Jared granted the shadow no breath, no second attempt at trickery. The instant its form solidified, he stamped out with Arcane Footwork, his body seeming to blink from view and reappear directly before the thing.
The Dragonslayer Sword crashed down, unstoppable. The slash looked plain, but it carried everything he could summon. Where the edge passed, the air split along a hair-thin black seam that refused to close.
The silhouette finally seemed to sense real danger. It refused to meet the blow head-on. Instead, it loosed a rasping, inhuman screech and thrust both distorted arms forward. Space itself rippled like water. Darkness condensed, coiling into a whirling barricade, an obsidian shield hammered out of pure night.
Boom! The sword crashed against the shield with a thunderclap that would have split mountains.
The blast rolled outward in a perfect ring, sweeping the broken shards of time and space even farther away until a raw, unstable arena was scoured clean around the two combatants.
The black shield shuddered. Web-thin cracks spread across its glossy surface, yet it held, just barely, against Jared Chance’s full-power strike.
His pupils contracted. The creature’s defense surpassed anything he had predicted. But long years of battle had carved adaptability into his bones.
Using the rebound, he drifted half a step back, flipped his wrist, and turned the descending slash into a lancing thrust. The tip of his sword vibrated at near-invisible speed, punching out hundreds, no, thousands, of times in a single heartbeat, every thrust driving toward one spot: the fractured heart of that shield.
Stab! Stab! Stab! The rapid-fire stabs melded into a single murderous hum. The shield, already splintered, finally surrendered. It burst apart in a storm of charcoal motes. Sword-light speared through the ruin and raced on toward the silhouette’s core.
Caught off guard, the creature contorted backward, bending in ways flesh and bone never could, while boiling ink-black vapors frothed from its skin to raise barrier after barrier of shadow.
Searing sword energy punched through the first screen, then the next, momentum bleeding but unbroken. The final few streaks drilled straight into the creature’s torso.
There was no blood, no sound of pierced flesh, only a smoky ripple where the blows landed. The silhouette grew thin, then re-coalesced, yet the twin crimson embers that served as its eyes dimmed and flickered.
It can be hurt… Yes!
“It’s working!” Jared’s voice rang across the shattered void. Hope ignited behind his eyes. He vaulted forward, the Dragonslayer Sword spinning like a furious golden dragon unleashed from its lair.
Every lesson, every secret form he had ever mastered poured from his muscles. Sometimes the blade cleaved wide arcs, an axe splitting the world. Sometimes it slipped in light as mist, sly and treacherous. At other moments, it scattered into a blizzard of phantom edges, reality itself unsure which strikes were real.
Under that storm, the silhouette faltered. It excelled at hiding, at twisting space to ambush prey. Forced into a straight-on duel, it found no easy purchase.
It stutter-stepped through ruptured space, dove into shadows, and re-emerged from impossible angles.
Each time it slashed with blades that could slice dimensions or hurled spears meant to rot celestial essence, but every attack met Jared’s sword, waiting like a hunter who knew the quarry’s heartbeat before it pulsed.
