Muna

Muna had never met a human as strong and as ‘solid’ as this one. They were usually as weak as twigs and their bones snapped easily. This one was able to take more of her strength than normal — not that she was using much, only about a fourth of what she could possibly do with her failing body. She was tempted to put some more pressure on his chest and pull at his helm some more to see how much he could take. Even as she was thinking about it, she was already doing it.

“Oops!” she said and put her arms akimbo, giggling. “Are you going to continue struggling like that? Don’t you want me to ease up on you a lil’ bit?”

He glared up at her from the slits in his visor — the visor that couldn’t be lifted externally.

“Go to hell!” he roared at her and gripped her leg.

The golem shot toward her with its spear aimed at her. With a thought, she let go of one of her prisoners on Terra Praeta — a wood spirit — and the golem froze, its spear, a mere inch away from her head. The human was a far better catch to the wood spirit.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Hell?” she asked. “What’s that?” Did he mean hall, as in, Valhalla’s Hall?

“Xseo’l. ra… sara maghra ae. Xseoo ra maghra luutsa…tsa… ra…” the human began whispering in ancient faerie. The cadence of his voice was steady, like the flow of the air on a windy night, flowing into the dark corners of her heart.

Muna got lost in those words like a child hearing a lullaby from a loving parent after longing for one for a very long time. She hadn’t heard ancient faerie in millennia. Oh, the memories the human’s words stirred up in her!

Something stabbed her and she was brought out of her reverie. She looked down to see a spear sticking out of her gut, sucking the life out of her. Her blood flowed freely but she couldn’t be bothered to stop it. She was too engrossed in the past to notice.

“I heard the stories,” she said, leaning away from the human and falling on her haunches. “Of a time when Terra Praeta was still a little populated. After…the great downfall of the Fae. Of how my grandmother was held close to her mother’s bosom to escape the great shifting of the foundations of the planet: The Rumbling, it was called. Tialana ran and ran until her lungs gave out.”

The human stood up but held the spear in place, trying to pin her to the ground as he glared at her. She could feel something begin to burrow into her. Something foreign. What did he do to her? Was it fire? Essence? It felt like fire. It was hot. So hot. She took hold of the spear with her psychic energy, pushed it out of her flesh, and flung it into the air. Whatever was invading her body didn’t stop its invasion.

So, not the spear, she thought as she stood up on shaky legs.

The human shot backward to retrieve his spear, leaving behind some metals that seem to move on their own. Mithril? No. Visha stirh’aun? They tried to attack her and lock her down, but she suppressed them with ease. Her wounds were healing already. She just had a moment of reminiscence but now her attention was back on the human.

“The populace ran for their dear lives as Illyrah battled another foe,” she said. “He stood tall as a mountain, wielding his golden spear to smite another foe. The earth crumbled around him and the moons were displaced in the night sky. The sky became as hot as fire and the air was sucked out of the lungs of every living creature.”

Muna took in deep breaths. Her lungs felt like they were being sanded, or being stuffed — she didn’t know which it was. Whatever the human did to her when he chanted that spell must have been really bad. How could a human learn to speak faerie? Not even the modern dialect but the ancient one!

“Many died in the Great Migration. Reducing the already sparse populace to nothing. Total extinction was inevitable at that point…but Illyrah… promised…” She looked up at him now with eyes filled with disbelief. He held his spear and waited. For what, she didn’t know. For her to die? But he was listening to her story. That’s good. If there was one thing Muna could call her superpower, it was getting people to lower their guard around her. She was also a good storyteller — not a conventional one but a good one. She shrugged inwardly.

“I used to believe, you know… Illyrah’s chosen would show up and save Terra Praeta from extinction,” she snorted. “Are you… Illyrah’s chosen?”

