Finish it right now…
Kaelen decided in less time than it took Valen’s next breath to escape his lungs.
A rain-drenched doorway on Earth, one hour from now, was nothing compared to having all of Valen’s arsenal, all of his ability, at the end of a completed hijack.
Holding the line grants Lyra a slower death by thousands of shallow wounds.
Taking this body gives her a chance to win.
“Understood,” said Nix.
“You’ll need an opening that overpowers his remaining will to resist.
Voluntary surrender of this body is not an option while he maintains his confidence in victory.”
Then I take it away from him
Valen surged forwards with his sword outstretched, golden light blooming from the blade in accelerating pulses as he poured all of his wounded pride from the last hour into one killing blow, the culmination of every fight in his life ending with him standing over his opponent’s broken form.
[Ding!
Emergency Motor Interference Initiated.]
[Target: Right Knee – Voluntary Muscle Control Suppressed.]
Kaelen reached into the fragile thread of twenty-two percent access he’d fought and bled for, and instead of leading Valen towards what he wanted, he simply blocked something his body needed to function.
The knee buckled
Not dramatically, not in any fashion that could be considered suspicious.
A quarter of an inch of lost extension, a half-second of misaligned tension, and Valen’s perfectly-aimed finishing strike went wide by the width of a man’s hand.
[Ding!
Combat Outcome Altered.]
[Host Flank Exposure: Critical.]
The Lich Lord didn’t waste the opportunity.
Ancient, decayed claws raked inwards through the gap Valen’s body provided, and golden runed armor that should have stopped a strike from anything short of an angel shattered inwards like glass under the force of the blow.
Valen’s scream echoed up the ridge, raw and real and empty of the arrogant poise he’d displayed through every trial, and he hit the dirt hard enough for his chest plate to cave inwards with black rot already blooming out from the wound in thick, veiny tendrils that had nothing to do with Kaelen and everything to do with the Lich Lord’s necrotic touch.
[Ding!
Critical Damage Confirmed.]
[Host Vessel Structural Integrity: 43% and falling.]
[Warning: Necrotic corruption spreading independent of parasitic infection.
Host body actively dying from external wound.]
Good, Great!
Kaelen allowed the ugly thought to linger in the back of his fractured mind.
Broken pride and failing body; the cracks I needed.
Inside the ruined corridors of Valen’s own psyche, something began to scream.
Not audibly; Kaelen could feel it, a violent thrashing of Valen’s own spirit against weeks of unknowing infiltration, against a truth he’d never seen in himself until now.
What’s happening to me.
My own leg – my leg didn’t move – something’s wrong something’s been wrong something’s INSIDE-
[Ding!
Host Awareness Threshold Breached.]
[Warning: Full Consciousness Recognition Event In Progress.]
He knows now.
Kaelen could feel the animal fear bleeding through Valen’s fraying nerves, and for a fraction of a second, a shred of the man that had once been here in the face of impossible odds shuddered from the realization of what he knew, and that it was far too late to stop it.
“His resistance is breaking down,” said Nix.
“Fear and physical trauma are accelerating the process more rapidly than the infection could on its own.
This is your window of opportunity.
It will not remain open for long.”
How long
“Seconds.
Possibly less.
His mental processes may become completely unmanageable prior to lock completion, in which case you will have possession of an empty vessel rather than a controlled one.”
Empty is still better than losing him
[Ding!
Neural Infection Progress: 22%…
41%…
58%…]
The percentage climbed faster than it ever had, Valen’s own crumbling resistance no longer holding back the advance as it had with arrogance and confidence.
Kaelen wrenched his way through pathways that had taken weeks of steady work to infiltrate, feeling the last remnants of the real Valen struggle against the encroaching blackness that was trying to swallow him whole.
[Infection Progress: 71%…
84%…]
Above them, the Lich Lord’s weathered and vacant gaze swept back towards the fallen Knight-Commander, unfazed by the destruction of his latest opponent.
Its staff rose slowly, frost-bright energy coalescing at the tip in a blooming knot of light that sent tiny needles of static electricity dancing up Kaelen’s borrowed arms.
[WARNING: Lethal Spell Charging.]
[Spell Identified: Soul Rend – Total Consciousness Erasure.]
[Estimated Time to Cast Completion: 12 seconds.]
Twelve seconds.
Already Kaelen could feel the two numbers racing against each other, the clock counting down the final moments of this body’s existence as he struggled to reach the other side.
Twelve seconds until that thing erased whatever was left of this mind, and I’m still at eighty-four percent.
“You will not be able to complete the lock at your current rate of progress,” said Nix.
“Not by standard means of infiltration alone.”
Then show me something that isn’t standard
The Lich’s staff pulsed twice, the frost-blue energy at its tip growing dense enough to bend the air around it, and in the back of a thousand screaming doubts and the rising clockwork tick of doom itself, Kaelen felt his core organism strain against the last few walls of determination that Valen simply refused to abandon.
[Infection Progress: 89%.]
[Cast Completion: 6 seconds.]
Six seconds, only I have six seconds to finish becoming him, or I lose this body, this chance, and possibly everything as Lyra’s bleeding for on the other side of this doorway where I can’t even reach.