Over by the large hut, the pathieite duo were quickly making progress in breaking through the defensive territory art. The boy maintained the formless barrier that held back the winds from closing in, while the man launched more and more punches at the hut—most of which were closed quickly, but some were left open just long enough for pathieites to slip inside.
Panic erupted as the situation turned from bad to worse. Mashallah's eyes opened wide for the first time in horror, which soon twisted into rage. Due to the isolating effect of the battlefield art—and the conflicting elements between her battlefield and the territory art—Mashallah didn't know what was happening within the territory art until the openings were created.
"Ahh… dammit all! Why can't I ever save anyone?!" she yelled inwardly.
Outside of the battlefield art, Akeem and his group—along with the leopard—watched as a growing number of crows hovered over the veil of wind. The appearance of the crows could only signify that lives were being lost.
Caw. Caw. Caw.
Akeem looked up at the crows with a slight smile and even gave them a wave, as if greeting a group of old friends.
One of the crows flew down until it hovered directly in front of Akeem and the leopard he sat atop.
Caw caw caw.
Growl growl growl.
As the crow cawed over the group, the leopard lifted its head as high as it could and growled in response. After a short round of communication, the crow flew off—away from the scene, toward a faraway and foreign place.
"What'd y'all two talk about?" Akeem chimed like a kid, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"None of your worries, child. Just prepare to retreat when I tell you to," the leopard said, snapping at a fly resting on its paw.
"Sigh. Whatever you say, sir." Akeem—like a lantern out of oil, or a flashlight without batteries—regressed back into cold indifference, inactive and inattentive to the terrible battle below.
"I don't understand, Mother. How is Auntie Mashallah struggling so much with this battlefield art? Is it that costly to use?"
Yara spoke to her mother while mending Tanzu's burns. Entering her mindscape, the image of a young adult woman with features similar to Yara appeared. She had ebony skin and a large curly black afro that ran past her shoulders, framing her beautiful face as she materialized. Her name was Zola Ashuwa, the wife of Hasani Ashuwa, who—along with the whole tribe—believed her to have died in childbirth. But in truth, in something only told and believed in legends, Zola sacrificed her physical body to successfully give birth to Yara, leaving her spiritual body behind to guide her daughter through life.
"There are quite a few factors and variables involved here, and I can't be certain of every one of them," Zola said. "What I can say is that Elder Mashallah's battlefield art is incomplete—there's an imbalance in the distribution effect of all the arts needed to maintain the battlefield."
"Distribution effect? What do you mean exactly, Mother?" Yara asked, curiosity sharpening her focus.
"I thought old Shanti went over this with you."
"He did, but there were many other things Uncle Shanti had me study—and that's not even counting school." As they spoke, Tanzu winced in pain and let out a guttural howl of agony.
"We'll go over your knowledge later. Right now, focus on healing Tanzu and watching your surroundings as well. You must never leave an opening for the enemy."
"Yes, Mother." Yara nodded and cleared her mind of distractions.
A bit of distance away, Malcolm had finished replenishing a little under half of his spiritual energy and opened his eyes. Now the youth stood with a resolved heart, ready to throw himself into mortal danger once more.
Mashallah's clone began to gather wind to wrap around the group, forming a shield as they closed in on the main threats.
Safari equipped a spear and a sword—one in each hand—while exuding his first-realm aura to cover his whole body in a green hue. That aura formed into a king cobra that hovered behind him.
Banji pulled out yet another juju artifact: a lion statue made entirely of dark bronze. He infused over 25% of his spiritual energy into the statue to produce a lion phantom whose aura was close to the third realm. While doing this, he also pumped another 25% of his spiritual energy into the cage containing the jackals, unleashing the whole pack within.
"Hehe… I had a feeling this last outing would be fun after all." Banji looked at Malcolm, whose aura—meager compared to the group's totality—was still so dense and ferocious it would give nearly anyone in the first realm pause.
A thin blue field of spiritual energy shimmered over Malcolm's body. He once more put both hands together in a prayer posture—but unlike before, the spiritual energy he gathered flowed into his hands instead of his spiritual core.
With that shift, Malcolm seamlessly funneled and stored outside spiritual energy into his hands. It built rapidly until both hands were covered in a bright blue light—so illuminating it could act like a flashbang from Earth.
The other three paused, staring at Malcolm with a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
"Is-is he trying to create an art right now?" Safari asked—more to himself than anyone else—awed.
