"And I'm afraid I'll have to decline." Aria glared at the decrepit old man. She felt a bit bad mentally registering him as "decrepit" but there was just a certain…quality, to him. As though he wasn't fully alive, wasn't fully there. Like a corpse, puppeted by a mind that didn't realize it was supposed to be dead.

"Are you certain? I could make it worth your while. Kneel before me. Give your life willingly. And I swear neither me nor mine will lay a finger on your kin." He made the offering sincerely, Aria felt. She couldn't know with certainty, but some sixth sense told her he really was offering her that trade.

"What guarantee do I have you won't turn around and betray that promise once you have my head separated from my body?" Aria was dimly aware of her mother's expression. Aghast that her daughter was even considering such a thing.

"You have my word. One immortal to another."

Aria was surprised at the snarl with which her next words issued forth. "Your word is worth nothing to me, Killer. I'm no gambler. I don't play stakes. I win. You want my head? Come and take it."

A Falcon and a Viper erupted across the span between them with the whipcrack force of a shearing gale.

The Viper arrived first, fangs outstretched to spew poison into another victim's veins.

The Falcon welcomed it gladly, her claws outstretched wrapping around the little snake's lithe, agile body with an ironclad grip.

The Viper writhed in her grip, breaking free, but the Falcon needed only a moment to take the battle to her domain. Even mortal martial prowess could be a fearsome thing, when amplified by immortal persistence.

Aria sent her foe careening through the already-broken window. A force cable shot upwards, trying to grasp at the ledge, its outer edges a putrid gray-green, the colour of wormeaten flesh sloughing off the bone. But while Aria's own Radiance was cored in a deep, dark violet, it still ultimately gave off light — she knew it did, she could feel it through her Presence. This vile…thing had a core of pure black, a darkness that didn't reject light, but seemed to consume it.

Aria's Constellation threw off a dissonant tone, a soul-deep feeling of wrongness. Her own Presence lashed out, disdainfully severing her foe's construct along its insultingly blatant seams, as she leapt out of the window after him.

The Viper lashed out, trying to find purchase somewhere upon the branches, or in the nests that tucked themselves within them, but wherever his tails tried to grasp, there the stooping Falcon was, her razor wings billowing out and slapping its tail away with utter contempt.

Aria drew Tenet from her waist. She'd never actually fired it at full force in her own hands before, only ever while holding it in testing rigs. Now, she drove the propellant to full throttle, and a dozen crack-hisses rang out over Arbourhaven as she let Tenet sing, feeling the recoil sink into her flesh and seemingly just…disappear.

Her opponent brought a defense to bear, but for all its potency, his Presence was a pile of bricks with no mortar. Jagged, clawing, scraping, painful simply to stand near, and yet so disjointed, so disparate, that she could simply tear along the seams.

The first four shots fell on a solid wall of that rotting green, and fell away to nothing, the hard metal sloughing away into brittle dust. The next eight found their mark with explosive force as Aria's Presence drilled down between the seams in her foe's defense, carving tunnels for them to pass through unimpeded.

Aria knew how the numbers worked out. She'd tested this exact load on ballistic dummies before. It really shouldn't have surprised her.

But there was just something about seeing a man's arms and legs blow clean off as the water in the tissue flash-boiled from the sheer quantity of energy she'd just deposited into his flesh. Ballistic tests just didn't do it justice.

The Viper's body was perforated, his blood spilling freely onto the ancient roots it fell past, but the Falcon wasn't so easily fooled. She sensed his Immortal Breath, still, and she would not rest until she had snuffed it out completely.

With her wings tucked close, the Falcon focused her Presence entirely beneath her, a solid wall tapering down to an impaling point. Her Externality manifested beneath her, a grisly barbed spearpoint diving straight at the Viper's heart.

His flesh all but gone, his Will subverted, the Viper had no recourse but to be rent asunder beneath the Falcon's talons.

The pavement at the lowest levels of the city shattered as the lance buried itself deep within the earth, pinning the Viper's corpse to the ground. Vast plumes of dust and newly-formed gravel erupted in the wake of the impact, as the Falcon alighted on violet wings, gently coming to a rest upon the still-unbroken ground.

