Asher dangled before the demon, still struggling to come to terms with what had just happened. In all the weeks he'd practiced with his skill, he'd never once encountered anything else capable of interacting with him in the astral realm. The fact that the demon was able to follow him into the astral and nullify his most relied upon skill…

It was no longer a question of how to win.

Asher needed to get away. Now.

Before he could come up with some sort of plan, the demon clenched its fist wrapped tightly around his wrist, crushing and slicing through his flesh like it was effortless. It was a testament to the pain resistance he'd gained from Complete Resistance that Asher didn't so much as cry out when his remaining hand was ripped off his body, dropping him back to the ground.

Before his feet had even hit the ground, Asher dropped Astral Dip. Seeing as he couldn't distort space while in the astral, the skill was nothing but a hindrance if the demon was capable of following him through it. The moment he touched down, he compressed space and leapt away, putting some distance between himself and the greater demon. Immediately, he formed a new tunnel, darting over to Samantha.

"Asher, your hands!" Samantha gasped, looking at his two severed hands in horror. She'd been so distracted by the demons and burning of her village, she probably hadn't even noticed he was already missing one when he first showed up, courtesy of his battle against Eight and his horrific rat-like form.

"It's fine, I'll heal," he hissed, doing his best to ignore the pain while he carefully monitored the demon as it leisurely turned back toward them.

"Few things pair quite as well together as human flesh and refined mithral," the demon grinned, opening its mouth wide and popping Asher's hand in between his jaws, dagger and all. Asher's heart rang out as the black teeth clamped down, shattering mithral and his hand alike in a single moment, before the pieces were swallowed down its gullet.

Eternal Regeneration would fix his hands soon enough, assuming they got out of here alive. But he had a lot of history with that dagger.

"You monster!" Samantha shouted, whipping out another arrow and firing it directly at the demon's face. Based on the glowing violet tip, she'd empowered it with her bow as well.

Asher felt the faintest glimmer of hope as the demon didn't even try to move out of the way, only for it to be dashed as the magically-enhanced arrow bounced off its face as though Samantha had fired upon a block of pure steel.

"That tickled," the demon smirked, tapping a lone claw against the unmarked spot the arrow had impacted. "Here, why don't you try again? Maybe you'll have better luck the second time."

"Don't waste your arrows, we can't take it down. Not like this," Asher muttered, gesturing to his missing hands. He had a hunch his more standard weapons would actually be able to damage the demon thanks to his demon hunter class, but a hell of a lot of good that did him when he didn't have the hands required to hold them. "We need to retreat. Grab Brian and get ourselves to safety."

"It's hilarious you think you stand a chance of escaping me when you already know you can't beat me," the demon laughed, the very world shaking along with it. "I'm faster than you. Stronger than you. And more experienced than you. I've been fighting across the realms for longer than the liches that called upon me. You're but an infant to me. Fun to torment, but sadly, not capable of actually putting up even a semblance of a fight."

"If you're so powerful, why listen to the liches in the first place?" Asher responded, before shifting closer to Samantha and lowering his voice as he whispered a separate message to her. He contemplated summoning a small Spatial Lock just to nullify his voice completely, but he couldn't risk the demon attacking it and draining him of all his energy. "I need you to trust me. Let my skill work on you, alright?"

"I see you don't understand greater demons very well," the demon chuckled, not making any move to show it had heard Asher's whisper as Samantha nodded at him. "Lesser demons are one thing, but we greater demons have too much… weight, would be the simplest way to explain it for your small mind. In order for myself to remain in this realm for any substantial amount of time, I need assistance. In exchange for providing said assistance, I'm happy to carry out a request or two, provided it's something that appeals to me."

"So you're the one that's really in charge?" Asher asked, wincing as he gently pressed one of his stumps against Samantha as if he were protecting her. "What even is this to you, just a vacation from hell where you can go around killing innocent people?"

"That is an excellent way of putting it," the demon grinned, its eyes watching his every move. "The various realms of hell get stale after a while, and I can't quite let myself go wild down there. There are far more horrifying things than myself trekking around within those realms, after-"

Asher waited until the demon was speaking before triggering his Personal Rift. Samantha gasped as a subtle rift in the fabric of space swallowed her whole, depositing her in his newly evolved pocket dimension. Asher hadn't wanted to try sticking an actual person into his skill until he'd gotten the chance to test it, but they didn't really have a choice.

The moment Samantha was gone, Asher focused on Brian and triggered Recall, letting out a sigh of relief as the world shifted around him.

His breath caught in his throat as the world suddenly stopped shifting, and his skill failed to activate. The Greater Demon had either moved forward with a speed so incredible he hadn't even seen it take a step, or it had a method of short-range teleportation.

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Either way, it had a clawed hand wrapped tightly around Asher's forearm, somehow locking him down and preventing his skill from activating.

"Now why would you want to run away?" the demon asked, almost pouting at him as it leaned down to look him in the eyes, its expression sending a dangerous shiver down Asher's spine. "I told you, I don't get to come up here to play very often. I have orders to fulfil, and capturing you is one of them. If I don't complete them, I'll be sent back!"

