Angelos Odyssey

5-3

I weave my hands through one spike after another; I weave, chop, punch, weave, chop right, chop left, punch, and punch once more so that Artemis keels over as he tries to back away. I step in, punch Artemis in the face, uppercut him in the stomach, and follow up with a jab to his chest, breaking it even deeper into itself. I strike Artemis in the face with a hook that dislocates his jaw, hit him with a left uppercut that shatters the side of his ribcage, and finish him with a straight jab that smashes into the mask of bone that covers his face and breaks it to pieces as Artemis Spilsbury collapses and falls onto his back.

“Yeah!” Kagiso cheers behind me. “That’s my guy! I knew he could do it!”

The crowd around me remains silent as I keep my eyes focused on the body of my opponent. The silver zol around Spilsbury hasn’t gone anywhere and continues to surround him as he remains rigid with his back to the floor.

Artemis breathes out loudly, causing a cloud of aura to burst out from his figure, and then his breathing increases before he starts to laugh. Artemis cackles happily for a few moments before his cackling turns into a wearied moan. As he tiredly sits up and attempts to stand, he says to me, “What a wonderful fight.”

When he’s able to regain his composure, he bows to me and continues, “It has been an honor to have met you, Tavon Meiziki. Not so long ago, we fought in the Citadel, and I bested you. To think that you’ve come so far is amazing, and that is why I have to give the last of my strength to my God, Lord Jao.

“Tavon Meiziki, I never had any intention of converting anyone, but if I can show the world a small portion of Jao’s will, then I believe that it will be worth the sacrifice.”—Artemis kneels and begins to pray—“I vow the rest of my willpower and the rest of my spirit. My body has been given over to Lord Jao, and may Lord Jao use this body as a vessel to shower his influence down upon this small gathering of people.”

As Artemis proceeds with his prayer, the tau around him spreads so that it extends high into the sky. His body is covered in an ash-like substance that spreads down from the center of his forehead, where I notice that a black diamond-shaped grove is starting to form. This grove becomes a dark abscess which leaks clouds of black into the sky. Spilsbury’s mouth becomes a chasm as it curves into an open smile that’s the color of midnight. A dark mask begins to form around his face as his nose broadens and angles outward, protruding with the rest of his face, which itself elongates into the blackened, skeletal head of a bull with two curved horns.

From behind a dark veil, Artemis looks at me and says, “I chose Jao as my deity because I believed that I could be ‘purified’ of my past somehow. I am giving up what’s left of me in order to win, to show you and myself that I chose the right path. If we do not meet again, Tavon, then consider this my goodbye. You’ll now come face-to-face with my God.”

Tau spills out from his form like black ink, splashing across the floor as electrical arcs of light flash across the arena. Black aura trails out from Artemis Spilsbury in multiple paths illuminated by silver petals of energy that flow outward as I sense immense pressure accompanied by the heat from the great sphere above.

Grandmaster Jia, seated in a meditative posture and holding one finger in the air as he chants under his breath, raises his finger higher: the ball of light hovering in the sky begins to move upward in response. Jia merely shakes his hand to the side, and, with his power linked to the aura generated by the sphere, throws it to the side and allows it to fall beneath the clouds. Just as a small vortex of lilac and silver petals descends down from the sky and drapes itself around the figure of Artemis, the sphere below explodes, and my ears ring as what sounds like a gigantic bass rattles throughout the atmosphere. I feel incredible energy both above and below and can’t decide which is more intimidating. The explosion produces a bright light that spreads out among the clouds as they dissolve amidst a sea of burning red. The zekomata shakes as it continues on toward its destination, and, as Artemis places his palms together, the line of aura reaching down from above expands into a shower of silver and purple that causes the ground at my feet to shake even harder.

Artemis Spilsbury’s form is obscured by a thicker veil than before, and it spins itself into reinforced walls that pulsate with bright lavender. Each wall extends into the formation of a violet rose, and that rose radiates outward with a warmth that causes my heart to race. It begins to glow brighter and brighter until it hurts to look at directly, and then, as rivers of lilac tau trail out from the purple rose, I feel another presence appear on my right. For a split second, I’m hit with a jolt of energy that’s so overwhelming that my heart beats even faster, and it takes two blinks before I’m drenched in my own sweat.

It feels as though I’m standing next to a burning star. I turn to face a masked stranger with a white mane as he says my name, “Tavon.”

When I look at him directly, I remember.

“It’s you again.”

“What’s my name, Tavon?”

“Amegdion. I didn’t forget our deal. What’s going on?”

Amegdion sighs, and then he says, “Someone invoked a god, and now that god wants to show off. Check out what’s happening—do you see each line of energy?”

As Amegdion points them out, I watch as trails of tau flow into the bodies of everyone in the crowd. I hear people gasp and shuffle between each other to leave the arena, but it’s too late. Just as one stream of aura wraps itself around the body of the closest onlooker, I’m forced to watch as lilac petals dance across him before one burns a black mark into the side of his neck. The petal burns away into the symbol of three parallel dark lines that trace down to form two legs bent at obtuse angles that match each other’s length.

“He’s marking them.” Amegdion says to me and points with his index finger as he goes on, “One, two, three…” Three rivers of tau flow into the bodies of three more members of the crowd as energy continues to spill out from the center of the violet rose, which lights up as subsequent trails of zol seep into the bodies of everyone in the arena.

From a distance, I see a figure that looks like Eigog sitting in meditation and issuing a protective shroud around his figure; Grandmaster Jia does the same and produces a shield of bright orange that ignores the rose’s influence. When a line of energy reaches me and Amegdion, it halts in order to grow outward into a giant ethereal face with two black holes for eyes and two horns that curve up and then down into twin spikes. Just as I can make out the features of its face, I’m hit with a blast of heat that feels as though it’s burning through my skin. Lilac petals try to press in on my body, but Amegdion blockades them with a shield that glows white. As it hovers around both of us, purple and black petals spread around it, falling to the ground at our feet by the dozen. Soon, hundreds of glimmering flowerheads begin to make up the floor, and a static-like aura sparks above them before descending down into branches of violet light that form columns arranged in an oval.

“I’m a god, but so is he. This one’s a lot stronger than I’m ready to deal with, and he wants something from you.”—as Amegdion continues, the air around us condenses into a fog that thickens to obscure the entire arena—“He’s stopping time, and he’s bringing us into his domain to find out why you’re not accepting his mark. We’ll have to negotiate with him if we want to pass on through to Zannica. Whatever you do, don’t piss him off.”