Something stirred within the Viper's shallow grave. Some terrible, unnatural power. His Immortal Breath faltered, and failed. He was dead.

And then, suddenly, he wasn't.

His Presence billowed out like wildfire, and it was all the Falcon could do to keep it from spreading as such. Her immortal pride could withstand the Viper's wrath, she knew. She doubted any mortals caught in its glare would be so lucky.

Her Presence spread like vast, shading wings. She knew she couldn't quash his fury, and she didn't try. She simply took it upon herself, letting it scratch, claw, rend at her wings, so long as it defended those defenseless.

Aria had always been a quick study. Her fascination had always been with engineering, of course, with the disciplines of natural philosophy, but she was no slouch in arts or history either. As she stood there, gritting her teeth against the raging onslaught, for a moment she simply…thought.

Of how she'd fought her whole life. She wasn't the most physically imposing, so she'd relied on technique, turning her foe's might upon them.

Of her cultivation art. Your opponent's strength, your boon. Their fall, ordained by nature.

And, strangely enough, of a very, very old poem. She'd read it once, in a library. It came from the time of humanity's ancestral home, supposedly, long before they'd scattered across the starry skies.

The Bird of Hermes is my name,
Eating my wings to make me tame.

She couldn't say why that particular couplet came to mind, but the image gave her some small measure of strength. Some faith she could endure.

Her Presence burned like an absolute motherfucker but, really, after the day she'd had, what was a little burning agony between friends? She managed to speak through gritted teeth, praying she'd be heard.

"Garcia. We've got a situation."

Gunnery Chief Garcia's voice fell like the sweetest song on Aria's ears. "I see it. Explosion in B-2. You have eyes?"

"For now. We've got falling stars, Chief. I need civilians evacuated ASAP from B-2 through E-5, two blocks wide. Gimme everything you got in that range, red hot, kill shot."

"You have visual contact with hostiles?"

"Hostile, singular, but he's a tough bastard."

"Any civilian casualties in need of medivac?"

"Not yet, but if you don't get them clear, we're about to have some."

"SupTech, we can have kill teams on the location in T-8, get clear."

"No can do, Chief."

Garcia's voice softened. "R-C, you know I respect the Hell out of you, but that is a cultivator. Don't be a hero."

Aria barely held herself back from screaming from a particularly intense blast of her foe's Presence. "Who said anything about being a hero? No, nothing so illustrious. I'm just bait."

The Presence in front of her began to pull inwards, no longer unrestrained, and finally Aria let her blanket of protection drop, pulling it inwards. Her Presence felt heavy, nowhere near as nimble as she'd become used to, and the Facet ached. She didn't even know it could do that, but then, if her Body could…

The dust plume began to clear, and from it emerged an undifferentiated mass of gore in a roughly bipedal silhouette. Flesh knitting itself back together, bones forming out of nothing, wet, squishy eyes popping into their sockets. Like printing a human body from raw materials.

As soon as the mouth had a tongue flapping inside it, the monstrosity spoke in not so much a voice as an unusually coherent death rattle.

"Little PEST. You are. Dangerous. I will end you here. Underestimated you. COST. ME. YOU. COST ME." The little mound of flesh — which by now even had a little skin, how novel — seemed really, truly insulted.

Even without skin — or, at any rate, clothes — the Viper once again dashed across the field of battle. He fought now, possessed, for even a snake has its honour, and he would not stand for the moulting the Falcon had delivered.

The immortal Falcon, even with her Mind and Body so remade, struggled against the onslaught. The first time since she'd remade herself that someone really, truly pushed her to the limits of her new soul.

But before she was the Immortal Falcon, she had been a mortal Mantis: an excellent fencer, and a peerless martial artist. where the Viper lashed out with the fangs of black-green unlight that now tipped his hands, the venom in them bright and clear to anyone with the senses of an Immortal, the Mantis' hooks were there, snapping at his wrists, his elbows, robbing his strikes of power as she danced back on feet that seemed to possess only a fleeting familiarity with the ground they stood upon.

She was being pushed now, forced to the absolute limit, and yet that was where she had resided so long in her mortal life. Though the debris fell like snow, and the blows landed like hammers, she was in familiar lands.

And yet, with every blow she caught, every strike deflected, her movements grew heavier, her joints locking up with the weight, as though each strike stuck to her, weighing her down.

