The shield still curved around Dex's fist and wrist shattered when Tesseract tapped it, but better that than his whole hand. The blow knocked the energy-beam into the floor, less powerful than Dexter intended, but the Adept had to let it go anyway in favour of twisting aside from that jab.

Tesseract's fingers brushed his side and Dexter gasped at the shattering pain which ran under his skin. His lower hand was already curling into a fist, a pair of spiked brass-knuckles shimmering over his joints as he slammed it into Tesseract's wrist just a moment too late.

Then the agony kicked in and he bent over his side, jerking toward the wall to gain some distance. He couldn't afford to get in so close with broken ribs. He could barely breathe. He sank against the wall, using it to steady himself with his vision warping white, and opened his fist to try one last energy-beam at Tesseract's back.

Solomon saw the pair of souls break apart. He side-stepped so neither Dex nor Tanith were in his direct line-of-sight and channelled magic into the blade Skulduggery had given him, then raised it and flicked a bolt of light--the same he'd used for Sanguine--at Tesseract.