Once they were far enough from the tribe, Nara slapped Chad on his armor-plated ass exclaiming, “Way to grow some balls there! I had no idea you could be so commanding!”
Chad responded by yelping in surprise and nearly jumping out of his skin, which earned him a round of chuckles from the group. Composing himself, he scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and said, “I um…well, that is to say…I hate being that way. But sometimes, being formal and pulling rank is the most prudent course of action. I hope you were not too upset by my actions, Queen Nara and, also, you, Princess Parish."
“Not at all,” Nara said immediately, “I am relying heavily on all of you royals to help me with this ‘Queen’ business.”
“And we intend to do just that,” Parish patted Nara’s shoulder reassuringly. She then addressed Chad, “And as for you, Sir Chadwick, I believed we had an understanding that you would never address me as ‘Princess’ outside of formal court proceedings…do you not remember our childhood promise to each other? Surely you remember what you said I could do should you slip up too frequently? Please do not force me to castrate you out of irritation; you know I would not want to do it but will if I am forced.”
“Lady Parish, is this not a formal occasion?” Chad defended, “We are escorting the Queen of Tenaris through dangerous wilds after all.”
Nara grinned, “Nope, this does not count. I am not technically the queen of anything yet, so it is not formal.” She looked at Parish and said, “Castrate away, my good lady.” Adding in a stage whisper, “You are going to grow them back, though, right?”
Chad knew he was outnumbered, and if he was candid with himself, he was unsure how far the women would take the joke. In all honesty, he was not confident Parish was joking, considering how much she abhorred the restrictive formality of the noble houses. So, being the intelligent tactician he was, Chad fled forward of the main group, deciding to find Naris and Nina, who were scouting ahead.
When Chad was out of earshot, Parish told Nara, “You know he is one of the most loyal and honest people you will ever meet.” Referring to the young Paladin as he strode away. She looked at him with a mixture of respect and admiration. “He and I have been friends since we were little,” Parish continued after a time. She tossed a look at Brenda and her sisters, adding, “We all have, well, except for little Nina.”
“Yeah, and we all made a pact years ago that we would never pull rank or treat each other as anything but adventuring friends when we were not in court,” Hanna piped up from behind Nara.
"Honestly, it is the only thing that got me through all those years at the castle. Dealing with all those stuffy maids and butlers was so…repressing and boring! Ella, the blue-haired Berserker, said, “Do you know what it is like not being able to eat with your hands? Or to be so protected that you cannot even die during a training exercise? Ugh, it is horrible!”
"Yes…that…um…that sounds terrible…" Nara responded slowly. The Berserker quadruplets always seemed to have a slightly 'off' way of thinking regarding entertainment.
Brenda summed it up with, “Now look at us; we are on a quest to put a queen back on her throne. I guess we get to put all those stupid stuffy lessons to use after all.”
“Well, I, for one, would like to be included in the pact of not being formal unless we absolutely must,” Nara concluded after giving it some thought.
“Ha, well-spoken friend!” Deborah, usually the quietest of the quadruplets, said with surprising enthusiasm. She slapped Nara on the back with a meaty palm, causing her to stumble forward from the blow.
“Eh, looks like we might have to work on toughening you up some, Nara,” Brenda said, laughing as she caught Nara by the arm, righting her.
“Indeed,” Parish agreed, much to Nara’s horror.
***
Cara slowed when she approached the battle; she didn’t want to surprise the combatants into thinking she was an aggressor. She assessed the situation using her drones, trying to make sense of the ongoing combat from the drone's aerial vantage.
She could see Sam fighting while holding a ball of darkness under one arm, which Cara assumed was the void slime that was teleporting around the battle earlier. She stood back-to-back with a red-haired bipedal monster girl and a sentry droid. Two blurry images of the Blight Craven circled the group like rabid animals, each darting in and out. The Blight Craven was using its ability to switch between two bodies to its advantage. Although only one out of every ten of its attacks landed, Cara could plainly see it was whittling down the defenders slowly.
After a moment, Cara remembered her daughter saying Sam's summoned beast could shapeshift. She realized the wolf girl was, in fact, the Bloodmorph she saw briefly during the battle with her former mentor in the church. However, she still couldn't figure out how the Pathfinder managed to subdue and reprogram a Hyperlite sentry droid without the aid of a Technomancer.
