Chapter 48 — The Seven Circles
From the far edge of the white plain, where the mist thickened into something closer to a desert cloud of frozen vapour, a shape began to resolve itself out of the grey distance, and the ground beneath Kai's feet trembled with the approach of something vast. It came on with a speed that belied its size, the ice shattering and cracking in long lightning-bolt fractures that raced outward from the point of its advance, shards of frozen white lifting into the air and spinning away on the shockwaves of its passage, and the sheer force of its approach created a wind that howled across the plain and struck Kai with enough pressure to make his coat snap backward and his stance shift. The size of the thing was impossible to hold in the eye, too large to be measured against anything familiar, and as it drew closer it opened its mouth and inside that cavernous darkness a red beam began to form, a burning sphere of crimson energy that swelled and grew and cast long shadows across the ice, and riding atop the dragon's head were three figures Kai recognized with a jolt that went through him like a current: Crystal with her dark hair streaming in the wind, Lyria with her silver crown blazing against the grey sky, and Trinity with her three heads all turned forward and fixed on the battle ahead, and the dragon herself was Drakara in her full draconic form, all scale and wing and ancient power, her massive body cutting through the air with the authority of something that had been soaring since before the island had a name.
She approached the battle zone and her form blurred and compressed and folded inward, the enormous dragon shedding its mass and reshaping into the human figure of Drakara Voss, her scaled armor flowing and shifting around her body with the motion of the transformation, the plates catching the dim light and throwing it back in dark glints, and without pause she opened her mouth and released the beam she had been building, the red energy that had been forming in her dragon throat now channeled through her human form and erupting outward in a column of devastating light that screamed across the frozen plain and met the Yati's own attack in a collision that turned the entire white field crimson, the ice reflecting the red glow until the world seemed drenched in blood-coloured light, the two beams grinding against each other with a sound like the sky being torn apart at the seams, and in that chaos the three riders leaped from their positions—Crystal landing at Kai's left side with her boots skidding on the ice, Lyria landing at his right with her bow already in her hand, and Trinity touching down beside Crystal with her three heads already scanning the battlefield from three different angles—and all of them turned to Kai with expressions that mixed fury and relief in equal measure, and Crystal's voice cut through the roar of the clashing beams with the sharp edge of someone who had been worried and had converted that worry into anger. "How dare you leave us behind?"
Kai looked at them, his breath still coming hard from his fight with the Yati, and the question came out before he could stop it. "What are you doing here?" he asked, and Lyria answered without lowering her bow, her golden eyes still fixed on the creature ahead. "We came here to help you," she said, and Kai shook his head and asked the obvious question, the one that had been burning since the moment he saw them riding toward him on the back of a dragon. "How did you find out where I was?"
Trinity's middle head answered while her left and right heads kept their vigil on the battlefield, her voice carrying the dry matter-of-fact tone of someone explaining something that should have been obvious. "Well, do you really think we didn't see a nuclear punch on the water? It was visible even from far away. Even if someone missed the sight of it, the impact delivered an earthquake to the island. Of course we knew something was happening." Crystal stepped closer, her dark eyes fixed on Kai with an intensity that made him want to look away and didn't let him. "After that, we found the a little boy —Toshiro—and he told us everything. So we followed your path and came here. Drakara tore open the domain and brought us through. That is the tale of how we arrived, and it is a tale you will answer for later."
The battle between Drakara and the Yati continued to rage behind them, the two beams locked against each other in a contest of raw power that made the air itself scream, and Kai watched as the advantage shifted back and forth, sometimes Drakara's beam pushing the Yati's attack backward and sometimes the Yati's beam surging forward and driving Drakara back across the ice, both of them sliding in opposite directions as the forces they were unleashing pushed against them with equal and opposite fury, and as Drakara began to lose ground Kai moved behind her and planted his hands against her back and held her steady, his boots grinding into the ice and his muscles locking into place, refusing to let her yield another inch. Trinity's three heads all turned toward the Yati and her mouths opened and fire began to build in all three throats simultaneously, three streams of blazing energy joining Drakara's beam and merging with it into a single combined attack that burned brighter and hotter than either alone, and Crystal raised her hands and formed a circle of flame that spun and rotated and then shot forward to wrap around the combined beam like a rifling barrel around a bullet, focusing and tightening the energy until it surged forward with renewed force and began to overtake the Yati's attack, the combined might of all of them pushing the creature's own beam back toward its source, the red wall of energy sliding closer and closer to the Yati's open mouth, and just before it reached him the creature sidestepped and the beam blasted past him into the distant mist, and he straightened and looked at the five of them arrayed against him and a sound emerged from his throat that was not quite a laugh and not quite a growl. "Whoa, whoa, whoa," he said, his deep voice carrying across the ice with a resonance that vibrated in Kai's chest. "Looks like it's going to be unfair for me." He paused, and his burning red eyes swept across the four women who had joined the fight, and then he added with a tone that was almost conversational, "You expect me to say that? Nah, I like this kind of fight. All of you have come as one, and that is how it should be. But I will tell you plainly—I do not consider any of the women here my competition." His eyes settled on Kai with a weight that felt almost physical. "You are the only one whose energy speaks to mine. You are the only competition I have. Your strength tells me the same thing."