That's… not good. Asher tugged at his arm, confirming he wasn't going anywhere so long as the demon didn't want him to. Whatever it was the demon was doing to him, activating Recall felt as though he were trying to climb a tree with an anchor strapped to his back. Just like the demon had said, there was an unimaginable weight holding him back and preventing his skill from activating.

By reflex, Asher tried to slip into the astral like he'd done dozens of times before to escape being grappled, only to find himself once again alone in the astral realm with the demon, its hand still firmly wrapped around his arm.

"Hmm… Seeing as we're here again, I suppose you can only travel to the astral realm in that case," the demon mused, looking around as though to confirm that was where they were. "Useful, but not as powerful as I first thought. Rather pathetic for a realm wanderer, if I'm being honest."

Asher let his skill end, and the two of them returned to the material realm together. There wasn't even a fraction of lag between the two of them, which led Asher to a startling realization. The demon wasn't shifting over to the astral realm whenever he was in order to match his location. The demon somehow existed in both the material realm and the astral realm at the same time.

He didn't know if that was better or worse, but he had a feeling it was the latter.

"Now, are you going to come quietly and let me deliver you to those liches in one piece, or am I going to have to cut you up a bit?" the demon asked, its eyes flicking toward his missing hands. "…or mostly one piece, I suppose."

"Sorry, but I'm not one to give up without a struggle," Asher grinned, steeling his resolve and triggering Recall a second time, and then a third. Over and over again, the world tried to shift and morph around him, and he swore he made out a faint image of Brian's shocked face flickering into existence before it faded away again. The demon's grip was absolute, and despite how hard he focused on Recalling, he could tell he wasn't going anywhere so long as it had him.

For its part, the demon seemed to find his attempts at escape amusing, as it simply stood there and watched him desperately try to get his skill to work.

Asher was rapidly draining his energy reserves, but that didn't matter, seeing as he couldn't fight the demon anyway. More importantly, with each failed attempt at activating his skill, he got a better sense of the demon's strange weight that kept them locked down. He couldn't say he understood it, but he slowly began to grasp the separation between the demon and his attempts at shifting his location across space. Finally, after failing to Recall nearly a dozen times in a row, Asher understood.

The demon's weight truly was absolute. There was no chance in hell he'd ever be able to shift it if it didn't want to be shifted.

So he'd just have to leave it behind.

Taking a deep breath, Asher triggered Recall one final time, attempting to shift the world around him and teleport to Brian's location. Just like his previous attempts, the weight of the demon clamped onto his arm prevented him from going anywhere, stopping his skill from working and locking him in place.

But who was the demon to tell Asher what he could and couldn't do with his skill? The Spatial element was his element, and Recall was his skill.

He'd be damned if he let someone else try to challenge that.

With a roar that seemed to encompass all the pain he'd experienced during his battle with Eight before returning to the place he called home, only to find all of Horntho village burning to the ground and the villagers dead or fleeing, Asher forced Recall to keep going despite the demon's continued refusal to be shifted through space. The world shifted around him more violently than ever before, and he got one final glimpse of actual shock on the demon's face before Asher's arm was ripped clean off at the elbow, the mundane ligaments and flesh not standing a chance when caught between a game of tug of war with the demon's incomprehensible weight on one end and the twisting of the very fabric of the world on the other. Finally, his skill went through, and Asher fell to his knees, his face scrunched in pain as blood poured out of his mangled arm.

It didn't seem quite so bad in comparison to his arm being ripped off at the elbow, but based on the other pain he was experiencing, he was pretty certain he'd dislocated his shoulder as well.

"Asher!" Brian shouted, the twelve-year-old taking one look at him and nearly dropping his bow as his eyes widened. "Your hand! Your arm!"

"No time for that, we need to get out of here," Asher groaned, forcing himself to his feet and praying he wouldn't die from blood loss before he'd gotten them to a safe location. Looking around, he spotted a small group of villagers continuing to flee down the dirt path, not even realizing that Brian had stopped running with them. On the one hand, Asher was a bit peeved that they'd just let one of their own fall behind like that.

On the other hand, it looked as though there were a dozen or so imps rapidly approaching, chasing everyone down the road. Even if the greater demon didn't chase after them, the imps would be upon them in seconds.

"Samantha's safe, but I don't know how long we have. I need to use a weird skill on you, do you trust me?"

"Of course," Brian nodded, his knuckles whitening around his bow as he stepped closer. His voice wavered as he looked up at him. "Thank you for coming to help."

"I promised I would, didn't I?" Asher said, managing a pained smile as he pressed his not-currently bleeding stump against him. With another flex of will and a slight shove, he shifted Brian into his Personal Rift, reuniting him with his sister.

Damn, I hope it's not dark in there. The errant thought flickered through his mind as he turned to see the mass of imps barely fifty feet away and approaching fast.

"Good luck everyone," Asher muttered, his heart going out to the fleeing villagers as he prepared himself. He was in no shape to actually help any of them, and he had a feeling if the greater demon caught him a second time, he wouldn't be able to use the same trick twice.

Focusing on the mark he'd left on Kree back in Whikoga, Asher used what remained of his energy to activate Recall one last time, narrowly avoiding a slash from a screaming imp as the world around him shifted and took him away.

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