United as One (Lorien Legacies #7)(92)

He doesn’t even seem bothered by my attack. It’s like he doesn’t feel any pain. He just floats above his lake of black muck, staring me down, an infuriating hint of a smile on his face.

“Is that the best you can do?” he asks.

Setrákus Ra flies towards me at a speed I couldn’t duplicate and punches me square in the sternum. There are spikes growing out of his knuckles that weren’t there a second ago, and I hear my ribs crunch. I’m tossed backwards onto a rocky outcropping at the edge of the vat, skidding to a stop on my elbows. Immediately, I start to heal my broken ribs.

I’m going to need to keep healing as fast as he can hurt me and hope that I can figure out a way to outlast him.

With a roar, Bernie Kosar flies towards Setrákus Ra. In his griffin form, he’s a formidable opponent, even if Setrákus Ra is moving at super-speed. Maybe one good bite could make the difference.

BK never makes it there.

Setrákus Ra raises a hand, and the ooze from the lake springs up around BK. It forms a cage over him, like something out of a zoo, the bars thick sections of oil. Slashing and biting, BK can’t break free. Slowly, the cage begins to contract around him, forcing him to shape shift into smaller and smaller forms or be crushed.

“I never did finish my work with the Chim?rae,” Setrákus Ra muses, watching as the muck swallows BK. “Thank you for bringing me one.”

The cage stops compressing when BK is squished down to beagle form. BK tries to go smaller and sneak between the bars, but the whole thing instantly seals up like a cocoon. I can’t see him anymore. BK floats in a solid bubble of ooze just above the lake’s surface.

At least, from the sound of it, Setrákus Ra doesn’t plan to kill him right away.

Can’t say the same about the rest of us.

As I scramble to my feet, Setrákus Ra lands a few yards away. He holds out his hands like a saint in a stained glass window. My lips curl in disgust.

“Like insects before a giant,” he says. “So do you children quail before a god.”

“You’re no god,” I reply, tossing a fireball at him that he simply absorbs.

He snorts. “You Loric, so pious even at the end. The thing you worship, the Entity that now hides beneath the earth, it is nothing more than a resource. Like ore, like water. You pray to a river while I create dams. You rely on the whims of nature while my intellect shapes galaxies. Do you not see now what my work, my progress, has the power to create?”

“I see a lonely old asshole living in a fucking cave!” shouts Nine as he launches in from the side.

Nine throws a haymaker that Setrákus Ra easily ducks under. As Nine stumbles and tries to regain his balance, Setrákus Ra grabs him by the hair and yanks him backwards. Setrákus Ra’s hand is flat, the edge gleaming like the blade of a sword. He swings in a chopping motion for Nine’s neck.

I yank Nine to me with my telekinesis before Setrákus Ra can cut off his head. He’s left with a handful of Nine’s hair, ripped right out of his head.

The speed. The invulnerability. Twisting his body into whatever sick shapes he can imagine. It’s crazy to think I was once intimidated by Setrákus Ra when all he could do was change sizes and cancel out our Legacies.

This monster before me is so much worse.

“Ideas?” Nine says to me.

“Flank him,” I reply, and we spread out.

Nine holds up my dagger. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

We’re trying to put on a show of confidence, but I can tell Nine’s shaken by Setrákus Ra’s display of power. We’re in trouble.

With a wolfish smile, Setrákus Ra starts to advance on us. Before he gets too close, he’s peppered by a volley of icicles from the ledge above. He’s a pincushion, the ice shards stabbing up and down his back.

“All you’ve made is pain and suffering!” Marina yells down at him. “All those bodies up there! For what? So you could craft these hideous powers?”

Setrákus Ra chuckles. “Oh no, my dear. Lorien is stingy with its gifts. The pitiful sparks that hide within all of you are mere drops in the bucket. I needed to tap directly into the source to create what you see down here.” He runs a hand vainly across his own cheek. “Draining those others was merely a trial run of one of my new Augmentations. They died in service to glorious progress.”

“You’re mad!” Marina counters. “For all your supposed genius, you’ve never created anything as beautiful as Lorien did!”

A sudden wave of heat radiates from Setrákus Ra, and the icicles melt right out of him. Then he spins around to face Marina, his appearance changing. His skin darkens to a caramel color, and his head sprouts a mop of curly dark hair.

“Haven’t I?” he asks. His face, his voice—he’s taken on the shape of Eight.

Marina recoils in horror as he starts to float up to her.

“Didn’t I promise to reunite you with your love?” Setrákus Ra asks, his eyes filled with malice Eight’s never held in life. “That could still be yours, dear Marina. . . .”

Using my stone-vision, I turn his lower half into solid granite and connect that to the cavern floor so Setrákus Ra is now a stalagmite rising up from the rocks. He looks down at himself—Eight’s appearance abandoned, his own younger self returned—and makes a face.