The women exchanged glances, and something shifted in their postures, a hardening of resolve that went beyond the battle they were already fighting, and Drakara raised her hand and the scaled armor that had been flowing around her body like a cloak began to tighten and compress, the plates drawing inward and locking together with a series of sharp clicks that echoed across the ice, each layer sealing over the one beneath it until her entire form was encased in a skin-tight shell of dragonic plating that moved with her breath and caught the light like dark water frozen solid. Trinity reached into a pouch at her side and withdrew a small box no larger than her palm, and she crushed it in her hand with a sharp crack, and from the shattered container a liquid substance spilled out and flowed over her body like living mercury, spreading and hardening into a second skin that covered her from neck to ankle with a faint iridescent shimmer. Lyria touched her crown and the artifact at her temples flared with silver light, and the ice around her feet shattered as living wood erupted from beneath the frozen surface, trees and vines and leaves that should not have been able to grow in this dead place twisting upward and wrapping around her body, weaving themselves into a suit of natural armor that covered her completely, bark and branch and thorn all interlocking into a form-fitting shell of living forest. Crystal pressed her palm against her chest and her body answered the call, her form shifting and expanding as her power surged through her, her hair lengthening and her horns curving upward larger than before and a tail emerging from her lower spine, and as the transformation completed a suit of dark armor materialized around her body, covering her from head to foot in plates that seemed to absorb the light around them. Kai leaped into the air and landed in a stance with his fists raised and his legs planted wide, his entire body coiled and ready, and around him the four women settled into their own positions, and together the five of them faced the Yati, whose seven rings burned behind him with a white fire that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the domain itself, his aura pressing against the air with a weight that made the ice beneath their feet groan in protest, a power that existed on a level beyond anything they had faced before.
Crystal moved first. She raised both hands in front of her and began to rotate them in a smooth circular motion, her fingers tracing patterns in the air that left trails of orange light behind them, and then she thrust her palms forward and from her hands erupted thousands of blazing circles, each one a ring of compressed flame spinning at impossible speed, and they flew across the frozen plain in a swarm that blotted out the grey sky and surrounded the Yati on all sides, and then they detonated. The blasts came in rapid succession, one after another after another, each explosion a miniature sun that bloomed and died in the space of a heartbeat, and the ice beneath the creature's feet shattered and the sky above him cleared of mist and the entire world became a chaos of dark fiery orange and billowing black smoke, and through that smoke Lyria touched her crown and the ground answered her call, and from the ice behind the Yati thousands of trees erupted upward with the force of a continent being born, their trunks as thick as houses and their branches as long as city streets, and they swung at the creature with the motion of living whips, striking him from every angle and launching him into the air, and the trees followed him upward and continued to strike, lashing across his body with blows that would have shattered mountains, and as he hung suspended in the sky Trinity leaped and her body blurred and she appeared above him and her fists began to move, and the air filled with millions of punches, each one landing with a speed and ferocity that made the space around the impacts distort and ripple, and every punch carried a coating of black mystical fire that clung to the creature's body and spread across his fur and burned with a flame that did not consume but tormented, attaching itself to him and refusing to release. Drakara opened her mouth and released another blast that streaked toward the Yati, but he landed on the ice and one of the seven circles behind him flared with sudden bright light, and he raised his hand and from his palm erupted huge vines of his own, and around those vines appeared circles identical to Crystal's technique, and then the vines were wreathed in the same black spiritual fire that Trinity had used, and from the tip of the combined attack a beam formed that was the beam Drakara had just fired, and Kai understood with a sick lurch in his stomach that the circle that had glowed was the circle of copying, and the creature had just taken their strongest combined attack and turned it back against them, and the composite beam of all their powers merged together was hurtling toward them faster than any of them could react.
