Athena caught up to him in a matter of minutes, just as he’d expected. As before, his first warning of her attack was a faint whooshing sound as her wings cut through the air. Then she was on top of him, her wings flaring out to cut off his escape left or right. That left him with only backward to escape. Or so she thought. He did take a step back to avoid the slashing talons with minimal effort, but instead of continuing to retreat, he stepped back inside her reach.

That change took her by surprise, he noticed. She immediately danced around him as if expecting some kind of attack, and attacked once more. Again, he ducked the attack, then moved closer. After repeating this a few times without attacking back, she stopped repositioning and dove in to bite him. Inches before she made contact, he activated the Magnetic flight of his suit, and shot straight up into the air, her head sailing right underneath him. He latched on with both hands, then planted his feet, his legs wrapped around her neck.

You think you can escape me like that?

Without warning, without showing any sign of what she was up to, she too shot into the air. But she did it much faster than he could, rocketing nearly a hundred feet into the night sky with a single powerful jump. The force of that leap nearly broke his grip on her, but he persisted. When they came to a stand-still, he looked down and noticed, wide-eyed, how far they’d come. They hung in the air together for several seconds, her powerful wings beating to keep them airborne, and craned her head to look at him with one eye. He gave her a sardonic challenging grin. Then she started to spin.

Around and around he spun, as she shot back down to the ground in a perfectly controlled dive. She pulled up at the last possible second, her talons lightly brushing the dirt on the ground before soaring back up to their previous elevation. She turned neatly, nearly in her own length, then dove again. She took every kind of turn she could imagine, throwing in a flip or another barrel roll. They changed directions faster than he could think, and it was all he could do to hang on for dear life, clinging to her cold metallic back.

I’m impressed. But this has gone long enough.

With an impact hard enough to shake his bones, she landed back on the ground. Then, tucking her wings tightly against her side, she rolled across the ground. Rocks and small twigs pressed into his back, but he was protected by his armor. Next she tried jumping into the air and landing on her back to crush him, but he was offered the same protection. Now there was a hint of annoyance to her commentary.

Get off of me, you vermin! Why aren’t you fleeing?

He let out a laugh. He’d expected her to lose her temper at some point during the hour, but not this quick. She was the first to lose her composure. In his mind, that was as good as admitting defeat. He continued to laugh as he shouted back. “You didn’t say I had to flee! You just said I had to be alive!”

She paused in her movements, turning to glare at him with those sharp eyes. He took advantage of the slight pause to open a panel in his armor’s buckler and yank out the camouflage chip. He replaced it with the only other loadout chip that he owned, the one that Nicholas had said to ‘only use when you’re out of options’. The suit’s program caught the change at once, and in seconds a new HUD had appeared. The entire suit grew warmer, and each small move he made was accentuated as the suit enhanced it. Perfect.

“Now it’s your turn to see if you can keep up with me!” He hollered. She dove at a nearby tree, slamming her back against it. Again his suit protected him from damage, but without his arms for purchase, he was finally knocked off. She darted several feet away, then turned for another powerful charge. “Come on!”

He timed it better than he could have expected. As she lunged in for another bite, he pivoted neatly in place, stepping back to allow her head to slip past him. Then he struck the side of her head with a punch, the suit adding extra power to the simple attack. It was more powerful than both of them could have expected. Caught unawares, Athena was thrown a few feet to the side and lay stunned, her limbs moving feebly as she tried to regain control.

He flashed over to her before she could rise, and wrapped both arms around her stout neck once more. On his HUD was the glowing silhouette of a man, with each part showing equal strength. From past training he knew he could change that, so he focused 90% of the power of the suit on his arms to ensure his grip stuck. Then he activated his Magnetic flight and defense power. Electricity arced all across his suit, shocking Athena, then he heaved with his arms. In a feat of strength that would have been impossible without the suit, he flipped her body over his shoulder, and slammed her into the hard-packed earth behind him, hard enough to hurt.

He knew he couldn’t maintain the upper hand forever. Every action he took in this loadout drained three times the power, and he was already at thirty percent capacity, down from the fifty percent he’d managed to recover. But Athena, even after taking two critical hits, seemed unfazed. She shook free of him at once and danced back a few feet on her hind legs, swiping at the air to discourage him from following. Then she came to rest on all four and glared at him. He glared right back.

Judging by the clock on his HUD, twenty minutes had passed. He was exhausted, and if it weren’t for his suit to support his movements, he would have collapsed right then and there. He hid his weakness the best he could, continuing their silent staring match. Even at a distance of fifteen feet, she was partially hidden in the shadows, visible only as a pair of brightly glowing eyes with slits for pupils. Even the light on her body and wings had gone out. A sign of exhaustion? Or perhaps she just had the ability to turn them off.

