Jaime rose higher into the sky, watching as the abomination continued to morph.

  Its heavily armored thorax narrowed as its entire body convulsed. Thick chitin along its back thinned, cracked, and peeled away in jagged plates. Beneath the discarded shell, raw flesh pulsed.

  Then two large, membranous wings unfurled from the exposed cavity.

  The creature shuddered violently to fully extend them. Though they appeared too soft and newly formed to sustain flight, the way its body continued hardening filled Jaime with unease.

  He could not allow it to finish adapting.

  The cicada-mantis hybrid it was becoming disturbed him on a primal level—as though this final form represented something irreversible. Fatal.

  Jaime dove.

  He urged Cimi to draw deeply from the ocean of faith. Wisdom and clarity flooded him as Mictlantecuhtli layered his own divinity atop it. The god’s power was less explosively destructive than dead faith—but far more stable.

  Shadow cloaked Jaime in a thin film of death.

  His feathers absorbed it eagerly. His armor darkened to pitch black before channeling the gathered force into his macuahuitl. The weapon trembled as he flashed toward the abomination.

  He descended like a comet.

  Air split around him as he forced himself downward, accelerating beyond comfort. The macuahuitl vibrated violently under the pressure of the immense energy he had crammed into its obsidian core.

  He struck.

  The abomination erupted.

  Corruption exploded outward in such density it resembled ink spilled across reality itself. Coal-dark smog surged upward to meet him.

  Instead of resisting, it yielded.

  The thick mass absorbed his momentum like a suffocating cushion. His fall slowed—then nearly stopped altogether within its unnatural buoyancy.

  The macuahuitl sank only partially into the substance before cracking under the strain. The stored energy detonated uselessly inside the corruption, dispersing chaotically without achieving the annihilation he intended.

  The cicada-mantis turned toward him.

  Its head tilted in grotesque curiosity. Maxillae stroked its salivating labium as though savoring the moment.

  Then the scythe-like forelimb came.

  Jaime barely reacted in time. He folded his wings around himself. Golden divinity flared within the feathers, cushioning the impact. The lingering dead faith coating them corroded at the scythe, buying him a heartbeat of reprieve as the creature reconsidered striking through the acidic barrier.

  As the macuahuitl’s remaining dead faith devoured the corruption binding him in place, Jaime twisted free. He rolled clumsily through the air and flashed away just as the abomination decided to cleave through his corrosive defense regardless.

  His scattered feathers snapped back to him before being shredded completely. Wings reformed fully as he ascended once more.

  Cold sweat slicked his skin beneath his armor.

  The near-death reminder sharpened his focus.

  One miscalculation would cost him his head.

  Mictlantecuhtli’s laughter thundered through his mind, ridiculing his failed attempts. Mocking him for squandering advantage.

  Fear hardened into anger.

  Jaime forged another spear of the dead. This one lacked the overwhelming density of his earlier creation, but he aimed not to annihilate—only to cripple.

  If he could destroy the creature’s wings, he could regain control of the battlefield.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  He hurled it.

  The abomination swatted it aside effortlessly.

  He threw another.

  And another.

  Each was batted away before impact. Its few meter-long forelimbs moved with disturbing dexterity, scythes cutting through the air with surgical precision.

  A sharp clicking emanated from the creature.

  Jaime recognized it as laughter.

  Its multifaceted eyes tracked his every twitch. Every muscle shift. Every breath.

  He had possessed the opportunity to exterminate it earlier—and failed.

  Now the consequence of that failure lay before him.

  The once-fragile wings hardened as he watched. Glossy, charcoal-colored veins pulsed visibly beneath the membrane. The wings themselves grew nearly translucent, the corruption within them flowing thick and luminous like liquid night.

  Then they beat.

  A violent gust slammed into Jaime as the abomination launched skyward. The droning vibration of its wings drowned out all other sound.

  It closed the distance in an instant.

  The wicked scythe was already at his neck before he could react.

  And then—

  Time stopped.

  Everything froze except his awareness.

  Jaime felt it—the flow of moments suspended, threads of possibility laid bare before his divine sight.

  Through branching futures, he saw what followed.

  Sol flashed into existence between them.

  Turquoise armor collided against the abomination’s flank with desperate force. At the same moment, a colossal jaguar of blue flame materialized and bit down viciously onto the cicada-mantis’ right wing.

  The frozen world shattered back into motion.

