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Hector looked up immediately, expecting another attack from Karkash, one he wouldn’t be able to mitigate at all, but that was not what he saw.

Instead, Karkash was going for Nize, yanking away the spires that protected her. And he saw Stoker, charred and battered, but standing in front of her, ready to take more lightning.

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Stoker knew he was outmatched--if not from the start, then certainly now.

He had the idea in his head, a chance at how to improve his odds. And he knew his power was lacking. He had never accomplished this particular feat with his hydrogen before. He’d never had enough control.

It began with selfishness. The instinct to survive. A kind of personal and glorious greed. He knew it well, even before becoming a servant. And of course, he knew how easily that instinct could fail. Before meeting Nize for the first time, he remembered being so determined to go on living, to make it through that battle--only to be killed anyway. Terrible luck, it had been. An ill stroke of fate, as his supposed comrades might say.

So he knew this desperation, this helplessness. And likewise, he knew the desire to do more, to be more.

Emergence was no complicated thing in itself. It was at once acceptance and rejection: acceptance of one’s helplessness, and rejection of the notion that this helplessness should warrant quitting. It was a perfect concoction in one’s mind, to know an imminent demise and to still refuse to go quietly.

And that was what he had now. That was how he achieved counter-emergence.

Controlled combustion was the idea. Stoker set his back ablaze, hydrogen mixing violently with the oxygen in his cells, heated with precision. And his flesh exploded, just as desired--not enough to destroy anything unwanted, but just enough to propel him forward. It gave him speed, and he did it again, more this time, and he kept doing it, until he was hurtling over the ground so quickly that his legs couldn’t keep up.