Muna sped through the sky, reaching the place where she sensed Csala last in the time it would take to blink. She had prepared too long for this not to get what she wanted. And then came this little twig of a human to try and ruin it. The Fae did not do a good job of putting them in their place. And what was that beside him anyway? A golem? Ah! That must be what he used to shoot me a few lunar cycles ago, she thought.

She should be angry at him for taking her hands — hands she had prevented from regrowing because it was going to cost her too much vitality, vitality she didn’t have to spare right now.

The kid gasped in surprise as he saw her appear out of thin air, hovering in the sky. She could sense his fear and oh, he was filled with so much vitality. Muna smiled crookedly to herself. She was so going to enjoy him after taking Csala’s body. Speaking of…she looked around and noticed she couldn’t find the young succubus.

“Where is she?” she asked, looking down at the human male with a frown. Her mind began to race. Did she escape? If so, how? She had been watching them since the night before and she admitted the human was adept at wielding essence, more so than many she had seen throughout the years, but it wasn’t enough for him to be able to sneak Csala away from under her nose.

“Nowhere you can find her,” he said.

Muna’s brows rose in surprise and then she chuckled. Humans and their big mouths. No one had ever spoken to her like that in like…she didn’t remember when last she had been spoken to like that. She didn’t expect him to give up Csala so easily, but she also didn’t expect the blatant disrespect. “Your mouth would get you in trouble if you keep running it as you do, child.”

The human shrugged. He was quickly getting over his fear of her. What was giving him the strength to stand before her without falling over? Interesting, Muna thought. Csala really found an interesting specimen of the human species. She eyed him in his armored Mythril suit appreciatively. Then she released a little more of her aura to overwhelm him.

The human grunted and took a step back, but he didn’t keel over as she expected. Succubi were different from the Fae. The Fae could pressure a person’s body and soul with their aura and spirit, making them feel like the whole world was trying to crush them. It was like being submerged in the deepest parts of the Ulnar Sea with the weight of the water squishing you on all sides.

The succubi, however, have a different kind of result with their aura: the person being pressured feels an intense hunger for them. In the deepest parts of their soul, they feel hunger like no other that threatens to consume them. It didn’t matter how old and ugly she looked — succubi would always be succubi. Their victims would want them with all of their beings, unable to even move until that hunger within them is satisfied.

