The battle at Athena’s Rest, continued…

Eyeing both Elena and Belial, the Wight moved forward. Her spectral form shifted rapidly within her prison of tarnished armour, and she readied her war mace and jewelled truncheon.

“Come…”

“Sure thing.”

Bursting forth from her palm in a fiery blaze that set the nearby market stalls aflame, Elena released a massive fireball from her crimson sigil that seared the air in its wake towards the Wight’s massive and armoured frame. Joining her, veiled in whirling curtains of sand, Belial charged forward with her eldritch scimitars, attacking with a multitude of mirror images that leapt directly into the raging inferno, setting themselves alight as they dashed in to strike with burning blades.

“Such power…”

The Wight raised her jewelled truncheon up high. A part of her shifting frame evaporated momentarily, turning into a phantasmal barrier around herself that flickered in unearthly shades of red that blocked the brunt of Elena’s inferno, leaving nothing but simmering flames. And as Belial’s mirror images closed in, she crushed them in quick succession with her war mace, shattering them into showers of sand and fire with her two-handed weapon’s superior range.

“Such… arrogance…”

In wide and sweeping arcs, the Wight destroyed the mirror images until only one of them remained – the real Belial, whose scimitars had merely glanced themselves upon the surface of her unholy armour. And then she swung her massive weapon, the aim of her ever-shifting gaze focused solely upon the Sand Wraith’s head.

“DIE…”

Without skipping a beat, Elena fired a missile of arcane energy. It surged and crackled violently through the air and struck the Wight directly upon her rusted breastplate, briefly staggering her armoured frame before her phantasmal weapon could touch Belial, who quickly ducked back into the safety of shifting sands.

“YOU DARE…”

Grinning wickedly, with dust stained upon her cheeks, Elena nodded once, her palm outstretched and her fingers writhing with white-hot flames and arcane sparks. The Wight’s shifting and hateful gaze was now solely upon her, and there was a missile-shaped hole left upon her rusted cuirass. Even so, the phantasmal fiend’s strength remained.

“LICH…”

The Wight raised her jewelled truncheon again and resummoned her phantasmal barrier, and advanced anew. Slowly, and purposefully, like death’s advance. Unfazed, and unerring like her stride, her barrier endured salvo after salvo of arcane and fire magic from Elena that exploded upon it in festering sparks of red and purple. And then, suddenly, her jewelled truncheon took on a pale white light, and she moved faster and faster towards Elena with every passing second, rapidly closing the distance between them both with her war mace at the ready.

“Will you stand… and fight… or will you be like her… what she did to me…”

“Like her, probably.”

Elena stepped back, only to be violently pushed forward by the throes of a whirlwind that had formed a barrier behind her. It blocked off everything else behind it in a swirling storm of sand, wind, wood, and stone, howling wildly like the screams of wanton death.

“No escape…”

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The Wight uttered her words with a cruel relish, the glow of her jewelled truncheon radiating an opalescent light eerily in tune with the whirlwind’s chaotic swirling. And then, she rushed anew at Elena with the same unnatural haste empowering her every movement, fighting off the mirror images of Belial who had re-entered the fray, destroying them in her advance with sweeping arcs of her war mace as their blades glanced themselves upon her tarnished armour, over and over.

“Kill… them… all!”

Elena leapt to the side, getting out of the way of the Wight’s war mace as it came for her skull, letting it smash the ground once beneath her into rubble and sand. In that same moment, she conjured forth a burning claymore with her sigil, grabbed it with both hands and parried the Wight’s follow-up blow, only to find herself staggering back from the sheer weight of the phantasmal war mace bearing down upon her fiery blade when their weapons clashed.

“Fall…”

With her war mace still bearing down heavily upon her foe’s defences, the Wight raised her jewelled truncheon once again, and it began to glow with a crimson pallor. It was a spell all too familiar to Elena – a Death Coil, a spell that channelled a field of the Dark Goddess’s energy through one’s form to drain the essence of nearby foes, living or dead alike. In her case, it began to siphon mercilessly, the magic of her phylactery used to make herself corporeal upon this world.

“Grr…”

With gritted teeth, Elena held her fiery claymore firm against the blunt edge of the phantasmal war mace still seeking to pulverise her. Now, as her eyes beheld the Death Coil’s crimson light, the burning blade began to feel cumbersome in her hands. Slowly, but surely, she buckled down upon her knees and took a step back unwittingly, only to have the violent whirlwind behind push her forward, towards certain doom.

“Kill… them… all…”

But before the Wight could dole out a finishing blow upon her weakened foe, Elena took one hand off her burning greatsword and released the biggest gout of magical fire she could. It was an opportunity, presented before her dying gaze at the eleventh hour – the Wight’s phantasmal barrier had been lowered, and she willed her flames towards the one weakness she could see so clearly and closely upon the spectral fiend’s ruined armour, that reeked of arcane residue.

“You first…”

By Elena’s will, the flames rushed swiftly into the Wight’s armour, setting her spectral form alight from within before she could resummon her barrier. It sent her reeling back, and her war mace fell upon the burning sands as the fire within her shifting form bloomed outwards and ignited upon her ghastly armour, bathing her in smoke and flames as she let out a fiendish wail wracked with pain and hatred unbound.

“YOU…”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Elena uttered, grimacing heavily. “Me. Burn…”

“No… not yet…”

The Wight regained her composure, and advanced anew towards Elena. Her spectral gaze beneath the rust of her hooded helmet seethed with pain and hatred, and she raised her jewelled truncheon up high, invoking another Death Coil.

“Your essence… MINE…”

With tears of dust trickling down her crimson eyes, and with one kneecap pressed hard upon the ground, Elena raised a hand to defend herself. But before she could, the Wight’s burning frame was struck by an oncoming blur dual-wielding a pair of scimitars. And then another, followed up by three more, striking swiftly and true from every conceivable angle in a seemingly endless dervish of whirling blades, until one emerged so distinctly amongst these mirror images, administering a killing blow with her twin blades.

“May the both of you be rewarded for your loyalty. By her hand… as I have…”

Falling down in a fading chorus of unintelligible and deathly shrieks, the Wight collapsed into a ghastly heap, her shifting form dissipating rapidly into the night sky. Soon enough, only tarnished weapons and broken armour remained.

“Well done, Vizier of the Eye,” Belial said, her opulent clothes stained with sand and dust as she offered a hand to Elena. “She’s been put to rest, once again. Elicia willing, this time shall be the last.”

With a grunt and a nod, Elena accepted Belial’s hand and stood up.

“That’s good… though I doubt it. Anyway…”

Much to her annoyance, however, Belial had walked off, her hips swaying gracefully as she made her way towards the Wight’s shattered remains.

“I’d ask what you’re doing,” Elena remarked out loud, crossing her arms as she watched Belial pick up the jewelled truncheon that had caused her so much trouble just moments ago, that was now dull and magicless. “Mind telling?”

“It’s a trophy, proof of our triumph to Her Majesty. Nothing more.”

Elena nodded. If she was being honest, it was probably anything but that. And yet, she had enough on her mind not to pry further.

“Right, of course. Shall we?”

“We should,” Belial answered joyfully, the gaze of her red eyes set homeward. “Her Majesty awaits our good news.”