Something had to give. She couldn't intercept the Viper's strike in time, yet she couldn't dance out of the way on such leaden feet.

She chose the feet.

She chose wrong.

Forcing the movement released the force that had gathered within her all at once. Neither the flight of a Falcon nor the graceful leap of a Mantis, the pavement exploded beneath her as she went careening dozens of meters through the air, flying backwards through the city streets.

Aria's arm and half her face scraped along the road, abrading until she could feel the wind touching her bones. On the plus side, her movements no longer felt leaden, which was cold comfort as claws cold as death tore a rent in her vest and shirt, cutting shallow gouges right into her stomach.

Immediately, she felt the foreign Radiance raging within her, trying to corrode her channels, to tear open her soul, to crack her open like some kind of fucking oyster. The indignity proved a shockingly effective stimulant.

Aria forced Radiance into her Body, the heals patching over right before her eyes — insofar as she still bothered to use those things — and while she couldn't deny the drain it'd put on her, it didn't leave her any less able to fight. At the same time, she began cycling Sovereign Guard, drawing the foreign Radiance into rounding spirals, grinding it down beneath her own Will, making it hers.

Your opponent's strength, your boon. Their fall, ordained by nature.

She understood now. The weight in her Body, and still building up within her Presence from that constant, scraping pressure. The Viper's strength. The Mantis' boon. The miserable little snake would be prey before the Falcon. Such was nature's ordinance.

Or, as the situation might call for, ordnance.

Aria was a grappler first, a boxer second, and a kickboxer essentially never. Feet were for moving, and if you were trying to hit something with them, something better have gone very poorly for your hands.

Today though, she found herself begrudgingly wishing she'd taken the time to learn. Her hands were more than occupied trying to stop even more of that bastard's venomous spell from sinking into her. Refining such a hostile, chaotic Radiance was proving more than a little difficult, and grinding down the shard of his Will while also trying to keep her head and her shoulders contiguous with one another was not what she would call a stacked deck. Or at least, not in her favour.

Still, if opportunity would not present itself, then she would force it. Aria dove low, striking for her opponent's knee. A dirty, brawler's strike, and a risky one at that, given how it put her face within a very easy arc of whatever part of her opponent's leg he deigned to use.

He went for the knee. A middling outcome, not the best not the worst. But good enough. His knee was met with her elbow in equal measure, an exchange that, had they not been immortal, likely would've ended in broken limbs for both. As it was, his knee simply deflected, unharmed.

The deflection was all she needed. Her father's voice echoed in her head.

To win a fight, you must control two things first and foremost: distance, and balance. Lose control of either, and even a far weaker opponent can take you for all you're worth.

Notably, the rest of that lesson had been about how bringing a gun to a knife fight was far more important than either of those things, but that didn't seem to hold particularly true for an immortal of her financial circumstances.

The hand she'd used to deflect struck her foe in the groin, hard enough to launch his feet just barely off the ground. Her other arm reached up, unleashing the full force of the spring-loaded storm that felt like it was raging through her body, a wide open palm-strike straight to center mass.

The force exploded through her hand like a loaded gun. Had she focused it on a smaller area — a fingertip, or even a closed fist — it likely would've put an explosive hole straight in his torso, which, from what she'd seen so far, would've been basically useless.

She'd taken away her foe's balance, and used it to take back control of the distance. Of course she wasn't going to lose this advantage.

It was easy to forget at times, living under the shade of the trees, that Astra-V was first and foremost a tripwire. In case of war, the planet was inhabited primarily to incur as grand of a blood price as possible from any invading or inhabiting force.

Usually the cannons designed to make that happen lay under the streets, hidden, out of sight and out of mind, looking no more assuming than a manhole cover. Now, a half-dozen erupted along her foe's path as he flew, perfectly aligning their firing arcs to ensure they would maximally perforate his body while minimizing damage to their surroundings and entirely avoiding one another.

Immediately, Aria capitalized on the advantage. Force cables shot out, propelling her through the air, and out towards Arbour Sound. Her Presence still felt laden, heavy, sluggish. She wouldn't be repeating her prior daring maneuvers like this, certainly, but she could manage flying through clear skies without too much trouble.