Muna’s brows rose in surprise as she saw the human withstand a level of intensity of her aura that should have made him pass out from too much stimulation. It seems the human isn’t ordinary, she thought. Now she had to take him seriously.

~~~

Jerome was stunned when the ancient succubus popped out of thin air a few yards away from him. He had expected to be able to shoot her down from a distance with the Dragon’s Wrath. With the distance between them decreased significantly, he should be running away. But for how long. She was a lot faster than he was — even with Godspeed.

She looked unkempt like a street beggar, with both hands missing from a few inches above the wrist. It was an eerie sight. Can succubi heal like sacred artists? Jerome thought. Sacred artists could heal, but not to the extent of regrowing lost limbs — at least Jerome had never heard of regeneration where the severed limb was destroyed. But the fae had the means to do it, even though it’s lost to the rest of Terra Praeta now. Thankfully, Achilles was created to preserve their knowledge for an heir to their secrets.

“Yes, Xerae. If the succubus is old enough, she can replace lost limbs. Since she lost her limbs to the Dragon’s Wrath, however, she would find it very difficult to regrow.”

That’s remarkable, Jerome thought, thinking whether humans could do that.

The succubus released her aura to suppress him and Jerome felt an intense sexual hunger, the likes of which he had never experienced before, threaten to take him over. The core in his armor spun, channeling essence into his body and pushing back at the succubus’ aura. The pushback didn’t happen at once. He had to spin his own core as fast as he possibly could to offset it completely.

“You’ve just resisted the suppression of a being equal in power to a Sage, Xerae. Congratulations,” Achilles said and Jerome snorted.

“Don’t congratulate me. I still need to get away from her. Besides, I should be thanking you for making this armor,” he replied.

Jerome sensed the succubus’ concentration sharpen and knew she now meant business. She blinked — not with her eyes. One moment she was hovering in the air, a few yards away, the next she was standing in front of him, invading his personal space.

Jerome shot backward but only covered a few feet before he stood paralyzed by the succubus’ psychic energy. Jerome didn’t sense it, however. As though it wasn’t there holding him in place. The fifty feet warrior behind him went to work. It leaned forward to slice the succubus in half a sword that had formed in its hand a while ago. The succubi responded quickly, leaning backward and away from the blade so fast, it was like she had broken her spine.

“What the fuck!” Jerome exclaimed, never expecting someone as old and as crooked-looking to be so flexible. He tried to move as the warrior engaged the succubus but found he couldn’t. How the fuck is she doing this?

“Her psychic energy is a lot more evolved than yours, Xerae. I’ll be able to break her hold on you in twenty seconds.”

The blade tore through the air as it passed through where the succubus’ torso should have been. Then it came back so fast, causing the succubus to leave her spot. The blade seemed to multiply and increase in speed, chasing her everywhere. The succubus cursed in faerie as she danced around to avoid the blade.

Jerome broke free of her hold exactly 20 seconds later and hurled a fireball at her. She dodged that too. He hurled another and another. The succubus gave him a flat look, but she couldn’t remain in place long enough to convey any words. Jerome blasted a heat wave at her, causing the temperature of the forest to rise. An idea lit up in his mind at that moment — it was a simple idea, but he was sure it was going to be efficient. Succubi didn’t wield essence. That was their greatest disadvantage.

He started to heat up the area around them both as he asked Achilles, “She seems not to be capable of holding down the avatar of the Dragon’s Wrath. Why is that?”

“She could if she wanted to. But she has imprisoned a lot of beings as it is. To suppress the warrior avatar with her psychic energy is to loosen her hold on another of her enemies.”

You mean she’s actively suppressing some people as we speak. Even as she is here, doing all…this? he asked, looking at the succubus as she hopped around cursing and fuming. She was a blur of movement to his eyes. Jerome could only hope not to get killed if he ever fought in a melee against someone with her agility and speed.

“Yes, Xerae.”

Jerome studied her for a bit, exasperated. Looks can be deceiving. How could this crooked looking woman hold so much power?

“Hey, you’re gonna burn down the forest at this rate. Stop whatever it is you’re doing,” the succubus called out. She had begun to feel the intense heat.

Jerome didn’t answer but rushed from the battle. He started walking in a wide circle around the avatar and the old crone. There were too many trees in this area so some of them would be destroyed with what he wanted to do but there was no helping it.

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The succubus cursed again and feigned left, only to move right toward Jerome. But Jerome had been expecting that. He stretched out his hand without looking and fired a lance of blue laser at her, singeing her ragged clothes as she dodged out of the way.

Jerome froze a moment later. She had done it again — held him in place with her psychic energy. He tried moving his fingers to complete the script he was drawing at the moment but no movement was possible, except for his eyes. Jerome could use his psychic energy to imprint the scripts, but he needed to move his fingers in the air to help him shape them better. If he wanted to complete the scripts, he needed to move.

Achilles?

“On it.”

Jerome tried again. Nothing. Then he noticed something else. His scripts were being erased. How the fuck was she doing that! Come on, Achilles. Faster!

Jerome fell forward as Achilles broke the succubus’ hold on him. With a vengeance, he increased the intensity of the heat in the air. He planned on limiting the amount of air the succubus had access to. If he could directly suck the air out of her lungs, he would. But he couldn’t. Not yet anyway.

“I hope you understand, Xerae, that she’s holding back. She doesn’t want you dead.”

“Don’t you think I know that,” Jerome replied with a scoff.

The trees in their immediate vicinity started to burn, adding to the intensity of the heat. Jerome was pushing the heat toward the succubus, but his level of skill was not advanced enough to directly do what he wanted, which was to push the heat into her bones — unless he could come in contact with her. He did his best to direct the heat to toward her but the succubus was moving around like a fish in water. Jerome marveled at her speed and nimbleness.

Somehow, the avatar hadn’t done as much damage to the succubus as he had expected, but the forest around them was a mess. Looking closely at it Jerome saw that it was fighting like him. Ah! It fights like me.

“Yes, Xerae. It does. You created it.”

This brought other concerns. He needed to learn how to wield other weapons. With a thought, the avatar changed the sword in its hand into a spear and the battle continued.

~~~

Who the fuck is this human? Where did he come from? How could he do what he’s doing? No human who came to Terra Praeta had ever been able to stop her from paralyzing them with her psychic energy. She was Muna! The oldest and most powerful succubus alive! Tialana’s great-granddaughter!

How could a puny human negate her powers in but a few breaths of time like it was nothing? Twice! This was an embarrassment!

Calm down, Muna. Calm down. He probably just got lucky with some ancient artifacts of the Fae, she thought, which in turn infuriated her. The ubus, with all their strength and beauty, could not wield essence, hence they couldn’t use artifacts, except for spatial rings which only required psychic energy. All the spatial rings they used were brought to Terra Praeta by humans. It was infuriating to see these weaklings wield the very thing her people had been longing for, for eons.

Muna feigned left but went right gunning for the human. This golem was in his control. If she captured him, she captured it. But the human was ready for her. He shot a blue lance of flame at her causing her to abort her advance. The giant golem suddenly transformed its weapon into a spear and renewed its attack on her. This time, it was more ferocious with its attack, as though its level of skill had increased by a hundredfold.

Muna dodged behind a tree, intending to shoot up into the sky to avoid the reach of the spear. The golem cut through the tree like tallow, sending it falling to the side and exposing her. It stabbed at her next with quick shot thrusts, every move flowing into another. She was left winded after a dozen breaths. She couldn’t keep up. Even with her tiny size and speed, she couldn’t make up for the adeptness of the golem.

If she continued like this, she would be skewered by the gigantic spear. Everytime she failed to dodge on time, the spear grazed her — or nearly grazed her. She could swear, there was lightning imbued into it. It shocked her, making her muscles tense up. There were a lot more cuts on her now, than before they started dancing — they hurt like hell, and weren’t healing. And it hadn’t been more than a few dozen heartbeats. What the hell was going on?