  -

  Sol dashed forward and summoned his short sword from within his gem.

  The blessed blade rematerialized in his right hand just as he came face-to-face with the first bipedal insect.

  For a heartbeat, time slowed.

  Sol thrust.

  The searing blade pierced one of the creature’s bulging eyes and sank deep into its roach-like skull. The steel burned as it entered, cooking through brain matter in a single decisive motion.

  Mandibles clacked inches from Sol’s face. A trembling proboscis extended outward in its dying spasms.

  The next insect lunged.

  Sol ripped his blade free, letting the twitching corpse slide from it. Vestigial limbs beneath its oversized sickle arms pawed weakly at him before collapsing. Its remaining compound eye reflected Sol’s snarl—and the towering flame jaguar looming behind him.

  Tezcalotl moved with predatory grace.

  The spirit bit into the approaching insect and ignited it from within. Blue flames consumed corruption mid-bite, refining it in the jaguar’s incandescent jaws. The creature became a blackened husk before it hit the ground.

  Only now did Sol recognize the difference between these insects and the one that had nearly overwhelmed him earlier.

  They were slower.

  Their movements seemed sluggish, almost delayed. Whether weakened by Jaime’s earlier devastation or shaken by Tezcalotl’s presence, they no longer felt like suffocating inevitabilities.

  Sol flowed between them.

  Each slow, exaggerated step they took left openings wide enough for slaughter. His sword slipped beneath their cuticles with brutal efficiency. Their armor proved meaningless against the blessed edge.

  One thrust. Twist. Withdraw.

  Another body dropped.

  A third.

  A fourth.

  With each kill, a grim sense of satisfaction bloomed in his chest. The blade carved through soft hemolymph and chitin alike, butchering them as cleanly as any of his former hunts.

  Their hideous heads and nauseating stench were the only harm they managed to inflict.

  Sol ensured it stayed that way.

  The last of the small platoon ignited under Tezcalotl’s flames, collapsing into charcoal. The stench left behind was overwhelming—so foul it drove Sol skyward in search of clearer air.

  His eyes snapped toward Jaime.

  He arrived just in time to see death poised at the younger chosen’s throat.

  Without hesitation—without even forming the conscious thought—Huehueteotl stopped time.

  The world froze.

  Sol rode his divine light forward, appearing to the right of the monstrous cicada-mantis. Tezcalotl manifested beside him in blazing brilliance.

  Sol swung with everything he had.

  The sword crashed against the creature’s armored flank. Sparks erupted from the chitin, but the exoskeleton endured the blow with terrifying resilience.

  Tezcalotl compensated instantly.

  The flaming jaguar lunged and bit down viciously on the creature’s right wing. Blue fire devoured membrane and corruption alike, crippling the appendage.

  The abomination screeched as it lost stability, plummeting toward the forest below—

  —but not before its scythe-like forelimb flashed.

  The blade cleaved straight through Tezcalotl.

  Sol felt it.

  A heart-wrenching agony tore through his chest as his spirit guide split apart. The flaming body dissolved and returned to his gem. Inside, Tezcalotl reformed whole—but immediately succumbed to slumber, weakened from the damage.

  Sol’s armor began to flake at the edges, divine structure destabilizing.

  Huehueteotl seized control of the faltering divinity, reinforcing the turquoise plating before it could collapse entirely.

  Rage swallowed Sol whole.

  Something precious had been harmed.

  The wretched creature would regret its existence.

  He would break its exoskeleton apart piece by piece. Its cuticle would become new armor for Tezcalotl. Its scythes would hang as trophies for his people to admire.

  Sol pushed off the air itself.

  Time halted again as Huehueteotl supported his mad charge.

  His short sword became an incandescent streak of light as he launched toward the abomination. Divinity surged violently through his veins, skin splitting beneath the strain. He did not care.

  His gem drained rapidly.

  He did not care.

  Huehueteotl sighed—ancient and resigned—and layered his own soul over Sol’s.

  Time meant nothing before the timeless.

  Primordial divinity poured outward.

  Sol drove his blazing blade straight into the abomination’s left eye.

  The blessed steel sank deep.

  Time resumed.

  The scythe-like forelimb reacted instantly, swatting Sol away the moment his borrowed divinity ran dry.

  He was hurled into the distance like a discarded ember, the world spinning as darkness clawed at the edges of his vision.