The human looked startled for a moment. Muna attacked. She hit the human in the chest and felt bones break under her closed fist. She smiled, remembering she had regenerated her hands. Under her perception, she watched as the golem broke free of her imprisonment. Shit. She had almost forgotten the human could break free of her psychic freeze. She had to move to the side to prevent from being skewered by the golem’s spear.

~~~

Boom!

Jerome crashed through the forest and found himself almost a hundred feet away when the succubus caved in his chest. He had burst through the clearing, out of the formation, and into the surrounding forest, destroying tree after tree before coming to rest on the forest floor. He lay there paralyzed.

“You need to stay still and heal, Xerae,” Achilles said with concern in his voice. “Your sternum is broken and your lungs have been punctured.”

“I get it,” he struggled to get out and coughed up blood. That was a huge reminder of what the succubi were capable of. Even though they couldn’t wield essence, nature made up for that with supernatural strength.

Ah, fuck. He would be unable to breathe in a moment if he didn’t heal fast; the carbon dioxide in his lungs would be unable to leave so new oxygen wouldn’t be breathed in. He was drowning in a pool of his own blood. He started stimulating the essence in the earth and the vital aura.

Jerome just lay there, tired and out of breath as he absorbed essence and vitality. Motes of flickering green light converged on his body, slowly healing him and his breathing came under control. He could hear the sound of the battle from not too far away. The thumps of the avatar’s feet on the earth as it chased the succubus around. The splash of liquid lava from the melted earth. She tried to push through the border of the formation but was rebounded. The avatar of the Dragon’s Wrath took the chance to pin her to the barrier, blistering her skin. He heard her scream in pain.

“It’s a good thing you used the space rune as a function in the binding, Xerae.”

Jerome nodded. “I may not say this often but thank you, Achilles,” he said, his voice clearer and stronger. “For everything. That should hold her down for a minute. But she isn’t burning up — not as fast as I expected.” He scanned the battlefield and specifically the succubus. It was like she was made of diamonds. Her clothes had fallen off, but her hair and skin remained unburnt.

With the space rune in the binding, any attempt to bend or punch through the fabric of space and time or push through the barrier was nullified. But a lot of essence he had gathered was being used up to power the binding. The fog of essence gathered around the barrier, hugging it closely like a tornado. But only very little of the essence remained in the air now. Which meant if she survived this…he shivered slightly, not willing to think about the consequences of failure.

“Hmm. She’s using her psychic energy to protect herself. But the air is getting hotter and soon, she’ll need to breathe. The inability to carry oxygen to her lungs and brain would lead to dizziness, then asphyxiation, then brain damage, and then death.”

“You didn’t have to list it all out,” Jerome said as he thought about all the times he had nearly died. And the time he had died. He should feel afraid of death. But that fear was non-existent. Somehow he wasn’t afraid of dying. Maybe that was what happened when one experienced it twice.

“But you have to wonder about it, Xerae. You have died twice already. Do you not wonder what happens to souls when they die?”

“I’m not that curious,” Jerome said wondering what was going through the AI’s thought process. Achilles was becoming more and more eccentric by the day.

“Really?”

“Yes. Really,” Jerome replied flatly.

“Not cool, Xerae. You should set aside a few more brain cells to think about the meaning of it all. The meaning of life, death, souls… Where does it all come from? Where does it go? How does reincarnation work?”

Jerome sighed as he just lay there. And let the AI blabber out like the eager beaver he tended to be sometimes. He wondered what Ash would be up to right now. She must have gone to Pilgrims’ Keep. Maybe she was already back. He couldn’t wait to see her. To hold her. Jerome sighed again. He missed Ash. He missed all his friends. This was something he hadn’t let himself feel in a long while. But ever since he found Ms. Tara, it was like the floodgates of his emotions rushed to the forefront of his mind, ready to burst through his mental walls.

“All this talk about death is making me homesick, Achilles. Time to get back to the fight,” Jerome said, pushing down his emotions. He stood up and began walking back toward the barrier.

~~~

Muna

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

In all her years, Muna had never clashed with a creature that frustrated her this much. The golem was unkillable. It kept reforming itself anytime she destroyed it. Worst of all, its body was getting hotter and hotter, the red color of its visage changing to white. It was harder to stay within the confines of this barrier. For some reason, she couldn’t leave; she couldn’t bend space to create a door that would lead elsewhere — like space had been locked down by an outside force. Muna panicked for the first time since the fight began.

Without being able to leave the confines of this barrier she would be roasted alive — or die of asphyxiation. She — the oldest and most powerful succubus in Terra Praeta — would die by the workings of a human. That set her blood on fire, burning the fear out of her psyche. Her rage was kindled and she bashed the barrier time and time again, wanting to destroy it. Though, she knew deep down that time wasn’t on her side.

“You can’t destroy it,” the human said. He was a youngling. Probably just a few years past his majority. From his voice, she could tell. “This right here…” he gestured with his hands in half circles, “...is what I call ‘to catch a fish’.” His helm retracted into his suit of armor and he grinned sardonically.