"It seems so. Hmph—Brother Black is showing off at this point." Banji playfully scoffed and shrugged before quickly turning away to hide behind the jackals he'd summoned. His face contorted into shock as he covered his mouth with one hand, his mind racing to compartmentalize what he was witnessing.
"This doesn't make any damn sense! Killing that second-realm mystic is one thing—Auntie was helping him—but now he's trying to create an art. Oh, Brother Black… just who in the world are you?" Banji took a deep breath before rejoining the others.
Mashallah's main body turned to look in their direction. Her cracked lips parted slightly, while the rest of her face remained motionless—except for her eyes, which flashed a cold light before quickly reverting to a lukewarm shimmer. An old image began to overlap Malcolm's body where he stood.
"R-Ramses… is that you?" Mashallah's eyes nearly popped out of her skull as she muttered it. She blew a gust of wind at herself, clearing away the false visage of the past and returning to the present.
The king cobra behind Safari reared its head toward Malcolm, sensing a threat. It let out a guttural hiss. Safari only stood tall and poised—like an ancient hill standing against the power of time itself.
His eyes slowly morphed into a distant golden-yellow, with round black pupils that glimmered faintly.
After a moment of appraising Malcolm, Safari reached back and unwrapped his ponytail, letting the wind blow his locks backward. A small smile grew on his face as he looked at Malcolm with rising excitement and expectation flashing in his normally impassive eyes.
"H-hey, Grandma. Point out where those damn pathieite freaks are, if you don't mind." Malcolm, strained to the limit, managed a small—if shaky—smile as he asked, polite but urgent.
The black wind clone pointed to Malcolm's right. Malcolm extended his hands forward, maintaining the hand sign. He opened his hands slightly and gathered the compressed spiritual energy between them.
With his mind and body pushed to the limit, Malcolm resolved that no matter what happened now, he would try his best. His body wanted rest. His mind wanted ease and comfort. But he couldn't afford any of those luxuries.
Malcolm disregarded the past and future. The present was the only thing that mattered. His mind became empty like the void of deep space—endlessly expanding, yet containing nothing. He no longer had a sense of self that needed to be maintained. He no longer needed to justify his actions, or even his words. For a fleeting instant, he became everything and nothing at the same time—more than and less than his previous self.
A tiny wisp of energy dormant in his subconscious traveled out of his mind and shot into the ball of energy gathered in his hands. This was not spiritual energy, but something else altogether. It exuded an almost cosmic feeling, surpassing the spirit of oneself and the world upon its revelation. Malcolm discovered something else—perhaps the most important thing: this energy surpassed the realms themselves, as he understood them. And the best part was that no one could detect it except him.
He smiled slightly as realization struck. So this is that gift you left me, huh? You old bastard. He thought of the strange man's words after he forcibly raised him to the half-step.
You'll thank me in due time, child—and we will meet again. Sooner than you may imagine, the man had said before leaving Malcolm to process the new power.
The ball of energy had originally been something that could kill nearly anyone in the first realm and pressure those in the second. But with this added cosmic energy—something only Malcolm could grasp—the ball changed and transformed. In a moment—maybe less—the magnitude of power in Malcolm's hands made everyone inside the battlefield pause. Even the chaos inside the hut abruptly halted.
The spiritual energy in the surroundings seemed to find a long-lost friend. All spiritual energy outside anyone's body rushed toward Malcolm's hands. Not even Mashallah's battlefield art could hold back the sudden drainage; soon, the battlefield began to dismantle from the inside out.
The leopard, able to see and sense the calamity building, quickly ordered Akeem and his men to withdraw.
Akeem sensed the shift to paramount seriousness and, without delay, retreated with the men as far as they could.
The boy and the man turned toward the source of the disruption and discovered what was effectively their Achilles' heel: the complete absorption of nearby spiritual energy. Since pathieites must kill whatever host they enter in order to take over, they must constantly absorb spiritual energy to maintain their hold on the host's body.
"What is this… this power?!" the boy shouted, while the man redirected his punches toward Malcolm, intending to kill him. With the battlefield art dismantling, the winds no longer obscured sight as badly.
The powerful punches created a barrage of wind that would reduce Malcolm to mincemeat if any of it made contact.