It’s the human, she thought. Fuck! The human is better at wielding a spear that’s why I’m being pressed. And the golem takes on its master’s skill. Which means the golem must be an artifact itself!

Muna wrapped her psychic energy around a full grown tree and pulled it out of the soil — roots and all. With little effort, she tossed it at the golem, gaining another gasp from the human. He probably had never seen something as lifting a whole tree with psychic energy, done with such ease.

The golem batted the gigantic tree away with its spear, but she shot forward and punched a man-sized hole into its chest with her psychic energy. Wrong move. The hole filled up almost immediately, surprising her. The golem took the moment to imprison her within itself, squeezing her like a pimple.

“Odin’s nuts!” she cursed and the human burst out in laughter.

“Odin’s nuts?” he said. “That’s a good one.”

The pressure around her increased as the temperature shot up. She scanned the walls of her prison and realized the golem’s body was turning from sapphire blue to ruby red. What the fuck? She could sense the density of essence in it, as well as the essence moving inside it. Problem was the essence was moving in the manner humans called cycling. The golem couldn’t be cycling, could it? The red bled into the walls from behind it and heat seared her skin.

“Ouch!” she cried out. The heat was remarkably intense. More intense than what the human was emitting. “Fucking human!” She used her psychic energy to try and drill through the wall, unperturbed that she was being baked alive. It was like drilling through essence stones. Incredible! The whole golem must be made of essence crystals! Even if she couldn’t touch essence as a succubus, she knew what it felt like to the senses.

Muna laughed. She had hit the motherload. Essence stones had a different internal structure compared to ordinary rocks. They were harder, but sublimated when exposed to air. This one on the other hand, didn’t sublimate. If she could capture the kid, she could study the golem and maybe…just maybe, she could find a way to become the first of the Ubus to wield essence.

“Okay. Playtime’s over,” she said and burst out of the golem. She was upon the human in the blink of an eye.

~~~

Jerome couldn’t believe his luck when the succubus punched a hole in the avatar’s chest and was trapped inside. He quickly started drawing scripts on the ground around the avatar. He forced the space around her inside the avatar to squeeze tightly but it seemed it wasn’t enough to hold her since she wasn’t panicking. Instead, she sounded playful. As though she found everything funny. He guessed she would find anything he did to survive and prevent capture amusing. She probably wasn’t using up to a fifth of her true strength.

At long last, the array was ready and active. It was more than a hundred feet in diameter and every script that formed it was glowing brightly. Jerome inspected his work one more time and nodded in satisfaction. He had gotten better and faster at drawing scripts. Next, he needed to learn to use the more ancient runes but that was a practice he wasn’t ready for.

Ancient runes were tied closely to nature. Anyone in the practice of using ancient runes had to have a very solid and advanced foundation. The fae used them and from the looks of it, probably dragons too. Many things in their history pointed to them using it. First the elemental runes. Those should be easy, he thought.

“Now that I think of it, Achilles. We used an ancient rune for space when we created the void space, right?”

“Yes, Xerae. With the array you sat on in the library, I set it up to appear between your brows when it was time to complete the void space. You should have sensed the energy from it back then — even if you couldn’t sense space itself.”

Jerome nodded. Achilles didn’t sound condescending this time around as he spoke. There was too much at stake if he was caught by the succubus.

The air inside the array became superheated as Jerome and the avatar began to emit extremely intense heat. The avatar turned red all over and Jerome had to stay a little ways away from it. The heat he was emitting couldn’t be compared to that of the avatar.

The trees and bushes in the area inside the array disintegrated in seconds, leaving blackened earth. Jerome sighed regretfully. He was supposed to be Mother Nature’s emissary, was he not? But now he was the one destroying nature. At least I won’t burn the whole forest down this way, he thought, looking at the trees on the edge of the array. The heat didn’t reach them because they were protected by the walls of the array. A barrier of sorts for the heat…and more.

Jerome’s blue flame poured out of him and wrapped around his body like a second suit of armor, ready to confront the succubus. He intentionally controlled the blue flame to follow the flow of essence in his armor. It was tedious and took too much time. But it created a second layer of protection for him. Now his armor glowed with bands of blue light in certain places, and a light film of flame cocooned his form making him blurry to the naked eye.

The succubus burst out of the avatar and was upon him in the blink of an eye. He knew the avatar couldn’t hold her down for long. One moment, the avatar's chest area burst open, the next something hit him with the force of a freight train. Jerome found himself at the edge of his array a moment later. He was pressed into the ground which had hardened as a result of the heat. He groaned as he picked himself up. The pain from the blow to his ribs was mind-numbing.

The succubus was there to push him down to the ground once again. She put pressure on her leg on his breastplate, threatening to cave it in. Jerome felt like a mountain was sitting on him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t lift himself an inch off the ground.

“I’ll enjoy my time with you boy,” she said with an ugly grin devoid of warmth. “I’m sure you’ve got a pretty face on you, don’t you?”

Then she cocked her head to the side and Jerome’s helm threatened to pull his head off his shoulders. He groaned loudly, thrashing violently as he struggled to keep his helmet on and his head attached to his shoulders.