“It will remain a mystery if she dies,” Cara reminded herself and resumed trying to figure out the best way to approach the conflict without startling Sam’s party into doing something stupid.
***
“Why is nothing working?!?” Sam was starting to get worried. This fight was not going as she had planned! It was as if nothing they did worked for more than one or two attacks! Surprising the monster by simultaneously attacking its images worked once, allowing her to tackle or almost tackle the beast. But that only resulted in causing minor injuries to the Blight Craven, and now it was flicking between its two images so fast that none of their attacks were landing. Yet still, the creature somehow got the occasional hit on them; it was infuriating! It wouldn’t have been so bad, except Sam couldn’t heal the lifeforce damage the damn thing drained, at least not quickly enough to keep up with its constant attacks! As always, wounds from the void element took twice as long and double the mana to repair. It wasn't physically affecting Sam yet because of her Rebuild skill. Still, each of the creature's attacks also sucked down some of her life energy in addition to the energies quarantined by Rebuild.
“Lupie, use a blood sack to create a dense fog around us again!” Sam sent the instructions through their chat as a plan slowly formed in her mind.
“Okay,” Lupie panted, adding, “I only have three left.”
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“Do it,” Sam replied. So far, the blood mist was the only thing that stopped the Blight Craven from switching between bodies, but it also had the unfortunate side effect of healing the damn thing.
This was Sam's fifth attempt to plant a bomb in the monster and set it off before it could switch. She has been unsuccessful up until now. “Oh well, the fifth time’s the charm!” she thought as a dense fog of blood mist surrounded them.
Sam lashed out with her threads as soon as the blood vapor permeated their surroundings. The physical form of the Blight Craven stopped moving, its mouth open wide. All the blood surrounding it began flowing into its mouth like a vortex of crimson life. The creature’s back arched in ecstasy, as Nara's did when Sam gave her mana. The first time she saw this happen gave Sam the idea of using the blood as a distraction to shove a charged mana crystal down its throat. Yet, every time she tried, the monster managed to switch before the crystal could detonate.
This time, she was going to try something slightly different. Sam deposited a charged crystal in the Blight Craven's mouth so it wouldn't suspect her real plan. At the same time, she was planting the distraction crystal, Sam and the wounded, but thankfully still conscious, Nul opened portals behind both blight monsters. Sam dove toward the incorporeal beast; she tossed Nul to Lupie while the Bloodmorph and S-2 fired mana lasers and void spikes at the physical body, absorbing the blood.
As Sam suspected, the blight switched before her crystal could detonate, and she caught the projection right as it turned corporeal. "Yes!" she shouted when her arm contacted the creature's wiry frame as she tackled it. The monster immediately bit down on her shoulder, sinking its needle-like fangs through her leather pauldron and deep into her flesh, and Sam almost fainted at the massive chunk of vital life energy the bite took from her. She kept her composure, though, and didn’t attack the Blight Craven; instead, as soon as she made contact, Sam blasted a pulse of her dwindling mana behind her, launching the two of them into the event horizon of her portal. She thought, “This has to work,” as she carried the monster into the deep blue on the other side of the portal.
Earlier in the battle, Sam noticed the Blight Craven would do everything possible to avoid touching the event horizon of her and Nul’s portals. It went so far as to take a hit from Sam and Lupie to avoid the portals. They tried to exploit that for a while, but ultimately, it did not work. Portals took a lot of energy to open and maintain. So far, she and Nul could only open one portal each, which made it difficult to trap the beast with only two portals open at any given time.
Sam couldn’t figure out why the Blight Craven was afraid of the portals but figured that if the beast wanted to avoid diving into an extradimensional hole connecting two singular points in spacetime that was held open by an attorney whose only previous knowledge of magical physics was when she fast traveled in her video games, then Sam was going to do everything in her power to push the creature through her own personal rift in spacial reality.
***
Cara decided to use her drones to harry the creature and its clone before engaging in the battle herself. She quickly set her five drones into an attack formation, broadcasting they were friendly on an open channel, hoping the sentry droid would receive the transmission and relay it to the others. Switching her rifle to long range, Cara dashed to an advantageous sniping location on a hill near the battle and sighted down her scope at the chaos below.
Cara took her eyes off the battle for only seconds as she prepared, so she was shocked when all she saw through her scope were her five drones hovering a few meters over the heads of the combatants, who were now just milling around and talking among themselves.
