Yu gasped. “Wait, that’s just like the move Rudra and I use!”
Just like his supersonic charge attack.
“I-Ichinose!” Ijuin came over the commlink. “You said that guy calls himself ‘the Whirlwind’ or something, yeah?!”
“Wrong name, Ijuin. I’m armorized,” Yu replied.
“Forget that for a minute, man! I think that archmage is gonna have a lot of the same stuff as the Mark III! You both control the winds!”
“I had a feeling.”
“Yeah,” said Ijuin. “Wind includes the air and atmosphere, so he’ll be able to move crazy fast and whip out sonic-based attacks! At least, I think so!”
It seemed the two of them had the same suspicions.
Yu reactivated the antigravity lifters and flipped himself right side up again, shooting skyward to avoid the encroaching swarm of tornadoes. But as if that weren’t enough, the portal-keep’s gates yawned open, revealing a blue beast—a scaled lizard of almost thirty meters in length, with the wings of a bat.
Taking to the skies was a blue dragon. The flying reptile opened its maw and a stream of crackling lightning burst forth.
But not towards the Mark III.
“Whoa, that one’s for me!”
“Natsuki!” Yu shouted.
Levitating in the air, Natsuki held the blade end of the Green Dragon out towards the surge of electricity rushing towards her. The anti-magic shell expanded out from the tip in the form of a dome, and the dragon’s breath attack was stopped dead at the protective barrier. A laser beam fired from the guandao’s edge as the dragon attempted to maneuver behind Natsuki, but the attack just barely missed its target.
“Welp, guess I’ll handle things here, Three!” she said over the commlink.
“Got it!”
While the Mark VI was a handheld Asura Frame, it still came equipped with antigravity lifters which granted the power of flight to its wielder. That was how they had gotten the drop on Scullchance in their battle with her, and they had hoped to do the same to Quldald. Yu would attract the enemy’s attention while Natsuki would approach quietly and wait for the right time to land a surprise attack. Now that she was out in the open, though, that plan was done for.
“I’m certain it bears no explanation to you, black and gold warrior, that lightning is but a boon companion to the wind,” Quldald said, suddenly appearing nearby. “You will find that I am well versed in such incantations!”
Yu clenched his teeth in frustration.
The mage raised his staff, and a sphere of light began to radiate from it. In no time at all, the ball of lightning had grown to the size of a human and been sent flying straight at Rudra. Yu nimbly shook the attack off, only for another swarm of twisters to hone in on his location.
“Rudra! Ein left you some Gospel Codes, didn’t she?” Yu asked his partner. “Prepare the Doomsday Book! I’ll buy us some time!”
The Prayer Wheel at his waist hummed as it began to spin at faster and faster speeds. Not long later came a chorus of men and women, singing this time with more poignant weight than usual, “Gate! Gate! Paragate! Gate! Gate! Paragate!”
Along with the song rose Rudra’s spirit, the divine determination of the god of the wind given mechanical form. Yu, meanwhile, dodged and laced between Quldald’s onslaught of cyclones and lightning, stalling long enough for the string of English text to finally finish scrolling across his visor.
[System Now Booting Doomsday Book “VIDYA-MANTRA RUDRA2”]
“Now!” he commanded.
The windbeast began to manifest, gusts coming together to shape into the wispy form of a panther. In its wake would follow a giant, swirling tornado that the creature would use to tear its prey asunder.
The Mark III had recited the hymn to summon the creature all on its own. The lyrics had appeared before Yu in a separate window.
The sinners of the trailokya know not their sin.
Such as the fools of the four wombs know not their folly.
In darkness we are born, to darkness we return, and to darkness we are born anew.
“My vassals!” Quldald cried out. “Go forth, dwellers of the clouds!”
At his order, the eight cloud giants that had been quietly observing the battle up to then started to deploy. They each placed their hands together simultaneously and uniformly, forming triangles in their palms.
Yu flinched. Ein had taught him about those sorts of gestures before. They were mudra hand signs, meant to heighten one’s senses during spellcasting. It had only been a matter of time before those Anomalies finally decided to make their move, and now they were beginning to chant.
“Shoot!” Yu hissed.
Eight triangles glowed in the sky before falling one after the other onto Yu’s trump card—the wind beast. The trinities of light enclosed the feline’s legs and bound them tightly. Struggle as it might, the windbeast couldn’t get the restraints to so much as budge.
Yu trembled in frustration and uncertainty. “He had a counterplay to the Doomsday Book this whole time!”
Quldald had done his research. Clearly, he was every bit the tactician as his proud and late comrade Scullchance. And more.
“Not good, not good!” Ijuin watched the fight unfold from his HMD goggles back at the roof of the building, and he didn’t much like what he saw. “Man, this is seriously rough without Lady Ein here! She’d have a Gospel Code for this situation, I know it!”
In truth, they had all been fearing this exact scenario ever since Yu told them about the Devicer from China. The girl knew this would be his weakness, and she had her eyes on Ein because of it.
“I’ve gotta figure this out or we’re screwed.”
The Replicant girl had taught him something before leaving. Ijuin stared deeply at the Shikoku sky, through the haunting aurora towards what lay beyond, remembering Ein’s words.
“Seek the sun, Ijuin,” she had said. “Not the one that burns, but the one that persists just the same. Sense its presence. You’ve learned well how to use the key of prajna—that is, your nanomachines. I believe you can do it.”
What Ijuin was attempting was meant to somehow substitute for the lack of a Replicant. He opened his eyes wide and strained his ears, doing everything he could to hone his senses to a fine point.
“Sense its presence,” he echoed. “Yeah, right. I’m not some ascetic monk here! Couldn’t you have given me something a little less esoteric?”
And then it happened. He felt it. Waves of some kind, propagating from the sky. No—more specifically, from the southwest.
“It can’t be,” he murmured. “It’s Avalo. It’s the coordinates for Devicer Nine and Lady Ein’s friend!”