The knight barreled forward below, striking at the Devourer's coiling body. Each strike burst with elemental force, but it barely wound the beast.
Ben grit his teeth and forced himself to move again. He leapt off a platform of warped gravity, twisting midair as two beams raced past his flanks.
He dove beside Apophis, hurling another spiral of dark aether straight into the tenth eye, just as the knight launched a blade of pure lightning upward.
The two strikes collided,
The tenth eye didn't shatter, but it fractured. A deep, glowing wound split its center. The creature recoiled, the eye spasming in its socket.
Ben landed in a crouch, gasping for breath. Sweat mixed with blood at his brow.
Apophis landed beside him. She didn't yell this time. She looked him dead in the eye. "If you've got something crazy in mind," she said quietly, "either do it, or don't."
She turned toward the sky again, claws raised. "But if you hesitate much longer, we'll all die before you get the chance."
Ben's fist clenched. "The sealing stone… is it an Empyrian crystal?"
"Yes. Why?" she asked, frowning.
"What happens if we detonate it?"
Apophis's lips twitched. "If you want to die, don't drag me with you! Nothing will survive that kind of explosion."
Ben clicked his tongue. 'So that way won't work... Do I really have no other method?'
Just then, the knight, still clashing blade-to-claw against the Devourer, shouted back toward them, "Then strengthen the seal! Reinforce it!"
Apophis's face twisted. She recoiled as if slapped. That thought had never even crossed her mind, not because she was foolish, but because she hated the seal with every fiber of her being.
After all, who wouldn't?
She had been chained for who knows how long. Centuries, maybe more.
Every second passed in pure, soul-numbing boredom. An ordinary mind would've shattered long ago. And yet she had endured it all. That prison had become her hell.
Ben caught her expression and stepped forward. "So it's possible, then? Good. What are you waiting for?"
"I refuse to do it!" she snapped. "If you want to go through with it, do it yourself."
At that moment, the knight was blasted back, skidding across the battlefield and landing hard beside them. His sword drove into the ground, carving a deep crater as he stabilized himself.
"This is not the time to throw a tantrum, you damned serpent!" he barked, bloodied and breathless. "Do you have any better idea!?"
Apophis went silent, her mouth twitching with restrained fury. But the sky above didn't wait. Six golden eyes flared.
They scattered, just as the beams fired.
Ben twisted through a gravity fold, gritting his teeth as golden heat scraped past his arm. His skin burned.
He landed hard and rolled, then sprang up with one motion. "Apophis!" he shouted mid-motion, appendages flaring to parry a descending serpent head made of dark shadow. "Do you want this thing using your body forever?!"
Apophis didn't respond. She hovered above, wings wide, starlight bleeding off her in fraying waves. Her fists were clenched. Her jaw locked.
Below, the knight leapt between two of the Devourer's sweeping lashes, his blade carving sigils mid-air to deflect impact. He kicked off the ground and landed beside her, slamming his blade into the cracked earth.
"You said you hated the seal," he growled, "Fine. So do something else. Just standing here and letting it win is worse than being bound!"
Apophis's glare burned, but her silence held.
Ben shot upward past her, a trail of dark aether spiraling in his wake.
"We're dying here! You can either suffer in chains or fight to decide your own fate!
Reinforce the seal, just enough to stop the system! Not forever, just long enough for me to tear it out!"
The Devourer roared. All eight remaining eyes glowed now, preparing something massive. The system code along its body pulsed, converging toward its chest.
The knight's eyes widened. "It's Charging a wide-area beam."
Ben's heart pounded. "Dammit, another new phase."
Apophis still hadn't moved. She stood in the air like a statue, eyes blazing with too many conflicted emotion.
Ben soared up to her, grabbed her shoulder, and pulled her face to face.
"I'm not asking you to forgive them. I'm not asking you to accept it. I'm asking you to choose, death by possession, or life by your own damn rules."
Her eyes narrowed. And for the first time, She hesitated. A moment passed. Then she growled, the word forced through clenched teeth.
"Fine!" She turned sharply, wings flaring behind her. "Buy me some time."
Apophis turned without another word. Her wings snapped open, trailing streaks of black starlight behind her as she shot across the battlefield, past the pools of broken space.
She flew toward the far horizon, toward the seal core buried beneath the ruins of her own prison.
Ben watched her go for half a second, then turned to the sky. The eight remaining eyes burned bright. It's maw opened while the energy converging on it's chest.
Ben's voice was cold. "If that thing fired…"
The knight raised his sword. "Then we won't live long enough to finish it."
Ben's hands lit with dark aether.
"Then we make damn sure it doesn't fire."
The two of them launched upward together. The Devourer turned its head, eyes tracking them like prey. One blinked, then another. More beams fired, crossing in deadly spirals across the sky.
Ben folded space and twisted through, appendages flaring as he launched a barrage of gravitational-tipped spears. The attacks struck the outer shell of the charging core, not enough to destroy it, but enough to rattle it.
The knight hurled his sword like a bolt of lightning. It spun forward, dragging arcs of blue fire through the air before slamming into it's chest. It cracked, just slightly, but the core shimmered in response, rapidly stabilizing.
Ben landed midair, gravity pooling beneath his feet. He threw his arm forward. "I said STAY DOWN!"