Coin’s steady striding led him to a makeshift bridge forged from stone and wood, positioned over a great chasm that stretched down into impenetrable shadows. Lanterns had been hung from the sides of the bridge, providing some modest measure of illumination.

  “Had a feeling you’d come,” Leona said, her voice echoing his way from the darkness.

  Coin stopped in place, his expression unchanging. He said nothing, watching as the woman emerged from the shadows. “Come to... settle affairs, as it were.”

  “Valle is dead,” Coin replied. “He was the one I was after. You and your plans? I don’t particularly care. But I’d advise you to get out of my way, all the same.”

  “Dead huh? No big loss. I was coming back to off him myself anyhow. Little prick had outlived his usefulness.” Leona emerged from the shadows, twirling a blade in one hand. In the other she held a large jar of some alchemical oil, glowing green in the lantern light. “You’re a possible threat to the plan, is the thing. A monster like you running around? Who knows how much more dangerous you could become. Plus...”

  Their eyes met. Coin grimaced.

  “I don’t like leaving a fight unresolved. You slipped away from me outside of Charnyll. Then I ran from you the other night. Beating you? It’s a matter of pride for me now.”

  “You’ll die,” Coin told her plainly. His head was still a mess after dealing with Valle, and he was in no mood to even contemplate mercy. Giving Leona a chance to leave was all he could muster.

  “Hasn’t happened to me yet.” She stroked her blade across the lip of the bottle, smearing it in that strange green oil.

  She was behind him in a flash, air puffing behind Coin from the sudden distortion. He spun around and tried to push back just as her blade whirled his way. He already knew her strength was inhuman, able to cleave a tree trunk in a single stroke. Thus he rendered the meat of his arms many times stronger as he tried to block.

  The edge still thudded into his right forearm, sinking a few inches into the flesh. But the real damage came from the hissing green fluid, which immediately started to gnaw at Coin’s arm like a colony of carnivorous ants. He howled and leaped away, smoke hissing from his fresh wound. The skin around the wound became gnarled and blackened, like wood from a spent campfire.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “You like that?” Leona asked. “I figure, between your toughness and shapeshifting, it would be foolish not to equip myself to dampen those abilities.”

  Something alchemical in nature, Coin noted. A powerful substance, designed to mutilate flesh. He grit his teeth, willing the blackened meat to crumble away. The wound closed up, eating further into his reserves of biomass.

  With great effort he began to weave the meat on his arms into a different shape, coating them in ivory scales that were harder than bone. The liquid would likely still melt through this makeshift armour, but with greater effort.

  Her blade whipped out, nearly a dozen slashes thrown in the blink of an eye. Coin reeled, dodging a few of the slashes. But he was forced to block a few against his forearms, grimacing as the strange acid ate into his flesh. A toothy tendril whipped from his back, aiming for Leona’s face. She vanished in a flash of silver, reappearing right behind him.

  Coin turned, his eyes widening as he found himself staring down the barrel of a freshly drawn hand cannon. The flash was blinding, and the ball bearing cleaved a chunk of his skull away. Coin hissed, his tendril thrashing about and striking Leona away from him.

  Half his head was smoking as he sought to reassemble it, and Coin found himself swaying off balance. Leona rushed him while he was still recovering, sprinting almost as fast as a speeding bullet. She raised her blade, the tip aimed low, and suddenly speared it into Coin’s right thigh.

  A pained shriek echoed through the cavern, and Coin was nearly bowled over as his legs threatened to buckle under him. In that moment he knew Leona was no stranger to killing mimics. She had clearly been aiming for his core, striking a spot she assumed Coin would try to hide his. It was just pure luck that Leona aimed for the wrong thigh.

  Spikes of bone exploded from his body, the sharpened tips grazing Leona’s limbs and drawing blood. She skidded back, gritting her teeth and taking a firmer grip on her blade. In that brief opening, Coin’s core slid down toward his heel.

  Coin glared at her in the dark, half his face still a smoking skull steadily being reclaimed by meat. He’d fought adventurers before his evolution, and had seen a handful of them who had trained their bodies far beyond normal human limitations. Leona was just like those freaks of nature, having honed herself into a weapon from head to toe.

  But Coin had evolved beyond his own limitations too. He was as far removed from the mimics Leona had killed in the past, as Leona was to a normal person on the streets of Sentinel.

  He raised his arms and took aim, blasting two spirals of wind at the redhead, the power of the breeze strong enough to slice the stone of the makeshift bridge. Leona smirked and jumped high, her gaze meeting his own. Already the air around her was starting to shimmer, her body preparing to teleport again.

  As he glared at her, the skin on the back of his neck furrowed and opened to reveal a new eyeball. Coin thrust his hands forward, kicking up a great gale that sought to sweep her off her feet. Leona grinned, vanishing in another flash of silver light.

  The instant she appeared before him, she found herself staring at Coin’s newly grown eye. Panic gripped her, briefly, as Coin’s tentacle lashed out and whipped her across the face. It was a dense thing, heavier than a human body, and was lashed with the kind of force that would shatter a normal man. A crack of bone echoed through the chasm, something breaking under the immense force of the blow, and Leona was sent silently tumbling into the blackness below until the shadows swallowed her utterly.

  Coin stood in the darkness for some time, wondering how deep that hole went, waiting to see if Leona would reappear. She did not. The woman was dangerous, but he had hit her pretty damn hard. Even that inhuman toughness of hers had a limit.

  He heaved a sigh, pulled himself back together, and pressed on toward the surface.