“You must be one lucky succubus to still be alive,” he said, skirting the barrier.

“And you are one lucky human—” she stopped. Does he know?

“What?” he said with a tilt of his head. “Because you can’t wield essence?” he smirked.

Muna’s anger spiked but she held it in. That incompetent little swine! What else did she reveal to the human? She couldn’t believe Csala let that slip. It wasn’t a problem, not if the succubus was in control and had the human enraptured and trapped, but this?! This was a disaster for their kind! Odin only knows how many other humans he had told!

“And what else do you know about my kind…human?” she said, her voice laced with condescension and a promise of wrath.

Muna began gathering her psychic energy for another attack — one more powerful than anything she had done. She had never been a firm believer of the prophecy: ‘Illyrah’s chosen would come from beyond the veil and save Terra Praeta from extinction’. It was a joke to her; a tale that was unable to be passed down into the present. Her great-grandmother, Tialana had made sure of it. But now…now it seems it may just be true.

If it wasn’t for Illyrah and his stupid war, Tialana would still be awake today. She would have united the succubi and made them a force to reckon with. These humans would be unable to send their pests to Terra Praeta to pilfer and feed off of her resources.

She admitted she had underestimated this human. And that had put her into this mess. Was she losing her edge? Fine. Perhaps it was her destiny to stop it all along. Now that it had got to this, she would risk it all. If it means getting rid of this damn pest.

The human took a step back as fear entered his eyes. Interesting. Did he sense what I was about to do? No. His psychic energy shouldn’t be evolved enough to sense mine. He must have seen something. Is it the fierce look in my eyes? Is it the fact that space around me is warped to the extent he can feel the volatility from where he’s standing?

Her hair stood up as though unaffected by gravity, waving slowly in the air. Rocks floated upwards untethered by gravity. The golem stood feet away from her, frozen by her power once more.

