Glaeken didn't look back. He continued his torturous trek toward the far end of the arch. Within a dozen feet of its origin he stopped and turned.

Rasalom's amniotic sack still hung from its lopsided platform like a gargantuan punching bag, but now a sinewed arm with a wounded hand protruded from the rent made by the weapon. It raked the air above it with its two remaining talons. And the eye…that malevolent eye was still pressed against the membrane, glaring at him.

"I'm not running far," Glaeken said.

With another burst of light and bloom of oily smoke, he drove the weapon deep into the arch beneath him and began to work it back and forth. The support was thicker here near its base, but he could afford the extra time it would take because he was out of Rasalom's reach.

"Glaeken," Rasalom said to his mind, "you'll never learn. You are forcing me to…"

Ahead, over the center of the pit, another arm clawed free of the membrane, then ripped a talon down the surface of the sack, opening it like a zipper. Tons of black fluid poured from the rent, spilling into the bottomless glow of the depths below. The rent parted, widened, and then…

Something emerged from the sack.

Glaeken knew who it was, but could not be certain what it was. It had arms, that he knew. And a huge eye at its upper end. But in the dim glow leaking up from the pit below he could be sure of little else as it crawled from the sack and hoisted itself up onto the sagging central platform. Legs…now he could see legs, very much like the two arms, but the rest of it was encased in an oozing gelatinous mass that dripped off the platform in amorphous globs and tumbled into infinity. There was a larger shape within the mass, something with a head and a torso, but Glaeken could make out no details. And now a pair of thick tentacles wriggled free of the gelatin below the arms to twist and coil in the air.

It began moving his way, crawling upward toward him along the fourth arch.

Glaeken redoubled his efforts with the weapon, widening, deepening the cut in its upper surface, thrusting the blade through to the underside. Rasalom's incomplete new form was cumbersome, his progress slow, but he was sliding steadily closer. He soon would have Glaeken within reach of those talons.

Suddenly an explosive crack echoed through the cavern as the fourth arch shook beneath Glaeken's feet and broke part way through like a green sapling. Its distal segment sagged. Glaeken paused and watched Rasalom claw frantically for purchase as he slipped back along the decline toward the central disk. He gave the monstrous form no time to recover, however; immediately he renewed his hacking assault at the remaining splinters holding the arch together.

"Give it up, Glaeken! This is an exercise in futility! You cannot win!"

Rasalom's voice was no longer in his mind. His new form was speaking in a startlingly powerful voice. Even muffled by the gelatinous coating, it was still loud enough to shake the walls of the cavern.

Glaeken ignored it and forced his wearying arms to maintain the assault on the arch. The reflexes were still there, the arms knew what to do, but the unconditioned muscles were sagging with fatigue. Yet he couldn't rest, couldn't even slow his pace. He closed his eyes to blot out all distractions and kept hacking.

"GLAEKEN!"

The stark terror in the voice and the ripping sound that accompanied it jolted Glaeken. He looked up.

Rasalom was near, clinging to the arch, his outstretched talons only a few feet from Glaeken's face, yet he was receding, falling away. And then Glaeken saw why. He'd cut through the remnant of the fourth support and now Rasalom was dangling over the pit, clutching frantically with arms, legs, and tentacles to the swiftly tilting remnant.

The entire structure—the new Rasalom, the central disk, and the remnant of his sack-like chrysalis—was now supported entirely by the third arch. And Glaeken had already damaged that near its union with the disk.

After all these ages, Rasalom's end was at hand.

Or was it?

Rasalom was suspended head down over the pit, but he was scrabbling backwards along the remnant of the arch, up toward the disk.

"You cannot win, Glaeken! Not this time! It cannot happen! I won't allow it! I'm too close!"

His movements were shaking the entire structure, exerting enormous pressure on the lone arch. It began to bob like a fishing pole that had hooked an enormous Great White. As Glaeken hobbled back to the rim of the cavern and made his way toward the final arch, he heard it begin to crack where he had started a cut near its distal end.

Rasalom must have realized it too, because even in this dim light Glaeken could discern a frantic desperation in his movements. But it was too late. The end of the arch was splitting, angling down at its wounded tip. Breaking…

A cannonshot crack signaled the end. The disk lurched downward suddenly to a vertical angle, twisted crazily. Rasalom was there, clutching the disk's upper edge with his taloned fingers. Other appendages, spiny, rickety arms with clawed tips had broken free of the gel along his flank and were blindly questing for purchase while his tentacles stretched toward the end of the arch, reaching.

And then the final threads of the final arch gave way and the disk, the sack, and Rasalom plunged into the abyss.

No—not Rasalom.

Glaeken groaned as he realized that Rasalom was still there. The rest had fallen away but he was clinging to the final support by one of his tentacles—and pulling himself up!

Glaeken forced his wounded leg to move, to half run, half stagger to the base of the third arch, climb upon it, and hobble along its wavering length. He didn't have time to cut through this one. He had to meet Rasalom at its terminus and stop him there before he regained his footing.

"This is what it's always come down to, hasn't it, Rasalom. You and me. Just you and me."

Rasalom's reply was to snake his other tentacle upward and loop it around the shaft of the arch next to the first. He used them to hoist himself higher until his taloned hands could grip the arch. That done, new tentacles began to spring from the great gelatinous mass of his body to join the others in coils around the shaft.

He's going to make it!

Glaeken clenched his teeth against the pain in his leg and increased his speed. He didn't hesitate when he reached the first tentacles—he slashed at them with the weapon. Blinding flashes, greasy smoke, and thick, dark fluid spurting from the amputated ends. The world narrowed to Glaeken, Rasalom, the arch, and the weapon. Closing his eyes against the flashes, choking on the smoke, he slipped into a fugue of pain and motion, moving in a fog, operating on reflexes as he severed coil after coil and kicked their writhing remnants aside, then moved on the next group.

From below him came a thunderous roar as Rasalom kicked and thrashed in inarticulate pain and rage.

Spiny, spidery, pincer-tipped arms rose on both sides and snapped at him. Glaeken lashed out left and right, scything them down as he kept pushing forward.

Until finally he was at the end of the arch and Rasalom swung below him, suspended only by his yellow-taloned hands, one of them already missing a finger.

"Glaeken…no…please!"

And in the instant of that plea Rasalom yanked his body upward and lashed at Glaeken with the three fingers of his good hand. Glaeken ducked as the talons raked the air inches above his head. He swung the weapon upward, over his head. The impact with Rasalom's wrist and the simultaneous detonation of brilliance as the blade sliced through skin and muscle and tendon and bone nearly knocked Glaeken off the arch. He threw himself flat and hung on as Rasalom thrashed and howled and waved his partially severed, black-spurting wrist in the air.