You’re brave, I’ll admit. No other person has had the courage to attack me directly, not even the Menorans.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied, breathing heavily. “I told you I’m not like anyone else.”

You think you’re better than the Menorans?

“They couldn’t fight against the monster plague,” he said with a defiant sort of shrug. “No monster has killed me yet.”

It was perfectly true. Of his five deaths, all had been from other players. It was a rare achievement, one he shared with only a tiny percentage of the ten thousand other players. It was always something small he didn’t care about, something to make him feel a bit better. But as he came across even more dangerous monsters he’d come across and still kept the achievement, he’d grown more confident.

“So,” he said, glancing at his clock. That staring contest had taken five minutes. Thirty-five left. “Are you going to stand there all night, or are you going to attack me? If you’d rather admit defeat, I’ll accept that.”

The eyes, which had started to relax a bit, tightened to a thin line once more. Cheeky human.

“That’s me,” he said with a laugh. “You should see what my platoon has to put up with.”

She was across the fifteen-foot gap between them in a heartbeat, her claws slashing. He stepped forward to meet her and swung his fist at her, but before he could connect, his fist was stopped by an invisible force. A faint rippling blue light ran across her body at the impact, as if the force were being dispersed. Then her wing whipped around and clipped the side of his head, spinning him in place with its force.

Slightly stunned, but still mobile, he dropped low as she swiped again. She seemed slower than usual. Obviously a trade-off for that defensive power she’d just shown. He was under her stomach now, but couldn’t do much with how badly his head was ringing. He tried to strike her again only to be stopped by that invisible forcefield. It felt a lot like Nick’s tek shields, though he couldn’t see anything apart from the ripple of blue light.

I barely felt that! The text distracted him as it appeared in his vision, the glowing white letters partially obscuring his vision so that he nearly missed her claws flashing towards him. He dove out from under her, missing her next wing strike by a matter of centimeters. Then he was away and clear. He made as if to dive at her again, and she jumped back. But instead of attacking, he shot straight into the air with his flight and flew off in the direction of Haven.

Get back here!

She gave chase, not even attempting to be covert as she caught up. Once she was nearly level with him, he stopped and aimed a punch at her head. Her reaction time was impeccable, and her defenses stopped him again. But then he was away once more, darting in a different direction. She knew what he was planning immediately, though, as he expected, she wasn’t willing to let him get away with it. She was determined to catch him, even if it meant moving slower with the defensive power.

45 minutes. His suit warned him that his power was at twelve percent capacity, and advised him to return to the ground. He ignored it, continuing to dark around Athena, who, with her defensive power constantly active, was clumsy by comparison. He couldn’t do significant damage to her, but she didn’t know that. She had to protect against each of his attacks, just in case one of them was able to disable her.

60 seconds. His suit was at four percent. He let her catch up once more, then, after striking and being blocked again, let himself fall from the air. After all their movement, they were hundreds of feet in the air. The wind rushed in his ears and slapped at his body as he fell in a perfect dive, not quite able to smother the sound of Athena letting out a victorious screech above him. She had access to his systems and knew he was running out of power.

As soon as he touched down, he had a few seconds to replace the combat loadout chip, sliding in the camouflage chip once more. Activating his stealth mode, he ducked behind the nearest clump of bushes. That wasn’t enough, he knew. He had to move away before Athena touched down and pounced. He’d barely managed to crawl behind the new cover when she hit the ground. Predictably, she shredded the bushes he’d used but found nothing.

58 seconds. A message appeared on his HUD. I can smell the electricity in your suit.

He let out a quiet curse. Of course, she could. As quickly as he could, he found the button in his settings to disable the suit and moved again. Within seconds, he heard the sound of more bushes being torn apart, then a tree falling. More frustrated growling. He was tempted to look at her as she was only feet away, but knew that the moonlight would reflect on the eyes of his suit, even if it were offline.

Thirty seconds to go. He was getting tired and nearly nodded off right then and there. It was almost over. Twenty seconds. Athena’s light footsteps were moving from one side of him to the other, but not towards him. She had no idea where he was! Ten seconds to go. He counted them off in his head, not daring even to breathe as her feet moved closer to him. She was sniffing the air now, determined to catch his scent.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

He stood up, and she gave a start of surprise as he appeared to rise out of the ground a foot away from her. She immediately lifted one clawed foot to strike at him but stopped at the broad grin on his face.

“I win.”