Where we last left off, the legendary boxer Ragnorre Rock had just cried “UNHAND HER” to the rollercoaster-sized shadow demon Urrich. It took Nyx a moment to realize where she was shouting it from.

The logical assumption was that she’d peeked through one of those slivers in the walls of this room—through which Nyx had seen Urrich’s foot back in the day.

It was possible that those holes helped her find the room...but they didn’t explain how she was standing right here, about five steps away from Nyx.

Whuh? For a moment, Nyx’s mind refused to accept it. How had this doofus managed to come so close to Nyx without them registering it at all? It wasn’t like Nyx’s mind had blind spots—and they had uncanny demon senses that should’ve detected—

But they figured that was the key word. “Demon.”

Urrich had drawn Nyx down a demon’s path, but apparently he hadn’t shut that path down.

Nyx shrugged. “Clever but not clever enough, Urrich,” they said. Hopefully more people were following Ragnorre. Or, wait, maybe both Nyx and Ragnorre were about to get killed within the next five seconds and the rest of the divers were best off getting the heck away.

Nonetheless, Ragnorre turned and smiled toothily at Nyx, before her fists erupted in lightning like flames.

Did even she know that Nyx was the same person as—whatever, it wasn’t worth worrying about. Also, yes, Nyx was now certain she did.

Urrich had paused in silence for a pretty long time. Maybe he was taking the new threat seriously, because even though Ragnorre was a generic adventurer by all rights, better to be safe than sorry. More likely he just playfully aloof?

He began to scuttle and whirl. Multitudes of yellow specks dotted his twilight-colored back—sets of eyes. His long limbs were more like sabers than feet, and there were way more than a hundred. Worse even than his size and status as a million living weapons, he wasn’t really tangible. As a shadow being who’d spent centuries of time living and growing and feeding off the power of others, surely he could phase in and out of any attack at will.

Naturally, Ragnorre took a direct approach. She tottered forward and cried, “Lightning Rock!”

Her fist landed square in his side...and through it. Her momentum smashed her against the wall behind him. Meanwhile, he reared up and dove into the floor with a room-sweeping gust of wind. The floor became all-black, seeped in his shadow.

Ragnorre got on her knees and started pummeling the floor. Useless sparks buzzed out.

“How do we hit him!?” she screamed.

Nyx kept their body calm and their breathing slow. “We don’t,” they said. “But he’ll go solid if he tries to hit us. Briefly, but—”

He came back. Surfacing like a monster shark, his head and horn-antennae ripped through the ground right underneath Nyx and Ragnorre.

Nyx escaped by becoming shadow and jerking to the side—a predictable move, but the only move. They slithered high up onto the wall, and the moments this took felt long in the heat of battle. Had the attack gotten Ragnorre? She wouldn’t have lightning speed, would she? Or if she did, it wouldn’t last her long...only so many different moves were physically possible for mortals, even when they had magic.

Only when they felt decently high and secure did they attempt to see where the other two were. The fight had shifted whole meters away, but the impressive part was that Ragnorre was back on—or had remained on—her feet.

Urrich had reared up in front of her, and Ragnorre responded with a relentless volley of electrified punches, of the exact same quality as her first but with several times the speed, intensity, and battlecry volume. Every single shot phased through.

He had to find this very funny.

But, wait, maybe Ragnorre was smarter than she looked, and all this was...a distraction.

Even if she wasn’t necessarily smart, she did have a bit of a storybook-hero thing going on, and that totally implied some self-sacrificing.

It was a nice gesture, and it could earn Nyx a few minutes or moments to think. Silently they thanked Ragnorre. From the safety of their shadow void, they worked out a plan to travel through the rock to some other part of the dungeon and maybe spend a few moments as an inert, outwardly non-living pebble.

Then Urrich really struck. For that purpose he became solid, which was just the opportunity Ragnorre would need to make a real dent. But only his legs, the legs that needed to, coalesced into shining spears and gutted her precisely through the heart. Killing her instantly.

Except...instead of dying, Ragnorre just disappeared.

No, she was just over there, a few inches to the side.

And the afterimages of her ultrafast movement were fragmenting in her wake.

Impossible. Nyx couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Ragnorre’d had zero time to react to that, and even if she had, even if she’d sent some lightning response to her brain and body to charge out of the way—

The ability was beyond mere magic and beyond human.