“What is going on? Where is the Blight Craven,” Cara thought, trying to understand what was happening. Then she noticed something else, “Wait! Where is the Pathfinder?!?”
The sentry droid already noticed her drones, and since no one was attacking them, Cara felt it was safe to approach the small group. As she came into their view, she called out to let them know her location and that she wasn't a threat. None of them even looked over at her; instead, they were staring up at her drones.
Slightly exasperated at the cold reception, Cara dismissed her drones with a thought; once she was close enough, they all disappeared into her storage device. Still, none of the defenders looked her way as they stared into the dawn sky.
Cara was about to say something when the red-furred wolf girl spoke to the void slime, “Now, Nul!”
At those words, a portal opened in the sky above the battlefield, and the Blight Craven’s body shot out of it to slam into the ground so hard it bounced. It was at the height of its bounce when the Pathfinder streaked from the portal to slam it back into the ground with a force that sent shockwaves out from the impact.
Cara's heart lurched, and a wave of brief panic washed over her at the sight of what was likely the deadliest monster in this region of space, appearing only a few meters from her. Her irrational fear of the Blight Craven was immediately replaced by a sudden unease as she watched Sam's violet hair, eyes, and claws turn void black. Even the Pathfinder's teeth were black fangs when she smiled down at the grey monster beneath her. It wasn't a kind smile. It was the type of smile reserved for a predator that finally bested its prey and knew the inevitability of what came next. Long black claws extended from Sam’s fingers, and she thrust them into the chest of the Blight Craven, saying, “Let me release you from your torment!”
Cara took an involuntary step back when Sam triumphantly ripped a blue orb from the blight’s chest cavity using her void claws, shredding the delicate soul core with a cry.
***
When Sam exited her portal several kilometers above the battle, still gripping the Blight Craven, she knew something was wrong with the monster. For starters, the drain on her life force stopped immediately, and the vicious jaws of the beast loosened their grip on her shoulder. She didn’t question her good fortune or why the portal stunned the creature. Tearing its mouth from her shoulder, Sam tried to stabilize her tumbling plummet toward the ground.
Sam's artifact, or notebook, as she called it, made an unwelcome appearance while she fought to control her fall and stay in contact with the Blight Craven. "Not now! She shouted at the book as it hovered fixed in front of her face, the wind rushing around them as they tumbled through the sky. It did not influence the magical book; as always, it ignored her request. Starting to panic a little, Sam quickly read the words appearing on the blank pages before her, doing her best to ignore the rapidly approaching ground.
The urgent note read:
Sister, you must destroy the soul cores to release both souls! You weakened the link with your portal, but it will not stay like this for long! Cut out its core! Channel Void! —The Collective
The notebook slammed shut and disappeared into Sam’s inventory. “Oh shit!” Sam shouted at how close the ground was and kicked off the Blight Craven’s chest as they fell, sending it down even faster than they were falling. “Now!” Sam shouted through the party chat. A portal opened in the sky, and the Blight Craven shot through like a meteorite, slamming into the ground an instant later to bounce back toward her.
Sam didn’t even try to slow her fall. Instead, she opted to strengthen her entire body with magic. She hit the monster full force, slamming them back into the ground.
Something primal filled Sam’s mind as she looked at the dazed and broken creature beneath her. It was her void affinity speaking, telling her what she must do to sever the link and free the souls permanently. Another voice inside her was telling her to stop, that what she was about to do wasn’t right for the Tenarian soul still linked with the blight.
Ignoring the second voice and guided by the first, Sam did something she never thought to try before. Using Void Manipulation, she replaced her arcane energy with void energy throughout her body.
The rush of violent power was almost more than she could stand. It was like having liquid fire pumped directly into her bloodstream, but instead of burning her, the fiery energy infused her with strength and something else. A primal need came with the power, a need for something intangible. It was like a craving, but instead of food or drink, this craving yearned for…power. No, not power. It wanted dominion to dominate all other living things, not to destroy them but to be worshiped by them. Sam couldn't quantify her craving and knew she didn't have time. So, deciding to meditate on it later, she used her newfound power to grow void cutters at her fingertips. Shouting words that came unbidden to her lips, Sam plunged her cutters into the monster and ripped the core from the Blight Craven’s chest. Then, as if she had done it thousands of times before, Sam tore the small blue soul core asunder, committing the released energy to the mercy of the Void, trusting The Collective to guide the life to a better place, a better verse.