“You seem apprehensive.”
I turned to the Triton with a more than contemptuous snort. “You’re fairly strong, right?”
“Fairly?”
“Tell me, have you ever struggled to decide how to go about a battle? Currently, I’m struggling to decide whether to use my body or my weapons. Or should I use my magic? My summons, maybe? What do you think?”
As pride dictated, Zohnos met my amiable smile with a demeaning sneer as he strode across the lift with a regal sweep of his hand. “This is no mere battle, Amun! This is a duel. To be fought on equal terms and with honor! As our best selves.”
“If you say so.” I turned away with a sigh. “I have better things to do anyway.”
Within a few seconds, the distant sound of lapping water trickled into my ears. Looking up, I saw the grayscale roof open up to reveal an expanse of calm waters surrounding a comparatively small island. Freshwater by accounts of the smell, or lack thereof. Though it wouldn’t be for long.
A deep rumble signaled the completion of our transit. Bringing us to a wide dais of tiled stone surrounded by a vast expanse of calm blue water. “We have our challenger, Zohnos Lagunath!” Zeff’s voice rang around us. Yet the triton simply stared in disbelief- almost longingly at the small sea around him. “And the challenged, Amun!”
“To fight as my best self, huh?”
“Ten seconds! Get ready!”
Either my words or Zeff’s announcement pulled Zohnos’ attention to me. He stared, algae-like brows raised high with expectation. Or curiosity.
“Nine!”
“I am a Shadow Necromancer.”
“Eight!”
“You have to make your way through legions of undead-
“Seven!”
"-before you get to fight me at my best self.”
"Six!"
“I’m also a Devil.”
“Five!”
“So I’ll make it as hard as possible.”
“-our!”
“Then I shall treat you as such!” Zohnos sneered.
“Three!”
“And slay you as I would a foul devil!” Zohnos whipped his coral-made trident overhead before Zeff shouted. “Two!”
Between then and one, I split a stream of arcana through my cores and immediately meshed them back together to form a dense ball of crackling energy that flickered between black and white.
Just before one, I poured more arcana into it. Pushing it to the point of sending jagged arcs of Purple Lighting in random directions. Meanwhile, Zohnos stepped back, darting his eyes between the waters and me before they focused on my finger; where a small but not insignificant portion of some type of dark energy was concentrating. Rising in potency until Zeff finally shouted. “Fight!”
Zohnos leaped back at once, aiming for the seas behind him. And I mirrored his actions almost perfectly. While he spun about to face the water and dove in, I sent my sphere of umbral electricity flying into the air above with nothing more than a small mental ‘push.’ As it ascended, I fell into the depths with a spiritual body drenched in EM arcana tuned to the infrared, shifting my flesh from its usual dark brown to a burning red before it glowed with a solar radiance. And in a great flash of light and steam, I made contact with the water and fell.
Like a skydiver, I dropped. Plummeted through stream after jetstream of ascending vapor until I spun and slowed to a grinding halt by the pull of an Artificial Well. Far above. Black and white flashes could be seen stabbing at the roof in a maddened frenzy, illuminating the raging umbral clouds around them as if a strobe of pale light had been placed within. While initially stagnant, they now tumbled and toiled against the rising pillars of steam to condense and precipitate an inky liquid on the swiveling head of scales.
Pit pat. The rain fell on his head and mixed with the seaweed-like strands of his hair, causing him to flinch immediately. Cursing under his breath, he swept his arm in a crescent motion overhead and left a wall of water trailing in his wake. Half a meter thick at the center and shaped like a domed shield, it contained some strange magic that saw my Nightly Rain bead off like water on a hydrophobic skin.
I rounded the pillar to casually lean against the stone and rest a cigarette in my mouth before he could shout the obligatory phrase. Then allowed my voice to meld with the darkness as I said. “Your first opponent is yourself.”
While he was over a hundred meters away, he may as well have been standing in front of me when he wheeled about in search of my voice. Night vision or not, he couldn’t see that far. And unluckily for him, his eyes were away from both me and his shadow as a flash of lightning illuminated the abyssal tempest I created. Behind him, the latter coalesced into a pristine copy of the proud Triton. Upon rising from the ground, it condensed and molded a mass of ambient darkness into the same likeness of Zohnos’ weapon. A trident made of gilded metals, barnacles, and corals alike; then reared it back and pushed towards Zohnos’ kidney without mercy.
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Sensing something, Zohnos wheeled and leaped back just before the weapon connected, managing to mitigate the damage to a prong in the side of his stomach. Though he did not yield. He kicked off the ground instantly, reaching forth to grab his clone by the throat and send ripples of bright blue electricity coursing through its umbral body before he grabbed his trident by the base of the prongs and sent it through his clone’s chest with a powerful thrust of electrical discharge.
Still on its feet, the clone slumped to the side. Shimmered. Then dissipated before Zohnos’ eyes, leaving a gaping wound in his side that he seemed to force himself to ignore. Though the grimaces that broke his face on occasion still betrayed him.
“Next comes my creatures of the night.”
Trailing in the wake of my words was a wave of magical darkness. A gate that Humphrey stampeded through without my order, sending a deluge of inky water from his trunk like a water cannon as his deep grumbles reverberated through the air. Zohnos, on the other hand, stood his ground with his trident held high and sparking with electricity. Undaunted, Humphrey stomped forward, firing off his inky cannon towards Zohnos and his water shield.