Her wings unfurled again, the Sound's thermals giving her the lift she needed to get clear of the inhabited regions as fast as possible. Behind her, the rhythmic thumps of anti-air cannons comforted her with the knowledge that her stupid plan might actually work.

Her foe seemed to simultaneously be fatally aggrieved any time he was made to spend any amount of Radiance, and yet burned it as though he was sitting on a boundless bounty of it.

Which, in fairness, he very well may have been.

Still, while Aria used her wings and the wind to carry her along, her foe chased terrifyingly close behind, plumes of Radiance shooting from his feet, propelling him forward like a rocket.

And much like a rocket, he was very, very fast.

Also much like a rocket, his maneuverability was shit.

Aria would never call herself an ace, but by the Saints if she couldn't even dodge this she deserved to have her head lopped off. The man chasing behind her seemed to grow more feral, more berserk with every injury he sustained, as though the indignity was so great he would gladly die if it meant getting his pound of flesh.

He would dash through the air, trying to bash Aria with his Presence, trying to dissolve her wings. And yet, for all its potency, it was simply far too diffuse, Aria's Externality far too robust. Had he focused it, tried to find the seams, tried to truly dismantle her, she'd be wearing fins now, not wings.

Yet where once he'd stood before her a perfectly honourable gentleman, offering her a deal — even if a rather shit one — he now chased her like a rabid beast, so tempted by prey that it might not even realize its own heart had stopped beating until its limbs began to go slack.

It was dangerous, and it was in no small part terrifying, but it was also useful. Aria couldn't fight freely if she had to worry about who might get hurt if she wasn't there to consume the agony, to bear the madman's ire.

So she baited him. She let out the slightest trickle of her own Radiance, blood in the water, to make sure he'd have eyes only for her. With every passing second her Presence grew heavier. That was fine. Accumulation to a moment of perfect release. The moment would come.

She didn't have a direct line to Citadel 4. Trying to get a secure line through Arbourhaven fire control would take too long, need too many questions answered.

But she did have a direct line to someone at Citadel 4.

"Matsuda, you there?"

"I picked up, didn't I? Aria, what the Hell is going on out there? World's gone upside down here. Cultivators fighting in Arbourhaven? Are your parents okay? Where the Hell are you? I've been looking all over."

"Currently? Enjoying a beautiful aerial view of the Palisades mountain range, while a Radiance-starved madman tries to rip my heart out and probably eat it."

Matsuda went silent for several seconds, before simply sighing. "Fuck."

Aria laughed, mirthlessly. "Don't worry, it gets worse. I'm sending you a firing solution. I need you to convince Commander Lance to authorize its execution."

A string of expletives came from Matsuda's end of the call, but Aria could hear her sprinting down the halls. Matsuda was a big woman, and while the low tunnels of the Planetary Defense Citadels often felt less than accommodating to her, it did have the distinct advantage of letting her bowl over just about everyone in her way to Lance.

"How the Hell do I get him to actually sign off on this? The timings here aren't exactly lax."

"Tell him Volkova's ordered it." It wasn't technically a lie. She had told her to clean up this mess, and now she was passing that order up the chain of command. Like a good subordinate.

"Who the Hell is Volkova?"

"He'll know. Trust me."

A brief pause. "You know, if this goes bad, he's gonna brig me. Probably a court martial."

"Not to put too fine a point on it, but if this goes bad—," Aria rolled on her ailerons as the madman rushed past her on jets of that awful, putrid Radiance of his, "—then I won't be alive to apologize."

"I hate you so much." Aria heard the sound of a door opening, as Matsuda's end of the line went quiet. She trusted her friend to come through, one way or another.

She just hoped she'd be quick about it.

As Aria's target came into view — a large mesa surrounded by deep, jagged, rain-cut gorges — she deliberately let her Presence lapse for a moment. The suffocating terror of having her Will suppressed was something she doubted she'd ever get used to, but she needed him to believe he had the advantage, that he was closing in on his prey and it was only a matter of time.

In all fairness, one way or another, it would only be a matter of time.

Aria tethered herself to the hard stone of the mesa, pulling herself forward to bleed off some of her momentum as she hit the ground running, and while she braced reflexively for the impact, her body simply soaked most of it. Her foe followed close behind, crashing atop her like a comet.

