vehicle, "on a scale of one to ten, how stupid was that final maneuver?"
"Solid nine," Lyra replied. "But it worked, so I suppose we can call it inspired stupidity."
"I prefer 'tactical improvisation under extreme circumstances.'"
"Whatever helps you sleep at night."
The hunt was over. The kin was dead.
Not bad for a night's work.