Mashallah's clone—and the rest—snapped back to reality and reacted accordingly. The clone pointed out five fingers, and from the tips of each finger, five black lines shot out to block most of the incoming wind. Most—but not all. More followed quickly. After that defense, the clone became more transparent, less clear to the eye. It retreated to stand in front of Malcolm for a moment, conserving what little spiritual energy remained.
Next, Banji waved a hand and sent out the lion phantom along with the pack of jackals to meet the wind with their bodies. The wind collided with flesh and phantom in a brief, brutal struggle. The jackals were ripped to pieces. The phantom lion was tossed aside—still alive, but no longer whole.
For the first time, Banji's expression turned truly serious. He dug into his pouch, pulled out a clay floor tile of all things, and hurled it toward the wind. Even Mashallah was momentarily bewildered—until she realized what it was.
"Banji, you—" she began.
Before she could finish, Banji clasped his hands together and formed an X hand sign. The clay tile expanded into a clay wall over two stories high. The wind was delayed for the first time—but everyone knew better than to think it was truly stopped.
Banji took that moment to look at Malcolm deeply, discarding his earlier jovial attitude.
"You owe me your real damn name after this, Brother Black!" he yelled, almost childishly, jabbing a stern finger toward Malcolm.
Malcolm only smiled weakly and returned all his concentration to the attack he was charging.
The clay defense could only last another second before collapsing, and Banji was nearly drained. With a quick glance exchanged with Safari, he ran toward Mashallah's clone and started gathering what little spiritual energy he could.
Safari, now taking the vanguard, performed a backflip, landed atop the king cobra manifestation, and charged forward. Like a demigod of war, Safari confronted the wind with exceptional ferocity and almost mad courage. Banji wasn't the only noble heir with hidden aces—and soon Safari would prove why he was a runner-up alongside Yara as a potential future leader of the tribe.
[Transformation Art: Serpentine Vortex]
Safari roared with primal excitement as he cast his transformation art. Unlike mystic arts, transformation arts primarily target the self—changing or altering the body into forms unnatural for humans.
Safari's head took on the appearance of a water snake, olive-green scales shimmering.
He opened his snake mouth and began to perform something similar to what Malcolm was doing—except Safari gathered the incoming wind attacks instead of spiritual energy.
The man responded by punching even faster, hoping to reach Safari's limit. But reaching it was becoming monumental—and the duo didn't have time. With the situation worsening, the boy searched for an escape.
"Damn… the best bet would be for this accursed battlefield art to collapse already!" he thought, quickly collecting multitudes of dying pathieites to take with him.
"Where the hell are you going?!" the watery sow yelled. Disregarding the defense now that the main threat had shifted, it barged out of the fortified hut and charged at the boy in maddened fury.
The boy scoffed, formed an invisible barrier around himself, and rushed forward to meet the sow head-on. An unstoppable force met an immovable object at such speed that the shockwave launched the sow backward—sending it crashing into Aba's face, nearly killing him on impact if he hadn't reinforced himself in time with spiritual energy.
The boy remained standing—but his expression looked like defeat.
"Damn beast! It drained away half my energy!" The pathieite was truly fighting for its life now. It knew if the attack behind it fully charged, it would mark its doom.
It thought frantically, then forced itself to calm and consider everything clearly.
Maybe if I help my companion stop—or at least disrupt—that attack, we have a chance at survival. But this battlefield art could collapse at any time, and once it does, being out in the open surrounded by enemies won't do us any good. The safest thing would be to wait at the edge for this place to collapse… then escape.
The boy thought hard and fast—for a parasite creature. Eventually, it reached a conclusion and turned around to join its companion in taking the biggest risk possible.
The real Mashallah strained herself to the limit, trying to keep the battlefield up as long as she could.
C'mon, little black… how much longer do you need? she whispered.
Yara overheard and snapped her head up.
"Wait—Mal—Black is doing all of this? But how?" Yara asked in wonder.
"For once, sweetie, I don't know the answer myself. This is far beyond the common mysticism that I know." Then Mashallah's eyes shot wide open in surprise.
Her voice carried as a warning to the gathered group.
"Ready yourselves. The second pathieite host is coming to reinforce its companion."
All three young men nodded. Banji already anticipated the other infected host joining this desperate struggle—and he knew the rest was up to him.
His clan name wasn't Ngozi for nothing.
He racked his mind for only a moment before sighing and pulling out a small light-brown pot with a narrow opening. Inside was a strange mixture of chicken blood, ash, roots, palm wine, and honey.
Banji sighed again, head shaking faintly.
