Vrakth was faster than me, not by much, but enough that every blink I make, he's already turning toward where I'll land. He hits me with an open palm, not even bothering to add a demonic spell, just his hand, and I fold around it and skip across the crater like a stone thrown flat across a pond, eight bounces, and I stop on my back looking up at the red sky with most of my ribs broken and the taste of metal flooding my mouth.
For a moment, I just lay there and felt the pain filling my body.
"You are fighting carelessly," the Hollow Avatar said, but I ignored it. What did it know about the happiness I was feeling in this moment, staring at the sky… the knowledge that nine loops ago, I would not have endured even a second of what I had just taken from Vrakth.
To the Hollow Avatar, the demons could as well be slabs of meat that needed to be crushed, but that was its mindset, and I was beginning to discover myself in the crucible of battle.