She couldn't move her limbs in time to dodge out of the way, and she didn't bother. She simply let the force cables tug her back, barely clearing the ground before the stone shattered like sugar glass beneath the force of the impact.

Her opponent rose, his arms splattered across the broken stone, flesh, bone, and sinew rapidly growing out from the bleeding stumps at his shoulders.

Commander Lance's words piped into Aria's ears, iron in his voice, and she stood a little straighter purely on reflex.

"Technician. With consideration given for the extenuating circumstances, your request for fire support has been granted. Sentinel firing sequence has been initiated. Timed and positioned as you requested."

Aria breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Commander."

"Don't thank me, Technician. Set your clock, and don't miss. Dismissed."

Accumulation to a moment of perfect release, Aria recited in her head, as though the words alone would salvage this moronic plan of hers.

"You. Think RUNNING. Will save you? I will TEAR OUT YOUR HEART. I WILL FEAST ON YOUR LIGHT, CRETIN."

A pair of force cables shot out from the steadily-disintegrating mound of flesh shambling towards her on two feet. His heart wasn't in it, Aria could tell. She batted both away with disdain.

"I'm not running. What's your name, Killer?"

A hint of humanity seemed to return to his eyes. He froze where he stood, struggling to regain his composure as he spoke. "Caspian Mwangi. That. Is the name. Of the one. Who will consume you. And you. Will become of us. You will."

Aria nodded, and gave a courteous bow, traditional sportsmanship in fencing. "One immortal to another, then, I acknowledge you, Caspian Mwangi. I acknowledge your power." She offered both hands forward, in a boxer's neutral guard. "But I do not acknowledge your strength."

Caspian tilted his head to the side, an uncanny glare in his eyes, and simply stared at Aria. The wind whistling through the gorges below them was the only sound between them for several long seconds, and Aria was grateful for each one.

When finally he spoke, it was with an eloquence that seemed foreign on him, stilted, like someone was in his ear, feeding him the script.

"I will have your name soon enough. But I would hear it from your lips before I kill you."

"Aria Rostova-Chen. Daughter of Viktor Rostov and Anya Chen."

Caspian nodded his acknowledgement to her, but it seemed forced, his neck seeming to ratchet forward rather than smoothly bow, like a wooden puppet, dancing on strings at the hands of a poor puppeteer.

"I acknowledge your grace, Aria Rostova-Chen. But I will not acknowledge your victory."

The Viper and the Falcon met upon an open field. The Viper dashed across sundered stone, the Falcon waiting, patient. The Viper lashed out, his fangs tipped in venom that hungered to rush through the Falcon's blood, to ground her, to render her infirm, to lay her heart upon the stone altar atop which they dueled.

Yet the Falcon spurned him at every turn. Where his fangs leapt for her flesh, her own claws of violet whipped them aside, showers of sparks and heat exploding out from where the two Externalities met — neither Presence strong enough to fully dissolve the other.

With each exchange, both lost something, and both gained something. The Viper poisoned the Falcon's light, and she amputated the rotting talons without hesitation, her reserves dwindling rapidly.

Yet in every blinding explosion of sparks, the force, the heat, the energy — enough to briefly ionize the very air between them — drained off into her Externality, turning her blows from rapid-fire rotary whipcracks to slow, inexorable hammer blows. What she lost in the agility of her defense, she gained in its sheer destructive power, the Viper's fangs shattering in every exchange.

He grew them back near-instantaneously, of course — a battle between cultivators proceeded at a blinding pace, and even the most grievous injuries would've bought sparse seconds — but she needed time, and the space between "Near" and "Instantaneously" added up.

The two of them swept back and forth across the mesa, leaving cracked stone and scorched earth in their wake, neither yielding enough ground to lose, nor seizing enough advantage to win.

In other words, equilibrium.

Aria was the first to stop. Naturally, of course. She had to drag this fight out quite a bit longer still, and every second that she could gain where she wasn't having to do her level best not to get killed was practically a divine treasure.

But that wasn't what gave her pause. They'd been going at each other, by Aria's count, for a little over a minute and a half now. In that time, she'd lost solidly a third of her considerable Radiance reserves which, setting aside everything else, certainly gave her some sympathy for her foe's indignation at being forced to rebuild his own body. Making flesh and bone from, essentially, scratch was costly.

