"Took you long enough." A voice I didn't recognize mocked my question. "I didn't expect you to sleep for as long as you did. Maybe don't strain yourself so hard next time, eh?" It paused for a second. "Actually, do it again; it gives me more time to play around, heheheh." It laughed at me.
"HOW?!" I bellowed in rage, trying to get this foreign entity to give me information.
"So full of questions. But do you really have the time to ask me anything? I did leave you quite the gift. Why don't you finish playing with it?" It continued to evade my wrathful questioning. And while it irritated me to agree, its words held some truth.
The fire raging across my body was still an issue. The group that'd charged into the throne room was now my problem instead of the entity’s. I had to assume this was a plan on its part rather than a twist of misfortune.
The fire around me contained mana; I could feel it in each lick, the intent already etched into the flames themselves. Each white-hot tongue desired nothing more than to burn, to render everything it touched as less than ash. I could not dispel the fire; the mana used in the spell would burn in some manner, no matter what I tried. What I could do is redirect it, give it something other than my body to burn. I grabbed the flames, the pain no more than a petty distraction. I could tell the others were moving beyond my sight; the mage hadn't expected to win with spell alone. I could feel that silver-tinted gaze bracing the world against me, holding me here, guaranteeing I would not flee. The arrow in my chest pulsed, the spirit wrapped around the head acting as a poison to slow me; it would not be enough.
The flames resisted my hold, they wanted to burn, and I burned so brightly for them. I could have negotiated with the mana within the fire, convinced it something else would burn with a grander radiance, but I hadn't the time. I forced my will upon the intent imbued in the flames. My age leveraged against a sacrifice already made, and my will fell short. I felt the fire shudder, it didn't trust that I would let it char anything, and it wanted to do so with so much zeal. So I gave it something, I gave it the stone, I gave it the throne, I gave it the entire damned crumbling castle. This place could become a molten pit of boiling mana for all I cared. This the flame agreed to, so it finally caved. The inferno pulled from my flesh, jumping to the broken fixtures of a once-great hall.
The flames vanished entirely in almost an instant. The ground and walls started to glow with internal heat as the mana raced into them. But I had to deal with the group of four in front of me before I cared about the blight I'd set on these lands.
"What?!?" The mage blurted out in shock.
"Thought you said that your spell would go for longer than that?" A gravelly voice came from the one in armour.
"It should have." The mage replied, the staff in their hands already crumbling into dust from the spell.
"I wouldn't be able to convince you all to leave, would I?" I interrupted them, my false voice cutting across the space, giving me a snippet of each of their thoughts as it did so. The mage was still shocked about the spell coming apart. Cold anger filled the mind of the one in armour, and the archer was only thinking about his next shot. The one with silver eyes was the oddest among them. She wasn't thinking at all; not even the slightest emotion or memory moved through her mind. She was as empty and hollow as a doll. That snippet into her mind told me the answer well before I even finished the question. The poor girl had already given everything to hold me here. Or, more accurately, to hold the entity that had already fled from my form.
The revelation was more of a shock than I'd been anticipating. The fact that this invasive creature from beyond the veil had done so much that someone felt it necessary to become a purpose-built weapon left me floored.
The mage pulled another staff from their back, this one as blatantly sacrificial as the first. The armour-clad swordsman leveled their blade at me, and the archer nocked another arrow in my direction. They didn't give me an answer verbally; they didn't need to. The girl with the silver light in her eyes didn't move, her body as still as stone. She was already empty, her soul no more than fuel at this point.
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"I see," I replied to their resolve with my own. "So someone must die today. How regretful."
"Shut up." The archer snarled at me, and with his words, the fighting resumed.
The second spell the mage cast wasn't as all-consuming as the first. Though, I would have preferred another bout of flames over what I got. A bolt of lightning jumped from the staff in their hand toward my body. I could feel the difference between this and the fire the instant the blinding white arc came into being. This was uncontrolled; I would not convince the mana in this spell away. It didn't have a goal, and I could not give it a new one.
