Cass kicked at him. She didn't have the Focus or raw electricity left for skills; it was just whatever her Strength could do.

It did nothing to slow the advance of his phantom hand toward her.

It did nothing to stop the phantom hand from piercing her chest.

Cass screamed.

The hand burrowed into her flesh. It burned where it touched her, like lightning tearing through flesh. It burrowed until it found her core, her soul.

It squeezed.

The pressure was unbearable. Soul Guard flexed to its limit.

Cass! Salos shouted, his body dissolving and his soul returning to its place in her necklace. His scream joined hers.

Cass kicked. She thrashed. She threw her weight against Kohen. Anything to break the demon's hold on her body. Anything to escape.

The Wind howled around her in protest, but there was no escape.

She pulled inward, retreating to her campground in her soul well, willing its walls stronger. The winds roared there. A tornado spun, her tiny campground the eye of the storm. But the pressure mounted.

It grew and pressed and crushed.

It squeezed the very air from her soul well.

The Hearth of her camp blazed, as if it could burn away the pressure, but there was no sanctuary to be found.

She struggled before the demon, her soul cracking under his assault. What was left to try? What was left to be?

Never mind healing Kohen, she was going to die like this.

Soul Guard quaked. It was all that was holding her up. The only thing between her and the hand squeezing her very existence. But that was all it was, a shield.

No. That wasn't wholly true.

Sometimes it had acted as a bandage instead, holding her soul together in the face of grievous wounds. Was the pressure it applied to open soul wounds enough to close them? Or was it just a bandage holding things together until time healed it naturally?

Could she even apply it to someone else?

You are attempting to manipulate the Soul of another Being.

[Would you like to perform Skill Injection? Injections are outside the standard range of your skill's function and will require significantly more Focus to perform.]

She accepted. She could work with that. There was just one problem. She could feel that she needed to take down her existing Soul Guard to put it up somewhere else.

If she were fast, she could probably apply it to Kohen before he crushed her, and that would probably end his attack, if she was right about the nature of the attack and what she could do with Soul Guard.

But she was worried where her mind would go when she let the skill down. There were so many soul pieces floating around them. The air was thick with their spilled potential.

Right now, this was simply an observation, not something she felt any particular way about. But she still remembered the stirring madness that had taken her when she'd first stepped in on Kohen ripping apart a soul. The hunger.

Could she resist or would this gambit release a second deranged beast on the unsuspecting?

There were too many probablys. Too many unknowns.

Cass resurfaced, stepping from her soul well and back into her physical body.

Kohen held her tight, the madness—the hunger—in his eyes unmitigated. The pressure on her built, like her soul was under a hydraulic press. Any minute, she'd pop, Soul Guard or not.

Ahryn hung limp over Kohen's shoulder.

Behind him, she could see the others in the cathedral's doorway. Alyx staggered to her feet, her dragon supporting her. Pellen straightened, her hands again flipping through her tome.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

If Cass could hold out another minute, they'd rescue her.

If she held out another minute, Alyx would kill him.

No.

Cass had to do this. Before Alyx recovered.

She took a deep breath and dropped Soul Guard.

The pressure was unimaginable. His hand squeezed her, hot and writhing.

And the hunger. It was as bad as she had imagined. Worse?

No, it was better, the hunger whispered. What was wrong with being hungry when she was surrounded by food?

She shook aside those thoughts. That wasn't who she was. That wasn't what she was.

Then what are you? the hunger asked. Not human. Not slyphid. Why not demon? Why not just give in? There were so many souls here. So many already destroyed. What would it matter if she collected them up? It would be a waste to let them dissolve into the aether.

It would make her strong. Strong enough to resist Kohen's crushing grip even without her skill. Strong enough to kill him and anyone else who tried to hurt her.

She wasn't human anyway, —

She wasn't slyphid anyway, —

—so what if she was demon?

There was a delectable reason to that. It would be so easy to accept it as truth.

But she wasn't a demon.

She wasn't any of those things.

And she was all of them.

Concept Applied: [Liminality - Will, Ala, Res

The space between. The space overlapped. The space that is neither and both.]

