The heat coming off the burning World Tree was a physical force, a fever radiating from the very bones of the world. Nahida stood frozen for a fraction of a second, her small hands trembling as she watched the black flames lick higher up the white bark.
"Go!" Ren shouted, his voice cracking with urgency. He stepped between the Archon and the Harbinger, his hands already glowing with a dual aura of violet and turquoise. "Heal the tree! If the memories burn, nothing else matters! I'll keep him off you!"
Nahida looked at him, torn between the instinct to fight and the duty to heal. But she saw the fierce, unyielding resolve in his eyes—the same resolve that had defeated Osial, that had defied the Raiden Shogun. She nodded, a sharp, decisive movement.
"Be careful," she whispered, and then she turned, sprinting towards the base of the Irminsul, her hands glowing with pure Dendro energy, ready to fight the corruption.
"Touching," the younger Dottore drawled. The strange mechanical device floating beside his shoulder hummed, and the air behind him shimmered. "But ultimately, futile. The experiment requires a control group, and the variable cannot be allowed to interfere with the subject."
With a lazy flick of his finger, space distorted. Six sleek, metallic needles materialized out of thin air, hovering like a halo of malice behind him.
Their tips glowed with a menacing crimson light.
ZZEEW!
Six beams of concentrated thermal energy shot forward, not at Ren, but past him—aimed directly at the back of the fleeing Archon.
"No!"
Ren didn't run; he vanished. Or rather, he moved so fast he seemed to teleport. A crackle of violet lightning, and he reappeared in the path of the lasers. He threw his hands out, and a thick, jagged wall of ice erupted from the aether.
The lasers slammed into the Cryo shield. Steam hissed violently. The ice groaned, spiderwebs of fractures appearing instantly under the intense heat, but it held.
Nahida reached the tree and raising her hands towards the burning bark, closing her eyes as she began the desperate work of purging the data-fire.
Ren stood his ground, the steam clearing. Dottore looked unimpressed.
"Fast," the Doctor noted. "Reaction time is enhanced. Elemental integration is seamless. But can you keep up the pace?"
The needles shifted. They didn't fire all at once this time. They began a rhythmic, staggered bombardment. Pew. Pew. Pew.
It became a dance of desperation. Ren was a blur of motion. He used his Electro speed to zap from point to point, intercepting the beams that targeted Nahida, summoning small, dense bucklers of ice to deflect the shots that targeted him.
But he was losing.
He could feel it. He was reacting, not acting. Dottore hadn't moved a single inch. He stood in the same spot, one hand casually manipulating the floating needles like a conductor leading a bored orchestra. Ren was expending massive amounts of energy just to survive, while Dottore was barely lifting a finger.
Ren fired back. He summoned icicles, sharp and deadly, and launched them at the Harbinger.
The needles didn't even need Dottore's command. They swiveled automatically, firing short, precise bursts that vaporized the icicles in mid-air.
Pinpoint accuracy, Ren realized with a sinking heart. Ranged attacks are useless. His defense grid is perfect.
He glanced back. Nahida was glowing with green light, her brow furrowed in pain as she fought the corruption. The fire on the tree hadn't receded; it was fighting her. She needed time. Time Ren was running out of.
He skidded to a halt, panting. A laser grazed his arm, singing the sleeve of his tunic.
I have to attack, he thought. I have to make him move. I have to get close.
But how? He wasn't a warrior. In Inazuma, he had been a shield. In Liyue, an inventor. When Ganyu and Keqing had tried to teach him weapons, everything had felt wrong. The sword was too clunky, the claymore too heavy, the catalyst too weird. They felt… alien.
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, searching inside himself. Not for the engineer, but for the boy in the mirror. The boy with the blurred past.
What feels right?
He reached out with his Cryo power, but he didn't shape it into a wall or a spear. He let it flow, guided by a sub-conscious instinct he didn't know he possessed.
The ice elongated. It curved. It hardened into a long, snaking handle. At the top, the mass grew heavy, extending outward into a long, wicked, crescent curve.
He opened his eyes. In his hands, formed of dark, diamond-hard ice, was a scythe.
It was massive, taller than he was, yet as he gripped the haft, it felt… weightless. It didn't feel clunky. It felt like an extension of his arm. It felt like an old friend.
Dottore paused, his red eye narrowing. "Oh?"
Ren didn't give him time to analyze.
Violet lightning crackled around his body. He pushed off the ground, the sound of thunder echoing in the void. He wasn't just fast; he was a streak of light.
He zigzagged through the air, dodging the intercepting laser fire. Left. Right. Up.
He closed the distance in a heartbeat. He appeared directly in front of Dottore, the momentum of his flight channeled into his weapon.
He swung.
It wasn't a clumsy, desperate hack. It was a fluid, reaping arc, a motion of terrible, yet still a practiced grace. The scythe sliced through the air with a high-pitched whistle, aiming for the Doctor's neck.
Dottore's eye widened slightly. He didn't have time to summon a needle. He raised his hand, and a hexagonal barrier of translucent, hard-light energy materialized just in time.
CLANG!
The impact was heavy, jarring. The ice blade dug into the energy shield, sparks flying.
Ren didn't stop. He used the rebound to spin, the scythe whirling around his body, building momentum for a second strike from below. Then a third, from the side.
He was a whirlwind of blue and violet. He moved with a muscle memory that terrified him. He knew how to use the haft to block, how to hook the blade to pull shields down, how to use the centrifugal force of the heavy head to accelerate his swings. He wasn't fighting like a child; he was fighting like a reaper.
Dottore was actually forced to take a step back. Then another. He blocked the strikes with his hard-light barriers, his expression shifting from boredom to intrigued annoyance.
"A scythe," Dottore mused, his voice calm despite the flurry of blows raining down on him. He caught the blade on a barrier, holding it in a deadlock. He leaned in, staring at Ren's fierce, glowing eyes.
"Interesting choice. It reminds me of… someone." His grin turned sharp. "Your fighting style… the aggression, the flow… it is certainly similar to hers. Though," he twisted his wrist, the barrier pulsing, "you still lack the finesse. You are raw."
The needles behind Dottore finally realigned.
"Enough with the foolish theatrics," Dottore stated.
Two of the needles swooped down, flanking Ren. They fired at point-blank range.
Ren's instincts screamed. He couldn't dodge. He spun the scythe, holding it vertically in front of him, thickening the ice of the handle instantly.
BOOM!
The twin lasers struck the shaft of the scythe. The ice held, but the kinetic force was immense.
Ren was blasted backward. He skidded across the misty floor of the dreamscape, his heels digging in, creating furrows in the memory-stuff of the ground. He came to a halt twenty feet away, smoke rising from his weapon, his arms vibrating from the impact.
He looked up, breathless. Dottore brushed a speck of imaginary dust from his coat.
"Not bad for a prototype," the Doctor sneered. "But this experiment is boring me. Shall we increase the temperature?"
He snapped his fingers again. The fire on the tree roared louder, turning from red to a blinding white.
Ren grit his teeth, tightening his grip on the scythe. He didn't know who "she" was. He didn't know where he learned to fight like this. But he knew one thing.
He wasn't done yet.