And yet, she could still feel the Radiance he'd been stealing from her. It was a weak resonance, but it was undeniable. Every time her Presence passed over him, she felt her Will tug upon those diffuse strands of the power that still, at heart, responded to her.

Of course, she imagined that went both ways. The venomous Radiance he'd sunk into her Soul still raged within her, barely held in place by Sovereign Guard, being ground down surely, yes, but slowly.

Aria had spent, essentially, all day today having stupid ideas and doing very, very stupid things.

This was still probably the dumbest one yet.

She stood perfectly still, as did her opponent, both watching for the other to make a move, as she spoke. "Seems we're at an impasse."

"No. You are. WEAK. I will drain your strength. And then. We will CONSUME you."

"Or I'll kill you. You've been spending far more freely than I have, Mwangi. How many more times can you rebuild that body of yours? You may be immortal, but you're beholden to laws too."

"You offer…something else?"

"A simple competition. A contest of Wills. You attempt to drain my soul, and I attempt to drain yours. Whoever manages to kill the other one first wins."

The Viper grinned, a vile expression on his ruinous face, the beast never having bothered to quite grow it back properly. "We. ACCEPT. Your offer."

He leapt upon the Falcon, his Presence wrapping around her, constricting her, as she pulled hers in tight around her, a rigid, unbroken shell around her Soul.

Her defense was flawed, of course. A singular gap, at the top, where the shell emanated out from her body and tightly around her. The Viper sunk his teeth in, pressing harder, ever harder. The Falcon was brave, yes, but she was weak, a mere hatchling. He had drank the blood of far greater, more storied heroes. She would be nothing but a stepping stone of his path to power. What a brief, miserable existence to lead.

She resisted, of course. They almost always did. But slowly, yet surely, a trickle of starlight bled out from her. Thick. Tightly-packed. Practically an elixir in and of itself. Yes, he would feast upon her light, and he would take his time absorbing her Will. Such great knowledge she possessed. Fool girl. His master had granted him great boon by sending him here. The heart of an infant goddess, what benevolence.

Aria felt as though her blood had turned to ice, and was being torn out through her skin. The monster drank from her without remorse, without restraint, drawing out the precious light that she'd so greedily grasped before. His Presence scraped against hers, a dozen screaming knives scraping against her senses.

Her Presence felt heavy. So heavy. She worried now. Would she be able to move it, when she needed to? Did she have the strength? Did she have the alacrity?

It hardly mattered. She was committed now. She counted down in her head. She had to outlast him. She had to outlast him.

She had to last just one minute in this icy cold Hell.

The seconds ticked down, and she hoped and she prayed she hadn't miscounted. She hadn't of course, she knew she hadn't. She had the Mind of a cultivator now, and even before she'd had an impeccable memory.

But the cost of failure would be high. Higher than she could possibly afford to pay.

Aria counted down the seconds.

20.

15.

10.

9.

The Viper was a trickster. A predator. A killer. And a survivor. In a pitched battle on an open field, it may have lost to the bold slashing talons of the Falcon. But in ambush? In deceit? That was its domain.

8.

The Falcon, in her pride, in her hubris, had flown too close to the sun. Had gladly let the vile snake sink his fangs into her neck. Had challenged him to partake of her immortal lifeblood.

7.

The Viper was king of deceit. The Falcon had its pride. Such was the way.

6.

But the dashing Viper had its own pride. Its smug self-satisfaction, seeing the light drain from a victim as it saw through the hunt.

5.

But the stooping Falcon had her own tricks. And the sky was her domain. What hubris, a sun-blind serpent thinking to see its demise coming.

The Falcon unfurled her wings, and the shadow of death was cast upon the Viper. The blood-soaked screaming Presence crashed to nothing, for only a brief moment, reforming itself in the blink of an eye.

But the Falcon's beating wings knew well what death could reside in the span of darkness between.

She grasped the lifeblood within the Viper's Soul, the icy shards that had been torn up through her skin now thinning, elongating, growing, splitting.

Dividing, fractal.

Into a Thousand Riving Roots.