An arrow joined the sparking light, flying impossibly fast alongside the near-instantaneous spell. The swordsman was a step behind; his blade prepared to cut me wherever I dodged. I couldn't evade them all. The flames from before had baked my bones, leaving my joints slow, caked in sticky melted flesh. The arrow took me in my left shoulder, the broadhead pierced through to my back, the spirit laced throughout dissipating in the air instead of my flesh. The lightning was different, even a tiny touch of those arcing white flashes would leave me immobile, so I twisted past it right into the swordsman. His strike was brutally efficient as punishment. His blade tore down from above, severing my right arm just beyond the shoulder.
The lightning slammed into a long rusted remnant of metal on one of the walls. Then, quick as a whip, it shot back towards the open air, towards the swordsman and I. Using the barely present stump of my arm, I splattered black blood across the faceplate of my assailant, blinding him, if only temporarily. His vision impaired, he resorted to swinging his blade horizontally across my position, trying to take me at the waist. This I ducked below, throwing my body past him to get at the girl beyond him. Having felt no resistance to indicate his blade landed, the swordsman took merely an instant to rip his helmet from his head, thus restoring his impaired vision in time to see the lightning race at his exposed chest.
Contrary to my expectation, the arcing white bolt of energy didn't leave him paralyzed when it slammed into his chest. Instead, it leaped from his armour to his blade, which he promptly jutted vaguely toward my person. In a mere moment, I took in the black scorch on his chest and the dull, straw-colored glow of his blade before I once again had to twist past the arcing nightmare that pursued me.
The mana within the spell pulsed with a maddened glee. Whatever the mage had done to create this spell, he unknowingly created as much a blight as the one I'd set into the now red-hot stone beneath our feet. The lightning shot past the girl who held me here, slamming into a metal rod hidden beneath the rock and rubble before returning to the air well above my head.
I ignored the lightning shooting down towards me. I ignored the archer, who'd loosed another arrow at my spine. The swordsman was still recovering from flinging the lightning at me, his clanging footsteps a heartbeat slower than they needed to be. I leaped at the girl, her body an empty shell, her mind used as collateral before she'd ever entered the room. She tried to dodge away, but the movement was too slow, lacking the urgency of a panicked mind.
As fast as my heat-cracked bones would allow, I reached out and grabbed her face. A quick jerk of my arm later, and her neck snapped. The soul within returned to the cycle in the same motion. The pressure on the space vanished with the passing of this empty doll's life, once more allowing me to move as I pleased. Using only an instant to take advantage of this, I reappeared on the other side of the room. My severed limb continued to gush black blood across the floor, the fluid staining the slowly melting stone.
"I apologize that she had to die," I said, trying my best to get across how genuine I was. "But a doll is not something one leaves to rot." I elaborated.
My words gave me yet another peek into the minds of the three remaining in the room. Grief, pain, anger, shock are all mixed in the minds of every single one of them. I could feel they wanted me dead for some personal reason, but I was not the actual target of that vendetta. I held no grudge against them. Without their actions, the entity would likely have continued to use my form as a tool for its dark desires; for that, I was grateful. I would not seek to harm them further, even if they would not grant me the same courtesy.
As a show of gratitude, one they'd never understand, I decided to clean both the blights set on this room before I left. Reaching below the ground, I found the burning mana still gleefully consuming the bonds between the rocks. It ate at them, heating them, melting them into something unrecognizable. Left alone, it would find a source of fuel and consume more than just this fallen castle. So I called to it, and when the lightning next slammed into a chunk of metal in the stone, I set the flame upon the over-energized bolt of electricity.
Together they'd do more short-term damage to this place. I could only assume that this castle would become no more than a crater by the day's end. But, they'd eat each other, preventing either from becoming a long-term blight on the lands. At least I hoped as much; these things were never as precise as I'd like.
With that thought, I stepped away from the once-great fortress to somewhere I knew well. Somewhere that would contain me if I failed to deal with this foreign entity that feasted on the madness that once plagued my mind.