Kai moved. He appeared in front of the beam and drove his fist into it with every ounce of strength his body contained, and the force of his punch broke the entire space around the point of impact, the beam shattering along fractures in reality that spread outward like cracks through glass, but the beam had already existed in that shattered space and even as the space broke the beam broke with it and a series of catastrophic blasts rippled outward from the point of collision, and Kai grabbed Crystal and Lyria and Trinity and Drakara and ran, dragging all four of them across the ice with the speed of someone who had taken those blasts before and knew exactly how devastating they could be. "What the hell," he thought as he slid across the frozen plain with the women in his grip and the explosions still rolling through the air behind them, "he can copy abilities now?" Crystal answered the unspoken question as they moved, her voice tight with the strain of the situation. "One of the circles glowed. Only one. That means all seven rings have individual powers, and one of them is the power to copy. He can take our strongest techniques and use them as his own. That is a serious problem."
The Yati was already running toward them across the ice, his massive form eating up the distance with terrifying speed, and as he ran the second circle behind him flared bright and a huge black orb materialized in his hand, and he hurled it not at them but at the ground ahead of them, and the moment the orb touched the ice the entire frozen plain turned black and every single one of them was slammed downward with a force that drove the air from their lungs, their bodies pressing into the ice as though the world had suddenly become a thousand times heavier than it had been a moment before, and the creature was upon them and his foot was descending toward Crystal's prone form when Kai dragged himself forward through sheer will and planted himself between the blow and its target, and the kick crashed into his crossed arms with a force that sent shockwaves rippling through his entire skeleton, and even with the gravity crushing down on him he held the block and kicked the creature back, and the Yati staggered and looked at him with something that might have been admiration. "I must say," the creature rumbled, "your strength exceeds what I imagined. Even with this level of gravity pressing down on you, you can still control your body and fight back. Let us see how much more you can endure." The second circle flared again and thousands of black orbs materialized in the air above them, and then they dropped, and the gravity multiplied, and Kai felt his knees hit the ice with a crack that he felt in his teeth, and when he looked up the Yati was still standing as though nothing had changed. "Looks like it is not affecting you," Kai managed through gritted teeth, and the creature nodded slowly. "Oh, it is affecting me. But you see"—and he pointed at his belt, at one of the many artifacts hanging there—"this artifact allows me to negate any drawback of any ability that I possess. If a power I use would harm me as well as my enemies, this artifact nullifies that harm. It can do so as many times as needed."
Kai's mind raced through the implications. The seven circles were not the creature's only power. The belt was covered in jewelry and accessories and artifacts, each one potentially as devastating as the rings, and together they formed an arsenal that had no clear ceiling, no limit that Kai could identify, and the creature was not even close to using everything he had. Kai tried to stand but the gravity was an anchor bolted to every cell in his body, and he took a deep breath and discovered that even the air had collapsed under its own weight, the atmosphere itself pressed flat against the ice and refusing to rise, and so he lowered his face to the frozen ground and inhaled directly from the thin layer of air that still clung to the surface, drawing it into his lungs with the desperate suction of someone pulling water from a well that had almost run dry, and he kept inhaling until his lungs were filled to their absolute limit and the air was flowing across his entire body and then he punched the ground and stood, and his body was heating up and smoking like a furnace, steam and heat haze rising from his skin in waves, and he looked at the creature and said with a voice that was steady despite everything, "I'm not going to back down." The Yati's eyes gleamed. "Impressive," he said, and Kai punched the ground so hard that a massive crater exploded beneath him, but the gravity remained, it had simply shifted downward into the hole he had made, and he realized that destroying the ground was not the answer, and so instead he reached down and seized the fabric of space itself and tore it free from the ice, and in his hand a sphere of distorted gravity began to form, and he compressed it smaller and smaller and smaller until it was a marble of absolute density in his palm, and then he hurled it at the creature, and the Yati slapped it aside with the back of his hand and the compressed gravity sphere crashed into a distant formation of ice and detonated like a black hole, consuming everything around it before collapsing into nothing. Kai and the creature looked at each other across the blackened ice, and behind Kai the four women were rising to their feet now that the gravitational assault had ended, their bodies aching and their breathing ragged, and Crystal looked at the Yati and the seven burning rings and the belt full of artifacts and said in a low voice laced with pain, "This attack was on another level. We have no idea how much more powerful he truly is."
Kai straightened and met the creature's burning gaze and asked the question with the calm of someone who had already accepted that the answer would not be comforting. "What are you going to show now?" And the Yati looked back at him and a slow smile spread across his ancient features, and his voice dropped into something deeper and older and considerably more dangerous than anything he had spoken before. "Oh? You are excited to see what other powers I possess?" The seven rings behind him began to rotate, and the belt at his waist began to glow with a hundred different lights, and the entire domain seemed to hold its breath. "Here it is. With the cool breath he says Realm—unfold."