Aria pushed her Aperture to the absolute limit, forcing as much Radiance into each of her Facets as she could. The timing had to be perfect. There was no room for error.

Her Mind sped along, counting the seconds within the seconds within the seconds, and in that moment were lightning to strike she could trace its path through the air as it did.

Her Presence was no match for her opponent's — not in sheer potency. In technique, however, sharp edges of her Will axed through the fault lines in his ill-formed foundations. It wouldn't last, of course. She didn't need it to.

Her Externality unleashed its stored weight, and Aria's shoulders sagged from simply being spared the effort of keeping such a tightly wound spring from lashing out before the opportune moment. Barbed hooks exploded outwards from the Roots, lodging themselves deep within the monster's flesh, sinking into bone, all throughout his body, the grip of the talons sparing absolutely no grip.

Her Mind kept counting. She had a little time left. And evidently, the insanity of immortality was quite alive and well within her still.

She looked her opponent in the eyes, or what remained of them — her talons had sunk into his skull, and the soft tissue of the eyes had not been spared — and spoke coldly.

"I told you, Mwangi. I don't play stakes. Did you really think I'd take a wager I had a shot of losing?"

He didn't have a chance to respond — not that he had an intact tongue or an unlocked jaw with which to do so — before Aria's countdown hit its mark. Pushing everything she had into her Body, releasing the force of her fall and of every blow she'd taken onto her skin since, Aria spun on her heels and, with the full force of immortal flesh, bone, and sinew…

Accumulation to a moment of perfect release.

Aria cast her foe skywards.

She kept her hooks lodged in him for as far as the timing would allow. Beyond that, devoid of her Intent to hold it together, her Radiance would run wild within his flesh. It wouldn't be enough to kill him — if it had been she wouldn't have bothered pulling rank — but it would keep him from throwing off her trajectory.

Not that he had much time to make any such adjustments.

Aria wrapped her Presence around her, using her Externality to form a shell around herself as she knelt and covered her ears.

In the sky above, Dawnbreaker's roar was beheld. An argent lance, blindingly bright, puncturing the atmosphere too fast to perceive anything more than the pillar of lightning left in its wake.

And the four blood-soaked stars that now hovered in its path.

Much as her own inner star — the first of her Constellation — had erupted from her Soul when she'd died during her ascension, Caspian's Constellation hung in the air above her. Cautiously, she pressed her Presence against it, and instinctually recoiled.

Death.

That was all it was.

Death, and hunger. A never-ending desire to consume. She had expected to find within it Caspian's Will, disjointed and chaotic as it was. Instead, she found the reason why it had been so flawed.

It wasn't one Will.

It was dozens.

Dozens of cultivators, dead, their memories, their beings, their Wills held within his Soul.

Something took root within Aria in that moment. To her, cultivation was beautiful. She had grasped immortality with both hands, and it had freed her. She soared through the skies, on immortal wings.

And here these…things were. Disjointed, broken fragments of cultivators, no doubt once like her, grasping the freedom their cultivation granted.

There was only one thing she could do, naturally.

She had a vocation with her Presence — according to her Martial Mother, at least — and so it should've been scarcely surprising that she could see the faults in those mad stars.

Of course, she also knew what happened when a star died, and yet something within her compelled her. She could not permit…this to exist a moment longer. A fate far worse than death.

Even her own.

Four spear-tipped cables shot out from Aria, and into the Constellation above.

Reinforced by her Will, ironclad as it was with the fledgling germ of something she didn't yet have the words for, each of them in turn found their way to the hearts of the stars.

It was really quite absurdly simple. If she followed the flows of the energy, it all made perfect sense.

She simply plunged her spears into the right place, at the right time, in the hearts of the four stars.

And like slipknots, the stars simply came apart.

The Wills that had been clawing at her, screaming at her for their freedom…she understood now what they were. She desperately wished she didn't.

To mortal senses, it would simply appear as though a vast glut of Radiance had simply flooded out into the mountains outside of Arborhaven.

But to the senses of the two immortals beholding the sight with true eyes, a terrible injustice was righted, as dozens of Wills called out one last time — in what, Aria couldn't say, except that it wasn't pain — before floating away, to rejoin the stars from whence all things came, and where they all one day had to return.