It impacted like a semi-truck, slapping against Zohnos’ water wall to send splashes of clear and dark water every which way. Then the second semi-truck impacted in a bright flash of lightning and dark water that seemed to dwarf everything.
Thrashing about, Humphrey trumpeted and stomped in anguish over the burning scars on his head, steadily being healed from the pitter-patters of Nightly Rain. He thrashed his head to the right, sending his trunk sweeping below Zohnos, cartwheeling in midair. Bellowing again, Humphrey whipped his trunk around to slam into his shoulders from above. Sending him rocketing into the ground just after his spear was released into the shadow elephant’s neck.
As if he could save Humphrey, I took advantage of the opening by flinging Stewie through the darkness. He landed on Zohnos’ chest in a puff of umbral smoke, pulling his concentration away from Humphrey’s rising feet. If only for an instant.
With a gargled growl, Zohnos ripped Stewie from his chest before the former could even open its mouth and pulled it to his own. And in one swift motion, Zohnos bit down on the umbral rat and rolled backward onto his feet, where he staggered to vomit forth chunky black viscera onto the ground. Even with the pestilent taste, however, he summoned a wall of water to bring him to his feet and charged into Humphrey’s stomp with haste.
Almost like a wrestler, Zohnos stepped inside Humphrey’s foreleg and threw his arms around it. And with all his might, he lifted. Heaved until veins pushed through his scales and blood gushed from his clenched jaws. A blood-curdling scream echoed through my night, outcompeting even the wails of a cornered Humphrey- a hollow scream that sent the rest of the Menagerie into a frenzy. But I didn’t release them. I only watched Humphrey get flipped onto his side to be impaled again and again with Zohnos’ electric trident until he was on the brink of death.
My only action was to Bamf my knife into Humphrey’s back just before he passed. Then I whispered through the shadows. “You don’t get to kill that one.”
“Now will you face me?” Zohnos sneered.
“If you beat him.” Laughing, I jerked my thumb over to a humanoid figure trotting into the monochrome arena. Then laughed harder as I tracked Zohnos’ eyes moving from the charred bone of his feet freezing the dark waters to ice, to the dry, somewhat mummified skin spreading a fall of snow around him. When his eyes rested on the ethereal flame pouring from Zaraxus’ eyes, mouth, and partially decayed nose, the draugr arched back to emit a blood-curdling screech and charged.
‘Kill him and I’ll send you straight to the void.’
With another nefarious grunt, Zaraxus acknowledged my order and bounded faster. And, frowning in disgust, Zohnos sprinted forward in kind.
They made contact in a dazzling shockwave of sparks and necrotic energy that preceded a rapid blur of blues and grays. Following the rebound of their clash, Zohnos wheeled around to jab Zaraxus in the sternum with his pommel. But in a flash of brown and gray, Zaraxus parried the attack with his club- more a paddle lined with nails than a proper fat stick. In the same motion, Zaraxus whipped his charred, skeletal hand around in the form of a hook that dug into Zohnos’ ribs like a meteor dragging to a halt in the dirt. Transferring enough power to send a visible ripple through the triton’s body before he was flung away.
Another flash of purple lightning erupted between them and Zohnos lurched to a grinding halt with his spear held high. Zaraxus screeched, raising himself onto his toes while Zohnos traced a circle around his frame with his trident. Mana surged behind him while blood was hacked up before him, only to be pulled into the bubble ring behind him by the strokes of his arms. A horrid hiss preceded an explosion of air and water strong enough to force Zaraxus back just a step.
By the time he regained it, a living torpedo had crossed the immense distance between us. Its elbows were clamped to his sides. Its trident was held along its chest like a ship’s keel as it rocketed away from Zaraxus and straight to me in mere moments.
Within the span of a smaller moment, I sent a wave of purple mana over the Triton with a wave of the arm. But not before Zohnos was to make contact in a vibrant clash of sparks. Ironically so, the light of his attack served to illuminate the object of his despair and simultaneously highlight that very emotion in my eyes.
With eyes as wide as coins, Zohnos watched his trident impale an umbral bosom and discharge lethal voltages through the strangely fleshy substance. Being as weak as she was, Lana thrashed about in silence until my Gravitational Wave pulled Zohnos back. As he fell, his trident withdrew from Lana’s torso, sending clots of blue-green ‘blood’ splattering onto him and the floor just before he tumbled and eventually fell toward a certain draugr, readying his club overhead.
A blood-wrenching crunch signaled Zohnos’ head meeting the crude weapon. Like a doll had been tossed aside by a toddler, Zohnos cartwheeled into the far wall and slumped helplessly to the ground, where he remained in unconscious stillness.
“Good job, you two.” Still smiling, I turned my eyes to the fallen troops scattered here and there in the inky waters. “And you two as well.” With a wave, I deposited the corpses and my minions into my shadow and did the same for the umbral energy lingering in the clouds and water. Then Bamfed up to the platform with nary a look behind me as I waited impatiently for the descent. The lingering storm would dissipate eventually if someone else didn't handle it first. After all, I had better things to do.
I had to commune.