She gasped as the pressure fell around her. It was still there, pain pressing deep, deeper than her bones.

And yet, she didn't feel it. Not really. Not the way she had a moment ago.

It was separate.

The demonic hunger tugged at her attention.

But it was separate. Like a veil had been dropped across her mind. On one side was the pain and hunger and the screaming. And on the other side were her goals and her dreams and her ideas. She felt them both, clear and real and intense, but they didn't spill into each other.

It was enough to hold what was one as two.

She pressed out with Soul Guard, throwing it over Kohen's writhing soul.

His soul buckled and pressed against the restrictions, gobbling down her Focus with every jerk and shove against her Guard.

She breathed easier as his grip loosened and his phantom hand disappeared, forced back into his soul by Soul Guard.

But there was so much power rolling within him. So much power that didn't know where it was supposed to be. So much that had no place in his soul.

And that power had nowhere to go. Soul Guard was impenetrable. It was his soul under extreme pressure now.

If this kept up, his soul would break, and he would die.

She needed to let some of that power out.

Soul Guard protested. Nothing in. Nothing out. Nothing.

It could not be reasoned with. It was just a skill.

A skill she could apply a Concept to. She had yet to do so intentionally, but Salos said it was possible if you knew what the combination would do.

And she knew what she needed it to do.

Concept Applied: [Liminality - Soul Guard

[An unguarded soul is fragile. You have been trained to protect your most vulnerable piece, but know the value of letting the trusted in and the unneeded out.

Passively increase resistance to attacks on the soul and, to a lesser degree, the mind.

Actively enforce a lockdown on your Soul Well, letting nothing in or out.

Association with the Concept of Liminality allows some things to be allowed in or out at your discretion. The defenses become more flexible, making it more resilient to certain kinds of attacks but weaker to others.

Cost: minimum 1 Focus/min

Modified by Res.]

The skill became malleable in her hands. With a thought, she opened vents along Soul Guard's walls, squeezing until the discordant pieces of his amalgam of soul were forced into the soul-filled air.

All the while, her Focus dropped.

Focus: 8/549

Health: 40/134

There was barely anything left.

Focus: 3/549

She burned Health. Her Hearth happily burned it up for more Focus.

Focus: 48/549

Health: 15/134

Still, he struggled against her. Still, his soul writhed under the pressure of Soul Guard.

Focus: 34/549

More.

Focus: 27/549

Focus: 6/549

Until there was nothing left to burn. There was no Focus left to hold Soul Guard. In a matter of seconds, she would collapse and it would all be for nothing.

Why? a voice asked. Why would you stop when there is so much energy all around you?

The air shimmered in her eyes with the potential of all the fallen paladins. All the men and women Kohen had crushed to nothing.

She couldn't eat that. Those were souls. Or what was left of souls. That was how Kohen had gotten into this trouble.

Who said anything about eating them, that hunger asked. She did not need to incorporate them into her soul to use them. What was the Hearth burning so greedily for, if not for burning potential?

Could she do that?

Why not, asked Hearth. The alternative is to give up on him. To let yourself burn out. To force Alyx to kill him.

Cass opened herself up to the energy in the air, feeding it directly into her Hearth.

Her Hearth burst to life, burning away the potential with glee and filling her Focus.

There was so much.

More than enough.

Maybe too much.

She felt like she'd just downed a gallon of coffee and chased it with an energy drink. Her entire body buzzed. Her head felt fuzzy even as the energy chased away the exhaustion.

Cass pushed the feeling across the veil in her mind, setting it aside with the whispers of the demonic hunger. There would be time for it later.

For now, her Soul Guard held.

Kohen's soul pressed against it, but with every passing second, more of his excess energy was forced through Soul Guard's vents, until his struggle slowed. Until the writhing within his soul stopped.

The sparking madness in his dark eyes faded. The hold his hands had on her wrists loosened. His knees buckled.

Kohen collapsed, his skin settling into something very near to his original appearance.

Vamphellish Demon has been Subdued.

[You have defeated a Demon of Blood and Lightning in a Battle for dominance.

You have been awarded experience for Subduing the Demon of Blood and Lightning.]

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