Second Genesis

Before Grey could even begin figuring out how the hell he was supposed to deal with the hive mind trying to swallow all of them whole, something whipped past him.

Xerchen.

Grey’s head turned, and for the briefest instant their gazes met. There was a deathly cold sitting behind Xerchen’s eyes, but what caught Grey’s attention more was the color of his irises, or rather the lack of one. Instead of the defined rings and lines one would normally expect, there was only an endless fog of grey swirling within them, thick enough that Grey almost expected bolts of lightning to crack through at any moment.

Then that moment was gone.

Xerchen flashed forward.

A slender black saber appeared in his palm, its blade so thin and dark that it looked more like a gap cut into the world than actual metal. Two Demons immediately adjusted to meet him, their coordination seamless as one fist came high and the other low, the angle making it almost impossible to avoid one without falling directly into the path of the other.

Grey’s eyes flickered.

Something had appeared around Xerchen.

It wasn’t physical, there was no visible barrier or glowing field, but Grey could feel it like a fog spreading through the air. For a moment, his mind immediately jumped to the Quasi Dominion he had just formed, especially because the sensation carried the same strange feeling of a person’s existence bleeding into the world around them.

But it wasn’t.

Grey was sure of that. It didn’t have an anchoring principle--no singular idea everything revolved around, no concept strong enough to force reality into obeying it. Xerchen had gotten frighteningly close to something like that, though, so close that Grey could almost see the shape of where his path might eventually lead.

And against these Demons, close was more than enough. They didn’t have an anchoring principle either.

Chi.

Xerchen’s Resonant Sense pressed down.

Grey’s eyes widened slightly as that black-hole-like pressure didn’t attack either Demon directly, it wedged itself between them. The Wills that had been flowing together perfectly were pulled apart by the smallest amount, such a tiny interruption that Grey doubted anyone else watching would have even noticed it.

The two punches faltered. Just barely.

Xerchen had waited until the last possible instant.

Grey understood immediately that he could have acted sooner. He could have suppressed the connection as soon as the Demons approached, could have weakened their coordination and then taken the safer path.

He didn’t. Instead, he waited until changing course was impossible.

’Oh.’

Grey’s lips slowly curled.

Compared to all the bullshit he had been watching today, this was a fucking breath of fresh air. Real skill.

Xerchen stepped between the punches.

His saber flashed once.

For a moment, it looked like he had missed them both, the black blade passing through empty air between their bodies. Then his wrist rolled, the edge arched downward, and the same slash flowed naturally into a sweeping cut across one Demon’s ankle.

Chi.

The leg buckled and the Demon toppled forward.

Xerchen simply stepped aside.

His body twisted with the motion, white-gold light erupting around one leg as he kicked straight into the Demon’s planted knee.

CRACK.

The joint shattered sideways.

The Demon crashed to the ground, but Grey was already looking past it.

The second Demon stumbled.

Its foot clipped the collapsing body in front of it, an insignificant little mistake by itself, but their coordination had been so perfect until now that the smallest hiccup became disastrous. A third Demon adjusted for the second, a fourth adjusted for the third, and suddenly what had been an immaculate flowing mesh began folding in on itself.

Grey almost laughed.

’That’s the weakness.’

The more perfect the system became, the more damage a single error could do. But this only worked if you had a method of ripping their coordination apart in the first place. Just countering them wasn’t enough, because they would adjust. You had to put an actual pause on their senses.

Xerchen moved through them.

It looked less like fighting and more like some elegant dance where everyone except Xerchen had forgotten the choreography. Fangs snapped shut a breath from his neck, claws swept past his legs by the breadth of a hair, fists tore through the air where his ribs had been a fraction of a second earlier, but every time the Demons adjusted, Xerchen’s pressure shifted with them.

He wasn’t overpowering their hive mind. He didn’t even seem to have to. He sifted through them like a looping poison.

Every time one connection formed, he weakened another. Every time a Demon trusted the position of the one beside it, Xerchen shifted the information just enough that the trust became a weakness.

Grey watched every moment.

One Demon lunged.

Xerchen turned his shoulder.

Another attacked from his blind spot.

He lowered his head without looking.

A third tried to lock his retreat.

Xerchen stepped forward instead.

The sea of limbs swallowed him, and somehow he continued moving through the center of it untouched.

Then he was suddenly on the other side.

Xerchen stopped.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

He flicked his saber once.

Blood scattered from its edge in a smooth arc across the ground, almost forming the shape of a bloody eclipse.

Then the Demons began collapsing.

First one.

Then another.

Then the rest.

Xerchen slid his saber back into its sheath with one fluid motion, then walked toward their circle as though he had just finished an inconvenient chore. He didn’t look at anyone, didn’t acknowledge the expressions around him, and when he reached where he had been standing before, he simply sat down.

A gloomy shadow hung over his brows.

To everyone else, he probably looked bored.

Maybe irritated that he had wasted his time fighting such weak opponents.

But Grey knew better.

’He’s fucking furious.’

Xerchen hadn’t cared about the Demons, he hadn’t cared about proving anything to the other Empires, he had walked out there and dismantled the entire group because he needed to remind himself what he was capable of.

Grey’s grin slowly widened.

Nothing Xerchen did to someone else was going to erase the fact that Grey had punched him through a fucking wall.

Grey rubbed his chin.

’Okay, so maybe not everyone’s useless.’

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