A sudden wave of heat radiates from Setrákus Ra, and the icicles melt right out of him. Then he spins around to face Marina, his appearance changing. His skin darkens to a caramel color, and his head sprouts a mop of curly dark hair.

“Haven’t I?” he asks. His face, his voice—he’s taken on the shape of Eight.

Marina recoils in horror as he starts to float up to her.

“Didn’t I promise to reunite you with your love?” Setrákus Ra asks, his eyes filled with malice Eight’s never held in life. “That could still be yours, dear Marina. . . .”

Using my stone-vision, I turn his lower half into solid granite and connect that to the cavern floor so Setrákus Ra is now a stalagmite rising up from the rocks. He looks down at himself—Eight’s appearance abandoned, his own younger self returned—and makes a face.

“Primitive,” he growls.

Primitive or not, it slows him down. Nine charges in, runs up my rock formation and takes a swipe at Setrákus Ra with my Voron dagger. Stuck in place, Setrákus Ra can’t dodge, and Nine cleaves off a huge chunk of his face. For a moment, I think I see blood. But then the Mogadorian sludge fills in the wound, smooths it over, and his face is back to normal.

Still, he was hurt. We can find ways to hurt him.

As Nine comes around for another pass, I push out with my telekinesis. I put pressure on the armor that Setrákus Ra wears, crushing it, compacting it, hoping to tighten it around his guts. I sense Marina add her strength to mine, and soon we’re squeezing the armor like a tin can.

Bellowing, Setrákus Ra rips the armor loose and tosses it aside. He’s bare-chested now. Right over his heart, in the spot where Six impaled him, there’s a throbbing mass of the black ooze, like a spider at the center of its web.

The stuff isn’t concentrated like that on any other part of his body. That has to be where he’s deriving all this power from.

Nine! Instead of speaking, this time I use my telepathy. I don’t want Setrákus Ra to know we’ve figured him out. Go for the heart!

Duh, he thinks back.

Setrákus Ra kicks free of the rocks I built around his legs like they were nothing more than pebbles. As soon as he’s free, I activate my stone-vision and trip him up again. At the same time, Marina assails him with another vicious barrage of ice. He swats the frozen daggers away, growling, distracted.

“This grows tiresome,” he says.

And then Nine is on him, leading with the Voron dagger, powering out of a crouch, thrusting forwards with all he’s worth.

Stabbing Setrákus Ra right through the heart.

Nine buries the blade to the hilt. Its tip pokes out through Setrákus Ra’s back.

Setrákus Ra looks down at the weapon.

He smiles.

“Is this a children’s story?” he asks, sounding amused. “I have spent centuries perfecting my work. And you think . . . what? That there is a weak point?”

He takes a deep breath, and the blade, along with Nine’s hand still on the hilt, is sucked fully into the black mass on his chest. Setrákus Ra looks towards Marina.

“Behold, a demonstration.”

Nine screams. His arm first turns blue, like the circulation’s been cut off, then gray and withered and finally as black as the ooze. The muscles melt, his skin sags off his bones. It’s like watching time-lapse photography of his arm decomposing.

Setrákus Ra again stomps free of the stone I placed around his legs and kicks Nine in the chest. Nine flies backwards.

His arm stays with Setrákus Ra. It hangs from his chest for a moment, and then it’s like the ooze begins to digest the limb, breaking it down, drawing it into Setrákus Ra. When the process is over, the arm is fully absorbed. Nine lies on the ground, clutching the empty space where his arm used to be. Marina leaps down, wide-eyed.

“Oh God, oh God,” she mumbles, groping at the spot on Nine’s shoulder. There’s no blood; the flesh is dried and dead. Still, she activates her healing Legacy and tries . . . tries something.

Setrákus Ra advances on them, wetting his lips.

I fly forward—stone-vision, a bombardment of ice, a blast of fire—try to slow him down.

I’m not strong enough.

He grabs my head, palms my face and slams me down to the stone floor.

“You will be last, Pittacus,” he says.

Blood streams into my eyes. Woozy, dazed, I struggle to my knees as Setrákus Ra stalks towards my friends.

We can’t win this.

Marina throws up her hands, and a wall of solid ice separates her and Nine from Setrákus Ra. The Mogadorian sighs, annoyed, and punches straight through it.