Steel stood, wiped the blood from his jaw, and grinned again.
"Cool story," he said.
Then his entire torso ignited in green flame.
"But I brought my own apocalypse."
Steel rose from the crater, shoulders steaming, ribs already repairing. Each breath pulled a dozen fractures together. His blood, laced with green bio-energy, hissed as it clotted over shattered bone and ruptured flesh.
"You really are out of your mind," he spat, voice half-laughter, half-rage.
Liliya—or what she had become—descended through the air like a marionette cut from physics. Her form shimmered, flesh flickering between states. One moment skin, the next obsidian scales, then fluid shadow wrapped in flame. Tendrils writhed from her back, dragging arcs of corrupted Ember through the air like cosmic ink.
She opened her mouth.
A pulse exploded from her throat.
Reality cracked.
Steel threw himself sideways as a beam of black-gold entropy sheared through the floor, vaporizing steel and flesh alike. Three mercenaries disintegrated mid-scream. The wall behind them collapsed into spiraling fractals.
Steel hit the ground, rolled, then lunged—arms transforming.
His left reshaped into a spiraled cannon of green energy coils, pulsing faster than the eye could register. His right split into four tendrils—each one tipped with a monomolecular fang.
He fired.
The cannon screamed.
A torrent of emerald plasma ripped through the air, twisting around Liliya's outstretched hand. She raised her fingers, and an invisible shield formed—runed with lost glyphs that shimmered and died as the bolt struck.
BOOM.
The entire chamber shook.
A second pulse from Liliya blasted through the floor, warping gravity. Steel was thrown upward, his body convulsing as time stuttered. Mid-air, he bent his limbs backward like an insect, then realigned. Constructs formed around him—bladed wings, segmented armor, a spinal turret whirring to life.
He dove.
Twin scythes burst from his arms again, sparking with high-frequency vibration. He struck Liliya from above.
CLANG.
The impact blew out the windows.
She caught his blades with her bare hands.
Energy screamed.
Green fire clashed with black-gold entropy in a maelstrom of impossible colors. Every warlord who hadn't escaped by now either combusted or was fused to the walls in grotesque, silent screams.
Steel twisted, flipping over her back, driving a kick into her spine. She barely moved.
Then retaliated.
A clawed hand caught his leg, spun him mid-air, and hurled him downward—straight into the lower floors.
THOOM.
He crashed through three stories of solid alloy, embedded in a databank vault. Sparks flew. Glass and memory shards rained like obsidian snow.
Steel coughed.
Then laughed.
The ground cracked beneath his boots as he stood upright. His lungs sucked in smoke and chaos, then expelled it with a snort.
Across the chamber, Liliya hung midair like a glitch in reality — floating, tendrils of black fire writhing around her in defiance of physics.
Around her, the dead did not stay dead.
Twisted remains of bidders and guards began to rise. Ember corruption twisted them anew. One man's ribcage split outward, forming jagged wings. Another's skull elongated, splitting open into a tri-jawed maw. Their flesh sloughed off and reformed — biomass obeying ancient, unnatural laws.
"Great," Steel muttered. "Zombie auction. Just what I needed today."
He stood, raised his hands—and the entire floor lit up.
Holographic schematics of Ember tech swarmed to him. His mind parsed them in microseconds. A dozen failed prototypes—weapons too unstable to test—now assembled themselves from the debris, pieces flying to his outstretched hands.
He built an arm cannon with a triple-bore chamber.
A whip of graviton coils.
A shoulder-mounted chain of rotating fusion blades.
"Let's see what the mad scientists left lying around," he grinned.
He launched himself upward through the floor in a spiraling inferno.
The first creature lunged.
Steel flicked his fingers. A flash of jade light sparked — then a whip of plasma formed, coiled around his arm. He spun, slicing the creature in half with a blur of motion.
The corpse hit the floor in twitching chunks.
"Who's next?"
They came in waves.
Twisted mutants. Ember-corrupted warlords. Even the guards who once flinched at Steel now surged forward like rabid insects.
Steel's arms shifted again — his right transforming into a triple-barreled cannon, humming with alien resonance. He raised it, fired.
The chamber lit up.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Three consecutive explosions rocked the foundation. Shrapnel and fire tore through the corrupted horde, limbs flying, ichor splattering across the walls.
Still they came.
Steel snarled.
He slammed his foot on the ground — the floor cracked outward in a glowing green shockwave. Emerald spikes erupted in every direction, impaling half a dozen attackers.
Above them, Liliya extended her arm — the air coalesced into a spear of rotting black glass.
She hurled it.
Steel looked up.
Time slowed.
He twisted, fired his cannon arm upward — plasma met obsidian. The impact detonated in midair, unleashing a storm of kinetic force that caved in a portion of the ceiling.
Chunks of marble and steel plummeted.
Steel didn't dodge.
Instead, he caught one massive slab midair, threw it at an oncoming mutant, and formed a blade from his left forearm.
"Next lesson: Gravity doesn't give a damn about your fashion sense."
He launched himself again — his feet propelling him in erratic angles, spinning and carving through enemies like a storm.
Liliya responded.
Her body liquified — not completely, but in bursts — dodging attacks by melting through space, her tendrils slicing through the air like razors. She appeared beside Steel in a flash — claws out.
Steel parried with his blade arm, the clash sending a shockwave of green and black flame across the room.
They separated — then crashed into each other again.
Fists, claws, plasma, tendrils — each strike cracked reality just slightly.
Liliya screamed something in Old Russian — a command or a curse — and the shadows behind her peeled open like paper, revealing skeletal specters bound in chains of corrupted Ember.
They lunged at Steel.
He growled and flared his core.
The ground beneath him exploded with viridian fire, and a barrier of spinning, crystalline energy erupted around his body — slicing the spirits as they touched it.
"Didn't your mother ever teach you not to throw undead at guests?"
He counterattacked — forging dual glaives of light, spinning them like propellers as he dove straight through the summoned horrors and slammed into Liliya.
They hit the far wall.
Steel's blade plunged into her shoulder — but instead of bleeding, she hissed, melting around the weapon and reforming behind him.
Her voice doubled again, ancient and profane:
"You are not ready for this flame, thief."
Steel coughed, spit blood, and grinned.
"I'm not here to steal it."
He raised his cannon-arm again.
"I'm here to burn it down."
They clashed again.
And the walls came down.