"Ten years this has been collecting spiritual energy," he whispered. "Ten years ought to be enough."
He chugged the potion at an unnatural speed. After finishing, he held the pot for a long moment, remembering something Safari had said not too long ago:
Like anything else in this world that's bound to change. If not today or tomorrow, then one day it will—for one day is all change will need.
"Guess you weren't wrong," Banji thought calmly as the potion took effect.
The spiritual energy inside his body shifted and morphed into something primal and viscous. His realm aura surged from the first realm to the second, then the third—finally stopping at the half-step to the fourth realm.
But it wasn't only his realm. His body expanded to accommodate the ascension—5'10" to 7'1". The ground beneath him cracked from the pressure. Soil and rocks blasted outward.
"Wait, Banji! Don't do it!" Mashallah yelled. Safari glanced over for only a moment, narrowed his eyes at Banji, then returned his focus to his own fight.
Banji's skin darkened from light brown to pitch black. Six large arms burst from his back like freshly hatched larvae. His head reshaped into the ferocious face of a black jackal.
"Hahaha! Finally—I'm free to fight!" Banji clapped repeatedly, then set his eyes on the approaching pathieite child. A vast, formless will projected from him, transmitting a single thought:
Your. My. Prey, boy.
Banji smiled wickedly and sprinted with such speed that he nearly caught the pathieite off guard—nearly.
He launched a downward punch. The child avoided it by springing back—but that gave Banji the opening to smash the ground, kicking up a momentary dust cloud.
Trying to conserve its remaining energy, the child let the cloud swallow it so it could attempt to slip around Banji.
But Banji, driven by instinct, anticipated the maneuver and moved to counter. The next moments became a brutal melee—violent, tight, and relentless—dragging out time the pathieite could not afford to lose.
The child launched an invisible force field at Banji. Banji endured the pressure with his enhanced body.
"Yes! Yes! Give me more! Give me life!" Banji screeched, punching the shield with all eight arms and creating gusts of wind not unlike the ones Safari was absorbing.
Above them all, the attack Malcolm was building had expanded into a massive, pressurized azure sphere held over his head. It grew larger by the second—like a great blue sun capable of annihilating all life as he knew it.
Malcolm could feel that once he released it, it would be his time to enter purgatory and serve his sentence. This was far beyond the limits of nearly anyone present—much less Malcolm, who had only just entered the first realm.
Yet he didn't reconsider. He didn't waver. Going out like this would at least put his heart at ease. It would be his repentance for the catastrophe that had unfolded since his arrival.
Mashallah tried to examine Malcolm's art to understand it better, but she couldn't find the source drawing in all the nearby spiritual energy.
But she did find one thing.
"Little black! Stop your attack—if you keep adding your life energy, you'll die!" she cried, her voice slamming into Malcolm's mind.
Malcolm's lips lifted into a sad, tired smile.
"It's a good thing then," he said calmly, as if speaking about the weather.
Mashallah, for the first time in many years, had tears starting to well in the corners of her aged eyes. She now truly saw Malcolm for who he really was—a lonely, tired soul looking for a time and place to disappear from the world that failed him.
Her dress changed color once again, from onyx black to navy blue. It was going to happen all over again… to someone she had only known for less than a week, yet strangely felt as though she'd known him her whole life. Ramses' image flashed to the front of her mind.For the first time since the beginning of the battle, Mashallah stopped maintaining the battlefield art, letting her hands dangle at her sides.
This immediately caught Yara's attention. She had finished tending to Tanzu's wounds as best she could.
"Auntie? Auntie! What's happening? Are you okay?" Yara hurried to Mashallah and gave her a small shake, trying to pull her back.
"Oh, dear… I'm sorry, but…" Mashallah said in a hoarse, weak tone. "It seems little black is serious about ending this battle—even at the cost of his own life."
As she spoke, Mashallah transmitted the full meaning of her words into Yara's mind.
Yara's face shifted from concern into stillness, like a statue. It was a lot to process—until it wasn't. Until the situation snapped into focus for what it truly was.
Then Yara moved.
"Yara—stop!" Mashallah screamed. And in the same instant, Zola's voice rang out inside her mind as well.
But Yara didn't slow.
She sprinted toward Malcolm's direction like a cheetah across the flat savanna.
She had already lost one old friend. She wasn't going to inherit any tribe—she wasn't going to become anything at all—if she couldn't try her damnedest to save a new one.
A real one.