Muna drew in what little breathable air remained and screamed.

~~~

“‘To catch a fish?’ Really, Xerae?”

What..? It’s poetic…err…ish?

Jerome turned his attention back to his adversary.

“Careful, Xerae,” Achilles cautioned. He could sense the succubus gathering her psychic energy and spinning it around herself in a strange pattern. He projected what he sensed to Jerome, whose mind interpreted the view in colors.

It was mesmerizing. Jerome made sure to memorize the pattern even as he backed away from the barrier. It would be a shame to lose such a powerful being. That’s if the barrier would hold. “The barrier would hold, right?”

“Yes, it would, Xerae. And it surely wouldn’t be a shame. I can teach you a lot more than she could.”

“Sure you can,” Jerome quipped.

Achilles snorted. “At least she doesn’t have curves and a beautiful face. Or what excuses do you want to come up with this time around?”

The succubus screamed. It was loud and its vibration threatened to destroy the barrier.

Jerome sensed wave after wave of powerful psychic energy assault the barrier. The scripts lit up brighter than ever before, framing the ground in a wide golden circle of light, and threatening to fall apart. The earth began to vibrate violently, threatening to open up and swallow the forest.

Jerome waited, dreading the outcome of this last move by the succubus. He had seen the resolve in her eyes and it bordered on madness. She was angry about something that had probably happened in the past. Maybe Illyrah? He fought to stop the Fae from destroying all of Terra Praeta. Perhaps that’s what she was angry about. What he represented: An echo of the powers of the fae.

“She had issues,” Achilles butted in on Jerome’s thoughts.

“Yeah, well…she talked about Tialana. Wasn’t that the person Csala said was afflicted?” he asked, remembering Csala’s words from the night before. “May Tialana’s affliction pass you by this eve,” she had said. “Tialana must have been a person of great influence among the succubi. Perhaps her ‘affliction’ was caused by Illyrrah?” It should have been a statement, but it sounded like a question.

Achilles gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. “And this one happened to be descended from her,” he added.

Ah! Makes sense, he thought. They fell into silence as they waited.

Jerome felt it the moment the avatar of the Dragon’s Wrath crumbled, its essence bleeding away from it and pouring into the succubus — scorching white-hot fire essence that was as hot as a supernova. She must be enduring great torment because she started wailing the next moment. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He had marked her when she pinned him to the ground and grabbed her leg. Because succubi couldn’t wield essence, they would be overloaded if a large amount of essence was poured into them. What would happen next, then?

“She would pop…like a watermelon,” Achilles said. The humor in his voice didn’t go unnoticed.

“Let’s hope so.”

If not, all that they had done here would be for naught. He had no other card to play and — he tapped into his connection with the Hezvar — Achilles was also out of options. This opponent wasn’t like the Argonaut. The Argonaut was happy to let him leave and tore up a hole in the fabric of the universe to get to Vorthe. This one would chase him to the ends of Terra Praeta.

“Terra Praeta has no end, Xerae. Sheesh, you humans and your impractical idioms.”

“I think I can find one or two in Fae history,” Jerome rebutted. That shut the AI up for a while.

They concentrated again on the rising levels of energy inside the barrier. It was getting truly dangerous, even for him on the outside. To be safe, Jerome moved a few hundred feet away from the barrier and rested on the branch of a tree, high up in the air.

The vibrancy of the forest had made him forget it was still night. Every leaf, flower, and tree was given off light so beautiful that you could lose yourself in the myriads of colors. He cast his senses around and he could sense the plea from the forest to stop the destruction. Now that he observed, the trees were leaning away from the barrier. As if afraid of being corrupted.

I guess the barrier, and what it does could be seen as a corruption of nature, Jerome thought. He wanted it to also stop. But there was no going back now. There was no going forward until the ancient succubus had been dealt with. He felt horrible for the destruction but sent a silent apology to the forest through his connection with nature and thought about how he could help the forest to grow again. His earth mantra could do it — maybe.

Jerome set his gaze on the barrier in the distance once again. Now the domed barrier could be seen, blazing with white light. It lit up the forest in the distance as its top pulsed above the trees. The pulsing light grew denser and with every pulse, essence was drawn from the soil and the trees of the forest. The vibration of the ground intensified tenfold, causing Jerome to feel that he had done irreparable damage to the forest.

With a thought, he commanded his binding to burrow deeper into the earth. If it got destroyed by the supercharged heat, he could make another. But the succubus would escape because the barrier would be destroyed.

“What’s happening, Achilles?” Jerome asked, his voice filled with worry.

“You don’t have to worry too much, Xerae. The two energies would cancel each other out.”

Two energies? Cancel each other out? All he could sense was the incoming explosion that was sure to happen. Whatever was happening in there was probably happening on an atomic level that he couldn’t quite grasp. Not yet.

“Explain.”

“Simply put, the succubus’ psychic energy is feeding the fire essence around her — the more she pushes it away from herself in the attempt to protect herself, the hotter the essence burns in that confined space. It could be said to be negative energy.

“The barrier, however, is positive energy, and with the help of the binding, it is trying to cancel out the negative energy. The white-hot energy we see now is a result of the energy inside the barrier heating up to the extreme on a quantum level, and trying to inflate itself. Both energies are colliding, and the barrier is compressing itself causing the ongoing reaction to give off more heat in the process.”

The binding is that powerful?

“Well, yes. But it’s still just a simple binding, Xerae… basic.”

True to Achilles’ words, Jerome could feel the heat from where he stood about 300 hundred feet away. The trees close to the barrier had already caught fire, and a forest fire would be inevitable. But there was more. “Why is it pulling essence from the forest?”

“That’s the work of the binding trying to contain the explosion. Remember you empowered it with runes and not scripts. There’s nowhere else to get power from, so it takes it from its vicinity.”

So if I had made the binding using scripts, it would have fallen apart by now.

“It would have fallen apart the moment the succubus crashed into the barrier, Xerae. The probability of this binding surviving is already zero. So…” Achilles gave him a mental shrug. “...basic.”

Jerome frowned but kept silent. He was still super proud of his binding and wouldn’t like to lose it. It didn’t matter what Achilles said, to him it was the best binding ever. “It’s holding back a freaking ancient succubus for God’s sake!”

“Any moment now, Xerae.” Achilles ignored him with another mental shrug.

The shaking of the ground increased again until it felt like the soil beneath him was humming. It began resonating with the pulsing energy from the barrier. The tree he was standing on cracked. Fissures formed in the soil. Other trees around, cracked as well and the ground caved in.

Jerome quickly jumped off and flew off in the opposite direction of the barrier. He flew fast and covered a great distance in a single heartbeat. The light from the barrier increased and blinded him all of a sudden. He had to place an arm in front of his eyes to block out the blinding light.